I was confused. I couldn’t believe that distancing myself from my mother was really the best solution.
Sitting alone in the corner of the living room, I looked around thinking about how I had once been happy here. Nothing seemed the same to me anymore. The long afternoons in these rooms, the games with my cousins, the laughter and my aunts’ affection, the big lunches, the parties, the afternoon naps when we all dozed together. Where had it all gone? Was it lost forever? I wanted everything back: my old happy family, my peace of mind. I felt like my world had broken into fragments, and that nothing could ever reassemble the pieces.
Everything I had filled my days with lost its significance: my relationship with Uday, the afternoons with Dani, school, playing with my friends. All of a sudden, everything seemed futile to me. I could have continued to pretend everything was all right – which was exactly what my family suggested I do – but it was clear that this would have just been an illusion.
After six months recovering in bed, Mum forced herself to make breakfast for us before we left for school in the morning. Her pretty green eyes were full of sorrow, yet she was always able to give me a smile. I went to school with Linda and Klara but I was always distracted, my mind full of confused thoughts.
I continued seeing Uday a few times a week. Mum gave me permission to go to the club with Dani, as she understood I needed that break from what was going on with our family. I had stopped talking to her about Uday, and maybe she thought we had stopped seeing each other, although we had been dating for nearly a year by then. Time flew without me realising it. Uday and I would only meet at Al Sayade, and our relationship remained confined within the club walls. We spent the afternoons together playing tennis, going to concerts and shows. Even though we were getting to know each other, our relationship was still very innocent. I was only a young girl and he would always be the son of Saddam. We never went further than chaste kisses.
In the space of a year so much had changed. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since Dad had spent a night at home. Bizarrely, he continued to stop by almost every afternoon. It was his way of pretending that he was still part of the family. On one afternoon when Uday phoned, Dad walked into the house.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me. I finally get to talk to you! Where have you been?’ his voice rang out happily. I looked at my father fearing that he would discover everything.
‘Who is it?’ he queried.
Pressing the receiver against my chest so he wouldn’t hear Uday’s voice, I hastily replied, ‘It’s Dani. She called to see how I am. I haven’t seen her for a while.’
I don’t know if he believed me, but he threw me a doubtful look. Then, distracted by the things he had to do, Dad let me carry on with the phone call. I don’t think Dad knew anything about my relationship with Uday. I certainly didn’t have permission to talk on the phone with a boy – whoever he might be. Uday often called me when he didn’t see me at Al Sayade, and my father picked up the phone more than once. ‘Hello? Hello? Honestly! Who is this?’ he’d ask. Then he’d hang up annoyed when there was no answer.
‘Hello? Are you still there?’ Uday’s voice boomed out, strong and clear. I looked for my father. Fortunately he was already in the other room.
‘I’m still here. I told Dad I’m on the phone with Dani so he’ll leave me alone. But speak quietly, for the love of God. If Dad figures it out, there will be hell to pay,’ I whispered.
‘How come you haven’t shown yourself round these parts? It’s been a week since you’ve been here. In a month I’ll have seen you just twice.’
‘Um, I’ve had a lot to do at school. You know, exams,’ I lied. Uday was right. Lately I had tried to stay away from the club. I had never spoken to him about all that had happened at my house. For months I had continued to hope that the storm would pass.
Uday must have picked up on something from the tone of my voice. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ I replied with fake confidence. ‘I’ve just been really busy.’
‘The afternoons are really empty without you, princess,’ he added, seemingly upset. I suddenly wanted to tell him to wait for me so I could run to him, but I felt very removed from this romantic delusion.
‘When are we going to see each other?’ he continued.
‘Soon. Maybe next week.’
‘I’ll wait for you then. There’s a nice show on Wednesday evening. Meet me at our usual table, okay?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll be there,’ I lied again, knowing very well that wouldn’t be the case. With a lump in my throat I croaked, ‘I’ve got to go now. We’ll see each other soon. Bye.’
