Twelve years had passed since we met in this desolate place. No one at all had been inside since the last night we had spent there. The country no longer needed air-raid shelters; fleeing death was no longer a vital matter. The important thing now was escaping life. Nadia squeezed through the barbed wire, and I followed. I matched her steps as she headed for the small door we used to go through. We reached the narrow staircase where we used to play as children. She stood up to her full height on the fifth step and leaped through the air. When her feet hit the floor, she clapped for herself in delight. She urged me to jump too, and I stood on the same step. I pretended to be afraid and walked down, laughing at how crazy she was. Then I went back up and jumped into the air.
She went up and jumped a second time, then a third and a fourth without getting tired of it. When I begged her to stop this game so that we might leave this murky hole with its damp smell, she ignored me and pressed on deep into the shadows of the place. I followed her with frightened steps.
In the corner where we had slept in 1991, we found a wide wooden bed. Beside it was a clay jar of water dripping a wet trail, a long staff, sunglasses, a pocket watch, a medicine bottle and an old book with a torn cover. Confused, we advanced towards the bed. A man was sleeping there, but not snoring. There was no sound of breathing or a beating heart. We got very close, but he remained motionless as a rigid corpse, wrapped in a white sheet that went up over his head. As Nadia hesitated and was about to uncover his face, he surprised her by throwing back the sheet and laughing loudly.
The soothsayer!
He leaned forward with a dead smile on his face. Then he took out a flashlight hidden under his pillow and shone the light in our eyes, laughing so hard he could not catch his breath.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he told me. Then he shone the light in Nadia’s eyes and said, ‘Don’t be afraid.’
We felt a kind of reassurance that eased our fear somewhat. The soothsayer swung his legs off the bed and addressed me. ‘I know you’re not anxious to know what’s coming, but now, this instant, is the time when I send you to a city beyond the future.’ He corrected himself to say, ‘I will send the two of you to an afterlife.’
I got a little closer to him and said, ‘Before you send us anywhere, you have to tell us who you are. How did you come into the neighbourhood? Why did you choose us and no one else? Who sent you? What is your aim in all this? Do you know that ever since the day you appeared among us, we have not known a moment’s peace?’
The soothsayer leaned back against the headboard and began to laugh. Then he cleared his throat and said, ‘That’s a lot of questions. How can I answer them all at once? I don’t usually answer questions like these, but nevertheless, I’ll tell you one thing. You, personally, have heard it before. Do you remember the captain you met on the ship’s deck one night?’
‘Yes, I remember that well.’
Nadia came closer, surprised to hear these words, and before she could utter a sound, I told her, ‘I’ll explain it all later. It’s complicated, but I’ll tell you all about it.’ Then I repeated my response to the soothsayer: ‘Yes, I remember that well.’
‘Good, my little one. I am just an idea in the neighbourhood’s imagination. The neighbourhood is just an idea in my head. Everything our eyes fall upon is only an idea, and there’s nothing real about reality. We are all imprisoned in our imaginations, and our experiences actually consist only of ideas. Existence as a whole is a collection of ideas. That is the sole truth. Don’t believe anything else, and don’t tell it to anyone because people don’t believe things that don’t occur to their minds independently. They don’t know where their minds reside, and there’s never a day when they ask themselves whether they really possess something called a mind. What’s it like? What colour is it? The mind, my little one, is just another idea, a complicated idea made from others as though they were all true.’
I remembered these words, the exact ones I had heard from the captain, and here was the soothsayer repeating them to me. Was he the captain? I thought about asking him that, but he did not give me the chance. He shone the flashlight into Nadia’s eyes, and when he had fixed it precisely on her pupils, he drew her in forcefully and launched her far away into a world of light. Then he turned and did the same thing to me.
