Naphtalene

by Alia Mamdouh

“What about you? If he takes you to his house, go. Your new brothers are there. One-eyed Nuriya is there. By God, she killed Iqbal.” My grandmother’s voice was clear and decisive: “God took Iqbal. Don’t listen to this talk. Give him our regards. Kiss his hand, and tell him God will bless him if he does honest work. I’m longing to see him and hear his voice. I want him to come to the house. I’d accept it if he got upset, or if he got drunk and the men carried him to the house. I’d accept it if he beat you. Tell him, ‘Your mother wishes you health and happiness and prosperity.’”

  She lowered her voice. She removed her spectacles and wiped away her tears. Adil shifted in her lap. He hugged her and sighed deeply on her breast.

  “Come here. Where are you going?”

  “Let her walk about a little.”

  Adil came after me and walked behind me. “Stop a little.”

  We jumped over the luggage. Everyone’s eyes were on us. Their faces inspected us. We stood before the window, finding a place among the young men and girls. We stuck our heads out of the window; the hot air blinded us as we staggered and bumped into the others gathered at the window. I saw numbers of flies settling on the glass and on the nostrils of the people around us. I shooed them away but they came back.

  “It’s one-eyed Nuriya who killed Iqbal?”

  “Are we really going to my father’s house?”

  “If you want to go, go.”

  “And you?”

  “No.”

  “But if he takes us, what will we tell him?”

  “Grandmother wants to see him, even if just at a distance. We’ll tell him that.”

  “He might get cross and not come.”

  “He might come with us.”

  Iqbal cut my father in two.

  The train stopped here, at Sakkat al-Hindiya, for a long time. It was the first time we had visited Karbala and the first time we’d ridden in a train. The call to noon prayer, the figures spreading out rugs and carpets on the floor in front of us, facing Mecca.

  “Grandma, we’ll get off for a little while here.”

  Farida replied, in her gruff voice, “Stay where we can see you. Don’t go far.”

  The air burned us as if it were coming from a furnace. The tall trees around us surrounded the rest stop at Hindiya. Naked youths swam in the deep brooks, and women dangled their feet in the muddy water. Some of them were bent over, washing and rinsing clothes and squeezing them dry. They scrubbed dishes and metal pots with mud, washed them off, and turned them over on the ground.

  Sheep, cows, and goats wandered before us, drinking from the other end of the brook, making their sounds and eating the green-yellow grass. The sound of love songs came from the other side of the brook, interrupted by loud cursing. Adil did not move; he was standing underneath the window of the train. He was watching me dipping my hand into the brook, washing my face and looking at the women, who looked back at me and laughed together.

  Again the train released its sound. My hair was matted with sweat and my clothes stuck to my skin. I smelled my armpit. My aunt had a disgusting smell, like burning excrement. I would sit far away from her. “We’ll be in Karbala shortly.”

  Every time I heard my grandmother’s voice I thought I was hearing it for the first time. Adil left me space next to him. The toilets on the train were far away. My aunt said, “They’re all filthy and full of diseases.”

  The sky looked like my father’s face. We all rocked forward and were pitched on top of one another. We were at Karbala Station.

  My aunt attacked me with a stinging voice before I disembarked: “Where are you going? Come back. I swear, if your father saw you running around with your hair uncovered he’d kill you in front of everyone. Take this cloak and wrap yourself in it the way you’re supposed to.”

  “Hold Adil’s hand tightly.”

  “If either of you gets lost, say, ‘We are the children of Officer Jamil al-Maarouf.’ ”

  I stumbled and fell, and Adil laughed at me. After a few minutes of walking I began to scratch my head. Every moment I put my cloak in order, it immediately tumbled from my head. My grandmother’s voice was lost amid the clamor of all the automobiles and the holiday noise. There were throngs of innumerable people. A woman who looked like a black cloud moved in front of us on the ground, so all we could see were some of the colors above people’s heads, the children’s white and blue dishdashas as they rode on their mothers’ shoulders.

