Absent: A Novel

by Betool Khedairi

  My aunt sits down on the chair to watch him. He comes and goes. She follows his movement carefully, to the right, and to the left, then again to the right, as if her head is moving in a table-fan motion. He measures each and every one of the paintings, one after the other, and writes down all their dimensions on a small piece of paper. There are so many paintings; they are hung up in three rows, one above the other, on the walls. All the rooms in the flat, with the exception of the kitchen, have paintings in them. Taking down the measurements takes quite a while. When he has done it, he says, “I have no other choice.”

  She waits, expectantly, and he says, “I must sell this fortune.”

  She looks at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. “What fortune?”

  “I heard that a number of wealthy Iraqis who are now living in London and other European capitals are very keen to acquire original Iraqi works of art.”

  “And how are we going to contact them?”

  “Through Jordan.”

  The look on my aunt’s face changes. “You mean through Miss Psoriasis!”

  “I mean with her assistance. She works in a hotel. We can get those works of art out, and exhibit them over there.”

  “And how will we benefit?”

  “With the money that I get for the paintings, I’ll acquire a new breed of untainted honeybees. After that, I’ll have to start all over again, from scratch.”

  My aunt attempts to object. He stops her by lifting up his arm rigidly in front of her, as if warning her to keep her distance. “Don’t interfere.”

  “I don’t like your idea.”

  “Don’t include yourself in these matters. I know you, you have the ability to insert yourself between layers of an onion skin.”

  “I wanted to say—”

  “If what I’m doing doesn’t appeal to you, then stay where you are, and don’t make another sound.”

  “But—”

  He starts to lose his temper. “Do you know what we do to the wasps that we trap, in order to protect our bees?”

  She lifts up her eyebrows without saying a word when he says, “We drown them in boiling water.”

  My aunt’s husband asks us to maintain total secrecy while he finalizes his plans. He knows that getting those paintings across the border without official permissions will not be easy. Taking original works of art by well-known artists outside the country is obviously illegal.

  Later on that week, he hires two laborers to bring two of the beehive boxes damaged in the battles amongst the bees, up to our flat. We no longer have the keys to Ilham’s flat, so Abu Ghayeb is forced to bring them into ours. He places them on top of old newspapers that my aunt had spread out on the floor.

  He cleans the hives, removing all traces of the dead bees and the dried honey discs. He takes out the white wooden frames and removes their metal grilles. He places them on top of each other, beside the boxes. Then he pulls up a chair from the kitchen to stand on. He starts taking down the smaller paintings from the walls. He treats them gingerly and lifts each one with caution. Each painting leaves behind a square or rectangle of dust that has welded itself to the wall over the years.

  My aunt gives him a screwdriver, a hammer and a handful of nails. He starts to pull out the nails from the back of the paintings, separating the canvas from its frame. He dismantles each painting separately, turning them into square pieces of colored cloth. When he has separated the right number of paintings from their fixtures, he asks me to hand him the white wooden frames that are meant to hold the hexagonal wax discs within the hive. He started replacing the picture frames with the frames from the beehives! He reattaches the canvas of each painting to a white wooden frame of suitable size. He hammers the nails on the back and makes sure they are secure. Then he returns the frames to the hives. He piles up the empty picture frames to one side.

  The next day, he continues. He tries to fit as many paintings as he can, of the right size, into the two boxes. When Saad rings in the afternoon asking if he can come to visit me, Abu Ghayeb says to his wife, “Tell him that it would be more convenient if he came over in the evening.”

  After she has hung up the phone, he asks her to conceal all evidence of his activities. She covers the boxes with a large sheet embroidered with flowers. This is when Abu Ghayeb notices the squares of dust on the walls. He contemplates the scene for a few moments, placing his hand on his back. It seems as if he is supporting a painful area that was troubling him. He says, “That’ll attract attention.”

  He heads to the bedroom and starts rummaging through a big bag kept underneath their bed. It is full of some of his old belongings. He pulls out a long cylindrical tube made of firm cardboard. It contains a number of posters that he has kept from his days at the Ministry of Tourism. He brings them back to the sitting room and starts unrolling them. They all bear the logo of the Directorate of Antiquities. He gets a roll of Scotch tape and starts attaching the posters to the walls, covering the marks left behind by the paintings that have disappeared. He covers the walls with the minaret at Samarra, Sarsank, al-Thirthar, Salah al-Din, Haj Imran, and Shaklawa. One empty slot remains on the wall. He takes an image of Habbaniya Lake and hangs it up in that spot.

  Saad doesn’t notice the change in wall decorations. What attracts his attention are the items hidden underneath the sheet. He greets me, and then whispers in my ear, “Adel says ‘hello’ and is enquiring about you.”

  “I’ll try and meet him when I’m feeling better. Please give him my best regards.”

  He then says to my aunt, “One could easily trip over something as large as this. Don’t you think?”

  My aunt doesn’t know what to say. Abu Ghayeb intervenes rapidly to defuse the situation. “Yes, they’re two old sewing machines that some friends of mine have asked me to repair.”

