My Father's Rifle

by Hiner Saleem

  One day, Jacob asked me if I had the courage to fire a few shots. I assured him I did. He gave me a loaded sixteen-shot pistol with a long barrel. It was even older and rustier than my father’s Brno. I thought it probably wouldn’t work. Jacob advised me to test it before using it: “Just fire a bullet into a wet pillow.” I took the pistol, wrapped it up in a sheet of newspaper, slipped it into an ordinary plastic bag, and, before going home, covered it by filling up the bag with tomatoes. One of the streets I had to take had Baath Party offices on one side and residences of Baathist employees on the other. I was always unsure where to look when I walked on that street since I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. I started walking, but when I reached the party office building, someone called out to me from the front steps. I turned my head and saw one of my teachers, who was a Baathist official. The way he called out to me was not like a teacher calling out to a student but like an officer calling out to a soldier. He walked up to me and asked me some ordinary questions. “How are you? What’s new in the world?” While I answered with something like “Everything’s fine,” I was figuring out how much time I would need, should he go beyond mere questions, to pull out my weapon and kill him, how long it would take me to run to the orchards, which I knew like the back of my hand, and what roads to take so I wouldn’t be impeded in my getaway. But he only glanced briefly at my plastic bag, lingered by my side for a minute, which seemed an eternity, and headed back to the office building. My heart slowly stopped pounding. When I got home, I went directly to our orchard to bury the pistol under a pomegranate tree. Several days later I returned to the place where I had hidden it because the day was approaching when I would need to use it. I noticed right away that the earth had been dug up. Yet the pistol was still there. My brother Rostam came to me and said, “If you people need anyone, count me in.” He had discovered my hiding place when he had gone to water the trees.

  When the day came, I returned to the orchard. My brother Dilovan and his friend Jamil were there. I had to wait for them to leave. Time went by. They didn’t move, and the hour of the meeting was drawing nearer. Finally they left, but I no longer had time to test the weapon. I grabbed it and ran. At 8 p.m. sharp, I was in front of the restaurant where the head security officer went drinking every evening. Another schoolmate was waiting at the spot chosen for our assassination attempt. As soon as he saw that we were in our assigned positions, my teacher Jacob, who could pass for an Arab, entered into the walled area around the restaurant. He was supposed to let us know if the head security officer was really in the garden. We were then supposed to jump over the wall and kill him. We were waiting for the signal to go into action when I saw a fourth accomplice arrive on the scene; he ordered us to stop everything: the restaurant was surrounded by plainclothes policemen.

  My brother Dilovan and his friend Jamil disappeared. My sister-in-law was the only person in on their secret. Three months later, on my father’s old Russian radio, we heard my brother calling out, in a moving voice, “Voice of Kurdistan speaking—” It was the pirate radio station of the resistance. And once again I heard the national anthem Ey Raquib … “Oh my friends, be assured the Kurdish people are alive and nothing can bring down their flag …” But this time my father didn’t say, “In a year we’ll be free,” as he usually did. He switched the radio off, disillusioned, and we were fearful: my brother’s voice could be recognized by anyone who knew him, and this was very dangerous for us all. As my mother put it, we were “in the eye of the hurricane.” So whenever a neighbor told us he had heard my brother, we fiercely denied it was he; we feared denunciations.

  At school, I was summoned to the office with the “Do Not Enter” sign on the door. The man from the security forces made me sit down and asked me straight off, “So when do you plan to sign up with the Baathist Youth?” “It’s a good organization, but I’ve never thought about the question,” I said. “Listen, the school, the books, the notebooks are all gifts of the party, which does everything for all of you. We must be loyal to the party and its principles.” Scratching the fuzz beginning to grow on my chin, I thought desperately about how to extricate myself from this situation. Watching me, he asked, “What’s that you have? A Ho Chi Minh beard?” I played innocent. “Him, I don’t know; it’s more like a Leonardo da Vinci beard.” Before letting me leave, he added, “We’re patient, you still have a bit of time to think about it.” At the door he stopped me and said neutrally, “Don’t forget we know who your brother is.” I was crushed. So the security people knew that my brother was the announcer on the new radio station of the Kurdish resistance. I realized my days in school were numbered. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  A new presidential decree stipulated that any eighteen-year-old without a degree would have to leave for military service. I was still in school, and since I was four years behind it was easy to calculate that I wouldn’t have my diploma by the time I was eighteen. Now I would never become a judge or a lawyer.

