When the Apricots Bloom

by Gina Wilkinson

  Ally put down the book and stared at her laptop.

  Radical art and radical politics.

  Again, her fingers tapped the keys.

  Yusra Hussain, 82nd Avenue. By the river?

  She thought back to the stretch of lonely roadway, the thatched guard post, the wind whipping up gray sand like spray from a dirty wave. She opened the textbook again, and her breath stopped dead in her throat. The final chapter of the book had been ripped out. All that remained was a row of fragile white teeth pressed against the spine.

  Ally was certain the chapter had been there before. She remembered one photo in particular—a still from a video taken just days after Saddam assumed power. It showed a parliamentarian being marched from a grand hall, the whites of his eyes wide and rolling, like a terrified calf’s. In the background, Saddam puffed on a cigar. A list of sixty-eight names dangled from his hand. Those sixty-eight men were marched off, one by one, and shot. A few were spared, but only after they were made to gun down their fellow parliamentarians.

  Ally leafed forward and backward, pulse accelerating with each page. But the photo and the chapter on Saddam were gone. The wind rattled the front door, startling her. She imagined the mukhabarat testing her locks, slipping inside, sifting through her photos, tearing pages from her books, copying the files on her laptop.

  Yusra Hussain, 82nd Avenue.

  A shiver inched down Ally’s spine. She’d intended to record every detail of her visit to Miriam’s house, the talk of communism, the unsettling ride through the wasteland of Eighty-Second Avenue. She wanted to document that painful flare of honesty in Hatim’s cinnamon eyes. She wanted to honor it the only way she knew how, to put it down in words, make it permanent, refuse to allow it to drift away like dust.

  She sighed and dug her fingers into her forehead. She couldn’t write it down. None of it. She couldn’t risk the mukhabarat seeing Hatim’s name. Or Yusra’s. Or words like Communist Party, radical politics, and notes on mutilated kings. Wind whistled through the narrow gap beneath the front door, bringing with it sharp grains of desert sand. Ally wondered if the mukhabarat were parked outside, right now, biding their time, while the same wind gently rocked their car.

  She rifled through her mother’s photos, removed the shots of Yusra, and then stuffed them deep into the pocket of her handbag. She couldn’t risk leaving them unattended. Next, she changed the login and password to her laptop. She eyed the screen.

  Yusra Hussain, 82nd Avenue.

  Gloomily, Ally pressed the backspace key. Letter by letter, the young nurse’s name disappeared. The skin on the back of Ally’s neck tingled. She glanced over her shoulder and the boxy, wood-paneled television caught her eye. Embassy security had warned about hidden surveillance. Was it possible the television contained a tiny camera, feeding like a parasite off the TV’s electrical supply?

  She padded across the marble floor and pulled the power cord from its socket. Next, she clambered onto the sofa and tried, unsuccessfully, to peer past the furred slats of the air-conditioning vent. She took the lamp from her desk, unscrewed the bulb, then turned it upside down and inspected the cord snaking from its base. Gingerly, she picked up the phone. Static whispered in her ear.

  Ally wondered if the mukhabarat were watching right now or listening in. Did they note down all of her and Tom’s conversations? Or had they grown bored of Ally’s complaints? Did they go and refill their coffee, let the tape roll on and on, while she moaned about her empty days? She tiptoed down the hall to the bedroom and flicked the light switch. Disgust tickled the back of her throat. Did agents of the mukhabarat watch her and Tom in bed?

  Ally crept back to her desk, shoulders hunched. Yusra Hussain, she repeated silently to herself, Eighty-Second Avenue.

  CHAPTER 15

  Through the square of stained glass in Rania’s front door, her visitor resembled a Picasso: green cheek, purple eye socket, swoop of dark hair.

  “Ally?” Rania called. “Is that you?”

  “I’ve come for my painting,” the girl called back. “You were going to frame it, remember?”

  “One moment.” Rania took a deep breath, stitched a smile onto her lips, and unlatched the door.

  Ally took a step back.

  “Rania, are you okay?” Concern surfaced in her cornflower eyes. “You don’t look so good.”

