My Father's Rifle

by Hiner Saleem

  She wept. We all started weeping with her, and the neighbors with us. After meticulously inspecting what remained of our house, she went into the garden. It was overrun with grass and the dried stalks of flowers. And in the orchard of pomegranate trees, fig trees, olive trees, cherry trees, apricot trees, and grapevines, only the trunks were left. She stopped at every decapitated tree and she wept, and everyone wept along with her. I couldn’t bear it anymore. I went back to the ruins of our house. I saw my father, alone, squatting, a cigarette between his fingers, and I heard him sobbing.

  We all met again in the garden, and tongues loosened. No, our sacrifice had not been in vain; we were free. Faces brightened and the time came for joy. I left my family as soon as I caught sight of Cheto, my cousin with the stunt pigeons. He was standing off to one side, looking at me; he was waiting for me. Happily, I went up to him. We looked at each other and stood side by side to see who was bigger: he was a little taller than I. And then we went off to fly some pigeons.

  I spent the summer of our return to Aqra joyfully carrying sandbags. My father had received financial compensation to rebuild our house. He called on Housta Musto, the best builder in town. Musto began by inspecting the ruins of the old house, then he drew a blueprint: four bedrooms, a spacious living room, for there was plenty of land. My father carefully studied Musto’s blueprint while smoking a cigarette. He shook his head; he wasn’t pleased. “No, Musto, no, it’s too big, too exposed, there are too many windows!” Musto, surprised, defended his blueprint. After lengthy discussions, he came up with another plan: a beautiful villa with large openings giving out on our orchard. Again, my father wasn’t pleased. In the end, Musto gave up. “Fine,” he said to my father, “do your own plan, and I’ll carry it out,” and he left, disappointed. He couldn’t understand what my father wanted.

  My father had known nothing but war. He was obsessed with problems of safety. He spent the night thinking about his house plan, and in the morning he sent me to fetch Musto. Musto didn’t challenge the plan which my father drew for him on the ground with a stick: two rooms on the ground floor, two on the next floor, all the windows oriented away from the town, facing the orchard and the hills. Poor Musto listened to my father’s explanations with some misgivings. But my father, imperturbable, continued, “A wall one yard thick, built of stone and cement. That’s much more resistant than the paper-thin sheets you’re proposing.” Then, stabbing the ground with his stick, “There are too many openings in your plan. Some of the windows have to be eliminated. We must be protected from bullets no matter what angle they fire on us from. You didn’t anticipate this in your blueprint. And think of the walls; I want walls that can hold up to missiles.” Musto, losing patience, grabbed the stick from my father. “Do you want to build a fortress or a house?” “A fortress-house, Musto, a fortress-house,” my father replied. So then Musto spoke to him as to a child. “Shero dear, the war is over. We’re free and there’s peace now. Why are you always thinking of war? The time has come to build large, airy, welcoming houses.” Scratching his bald head under his turban, my father had the last word: “That’s true, Musto. But the saying is the bride must please her husband, and you, you must build a house that pleases me.” Musto didn’t want to lose the job.

  By the time the first stone was laid, I had already brought over a big pile of sand.

  When the house was finished, my father hung a large portrait of General Barzani in the main room. Outside, the orchard had been cleared, the dead trees uprooted, and the garden was once again overflowing with flowers.

  I was in eighth grade. Cheto was three grades ahead of me, and Ramo, another cousin, one grade below. We were all in the same school. Over the door, a banner proclaimed, “Long Live Arab-Kurd Friendship.”

  I was a good student; I loved school. My father was constantly telling me that he wanted me to become a judge or a lawyer. But on the first day of school I couldn’t understand a word: the teacher spoke Arabic. I was shattered. My enthusiasm vanished. I was on the verge of tears. I felt self-conscious with my classmates; I was nothing but an incompetent, an ass. Cheto and Ramo waited for me after school. I didn’t stop and didn’t talk to them and went straight home. My mother saw me crying and she wanted to know why. Tearfully, I explained my distress. “I didn’t understand anything the teacher was saying; he speaks only Arabic.” My mother caressed my head, smiling. “Dear boy, a class in Arabic is nothing to worry about; it’s good to learn another language.” I answered, annoyed, “But, Mama, it isn’t just one class. Everything is in Arabic.” Whereupon my father arrived. “Don’t worry, my son, before the end of the year the teaching will be in Kurdish; the government promised us. You’ll be first in your class.”