  My father knew a government employee at the town hall who was in charge of the registry office. He gathered all my papers and we set off for the town hall. At the market he purchased two plump roosters, and we continued on our way.

  When we came to the employee, we sat down with the two roosters at our feet, and the discussion started. “What can I do for you, Mr. Shero?” Leaning toward him, my father began. “Four years before my son’s birth, Azad here present, I had a son with the same first name who died. When this one was born, I called him Azad, and since the two boys had the same first name, we used all the first child’s papers for the second one. At the time, the problems of age, school, and military service never crossed my mind. Now I’d like to set the record straight by obtaining a death certificate for the first Azad and a birth certificate for this one, who is very much alive. He must be made four years younger.”

  The employee deliberated for a long time, opened old registers, turned pages, stood up, and closed the book. “It’s very difficult to make one son die and give birth to this one.” My father resumed. “Listen, I have two dreams in my life: I won’t tell you what the first is [I could easily guess]; the second is that I’d like to see my son go to university and become a judge or a lawyer. And now I’ll die without either of my wishes coming true.” The employee lit a cigarette. My father realized that two roosters were insufficient. Standing up, he got closer to the employee, then reached into his pocket and handed him a pair of earrings. “Look, here is the last gold jewelry we have.” As he put them in the employee’s hand he added, “Do something.” Glancing quickly at the earrings, the employee put them away in his drawer. “Come back tomorrow, Mr. Shero, I’ll see what I can do …” We left our papers with him. My father signaled me to take the two roosters, and before leaving he said, “Tell my son where your house is.” When I returned to the same office the next day, I saw my date of birth had been changed from 1960 to 1964, and I heard the employee whisper to my father, “I’m a good Kurdish patriot.” I thought, Roosters or patriotism, who cares, my problem is solved.

  Halfway home, my father signaled me to stop. He was tired and sat down to rest. He rolled himself a cigarette, and for the first time, I noticed my father had aged. I was very touched by my parents’ sacrifice: they had given away my mother’s last gold earrings so that I could pursue my studies. We started walking again. I laughed and said to him, “Papa, the employee changed my date of birth because he knows you were the general’s personal operator.” He looked at me, and his face lit up with a small smile. Then he swallowed, fell silent for a long time, and said gently, “My son, you must go to university. But I don’t want you to become a judge or a lawyer anymore. I talked that way thinking of the time of the king. Today, we’re in another world, the police are hard at work for the people, they even do the work of judges and lawyers. Do what you feel like doing. The important thing is that Azad, Shero Selim Malay’s son, obtain a university diploma.” He stopped, looked me straight in the eye, and added, “Promise?” “I promise,” I
answered.

  I was entering the years of awakening: painting, books, my math teacher, Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, everything was helping me grow out of childhood. I made new friends: Jemal, Ako, Imad … Jemal was a student in the technical school of agronomy, Ako was in the teachers’ training college, and Imad was the musician of our group. He played the lute and the violin extremely well. We liked to get together at Ako’s—especially me, because his sister Nazik was fond of me. She was a small brunette full of vitality, with black eyes and long hair. Whenever I left her house, she would slip love letters into my jacket, and as a way of winning me over, she would mix references to Kurdistan and patriotism with words describing my “beauty” and her love for me. Sitting in a room, we would liberate Kurdistan and give power to the working class. Jemal, the son of Abdulla the Communist barber, would talk to us, in no logical order, about the glory of Stalin, Ceauescu, and Brezhnev, the genius of Erich Honecker, the courage of Enver Hoxha, the technological progress of the Eastern bloc countries. “But why are all these great men friends of Saddam?” Jemal’s reply to me was, “Your father listens to Voice of America too much.” At that point Imad would take out his lute and we’d start singing, and Nazik, under the pretext of serving tea, would walk by me several times, throwing me ardent glances.