  Rania hurried past her to the gate and wedged the bolts shut.

  “How did you get through the gate?”

  “Your friend, Malik, left it ajar.” Ally held up Malik al-Bashad’s gold-lettered business card. “I met him outside, on the sidewalk. He invited me to visit him at the Ministry of Culture.”

  “Did he now?” Rania struggled to hide her loathing. A few scant minutes ago, Malik had been in her hallway, running his plump fingers over Hanan’s photo once again—erasing all doubt that her daughter was just a passing fancy. He said once Rania’s portrait of the president was complete, she should bring both the canvas, and her daughter, to the palace. Uday wanted to inspect his father’s gift before it was presented. To test its quality, he’d said.

  “Did you come alone?”

  “My driver brought me.” Ally eyed her curiously. “Do you know Abdul Amir? He’s Huda’s husband.”

  Rania shrugged noncommittally. She couldn’t bear to talk about Huda now. First she had to stop her heart from hammering and scrub the rage and fear from her eyes. She waved Ally toward the stepping-stone path.

  “Please go on ahead to the garden while I fetch your painting.”

  Ally stretched out her hand.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Rania replied with a tight nod and slipped out of reach. She had a habit of revealing more to Ally than she’d intended. She feared if she let her inside now, poured her tea, and sat across the kitchen table, she’d break down and confess about Malik, Hanan, and the half-finished portrait waiting inside her studio. Maybe she’d let slip about Huda and the mukhabarat. That sort of honesty always felt so good in the moment, but it was a dangerous drug.

  “I’m a little busy right now, that’s all. Make yourself comfortable in the garden.” Rania backed inside and shut the heavy door behind her. Hanan was sitting on the stairs, snacking on a handful of pistachios.

  “What are you doing?” Rania hurried over the creaking floorboards. “I asked you to stay in your bedroom.”

  “I heard your visitors leave,” said Hanan. “And I was hungry.”

  “Well, I’ve got another visitor now.”

  A scowl twisted Hanan’s features.

  “What did I do to make you so ashamed?”

  “I’m not ashamed of you, not at all.” Rania’s chest ached with a mix of guilt, love, and fear. “But right now I’ve got a client out there waiting to buy a painting.”

  “Will it be enough to pay our membership at the Alwiyah Club?” Hanan brightened and sat up straight. “They’re showing movies by the pool next week.”

  “Maybe . . .” Rania kissed the top of Hanan’s head and hurried into the kitchen before Hanan could spot the tears in her eyes. Soon she’d have to tell Hanan that her grandmother was coming this weekend to take her back to the farm. She prayed she’d be safe there. At least for a year or two. Then what? she asked herself.

  Rania put the kettle on the burner and grabbed a paper bag of tea. Hanan had found it tucked at the back of the pantry this morning—Huda’s carefully tied package of numi basra. Rania didn’t want to sit in the bittersweet steam of Huda’s tea, so after scooping in the leaves she left the water to boil, retrieved Ally’s painting from the whitewashed gallery, and carried it out to the garden. Ally was staring at the statue of the mother curled around her child.

  “You seem to be drawn to this piece.” The wind pulled at Rania’s hair. “Would you like me to find out if the sculptor has any smaller works available?”

  “Oh, no, don’t do that,” said Ally quickly. “But tell me, do you work much with this artist? Am I likely to bump into her in your garden
?”

  “Miriam Pachachi is her name. To be honest, these days I only see her at weddings or funerals.” Force of habit made Rania glance over her shoulder to check if anyone was listening. In the 1970s, Miriam had been active in political circles—too active for the authorities, even in that relatively liberal time. It was only her family connections that saved her from prison, or worse.

  “Miriam has often been called a black sheep.” Rania patted the statue’s sun-warmed flank fondly. “Like many artists, she is driven by the desire to communicate. But sometimes you can’t put your message into words, so you paint a storm cloud, or you cast it in metal.”

  “These things that can’t be put into words . . .” A shadow passed briefly across Ally’s face. Before Rania could ask what troubled her, the young woman removed a chunk of dinar from her handbag. “Please, let me pay you for this painting.”

