‘Don’t worry. It’s all taken care of. Go on, choose a meal and let’s order.’
‘But, Mum …’
‘Don’t ruin Christmas dinner for your sisters. Let’s enjoy this evening. We deserve it, don’t we?’
Linda seemed enthusiastic. She was still too little to understand what was going on. Klara stared absently into space without speaking. I didn’t know what to say. We didn’t want to ruin everything, but our mother’s idea seemed pathetic and strange. Where had she found the money for the bill? That concern, combined with the awkward silence which had befallen our table, made me completely lose my appetite. I felt my stomach tighten like a fist.
Mum tried to make conversation throughout dinner, but Linda was the only one who was willing to join in. Klara and I sat mute and barely ate. That hotel was a painful reminder of better times. My mother wanted us to relive our happy moments, but how could she have thought this would work? Being in that restaurant didn’t give me any joy and became more agonising by the second.
I watched my mother move her food around on her plate with her fork. She chewed small morsels with difficulty and swallowed reluctantly. I could see she was trying to appear happy and relaxed. At the end of the meal, Mum insisted we order dessert. Klara and I refused, saying we were too tired and wanted to go home. The thought of the bill to pay loomed. My mother told me to take my sisters outside and wait for her in front of the restaurant.
I didn’t know where Mum had found the money to pay for the expensive dinner. Linda dozed off on the bus ride back, leaning against my mother’s shoulder. Klara looked out the window. Nobody spoke. My mother and I exchanged a melancholy stare, sitting on the filthy seats, under the low and demoralising light.
By January little had changed. The cold weather continued and we huddled together at night in Mum’s big bed. Night was always a scary time. The intrusion attempts were still happening; either strangers or my father tried to come in through the hastily repaired terrace door.
One night my father was able to force his way inside. We heard Mum scream, followed by the sound of his voice. Then he started hitting her and Mum’s pained cries echoed throughout the house.
‘You have to go, understand?’ he yelled furiously. ‘I don’t want you here anymore! This house is mine! Mine!’
We could hear the scuffling again from Linda’s room, where we were hiding. A piece of furniture launched against the wall. We kept close to each other in a corner; we could feel ourselves trembling in unison. Linda cried and called to Mum, but the fight continued. Eventually, Klara and I decided to go to where they were in the living room and defend her.
We found her curled up on the floor, shielding herself with her arms.
My father, with crazed eyes, screamed insults at her. ‘You have to get away from here! Out!’ he yelled as he kicked her. ‘Away! Get out of my house!’
She crawled to the wall to protect herself. She cried pitifully, ‘We don’t have anywhere to go. You can’t kick us out into the street! You’re an animal!’
‘I don’t care! Go back to where you came from, and take them with you.’
‘We’re not going until you give us what you owe us,’ she answered back.
I saw him raise a hand to Mum. I was shaking in fear. I heard my father curse, but then he took a step backwards and quickly made for the door. The sound of the door slamming violently allowed me to breathe again. We ran towards Mum, who gathered us in her arms. Linda’s terrified cries wound their way through the house. Through it all she had been alone in the bedroom; the unexpected silence had frightened her. She didn’t understand that this was just the sign of a momentary ceasefire.
Spring came, though we hardly noticed the seasons anymore. We also didn’t pay much attention to the news about the war, as it had been going on for years now and seemed interminable. The air strikes continued, filling the Baghdad skies with sparks from airborne missiles. Parts of the city had turned into mountains of dust and rubble. People walked anxiously around the streets and shared stories of mourning families, as the body count piled up.
Although a missile hadn’t destroyed our lives, to us our father’s abandonment was equally tragic. Gazing at bare walls and wandering the empty rooms of our house with little to do was unbearably painful. My happy memories of the past were so vivid that sometimes I wished the explosion that took Otůr had taken us all.
