When the Apricots Bloom

by Gina Wilkinson

  He swapped his pajama pants for trousers and stomped back to the living room.

  “These foreigners only want to destroy our country.”

  “That’s not true.” Huda pursed her lips in irritation. Of course, she’d thought twice about working at the embassy. Anyone even remotely connected with foreigners, especially Westerners, drew the suspicion of the mukhabarat. A case of the pox was more welcome than that. But what was she supposed to do?

  Abdul Amir’s company wasn’t the only business to close its doors. Huda’s previous employer, an agricultural import-export company, had resorted to paying her with sacks of almonds or pistachios from shipments abandoned in their warehouse. Unfortunately, Huda couldn’t pay her bills with rancid nuts. Then a cousin who worked as a driver at the German embassy called. He’d heard through the gossipy driver grapevine that the Australians down the road needed a secretary with good English and typing speed of eighty words per minute. When he mentioned the salary, Huda’s eyes bulged. She’d swallowed her reservations about working with foreigners. Not only would this cover their debts, the salary was more than her and Abdul Amir’s former paychecks combined.

  “The staff at the embassy are nice people,” she scolded Abdul Amir. “They’re ordinary people. Like us.”

  “Everyone knows, Australia is nothing but America’s obedient lapdog.”

  “You can’t judge people by the actions of their—” Huda broke off as the six o’clock anthem blared from the television. The president rode across the screen in an army jeep. Abdul Amir grabbed the remote and flicked to the next channel. From a gilded balcony, the president saluted a battalion of goose-stepping troops. He growled and tossed the remote back onto the couch.

  “I fear that people will question your loyalty.” His words were barely audible above the television, but like most sensible people, they’d long ago grown accustomed to reading lips, filling in blanks, talking in code.

  “I love my country,” whispered Huda. “You know that.”

  “It is not what I know that matters,” he muttered. “I’m going to the coffee shop.”

  “What about dinner?”

  He had shrugged, grabbed his car keys, and stormed off, leaving her to seek comfort in a box of nougat, unaware that the mukhabarat were about to descend upon their home.

  * * *

  Huda rolled onto her side and checked the clock on the bedside. She wondered, Was Khalid asleep? Or was he huddled under his faded Star Wars sheets, shining his flashlight on a dog-eared copy of Harry Potter? The boy wanted nothing more than to enroll in the Hogwarts Academy. Pity he did not show the same enthusiasm for study in real life.

  Huda’s ears pricked up at the familiar rattle of Abdul Amir’s Corolla station wagon turning into their street. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and into a pair of fluffy pink slippers. A Mother’s Day gift from Khalid three years ago, they were worn at the heels. In the hallway, she paused and stuck her head into his bedroom. Khalid was curled up like a snail. She continued to the front door, unlocked the dead bolts, and released the chain.

  Outside, dry leaves whispered in the darkness. Abdul Amir’s voice boomed from the far side of the gate.

  “What the hell? Have you locked me out of my own home, woman?”

  “The lock was broken.” As Huda pried open the gate, she could smell the burnt molasses of nargilah smoke embedded in her husband’s hair and clothes. “I had to replace it.”

  “How on earth did it break?” Abdul Amir waved his hands about like an angry prophet scolding his flock. “Do I need to punish Khalid again?”

  “Please, my dear, be quiet.” Huda peeked along the potholed street. Tall walls stretched in both directions, draped in flowering bougainvillea or fragrant jasmine. All were topped with metal spikes or shards of broken glass. “I’ll explain everything—in the backyard.”

  Abdul Amir stiffened.

  “The backyard?” he whispered. His hands were still raised, but now he looked less a righteous prophet and more like the victim of a stickup.

  “That would be best,” Huda murmured nervously.

  Like his wife before him, Abdul Amir scanned the street. The wind groaned, and grains of pale desert sand scratched against their cheeks.

  * * *

  A razor-thin moon hovered high over Huda’s backyard. The flames of al-Dora still spiked the horizon, but the wind had begun to turn. Huda’s nose wrinkled at the smell of burning gas. Abdul Amir stood on his toes and peered over the neighbor’s fence. No lamp glowed in their window. Their own house was dark and quiet too. Still, it was safer not to talk indoors—walls have ears, and so do teenage sons.

