How could I tell Farouq that I was not ready, psychologically? Would he consider that an outright refusal? How would this handsome young man, this gifted sports star, understand some girl refusing to marry him? But I was not some girl; I was his girlfriend.
I loved him. Indeed, I loved him to death. This solitary white bird in the depressing purple sky is the only thing for whom I can say that life is life and not a giant prison. I loved adolescent Farouq, playing on the neighbourhood team. I loved the Farouq in whose hands my hands planted themselves as my heart trembled beside him. That good and shamefaced young man, who released me from my shame and set me free to sing... but how could this same man be my husband?
Are love and marriage two different worlds? Two rivers flowing in opposite directions? Are we able to swim in both at the same time without drowning in one? Farouq, my love... Have you missed the goal this time and kicked the ball out of play?
That same day, without any warning, I was approached by Mundhir, who studied with me in the same department. He told me he liked me. I stammered as though I were hearing that for the first time in my life. I did not know how to respond to this eloquent young man, who was shamefaced too. I did not have it in me to ruin his day, so I gathered my positive energy and told him with perfect calm, ‘I’m engaged, Mundhir.’
With this abrupt sentence, I moved from life in all its possibilities into the world of Farouq alone. I had drawn a tight circle around myself, a circle shaped like Farouq.
35
Yes, we do not cross the same river twice, but with the power of imagination, we are able to create a river of memories that flows over us thousands of times.
There is no longer a neighbourhood in our neighbourhood. Our neighbourhood has moved into the big blue notebook filled with stories and ghosts, sometimes in Nadia’s handwriting, sometimes in mine, and sometimes in Baydaa’s. We have written there everything that was possible to write.
The three of us are now waiting for the moment when one of our families emigrates, when we will close the record once and for all. For out of its pages come real stories sometimes, real events that we lived with all the force of their time. Its pages have become our tourist destination, where we wander without any fear. In the past, everything that could happen has already taken place, and it is not particularly important to me what exactly happened. The important thing now is what’s in my head.
The anxiety begins when I think more about what is approaching in the present time, which hovers over a land made of fear, caution and watchfulness.
‘Baydaa dropped out of university.’ That is a real sentence that Nadia and I wrote on the page for Baydaa’s family in the notebook. ‘Baydaa’s family is preparing to emigrate.’ That is another true sentence. ‘The black Chevrolet that will carry Baydaa’s family far away came.’ A new sentence that is also true. ‘Baydaa and her family got in without saying goodbye to us. The car started to move and we shed many tears. The car set off and more tears fell. The car reached the end of the street and our tears raced to the pavement. Biryad followed the car in a daze. It made the turn and was lost from sight. Biryad returned, broken. We went inside the house and closed the door.’
This true paragraph entered our notebook all at once, but it did not tell us everything that happened exactly. What was the scene like behind the window of the car where Baydaa waved to us with the hand that wrote every story of our lives?
Did you see her face in these true sentences? Did you mark the terror in her eyes as she turned about like a bird trapped in a dark box, breathing the memories of its distant nest? Did Baydaa exit our lives and enter the record of the past, the details of which she herself recorded? Did Baydaa question her spirit on the long road to the border, on the road of tears and farewells where she took her laughter away from me and disappeared?
Baydaa, where did you go? Is this your time? Come back! I want to kiss you, to embrace you, to get my fill of you, to cry, to die of sadness in your arms. Is it true I will not see you again? What will I call my life without your presence in it?
Whatever I did not write in the record, whatever I forgot to write, that is what remains for us of our days in this place – Nadia and I, the two oldest children in the neighbourhood – our memories, our joys, our sorrow, our delights, our pains. We are all that remains of a time that melts before us like a piece of ice on the hot ground.
Nadia dropped out of university. I dropped out. She sat at home, and I sat at home. She counted up the days spent over the coals of fear, according to the number of victims of car bombs and snipers, according to the number of strangers as they painted the houses of our neighbourhood in bright colours. All this is by the grace of their Lord. As for our Lord, he has bidden us to emigrate, and I counted up the days like Nadia.