  She began to count out her dinar, flipping the blue notes over her finger, one by one.

  “Malik al-Bashad was very chatty when I met him outside,” Ally remarked. “He said you have a lot of admirers at the Ministry, including him, I suspect.”

  Rania wondered what else that bastard had said. Had he told Ally that she was painting the president’s portrait, that she’d taken money to make the tyrant’s eyes sparkle and his lips ruby red?

  “Malik and I attended the Baghdad College of Fine Arts at the same time,” she mumbled. “It was before I went abroad to study in London.”

  Ally glanced up from her counting.

  “Have you ever thought about moving back to the UK?”

  Rania gave a small shrug. She knew it was hard for outsiders to understand, but the idea of leaving Iraq seemed contrary to the laws of physics, as if asking metal to defy the pull of a magnet, or the tide to turn its back on the moon. Iraqis had given their lives for this land, men like Huda’s brothers, Mustafa and Ali. Didn’t she owe it to them to stay?

  From the corner of her eye, Rania saw the curtain in Hanan’s bedroom window shift. She remembered the tiny studio she’d rented all those years ago in London’s Earl’s Court. She’d sit by the window, watch the parade of passersby, and try to imagine all the millions of different places they might end up. Perhaps, back then, she could have stayed in London happily. But now, it was too late. Like gravity, loss kept her pinned in place.

  When she first learned of Mustafa’s death, grief had run through her body with electrical force. She felt it drill deep into the earth beneath her feet, so deep she thought she’d never move from that spot again. But Hanan was different. If she left now, perhaps she could have a chance at true happiness.

  “Forgive me,” said Ally, interrupting Rania’s reverie. “Baghdad is your home, not London. That was a stupid question.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” blurted Rania. She imagined Hanan exploring London’s cobbled lanes, far from Uday, far from Saddam. Free from fear.

  “I’m too old to start again.” Rania words rushed out like it was their one last chance. “But for a young woman, perhaps it would be different. If she’s smart and hardworking, a young woman could make a good life in London. What do you think, Ally? Am I wrong?”

  “It’s true,” she said. “London is one of the world’s great cities.”

  Rania’s mind lurched into overdrive. In a year or so, Hanan would turn sixteen. Rania had a cousin in London, as well as friends from her college days. Surely, they’d take Hanan under their wing. And it didn’t have to be forever. One day, God willing, it would be safe for Hanan to return.

  A gust of wind raced through the garden. It plucked leaves from the eucalypt and sent them spiraling toward the grass. Rania saw nothing of this. Instead, she did math in her head—it would take at least a year to pay the bribes for a passport. Rania eyed the dinar in Ally’s hand. For a moment, she felt like a starving woman hovering over a warm loaf of bread.

  When her mother arrived this weekend, Rania decided to ask if she had any jewels hidden away, sequestered for an emergency like this. But she suspected they were already in the hands of Basra’s moneylenders. Her mother had expensive tastes, and the moneylenders never said no to the sheikha. She eyed the wad of bills in Ally’s hand again.

  “Did I tell you, my dear, I’m staging a new exhibition? But I must warn you, the works are more expensive than usual. The inspiration is Scheherazade. You know her?”

  “Of course,” said Ally. “She’s the narrator of One Thousand and One Nights: ‘Aladdin’s Magic Carpet,’ ‘Sinbad’s Adventures,’ ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,’ all those great tales.”

  Rania shot her a sideways glance.

  “Many people know Scheherazade’s fables, but they haven’t heard the tale of the storyteller herself.” She let her words out smoothly, slowly, softly, making Ally lean closer, drawing her in. “Scheherazade told all those stories, one after the other, because if she stopped, her husband, King Shahryar, would have killed her.” Rania paused to milk the drama. “He’d already murdered one thousand women—virgins he deflowered in the royal bed, and then strangled the next morning, because he didn’t trust they’d stay loyal.”

  Rania took the bundle of dinar from Ally’s hand and handed over her painting.

  “Scheherazade had no choice,” she said. “She told her king those stories to stay alive.”

