Though my head spins in this way and though my stomach also tells me it is time for dinner, Ulayya continues with a description of the house where the satellite dish will be placed, if her father does indeed decide to purchase the equipment and the plan from me.
“It is a nice house,” she says, “with a big garden—two gardens, actually. One for the growing of vegetables. One for pleasure, to sit under date fronds in the evening. To hear music playing softly in the background. To be in pleasant company, to have pleasant conversation…”
I look up from her and see behind her Hussein, the leader of the Hezbollah, lounging in the shade of the store directly across the street from me. Some of his gang members stroll from store to store but Hussein does not. He watches his subordinates as they collect money from other shops along the sides of the road. He watches them as they warn Rabeer’s employees, playing cards in their shop as usual, against the vices of gambling. He watches them as they dole out a quick lashing on the calves of a woman whose abaya does not reach all the way to the ground, leaving her sandaled feet showing. He watches his men, but he also watches Ulayya from his partially concealed place beneath the awning of the store.
I think about calling to Ulayya’s attention the fact that she has an admirer. I wonder how she might react. But before I have a chance to do this, behind Hussein I see another thing. Little Layla runs toward me. Hussein sees that I look beyond him. He turns to look at Layla but doesn’t seem to understand what I see: he must be blind to Layla just as the other store owners and guards and helpers in the market seem to be. To them she is only another street rat, nothing of concern, as invisible as Ulayya’s body under her cloaks. Ulayya also notices where I glance. What is more, she must also notice something about the quality of my glance, the way it lingers, the way it lights up, the way it focuses, for she does not dismiss Layla’s rapid approach without comment.
“What a horrid little creature,” she says. “How could any mother let a daughter out of the house looking like that!”
Indeed, as Layla pulls to a halt in front of my shop, I see that she is especially dirty this evening, her face nearly black, her strange blue eyes flashing through the soot or mud or oil that covers her. I sing a little song in my head, one I remember from my schoolchild days: aini zarqa tubruq biruq. It means something along the lines of “my blue eyes shine like lightning.”
“Abu Saheeh,” she shouts, still from the far side of the street, where she has paused to let the traffic pass. “I have found a geyser. Black gold.”
“Obviously,” I say.
Ulayya looks at me.
“You know this girl?” she whispers.
“She visits the shop,” I say. “She is funny. She dances, she sings, she begs.”
I regret this last epithet, for Layla has never begged, not from me.
I let my gaze return, flickering back to Layla. She runs across the road, through the last bit of the market. Ulayya is obviously offended by our familiarity. The posse of Ulayya’s escorting aunts and female cousins also shows its displeasure. They gather together more closely, as if Layla were a tiny little lioness and they a herd of water buffalo, all horns pointed outward. Layla appears not to care. In fact, she smiles as she stops in front of the venerable aunties and does a small bit of her Britney Spears routine, possibly the most inappropriate part, with a thrust of her bony hips in the direction of Ulayya herself.
Ulayya stands her ground.
Ignoring Layla, she says, “I will discuss the satellite with my father.”
Then she and the cousins and the aunts and the great-aunts and the friends of the great-aunts gather their long abayas about them and waft back into Safwan, from whence they originally came. Behind them, at a moderate distance, Hussein’s patrol of Hezbollah follows. As he leaves his shaded spot, Hussein takes from the front breast pocket of his dishdasha the mobile phone I lent him when he first visited my store. He touches it to his forehead, a little salute. I wave back at him, being friendly, but he does not smile.
When they all have gone, Layla’s voice assumes a tone similar in its huskiness to Ulayya’s way of speaking. She says, “I will discuss the satellite with my father.”
“You should be more respectful of your elders,” I say. “And more respectful of Allah. Your stories disturb me. I still wish, as I said when we last met, for you not to compare American movies to a messenger from Allah!”
For just an instant Layla looks at me as if I have said something strange, or funny, or inappropriate. Then she moves closer to my shack, leans on the sill, and says, “Jed Clampett and his whole family moved to Beverly Hills because he shot the ground accidentally and black gold came up. I borrowed the guard’s Kalashnikov and shot the pipe on the far side of the road. I thought it would have water for our tomatoes but it has oil, not water. Useless oil.”
“You shot the Kalashnikov?” I ask. “How’d you get it from the guard?”
I look up, see the man fast asleep on his stool. My question seems suddenly silly. The rifle rests an arm’s length away from him, leaning against his tent.
“He has only one bullet, you know,” she says. “So returning the gun isn’t as difficult as taking it.”
“You need a bath,” I say.
“I look like the black soldiers in the American Humvees.”
“But stickier,” I say.
I run a finger through the smear of oil her elbows leave on the front counter of my shack. I picture Bashar’s daughters, fuller, heavier, fleshier than Layla. And cleaner. The difference between them, though, is the difference between the sand and the sandstorm. I think of asking Layla to sing again, to sing the Close Encounters song. But I can’t imagine the semidivine sound of that song coming from a face so covered in filth. I can’t imagine any sort of saintly presence emanating from a girl so happily dirty.
“Is the oil still leaking?” I ask.
