by Alia Mamdouh
She said, between her tears, “Is this the truth, Jamouli? Are you really going to marry again? You are my family. Your mother is my mother, and you are the father of my children. How can you? How can you let your children live with a stepmother?”
She knelt before him and trembled so that her teeth chattered. She sobbed. She reached for his legs and grasped his boots. She removed them and placed them side by side. “A woman may fall ill, be treated and cured, but she should never be abandoned. Good God, Jamouli, is this my reward for all I’ve been through?”
She began to massage his toes and leg in order to rise up. She removed his socks and smelled them. “You always smell clean. Darling, really, are you going to marry again, Jamouli? Do you swear by your father’s soul?”
He pushed her against her chest, and she fell backward.
“Why do you want me to ask you for permission? You’ve been ill for years. All that medicine and all the expense, and you’re still the same.”
He stood up and began to undo his leather belt. He held his pistol and pulled out the cartridge clip, and placed it at a distance in the middle of the table.
My mother was afraid of every sort of weapon. She did not look at him, but he bent over her and raised her head to him. They looked at each other. His face was calm. At that moment my mother was able to get close to him, and before he removed his trousers he knocked her to the floor and threw himself on top of her. Her tears flowed wordlessly. He checked to make sure she was not dead. She knew he could not wait.
Amidst her tears and his murmurs, she sobbed, “Don’t marry, Jamouli, please, God bless you, for the sake of the children, and your dear mother who has been better than my mother.” He stifled his shout in her quiet breast, then stood up, preparing to leave.
“Now listen carefully, Iqbal. A few months ago I married a nurse from Karbala. She came with me to Baghdad, and she is pregnant. I don’t like doing things illicitly. There are as many women as we have prisoners after me. They’re young and pretty, and my boss had his fill of them. I swear to you, he even slept with the animals. Listen—don’t shout and don’t cry. You are going back to Syria, and I am going to stay at the prison by myself. You know the prison. Come there and see how it would drive you mad. Don’t worry about the children. They will stay with my mother and my sister. Now get up and draw my bath.”
“But Jamil, what about later on? What if I get well? Jamouli, what will you do later on?”
“We’ll see. There’s time from now until you come back safely. Now get moving—I want to wash and eat.”
She burst into a fit of coughing such as we had never heard before. The sound of the wardrobe with the three doors erupted in its own fit of creaky coughing also. When we opened its warped doors we could not shut them again, unless someone pushed them up.
My father left it open, having taken out his large white towels and gone out.
This room was at the end of the hallway, far from us. It was the cleanest and warmest room, its walls painted a light blue. An iron bed stood in the middle, and the wardrobe took up most of the middle wall.
Also in the middle stood a mirror which had lost its quicksilver backing, and its wooden frame was worn at the edges. In one corner was an old chair and earth-colored table where my father’s shaving things were set out with a bottle of aftershave and one of rosewater. A Qur’an rested on a small shelf covered with a cloth embroidered in white thread. In the other corner stood old shelves upon which books were arranged: Dar al-Hilal editions, the Reader’s Digest in Arabic, and the novels of Jurji Zaidan, Taha Hussein, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and al-Manfaluti, and issues of Egyptian magazines such as al-Musawwar, Akher Sa’a, and al-Kawakib. The only window, which looked out on the courtyard, was usually closed. When my father was in Karbala, its yellow curtains were drawn back. The glass panes were always clean. In the summer, my mother wiped them with old newspapers, and in the winter she wiped the traces of rain away with a dry cloth. The floor was covered with a long old carpet folded in more than one place to make it fit the small room.
My mother wandered about, giving off a scent of defeat. She stood in the midst of that heritage. The boot, the pistol, the madness of this rupture. Her first unawareness came to an end. These changes had taken place behind her back. It was not important now that she change her name or blood type; nothing could bring back the past, the magic or her beauty or her serenity.