I hung up the phone without hearing his goodbye. I stared mute at the wall for a few seconds, thinking of the date I wouldn’t keep, and those that would have followed had Uday kept calling.
I didn’t know this would be our last conversation. I wouldn’t see him again. I went back to the club a few times, but he wasn’t there. Maybe our paths weren’t destined to cross again. He attempted to call me once after that, but I didn’t reply; I couldn’t respond anymore. I slowly surrendered to the fact that our love story had ended. Perhaps one day, I thought without regret, we would meet again.
For a while I hardly went out in the afternoons. I saw Dani every now and then but never at the club. The first few times she asked why I wasn’t there I made up some type of excuse, saying I couldn’t go with her. She told me about Uday, about what he was up to at the club. It seemed that he was moving on easily and that my absence hadn’t particularly pained him. I was hurt. Maybe for him our relationship was just an indulgence that had lasted longer than usual, although I didn’t want to believe I had been wrong about his intentions. Perhaps Uday simply suffered in silence. I tried to imagine his reactions, his thoughts, his gestures. Then I quickly returned to reality and reminded myself that I had to stop fantasising and simply try to forget him. I didn’t need anything more to worry about, my home life was already complicated enough.
My parents remained tense and withdrawn, and now Dad was becoming even more emotionally distant from Klara, Linda and me. Even though he still found the time to take us to Bibi’s and our aunts’ houses and exchange a few conversational words, he became increasingly cold. He continued taking bags and boxes of things from our house. I didn’t ask questions. There was no trace of the removed items at Bibi’s house. Who knew where he was taking them all?
I confided to Dani about what was happening to my parents, but I didn’t have the courage to talk about it openly with the rest of my friends. My pride and her embarrassment caused us to see each other less frequently outside school and limited our chats to frivolous, inconsequential matters. I remember she spoke to me for hours about an American singer she was infatuated with. I tried to listen, but it all seemed so trivial to me. Dani wished she could go to the US to get his autograph. She talked about it as if it were a matter of life and death. She may have thought that she was distracting me from my troubles, and she didn’t know any another way to show her affection.
Instead, I found I spent more time with the girls I grew up with: Bàn and Otůr, and sometimes Dani joined us. We strolled around the block or hid beneath a tree in Dani’s garden, attempting to roll cigarettes. We had never smoked and it felt particularly rebellious. Dani was the most experienced and she took the first puff. Bàn started coughing immediately and went red in the face. We laughed hysterically. They certainly weren’t like the afternoons at the club, but at least they didn’t remind me of the carefree days I had lost. For that reason those ordinary afternoons were precious.
The war continued and the frontline was drawing dangerously close to our neighbourhood. Dani, Otůr and I often went to see a building that had been bombed in the night. People gathered around the craters and rubble as if it were a show. There had been many attacks by aircraft bombers on Al Mansùr villas. At night, the Iraqi soldiers pointed their machine guns towards the sky and fired off numerous
shots. I often stayed awake to watch the tracers of the missiles leave their vaporous trail in the night sky. People were afraid, but I naively observed the attacks from behind my window as if they weren’t dangerous, as if they couldn’t reach me. There were other things to fear in my life that felt a lot more menacing.
My father started raiding our house at the most unexpected hours. He had taken away paintings and removed some larger pieces of furniture. His demeanour was even more intimidating, more brazen. Mum tried to stop him from taking things, but he continued ignoring her. Sometimes they’d argue violently, almost to the point of hitting each other. My sisters and I took refuge in my bedroom, embracing each other until the yelling had stopped and he’d gone. My mother would then come to us to try to calm us down. She was exhausted but, despite everything, claimed that they were just arguing about the furniture. We feared Dad was mad at us, but she assured us he wasn’t; he loved us and would never hurt us. There were just a few problems between them.
One afternoon while I was at home taking a bath, a terrible rumbling shook the ground. Petrified, I froze, the sponge scrunched tightly in my hand. The bathroom window had shattered and a dense yellow dust cloud covered everything. Two long cracks had appeared in the walls.