I look up again, under the overpass, toward the pipeline and toward what I imagine must be Layla’s home, her family’s tomato farm. It’s a rundown shack half hidden behind the far embankment of the overpass. Like every other Iraqi farm, it is dun-colored, low-slung, thick-walled, with a scruffy palm tree sprouting on the edge of the hole in the earth that serves as an irrigation well. I see a flurry of activity nearby, just beyond the house: U.S. Humvees and British Land Rovers gathered around the leaking pipe.
“You’re a terrorist,” I say. “You’ve ruined the economy.”
“I’m a jihadist,” she replies. “And I’m moving to Beverly Hills tomorrow! Do you want to come? You would make a fine butler for me!”
I take a swipe at her, as if to hit her in reprimand, but she skips away. I am glad for it. My dishdasha would have been hopelessly soiled by the dripping crude oil she wears. I shake my head and my fist at her instead. I decide to speak no more to her, at least not this evening. I send her away, quite forcefully, telling her she had better wash herself and look presentable if she should wish to visit me again, telling her she had better treat her elders with more respect. I think I go so far as to call her a little urchin or maybe even a little devil but perhaps that is just the voice in my head, my conscience, as compared to the words I actually spoke.
Whatever I have said, Layla leaves, as quickly as she had come, running and sliding back under the overpass and keeping a wide expanse of desert between her, the broken pipeline, and the assembled multitude of U.S. and British vehicles.
I shut and lock my shop and walk into Safwan.
Bashar asks me about the oil on my finger and whether I had any interesting visitors today. I tell him about the broken pipeline and the hullabaloo it caused. I do not gratify him by mentioning Ulayya’s visit, but I order my tea and my falafel and ask him why he does not call himself Abu Saleem in honor of his healthy, smart little son. I know it is because he has a girl as his firstborn. His feelings are delicate about the matter and he pretends not to hear me, touching his mustache once, nervously, and then flitting away to help another customer.
A few mornings after Nadia and I found the kitten, Yasin thumped down the back stairs into our kitchen to give me his typical surly good-bye. He didn’t look as bleary-eyed as usual. He didn’t look as if he had only gone to sleep a few hours earlier. In fact, his face glowed with what I took to be excitement. The idea crossed my mind that he might offer to walk me to school. I felt in my pockets for spare change in case the opportunity presented itself to buy us daheen cakes from a street vendor.
Yasin waited in the corner of the kitchen until my governess, Fatima, left with a plate of breakfast for our father.
“I see you found my little experiment,” he said.
From behind his back he revealed the kitten, my kitten. Holding it by the scruff of its neck, he seemed to offer it to me across Fatima’s big butcher-block chopping table. I reached for it.
“Give it to me,” I said.
He pulled it away. Stepping back but still holding the kitten high in the air, he brought his other hand up to the kitten’s belly. Before I could rush around the table, he untied the cords holding the safety rag around the kitten’s midsection. Then, as the kitten frantically clawed the air, all four paws in furious motion, he dug into the gash. Sawing upward, inserting one, then two, then all four of his fingers, he further tore the wound. He pulled my stitches free. The kitten’s intestines spilled out in a long, coiling mass.
When at last he handed the little animal over to me, its heart had already stopped beating.
7
Sunday
LAYLA DOES NOT VISIT THIS EVENING. Perhaps the dirt and oil could not be scrubbed off in time for her to visit. Perhaps she is afraid of my wrath, as well she might be, if she doesn’t heed my warning from yesterday and show up clean and with a reformed attitude toward Allah. As the sun sets behind the overpass, I watch for her, unwilling to be surprised at her arrival. In addition to the convoys today, I notice a British patrol moving about the desert near the bypass road’s intersection. This is the first time I have noticed a patrol near the convoys, something other than the normal three Humvees the Americans use to guard their vehicles. Maybe they are concerned about the pipeline still. Maybe they hunt for a jihadist.
Today marks the seventh day since Layla’s visitations began. Also the twenty-fifth day of business for me since I moved to Safwan. A good day. I did not sell much of anything but, after the repeated visits from the Shareefi clan yesterday, I do not feel much like talking about satellites or mobile phones. I do not feel much like haggling over prices and plans.
The guard for the overpass brings out his tea set and arranges it on an overturned box beside his three-legged chair. I watch him make tea for himself, the lukewarm water he had left in a tarnished tin pot under the sun all afternoon, the sachet of chai dipped over the edge of the pot, two small tin cups ready to receive the brew.
Seeing no sign of Layla, I begin to walk down the road into Safwan. I try to think of Ulayya and of other Safwan women, but I discover I am thinking of Layla’s story, of Jed Clampett finding oil. I picture myself as a butler. I picture Layla in Beverly Hills, among mansions and swimming pools and robot actors. I picture Layla with a corncob pipe in her mouth like Jed Clampett, riding through town on a flatbed jalopy with a gun laid across her lap. I remember Layla stealing the guard’s gun. I turn around and look up at the guard. He has poured one cup of tea for himself. He drinks from this cup but the other cup sits on the tray unused. He apparently does not have a visitor, no one to drink from the second cup.
