When the Apricots Bloom

by Gina Wilkinson

  * * *

  Kareem removed his glasses and tucked them in his shirt pocket. Without the thick lenses, his dark eyes seemed even smaller than Rania remembered from their encounter at the Khan Murjan. He nodded at the old bookkeeper waiting by the door.

  “Thank you, haji,” he said. “We won’t be long.”

  “Take your time.” The old man pulled the door shut behind him, leaving them alone in the cramped back room, surrounded by battered filing cabinets, boxes of computer paper, and messy stacks of manila folders. Rania’s throat itched from dust and the faint acid stench of decaying documents. Kareem brushed down a stool and indicated for Rania to sit.

  “I was surprised to hear from you,” he said. “I thought our business was complete.”

  “Unfortunately, there have been some problems since we last spoke.”

  “With your friend Huda?”

  “She’s not my friend,” said Rania, even as an unexpected pang of wistfulness twisted beneath her ribs.

  “I’m reminded of that old saying, ‘A friend knows better than an enemy how to do you harm.’” Kareem smiled coldly. “I don’t want to impose on my bookkeeper’s hospitality any longer than necessary. So please tell me, what can I do for you?”

  “I need a passport for my daughter, and an exit visa.”

  “You know that women can’t travel without male permission.”

  Rania’s eyes narrowed.

  “Your friend the cleric must have rejoiced when that law came into effect.”

  “Why are we rehashing this? Later we will have the luxury to pick and choose our allies. At the moment, we must take support wherever we can find it.”

  Rania swallowed down a retort.

  “When the time comes, I will find a way to deal with that ridiculous regulation. First, I need a passport for my daughter.”

  “Why now? The Americans are pledging to rid us of this regime, and suddenly you want to leave?”

  “It’s—” Rania broke off. Even hidden in the claustrophobic backroom, with its dented cabinets and moldering papers, the words still didn’t want to leave her mouth. “It’s . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Uday.”

  Alarm flashed in Kareem’s eyes.

  “One of his clique came to my gallery to order a painting. He’s come back since. Both times, he said the president’s son wants to meet my daughter . . .” Fear squeezed Rania’s throat. “I thought I could keep Hanan safe by sending her to my mother in Basra, but now that’s impossible.”

  A small brown moth fluttered from an overstuffed bookcase.

  “I understand your concern. I have two daughters myself.” Kareem crossed his arms. “First, we will need four photos of Hanan, plus her birth records and citizenship papers.”

  “Yes, I can do that.” Rania nodded gratefully.

  “The fee for your daughter’s passport will be two thousand five hundred dollars, plus five hundred dollars for an exit permit.”

  “Three thousand dollars? How can that be? You told Huda her son’s passport would cost nine hundred dollars, visa stamp included.”

  “Well, Huda is useful to us. She is a mukhabarat informant and that has value in itself.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Surely the most important thing is to get your daughter to safety as soon as possible. So please understand, if you want, how should I say, express service, it costs more.”

  “Huda pays nine hundred dollars, but I have to hand over three thousand? I was a loyal member of the opposition. Does that not count for anything?”

  “From what you told me, Huda’s family made plenty of sacrifices for the cause.”

  “But three thousand—”

  “Look here,” Kareem cut her off. “Huda may be paying nine hundred for her son’s passport, but she won’t be getting it any time soon. Once she is no longer of use to us, we may supply her son with a passport, and even that is not certain. In fact, from what I hear, the boy may want to stay and join our fight. But if you want a passport for your daughter quickly, my dear Rania, you will have to pay.”

  CHAPTER 16

  From a picnic bench on a covered pontoon, Ally watched an egret flap along the edge of the Tigris, its long, skinny legs trailing behind. The bird landed with a splash and began to stalk the rushes, beak slicing the water like a scythe. Above it, the sky stretched in every direction, huge and impossibly blue. No wonder her mom called it paradise.

  Huda wiped a scrap of flatbread through the remains of a bowl of hummus. A platter of fish bones lay beside it, stripped clean during their lunch of roasted masgouf. She pushed a dish of plump olives toward Ally.

