Against the Loveless World

by Susan Abulhawa

  Still, I had not understood the extent of our subordination until I knew what it meant to be respected, not in spite of being Palestinian but precisely because of it. We all felt it, and it was hard not to revel in it. We simultaneously loved and resented Kuwait, just as Kuwait both loved and resented us.

  The rich fled the country, leaving their belongings in unguarded mansions. I was right there with the looters who broke in and took whatever we could carry. It wasn’t just us non-Kuwaitis. Poorer Kuwaitis did the same. Iraqi soldiers were also stealing. Um Buraq took me with her to pick through a mansion belonging to one of the al-Ghanim families. I already knew how they lived, but it was still shocking to see such ostentatious wealth. Um Buraq and I opened a bathroom closet with cosmetics worth at least ten thousand dinars. There were even bags of unopened makeup from London. One bag with twenty Chanel lipstick tubes still had the receipt in it. One thousand two hundred British pounds spent on lipstick in one day. These people deserved to be robbed. One house had gold faucets in the master bathroom. It looked as if someone had tried to pull them out. We gave it a try but couldn’t shift them. The toilet seat had been removed, and we figured it too must have been gold. Why else would someone steal a toilet seat? The vulgarity of excess was on full display. We thought Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was God’s punishment on them, and we were all too happy to be agents of the Lord.

  The real valuables—diamonds, cash, gold bars—were long gone, but we managed to get decent spoils. Um Buraq even hauled away a lush set of sofas and other furniture. Those were good times. Six months of feeling powerful and safe. As long as Iraqi soldiers roamed the streets, I felt in control of my fate. That’s what Saddam gave me, and I loved him for it. I don’t care what anyone says about him. Saddam was my hero, and many years later, when the Americans saw him hanged, I wept wretched, bitter tears.

  Unlike Jehad, I hadn’t been one for watching the news. When powerless, following world events only highlights your impotence. But during those six months when Kuwait was again a province of Iraq, I thought I could affect the course of our lives; that my opinions could be relevant. I consumed political news and analyses for the first time in my life, and Jehad and I spoke about current events over the phone several times a week.

  Allegiances at the Arab League summit were split between those aligned with Saddam Hussein and those supporting Saudi Arabia’s move to allow United States troops to amass on its border.

  Jehad said, “It’s not that Libya, Yemen, Morocco, and others are siding with Saddam. They just don’t want American military bases all over the Arab world.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And the minute they’re here, they’ll never leave until they kill Saddam and destroy Iraq. They’ll take out Gaddafi and then el Assad, and probably move on to Iran.”

  “I agree completely, Sis.” Jehad was surprised, but also proud that I had acquired a critical analysis. His approval meant alot to me.

  “In concert with Israel, they will plunge the whole region into chaos and death. The Saudis are all too happy to appease. They’re as bad as Israel. It wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t wake up in a few years to learn they’re working hand in hand with Zionists, probably against Iran,” I said.

  I also spoke regularly with Sabah. She and her family had been among the masses who fled with whatever they could when Saddam invaded. I went to see her before they left. Her mother let me in, but Sabah had locked herself in her bedroom. So much separated me from her and from the person I was before we drifted apart, but she mattered to me, and I didn’t want to lose our friendship forever in the chaos of political upheaval.

  I sat against the wall and spoke to her through the door. “I don’t blame you for being mad at me. I haven’t been a good friend,” I said. That was all it took for the door to swing open. She hugged me, and we went into her room, where she had been packing a small suitcase. “Mother said to take only what I absolutely have to. She said we’ll come back when this is over, but my father reminded us what happened in Palestine, so we’re taking things we can’t do without.”

  “You can’t live without that?” I asked, pointing to the stuffed toy in her suitcase.

  Sabah blushed. “It was a present.”

  “From a boy?” Much had happened in her life too.

  She filled me in on the details of how they’d met, their late-night phone calls when her parents slept, the love letters. I envied her innocence and shared in her happiness too. We talked for a while, getting caught up as I helped her pack. Then she asked if I was still friends with Um Buraq.