  Abdul Amir and Huda huddled close.

  “What did you tell them?” he whispered.

  “There was nothing to tell,” said Huda. “I barely know the woman. If she stops by the office, we chat about the weather, small talk, that’s all. I mean, why would I go asking for trouble?”

  Huda scanned the dim reaches of the garden: the orange and lemon trees, the vegetable patch in the corner, the wrought-iron swing seat that rocked back and forth on squeaky hinges. Abdul Amir raked his hands through his hair. In the moonlight, his fingers were pale as bone.

  “What do you know about this woman?”

  “Ally seems nice enough,” mumbled Huda. “But it can’t be long before she packs up and returns home. The heat and the sun always prove too much for the embassy wives.”

  And the loneliness too, thought Huda. She remembered meeting Ally a month ago, at the end of her ten-hour drive from Jordan to Baghdad. The young woman had stumbled from the embassy Land Cruiser, hand raised to ward off the sun, legs wobbling like a sailor stepping ashore after months at sea.

  “All the way here, I kept looking for white sand dunes and camel trains.” Ally laughed awkwardly. No one had the heart to tell her that was some other country.

  Huda remembered when women like Ally had flocked to Baghdad: British nurses, French school teachers, and the plump wives of American oilmen. Tourists filled the cafés and strolled the banks of the Tigris. But nowadays, the expats were gone. So were the tour buses. The rail line to Istanbul was severed, and NATO jets shot down any planes that entered Iraqi airspace.

  These days, only a handful of diplomats and United Nations workers ventured through the wide western desert to Baghdad. Very rarely did their wives join them—and like the exotic parrots at al-Ghazl pet market, the women soon went off their food, drooped, and plucked out their own feathers. Then they disappeared back into the desert, pale-skinned gypsies in four-wheel-drive caravans, leaving nothing behind but a trail of dust and perhaps a forgotten sun hat. Eventually, their husbands were posted elsewhere and life resumed happily. At least, Huda assumed it was happily. It was almost impossible to stay in touch with those outside Iraq’s borders. Unwise, even, to embark on such friendships in the first place.

  “What is she like, this Ally?” Abdul Amir paced back and forth. “Is she one of those arrogant foreigners who knows nothing of history and believes we’re all savages?”

  Huda shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Will it be difficult to befriend her?”

  The moon slid behind a cloud. Huda was glad of the darkness.

  “I don’t know,” she lied. Ally wasn’t standoffish at all, and Huda sensed it would be easy to draw her close.

  Until this evening, Huda had thought she could handle the obligatory visits from the mukhabarat. She kept her answers brief but true and made it a rule to avoid gossip. She was only a secretary. She had nothing to hide. Besides, her Australian bosses weren’t fools. They told their Iraqi staff only what they were happy for the government also to know. The rest they kept to themselves.

  Huda remembered depositing her first embassy paycheck and how the bank clerk’s eyes widened as he eyed her salary. His usual sneer disappeared. He called her madam for the first time, and asked if she’d like tea while he processed the check. She’d relished that moment far more than she
cared to admit. Now, the strings attached to her job drew tight around her neck.

  Abdul Amir stopped pacing back and forth across the lawn.

  “Did Abu Issa offer you money?” he said.

  “Money?” Huda frowned. “Of course not. No one gets rewarded for answering their questions.”

  “Let’s be honest. They want more than that. Much more.” He ripped a prickly sow thistle from the lawn. “I heard sometime they pay informants.”

  Huda tasted the sour gas from the refineries on her tongue.

  “I am not an informant.”

  “You wanted the embassy job.” Abdul Amir snorted. “You wanted to work with foreigners. Did you not consider there might be a price to pay?”

  Huda had thought she was so smart, that she could type a few letters, take the foreigners’ money, and manage the mukhabarat too. She’d ignored the voice inside her whispering, You’re playing with fire. She searched her husband’s face. His eyes were nothing but shadows.

