My Father's Rifle

by Hiner Saleem

  My mother held up the oil lamp near her son to see him better, but my father pushed the lamp away; he didn’t want his son bothered by the smoke. And my mother kept sniffing his jacket and saying, “It’s my son’s odor.” Later that night, in a tender voice, she said, “My son, you’re a man now, you’re eighteen, you must marry … We want to see our grandson.” My brother was embarrassed. He was an adolescent; he didn’t speak of women in front of his parents. He smiled vaguely and said only, “It’s up to you.”

  As for me, I was very happy. Like my mother, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It is marvelous to have a big brother. Before dawn, I put my head on my mother’s knees, eyes still riveted on Dilovan, and fell asleep like the kid I was.

  One evening in July, my father was listening to Radio Baghdad, Voice of the People, and simultaneously translating everything into Kurdish for us. The announcer from the Baath Party, the new pan-Arab party, was inviting all Iraqis in Baghdad to come eat kebab in Liberation Square, in front of the gallows where enemies of the people and the homeland had been hanged. He shouted, “Oh, Iraqi people, from now on we shall liberate your country from its enemies.” The hanged men were Baghdadis: Iraqis and Iraqi Jews.

  On hearing that Jews were being hanged in Baghdad, my father became frightened in Bill, miles from Baghdad …

  His father, my grandfather Selim Malay Shero, had taken Aïcha the Jewish woman as his second wife. Aïcha’s family had moved to Israel before I was born, but she had stayed in Aqra. She loved my grandfather and even after his death never wanted to leave the country; she wanted to be near his grave. Everyone in our town knew about this and knew my grandfather had been madly in love with Aïcha the Jewish woman. People even said that he would have followed her to Israel. And that one day while his entire harvest was burning, my grandfather was in bed with Aïcha, refusing to move, not wanting to shatter their bliss.

  I saw fear on my father’s face. He saw himself among the hanged men in Liberation Square, surrounded by crowds eating kebab, because his father had been in love with Aïcha the Jewish woman, his stepmother.

  I left my father to his thoughts and ran after my brother Dilovan. He took me to visit the few shops in the village. I looked around for some trinket he might buy me. The first store sold only kilims; in the back, a Brno was hanging on a wall. There was nothing there for me. The second store sold riding accessories, and horsemen were assembled in front of the door with their mounts. The next store had farming tools. Finally, in a stall a bit farther on, among dusty oil cans and sacks of sugar and tea, I noticed packages of biscuits in a corner. We looked at each other, my brother and I, and then went in. All the merchandise had been smuggled in from Iran, for Baghdad had imposed an embargo on the regions controlled by our leader, Barzani.

  My brother picked up a package of biscuits and my mouth watered. They were honey and sesame biscuits. I could already feel them melting in my mouth. I kept my eye on the package while my brother turned it over this way and that. I was waiting for a sign from him to grab it. After what seemed to me an eternity, he handed the biscuits back to the salesman and told me to follow him. We walked out. I was terribly disappointed; my mouth was dry and I had a lump in my throat. He turned to me. “Azad,” he said, “those are good biscuits, but the ones in that package had more bugs in them than sesame. Come on, I’ll buy you something else.” I knew there was no other store for me in Bill. The last shop was the meeting place of partridge enthusiasts; the partridge is a common bird in our mountains and a symbol of our people. I knew the partridge could be its own worst enemy: hunters used the birds as bait to attract their fellow creatures. But I didn’t understand why my mother sometimes compared us Kurds to partridges, for I was still a kid.

  We arrived at Hamadouk’s tearoom. We climbed the ladder up to the balcony, the ground floor being reserved for the barber. It was a modest tearoom with small, rickety stools and dented drums as tables. A large sign said CASINO, but there was nothing to drink but tea. The customers around us were playing dominoes, their guns resting on their laps. My brother raised his hand to greet them; we sat down and he ordered tea.

  I didn’t want any, but there wasn’t anything else for me. Then Dilovan sent me downstairs to the barber to get my hair cut. I had a choice between several cuts and I chose the one where a bowl is placed on top of your head and the barber cuts your hair all around the edge. I ended up looking like my Bill schoolmates, with a skullcap of hair on my head. I was sure I would be the only boy with this haircut in all of Aqra.