  The teacher never called on me, I was never punished, and every day I made the same wish—that the courses in Kurdish would begin. In vain. I was forced to learn Arabic. As the end of the year approached, it was exam time, and still no change. Everything continued in Arabic. I waited for the results, hoping that my teacher would be lenient and I would pass into the higher grade. When the day came, all the students lined up in the courtyard. The headmaster, report cards in hand, called us up one by one. We knew we had passed when the teacher signaled us to go up to the caretaker. By custom, the student first gave the caretaker a coin to thank him for his services in the past year. Then, when the student received his report card, we were supposed to applaud. My father had given me a one-dirham coin for the caretaker. I held it carefully in my hand, buried deep inside my pocket, and fiddled with it as I waited to be called. Suddenly I heard my name, my head began to spin, and I became unaware of my surroundings. I headed for the caretaker automatically and put my coin in his box without waiting for my teacher’s signal. There was a great silence. The headmaster signaled the caretaker to hand my dirham back to me.

  I still didn’t realize that the worst had happened, and I went on waiting for my teacher’s lips to pronounce the much awaited word: “passed.” All the students were looking at me. Without a word, the headmaster gave me my report card. I took it, eyes lowered, and heard the next name being called, “Cheto Rasul.” I walked away under the ripple of applause for my cousin.

  I looked at my report card and saw the red marks; I had been flunked. I thought of not going home, fearing my parents’ reaction.

  My father greeted me very calmly and all he said was, “My son, my dream is that you become a judge or a lawyer. Your older brother, Dilovan, didn’t go to university; he joined the fighters. And Rostam didn’t even finish high school. I must have one son at least who will allow me to walk with my head high.” He was sad, disappointed, and after a minute of silence he smacked me in the face. He didn’t speak to me for several days. Ramo had caught up with me. Small comfort. We’d be in the same class in the fall, and I hoped our teacher would let us share the same bench.

  My father was summoned to the town hall. He went hoping to get a job, by virtue of the agreements concluded between General Barzani and the Iraqi government.6 The government employee told him he had been put on early retirement and would be receiving a small pension. For my father, this was a bad omen.

  On the other hand, the teacher-training course my brother Dilovan had taken in the mountains was accredited by the state, and he found a job in a small village far away. He spent a good part of his salary paying for visits to his wife, who, with their little daughter, was living at our house. They had named her Zilan, after a valley where the Turks exterminated Kurdish deportees in the 1930s, to mark their commitment to the cause.

  Xebat (The Struggle), the Kurds’ underground newspaper, became legal and we could now buy it openly. One day, my father came home with the newspaper and a thick book tucked under his arm. It was Malaye Djeziri’s poems. What a marvelous book! Each poem was illustrated by a painting. From then on, late at night, after he had listened to the news on all the stations, Radio Baghdad, Radio Israel, Radio Moscow, and Voice of America, my father would open the thick book and read us poems, writt
en in very beautiful Kurdish. He would comment on them for us, giving free rein to his imagination. But what fascinated me were the magnificent illustrations facing the poems. This was the first time I had seen drawings and I was overwhelmed to discover this magical art. I thought that since these drawings were so beautiful, the poetry must be very beautiful, too.

  They showed magnificent women, voluptuous like the houris of paradise, springing up from the earth like flowers. The sky was as limpid as the sky in our mountains. These beautiful women were dressed as Kurds. I longed to touch them, to speak to them. I would have liked to hang them on the wall next to the general’s portrait. For me, being Kurdish meant these poems and the songs I had learned, these women in long green or pomegranate-colored jackets embroidered with small violet flowers.