  He doesn’t seem to doubt the reply, he just says, “How clever you are!”

  He drinks his tea and leaves. He walks past the embroidered sheet. He has no idea that they are beehives filled with works of art, ready to travel.

  Abu Ghayeb stayed up late for another two nights, finalizing his diversion plans. The hired laborers returned the heavy boxes to the separation room. He then added genuine frames that contained wax, honey, and some live bees to the hives. The sales representative for Dead Sea Products agreed to be their traveling companion. She would claim, when she crossed the border, that they were a rare breed of honeybees that would be used for therapeutic purposes to treat psoriasis. Hopefully, none of the customs inspectors would pay too much attention to a vehicle that didn’t bear local license plates. My aunt left the flat when she found out that the competition had arrived in the capital to collect the goods and travel with them to Jordan. She didn’t want to face her rival, who might eventually be saving her life. She went to the cloth market and made Abu Ghayeb’s mission easier. It wasn’t an ordinary meeting, and everyone was tense.

  In the end, Abu Ghayeb said goodbye to his loved ones: his paintings, his bees, and Miss Randa.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The fact that the United Kingdom and United States have been unilaterally bombing Iraq almost every other day since December 1998 has generally merited only one-paragraph notices in the New York Times “World Briefing” section. In a rare instance when the bombing made the front page, the Times acknowledged, American warplanes have methodically and with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq.

  In the last eight months, American and British pilots have fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 targets in Iraq.

  This is triple the number of targets attacked in four furious days of strikes [on Iraq] in December [1998]….

  —Iraq Under Siege, 9

  THE DAYS GO by. The phone doesn’t ring. Our nightmares blend whenever we bump into each other as we move between rooms. A brief conversation between my aunt and her husband seems to me to have been going on for an hour. She picks up a magazine showing Tony Blair talking in the British parliament. His features: an
evergreen eagerness.

  Their paths cross. He is heading toward the phone. He picks up the receiver to make sure that the lines are not out of order while she heads toward the kitchen. He says, “I’ll go to the apiary for a little while.”

  She gets her broom out. As he is about to close the door behind him, she asks, “Why has the Miss not called?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Then he adds, “Please don’t leave the flat until the call has come through.”

  She sweeps his scales. “Do you trust her?”

  He takes his hand out of his pocket to scratch his neck. “Time alone will tell.”

  Another hour goes by; even longer than the one before. Instead of the awaited call, we hear a violent knocking on our door. I exchange glances with my aunt. Without saying a word, images of jumbled up doodlings start sizzling in my head: pages of pale designs cling to each other, with beads of fire burning into them.

  My aunt drops the broom and goes to open the door. When I see Adel’s face, I leap toward him. Then I notice two policemen behind him. He makes his way into the flat. My head starts spinning as I try to concentrate on my aunt who is rooted to the spot. Why is Adel wearing a military uniform? I am penned in by a circle; through its middle are rows of palm trees, each the size of a pin, twirling around themselves. On the perimeter are mosques that hang in the air, dangling down from their domes. They are about to tumble, any moment now.

  I am awakened by the sudden ugliness of his voice, “Where’s Abu Ghayeb?”

  My aunt replies, “At the apiary.”

  He orders the two policemen to start searching the flat. He then turns his back to us as he starts heading out. Two other policemen wait for him on the stairway. He says to them, “Let’s go.”

  My aunt gasps in fear. She tugs at my hand, and we follow the sound of their heavy footsteps. I call out to him, “Adel!” but he doesn’t reply. We leave the building. The spinning worsens; the orange minarets in my head bear no resemblance to the minaret beside the club. In the street, I can see Baghdad as endless replicas; watery layers of a city the color of dusty indigo. I call out “Adel!” once again. He picks up the pace, and the two policemen follow suit. I see them as embroidered figures wearing Abbasid turbans. We’ve reached the tennis courts. The tent that had been set up on Court No. 2 is no longer there, but the soldier greets Adel and his companions. He opens the door in the fence, and within moments they’ve encircled my aunt’s husband. They do not allow us in, so we wait outside the fence. My heart is pounding; everybody around me is turning into twins.

  Adel’s voice descends upon us, “Abu Ghayeb?”

  “Yes.”

  His jaws move apart, “You’re being called in for interrogation.”

  Abu Ghayeb waits at the entrance of the separation room while one of the policemen prepares the metal handcuffs. Adel makes his way toward him, “You’re being arrested.”

  My aunt’s fingers cling to the wire fence. She cannot move. The flesh of her palms is squeezed into the shape of baklavas. Nobody is moving except Adel who is nervously coming and going. Suddenly he stops with his mouth open looking like the angry lion on the gate of Ishtar. He says, “You’re charged with smuggling Iraq’s heritage.”

  I watch my aunt’s husband as he asks Adel for permission to check his bees one last time. After a moment’s hesitation, Adel agrees.

