Mothballs (10 page)

So this was Baghdad, the city of cities. I raised my arm and waved briefly to my mother. She never went to the market. They bound her to the al-A‘dhamiyya district. She stumbled there. She came from Aleppo, married in Karbala, got pregnant on a cold iron bed, coughed in the ancient bathroom, and gave birth to us on the floor. Grandmother insisted she went out, always repeating, “Take the children and get away from me. I want to be alone.”

“Mama, go with us, have a look at the market, get some fresh air! Aren't you tired of being in the house?”

My mother did not reply or offer any resistance; she went into the kitchen. There she furnished all Baghdad on her table and cooked it at her leisure. She dreamed of it, kissed it, and presented it to herself, made us biscuits, sprinkled them with sugar, almonds, and raisins, and went into a fit of weeping. She alone cried when we left. She had Baghdad bathe with her, and spoke to it in the only room that she knew. The house she tidied, that kitchen whose doors she opened up before her. She washed the dishes and got them as shiny as her eye, leaving her smell in the spoons. She called out, she aged, and when we came back, we saw Baghdad in her eyelids. She surrounded us with her wrist and forearm. We fled from her and she was silent. Baghdad, my mother is the most beautiful thing you have.

The sounds of hammers in the coppersmiths' market, the melodies, the blows against pounded red metal. They hammered melodiously, smoothed out, and balanced. The large, flat sheets of metal folded and curved. Every movement of these strong hands produced something, made an object: a large platter, a basin, an old-style coffee pot, a pan. Their hands lifted up the sheets, the big metal-cutting scissors, the high, narrow anvil which the coppersmith put in front of him; he begins to hammer. The wide wooden anvil, narrow in the middle, was for shaping the metal and adding the engraving and ornamentation, pictures, inscriptions and Qu'ranic verses.

The fire softened the metals and burned our hearts and the muscles of the men competing with the muscular metals.

The young workers and the old men wore unbleached cotton clothes. Their feet were bare. The shops were small. This market was roofed with thin metal sheets. The sound of the hammers grew louder, and the red and yellow shapes changed and evolved. I did not hear the voice of either aunt. Here I can shout as I please; I can sing, joke, stand or walk, or lag behind.

The languages intermingled; everything assailed anything. The cries of the pedlars flowed over me. The ground was furrowed and muddy, not paved. Every moment brought fountains of flame from the openings of the shops, a stifling flame that spread, along with its blaze, black clouds and a penetrating smell. I did not know what it reminded me of.

The paths opened up before me. To the right was a short, twisting, dead-end lane that reminded me of the lane in our neighbourhood. To the left was an open ditch full of leaden-coloured water. The ladies' cloaks were before me, the sighs of admiration behind me. The men smacked their lips at these expanses of veiled women and dreamt of the concealed. I never tired of this sight.

We stood and walked on. Aunt Naima bargained, leaving my father's sister no opportunity to speak. She let her only open her bag and pay out the money.

In this new wedding basin Farida would wash away her first blood, and tall white candles would be set in the middle of the new copper Prophet Zacharias dishes, inlaid in the middle and engraved along the edges. We would put sweets there too, under which we would set out green leaves for the prophet's blessing. Utensils and pitchers, plates and coffee cups, rugs and carpets, silver necklaces and rusty rings. My father's sister poured out her new scent. She did not smell; she had not seen all this before. She took out the money and counted it. This was Grandmother's money – she had prayed over it before going out, to give it a blessing. It was buried in the old bag, intended for today.

We entered the cloth market. Rolls of material, colours, golden thread, silver wires, silken ribbons, and black woollen shawls. The smell of the cloth made me dizzy. Open rose blossoms, the closed circles, the shops turned inside out … the silk ornamenting the bride and the lace enveloping her.

Farida's voice emerged from all this commotion, rising and falling as she waved the old jacket around, trying it on me: “Stand up straight! God help your poor teachers at school!” They collected clothes for me from family and relations far and near. They washed and dyed them, tapering the ones that were too short and shortening the ones that were too long. They stitched the back and shoulders to make them fit my narrow frame. They changed the leather on the old shoes and dyed them, and pounded flat the nails that pricked me. The day winter arrived, they took down the velvet curtains and Umm Suturi took them to make them into a coat you would wear for two years, three, it was the colour of the sky when it rains, neither grey nor blue. You wore it in the dirt and mud. You went to Hubi, where it got stained with grease and blood, and to the baker's, where it got sullied with flour and bread dough.