Which of the two cars would arrive before the other? Our car or that of Nadia’s family? That is the one remaining question on the test, and the last person remaining in the examination hall is the one who will be able to give a final answer to this bitter question.
Nadia decided to spend the night with us in my room. She stretched out on my bed, touching everything around her. She paged through all my notebooks. She listened to all my music tapes straight through. She danced every dance she knew. She gave me a thousand kisses and petted Biryad, who spent the night with us there. She gave him a new name that remained a secret between the three of us. She kept chatting the whole time, talking without interruption. She wanted to say everything, but then the rising sun shone through the window and she had to go home.
She shed the last of her tears at the door of my bedroom. I went out with her to the gate. She took hold of my hand and started walking. An hour later, their black Chevrolet came and she got in with her family. I stood behind the gate, watching her in numb silence. Nadia was leaving me all by myself.
Was she really leaving me all alone? It is more correct to say she was abandoning a shattered object from the past. A ruined hut consumed by flames in a dark forest. A ghost of sadness with surprised eyes, a heart rent by pain and a groan that burned in my throat.
What is life? What is the neighbourhood, the street? What are memories, and what is Nadia, disappearing on the long road to the border? Listen, long road, don’t you ever get tired?
I imagine her in times like this. She sits in the back seat and gives herself over to memories. I imagine that she begins from the first night we met in the shelter. No, she would begin with our time in primary school. She would think of Ahmad, and then of Marwa. She would come back to memories of me, and she would cry. She would look for her mobile phone and try to call me, but she sees that the reception is weak and her battery is running out. She would lean against the window and try to count the hills of sand along the desert road. Then she would remember me again and cry. She would sleep. Now she is dreaming, and I see her dreams. Dreams are not like telephones. Our shared dreams always connect on the network; their batteries never die.
I want to ask your forgiveness for leaving out my remaining days in Baghdad. I am embarrassed with you watching. I tried to write about a beautiful time for you, but where can I now come up with a beautiful time?
Nadia and I were born during the war with Iran. We got to know each other during Desert Storm. We grew up in the years of the sanctions and the second Gulf War. George Bush and his son, George W. Bush, took turns firing missiles and illegal weapons at our childhood, while Bill Clinton and that old woman Madeleine Albright were satisfied with starving us. And when we grew up, hell sat in wait for us.
I will trick you with my words and dodge my memories. I will sing and cry; I will dream with Nadia. I will distract myself by talking to the American pilot. I will open the neighbourhood record and choose only the happy days. I will do all that until the black Chevrolet comes and carries us across the border.
We are the last teardrop aboard the ship, the last smile, the last sigh, the last footstep on its ageing pavement. We are the last people to line their eyes with its dust. We are t
he ones who will tell its full story. We will tell it to neighbours’ children born in foreign countries, to their grandchildren not yet born – we, the witnesses of everything that happened.
A black car stopped at our door today at dawn. On its back window, white letters read: ‘By the grace of our Lord.’
We got in, and it took us away. There was no one in the street shedding tears over us apart from Biryad, whom we left behind all alone. He looked in our faces, one by one, not believing what he saw. Like a madman, he jumped up on our wall and stretched himself out like a plaster statue.
No one remained apart from him for us to wave goodbye to. We were the last of the exiles, and our house was the last of the houses that the Lord granted by his grace to others.
My heart waved to the black statue of Biryad as he raised his white tail in grief at his desolation. My heart waved at our house, our garden, the wall around them, our windows, and at a small cat jumping now from the wall to the abandoned house. Here is Ma’mun Tower. There is the destroyed Baghdad Clock. Here is the tower in Al-Zawra. The ship is ready to welcome new travellers aboard. The land does not move on with those who loved it and lived their years there. It suffers in silence and preserves them in memory.
Book II
The Future
The future: not every new thing that comes through the workings of time, but rather everything we do not know.