  “Have I not paid enough already?” she asked.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rania ducked behind one of the ornate columns lining Mutanabbi Street, but not fast enough. On the opposite sidewalk, the old poet Adnan Nawab waved to her, like a fly fisherman casting a lure. Between them ran a river of books, some stacked on low tables, but most set out on cardboard on the ground. A gust of wind whistled off the Tigris and fluttered a million pages with its brackish sigh.

  “Rania, my dear!” Adnan was thin as a child, but his voice still held the power to cut through the throng at Mutanabbi book market. “Will you join me for tea?”

  Rania groaned quietly. She adored Adnan, but today she had no appetite for tea and gossip. Still, he’d spotted her, so she made her way from under the shaded balcony, past the great columns, and into the heat and commotion of the walking street.

  “I’m coming, Professor,” she cried.

  She clutched her bag tight—a backpack stuffed so full the zipper strained at the teeth—and squeezed past a stall stacked with almanacs, astronomical charts, and Korans bound in leather and engraved with jewel-toned inks. A vendor waved her toward an atlas with lands that existed only in memory: Rhodesia, Tanganyika, Transjordan. Beside him, young men squatted over college textbooks piled atop plastic sheets on the ground. Rania caught a glimpse of a dissected heart, pink arteries and blue veins laid out over two pages. She wondered, If she hunkered down beside them, might she unearth a diagram of the soul, its purple bruises and rotten patches properly dated and labeled? More important, would she find dog-eared instructions on how to remedy these maladies?

  “Professor, what a blessing to see you,” said Rania as she reached the steps of a whitewashed café. The clank and whistle of kettles on a gas stove drifted through the open windows. “Then again, where else would I find our nation’s most esteemed poet, but at the door of Shahbandar café?”

  “You are too kind,” he replied. “Especially to an old man who does nothing but waste his days rewriting the same line fifty different ways.”

  Behind him, a group of middle-aged men passed a burbling nargilah pipe back and forth while noisily debating the merits of eighteenth-century novelists. Two young women in blue jeans sat quietly on a cushioned bench sipping sweet tea.

  “I hear talk of a new exhibition at your gallery,” said Adnan.

  “The German Cultural Center is sponsoring some young artists. The theme is peace.”

  “Peace?” He raised a gray bristling eyebrow. “I hope the artists had good imaginations, because they could not draw from their own experience. Perhaps next time you can convince the Germans to hold a poetry exhibition. We could call it The Gasbagging of Old Men. What do you think of that?”

  Despite herself, Rania grinned.

  “It would be a fine thing, I’m sure.”

  Adnan limped toward the café’s heavy doors, gesturing for her to join him.

  “I’m afraid I can’t stop, Professor.”

  The old man raised his ponderous brow again.

  “No tea?”

  Rania reddened. “I have an appointment.”

  Adnan snuck a glance at Rania’s bulging backpack. A sigh of recognition escaped his wrinkled lips.

  “I pray that your appointment goes well,” he said. “After all, without you and your gallery, most of the Shahbandar’s customers couldn’t cobble together enough dinar for a single cup of tea.”

  “Well, I, uh . . .” Rania blushed again.

  Sympathy clouded Adnan’s rheumy eyes.

  “You’re not the first person who’s had to sell off their books,” he said gently. “There’s no shame in it, my dear.”

  “I’m not sure my father would have agreed.” Rania clutched her bag tighter. “I guess it’s a mercy that he’s not here to witness me trading off the last of his library for a handful of beans.”

  “Come now. With some shrewd bargaining, inshallah, you’ll make enough to patch your roof. Or is it the hot water that needs fixing? I’m sure your father would want you comfortable.”

  “You think so?” Rania rubbed at an inch-long scar on her thumb, a smooth line the color of pearl. “My father always put honor higher than his daughter’s wishes.”

  Adnan frowned, but his eyes were kind.

  “Shall I come with you?”

  Rania enveloped his knotted, arthritic hands in hers.

  “Thank you, Professor, but I need to do this myself.”

  * * *

  The bookseller hollered for his apprentice. His raspy call was muffled by ten thousand books. They were stuffed into bookcases that stretched fifteen feet to the wood-paneled ceiling, stacked on top of tables, and packed in crates on the floor. More were jammed into windowsills where they blocked all but the sun’s most determined rays. Dust motes twirled beneath a neglected chandelier.