  After that we went home. My father was a bit worried. He whispered to my brother. Dilovan had to go back to the mountains, urgently. At my mother’s insistence, he ate some savar4 and a few olives before leaving. It was always painful to see my brother go. My mother cried. But it was clear that the situation was deteriorating.

  On my father’s radio set, Radio Moscow denounced the two putsch leaders and presented General Barzani as the liberator of the Kurdish people. But Voice of America said the Kurds were rebels and bandits, and Radio Baghdad continued to accuse us—our leader and all of us—of being Zionist agents and enemies of the Baath Party. The two putsch leaders spoke of going after other enemies once they had crushed the Jews.

  The Iraqi army began to bomb some of our villages. There was turmoil all around us once again: horses and mules crossed through the village, loaded with weapons.

  Hamadouk’s “Casino” was crowded with peshmergas. They drank a beverage served in bottles. It wasn’t tea; the color was darker. After drinking it, they belched loudly. I was very curious to know what it was and how it tasted, but I didn’t have the money to buy a bottle of the mysterious drink. I watched Hamadouk’s gestures, perplexed. He opened the bottle with a piece of metal; it made a strange noise, like a bullet fired into water. As soon as the black bottle was open, a white foam bubbled out of it. Rezgar and I immediately started collecting the bottle caps and soon our pockets were filled with them. When I was alone, I quietly sniffed a recently removed cap and licked it with the tip of my tongue. It was impossible to tell what that strange drink tasted of.

  Suddenly two airplanes flew overhead at a low altitude. Panic broke out; some people hid, others lay on the ground. I remained standing, petrified, my heart about to burst, when Rajab jumped down from the balcony, threw himself on me, and shoved me against the wall. Aiming his old rifle up at the sky, he started shooting at the airplanes. I smelled the odor of gunpowder, and the airplanes flew off. Rajab proudly slung his gun over his shoulder and got ready to climb back up on the balcony. He caressed my hair. “You weren’t scared, were you?” he asked. I’d been terrified, but I shook my head, for Kurds must not be scared. Then he added, “Whose son are you?” “I’m Shero’s son.” His face lit up. “Oh yes, you’re Shero’s son—Shero, the general’s operator.” “Yes,” I said. Then he looked up at Hamadouk, the “Casino” owner, who was just coming out of his hiding place behind the samovar, and called to him, “Bring a bottle for this future peshmerga.” He turned to me and asked, “What’s your name?” “Azad.” “A beautiful name …”

  Hamadouk brought us two bottles, one black, the other yellow. “Which one do you want?” asked Rajab. Shyly I answered, “I don’t want anything.” But Rajab insisted, pointing to the bottles. “See, the black one is Coke; the yellow one’s Orangina. It’s good, you can drink some.” I refused again, shaking my head. Rajab turned away from me and started climbing up the ladder, saying to Hamadouk, “His name is Azad, he’s Shero’s son, the general’s personal operator.” I watched him with a lump in my throat. I was dying to taste one of the drinks but I was afraid my mother would be angry. Out of pride, she forbade us to accept anything from strangers. Before leaving us, Rajab called down to me from the balcony, “Tell your father that Rajab sends his greetings.” I nodded my head, and I left with a heavy heart from not having drunk from the mysterious bottle.

  My cousin Gibrail, Mamou’s brother, came to see us. We hadn’t seen him in a long time. During lunch
, we were talking about Mamou, with tears in our eyes, when we heard the sound of airplanes. They were flying very low, making the tea glasses shake. We rushed out of the house to hide, fearing the house might collapse on our heads. No bomb was dropped, but the dreadful sound of the low-flying planes was enough to make me think I would die of fear. The planes came around again, even more menacingly. We all dived to the ground, facedown, and the pane in our one window shattered into pieces. Our horse, tied up, kicked and whinnied in fear, and the partridges, terror-stricken, desperately tried to break open the bars of their cage with their beaks. Calm returned; Gibrail kissed us and left hurriedly for Raizan, worried about his two wives and sixteen children. From that day on, the planes flew overhead regularly. Nothing was more terrifying to me than that noise. One day, they started to bomb our village. Hidden, I saw my father fire with his Brno in the direction of the planes. But what could he do with a Czech rifle dating from the 1940s?