  “Yeah, why?”

  She looked away, but I pressed her to explain.

  “I defended you a lot over the past few months,” she said.

  “Defended me from what?”

  She sat me down. “People talk. Look. People say things about Um Buraq. That she goes to late-night parties and things like that.” Sabah hesitated. “Some people said she was taking you with her.”

  I remember that moment well. I wasn’t upset with Sabah for confronting me with my reputation. I don’t think she would have participated in such harmful gossip. But the hurt and bitterness taking root in me tightened my throat and made my belly cramp. As I look back from the Cube, that physical expression of my humiliation was a kind of hinge between the tenderness of the girl who still craved acceptance and the hardened woman who was much older than Sabah, jaded and maybe wiser—more like Um Buraq.

  “As if I give a shit what people say,” I said.

  Sabah and I promised to stay in touch no matter where we ended up.

  I kept my promise and made regular calls to her in Jordan, even though Mama worried about the cost of long-distance calls. The Iraqi occupation put us in an economic bubble. Utility companies were barely functional, and money had no value. It was just paper. In this strange new order, I thought we could afford to “waste calls,” especially since I was wearing expensive Chanel lipstick. I had saved the receipt showing I had twelve hundred British pounds worth of lipstick. Perhaps as proof of my worth.

  My retail job vanished as stores shuttered during the occupation, but the shortages of food, electricity, and drinkable water did not lessen the number of women with bushy eyebrows. In fact, with most salons closed, I had more customers than I could handle and I used a room in Um Buraq’s house as a makeshift salon. In part, it provided a small income for her. She loved my company as much as I did hers, and our friendship grew in the common ground on the margins of honor. There was also the matter of her having saved my life after the abortion. She never spoke of it again, which made me appreciate her all the more.

  Um Buraq’s house became known as “Yaqoot’s Salon.” I abandoned Almas. Nahr was for the purer part of me. And Yaqoot was everything in between.

  I did hair, makeup, wax, and eyebrows, while Um Buraq and Deepa served coffee and tea to customers. We women passed the time in gossip, idle chatter, and dirty jokes. None wanted to talk about the occupation, the military, or war. Few knew anything about politics anyway.

  But, of course, it was unavoidable. Usually I was the one mentioning something I had read in the newspaper. I might say, “I heard that the Americans are lining up tanks on the Saudi border.” Someone would respond, “God help us,” then we’d move on to stories about rich Kuwaitis partying it up in London nightclubs. Or, “The deadline for Iraqi withdrawal is in three weeks.” God help us. “Iraqis just executed two Kuwaitis in the resistance.” God help us. “Saddam said he’s going to give the Americans the mother of all battles.” God help us. One woman said once, “Palestinians will pay dearly for betraying Kuwait, even though most have nothing to do with it.” I said, “God help us.”

  Um Buraq and I began making body butters and facial moisturizers from olive oil, goat’s butter, herbs, myrrh oil, and frankincense. It was a craft she’d learned as a little girl from her grandmother in Basra. We sold everything we made.

  Saddam imposed Iraqi currency, and Um Buraq and I split whatever came in. We didn’t
know it then, but the money we made from threading all that facial hair and cooking up toiletries would become worthless overnight. I kept those green banknotes emblazoned with Saddam’s portrait, a reminder that the world can pivot at any moment. It wasn’t much, just a few hundred dinars, because I often accepted noncash payments, such as bread, produce, looted appliances. And when we had more than we needed to live on, Um Buraq and I shared with those around us. I made sure our home had enough food and clean water. Mama in turn shared with our neighbors. Um Buraq also took care of her neighbors, ensuring they had bread and water when the shortages hit. We didn’t need much money in those days. Our lives became wonderfully simple, clearer somehow in the fog of occupation. Folks with money—the creditors and landlords—had fled the country, leaving the rest of us with a new freedom to exist. We didn’t have to pay rent for six months; no one was there to collect it.