  At first, I thought the poems were little songs without music. Thanks to the drawings, I realized that if the poetry gave rise to such beauty, it undoubtedly surpassed simple song lyrics. And with this book, published openly, I thought we Kurds were beginning to gain respect.

  Some time later, walking by Abdulla’s barbershop—Abdulla, whom people called a Communist—I saw a large painting and stopped. It was a painting from my father’s poetry book titled The Young Kurdish Girl and signed “Sami.” While my friend Ramo, suddenly sick to his stomach, rushed to the toilet in the mosque to empty himself of all the pomegranates and figs he had gorged on, I lingered in front of the barbershop, transfixed, eyes riveted on the painting.

  From then on, I went by the shop whenever I could. One day, I saw my brother Dilovan inside, and he called out to me immediately. The shop was the meeting place of all the town intellectuals. My brother was talking with a very tastefully dressed young man. His name was Sami, and they were discussing the painting. My brother pushed me toward one of the chairs and asked the barber to cut my hair while they continued talking.

  There was no question, I was close to Sami, creator of the painting. I wanted to touch him or kiss his hand or talk to him, yet at the same time I wanted to run away. I was greatly intimidated. Abdulla wrapped a large, well-worn towel around me and tilted the chair back.

  I would gladly have stayed in that chair for hours because I could see Sami in the mirror. Alas, Abdulla cut my hair in the blink of an eye and that was it; my brother said goodbye to Sami and we left.

  I fell ill. I had persistent bouts of high fever. In spite of this, my mother took my hand and walked with me to a desolate hill facing our house. Near the top, at the opening of a cave, we stopped. It was a sacred cave.

  Inside was a spring flowing with cool, clear water and surrounded by twigs on which pieces of green and pink fabric had been fastened. My mother undressed me and, with a saucer, poured sacred water all over me. This cave was called Kinishte, the synagogue. It had been a Jewish place of worship for a very long time. Until the 1950s, there had been a Jewish quarter in our town and two synagogues, besides the three churches and the mosque. Then the Jews had left for Israel and the mosques had multiplied. Legend had it that a holy Jewish man was buried in the cave. This mattered little to my mother; a holy man was a holy man, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

  Coming out of the cave, we passed some Iraqi soldiers. They were building blockhouses. I saw the alarm on my mother’s face, but I didn’t attach too much importance to it. I was still a kid.

  A year went by and I passed my exams, to my father’s great satisfaction. With his ear glued to the radio, he was following the putsch leader Saddam Hussein’s trip to Moscow. And to his great disappointment, Radio Moscow made no mention of the Kurds. I went to town to look at Sami’s paintings. Many shops showed his paintings now. Sami wasn’t just painting young Kurdish girls anymore. One of his paintings showed four partridges on a snowy mountaintop, symbolizing our homeland split up among four countries. One of my favorites was a portrait of the charismatic General Barzani, head held high, in traditional dress, a dagger tucked in his belt, a pistol at his left side, the end of his rifle jutting out behind his shoulder. What a great man. A rumor had been going around for some time that the general wasn’t coming down from his mountains anymore. He no longer believed that the accords signed with the putsch leaders would be respected. We had seen policemen gradually reappear in town. That was not in the accords. And on the hill with the cave, directly facing our house, the Iraqi soldiers’ little blockhouses had been converted into barracks. I knew that had it been possible, my father would have turned his house around to face the town.

  My cousin Cheto used to sell blackberries to the soldiers, and I would go with him. We sold them for ten cents a cup. We never went farther than the barracks door. At first, the soldiers distrusted us. They would ask us to eat some of the berries in their presence so they could be sure they weren’t poisoned. The trade became unprofitable: we had to eat a cup of blackberries for every few cups we sold. But little by little, they began to trust us, and the soldiers going on leave to their families asked us for whole baskets of apricots, apples, grapes, figs …