Bàsil, in one of his ever more frequent notes, advised me to stay strong. ‘As soon as the war is over, everything will return to normal,’ he wrote reassuringly. Bàsil believed even our family, what was left of it, would have a future. I didn’t share his optimism. How could we start again? We had a house, but we were alone. Paradoxically, we were in a more desperate situation than those who had lost their house in the war, but had preserved a united family. The war raged around us, but inside our forlorn group of four was waging a battle of our own.
From Arba’taash Ramadàn, the main street that passed by our house, the festive sound of car horns and loud, merry voices floated past. I bolted onto the terrace. Linda and Klara were peering over the balustrade at a long procession of cars on the street.
‘What’s going on? The war – is it over?’ I asked, still breathless.
‘I don’t think so. It’s a wedding party,’ Klara answered, without taking her eyes off the cars.
It was a custom. Newlyweds and their entourage drove their flash wedding cars down Arba’taash Ramadàn, honking their horns madly. The guests leaned out of the car windows, yelling and shrieking with joy.
‘The newlyweds are in that beige car!’ Linda shouted excitedly, pointing at a very sleek Mercedes. The rear windows were rolled up so we couldn’t see inside.
‘Just imagine how pretty the bride must be,’ Klara sighed, resting her chin against the balcony.
‘But who gets married during wartime?’ I asked.
‘Why not?’ Klara answered back.
‘It’s your father.’ Our mother’s voice was tight, and we turned around quickly. She was standing on the edge of the veranda, watching the procession.
‘Pardon?’ Klara asked.
‘What did you say?’ I demanded.
‘That’s your father’s wedding,’ she replied, her eyes fixed on the departing spectacle on the street.
‘But what does it mean?’ I asked with incredulity.
‘Your father is getting married today,’ she repeated again.
‘He can’t, you’re his wife!’ Klara said, alarmed.
Mum didn’t respond. Nearly all the cars had gone away, but we could still hear the sound of the horns in the distance.
‘Who is he marrying?’
‘Zainab,’ she replied. An instant later, she turned and went back in the house.
The name was familiar. But of course! Zainab was the young woman in the boutique who I had seen that day with Dad at the shopping gallery. I suddenly understood why she was so kind to me.
My father had been having an affair with that girl, almost twenty years his junior, ever since he introduced her to me. She must have been the one who had moved the things in our house while my sisters, Mum and me were away on our trip to Pattaya. It all made sense. Dad had started working late because she worked the night shift. My aunts knew about the relationship – they had supported the union and had wanted my father to marry Zainab. That’s why they weren’t happy – even disappointed – when Mum got pregnant.
In time I learnt that only Dad’s brother Uncle Kassid was against this second marriage. When I was little, my mother told me Uncle Kassid had rocked me in his arms for hours. Since the war years, he had worked in the Baghdad military hospital, caring for wounded soldiers. He had always been a minor presence in our lives, but he was the only one who tried to defend us in any way. He believed a second marriage, even if the law allowed it, was a shameful act.
To add insult to injury, my father married Zainab without asking my mother’s consent, as he should have done according to Muslim law. Ahlam had tol
d her about the wedding, which is how Mum knew exactly what was happening that day on the terrace.
But despite everything, she didn’t let herself be disregarded. We had a right to an explanation. A week later, we went to Ahlam’s house but she refused to let us in.
‘Mohamed zawich! Married! Understand? You need to leave him alone!’ she shouted from the doorway.
‘Mohamed is still married to me, too. I know the law, Ahlam. My daughters and I still have rights.’
‘He doesn’t want you anymore. Now he has a real wife. Your daughters chose to stay with you. They should have thought about it first. If they’d gone with their father they’d be with him now, in his new house,’ my aunt retorted. ‘You’ve always been an obstacle to my brother’s happiness. If you hadn’t been so careless with that money it wouldn’t have taken him so long to rebuild his life.’
‘That’s what he wanted our savings for? To build a house for that home-wrecker? He fooled me into thinking he wanted to take us away from here. Damn him!’ my mother hissed through clenched teeth.
‘We couldn’t wait for you to leave him.’
