Mothballs (18 page)

Adil and I did not speak or watch the door. If we had been left there we would immediately have fallen asleep. Would our father be angry with us if he saw us here? If he did get angry, would he hit us in front of the police? No one had hit me for long months. They said I had grown, and it was wrong to hit a girl who had come of age.

Puberty: the unknown door had opened before me, and I saw drops of blood on wide, unbleached clothing. I was not frightened. I had seen your blood flowing from your nose, legs, and mouth. That was my first blood, the exclusive possession of Officer Jamil. This blood would be yours alone. I took off the clothes and looked at it for a long time. My grandmother and Aunt Widad had trained me, and it was concluded in secret. They said: “When you become of age, you should fear men, all men. You can be a mother or a goddess.” I was terrified: my mother was dead and I did not know anything about goddesses. It was not the blood that frightened me, but masters' complexions: Jamil, Munir, Abu Iman, and … they all came out of the secret suffocating rooms and began to spray you with hoses of fire. You inscribed your clothes with your slender, delicate fingers, locked the door on yourself, and left the blood before you. You looked at it as if he were a new brother of yours. This was your blood, and the first time it came out you did not strike or scream.

Sergeant Jasim came in carrying a round tray with two glasses of laban. He placed it on the table, and I went to him. “Sergeant Jasim, Adil wants to wash his face, and – ”

“The washrooms are at the end of the corridor, on the right.”

Adil paid no attention and did not move. His head was hanging back, as if he were dead.

There were droplets of cold water on the sides of the glasses. The thick rich froth got on my lips as I drank. Adil drank but said nothing. My father's voice sounded behind me; the glass trembled between my mouth and my hand, dripping on my clothes as I set it down on the table and turned to him. He went first to Adil, and round the table he took us in his arms and hugged us tightly. Had my father grown shorter? Or had I grown taller?

Adil began to cry and I did not know what to do. Not one tear would fall, not one word would come, and he was more perplexed than we were.

Adil's voice was the first to crack: “Papa, my mother is dead.”

Sergeant Jasim's voice, as he saluted my father. I heard the sound of his legs as they rubbed together and he raised his arm: “At your service, sir.”

We clung to him, both turned toward the sergeant. He looked at us and lifted Adil to his chest, and carried him over to the bed. I walked behind them.

“Have you eaten?”

No one answered.

“Go and bring twenty skewers of kebab from the town.”

He left Adil, took out half a dinar, and went to the table, took the glasses in his hands and came toward us: “Drink the laban now.”

He did not look into my face or Adil's, but reached his hands out to the sink, turned on the tap, washed and dried his face, and took off his jacket. There were splotches of sweat under his armpits, and on his stomach and back.

He sat beside Adil and stretched out his legs. I slid down to the floor in front of him and looked at his feet. Instead of his boots he wore ordinary shoes, which I unlaced and pulled off, but when I began to pull his socks off, he pulled them back up and said, “Thank you, little Huda, we're going out shortly.”

He ruffled Adil's hair, stretched him out on his lap, and petted his face. They looked at one another. He lifted his face to him as I stood before them: “Have you taken your school certificates yet or not?”

“Papa, Adil passed, and I – ”

He took me by my hand and pulled me to his side, and put his arms round me. My tears streamed down, and my father cried as well. He took his hands away from us and raised them to his head, covered his face, and the sound of his sobbing grew louder and hung in the room's hot air.

This was a face I had never seen before, and all the moments and old images came near me. His haggard face, the delicate strands of grey more plentiful in his hair, the despotic appearance that aroused our aversion and hatred. These were his tears; he had not borrowed them from someone else, and he was not covering them with a handkerchief. He did not display them, and we could only see them up close. If only Iqbal knew; if only Wafiqa knew; if only the whole neighbourhood knew, that Officer Jamil was covering us with his wailing and his charm. We were crowning him now as father over our small heads, and he was sealing them with white wax and accompanying us as we crossed the road. No pistol with which to humiliate, no whip scourged our skin. Jamil had stopped crying, and we stopped studying his head; we held him by his arms and took him by his sides, and turned to him. We squirmed into his embrace and he hugged and kissed us on the neck and hair, smelled our ears and mouths, and a tear fell from his eye on to our hands. We cried as if Iqbal were there with us all, released from prison and free with us. He stood us up in front of him and looked into our faces, never taking his eyes off us. He dared, he dared us, and got to know us; all that was before us was tears and sorrow and fright.