She paced the room, and I paced with her behind the window. She was agitated, facing all the objects and things, looking at everything around her as if seeing them for the first time. She walked unhurriedly, touching the Qur’an, fondling it with her hand and saying, “They left me in your care. You beat me and cursed me and made me have tuberculosis.”
She staggered, looked at the carpet and the open wardrobe. She fingered the bookshelves and her muscles contracted. She snatched the books and threw them to the ground, shivered, and sweated; her face grew paler and the familiar objects became masses of hidden meanings. She knocked them to the left and the right, and stood in front of the mirror, advanced slowly and opened her mouth in an obscene movement, lifted her hair up and then let it fall on her face, moved her arms. Her eyes bulged, as if she were emptying her bowels. She let out a cry and put her hand over her mouth, slapped her face and tore at her hair, and caught her breath sharply before the mirror: “Is it true what Jamouli said? My face looks frightful. My God, I’m afraid of seeing it in the mirror. I’ve been afraid of that face for so long. I certainly was the prettiest among my sisters. When Umm Jamil came to find a bride for her son she said she wanted the most sensible girl. Oh, God forgive me! Is there any sense left now? Mama, come and look at Iqbal now. Jamouli is married, Mama. God Almighty. He married her and she is pregnant as well.”
She smacked the surface of the mirror and dropped to the floor. She opened her legs and beat on them. She raised her nightgown from her slender thighs and pinched them. I could only see her undulating movement as she shook and hugged herself, as she raised and bowed her head and back before me.
“What do I have left? I will never see the children again. Mama, come look at me now. No, no, let me come to you instead. I would love to travel there. I will see you and my brother Shafiq. I will be able to tell truth from falsehood. Poor Iqbal, humans get ill and are stricken and rise again. They must pick themselves up and stand tall. Death is an attitude. Why, Jamouli, why? Is she better than I am? I am the mother of your children, the mother of precious Adouli. Oh, Mama, who will wash Adouli’s hair now? Where will I go now? Jamouli is trying to drive me mad before I die, and I swear to God his dear mother is the only reason I have stayed.”
I heard my father’s loud voice: “Iqbal, come rub my back.”
She jumped up suddenly as if stung. Her voice was inaudible, smothered by tears. She opened all the doors of the wardrobe and started there. She took out my father’s clothes, his new uniforms, his ironed shirts, his hanging ties. She threw one uniform after another onto the floor, scattered the shirts, and hurled down the ties like a genie the hot earth had produced, or who had flown out of an oven.
She shrieked and crawled. She snatched the clothes and threw them away from her. She turned and curled up on the ground, then stood up. She turned about, flushed with anger. These were the clothes of the long nights of waiting.
These were the shirts of the only man who had ever known her pure embrace and sunk his beak down to the ailing roots. She had pulled him away with her hand, rubbed his back, chest, and hips, his thighs, legs, and feet. She had seized him by the arms and gone up to his head.
She had whetted his appetite for sleep and snoring. She had covered him and gazed at him. She had sat at the end of the bed until he awoke, and when he called to her she went to him, bruised but radiant.
This was the bed where she had learned he was a man, that he was the ruler, the father, and the chosen one. She trod and leapt and wailed. She pulled out the white undershirts and held them to her face, smelling and kissing them. She hel
d his underpants, his white and blue handkerchiefs, and his socks, and moaned, “Jamouli is married and he’s got her pregnant! Oh, no! What shall I do now?” This was the first time I heard my mother’s voice torn out of her like a rope lowered to all of us. It cut through the walls and our ears. It was nothing like our voices or our daily quarrels.
The voice started and awakened, stopped and then rolled on, carrying a banner high, stopping before me in the window.
She did not see me but I saw her. She screamed in my face: “Go! Get me the scissors.”
This was my father’s precious inheritance, his bed, his clothing, his bloody receptacles, his insides, his madness, the emblems of his police work, the conditions of his good looks and elegance.