‘What are you saying? He was the one who left me, he abandoned me and his three children. He’s still obligated to take care of us,’ Mum shouted, infuriated.
‘You’re wrong. He says you ended the marriage, and now he doesn’t owe you anything. He’s zawich! Married! Get it through your head!’
Mum could no longer handle Ahlam’s torrent of lies. She grabbed me by the arm. ‘Let’s get out of here. It’s useless,’ she said. She turned one last time to look at Ahlam, ‘It’s not over yet, I promise. Your brother doesn’t have the right to treat us this way. He’ll pay.’
Instead, we were the ones to pay – again. Dad refused my mother a legal separation to avoid being forced to pay alimony. I found out many years later that during Dad’s second marriage Zainab bore him three more daughters. The boy his family had so desired never arrived.
Um Butrus dropped by our house every afternoon after she finished work nearby. She must have been in her seventies. She was there when I was a tiny baby and saw me grow up. Um still saw us as her children. One day I opened the door, and she was climbing up the front stairs, gasping for air. She had staggered along the street with a giant pot of lamb stew she’d cooked for us.
Um Butrus placed the still-warm pot on the table and asked if Linda was home to greet her. Although she was stern, she always had a soft spot for Linda. When Linda hugged her, she melted.
I looked inside the saucepan. The gorgeous aroma of herbs and meat wafted up. Um Butrus was an extraordinary cook. She taught my mother almost all the recipes she knew. I thanked her with a hasty kiss and ran to my room to finish writing my umpteenth letter to Bàsil.
When she was leaving I called out goodbye to her from my room. I wouldn’t see Um Butrus again. She fell ill as soon as she got home. Waiting for the doctor, her family had laid her down on her bed. She fell asleep and never opened her eyes again.
Leaning on Bàsil’s shoulder, I lost myself in his gentle touch. We still met in secret, always at his house.
‘What can I do to help you?’ he asked, worried by my tired demeanour.
‘Nothing. You can’t do anything,’ I responded in a flat and tense voice. ‘Neither of us can do anything to resolve this situation. There’s nothing left to do.’
‘Don’t say that. There has to be a way,’ he continued. ‘Isn’t your father obligated to take care of you all?’
‘He doesn’t care about us anymore. Maybe if we had a lawyer things might be different. Otherwise, it’s impossible to get him to change his mind. When he comes at night we hear him argue with Mum. It’s frightening; he’s become another person. Sometimes I think he wants to kill us. I know he wants us out of the house.’
‘But he can’t kick you out into the street!’ he objected indignantly. ‘Then what will happen to you?’
‘I have no idea. That’s the point. We don’t have anywhere else to go.’ I averted my gaze. I didn’t want to unload my anguish on Bàsil, but I had to talk to somebody to keep from going crazy. And he was so sweet, so understanding. I know if he could have done something he would have. Too bad he wasn’t much more than a boy.
‘What does your mum think?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. She doesn’t speak much. She called my grandmother in Dobříč the other day. I heard her ask if we could stay with her for a little while. Maybe she’ll take us in.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Bàsil seemed alarmed.
‘I hope not. My home is here. I don’t want to leave.’ I couldn’t stand the idea of being away from Baghdad, and especially from this boy. I watched him as he brooded on this information.
‘What’s wrong?’ I finally asked.
‘If you were to leave, I’d really miss you,’ he said under his breath. We embraced. I kept my eyes closed, clutching onto him, as if we were going to be pulled apart at any moment.
‘Wherever you go, I’ll never leave you alone,’ he whispered in my ear. Then he pulled himself away, looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘You know that, right? We’ll keep writing to each other. Promise me.’
I agreed and buried my face in his shoulder. I knew this hug would be our farewell.
At the end of July the news circulated; Iran had accepted the United Nations resolutions. The war would soon be over. Eight years of fighting and bombings had destroyed the city and left the country on its knees.