  “Would you like something more to eat?”

  “That was delicious.” Ally leaned back from the table and groaned. “But I’ll explode if I eat any more.”

  Halfway up the pebbled bank, a waiter emerged from a mud-brick kitchen. He trudged past a crackling firepit, descended a zigzagging set of steps, and bounced across a gangplank connecting the pontoon to shore.

  “Tom’s going to regret missing this masgouf,” said Ally, as the waiter collected their plates. “You know, I should move up north to Mosul. I’d probably see him more often.”

  “We can come again when he returns,” said Huda. “He’ll be back soon.”

  “Not for another four days.” Ally felt a twinge of jealousy. “After the election.”

  Quickly, Huda pointed to a trio of jade-headed ducks paddling past the pontoon.

  “Do you see the birds?”

  Ally noted the change of topic. She was tempted to ask if Huda had attended any of the election rallies she’d spotted, with musicians and dancers onstage, and secret police skulking about the fringes. But a voice inside her said, Why ruin a lovely afternoon? She told herself to keep quiet, to enjoy this riverside picnic, like her mother had done so often thirty years ago. Ally stared at the limitless sky and wondered, Was her mother up there, with her father, in a paradise colored perfect blue? Guilt prodded her chest. Her father wouldn’t want her here, in Baghdad, trying to dig up the past.

  “The past is dead, that’s what your mother used to say,” he answered, every time Ally asked about her or the portrait that supposedly went missing during their voyage from the United States to Australia. “She’d want us to get on with our lives. It doesn’t help to dwell.”

  If she persisted with her questions, he’d go silent. Before too long, Ally knew she’d find him drowning his sorrows in a long-necked bottle of beer, and David Bowie would reappear on the record player in the lounge room.

  Young Ally couldn’t understand it. Her dad loved her mother, with her adventurous, globe-trotting past. He sought solace in Ziggy Stardust, jetting off in his starship toward an unknown universe. But perhaps, as he listened to Bowie wail that nothing will keep us together, he was reminding himself that it was best to stay rooted in the present, feet firmly planted in the safety of his own backyard. It was cold and lonely up among the stars.

  Ally tried to stay out of sight. She tiptoed silently up and down the hallway between her bedroom and the lounge room, guilty and fearful of what her questions had unleashed. Her father’s pain emanated from the lounge room, growing larger and more palpable with every song, with every trip to the fridge to collect another beer. What would happen if she insisted on answers? she wondered. Her father’s grief was almost a creature unto itself. It had a pulse. She was too scared to test it, but she suspected it had teeth too. Teeth that could bite.

  Eventually, the neighbors complained about the loud music that went on until dawn, and her grandparents noticed the pyramid of beer bottles collecting by the back door. One day, when Ally was at a friend’s house, they staged some sort of intervention. Her father promised to pull himself together. And when Ally got home, her grandma made her promise she’d stop asking about things that made her dad sad.

  Her grandma said it was better that way. It did no one any good, she said, rehashing what was gone. It became an unoffici
al family motto, that refusal to dwell on the past. During the years to come, her mother’s memory grew distant and hazy. But the hole in Ally’s chest only deepened. Despite this relentless march forward, she knew in her heart something vital had been left behind.

  Huda sighed, leaned back in her chair, and pulled her sunglasses over her eyes.

  “I could fall asleep right now,” she murmured.

  The river gently slapped the pontoon’s side. Ally searched for fishermen, but there were none out on the water. There were no other diners either. When Huda invited her to lunch, she said the restaurant was a popular spot. But like most Iraqis, she often spoke of decades-old history in the present, as if ordinary people could still sail the river without threat of punishment and had money to spare for fine masgouf.

  Like her father’s dogged refusal to talk about his lost wife, there was a gap in Iraqi history too. It was as if time, and collective memory itself, stopped when Saddam seized power, when war, sanctions, and tyranny brought the cosmopolitan “golden years” to a bloody end. Nowadays, there was only the glorious past or the future. The pain that came in between, no one spoke of aloud. At least, not to Ally. She wondered if Huda had known all along that the riverside restaurant would be deserted. Perhaps she chose it because there’d be fewer people to witness her consorting with a foreigner. Ally couldn’t blame her for that.