I heard my mother and sisters scream. I threw on the first thing I could find and sprinted to them. They were up on the terrace. I looked over the balcony. A missile had hit a house a few metres from ours. As the dust settled, we could see the debris: the building was completely wrecked, less than half of it was left standing. The rest had been pulverised into a pile of rubble. Then it was as if I felt the impact of the explosion resonate inside of me.
It was Otůr’s house.
We ran outside. Many of our neighbours poured into the street. The ambulances and emergency services were on their way. It was total chaos. People were screaming and running in every direction. Sirens were blaring. Through the swirling dust that burned our eyes, I passed through the growing crowd until I arrived at what remained of my friend’s house. The top storey had almost completely collapsed and only a section of the living room remained. I recognised Otůr’s mother’s crucifix, still hanging on the wall. Completely shocked, I didn’t hear the deafening noise around me, only a long whistling in my ears. I’ve heard people say this a lot, and for once I finally understood it: time stood still. I don’t know how much time passed until I was brought back to reality by a woman crying on my shoulder. Rescue workers were simultaneously trying to dig into the debris and contain the increasingly hysterical crowd. Somebody’s words reached me, overlapping the woman’s cries, ‘Nobody was spared. They’re looking for the girl’s body. We think she was in the bathroom when the missile hit.’
I looked around. It couldn’t have been true. My eyes darted frantically over what was once my friend’s home, looking for Otůr, desperately asking people in the terrified crowd. I seized them by the arm and screamed, ‘Where is Otůr? Are you sure she was in the house?’ But they shook their heads and ran elsewhere, perhaps attempting to find others who could’ve been buried under the still-smoking debris. I stopped a man whose face was obscured by dust and whose arms were completely covered in earth. I asked him too. He said that there was no hope of finding any survivors; everyone must have perished in the collapse.
I looked at the skeleton of the house again and that cross, still stubbornly attached to the wall. My eyes were stinging; a combination of the dust from the explosion and my very own tears. They had to find her. Otůr had to be somewhere. Maybe she wasn’t even home when it happened? If that God, who remained attached to her wall was as powerful as she said, He had to have saved her. An hour passed, maybe two. Then suddenly a man who was lifting one of the fallen beams, from what seemed to have been the bathroom, yelled, ‘There’s a girl here. She’s dead too. Help me pull her body out!’
I ran from the crowd to escape the cacophony of sirens and screaming people. I thought about the moment of the explosion: I was in the bathroom too, just like Otůr was in hers. If the missile had fallen only a few metres closer, my house would have been the one blown into a pile of rubble. I wouldn’t have had a chance. The tears born from my fear and anger for this unjust and absurd tragedy streamed down my face. In a daze, I found myself outside Dani’s church. I stopped in front of the enormous dark front door. Instinct told me to push the heavy wooden panel and enter. The darkness drew me in like a hug and I smelled the calming scent of incense and wood. Everything was still and quiet inside; you couldn’t have guessed that a shattering explosion had taken place outside.
I kneeled on one of the last pews. The soft, dimly lit atmosphere stilled my crying. I thought about Otůr: her unexpected death was still unreal. I prayed to God that it wasn’t true, that I would leave the church and meet her in front of her house, still intact, and she would smile at me with those big dark eyes and funny row of little teeth. Then my gaze fell on my dust-covered clothes. At that point – thinking of my little Otůr, of her life interrupted at thirteen – I began to sob again. She would never become an adult. She would never have a husband, children or her own house. She would never tell stories to her grandchildren. For the first time, I understood the true horror of the war in our country.
I left the church, remembering my mother and sisters who would be worried about me. Outside, I saw a booth that sold sacred objects – religious images and jewellery. I picked up a small metal cross, but realised I didn’t have any money with me. The elderly vendor, seated to the side of the stall, must have gathered from my dishevelled appearance and weary look that I was in trouble. She placed the little cross in the palm of my hand and closed my fingers. ‘Keep it with you. It will protect you.’ Later, at home, I put it on a string and fastened it around my neck, under my clothes. I didn’t know if it would protect me, but it was there close to my heart, in memory of Otůr.