  My grandmother and aunt dropped their veils over their faces. Now we could only distinguish them by their voices. The men in front of the shops wore white clothes and undershirts, and all their wares were spread out: rugs, carpets, fabrics of every color, gold, swords that glinted whenever the sun caught them, fruits, vegetables, watermelon slices set out in rows on large platters, and glasses of cold laban. There were bookshops and shelves of thick, dark green books whose titles were written in gold. There were pictures of Imam Ali, behind which forked swords shone. I forgot to draw the cloak around me and one of the women smacked me on the chest and kept walking. We stopped behind them and all got into a horse drawn carriage, then sat opposite them. My grandmother said, “Take us to Karbala Prison.”

  “Yes, today is the holiday visit. Who have you got over there?”

  “My father,” said Adil.

  “God willing, he’ll be safely released.”

  Grandmother, who was praying, replied, “No, he works there.”

  “Hmm.”

  He lashed the horses vigorously, and they led the carriage at a run through Karbala’s paved lanes, high and bare, filthy and hot. We went a long way and emerged outside the city, where the air was dusty but the sky was clear. There were no plants, no trees, no houses or garages, no cars, no donkeys. The soil was as white as lime, and the fine, delicate dust settled on us. The carriage crushed the pebbles as it ran over them on the long dirt road.

  “By God, I’m only taking you there for the children’s sake. No one goes there at this hour.”

  “We’ll drop the children off and go back to the shrine with you,” said my grandmother.

  “This is the prison. We’re here.”

  Adil’s voice: “I’m afraid, Grandma.”

  Grandmother took him by the head, hugged and kissed him, and I pulled at him. We got off. The cloak fell to the ground. I picked it up, brushed it clean, and put it on my head, the tray in my other hand.

  “Listen, if you don’t come back soon we’ll leave.”

  “But if—”

  “You’ll come with us to the shrine. We’ll spend the night there.”

  We took our first step on this ground. We could see the faraway building; it looked like an upside-down lorry and had a high wall the color of used iodine. All I could see behind it was the sky, with creatures dispersed around it, whose cloaks shone when the sun caught them. Children turned their heads toward the gates, which were higher than the gates of our mosque, wide and intimidating, with iron plates in the middle and on the sides and round iron rings from the top to the bottom. The children played with them, poking their fingers inside and pushing their bodies against them. There was a huge hole in the middle in which I saw a key that did not move.

  Two jeeps were parked close together in front of the gate. Women were leaning on them and some children were asleep inside. The doors and roofs were open. There was a smell of burning rubbish whenever the wind blew, and the rancid smell spread.

  Adil walked in silence, playing with the pebbles and kicking them away. All eyes were on us, and did not leave us. I stood at the gate and placed the tray on the ground, letting the cloak slip down to my shoulders. I looked around me. One of the women asked in a low voice, “Do you have a watch?”

  “No.”

  “Visiting hours start at three.”

  I knocked at the door and the children laughed at me and crowded around me. I looked at the movement of my palms, as if they were the wings of a fly on the verge of death. I lowered my head to the big hole and shouted, “Mister, we are
the children of Officer Jamil.”

  The children fell silent, and the women turned away from us. A few minutes later the door creaked open sharply and the face of a police officer appeared before us.

  Everyone moved toward me in a wave, standing and surrounding us in a circle. They grabbed us by the shoulders and pushed us away, and the man wheeled around, searching for us among the throng. My cloak swept the ground, and I grasped the tray and Adil’s hand. The man drove the people away and walked on, holding our hands and pushing us ahead of him. He turned to them irritably: “How many times have we said visiting hours start at three?”

  Before going in I looked back to see the carriage. My grandmother’s head looked like an eagle’s. I waved to her. We then entered, and the gate closed behind us.

  13

  “So you are Adil.”

  He did not reply.

  “And you are Huda.”

  “And you?”

  “Jasim. Sergeant Jasim.”

  “Is my father here?”

  “He’s here, but he’s doing inspection.”