  “You know what . . .” She pushed her chair away from the table. “I might go for a little stroll and walk off some of that food.”

  Huda removed her sunglasses.

  “A stroll?”

  “I won’t go far.” Ally gestured for her to stay put. “Don’t worry.”

  “Who says I’m worried?” Huda climbed out of her chair and linked arms with her. “It’s a perfect day to stroll by the river.”

  The two women paused at the top of the zigzagging steps. The Tigris burbled below them, sunlight reflecting off the ancient river. From the masgouf firepit, a graceful thread of smoke twisted into the bluest of skies. Ally wished that more people could see what she did: beautiful waters, and a generous friend. Huda and her countrymen didn’t deserve the suffering inflicted on them. Huda might pray in a different manner than Ally, bake her bread flat instead of leavened, but underneath that, they weren’t so dissimilar. They just wanted the chance to break bread in peace. Ally knew it sounded cliché, but weren’t clichés born from a greater truth?

  Huda squeezed her elbow.

  “I wish more foreigners had a chance to taste our masgouf. They might see Iraq differently if we got to share a meal on the river.”

  Ally laughed in surprise.

  “What’s so funny?” Huda looked a little miffed.

  “You’ve got to add mind reader to your list of talents.” She draped her arm around Huda’s shoulder. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

  Huda gestured north toward a line of tamarisk trees with tightly curled purple buds.

  “Why don’t we head toward Eighty-Second Street?”

  Ally stiffened.

  “Did you say, Eighty-Second Street?”

  She eyed the purple tamarisk and the silver stretch of water. Did Miriam Pachachi misspeak when she said Yusra lived on Eighty-Second Avenue? Did she mean Eighty-Second Street? Ally’s pulse jumped at her wrist.

  “My mom had a friend who lived on Eighty-Second Street.”

  “Is that so?” Huda stared at her, but all Ally could see was her own reflection in the dark sunglasses. She glanced over her shoulder. There was no one else on the river road. Only her and Huda, and the breeze hissing through the trees.

  “They worked together.” Ally dug the yellowed photo of Yusra in her nurse’s cap from her handbag. “I don’t know which house she lived in, only that it was on Eighty-Second Street, close to the river.”

  As Huda inspected the photo, the ache Ally carried inside expanded.

  “Let’s check it out,” she said, and set off toward Eighty-Second Street. Huda hurried after her.

  “How will you find her?”

  “I’ll knock on doors.” Ally tried to sound confident. “Someone might recognize her.”

  “Knock on doors?” Huda gaped. “That will never work.”

  Huda was right, of course. On Eighty-Second Street, doors stayed locked. Windows barred. Occasionally someone cracked open a gate, glanced at the photo, then quickly said goodbye.

  “I’m sorry, my dear. It looks like we’re in the wrong place.” Huda glanced at her watch. “We should go if you want to make it to your aerobics class on time.”

  Ally spotted a cheerful row of potted geraniums at the very end of the road, abutting the river.

  “One last try,” she said, and hurried forth.

  Huda followed her through the gates of a plant nursery stocked with rosebushes, bougainvillea, and palms of every size and shape. The nurseryman—a skinny fellow in a grass-stained dishdasha—was napping under the fat-leafed canopy of a fig tree. Ally grabbed a lemon sapling in a plastic pot.

  “Maybe if I buy something it’ll loosen his tongue.”

  “It’s better if I do the talking,” said Huda. “Otherwise you’ll end up paying a pharaoh’s ransom for that little plant.”

  Huda coughed loudly to wake the old man. He opened one eye, then clambered quickly to his feet. Ally offered an as-salaam alaikum, then Huda launched into a stream of fast-flowing Arabic. Ally waited by her side, smiling awkwardly, trying to follow along as the two bartered over the lemon tree.

  “He wants fifteen thousand dinar.” Huda rolled her eyes. “It must grow golden fruit.”