I knew it was prohibited, haràm, to wear a Christian symbol, just as entering the church was. But I continued wearing the cross day in, day out. Maybe I hoped somebody would discover my secret, perhaps my own father. I wanted to trigger a strong reaction from him, something to bring him back to me and our family. My mother noticed the cross, but didn’t say anything.
I awoke in the night to the horrified screams of my mother. Footsteps followed, then a chair crashed to the floor. My mother screamed again. Dad was back in the house for one of his nightly raids. He was looking for books and some of his papers. He and Mum were shouting at each other in English. My father’s face was dark; his eyes, wild. I almost didn’t recognise him. He took a precious statue from a shelf and then another figurine, a souvenir from one of our trips and shoved them into a large bag. He began doing the same with the silver when Mum grabbed his arm.
‘Stop! You can’t take everything away from us, Mohamed. Get out of our house.’ Her frail hands gripped on to his wrists, in an attempt to stop him from making off with the expensive cutlery he had in his hand.
‘This isn’t your house. I’ll take what I feel like taking. Move out of my way!’ he yelled, freeing himself from her.
‘Not the silver. You’ve already taken too many things. Stop! What do you need them for? Where are you taking them, huh?’ Mum wouldn’t back off and he became furious.
‘Give up! You’re pathetic,’ he barked, shaking her roughly. ‘Get out of my way.’ He slapped her across the face and she fell to the floor.
I wanted to run to Mum, to protect her, but I was terrified of him. I was afraid he might hit me too. There was no way this man was my father, my king. I felt a hand touch my shoulder. Klara looked at me with fear in her eyes. Linda was grasping her arm, her eyes streaming with tears. I didn’t know what to do. Call the police? How? Our father had taken the telephone a week before, ripping it from the wall in a rage.
Mum cried softly and curled into a ball on the floor. Dad, without acknowledging her, started filling the bag again, but she reached out for his ankle. He kicked her. She tried to defend herself, shielding her body with her arm. Kla
ra started to scream and ran towards them. Dad turned to look in our direction, noticing our presence.
My sister shrieked tearfully, ‘Stop! You’re mean, leave Mum alone!’
Dad took a few threatening steps towards us. I was scared and instinctively wanted to protect Linda, squeezing her behind me. I felt her sobbing hard against my back. While our father was distracted, Mum scrambled to her feet. She jumped on his back. ‘Stop! Damn you! Don’t touch the girls.’
‘Get off me.’ He pushed her away. ‘What do you want from me? You’re not my wife anymore! Tallaq! Tallaq! Tallaq!’ he taunted, furiously launching the words at her.
That incantation – which means ‘divorce’ – repeated three times sanctified a separation. But Dad couldn’t do it like that, he needed witnesses.
‘Get out of this house, now!’ Mum shouted.
‘This is my house, Jana, and don’t you forget it. I’ll be back to get the rest of my things.’ He grabbed his big bag and left, slamming the door behind him.
Mum slumped down on the chair and steeled herself not to cry. Linda ran to her and hugged her tightly. Klara and I followed. All four of us remained huddled together, shaken by what had happened.
When Dad came to the house four days later to take us kids, as always, to Bibi’s, neither Klara, Linda nor I wanted to go with him. The memory of that awful night was still too real.
‘I don’t want to. I’m scared,’ cried Linda.
Klara agreed. ‘The other night was terrible, Mum. He frightened us. He hurt you. We want to stay here with you.’
‘Well, you have to go. He isn’t mad at you girls. The argument is only between your father and me. You don’t have anything to do with it, understand? Do it for me. Go to your grandma’s house and act as if nothing has happened.’
The Girl from Baghdad Page 13