  It was marvelous; we were beginning to earn money and I was building a small nest egg. My mother, though, was afraid for us because of the soldiers and the land mines in the area. With money from the blackberries I went to see Sami in his newly opened studio, where he also sold tubes of paint. He taught me how to stretch canvas on a frame. When I came back home, I climbed up to the second floor with a white canvas and the fat book of poetry by Malaye Djeziri under my arm. I studied every illustration in the book over and over again, inch by inch. I read through the poems, trying to understand which words had inspired the colors, the shape of a mouth, the black eyes with long lashes, the hair, or the round breast, plump as the pomegranates in our orchard. Yes, there were even bare-breasted girls. I remained indecisive in front of my white canvas for the longest time, unable to pick up the paintbrushes. Suddenly I heard my brother Rostam arrive and I went downstairs to the garden.

  He had a new weapon and was examining it with my father. It was a Plimout. The weapon was the size of his forearm, unlike my father’s long Brno. Besides, it was an automatic, and the magazine held thirty-six bullets. It was a short-range combat weapon. I was fascinated. My father placed the Plimout in my hands. “Be careful, it’s loaded. With the slightest jolt, a hail of bullets can go off.” I was dying to shoot a little, and my father added, “You’re not a kid anymore, you’re a man. Take it and fire as many bullets as you like.” For the first time, thanks to the Plimout, my father called me a man. I seized the weapon and I darted off, running through the orchard toward the hills. I was proud—I had a weapon and I wasn’t a kid anymore. I felt like a man, as my father had said. I looked all around me for a target. There was a flock of birds, but they were flying too high in the sky. I tried to find a rabbit or a snake, but no luck. Finally I aimed my weapon up at the sky, in the direction of God, and I fired a hail of bullets. I was like a madman, a drunk. At that moment, I could have killed a man, I was fearless. I fired a few more rounds and listened to the hail of bullets echo in the hills. The odor of gunpowder was intoxicating. Virile. After emptying the magazine of its thirty-six bullets, I smelled the barrel of the Plimout and headed back home, replete.

  My mother killed a rooster and prepared a feast. My uncle Avdal Khan, who worked for the oil company, had just been put on early retirement. The government no longer wanted Kurds in sensitive positions, such as in the oil sector. And my uncle had decided to return to his hometown.

  I was delighted. I had new pals—my cousin Sardar and especially his sister Shahla. She and I were the same age and she was very beautiful.

  But the most beautiful thing was that my uncle came back with a television set! A television!

  In the evening, as soon as the programs were to begin, I darted over to their house. First we had the privilege of hearing the party anthem, followed by endless speeches by President al-Bakr and Vice President Saddam Hussein. I was seeing the two Baath leaders for the first time. I looked at them, incredulous. Al-Bakr was an old man; he look
ed like our neighbor Babik the ice-cream vendor. But Saddam was young and slender, with a black mustache, and he was taken seriously because he very seldom smiled. Soon I could no longer bear to sit through the anthems or the speeches to the glory of Pan-Arabism and Baath nationalism. I would come in time for the Egyptian soap opera Anter and Abla. The plot revolved around a wealthy young man, Anter, who was in love with Abla, a black slave. The entire neighborhood talked about my uncle Avdal Khan’s television. We all wanted one, except my mother, who regarded TV as the devil.

  When my father received his meager pension, he added to it a little money he had saved and bought a television set. I went with him. It was a small set that worked on a car battery. The owner switched the set on. We saw the image of Saddam Hussein appear, bright and clear, and he quickly switched off the set. My father stood up, and after protracted bargaining, the deal was settled. The understanding was that once the set was bought, it couldn’t be returned. We went home. My father was pleased with his purchase and I was delighted. The television was set up in the upstairs bedroom. To please my father more, my mother fixed us some good tea. The entire family sat down in front of the set while my father tried to tune in the image. But it remained blurry, the tea got cold, and we began to lose all hope of seeing Anter and Abla, our favorite soap opera. My mother asked my father, “Why did you buy a television set that runs with a battery when we have electricity?” My father didn’t answer. He started to get worked up, turning the antenna in every direction. Our enthusiasm vanished, and worriedly we watched our father seething. We knew he was capable of anything in this state.