Baghdad's cold paralysed the bones; Mahmoud's warmth spread as he stood before me in his old jacket.

He brushed the dust off my coat and blew it into the public street, and in front of everybody he continued to watch the dust fly into the sky: “When I grow up, I'm going to put these clothes in the museum so people can see our clothes. Huda, some day we'll wear new clothes and read pretty books. My father says things will change, but I don't know how. Study hard so that you'll be a doctor or engineer, but I'm very afraid of blood. You remember when we spat in the street to see the blood? That time I was frightened, as if I'd seen all my blood run out in front of me, as though the street was all blood. I was afraid and ran to the river bank and went swimming, and dunked my head under the water. I swam until I was tired. The sun was strong, and my eyes could hardly see. The other children went away and left me all alone. They said, ‘Mahmoud has gone mad,' but no one knew what had happened to me. Whenever I lifted my head out of the river I saw blood, so I went under again until it went away. I don't know what happened then, but I was in the house, shouting and crying, Huda. Lots of blood is scary.”

This was the day my aunt's blood would be spilled.

Farida was the first fortress of this house. My grandmother and her masters were tested by her: Jamil, Munir, Adil, and I. A battalion that emitted a secret life. She had no double wings, but she did have a skull like my father's pistol, a body as strong as all the men in our neighbourhood, and a voice I heard at night that could scare away the angels. This was her imperial, sublime day. Her secrets would be pierced; everything was upside down. She was stretched out on the carpet in our room, nearly naked, her legs open. Umm Suturi lifted her right leg, and Aunt Naima took her left leg. They drew thick lines along each thigh, clipping and up-rooting the hair of her thighs and legs. She was like steel, turning on to her stomach, her hair hanging between her eyes. The white cube of chalk moved along her brown flesh, swelling, red, rushing into her cells, seeping into her blood.

Farida's voice created a new layer: “Ouch! Let me rest a little while. I'm dying!” Her bursts of trilling were like a declaration of war. Umm Suturi's voice sounded: “God's blessings upon Muhammad, flesh, fat, and beauty. God help you, sweet Farida. We're almost done.”

Aunt Naima: “Listen, Farida, men don't like hairy women. You have very little hair. Just be calm until we finish. For two months you'll see the water running over your body like silk.”

She took her arm and got as far as her armpit. The bride wept and fell back.

“You'll be numb any minute now.”

The bride kicked among their arms, bracing herself against the wall. Umm Suturi took her head and held it steady in her hands, and presented her face to Aunt Naima. The slender thread moved along her cheek, her chin, and her face.

“Leave my eyebrows!” she cried.

“Today you just be quiet.”

Farida looked like a ripe fig. Her cheeks were spotted, her forehead was a blazing red, and her eyebrows were reduced by half. Her beauty was turned upside down. They put her hair up with a narrow ribbon, and her neck turned and moved. My two aunts went down to her chest and stopped at her nipples and the fiery divide. With the tweezers they plucked out her downy blonde fuzz. They palpated her and watched her. They drew flared rays from her belly, which folded over a little, running downward to the last dream, and up to her nipples.

“Look at Huda here with us. Go away. Go outside.”

Aunt La'iqa's voice: “When you grow up we'll marry you off ourselves, and rejoice with you. Now go play with the children.”

The children, the little ones, and the house was inundated with women. I had not seen them before. I knew Rasmiya, Umm Suturi, Umm Mahmoud, Umm Hashim, Umm Ghanim, and the wives of our neighbourhood's shopkeepers. They all flocked together to the bath in our house, washing and drying, changing clothes, combing their hair, exhaling pleasant odours and cheap perfume, sudden voices, murmuring among the aromatics, slanders coming from their gums: “Yes, this Munir is her cousin. His looks! He frightens the children. But he's terribly rich, and all the luck in the world. Everyone has tried asking for Farida's hand, but life's like that.”

“Well, that's her luck. Yes, she's pretty, but she's vain and sour, and her tongue cuts like a saw. When she opens her mouth about anyone, God help them!”

The flood moved into the kitchen as well. Aunt Bahija stood in front of the pots and rolled up her sleeves. She skimmed the grease and sprinkled cumin on the meat and rice. She fried the meatballs. Her pelvis shook as she kneaded the dough for the stuffed pastry. She stirred the pot of milk with her long wooden spoon, blew on the froth, and sprinkled saffron and aromatic herbs on top of the custard.