  “So he’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  I calmed down a little when I heard what he said. I thought of cross-eyed Hashim. When he grew up he would look like him. He wanted to help me; he tried to take the tray, but I refused, moving it from one hand to the other. The abaya was in my way—I stumbled in it; it twisted round and opened up, revealing my thin body. Before it fell down, Adil helped me lift it and took the tray. When I wore it, I looked like Firdous’s ugly and comical rag doll. Pulling the abaya from the ground I wrapped it round and looked down at my shoes.

  Adil walked. I could not tell whether his feet were pulling him or he was dragging them. My knees knocked together and my fingers trembled as I clutched the cloak; I tried to swallow but could not. If only I had tried my cloak on before. Oh, we had done that before, Firdous and I, we laughed for a long time, calling out in voices like the voices of my aunt and her mother, and we quieted down before anyone came in.

  The sergeant walked quickly, then stopped to let us catch up, then resumed walking ahead of us.

  It was a long, open path, paved only with old footprints and shiny pebbles both small and large. The soil was red and rippled, covering and uncovering itself as the wind opened up hollows and then filled them, forming mounds and throwing them up into our faces. The edge of the cloak flopped over my face and I nearly fell, but Jasim grabbed me from one side and Adil grabbed me on the other and we stopped. I closed my mouth, pursed my lips and smelled the sand that had gotten into my hair and between my toes.

  “He will be delighted to see you two.”

  Calcite air, yellowish, white, red. The wall was behind us, and rooms I could not count before us, distant and small like sand in a swollen eye.

  I did not distinguish the color; I thought I would ask Jasim about it but I kept quiet. I said to myself that it was perhaps the color of cooked olives. Sweat had begun to trickle down the top of my neck to the top of my spine, and I felt it moving down my back. It ran and I did not know how to stop it. Now my scalp began to itch as well. I reached up to scratch it and then I did not want to stop. Yesterday I had washed in the bathtub at home; it had been months since we had gone to the market bath. When I came out of the bath Firdous stood in front of me and said, “When you grow up you’re going to be tall, and you’ll look beautiful in a cloak.” I was still short, and this cover made me suffocate and stumble constantly. My skirt was black, as was my blouse; I had borrowed it from Firdous the night after the death. My waist was wet with water. I touched my middle and let go of one side of the cloak; it dropped down, and grains of sand and sweat wiped off my hand.

  There was not a single tree in this whole expanse. I did not know how far we had walked. My father had brought me when I entered the sixth grade in elementary school. I did not mind all this walking, but my thirst, and the tribulation of my bladder! How was it that Adil had not yet asked to urinate? How could I ask? He was so patient and reserved, and could piss on himself if he saw my father in front of him.

  Now the inner gate of the prison was in front of us. It was wide, and high as well. We entered the way cats enter the gate of a mosque; first voices emerged, then the men appeared, their moustaches, their big black boots notched with nails, the smell of their armpits stirred me up as I stared at them. They turned their heads. One of them was clean shaven, and his skin was freckled, as if the sun had never shone on him for a single second.

  We walked down a long, dark corridor. Men walked in and out, turning around and looking. The floor was of old yellow broken brick scrubbed very clean and reeking of disinfectants, yet flies buzzed all round us, heedless of cleanliness and unintimidated by the police. They buzzed round the men’s noses and bare heads. No one shooed them away or killed them as we did in our house.

  “Please come in. This is his room.”

  We stood in the middle. Adil walked round a little and placed the tray in the middle of the room and sat at our father’s table. I looked all round me, turning and glancing about. I went to the mirror but saw only the top part of my head. I stood on tiptoe, stumbled and fell, me and the cloak. I looked at the floor, stained with this piece of diaphanous silken cloth. I gathered it up in my hands and threw it on the only bed in the room.