  “That boy is never to be found when I need him.” The bookseller pushed his chair away from his desk. “Please, relax while I fetch more tea to mark our deal.”

  Rania waited in silence as he waddled from his musty den. He’s probably gone out back to dance the dabke, she thought morosely as she tucked her payment into her pocket. Her nose twitched at the vanilla-and-mold scent of old glue, ink, and paper slowly decomposing.

  A floorboard groaned behind her, on the far side of the bookseller’s front door. Silence followed. Whispers. A gentle knock. A young woman inched through the doorway. Her long dark hair could have belonged to an Iraqi, but her skin was far too pale, like Snow White’s.

  “Is this al-Kitab bookstore?” the young woman said in halting Arabic.

  A tall man slipped in behind her. From his freckles and sun-bleached hair, Rania would have guessed he was a surfer from California. But, of course, that was impossible. Americans had been banned from Iraq for over a decade.

  “Come in,” Rania decided to answer in English. Like many Iraqis of her class and era, she’d attended college in Britain and spoke with a slight Oxford accent. If that didn’t work, she could always switch to her passable French. “You’re at the right place.”

  At Rania’s answer, the young woman’s eyes lit up. They were an unusually vivid blue—the same color as Fatima’s amulet, the charm used to ward off evil designs—and they seemed to double in size as they darted over the jumbled tabletops and scaled the library ladders resting in their rails.

  “This is amazing.” The young woman began to spin in a slow circle. “Your bookstore is even better than I imagined.”

  “I’m just a customer,” said Rania. “The bookseller is out back.”

  “Oh, I see. For weeks I’ve been pestering my husband to take a day off and come to the market with me.” The young woman reached for her husband’s arm, but he was looking at his watch like he had somewhere else to be. “Isn’t that right, Tom?”

  “Umm . . .” Her husband glanced about, as if he might find his answer on the shelves. A brief spark of irritation flashed in the young woman’s eyes.

  “I’m Ally.” She extended her hand. “A
nd this is my husband, Tom Wilson.”

  “Rania Mansour,” she replied.

  Once the introductions were done, the young woman’s gaze returned to the groaning shelves.

  “The market out there—so many books, so beautiful, in every language you could imagine.” Ally shook her head in wonder. “And these old shops like al-Kitab, tucked away in the arcades. I feel like I’ve slipped down the proverbial rabbit hole. Is Mutanabbi a world heritage site? It should be. I wonder—” Ally broke off and clapped her hands over her mouth. “Sorry, I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  “Not at all.” Rania chuckled. The young woman was a breath of fresh air. “I remember feeling the same way when I visited the Serpentine Galleries in London for the first time. I was a student at the Royal College of Art back then. It must be close to twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty years? How can that be?” said Ally. “You don’t look so much older than me, and I’m only twenty-seven.”

  “Twenty-seven? Really?” Rania peered at her from the corner of her eye. She wondered, Was it a childhood free from desert winds that kept Ally looking so young? Or was it that grief had not yet pinched her lips or reddened her eyes? Rania felt a stab of envy. In Iraq, no one neared three decades and remained so untouched.

  “What brings you to Baghdad, Ally?”

  Before she could answer, Tom leaned forward.

  “I’m the deputy ambassador at the Australian embassy.”

  “The Australian embassy? Then you might know—” Rania broke off. A decade had passed since she last spoke with Huda. Why on earth was she thinking of her now?

  Of course Rania’s mother, the sheikha, kept her apprised of happenings among the tribe. Births, deaths, marriages, and successes like Huda’s appointment as an embassy secretary were all relayed along the scratchy telephone line from Basra. And if she was really honest, Huda had been in and out of her thoughts ever since she began packing up her father’s books for sale.

  When they were young, the two of them spent hours flipping through her father’s leather-bound story collections—and substituting themselves as the heroes. The fine woven rug on the library floor was transformed into Aladdin’s carpet at least a hundred times. In those moments, they were able to cast off the rigid roles they’d been born into—Rania the sheikh’s obedient daughter, Huda the scrappy village girl—sharing secrets and dreams they knew others would scoff at. They thought they’d ride that magical carpet forever, closer than teeth and tongue.