  Abu Ghayeb heads toward the bee boxes and opens them all one after the other. He knows where his queen will be. He takes her out of the hive and crushes her head between his thumb and forefinger. He takes a few steps back and waits. A few moments later, Adel and all the others have to move back too. Hundreds of bees emerge from their hiding places and gather in the air. They start to come together gradually, all the while dancing nonstop in circles. Abu Ghayeb lifts his arms upward. It seems as if the bees have understood his signal as they all start to fly away. Our heads move backwards gradually as we watch the bees depart. A carpet drawn with dots, continuously changing its formations, as it moves away, further and further.

  The next day, I come down the stairs cautiously. I can no longer trust anything around me. On the pavement, I look behind to check that my shadow is still following me. Saad opens the door. He gives the impression that he is expecting my visit, even though I have given him no forewarning. He looks different. His shop is dishevelled, as if it has been burgled. I ask him, “What’s this chaos?”

  A dark beard sprouts from his cheeks. “It’s I who caused all this.”

  He gestures to me, “Sit down.”

  “Has something happened to you?”

  “Yes.”

  The chairs have been knocked over. I upright one of them and sit down. He asks, “How are you?”

  “Time has stopped for me.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I feel nothing.”

  “How’s your aunt?”

  “She can’t cope with the shock. What she says no longer makes sense. She now depends on me for every little thing.”

  The basin for washing the clients’ hair has a wide crack that splits it into two halves. “Was there a fight in here?”

  “No, the fight was between me and myself. In the end, I just destroyed my possessions.”

  He inhales a puff of smoke, despondently. “Before you ask me about him…”

  He puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a thick bundle of U.S. dollars. He places it in front of me. “This is for you.”

  “Have you gone crazy? What’s this all about?”

  “Compensation for what’s happened to your family.”

  “What have you got to do with that, Saad?”

  He smokes, mercilessly. “The administrators at the Alwiya Club have sold their electric generator. I’ll no longer have access to additional electricity. I’ll have to close the shop. And besides, all my clients have disappeared.”

  “So what’re you going to do?”

  “I’m going to emigrate to the Lebanon. I’ll join a friend of mine who has a men’s hairdressing salon in Beirut.”

  “And what’s this money?”

  “It’s from Adel.”

  It feels as if he has stabbed me all over my body. “Who is he?”

  “His real name is Jamal. They call him ‘Jamal Drawers.’”

  He adds, “That’s why he hates nicknames.”

  “Get on with it; explain everything. I’m tired.”

  “He’s an assistant at the Secret Service Agency. He asked me to work for him.”

  “For money?”

  “No.”

  One of the mirrors had been broken. Triangular pieces with sharp edges dangle down from it. “Don’t tell me that your real name isn’t Saad either!”

  “My name is Saad, but it’s my nickname that’s more important. They call me ‘Delight.’”

  “Delight?”

  The shelf for the boxes appears more angled. Its contents are now scattered everywhere. “Yes, because I usually bring happiness to others.”

  The smoke starts to snake around his forelock. He continues, “But not on this occasion, unfortunately.”

  He tries to hold my hand. I pull it away. He indicates that he wants me to follow him to the bedroom. He opens the door and points to the bed. “My services.”

  “Oh my God, you and Adel?”

  “No, other men and I, with Adel’s permission.”

  “Why?”

  “In exchange for providing information about what goes on in the building.”

  He kicks away a dented can of hairspray. “Adel had, I mean Jamal, had been ordered to monitor Umm Mazin’s activities. It was suspected that she might be attempting to corrupt society. The intention was to move her on. My job was to inform him of any unusual activity taking place in the building.”

  I feel in need of a chair to take the weight off my over-burdened body. He stands in front of the black painted wall. “Jamal’s job was to ensure that those whose behavior corrupted society were chastised. If they persisted in their
activities, he’d place one of their hands in a metal drawer, and slam it shut as hard as he could. The force of impact would break a finger or two. He punished people to stop them from reoffending.”

  The dizziness is rising to my head. “That’s the limbs section?”

  “Well, he punished them so that they don’t go too far.”

  “So why didn’t he stop you?”

  He lowers his head slightly. “He made use of the information I provided about the inhabitants of the building. But now, he no longer has any use for me, so he’s asked me to leave.”

  “And the money?”

  “It was my reward when my services were terminated.”

  “What made you think I’d accept it from you?”

  “I have no choice. I feel guilty. I’m the one who told him about the bee boxes being taken up to your flat.”

  “You bastard!”

  He lowers his head further. “Didn’t I once tell you that there’s a defect in each one of us?”

  “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.”

  “Calm down, and I’ll explain things to you. Because of the sanctions, there haven’t been enough jobs to go round for everybody. Instructions were issued to encourage more women to wear the hijab, and stay at home. As a result of that, we the hairdressers started to lose our business. That’s when Adel and his colleagues stepped in. They allowed us to continue working in exchange for our services in preserving security.”

  “Why did you agree to work for them?”

  “There was no other way I could earn a living.”

  I then ask him, “So how did the boxes cross the border?”

  “I delayed telling Jamal about the Jordanian lady’s last visit to you.”

  “Why?”

  “I backed out of cooperating with him for your sake!”

  “You’re lying. You only backed out to save your salon. You needed the honey customers.”