One Hundred and One Nights (9780316191913)

by Buchholz, Benjamin

  I ask after his children, how they are growing, the health of the family. He promises to bring them out later to see me. I don’t ask after his wife. Such a direct question is wholly inappropriate, even for old friends like us. I imagine her in a flurry of activity at this unexpected visit: scrubbing feet and hands and hair; finding clean caftans for the girls and clean pants, maybe school uniforms, for the boys, the starched white shirts. I try to remember if it is three boys and three girls. I decide it is actually four boys and two girls, although a girl is the eldest of the brood, somewhere in her mid-teens. Bashar and his wife have been fertile, productive. He will grow old in comfort with his family settled around him in this town. I wonder if he teaches them specially in the sciences, which he learned during our days together at university—anatomy, chemistry—or if he is content to let the schools and the normal way of life inform them, mold them, save them from knowing too much of the world. It was his excuse when he left Baghdad that he wanted safety for his family above anything else. But with too much safety comes ignorance.

  Better for them to grow up safe and dumb or world-weary and wise? I wonder.

  As Bashar and I walk toward the door of his diwaniya, I scan covertly each window of the house that looks upon us, thinking that I might see his wife. I shouldn’t even look for her, but the lure of a forbidden thing is too tough for me to resist. However, I do not see her face in any of the windows.

  When we enter the diwaniya we sit on cushions. Bashar lights a water pipe that burbles softly as it warms, the scent of bukhoor wafting from it. He smokes flavored tobacco. I do not smoke. If I do, I do so only when occasion demands, social niceties. A small silver radio in the corner of the room tinkles with the sound of a Lebanese singer, perhaps Carole Samaha? More modern than my taste, but pleasant. Not Britney Spears.

  “The house is very nice,” I say.

  “Better than above my shop. Still nothing like the old days,” Bashar says.

  I nod. I remember his house in Baghdad, the sound of water sprinklers on the lawn in front, beneath the palm-lined driveway, such a luxurious waste, that free-flowing water, such a westernized existence in our gated and guarded secure little community of diplomats and reconstructionists.

  However, I say only: “I can’t remember the old days.”

  Bashar offers me a sad smile. He serves tea in delicate finjan glasses, a lump of sugar dissolving in each. We discuss the weather, the crops, the American and British occupation, their soldiers, the smell of their breath at close quarters—cow’s milk and meat, sugary soda and hot minty chewing tobacco—a different smell on them from the smell of diplomats and politicians with pressed suits and cologne. We discuss the coming elections, Muqtada al-Sadr’s effect on the various parties, whether the Sunni minority will get any seats in the Council of Representatives, whether there is a Kurdish conspiracy to steal northern oil. Our conversation winds through these topics with no real feeling, just formality. This takes time, half an hour, almost an hour. I am in no rush, but I can tell that Bashar wants to know the reason for my visit.

  “Is it about women?” he asks at last. “I meant what I said the other day. I know people here in Safwan now. Saddam killed most of the men after the southern tribes rose in support of the Americans the first time. And now this war means more have been killed. There are plenty of eligible widows for your big new house. Ulayya bint Ali ash-Shareefi, for instance. An alliance with that family would do your business good. You would sell a million mobile phones.”

  He mentions the number and the business, but secretly carves the shape of an hourglass in the air between us to show me that Ulayya is also a comely woman.

  “No,” I say. “Not women. That’s not why I visit today. Nor business, mobile phones, or whatever.”

  Bashar sits straighter on his cushion. He looks taken aback. His mind must have been filled with such plotting. He appears to wipe his thoughts clean, not without some effort, a crinkling of lines on his narrow forehead and between his eyes. Then he leans more comfortably on one elbow and waits for me to explain.

  It is hot in his diwaniya. The bukhoor smoke causes the walls to feel close and the air to feel raspy, like the voice of Carole Samaha.

  I take a moment to compose my thoughts. I have mentioned Layla already to Bashar. I do not want him to think I have any marital or sacrilegious intentions regarding the girl. None whatsoever. Nothing so simple as that. Two mentions of her in as many days might give him the wrong notion, would almost certainly give him the wrong notion. So I approach the subject carefully, in a roundabout way. I decide not to talk about Layla at all.