  Henceforth, at dawn the entire village went to hide in the caves along the river, and so did we. We brought along the little food we had and stayed hidden all day in our caves. We didn’t leave until sunset, taking the same road back for the two miles that separated us from our house.

  It wasn’t long before we had nothing left to eat but flat round breads soaked in tea, and then only once a day. All activities came to a halt. When a bread crumb fell to the ground, out of respect I would pick it up, kiss it, and bring it to my forehead before eating it. Bread is sacred. In full view, the river Zab flowed by, a river full of rocks and whirlpools, teeming with fish. Our cave was a short distance away.

  My father knew that in other caves the villagers fished, but he said nothing. We knew it, too, but we kept silent; we didn’t want to humiliate my father; he didn’t know how to swim. How can you fish if you don’t know how to swim?

  With our ever more stringent diet, we all began to get thin. It was unbearable for my father, seeing his family die of hunger, so he decided to go fishing no matter what. The limpid water flowed by; the fish in the river taunted us, leaping and lively; we devoured them with our eyes. My father made himself a fishing rod with a branch, a piece of string, a needle bent like a hook, and some bread as bait. Perched on a large flat stone and surrounded by his whole family, he threw his line into the water, but he didn’t catch a single fish. By the end of the day, an entire loaf of bread had vanished in the river to feed the fish. “It’s because of the airplanes, the fish don’t dare approach,” was the excuse my father came up with, even though we could see the fish, right there under our noses. A second day went by, just like the first. As soon as the airplanes disappeared, we came out of the cave to encourage my father, still on the rock. We saw the smoke rising from grills in the neighboring caves and the smell of grilled fish tortured our stomachs.

  My father felt more and more ashamed, and my mother moistened the dry bread and divided the pieces among us. My father broke his bread into six pieces and gave each of us a piece, claiming he had a stomachache and would just drink a cup of tea and smoke a cigarette. After this meal, he started fishing again, with his line a few yards away from his feet. “Cast it farther out,” said my mother. “Very good, but if the hook gets caught in the rocks, who’ll go fetch it?” “Me,” I said, raising my head. He looked at me, surprised: he didn’t know I had learned to swim with my pal Rezgar. He wanted me to demonstrate my swimming skills at the edge of the river. I undressed and threw myself into the stream, stark naked. “Come back!” cried my father. It was dangerous, but I was cocksure.

  Then I heard them all scream. The world collapsed around us; the planes were bombing the river with napalm, and huge columns of water soared up into the sky wherever the bombs fell. I started swimming like a maniac toward the riverbank, where I could see my whole family, looking panicked, reaching out their arms to me. My father unwound his long belt, put one end in my mother’s hand, threw the other out to me, and jumped into the water. The bombs went on falling and I came out without his help. My mother, tugging on the belt, now tried to pull my father to the riverbank, but the powerful current made it hard. We all set about helping her, hauling our father out of the water like a big dead fish. We looked at him standing on the riverbank, dripping wet. In tears, we burst out laughing and retreated to our cave.

  Before long we heard only the sound of the river, so my father went out to look at the sky and dry himself off in the sun. Moments later he came back, completely naked, his arms loaded with fish, which he threw down on the ground. Incredulous, we rushed to look at them. They were all mangled. We could easily imagine that we had been within a hairsbreadth of suffering the same fate as the fish. “Fix them, Haybet,” said my father, turning to go out. My father’s thin silhouette was outlined against the light at the entrance to the cave. This was the first time I’d seen my father naked. We set about preparing the fish. We all realized that if we wanted to eat, the airplanes would have to return every day.

  My father always kept telling us, “In a year, our country will be liberated.” And the years went by. Then we began to believe it. The two putsch leaders in Baghdad, al-Bakr and Saddam, spoke of peace, and the planes stopped coming. My brother Dilovan returned from the hills. My mother had found him a wife—Dijla, Barakat’s daughter. My brother had never set eyes on Dijla. Barakat had agreed to the marriage on one condition: that we give our sister Taman to his son Goran. My sister had never set eyes on Goran. This was of no consequence—my mother had seen all four, and the marriages were celebrated.