I change course, walk back across the market, past Rabeer’s used-car lot, past Maney’a and Ibrahim’s stacks of doors, door frames, sinks, knobs, and fixtures, past Wael’s dusty gray bags of concrete, past my own shop. I stop at Jaber’s stand and purchase two kebabs of chicken. These I take with me as I walk up the gradual curve of the cloverleaf on-ramp to the place where the guard’s tent perches in the last of the day’s long light.
“Masah il-kheir,” I say. “Fine evening!”
The guard snaps to attention. I am happy to have caught him unaware, lazing. I feel like a genie or an alien arriving unannounced. I feel like a nosy butler. I want to put on a fake Austrian accent and say “I’ll be back,” but I don’t think I have the necessary talent for voices. I am, nevertheless, proud of my stealth, and my pride erases most of the self-loathing I had felt for my previous thoughts about him. I do not put the young man at his ease. It is good that he should be deferential to me. I must be twenty years his senior, maybe twenty-five.
The guard looks at the kebabs, one in each of my hands. They are oily, cooked to a perfect golden brown and flavored with fenugreek, caraway, cumin.
“Would you like one?” I say.
“Thank you, but no thank you,” he says, the polite thing.
“Please,” I say. “Please. It’s my honor.”
Again the guard refuses, but only after darting a glance at the kebab nearest to him.
“No,” he says. “No.”
I thrust the kebab in his direction, making it hard for him to avoid the gift.
“I insist,” I say.
He takes longer than I expect to reach his hand out for the food. During the pause, the delay, he looks past me, quickly, up over my shoulder across the market toward town. I follow his gaze and see a slim-bodied boy standing beneath the ayatollah’s arch. This boy looks at the guard and then at me. For a second time he looks at the guard before turning and running back through the arch into Safwan. I recognize this boy: one of the waiters or busboys from Bashar’s café. Perhaps he was bringing the guard some food for dinner. No matter. I have food.
“By Allah, yes,” the guard says at last, snapping his eyes back to me, back to the kebab. He is still standing straight, at attention, as if I am his commanding officer or some such thing.
I release the kebab into his grip. At the same time I glance at his teapot and his spare cup. The man has no manners. I glance at the cup again, more pointedly, and almost nod my head in its direction.
He gets the hint at last.
“Please, please,” he says, “please, sir, sit. Do share of my tea if you are in the mood to share with a humble man such as me.”
“I am just a vendor in the market, a humble man myself,” I say. “No need to be so formal. We are like brothers, men who work for a living. Not princes. Not politicians with stuffed-up shirts.”
This at last puts the man somewhat back into balance, though he twitters around me, arranging space for me among his things on the little flat space around his tent, arranging his tea set, his box table, his chair to make more room for us both. Throughout this dance he steals looks whenever possible across the market toward the spot where the boy from Bashar’s café had stood. After a moment he finally manages to pour a cup of tea for me while still holding the kebab I gave him. I look around for a chair to sit on. There isn’t one. The guard offers me his, pulling it away from its spot beside the telephone pole and placing it nearer to his tea set. Before I sit, I introduce myself more completely.
“Abu Saheeh is my name,” I say. “I own a shop below.”
“My name is Mahmoud, sir,” he says.
We try to shake hands but the kebabs baffle us, both in our right hands, both of us unwilling to touch the food or each other with the impure left hand. I wave my kebab in the air to show Mahmoud that the handshake doesn’t matter, not now. I am glad not to have to complete our introduction with the customary clasp and kiss. The man is unshaven like most men, but he has also been a long while without a bath. He likely has vermin in his patchy beard. I sit on his chair. He opens the front flap of his tent and pulls his cot from within. He sits on an edge of the cot as it teeters and adjusts to his weight. We eat the kebabs chunk by chunk, chicken and onion and tomato, sliding the pieces from the skewers into our mouths. I drink a little of his tea, poor thin stuff, bitter.
When I finish eating, I say, “You have a marvelous view.”
“Nearly the whole city.”
“An
d up the road quite a distance.”
“And that way.” He points. “Down toward Umm Qasr, too.”
“Quite a responsibility!”
“A start, for me. A start,” he says. “I hope to become a member of the Safwan police soon, or even maybe the special police from Basra, when I have the money to pay the deputy his bit.”
“You have to pay to become a policeman?”
“To pass the test,” he says. “Just a little baksheesh goes a long way. That, or family. Or both.”
“How much do they ask?”
Mahmoud blushes.
“Come, come,” I say. “I am a merchant. Money is just money. I am accustomed to such things. And maybe I can help you.”
“I could never repay—”
“We can work something out,” I say, not at all certain why I am offering him my patronage. In fact, the next thing I say is nothing but a bald lie: “I watch you working diligently up here. You are here every day, yes?”
“All day,” he says. “Except for Fridays, when the deputy relieves me so I can visit my father and attend prayer. They bring me food, water. I sleep here.”
He thumps his hand on the edge of the cot to emphasize the place where he sleeps. He points out his prayer rug, too, to show me he completes his daily observations even when not allowed to go to the mosque. I see his Kalashnikov leaning against the side of the tent.
“Are you a good shot?” I ask.
One Hundred and One Nights (9780316191913) Page 5