  I ask, “Have you seen the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind? It’s an American movie…released back when we were at university, I think.”

  “Why, no,” he says. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Do you know whether anyone here owns a DVD of it?”

  “Was it a popular film?”

  “Yes, perhaps. I think it played on Nile Drama TV a few nights ago. A rerun.”

  “You want to watch it?” he asks.

  Something obviously doesn’t make sense to him. Why would I pay a visit, a formal visit of this sort, to discuss a movie?

  “A friend of mine compared it to the time Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, spent meditating on Jebel an-Nur. I wish to watch the movie in that regard, to see if the friend has spoken a blasphemy. Most of all I want to hear the music of the aliens because the friend, my friend, likened it to the sound of the voice of Angel Gabriel.”

  “Certain blasphemy,” Bashar says.

  He stands. He is filled with anger, perhaps a mocking show of anger. His face turns red. He pulls at his thin, clipped mustache with the fingers of one hand. He is unsure how I feel about blasphemy and he wants to err on the safe side.

  “Is this friend Shia or Sunni? We should ban this movie, write a protest to Nile Drama TV. We should have the imam issue a decree, a fatwa, against such a…”

  “We should watch the movie first,” I say.

  Bashar sits. He composes himself. He is happy to hear that I am rational, not full of indignation. But he is confused and flustered.

  “I will make inquiries,” he answers after a moment of unbroken eye contact between us. He can tell it is important to me but he doesn’t understand why. He wants to ask me why it is so important as to merit a visit like this. If I am not necessarily condemning it as blasphemy, then what? I can see the words of various questions forming on his lips, re-​forming as he searches for the right phrases.

  Just then his eldest son, Saleem, enters the diwaniya. The boy is about ten years of age, taller than Layla already but younger and cleaner. He has a blunt little snub of a nose and a roly-poly face.

  “Mama asks if we should present ourselves.”

  “Around the fountain,” says Bashar. “Abu Saheeh and I will finish here in a moment.”

  Saleem leaves. I hear him, under his breath, repeat my name, “Abu Saheeh…Father Truth.” The boy laughs. He has his father’s sense of humor, a short, under-the-breath laugh followed by the silent repetition of the joke, mouthing the words as if he will be called upon to repeat the joke later, afraid that he might fail.

  I hear Bashar’s children lining up outside, hear little Saleem pipe up over his older sister, putting them all in order. Saleem, or one of the other children, whistles like a bird, somewhat secretively. With that, Bashar stands.

  “I will let you know if I can find the movie,” he says as he takes me out into the courtyard again. “And you let me know if you change your mind about Ulayya bint Ali ash-​Shareefi or another woman, any other woman. I tell you, you will have your pick of them, my friend.”

  “I’m not interested in women,” I tell him. “I’m not here to settle down.”

  “Then what? What are you here for?”

  “The market.”

  “Lofty new ambitions as a mobile-phone salesman? I don’t get it. A man like you!”

  “It’s the view,” I say, which makes
him laugh.

  The children smile and stand straight as Bashar and I inspect them. Bashar ruffles Saleem’s hair. He raises an eyebrow at the youngest girl’s sandals, unbuckled and clinging to her feet in a most slipshod fashion. I don’t say anything. The children don’t say anything, either, but they giggle a little as Bashar and I pass them. I hear Saleem whisper “Father Truth” to the sister nearest him. Despite several glances I cast at the in-facing courtyard windows, I still do not see their mother. This is traditional society now. This is her role—cloistered, separated. She won’t break the pattern, now that it has settled over her, even for the sake of an old friend like me. Though I don’t see her, I feel her watching us, watching me. I feel her intensity and it takes all my willpower not to ask Bashar about her specifically and directly.