  My friends were several years older than I. They wore sideburns, but I didn’t have enough of a beard to grow mine. So I colored them in with my mother’s kohl.

  On Thursdays and Fridays we would spend the evenings in a bar owned by Armenians. We would drink raki with our meze, and the waiters thought we were artists. One evening, I saw Sami the painter come in. He greeted us and went to sit in a corner. We didn’t dare invite him to our table, knowing that he liked to be alone. He ordered some raki and lit a cigarette. I was glad to be frequenting the same bar as he. My friends and I were once again remaking the world—and drinking, too. There was no one in the bar but Sami and us, and even though we were having a lively conversation, the waiters didn’t seem to be paying attention to what we were saying. To my great surprise, Sami called out to us, “We Kurds will never amount to anything. We are cursed, that is our destiny. Look at our history, we’re the most ancient people in the region, and yet the Turks, who came after us, have their own state, and we have nothing.” Finger pointing to his temple, he added, “But the strangest thing is that in spite of the massacres, we’re still here. The Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Sumerians built empires and nothing is left of them. As for us, we’re still here, speaking our language, and yet unable to make anything of ourselves. We refuse to be subjugated, we rebel, and we’re still nothing …” Imad turned to Sami, smiling. “What you’re saying is contradictory.” “You can’t speak,” replied Sami calmly, “you signed up.” Imad turned pale; he was speechless. Signing up meant joining the Baath Party. How else could he have been accepted into a school as politically sensitive as the Baghdad Music Conservatory?

  The evening ended without incident. We, his friends, knew Imad had signed up only because of his passion for music. And being seen with him, a party member, was a good cover for our group. But the security forces knew how to manipulate us and sow the seeds of doubt in each of us. We all suspected each other, friends, brothers … But as one of our proverbs says, “The mouth is not a hole in a wall that can be filled in with mud.”

  For July 17, the anniversary of the Baathist Party’s coming to power, loudspeakers were set up around the town hall on Aqra’s main square. The walls were decorated with slogans and photos of the president. The local Baath Party leader was going to speak, and students, government employees, everyone had to attend. I was present when the party leader began his speech with greetings to the president. Half the people assembled on the square belonged to the security forces; they began applauding and we followed suit. Someone cried out, “Long live the president!” and we all chimed in, “Long live the knight of the Arab nation!” Everyone cried out in unison. The speaker resumed his speech. Quiet had returned when someone in the crowd began to shout, “Long live General Barzani! Long live Kurdistan!” The scattered security officers immediately converged on the spot where this shout had originated. It was Sami the painter. He had stripped off his clothes as a sign of protest. We saw the policemen grab him like a wisp of straw while Sami continued to shout, “Long live freedom! Long live Kurdistan!” I never saw Sami again, nor his paintings of Kurdish women nor his portraits of the general.

  I was told that he spent his time writing letters to Kurt Waldheim, Jimmy Carter, Giscard d’Estaing, asking that they assist the Kurds.

  One day I was summoned by the headmaster during math class. Jacob, my teacher, looked slightly worried as he gave me leave. I followed the caretaker up the long hallway to the headmaster’s office, but before I reached the door, the caretaker signaled to me to enter the neighboring office, the one with the “Do Not Enter” sign. I knocked and walked in. The man with the drooping mustache was waiting for me, but he wasn’t alone. Two other men from the security forces were present. Strangely, I was no longer afraid. This wasn’t the first time I’d been summoned. I wasn’t trembling; I already pictured myself a martyr. Immediately the man with the mustache asked me if I had enrolled in the Baathist Youth. “Sir, the only thing I care about in life is painting,” I replied. “My dream is to study art in Europe. After that, I’ll be worthy of joining the party.”