  “Tell him he can have it, but first ask him if he knows Yusra.” She passed the photo to the old man. Ally thought she glimpsed a flash of recognition in his rheumy eyes. His brow wrinkled, and he muttered a few quick words.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He says she doesn’t live here.”

  “But he recognizes her, right?”

  The old man gazed at the photo, shook his head, and handed it back.

  “Keep trying,” said Ally. “Ask if he knows of any nurses living nearby. Or maybe he knows where she moved to? The woman we’re looking for would be in her fifties by now.”

  The nurseryman shot an uneasy glance at the gate.

  “My dear, this man is not accustomed to foreigners. He’ll probably talk more freely if it’s just me and him.” Huda pressed her arm. “Trust me.”

  Reluctantly, Ally drifted deeper into the nursery. Overhead, black shade cloth diced the sunlight and patterned her skin with tiny squares. At the river’s edge, she stopped and glanced back at the nurseryman and Huda. Hope inflated her lungs as she pictured her mother in this same spot, with the same breeze cooling her cheek.

  A little farther down the bank, a kingfisher perched in a weeping willow, motionless, eyes fixed on small fish and freshwater crabs scuttling among the bulrushes. In a flash of blue, the bird speared the water. When it emerged, a fish wriggled desperately in its beak.

  “I’ve got your plant.” Huda materialized suddenly at her side and passed her the sapling.

  “The old man drove a hard bargain, but I bartered him down for you.”

  Ally’s heart thudded like a mallet against her ribs.

  “Did he say anything about Yusra? Does he know where she lives?”

  Regret carved an arrow in Huda’s brow.

  “I’m sorry. He knows nothing.”

  The ache in Ally’s chest expanded again.

  “I was sure he recognized her.”

  “He was confused,” said Huda. “He was thinking of someone else.”

  “Someone else? Who?”

  “No one who knew your mom. I double-checked.”

  “Let’s ask him again.” Ally started toward the fig tree.

  Huda grabbed her arm.

  “He doesn’t know anything, and I have to get home. Khalid has a soccer game. I can’t be late.”

  Frustration vibrated through Ally’s body. Was this truly another dead end? Did Huda re
ally do everything she could to get answers? Or did she just want Ally to stop asking questions? In the empty lot next to the nursery something rustled. The two women fell silent. Huda squinted through the wire fence.

  “It’s just a lizard. There must be plenty of them hiding in the scrub.”

  A slab of weathered granite caught Ally’s eye. It was engraved with curling script.

  “What’s that?”

  Huda slipped her arm through Ally’s.

  “Please, we should go. You’ll be late for your aerobics class.” She steered her toward the gate. “Besides, we’ve been poking around for too long. People get nervous, you know. Someone might call the police.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Huda pulled the seat belt over her shoulder, and hoped Ally couldn’t hear her heart thumping in her chest.

  “When that old man looked at the nurse’s photo, it seemed like he recognized her.” Ally slid into the passenger’s seat. “Didn’t you think so?”

  “Not really . . .” Huda jammed her keys into the ignition and pulled out onto the road. She tuned the radio to Youth FM. The crooning of Spandau Ballet filled the cabin.

  “I always liked this band,” said Huda, as fish and flatbread did anxious somersaults in her stomach. “The singer has such a beautiful voice. Not as good as Bryan Adams, of course, but still very nice.”

  A car turned onto the road behind them. Huda glanced in the rearview mirror. Were Abu Issa and the Bolt Cutter checking up on her? She’d seen them before, tailing her.

  “Is it possible there’s another Eighty-Second Street?” asked Ally.

  Huda shook her head. The old gardener hadn’t said much about this nurse called Yusra, just a couple of words, but it had been enough to make Huda bite the inside of her cheek.

  “Her family used to live here, long ago,” the old man had muttered. “But their house was bulldozed. . . .”

  He’d lapsed into wheezy silence, but Huda knew the words left unsaid—traitors had their houses bulldozed. That’s why, when Ally knocked, people closed their doors and slammed their gates. What was she doing with a traitor’s photo in her handbag? Did she have any idea how dangerous that was?