I entered an expansive city. Its walls were built with bricks made of faint sunlight. Passing under an arch of white neon light, the kind that might come from a nearby star, I carefully picked my way down a narrow path paved with red stones that glowed from within as though they were cubes of ice. Swallows with golden wings flew towards me. At the end of the path a magnificent gate opened up, leading into an enormous hall whose ceiling nearly touched the stars. Exhilarating perfumes wafted from each corner of the room.
A small swallow separated from its flock and approached me. It led me towards a side room made of intense light, where it bade me sit on a sofa that was nearly the same as the one we had in our house, though this one was made of translucent glass. It was in the middle of a large room through which a cool breeze was blowing.
The bird went out, flapping its bronze wings, and left me there by myself. I did not know what awaited me in that strange and desolate place.
Hours passed, maybe days, while I remained as I was, still sitting there. When I got hungry, some strange kind of fruit dropped down from a tree with a red pastel trunk, and whose branches were yellow, blue, green, purple and so on, with no end to the different shades of colour. I tried to remember how I got there, but I no longer knew anything outside this world of light apart from my memory of this sofa. I heard the voices of my parents, calling me from far away, but there was no air in my lungs to reply.
The door opened, and the swallow passed through, leading Nadia in. It gave a sign for her to sit beside me. She sat on the far end of the sofa, as though surprised at my presence, or as though she did not recognise me. She began examining my features in order to remember me but did not succeed. I looked at her and tried to say, ‘Hi, Nadia,’ but again, the lack of air in my lungs stopped me.
A white angel with wings too small for its body came walking by on delicate feet. With a gesture of its left wing, it commanded us to follow and led us into a large courtyard. Faint stars glittered in the sky. Enormous circles of deep darkness spread in the distance. We passed through dim streets, turning dozens of times to skirt forests of bright trees that shifted around us and changed their direction with each turn. A long way off, we saw a small cottage built into the side of a green hill surrounded on three sides by cypress trees. Shooting stars with strange light descended towards it.
The door to the cottage opened, and a young woman, twenty years old, welcomed us. She was wearing a yellow sash and shoes made of feathers. On her wrist she wore a silver bracelet engraved with my name. A white cat followed her. She guided us through the small rooms of the cottage until we reached the kitchen, where she said there was enough food to keep us alive for many centuries.
With its kitchen and other rooms, the cottage resembled those country homes you see in movies, where the snow falls no matter what time of year it is.
The young woman nodded in farewell. Leaving the cat with us and giving us an ambiguous smile, she went out. Nadia sat on a seat covered in feathers, and I sat on another nearby. She smiled at me, and I smiled at her. Air filled my chest again, and I yelled, ‘Nadia!’ before rushing forward to embrace her. The white cat came over to us and jumped up in Nadia’s lap. It was our cat, the very one we had brought home after we found it shivering from the cold.
Nadia and I sat with the cat between us. We talked late into the night, establishing a new memory in this new world. We lay down on the colourful rug and closed our eyes. Nadia began talking to herself and smiling. I knew she was dreaming. I came close, put my face in front of hers, and began to watch her dreams. But this time she prevented me and shut the door to her dreams in my face.
In the morning, a small star rose up through the window and told us he wa
s the child of the sun. The swallow landed on a branch and veiled the star with its wing.
Someone knocked on the door. Nadia got up to answer it, and the girl who had welcomed us the night before came in. Nine beautiful girls were with her, one of whom resembled Mayada when she was a teenager. Trailing shining white garments and wearing yellow sashes, they came over to greet us. I got up and went into the kitchen to make them tea. The girl who looked like Mayada followed me to make sure I was able to use everything in the kitchen, and when she found I knew my way around, she asked, ‘Do you know Dr Tawfiq?’
‘No, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that name.’
‘His clinic is in the main street. Please go and tell him that Mayada loves him and is waiting for him here.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I told her.
She kissed me and went into the sitting room, where she stood, watching from afar. The girls had begun speaking to Nadia as though they were old friends come to welcome her. I brought them tea, which they drank with coordinated movements as though they were a ballet troupe performing a mime.