  “Bravo,” he said, “the party will help you. You have the choice: either sign up and the party sends you to Europe, or don’t sign up and the party sees to it that you disappear.” The two other men rose, impatient, and my interlocutor told me to follow them out. “They have things to see you about.” I followed calmly in their footsteps. They made me climb into a white Land Cruiser parked in front of the school, and I sat squeezed between the two of them. They took me directly to the security offices opposite the hospital. There they asked one of their colleagues whether they should bring me to the basement. I started to become truly frightened; I knew, as everyone did, that the basement was where they tortured and executed people. Finally, they led me into a small room on the ground floor, with no window or light, and locked the door. A half hour later, the door opened and I was pulled into the office of the head security officer. He had a tape recorder on his desk, and he started questioning me about my brother the fighter. “I know nothing at all about him.” He showered me with questions. “What about his friends, what do they say? What do they know?” “I don’t know them, they’re too old for me.” “Why didn’t you report him when he joined the fighters?” “Among us, a younger brother doesn’t have the right to ask his older brother anything!” “Fine, that’s true … We’re kind to decent people. I’ll let you go, but come back to see me regularly, whenever you have something to tell me.” The session had lasted about forty minutes. I left his office and found myself at the door of the security building, blushing with shame—and worried, for if someone should come down the street at that moment and see me leaving unharmed, they would assume I was a collaborator.

  I walked down the street, head lowered, glancing furtively around to see if any acquaintances were passing by. Fortunately, there was no one, and I ran off as fast as I could. Only when I was some distance away did I begin to think about the questions the head of security had asked me. I was dealing with an intelligent man who believed he could use me as an informer by employing gentle methods.

  All the librarians had received a list of books that had to be sent to Baghdad to be destroyed. These were old books whose flaw was that they didn’t follow the Baathist line. Because he trusted me, our town librarian had given me some Kurdish books, and I considered it my patriotic duty to hide them for safekeeping.

  I was prepared to do anything for the Kurdish cause. I wanted to make movies, but I knew that I had no chance of being admitted to the film institute: the school was for Baathists exclusively, and advantage was given to Arabs. I wanted to skip ahead, catch up in school, and make up for lost time. I was eager to become
a man, and to be more brilliant and courageous than my friends. I wanted to be a hero and come up with new fighting methods for my people. And I felt my time had come. I spent days in endless palaver with my friends, my head brimming with ideas, but I was disappointed in my pals, who weren’t active enough. I became solitary.

  Up in my room, on the second floor, I mulled these things over, including the fact that the secret police were at my heels. I had to make a decision.

  My cousin Ramo dropped by to see me, well dressed and very perfumed, his sparse beard clean-shaven. He wanted us to go for a walk downtown, and invited me for lunch at his parents’ house afterward. But that day I had come to a decision and had other plans in my head. I went downstairs and saw my mother, in her black dress, busy with the housework; I watched her for a long time as a way of saying goodbye. She said to me, simply, “Don’t come home late, and be careful.” I smiled at her to put her mind at rest. “Dayé, Mother, don’t worry, your son isn’t a kid anymore.” I was dying to kiss her, but I was afraid of revealing my plan, and feared she might cry and stir up the whole neighborhood.

  I left the house with two cents in my pocket and headed straight for the bus station. Ramo, who very much wanted me to regard him as a courageous person, followed me. “Where are we going?” “How much do you have on you?” He rummaged through his pockets, “Twelve dinars, why?” “We’re going to join the partisans.” “What? We’re going to the mountains? Why didn’t you warn me so I could be prepared?” “Real men must always be prepared.” I was a person of conviction. I added, “But if you don’t want to come …” Full of pride, he cut me off immediately, “The Kurds have a saying, Kem bijî, kel bijî.13 Come on, let’s go!”