Aunt Najiya beside her brewed the tea, cleaned the tea glasses, spoons, saucers, and knives. Her voice dripped with greed and jealousy: “Who invited Naima? It must have been you. Are you trying to kill me? Don't you have enough women? Oh, if I could have, I'd have killed you and been saved from you.”

The grease, the smells of the kitchen, the distinct smell of Aunt Bahija's repressed laughter. The smell of fingernails painted with grease. The long nightgowns did not emerge from their steam without this panting. The fragrant steam of delicious food warmed the kitchen. The legs of the wedding lamb had been cut, its intestines removed, and the carcass skinned. Hubi had sized it up and taken his share – the head – in advance. My grandmother's voice: “Leave a little meat for us to distribute to the poor at the mosque. This day is a favourite of God's.”

It all collided and mingled together, the flesh of the lambs and the flesh of all these women, my mother's sisters Nahida and Zubayda.

The young boys and the girls watched, moving from room to room, not knowing what to do. Grandmother Wafiqa came and went amidst them all. She had bathed before them and still had not changed her clothes. She brought the new silk robe, embroidered with violet thread. She adored this colour and always pronounced it incorrectly. She smacked us when we laughed at her inability to say
banafsaji
, saying instead 
banoonsaji
, meaning my teeth have gone and my tongue is crooked through grief.

On this day they called her “the mother of the groom” and Umm Jamil. I pulled her by her dress: “I want my mother. When will she come? Today is my aunt's wedding.” She did not reply. Adil was dressed in his old holy day clothes: long trousers the colour of dirty sugar, a blue shirt, and new shoes. He combed his hair and stood bewildered at the gate to the house. He spoke to no one and made no jokes. When he grew tired, he sat on the bench, which the women had pushed out of the way so they might pass without bumping into it.

Firdous was with me as I alternated between the kitchen and the trays of doughnuts and baklava.

The house was upside down. We brought bamboo chairs from our grandfather's big house and the neighbours' houses. These were lined up along the left, and a small table was set before each chair. New mats were laid on the floor, to the right, and freshly fluffed mattresses made up with clean sheets. Big cushions were propped up against the walls. The glasses gleamed, and the dishes and spoons were taken out of the boxes on the top shelf, and were all set out on a rectangular table at the opening of the hall.

This was the wedding of the first girl. My grandmother had lost three girls and a boy; there was only Jamil and Farida, with fifteen years between them.

I went up to the roof and murmured with my father's first voice. Today neither Mr Jamil attended, nor my aunts Widad and Inaam.

I plunged alone into those walls that had been demolished. The storm had harvested all that the other rooms had abandoned. The roof, which had been a bridge leading me to the sky, was now crowded with new fears. Uncle Munir had levelled the surface, paved its rutted mud with coloured tiles, and coloured its walls a bright shade of apricot. The old things were gone; Munir Effendi had taken them out of their boxes and the secret rooms and built the wedding chamber.

He had bought a great wide bed. Its frame was gleaming brass, with scalloped designs at the top and middle. New cotton was brought and the old was fluffed up. A ribbed, bright yellow eiderdown was made to cover it. He bought a wardrobe with four oaken doors, a chest of drawers with a round mirror mounted on top, and a small, low chair upholstered in embroidered black velvet. He replaced the glass in the ceiling with new, coloured glass decorated with a branch pattern.

On the bed they spread out a pink, low-necked nightdress and a robe whose bosom and sleeves were worked in lace and silk thread. The bride's high-heeled shoes were set out on the floor, high and shining with broad feathers. I opened the wardrobe and looked at the bride's clothes. The bundles were lined up: these were her clothes for the first seven days, perfumes, rosewater, sprigs of lavender, dried flowers placed among the bundles, and everything bright, shining, and orderly: blue, red, pink, yellow. I opened them and touched, sighed, longed. This was the corner for Rachel's clothes, this was Aunt Naima's pile. Between them hung Uncle Munir's suits, upright, elegant, new, ironed like a border guard's. Iqbal's clothes had been stored since her trip in a small suitcase tossed on top of the wardrobe. Her first wedding dress, her only silk handkerchief, her hairband, and a picture of her with my father on her wedding day, which she had placed before me on the shelf near the Qu'ran.