After Otůr’s house was hit by a missile, many other homes in our neighbourhood had been bombed and destroyed. Even Yermouk, the prestigious neighbourhood where Ahlam and Elham lived, had been badly damaged. Our house had miraculously escaped the rain of missiles, as did many in Zeyůne, the area in which Bibi’s house was located. A few years later, during the second Gulf War, that district would burn to the ground.
But in July 1988, the unimaginable happened: the war with Iran was about to end. The news of the fighting’s imminent conclusion had restored hope to the population.
A month later, on 20 August, the ceasefire was official. Explosions were still heard on the outskirts of town, but people took to the city’s streets in jubilant celebration. From the terrace of our house, I saw a huge, joyful crowd descending on Arba’taash Ramadàn. Rejoicing, they shouted with glee and hugged each other. Those with a car honked their horns madly. It seemed as if everyone had gone crazy with happiness, with relief. Even I was smiling. It was really over. No more missiles. No more explosions, death, destruction, or constant looting. I hoped things would also change for us – for me, Linda, Klara and Mum.
Linda screamed and clapped her hands to the music coming from the street. Even Klara was cheerful, but I knew our happiness would be short-lived.
A few days later, in the early afternoon, Klara entered my bedroom. ‘Mum has something to tell us. Come in the living room. She says it’s important.’
Linda was already sitting next to our mother and Klara sat cross-legged on the rug.
‘We have to leave. Tonight, an uncle you don’t know will come to pick us up and take us to the airport,’ she announced solemnly.
‘What? Why in such a hurry?’ Klara asked.
‘We have our visas and there’s no reason to wait,’ she answered.
Two days before, we met Dad briefly at the Baghdad passport office. He had come to sign the consent form that would allow us to leave. He quickly did what he had to do, leaving my mother with an envelope. Then he departed without saying goodbye. It was the last time I saw him.
‘I don’t want to leave here!’ I burst out angrily. ‘Why do we have to go? The war is over. Now things will get better!’ But I knew my words were hollow.
‘Your father has booked us the last flight tonight for Frankfurt. From there we’ll go to Prague. We’re going to stay at your grandmother’s place in Dobříč.’
‘I’m not leaving Baghdad!’ I screamed through tears.
‘You girls should go and pack your bags now. There isn�
��t much time.’
‘What can we take with us?’ Klara asked.
‘Whatever you can fit in a suitcase. We can only take one each. Only choose things that are important.’
‘But we don’t even know how long we’ll be away. And besides, what will happen to the things we leave here? … Looters will steal them,’ I objected.
‘Nobody will touch anything. Now go and pack. Your uncle won’t wait for us and neither will the plane.’ Mum got up and went to her room. We heard her open the closet and start taking out her clothes. Quietly, we did the same.
As I was deciding what to include in my large bag, I realised I wouldn’t have time to say goodbye to Dani and Bàsil. I didn’t know how long we would be gone. I quickly wrote down the address of the house in Dobříč and a short message on a little piece of paper. I ran to the street to hide it in the usual spot. I had to tell Bàsil about my unexpected departure, I didn’t want to lose contact with him. I was anxious when I came back inside. What if the note got lost? What if he didn’t notice it?
Defeated and upset, it was difficult for me to decide what to pack in my suitcase. Each object had a history for me. It was painful to have to leave things behind. And the thought that my remaining clothes and belongings could be stolen by strangers made me uneasy.
In the next room, Mum was helping Linda and Klara close their luggage. Linda slumped next to her bag, sobbing quietly. Her eyes were red from crying. I understood her sadness and wanted to be free to cry like her, but I wasn’t a little girl anymore.
Mum sat down next to her, stroking her fingers gently through my sister’s hair. ‘Linda, there’s no time for tantrums or discussions. Your uncle will be here soon. We can’t miss the plane. Get your doll.’
Of course, our dolls – Dad’s gift. I returned to my room and cuddled mine. I placed it in the suitcase and closed the lid. I felt so angry about this unplanned departure. It seemed so unjust to me.
The Girl from Baghdad Page 16