My father spent most of his wages on clothes. In winter he wore gray and black, and in the summer blue and beige. He glittered and shone as he stood in front of the mirror treating his glossy hair with a special white hair cream. He covered his face with cologne. On his body his clothes became like wings—he seemed to fly out to the street, and his mouth watered when he saw himself in the eyes of the neighborhood women. He shivered as he placed his watch with Roman numerals—it had been a gift from his grandfather in the days of the British—on its gold chain and hung it from his waistcoat, letting the chain gleam and flash across his stomach.
He left the house alone, walking like a king—he had trained himself in this walk. He never bumped into anyone or greeted anyone with any hand movement. His fingers were in his pocket, his leather belt, the opening of his collar, his crisp trousers. He never took a step out of his way. He never lost a button or dropped a handkerchief. When he boarded a bus, he rarely took a seat, though when he did he made a great show of positioning his arms and legs. He held his breath, his arms folded tightly against his ribs, his skeleton perfectly erect. He took his uniforms to Abu Ghanim’s ironing shop himself; Abu Ghanim ironed the clothes of the rich families at the far end of the neighborhood. He picked them up himself too, felt, sorted, folded them, and hung them up in the wardrobe himself. He ordered my mother, “Wash them separately, and spread them to dry in the shade so they won’t fade.” We never dared touch them.
He called out, “Where are you, Iqbal? Come wash my back.”
I did not move; my head was splitting with her screams and sobs.
She paced around the room, bent over, straightening up and taking whatever was in front of her, tearing it with her teeth and throwing it on the floor. She hiccupped. “I won’t die twice, and if I die now, I’ll die contented.”
I wept in the courtyard. My grandmother, aunt, and Adil were walking in front of me. They went in to her, and now her voice was louder than my father’s. “Your son is married, Mama, Umm Jamil! Jamouli is married and the woman is pregnant! That’s your reward. But now he’ll see who Iqbal is.”
His voice, our voices, her voice—all had drunk from the same river of madness and grown in the same house of utter ruin. Adil was squatting in a corner, watching and crying. My aunt picked up the clothes and books; now the room was starting to resemble the messy room high up on the flat roof.
Farida wailed: “God protect us from this day! God will kill you, Jamil. Huda, come help me clean up before he comes in here or blood will flow tonight.”
Alone, I watched, and watched, and watched, and stumbled, and bent over. My grandmother cradled my mother and hugged her tightly, prayed over her, and pulled her by the arm. “God is great, my daughter Iqbal, God protect you, God bless you, now let’s go, let’s get out of here before—”
My mother screamed at the top of her lungs. “What will happen now? He’ll kill me for tearing his clothes. I don’t care! I’m dead! I don’t even have any blood left! Jamil is married. Huda, your father is married! Come, Adouli, you have brothers! Adouli and Huda, come and see, today we will have this out. I want him to come here, in front of me. Come out of the bath, Jamouli, come here and see how Iqbal isn’t afraid any more. Mama, everything is gone now.”
She coughed, and for the first time I saw her blood. I cried out, and so did Adil and my grandmother, and for the first time I saw my grandmother’s tears.
My father’s voice: “What’s going on? Iqbal, Huda, Adouli, Farida—where are you?”
His voice approached and my grandmother dragged herself and my mother by her arms. My mother resisted and tried to squirm away, ablaze with rage. Her voice split the air: “I won’t leave! I want to stay here and see him. I want to die today. Adouli, Huda, come near me. What more can happen to me? Can it be worse? Where do you want to take me? This is my house and this is where I’ll die!”
My grandmother put her cloak over her head and over my mother’s as well, and pushed and pulled her, breathing prayers and murmuring, “God is great.” My grandmother forgot nothing. She took her suitcase, put on her spectacles, covered her face with her veil, and pushed my mother in front of her into the street.
My father was now out of the bath and stood wet and frightened. My mother’s coughing sounded from beyond the doorway and was heard no more.
Cough now for as long as you like. We will huddle together, Adil and I, and cry, and gasp, and say no more.
6
Your father camped out in his room. He opened the window: “Farida, dear, please bring me tea made by your lovely hand.”
