Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (44 page)

“What happened with my brother a few days before the wedding was that his fiancée called him and asked him to come to her house right away. There he found her father and brothers in a state of extreme panic and the whole household in chaos. She told my brother that they, meaning the government, had given them six hours to leave Iraq. ‘I want you to take this tin can in which we have stowed all the family jewels and whatever cash we could get our hands on. I will leave it in your safekeeping until we settle down somewhere, because we’ll go to Iran first and from there most likely to Paris or Beirut, depending on my father’s or brothers’ jobs.’ Abd al-Razzaq was at a great loss about what to do and said, ‘Why don’t you leave it in safekeeping with one of the husbands of your sisters, some of whom are Iraqi with Ottoman affiliation?’

“She said, ‘I don’t trust anyone but you.’ Abd al-Razzaq thought for a little while then said, ‘I am sorry, Shirin. I cannot guarantee the safekeeping of these assets. Iraqi security forces might come and take them by force. How would I look then, to you and your brothers? And what if your father or other members of your family did not believe me? What would I do? Security men might confiscate it, then the officers would later on deny it. I am sorry. I can’t do it. I want you, not your money or your family jewels.’ She cried and said, ‘The officers and policemen will seize it now. Please, help us. Maybe no one would know about it. I’ve put it in a cooking butter can that you can hide anywhere you wish. If all goes well, then our property would be preserved. If they seize it, then at least we’ve tried, because if we keep it they’ll take it anyway since the departure order permits only what we need on the road to the borders.’

“Abd al-Razzaq said, ‘I am sorry. People lose everything for much more trivial reasons. I hope you understand my position. We will meet in Beirut when things calm down, God willing.’

“Shirin then opened the can and took out a gold miniature Qur’an on a chain and a ring and got him to wear them. Abd al-Razzaq went back home despondently. And naturally they haven’t met again yet and he doesn’t know if they ever will. Shirin’s father was the biggest fruit merchant in Iraq and owned several import and export companies. He had been spared the big deportation operation with the other tycoons because he was sick that day. Shirin’s older brothers were in Beirut, where they still are, and none of them had gone to that meeting.”

A deep sadness enveloped us. It was the tragedy of love and hatred that Iraq was constantly experiencing over again. I thought to myself, “Why is it that Iraq is so hard on its own people? Why?”

Sawsan whispered, “Doesn’t it remind you of Inji and Hasan Abu Ali in the movie
Rudda Qalbi
?”

Maha lightly struck Sawsan on the thigh. I got up to prepare tea in the samovar and to try to break the sad mood that had settled on us. A few moments later I heard some loud laughter. I said to myself, “Thank God,” and asked them to tell me what they were laughing about. I saw tears in Anhar’s eyes despite her smiling face. Suhayla said, “Anhar must tell the story. No one can tell it as well as she can.”

Anhar said, “The deportation continued in descending order according to the status of the deportees. It even got to the point that some people made false accusations about people that they knew. Most beggars were either Iranians or Indians, especially near the shrines. An old lady whose husband had died rented a room in my uncle’s house. This uncle is a very old man who lives alone with his wife after marrying off his children. Their relationship with this ajami woman was very strong and it grew stronger because she checked on them every day until, with time, she became part of the family, especially since she didn’t have any children. Suddenly they arrested her and put her on the military truck and told her she could only take a bag, a blanket, and a bathroom pitcher. The old woman was frightened and had a panic attack that left her with a case of acute diarrhea. My uncle and his wife could not help her
in any way. Kazim begged them to let her go, but they threatened him harshly. Faced with the cruelty of the soldiers, the poor woman got on the truck, crying the whole time. Throughout the drive, the driver refused to stop so she could go to the bathroom. The diarrhea persisted and she couldn’t control herself. The other passengers and the soldiers escorting them couldn’t stand the stench. One of them said, ‘What can this ajami woman do and what difference would it make if she stayed in Iraq or left?’ He ordered the driver to stop and rid them of her.”

Anhar then stood up, imitating the soldier and saying loudly, “Go, go. You’re so disgusting!”

“My uncle and his wife were surprised when she returned after a few days in a pitiable condition.”

Everyone was touched by the sad story, but when Atef grabbed the lute and began to sing a serious, melancholic song by Abd al-Wahab, Sawsan asked him to stop and to sing a more cheerful popular song.

Naglaa gave me a banana. I told her, “The way you’re feeding us, you’d think you’re fattening us for the Eid!”