  The floor was of tile that had lost its color and become mud-colored. A thick-sided rectangular metal table with three lockable drawers on the right-hand side, and an orderly stack of papers on top. My father loved order. Envelopes and folders were piled neatly. There was an empty water glass with a sandy residue at the bottom. An old ashtray with a recently stubbed out cigarette, which I emptied in the rusty wastebasket and returned to the table. A black telephone whose surface was smudged and cracked where the numbers were; it was antique and bore the royal emblem. A wooden chair with a wide back and square pillow with some of the dirty brown cotton stuffing spilling out of it. Adil rested his head on it. On the high wall above the chair hung a picture of the King of Iraq and the Regent on the throne, both in brilliant white clothing. The picture frame was old and silver, and slightly dusty, even as I viewed it from a distance. I approached and wiped it with my arm to see: the King of Iraq was still, and the Regent was showing his even teeth.

  Adil tossed his head back. I walked over to the only window, which was also painted in a dark color and had a cheap wrinkled curtain. I stood there with the smell of wild thorns passing over me—they were massed like a second, outer window. There were iron bars over the window. A narrow black water hose passed its voice over the tops of the wild thorns and through their branches, moistening the hot air, soaking up the dust and dirt. It gave off a light, secretive smell of cold that entered my ribs, dried my sweat, and rose to my head. There was a ceiling fan whose sound, as it turned, was like Firdous’s voice when she talked. On the other side was a very low iron bed covered with an earth-colored sheet, and to the side my father’s blue dishdasha and cloak, and below them his big leather shoes.

  A dark-colored but clean sink was in front of us, with shaving implements on the cheap metal shelf over it. On the wall, a faded towel hung from a big nail.

  I lifted the tray and put it in a corner, and sat on the bed.

  At once I felt sleepy. The shade was lovely and the air was heavy, and there was no sound from outside. I removed my shoes and placed my bare feet on the floor, and saw my footprint there.

  Adil and I did not speak or watch the door. If we had been left there we would immediately have fallen asleep. Would our father be angry with us if he saw us here? If he did get angry, would he hit us in front of the police? No one had hit me for long months. They said I had grown, and it was wrong to hit a girl who had reached puberty.

  Puberty: the unknown door had opened before me, and I saw drops of blood on wide, unbleached clothing. I was not frightened. You had seen your blood flowing from your nose, legs, and mouth. That was my first blood, the exclusive possession of Officer Jamil. This blood would be yours al
one. I took off my panties and looked at them for a long time. My grandmother and Aunt Widad had told me about it, and I was let into the secret. They said: “When you become of age, you should fear men, all men. You can be a mother or a goddess.” I was terrified: my mother was dead and I did not know anything about goddesses. It was not the blood that frightened me, but masters’ complexions: Jamil, Munir, Abu Iman, and . . . they all came out of the secret suffocating rooms and began to spray you with hoses of fire. You scrubbed your panties with your slender, delicate fingers, locked the door on yourself, and left the blood before you. You looked at it as if it were a new brother of yours. This was your blood, and the first time it came out you did not strike or scream.

  Sergeant Jasim came in carrying a round tray with two glasses of laban. He placed it on the table, and I went to him. “Sergeant Jasim, Adil wants to wash his face, and—”

  “The washrooms are at the end of the corridor, on the right.”

  Adil paid no attention and did not move. His head was hanging back, as if he were dead.

  There were droplets of cold water on the sides of the glasses. The thick rich froth got on my lips as I drank. Adil drank but said nothing. My father’s voice sounded behind me; the glass trembled between my mouth and my hand, dripping on my clothes as I set it down on the table and turned to him. He went first to Adil, and round the table he took us in his arms and hugged us tightly. Had my father grown shorter? Or had I grown taller?

  Adil began to cry and I did not know what to do. Not one tear would fall, not one word would come, and he was more perplexed than we were.

  Adil’s voice was the first to crack: “Papa, my mother is dead.”

  Sergeant Jasim’s voice, as he saluted my father. I heard the sound of his legs as they rubbed together and he raised his arm: “At your service, sir.”

  We clung to him, both turned toward the sergeant. He looked at us and lifted Adil to his chest, and carried him over to the bed. I walked behind them.

  “Have you eaten?”

  No one answered.