  Almost daily, Mama and Sitti Wasfiyeh would gather with the women in our building who remained in Kuwait. They’d bake bread rather than wait in the bread lines. Despite the uncertainty, people socialized without the weight of financial responsibilities. Iraq’s occupation had the effect of a natural disaster—it allowed us to take a break from the contrived necessities of money. There was a deeply felt dignity in the sense that one’s shelter and sustenance were not mortgaged. We went where we could not have afforded before the invasion, walked into homes where we’d never have been invited, and into establishments that would not have welcomed us during normal times. No one was poor. No one was rich. We just were. And we shared. We ate. We drank. We laughed. We danced. We cried. We dreamed and imagined a better world. Then we waited for fate to fall on our heads from American warplanes.

  Newspapers and television pundits spoke of the United States military buildup in Saudi Arabia, but I could not imagine war. I thought it only happened far away, in “war zones” deep in the desert or beyond the orange cones bobbing in the ocean where swimmers were not permitted to go. I was a daughter of refugees chased out of their homes in Palestine, not once but twice, yet I could not conceive of bullets and bombs coming so close. But as time passed, the louder and more animated the pundits became. People who previously spoke only in whispers now spoke openly about the United States destroying Iraq. On the other hand, those who had been emboldened by Saddam Hussein began to shrink. Then they began to flee.

  Most foreign workers fled in the early days of the Iraqi occupation, but Deepa stayed almost until the end. She had little to go back to. Parents gone, no kids. Then Um Buraq told her to leave. All those years Um Buraq had been taking half of Ajay’s money, she was actually putting it aside in a savings account for Deepa. She gave it on the condition that Deepa use it to build a house in India, in her home state of Kerala, and she made Deepa promise to put the house title in her own name, not Ajay’s or the name of any man. Since all money had changed to Iraqi currency, the value of the account was half of what it had once been, but it was still more money than Deepa had ever owned—Ajay too—she told me, crying.

  I went with Um Buraq to the airport on the day Deepa and Ajay left. It was October 20, 1990. We waited five hours for two available seats on Indian Airlines, which set a world record for the most people evacuated by a civilian airline. Um Buraq bade farewell to her faithful friend and companion; it was the only time I ever saw Um Buraq cry.

  About six weeks after Deepa and Ajay left, my brother returned from Amman. Jehad’s university was closed for winter break, and the United States had given Saddam one month to withdraw from Kuwait. Jehad warned us that the United States would attack and probably wipe us all out if Saddam stayed. I disagreed. I thought Saddam was invincible. I believed he’d be the Arab leader who would finally defeat Western imperialists and Zionist colonizers. My recent interest in politics made me feel smart to speak with my brother with such a vocabulary.

  When an American invasion was clearly imminent, I stopped reading and watching the news. I kept myself busy to stay out of the house, because I could not bear to listen to Mama, who was cheering for the Americans to come. “People just can’t go around stealing other people’s countries,” she said. “It’s wrong. For better or worse, Kuwait is our home. It’s our duty to defend it. When did you stop loving this country? Don’t you know the only tax collected in this country is for the Palestinian resistance? We cannot deny that!”

  I left without answering and stayed more and more with Um Buraq, coming home as little as possible, until our home boiled and evaporated and then vanished with history’s disappeared bits. But that wouldn’t happen yet.

  There was something else. I had a secret life during those months. No one, not even Um Buraq, knew. I took up with an Iraqi soldier. I wasn’t yet ready to give up on men. Part of me wanted to know if men could be good; if it was possible for physical intimacy with a man to be something honest, loving, nurturing, powerful, and passionate. I wondered, too, whether I was lovable. I needed to know, because I thought we might all die soon.

  His name was Mubshir. He manned a checkpoint I passed frequently. A few glances and flirtations later, he gave me a number and time to call a public pay phone, where he would be waiting. At first we met by the sea, but as things developed, we began meeting in an abandoned apartment in the Salmiya district. We found a kind of refuge in each other, especially when it became clear that he would be forced to fight the Americans soon. He thought he was going to die and worried how death would come. But we didn’t talk about that much. We fucked with little respite to keep from thinking about it.