  After saying good-bye to Bashar at the gate, kissing each cheek, shaking hands, I walk the few hundred meters from his home to mine. Out in the noonday sun, without the protection of the shade of my shack, I feel my age more pointedly, sweating with the minor exertion of a walk across town. I stop in the shadow of a ruined building along the road where the U.S. convoys pass. There are no convoys in sight at this moment; no traffic from Iraqi vehicles, either. The gate, the border crossing, is just visible to the south: a Kuwaiti guard sitting on a chair on the far side with the door of an air-conditioned booth splayed open behind him. Such a waste. Such a waste of energy. Such a waste for Iraq and Kuwait to be separated in this way. Such a waste to have had this war, these wars. Such a waste to have light poles and an abundance of electrical power that end at an antitank ditch and a painted pipeline and a series of guard towers strung out in the desert like a barbed necklace.

  I cross the road and walk to my house, where I spend the rest of the day and most of the evening thinking about Bashar’s family, his beautiful growing little family. And I think about how tribes have been split as men draw lines across the desert.

  * * *

  The day when Nadia and I built our fort in my father’s garage, I began my construction by searching in the loft for scrap materials. When I returned with my first armload I expected Nadia would already have arranged some of the chauffeur’s disassembled engine parts—headlight reflectors for cups, an oil pan for a teapot—on the upside-down cardboard box that would serve as our tea table. I expected she would already have tea ready and that, upon returning to her with my sheet of rusted tin, she would force me to sit for a while and pretend to drink. I would have to make small talk with her. I would maybe even have to kiss her again.

  So when I returned to find the tea set abandoned, I dropped my building materials and rushed to find her. My first thought was that Yasin had come into the garage and done something to her, tied her up, hidden her from me. I searched the corners of the chauffeur’s workshop. I opened the back door of the garage to see if Yasin had taken her out by the chicken coops. I returned into the garage and ran down the line of shining black parked cars. I found her on her hands and knees, peering under the wheel of one of the cars. I watched her for a moment, her head cocked to the side, her body trembling, but still. I approached her as quietly as I could and knelt beside her.

  “Do you hear it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I reached up, inside the wheel well, as deep into the engine compartment as I could angle my arm, and pulled a small crying kitten free from the tangle of wires and sprockets into which it had wedged itself. It was a mangy thing, emaciated and losing tufts of its white and orange fur. Blood caked its stomach, oozing from a spot where it had licked its belly bare, licked and bit and nibbled at a long cut slicing from the inside of its right hind leg nearly to the start of its rib cage.

  Nadia put her hands to her mouth at the sight of the kitten’s blood. I cupped the little animal in the crook of my arm and took it over to the chauffeur’s workbench. There I turned on the overhead light and examined the wound. It was clean. It hadn’t yet started to fester. The kitten had done well licking itself, but I knew already then, at the age of twelve, that a wound so deep and long would not heal, not on its own.

  “Go into the house,” I told Nadia. “In the room to the side of the kitchen, the little room where Fatima keeps her sewing things. Get me thread and a needle, also a candle and some rags.”

  When she returned a few minutes later I had already lashed the kitten’s limbs to the table so that it could not bat at me with its sharp little claws. I made Nadia hold its head so that it could not bite me, even though she turned her own head away from the sight of the open belly, the green and blue glistening intestines, the matted fur, the mealy-white skin.

  I lit the candle and ran the flame up and down the length of the needle, sterilizing it as best I could. Then I threaded the needle, doubled the thread over on itself, and pierced the kitten’s skin, first on one side of the wound, then on the next, knotting the end, drawing the suture tight. The two sides of the torn flesh puckered toward each other. I cleaned the needle on a rag, held it to the candle once again, and repeated the process of piercing and knotting for a second stitch and a third stitch. Untying the kitten’s limbs, I reused the lengths of rope to bind a clean rag around the site of the wound, wrapping it tightly and completely so that the creature, meaning to clean the area with its tongue, could not accidentally reopen the wound.

  Then, satisfied, I took Nadia’s tea table box, tipped it upright, filled it with some shredded rags, put the kitten in it, and carried it up the ladder to the loft. There I stowed it in a corner behind a discarded portmanteau.