He began with the Qur’an. The tea tray, bread, white cheese, and mint leaves. Your father’s sister was born for these chores. She worked hard winter and summer. Your grandmother was on her bed, a Qur’an in her hand. You children dared not play.
I did not like school, but even so I passed miserably at the end of the year.
Here I could not bear the silence. There was no coughing, no infected blood, no healthy blood. Even the ants lost their way in this house. No one quarreled with anyone; no one stammered with anyone else. Adil opened his reading book, and dusk fell as he murdered the letters ba, dal, and dhad. You wandered about among them all. You undid your braids and toyed with them. You struck Adil and knocked the book out of his hand, and you trampled the paste for his paper kites. You wanted to hear screaming or a gunshot; no one had screamed or coughed for months. They said she was getting worse with every passing day; the air of Syria was doing her no good; she wanted to breathe the same air as this man.
Through the little glass window at the top of the house, the sky looked gray and black. Time was bewildering: it did not pass quickly, either to let you grow up or to consummate your despair.
You walked in front of the door to the roof, which admitted an icy breeze in winter and dust as fine as powder in summer. You used to stop up the cracks in it with thick plugs of wool.
You went up the stairs in the blink of an eye and were in front of the door, and when you opened it the whole house shook. If you had remained standing where you were, you would have gone mad. You held the plugs of wool to stuff between the wall and the lock, and looked like a professional thief. The door had to open once.
You stood on the roof; there was no big booty here, only the sky, and any deal you made with God had not been kept. You asked Him if you might share that traveler’s coughing and illness, but He agreed only to multiply the quarrels between you and those around you. Your father was number one in this respect, and the sky crowded you and pushed you into war. There was no door before you. Where had your grandmother aimed her prayers?
In those years, your father alone was engrossed in planning for this family, producing his own public and private evil.
He married one-eyed Nuriya, the nurse at the state hospital in Karbala, and moved into her old house, where the screams of her mother and siblings drove him to madness. His visits grew more frequent. Every Thursday he visited us, and sometimes he came in the middle of the week. Debts became drafts drawn on the future as he waited for his seed to grow in the belly of his new wife.
“You have not seen her and you never will.” That was your grandmother’s vow. He had organized his own world, which began with drinking and ended with drunkenn
ess.
They said that she had lowered herself with some of the men of the holy city and submitted to various influential characters. They said your father had fallen under her lethal spell. They talked and spread rumors, and your grandmother did not advance or retreat in her decision: “Listen, Abu Adil, as long as I have breath in my body, Nuriya will not set foot in this house. She is your wife—fine. The past is hers and the present is yours, and what comes after is your own business.” His voice rose in grief and sorrow: “Mama! Are you telling me to divorce her? She’s not a nobody. Her mother used to read prayers for Imam Hussein. Her morals, God forgive me, are like anyone else’s, but she’s respectable. I’ve lived with her, and she loves me and is very afraid of me. In a few months she’ll have the baby. For the child’s sake let her come here and kiss your hands. Please, Mama, God bless you.”
She did not reply, or turn around; she only looked down. He went out with his head bowed. He set his table: peeled cucumbers, boiled beans, made hummus with sumac and lemon squeezed over it. Three empty glasses. He always put out this number of glasses with a bottle of arak. He looked at them; he liked them empty but wanted them full. He whispered to the arak and joked with it; it waited for him and he waited for it.
Across the table, the father waited for numerous caresses. The policeman’s despotism relaxed, and his official clothes came off. He traded his boots for the bare floor, and his bare toes trod upon it. Here he encountered disorder. He was out of prison, and did not harbor anything but love. He acted lovingly toward you each in turn, starting with Adil, calling him and joking with him. He hugged and kissed him, lifted him up in the air and buried him in his chest, then put him down. He put him on his lap, and they looked at each other. He started to read him a book, spelled out the words, and helped him with the arithmetic. He pinched his cheek, saying, “I can never get enough of you.”