  Mubshir was beautiful. He was the first man who ever made me climax. I told him I loved him, and he said the same to me, but we were pretending, and both knew it. We wanted a love story. It made our imminent demise romantic. He had a girl back home in Baghdad. I think all he ever wanted was to be her husband, her provider and protector, the father of her babies. He didn’t lie or try to mislead me, and the way he spoke of her made me love her too. I didn’t mind when he called me by her name, or that he pretended my body in his arms was hers. Sometimes I imagined I really was her. I thought it was the closest I would ever come to being loved by a man.

  Then the Americans rolled in on their monstrous tanks, smiling from their perches, flowers thrown at them from all sides. I don’t know what became of Mubshir. I’d like to imagine him with his girl, but I’ve seen enough of our world to know better. Charred corpses of fleeing Iraqis burned stiff in every conceivable configuration littered the desert sand for miles and miles in what became known as the Highway of Death.

  Jehad had been back from Amman less than a month when American soldiers swarmed our streets. He was a few centimeters taller and his whiskers had bloomed into a proper mustache and beard. I wanted to hear about university, but in that month he was preoccupied by our situation and spoke of little else.

  “I think the Americans orchestrated all of it and our stupid leaders, especially Saddam, are playing right into their hands,” he said, taking a hit from his inhaler. I noticed he was doing that more frequently now. He wanted to help the resistance defend Kuwait, but he felt the same kinship with Iraqis as he did with Kuwaitis. He could not fathom harming Iraqis and cursed Saddam for bringing such division among brothers. He cited historical examples of American treachery, spoke of Iran’s shah and several CIA coups against Arab leaders. The malice of it all vexed him.

  I was both impressed and annoyed with him. I didn’t want my brother to be engulfed in politics the way so many men were. I was so emotionally invested in his future that I neglected to examine my own ambitions. I too wanted to learn. I wanted to leave and love and live something else. I didn’t yet know what, mostly because I needed to ensure that Jehad could find his way first.

  “Teach me something in Russian,” I begged. “Please?”

  “Kak pozhivaesh?”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means, how are you?”

  “No. I want to know dirty words.”

  I learned several fabulous words that day bu
t forgot them all except one superb line: “Otva`li, mu`dak, b`lyad!” It means: Fuck off, you asshole, fuck!

  Jehad’s second semester started at the end of January, and he tried to persuade us to go with him to Amman. But none of us wanted to leave. For my part, it was perhaps a false sense of security, an inability to truly fathom war at our doorstep. I also wasn’t keen on being in Jordan. Sabah had painted a bleak image of Amman as an economically depressed and corrupt place. But it was Sitti Wasfiyeh who persuaded my brother it was pointless to try to make us flee. She had been listening to us, uncharacteristically quiet, then she asserted, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m tired of being chased out of wherever I am in the world. Out of Haifa, then out of Ein el-Sultan, then Jordan, and now Kuwait? No. I’ll just die here instead of facing another exodus. I’m too old for this shit that these shit people keep doing to us. Shit. All of it—shit!”

  My brother begged, but it was no use trying to persuade my grandmother. Jehad despised Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, but he feared American intervention and decided to stay with us rather than leave. I was furious. “Mama and I work day and night to make it possible for you to study, and you think you can just decide not to go? As if your life is yours to do as you please without regard to your family?” I yelled.

  Jehad stiffened. “I’m not leaving my family in this situation. So you can just stop, Nahr!”

  Jehad’s insistence eventually brought Sitti Wasfiyeh and me around to leaving, but by then it was too late. The American invasion was already under way. We stayed put, waiting for our future to emerge from the blasts, news reports, and innuendo. I could feel the sun setting on our lives in Kuwait, and when the Americans arrived, the sun indeed was gone. For months it was blacked out by blankets of soot. From the Highway of Death, Iraqis had managed one last act of defiance. They set flame to oil wells, which heaved unstoppable plumes of smoke into the sky that not even the sun could penetrate. It looked and smelled like the end of days, an apocalypse sucking us into hell.