  “I never knew that.” Ally glanced at Miriam Pachachi’s statue again, like she was seeing it for the first time. “I assumed she created those stories of her own accord.”

  Rania felt an overwhelming urge to confide in her about the portrait waiting in her own studio. The young woman had a generous heart. She might lend her the money to get Hanan to safety. Even as Rania thought it, a voice inside her whispered, Don’t act rashly. Don’t lose your head.

  Ally was the last person she should confide in. The mukhabarat were monitoring her. The cleric and Kareem seemed to have an interest in her too. And there was Huda. It was hard to keep secrets from her. Even if Ally swore secrecy, Rania knew from experience that Huda might worm the truth out. No, for now, it was safest to send Hanan to the farmhouse under the sheikha’s protection. A tinny buzz swept through the garden. Rania cast an anxious glance at Hanan’s bedroom.

  “Ally, can you excuse me a moment,” she said, then hurried to the front of the house.

  “Rania?” Her cousin Hala’s voice floated over the top of the gate. “I’ve been trying to call but your phone is down.”

  “I know.” She pried the gate open. “It’s been playing up for two—” She broke off.

  Hala’s face was ashen.

  “What is it?”

  “Your mother suffered a stroke last night. They’re transferring her to a hospital in Baghdad. It doesn’t look good.”

  * * *

  It was not the slap of the orderly’s mop against the concrete floor that woke Rania. It was silence. She lurched from her chair and scrambled toward her mother’s hospital bed. The heart monitor was dead: no beep, no hiccupping red line.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said a nurse at Raghad’s bedside. She brushed a strand of long gray hair away from the old woman’s face. “The power cord was caught around her arm. I’ll switch it back on after I turn her. We don’t want her getting bed sores.”

  “What time is it?” Rania’s mouth was dry as bark.

  “Five in the morning.”

  The nurse peeled back Raghad’s top sheet. Rania averted her eyes. Her mother would hate the ugly feeding tube taped to her nose and the way her skinny limbs poked inelegantly from her dressing gown. She’d once joked that when her time was up, she wanted to go dressed in her furs and gold. As the nurse rolled Raghad onto her side, Rania bumbled about the periphery, fluffing her mother’s pillow and feeling thoroughly useless. The nurse pressed a switch on the heart monitor. Raghad’s pulse flicked across the screen. Rania eyed her mother closely, hoping for a sign of consciousness.

  “The doctor said there’s been bleeding in the upper part of the brain,” she whispered. “But still, it’s not
impossible that she’ll wake up, is it?”

  “I’m not a doctor, but if she is no longer responding to light, sound, or pain, the outlook can’t be good.” She eyed Rania solemnly. “If the feeding tube was removed, we could keep her comfortable throughout.”

  “Let her starve to death?” Rania shook her head. “She wouldn’t want it.”

  “I doubt your mother would want you to feel guilty, either.”

  “There’s no avoiding that.”

  Rania’s laugh was fifty percent sob. She’d already betrayed her mother. Even as she sat at Raghad’s bedside and stroked her limp hand, her mother wasn’t foremost in her prayers. Instead of reciting the Koran as a proper daughter should, all she could think of was Hanan. She’d planned to send her back to Basra, far from Malik’s lecherous reach. But now, with Raghad nearing death, her last safe harbor was gone.

  Rania pressed her hands to her eyes, desperately trying to think of a way to find money for a passport for Hanan. The regime had long ago taken most of her family’s land, just like it did to Basil’s clan. Then they drained the marshes and diverted the waters her tribe needed to prosper. But Raghad had sailed on regardless, flying her extravagant flag. She’d barely been admitted to hospital when the moneylenders began to call in their debts. Rania imagined they were stripping the farmhouse right now, taking the rugs and chandeliers, tearing the copper plumbing right out of the walls.

  She thought of the envelope of cash that Malik left as a down payment for the president’s portrait. Would the finished work earn her enough to secure Hanan’s passage out of Iraq? As Rania did math in her head, she cursed the president, his sons, and his enablers. They’d taken so much. Now they denied her the chance to mourn her mother with her whole, undivided heart.