My father changed his clothes; he surprised us and we saw him change. He kept us waiting, and joined us halfway.

My father.

We grabbed him and shook him and stood together and pulled him to the sink. He blew his nose, washed and groaned. We were behind him. I grabbed Adil, wiped my face with my hand, put the cloak on my head, and we went to the washrooms.

We went back and found him stretched out on the bed, his face washed clean, his eyes bloody, his mouth about to speak. We stood at his head, Adil stayed near him and I wandered round alone. I picked up the tray and went to the table, took out the bread, peeled the eggs and potatoes: “Papa, will you eat with us?”

“I'll wait for the kebab.”

“Grandmother and Auntie will eat kebab at the holy shrine.”

He spoke in a very soft voice: “How are they?”

Adil stood in front of him: “Papa, why don't you visit us like before?” I quickly added, “They send you their greetings. Grandmother prays for you all the time when she says her prayers. She raises her head and says, ‘Soften Jamouli's heart.' She wants to see you. She said, ‘I'd accept him coming even if he got upset and beat you two,' Papa. They are at the holy shrine.”

Sergeant Jasim came in. He did not see my father in front of him and did not know whom to salute. My father stirred on the bed and then stood up.

The smell of kebab, onion, and chopped celery. I opened the bag, and a light vapour emerged through my fingers. A layer of fat was stuck to the bottom of the bread. Red sumac was sprinkled on the skewers of kebab and wilted sprigs of mint. There were sharp Karbalastyle pickled vegetables, cooked in vinegar with hot peppers, cucumbers, rose-hued boiled turnips, and tomatoes. Sergeant Jasim returned with a container of laban and clean glasses. We three ate. It was the first time we had eaten together. My father broke up the bread and put the kebab in the middle and pushed it toward us. Adil's voice: “I've had enough, praise God.”

Sergeant Jasim went to the middle of the room. Whenever he saluted I wanted to laugh. His moustache was luxuriant, his complexion was yellowish, his cheeks clean-shaven, the hair of his head was frizzy and he had one green stripe on the shoulder of his jacket. He was short and stocky, and his teeth were white: “Sir, we'll open the gate at three-thirty.”

“Leave solitary until I come.”

He went and sat on the bed, took his shoes and put on his jacket, put the
sidara 
on his head, and straightened it as he stood in front of the mirror. He washed and dried his hands.

“Papa, we'll go with you.”

Adil said, “To the shrine?”

“No, not now.”

The voices of men outside, the tramping of their feet, their military gait; the gate opened with the movement of large keys and the rattle of iron chains. Adil went to the window and pulled the curtain aside, and looked out. “Papa,” he said sadly, “Do you remember when you told me ‘Come and see how I live in Karbala, the dirt and black death'? Papa, I still haven't forgotten that.”

Adil turned to us and ran to our father, buried his head in his chest, and we left the room.

I had disappeared inside the cloak, with only my ugly, plaguestricken face showing. Whenever we passed people, they stood up and saluted us.

The police came through the doors and stood in the large courtyard, their rifles on their shoulders and their faces expressionless, their lips thrust out, their uniforms sweaty, the sun beating down directly on to their weapons. There was a sudden flash in front of us as we passed them. They watched us, their eyelashes trembling and eyelids twitching. Their arms were not steady, and the vast courtyard rose as one human wave as they moved and turned. The women shouted. They opened their arms and uttered moans and incoherent words. Their tears flowed down their cheeks. Minutes tumbled by these women, things, and faces.

Friends, relatives, fathers, brothers, uncles, neighbours, spreading their cloaks on the floor, looking into bags, handing out food and cigarettes, sharing water and a little money, weeping and kissing, falling silent, watching, as we plunged into their midst. They touched Adil's head and looked me closely in the face.

The faces of the prisoners, slender figures tall and short, their eyes wandering, cheeks sunken, thick moustaches and slack jaws. Their dishdashas were dirty and their sandals cracked. They all became one colourful, wandering, mad planet.