After several minutes, an old man came in, leaning on a staff that he used to push open the door. He took a small piece of paper out of his pocket and read off Nadia’s name. He told her to stand. ‘You will go back whence you came.’
He went towards her, took her by the hand, and went out. I remained alone with the cat, looking into the faces of the young women. The one wearing the silver bracelet went out. One by one, the rest followed her with sad faces and closed the door on me.
‘I want to go back!’ I screamed at the top of my voice.
A man in his mid-forties appeared and looked through the window with a smile.
‘I want to go back,’ I told him.
He kept smiling without moving away, and I began shouting at him. After a while, he went towards the door and pushed it open. He came inside and said in scolding tone, ‘Where is it you want to go back to?’
‘To our house. To my parents. To our neighbourhood. To my friends. To the university I want to attend with Nadia. I want Baghdad...’
‘What will you do amid that ruin, with war at its gates?’
‘What would I do here in this desolate place, with no air in my lungs?’
‘It’s because you...’
‘What? Because I’m dead?’
‘No, you’re in-between.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You are in a place between life and death. We examine the names here to confirm the dead before they die.’
‘And am I among them?’
‘Not yet.’
‘How long will I remain like this?’
‘Until we know your name. Up until now, you haven’t mentioned your name to us, and we haven’t been able to come across it in the records. We don’t know anything about you.’
I took several steps towards him and whispered my name in his ear. He asked me to repeat it, and I did. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘I know you. I know your family well. They are my family too, and I love them. I am Ahmad’s father. Do you know him?’
‘Yes, I know him and his mother too. Are you the one who was martyred in the Iraq–Iran War?’
‘Yes, that was me. Before I died, I was your neighbour, and your parents were my friends. I love them. How are they doing? How is my wife, and my young son Ahmad?’
‘They are all doing well. Ahmad is no longer young. He is now studying engineering at the University of Mosul. He loves Nadia, who just left.’
‘Has he really grown up? And experienced love too?’
‘Yes. He is a handsome young man who loves life. Nadia loves him with all her heart.’
‘What joy to be in love and live out a love story in Baghdad!’
‘What do you mean, Uncle? Baghdad is no longer as you knew it.’
‘I know; I know it well. But we love it, and we only see it as we imagine it. Come! Your grandfather lives with me in that glass palace on the other side. I got to know him here years ago. He is a good and generous man. We call him Harun al-Rashid.’
His words struck me with confusion. I longed to see my grandfather, but I was afraid he would keep me with him. I wanted to ask Abu Ahmad why they called him Harun al-Rashid, but he interrupted my thoughts by saying, ‘Your grandfather loves Baghdad. He loves its people. He loves the workshops and the interlacing streets. Even here, in this blessed life, he does not drink the pure water but asks for water that has been brought from the Tigris River. Look at that wall around his house. Do you see it? He built it himself with bricks made from Baghdad clay, calling it the Baghdad Wall. When evening comes and he trembles with desire, he goes to Baghdad in the time of the Abbasid Caliphate and wanders through its palaces before sitting in the place of Harun al-Rashid, summoning the poets and sages so he might listen to them. Then he calls for singers and musicians to stay up all night with them until the morning. He doesn’t want Baghdad to sleep.’
‘But why Harun al-Rashid? Wasn’t Al-Mansur the one who build Baghdad?’
‘Harun al-Rashid is a Baghdadi idea, a dream that its people dream. The Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid is a story the city tells about itself. The truth or falseness of the tale is not the important thing.’
‘Yes, I see that now,’ I told him, although in fact I did not understand very well what he was saying.
He took a piece of yellow paper out of his pocket, read it, and said, ‘Wait here a while. I’ll come back and set you free from this place.’