  “That was very brave of you,” Nadia said as we returned to the house to get milk and a saucer.

  “Very brave of you as well,” I said to her, and I took her hand in mine.

  6

  Saturday

  LAYLA VISITS IN THE EVENING, like most evenings, this evening no exception even after the passing of a day apart, this yesterday, the day my shop and every other shop closed for the Friday prayers. She stands in shadow under the awning of my little store, my shack, as a golden sunset reflects its light against the overpass where the road from Basra to Kuwait and the even larger road from the port of Umm Qasr to Baghdad intersect. The convoys flow north and south on this main road, as they do every day. I see a crane on the back of one flatbed truck, an army-green crane. I imagine it hoisting barricades into place in the streets of Baghdad as the elections near. I imagine it returning south on the back of a different flatbed truck, damaged, exploded, sabotaged, a shell of iron barely recognizable for what it had been. Where does all the waste from this war go? Is it deposited in the gulf, dumped overboard from hulking trash barges to make new reefs and new coral for the fishes? Is it left in the desert, buried, to rust and decay? Is it shot to the moon?

  Today marks the sixth day of Layla’s visitations. Also the twenty-fourth day of business for me since I moved to Safwan. A good day, though a strange one. The Shareefi clan spent several hours at the shop, various cousins and uncles looking through my brochures on Nilesat, the satellite TV I can obtain for them, which has the sports, the drama, Dream TV, the news as reported in Egypt and Lebanon and Dubai.

  The guard for the overpass leans on his three-legged chair as usual. He hasn’t moved since three or four o’clock this afternoon. The flaps of his tent are closed tight. Maybe he hides someone inside. A night visitor? A lover? Earlier, I started walking up to him to see if he was awake, alert, alive. I thought, perhaps, that I would scold him into doing his duty more passionately. But just then another group from the Shareefi family approached my shop and I put the need to correct the guard to the back of my mind. Perhaps I stall in scheduling an appointment with the sheikh on purpose. I do dread the visit a little, the formality, the bustle of people around him, the chance that I might mistakenly offend him. Any of a hundred little things could go wrong. I don’t know if it is worth a visit just to report on this guard’s bad behavior.

  These particular Shareefi who visit me, from among the many today who have found a reason to ins
pect my satellite brochures and my mobile phones and my other wares, are the women of the clan, including Ulayya bint Ali ash-​Shareefi herself, daughter of the head of the clan. She has been widowed but not very recently, perhaps five years ago. Although she wears black, as do all the others—black robes, black burqa—she definitely appears no longer to be in mourning. She has managed to convey to me, even with several of her escorts chattering at a respectful distance, that she hasn’t lost her firm figure and that the two daughters left behind by Zayed, her first husband, are both well provided for, with dowries enough to ensure good marriages and stipends for their day-to-day expenses in the meanwhile. As she talks to me, Ulayya’s eyes gleam brightly, dancing black jewels deep within the slit of her burqa. Not altogether unattractive. I imagine myself in her company. I imagine her in my home. I imagine her in my bed. The image is an odd one, she clothed in black throughout all the imagining, though in truth she would shed the hijab behind the doors of any house we might share.

  This woman, Ulayya, has a basket of tomatoes over one arm. I think for a second that I might ask her how much they have cost, just to make pleasant talk and to have some information for Layla if her mother once again sends her into town to spy on prices. Ulayya holds one of my satellite brochures in her free hand. Everything is proper: a widow shopping for a satellite. But also she is putting herself on display. I laugh a little at the absurdity of these things and at my inability to picture her in normal clothes or even to picture her naked. I can’t bring myself to imagine what she looks like, despite years of such practice. When I try to see her naked, in my mind I see nothing, a void, as though an explosion occurred in my imagination and left only a vaguely woman-shaped infinity of emptiness, black cloth and black dancing eyes and nothing deeper than that. The void, the inability to focus or to force my imagination toward this woman, makes my head hurt. I think, very briefly and guiltily, about shutting my shop early, returning home, and having an early drink to help wipe away the blackness.