The men looked like the men of our neighbourhood: Abu Mahmoud, Abu Iman, Abu Hashim, and Haj Aziz. We approached, and the gates which had been olive green were colourless. Here they were before me, I felt them with my hand and looked inside: stone steps, thick brown paper, dug up earth, the high wall. Flies flew out into the heat and solitude outside. The smell spread outside, like the heat of the baker's oven in our street, like the mud of the Euphrates in the first months of flood.

My father left me, I leave him. Not one stone over another; not one neighbour near another neighbour.

How could that man laugh? When would he urinate?

I counted: one, two, twenty, one hundred. I did not know how to count the prisoners. Mahmoud knew that I did not like arithmetic, but I was able to count them. They sat on the ground near the children. The women sprawled out on the ground though the sun was no good at this time of day. Some laughed, and diverted me, laughing. Was it lawful to laugh in prison?

My mouth had a bitter taste, my lips were parched, and my tongue was dry. It was tea-time. I turned round: my father and Adil were standing before the locked gate. A group of police officers stood round my father. On the other side was the solitary.

When my father was alone with me on the roof, I was alone with the ants, flies, and fear. The iron bars before me were as silent as our iron roof with glass. There I looked down from high up. I saw everything all at once. My mother, as well, had been freed from prison and wooden talk. Here there was no white or grey glass. The gates were high with small round windows admitting fine dust and flies. No steps took me to the high roof, and no staircase brought me down to the doors that opened one after another. A few visitors waited to the rear. Rifles, police, my father's height and his face, also freed from his prison, coming out one after the other. My father turned round before them, Adil raised his head and looked, holding him by the arm.

My father extended his hand to them, took them by the forearm, and walked with them a little. One, two, seven; they became thirteen. They opened their eyelids a little in the light, moving along with a number of guards among them, though at a gesture of my father's hand the police moved away. He produced a packet of cigarettes, walked, shared some and lit them with a match. His hand touched their fingers, and they took deep breaths, they sat and stretched their legs out on the ground. My father turned to us and stepped back a little. We stood at a distance. The families sat down to rest by one another. One of the sergeants approached us.

“Sir, we have thoroughly searched the trays.”

With a nod of his head, the food was distributed to them.

We walked behind him; we turned when he turned and stopped when he stopped. Now he was close to us, now far.

Suddenly he turned to us: “Adouli, go and bring the rest of the kebab.”

Adil ran in and returned with the kebab, eggs, potatoes, and bread. My father walked with the tray on his shoulder, the cigarette in his hand, talking with the guards and the circle of men who had been around him. We stood together before those men. They did not lift their heads or lower their arms. They were motionless and silent.

“This is Master Abba's kebab, which my mother has prayed over and sent.”

He took the tray, placed it on the ground, and walked away quickly. They lifted their faces to face the sun. For the first time I saw their faces. Their eyes were beautiful, their eyelids were swollen, their eyelashes were dry, their hair was dusty, and their fingers trembled as they held their cigarettes. They coughed. At last their lips opened to show their yellow teeth and white tongues.

“Thank you.”

We walked behind my father, who was now far ahead of us and entered the crowd. I saw him, calm and contented but far off. I did not know when his fright ended, or who had buried him with titles. Icould remember his first slap and his dreadful lair. His face was moist with sweat, tobacco, and iodine. He was the handsome king on the throne of those who sat before me, my good-looking father who had begotten me and loathed no girl like me. One day Iqbal said, “One night your father came to you when you were in bed bloody and sweaty. You were fresh and new. He was afraid when he first saw you. I thought he would change you to mere bones, and you would make him a policeman constantly standing at your door. He hated it when you cried at night and wailed in daytime. He hated your slow shouting and your rapid breathing. When he slept, he imagined you were hitting him on the head, and he'd wake up wanting to hit you, but I woke up and stopped him. He cried, you cried, and we all cried together. I could never fool him, and neither could you. Every woman fooled him except us. I used to lie down beside you, and he'd lie down far from us. He'd mutter between his teeth as he slept: ‘I'll only have boys, I'll never get Huda married. I'll have her dedicate herself only to me. I'll have her never grow up.'”