She said, “I am sure you’re hungry.”

Then she placed her hand on her mouth to whisper, “You are nursing and you need food.”

Abd al-Razzaq never met his fiancée again—the war made that impossible. I remembered asking Anhar a few months after that whether the deportation of Iraqis with Iranian affiliation had stopped, and she said, “Yes. Some of those close to Saddam said to him, ‘Why do you give Iran the gift of an army of angry young men who resent being forcibly deported from Iraq, when they know Iraq inch by inch and could come back as spies or carry out terrorist activities without arousing suspicion?’ So Saddam ordered the deportation of girls and the elderly and the detention of young men at Abu Ghraib. I understand there are thousands of young men
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five being detained now. The catastrophe is that now that war has broken out, it’s become impossible for them to be released. And nobody knows the true facts or exact figures.”

I looked behind as I heard a girl singing in the back of the train car, “Tarry, tarry, sun! Sun, tarry, tarry!”

The Iraqi women on the train joined in and started singing the rest of the song. I tried to keep track of the boisterous singing even as I kept hold of my thoughts. The singing rose so loudly it engulfed the whole car:

The morning bird passed by and greeted me.

It said “good morning” and wished me well.

It fluttered its wings and sang to me.

It dispelled the clouds and revealed the light;

It took me to my house and gave me a mare, two robes, and a kerchief.

It said to me, “Congratulations, a thousand congratulations! You’re now free!”

My tears flowed. Where is that freedom now, Anhar, Abd al-Razzaq, Shirin, Suhayla, and Naglaa? Who else can I think of, and where is that freedom? Why was the picture so different when I lived among them? Why were Hatim and I so happy for Iraq, thinking that it was prospering? Why did we, along with so many, love Saddam? Oh God!

The train stopped in the Nasiriya station. We were getting very close to Basra. Will Basyuni keep his promise and come to our appointment at the hotel? I remembered his baby face and his excessive zeal, his sense of humor and his sudden fits of anger. I asked myself: What tempted him to join the Iraqi army in the war against Iran? Did he really believe it was a national war in defense of Arabism? Has the war changed him just as prison had? Nora, what does prison do to a boy who finds himself among veteran political
prisoners? Undoubtedly they spoiled him and he took on the role of a revolutionary without fully understanding what the word meant. But it also points to a sort of suicidal character, the makings of a Greek tragedy: from prison to Iraq and from a clean bed to laborers’ tents to war in one fell swoop? Why does life choose certain people to test by fire from so early on? I don’t think it’s mere coincidence. If you keep running, you are bound to stumble at some point.

We arrived at Basra at two-thirty in the morning. We went directly to the lattice-covered Sheraton hotel. I took a hot shower and quickly emptied my breasts without bothering to measure the outcome. I just wanted to go to sleep.

I woke up at five in the morning as usual. I opened the window and turned the radio on, filling the room with soft music. I conducted a thorough examination of my body. I noticed that the milk in the glass came only to the half-way point. I counted the days, using my fingers, and held on to hope. I took out Hilmi Amin’s memoirs from the bag and started reading. Maybe they could shed light on Anhar’s disappearance, even though he described the memoirs as the body’s journey that he couldn’t record for me. And why not? Anhar is his beloved even though he hadn’t mentioned her in the pages I had read so far. I continued reading:

The First Pick

All these experiences with women and now, the only woman I’ve ever wanted with all my being, I find myself unable to plunge into her body. I know that body from the outside, I desire each of its cells, yet I am content to stop at its threshold, at these outer pulsations that fall with the overpowering turnings in my hands. When your body twists, Anhar, and when I hear your moans, breathless with desire, filling the whole room, and when you cannot contain the desire pressing you for completion, I get aroused to the point of madness, I call on my iron will and long experience in self-control to prevent our becoming one body. It had become quite a knot, and I don’t know how we will untie it in the coming days.

Do you remember the first time I saw you naked? I began to kiss you as you twisted sweetly, melting like an ice cream scoop in my hand, and abandoned resistance at the threshold of your lips and lifted barriers one after the other as I undressed you?