I sat waiting for more than an hour. It may have been more than a day, or less. I do not know how much time I was waiting for him because they do not have time there, no clocks that look like the Baghdad Clock and count out the seconds. Abu Ahmad came back in the military uniform he had been wearing when he died and accompanied me to a dwelling made of glass that stretched to the horizon without an end. My grandfather lived there.
There was a large sunlit garden, shaded by leafy trees. My grandfather was sitting on a chair made of aluminium with colourful strips of plastic. In his lap was the small white cat. He was wearing the same clothes and glasses I had seen in the picture hanging on the wall of my grandmother’s room. Beside him was an old box that bore the stamp of Mackintosh’s Candies, in which shaving implements were carefully arranged. On a small bench beside him sat a man I did not recognise. He dipped a small shaving brush in a bowl of shaving cream and then spread it over my grandfather’s face. Having finished, he set the brush aside. Then he took a golden razor and passed the blade across my grandfather’s chin with extreme care. When the man, who had remained silent this whole time and had not looked at my face, was finished, my grandfather picked up a bottle of aftershave that he applied to his face. He wiped his face with a silk towel. Getting up, he came over and took me in his arms. I savoured the smell of his spirit and clung to it.
‘How are you, my dear?’ he said in a serious tone. Then he came over, sat down, and pulled me onto his lap after moving the cat aside to make room. It stood under his feet, meowing tenderly.
‘I’m afraid, Grandfather.’
‘Don’t be afraid, my child. How is your grandmother doing, and her sons and daughters? How is our house and our garden? How are the people there?’
‘Grandfather, I’m afraid. I love you, but I don’t want to stay here.’
‘Don’t be afraid. You will leave this place. Tell me about all of you. What befell you after my departure?’
I sat with him for many hours, telling him all the details I knew about life there. He put his hand to his cheek and watched me, without showing the least surprise. When I started feeling tired, I told him, ‘I have nothing else to add.’
‘My dear grandchild, we in the world of the dead do not sleep well on account of the pain we suffer for our countries. We feel a sense of failure and shame towards you for having left you in agony aboard the ship we chose for you without your wanting it.’
‘Grandfather, is it true that we live aboard a ship?’
He got up from hi
s place and took me by the hand. We went up to a small hill behind his dwelling and from there descended into a deep valley filled with flowers. After that, we stood at the edge of a vast well that opened to the centre of the planet. He threw in a flower he had plucked from a branch hanging down nearby. A few seconds later, I was surprised to see our neighbourhood appearing clearly before me. From this perspective high in the sky, it appeared just like an actual ship with its sail, tower and anchor. I recognised my school. I saw the shelter. After that, I found the Baghdad Clock, the Ma’mun Tower and the suspension bridge. Then I came across our house and cried as loudly as I could, ‘I want Mama and Papa!’
‘Go in peace, my granddaughter. Tell your grandmother that I’m well and that I live a blessed life. Kiss each palm and every other tree in our city for me. Kiss the river, the ground and the air there. Go, my granddaughter! You are late. Life is there, life in the birthplace that is even more beautiful than this blessed existence.’
A tear like a crystal ball sprang from his eye, and before he left, he looked into my eyes and said, ‘Do you remember how many palm trees there are at our house?’
‘Inside the wall, there are four palm trees, Grandpa.’
‘Tell your grandmother to take care of them.’
‘Yes, Grandpa, I’ll tell her. But can I take the cat with me? My friend has been looking for it a long time, and she was overjoyed when she found it here.’
‘No, my daughter, this is my cat, and it cheers me up. In your world, it lived blind.’
The cat jumped up on me to give me a kiss and then jumped over to Grandfather, who held it to his chest as he moved away, muttering to himself, ‘Four palm trees – dear Lord! Four palm trees that I left behind at my old house and that I wish might be here.’
A little later, a swallow came and guided me towards the Nineveh gate, through which I had entered earlier. I went out and found Nadia waiting for me at the entrance to the shelter. I took her hand and we went home.
The Baghdad Clock Page 13