  My parents were proud of their new daughter-in-law. She had an uncle who had followed General Barzani to the Soviet Union in 1946, and that was enough for them. My parents gave the young bride a gift of gold earrings. My mother had a small jewelry case in which she hoarded our entire treasure: several rings, necklaces, a solid gold bracelet, and a cake of soap, the last one purchased in our town of Aqra. It was a deluxe soap called Asfanik. Dijla, our young sister-in-law, couldn’t pronounce Asfanik; she’d say Afsanik. Whenever she annoyed us, my little sister and me, we’d tease her by asking, “What soap is it?” She’d mispronounce it and we’d make fun of her, the village girl. But Dijla had a great deal of personality. She was intelligent, even though she didn’t know how to read and write, which very much bothered my brother. The day after their marriage, my brother came home with some paper and a pencil. He closeted himself with his wife in the one room of our house and taught her the alphabet. Alphabet or no, we had to stay outside; the young married couple was not to be disturbed. When he left for the mountains again, he gave her a pile of homework as an assignment, and that was how my sister-in-law learned to read. And we children, we thought about our sister Taman, whom we had exchanged for Dijla: she knew how to read and write.

  After his marriage, my older brother returned home often. We’d go to the village with him; we’d listen to cassettes of Kurdish songs in Hamadouk’s “Casino,” where the ambiance was very lively. I no longer craved the parasite-infested Iranian biscuits; I was determined to get someone to buy me a bottle of the black liquid. When Hamadouk asked me what I wanted, I answered without hesitation, “Some Coke,” and my brother Rostam followed suit. Rajab, that proud and courageous man, was there. He was talking to my brother Dilovan. Rostam and I, we took advantage of the opportunity to order two bottles of Orangina. Suddenly Hamadouk turned off the music to listen to the news. All the men gathered around the radio. There was an announcement that General Barzani had been invited to Baghdad. And my brother and I emptied our bottles; then, mouths agape, we belched at length. Around us, the spirited conversations went on. Rajab said that the general shouldn’t go to Baghdad, and he got all worked up. “If they’re sincere, let the putsch leaders come to us! Why should the general trust them?” They all took bets: would he or would he not go to Baghdad? The stakes were bottles of Coke and Orangina. Some of the men even bet their horses or their best partridges. Rajab went so far as to bet his Brno that the general wouldn’t go. And he won. It was Saddam who ended up traveling
to the mountains. Except for the independence of Kurdistan, he accepted all the demands. Kurds and Arabs, we were going to share everything like brothers!

  From then on, everyone had a smile on their lips. We were all carried away by the euphoria of peace. I certainly believed in it: the price of Coke went down, I could buy myself two and a half bottles of Coke for the price of one, and in joyful celebration, my father fired into the sky with his Brno. There was dancing in the streets of Bill, accompanied by drums and flutes. Even my mother, tiny among the tall Russian women, danced with joy, arms raised in the air. We were finally a free people. My father sold his two horses. We gathered our possessions. An old pickup truck came to fetch us. After I had embraced Rezgar and his mother, the towering Russian lady, and everyone in the village, I saw my teacher, Abdul Rahman, arrive, holding a scroll of paper. He embraced us and handed me the scroll: it was my school certificate. The entire family piled into the truck, with us children perched on bundles in the rear. My father entrusted the partridge cage to me and slipped his Brno under a mattress, muttering between his teeth, “You never know …” He climbed in front with my mother, and we set off to go back home to Aqra. We waved our hands, Khatra wa, khatra wa5 … We were leaving my sister Taman behind but taking Dijla with us.

  On arriving in Aqra, the truck stopped about a hundred yards from our house. My mother rushed toward it first, like a madwoman. All our relatives and friends came out to greet us, but nothing and no one could stop our racing forward. The whole neighborhood started running with us, kissing us, welcoming us. Suddenly, when she got to our house, my mother stopped, transfixed. All that was left were a few sections of blackened wall. She made her way into the rubble in tears. She caressed the walls with her hands as she might have caressed the mortal remains of a loved one.