I remember all the details very well. They say that women are best when it comes to details, but I say that I see the picture so clearly and in vivid colors in my imagination’s eye, because of the many times I have recalled it on the lonely nights since you left. I removed your wool vest first, then you smilingly gave me your blouse as you waited for my next step. I raised your slip and you slipped out of it, laughing as you reached for the clasps of your bra, undoing them and handing it over to me in a gesture of acquiescence. How strong you are, Anhar! You left me facing your breasts as perfectly shaped as pomegranates anxious to leave their tree, calling out to me, inciting me to pluck them. Oh God! Are you really mine? Are you really standing, half naked, like a goddess, head pointing to the sky, delighted in showing off what you’ve got? I must admit that you are really consciously proud of what you have and that I would one day realize that your pride would be our biggest problem. I got lost in my reflections until you got me out of them by asking, ‘Where have you gone?’

You had sat up, resting your knees on the mattress, leaving your legs bent behind you, naked except for black netting stockings through which your skin appeared even whiter. You also wore black lace panties. I pictured you as Venus, standing on the water’s surface, defying the world, time, and the gods. It got to the point when all that was left was for me to remove the last piece of clothing. I reached for your shoulders and began to feel them, reverently worshiping the body open before me. I wanted to touch its pores, get to know its minutest details, in reality and not just fantasy. I sat a short distance away, my fingers seeing what my eyes could not. It was as if I had realized that all my senses were aching to know you. I kissed you and my lips wandered all over your smooth and firm complexion. Did you know that I loved the taste of your skin? That it had
a flavor all its own, which left me at a loss for a long time to figure out where it came from and why it so captivated my mind? Was it some kind of perfume? I knew your perfume quite well. It exuded a totally different fragrance when another body wore it. Was it a special kind of soap? Was it the food you ate? When my tongue made the acquaintance of your skin I realized you had a rich, deep flavor resembling the rich scent of the alluvium of the Tigris after a rainy winter afternoon. My desire to kiss you all over grew stronger and I gave in to that desire. When I reached the dimple of your navel, I moved my head back a little and began to devour with my eyes the deep mark of your birth and said to you, ‘Maybe I should place a colored bead there to protect it from both devils and gods!’

I inserted my tongue into the navel, feeling that I was having intercourse with you. Your skin trembled. Have you ever touched the neck of a horse and felt that lustful tremor under your palm? Your tremor tempted me to kiss your whole body, which I started doing until I stopped just outside the gate of paradise. I kissed you there and wiped my forehead on it; perhaps it would grant me entrance. I removed the black lace fabric and was surprised to see the red crest of the rooster alertly standing guard, armed with the banners of two lips filled with blood. It was overcome with desire so it shouted its readiness. I couldn’t prevent myself, before taking any further step forward, from going back to look at your eyes. But you had closed them and withdrawn to a different world to which I had not been introduced yet.

You had stretched out on the bed in front of me, naked and available, beautiful and lustful, having lost all control of your body as my fingers moved freely, squeezing the nipple like a soft yet firm red grape which put my whole body on fire when it slid to my palm. I saw happiness washing over your face with holy prayer water, drawing me into the prayerful mood, causing me to forget time and place and defeat. But you automatically reached for my shirt buttons, taking it off, not knowing that at that very moment when you were signing the deed of the union of our flesh, you awakened my
mind and made it possible for it to confront me and to remind me of my fear for you and the fact that you were my daughter’s age. I started feeling torn between my overpowering desire for you and my responsibility toward you. I did my utmost to escape and to come back to our present moment and to cling to you as much as I could, so I embraced you tightly and began to rub and squeeze your back and your breasts fervently as you also rubbed and squeezed me, as if each of us wanted relentlessly to take the other deep inside. I sank my teeth into your neck and heard you screaming, thinking it was an act of lust and its fire, whereas I was seeking protection from the pain of my trying to stop my runaway desire. Then you surprised me by moving under me as if I had plunged into you. You made me feel as if I were on top of a mare galloping rhythmically and moaning, seeking my help to free you of the pain of waiting. I stole a glance at the rooster’s crest and found it changing color from red to maroon to violet and getting darker and darker. My palm clung even tighter to it and it began to devour your lips, my pleasure increasing as my hand felt the fanlike movement and as I held myself back from ravishing you while desiring to contain all of your organs at the same time. My eyes were still fixed on what was under your eyelids, trying to pry them open and get into your innermost depths. Then your screams exploded so loudly I feared the neighbors would hear them in the quiet of the night as your hand reached into my pants, freeing my penis, which had been awaiting your hand’s move. I felt your fingers hesitating as they felt the effect of age. But it was too late to stop or go back. Your own movement had begun to reach a crescendo. Then my hand felt the rhythmic movement subside. I stayed with you, patting it gently, until I got the message of your desire to withdraw.