36
Two years ago, I discovered Nadia by chance on Instagram. I nearly died from the intensity of my joy. But unfortunately, it was a virtual joy, a joy that resembled our frozen pictures on social media. Or like our cold words in response to these sites. This was not Nadia. This was a woman who looked like her. Nadia was not married, and she did not have a small daughter. This was a woman from some other world, some other time.
This was not the same person I had met in a shelter protecting us against the air raids. It was not the same person I had lived with most of the years of my life. This man with her in the picture was not Ahmad. Some days later, we spoke by telephone. Her voice too was not Nadia’s voice. Her interests were not Nadia’s interests as I had known them and memorised them in my heart and in my soul.
In the virtual world, on our social media sites, discovering an old friend resembles a real event that crashes into you with all its emotional force. With the passage of time, the spark of light fades, and it gradually becomes virtual again.
The virtual world is not only a means of communication, it is a tool to examine the past and settle our accounts with it.
Day after day, I kept eluding her, this virtual Nadia. I secluded myself with my memories of her. I was afraid of her imaginary presence in our real story.
I opened the notebook containing the record of our neighbourhood and leafed through the pages. I was looking for a space to write that Nadia no longer existed. But I hesitated and closed the notebook.
When we get ready to resume old memories, we need new hearts, not used ones. Fresh hearts, in which we construct new civilisations of friendship. We write a new history upon them, a story never before told. We enter its world for the first time and get to know its protagonists for the first time too.
Has our story become just an old tale we need to fold up and put away? Do we need to write a new novel about our lives that begins where the old one left off?
Our virtual relationship gradually faded away, and the memories remained frozen in place. Whenever an old memory insisted on coming to mind, I would ignore its existence on Instagram and go to the record of the past to learn from its worlds the moments we experienced together with all that warmth.
When we left Baghdad, I took in my hand luggage The Baghdad Clock: The Record of a Neighbourhood. I kept it close in our house in Jordan like a secret treasure I was hiding from intrusive eyes. I opened it every now and then to read some pages that Baydaa had recorded, line by line. Through her words, I remembered the faces of our neighbours, their houses and the details of their lives. I remembered the songs they liked. I played with their children and chatted with the grandmothers. I tasted the lunches they made and I smelled the fragrance of the roses in their gardens.
One night, I opened the record and began reading with a ravenous appetite. I examined the letters and listened to the old voices from afar. Suddenly, I came across a group of strange pages, carefully folded up inside. On them, in a thick black script, were written two words: ‘The Future’.
I was surprised to find these pages I had never seen before in our record of the past. Doubt nagged at me as to whether some hand was secretly reaching out to mock all my memories. But these words, ‘The Future’, were written in Baydaa’s familiar script. They were written with the same pen that Baydaa had used when she stayed up that night to record the events of her memory, but with a darker ink, as though she had run the pen over these letters more than once.
Where had these words, ‘The Future’, come from then? And what were they doing here in a record of the past?
My hands trembled as I tried to touch the first pages. I hesitated a long while, and the blood ran cold in my veins. My heart was beating violently, and I nearly choked with terror at this unexpected surprise, for I had no great confidence – not even a little – in this ‘future’.
How did this stranger slip into the record of the past? What was this mystery doing here? My hands kept shaking, and my forehead beaded with sweat. My mouth dried up entirely.
I left the notebook open where it was and went downstairs, leaning against the wall that ran down the staircase to the ground floor. I was parched and needed a mouthful of water. It was as though I had crossed an entire desert in a blaze of unending afternoons. I opened the refrigerator and drank three glasses of cold water, one after the other. Having quenched my thirst, I returned with heavy steps to my room.
The ghost of the future had closed the shades and turned out the lights. It began roaming throughout the room. There was a strange hand knocking on my window in the darkness. I felt like I was choking and collapsed onto my bed. I wanted to wrap myself in the blankets and sleep, but fear deprived me of the ability even to lay my head on the edge of the pillow. Dear God, what in the world was going on?
I turned on the light again. The ceiling fan was going around slowly, all on its own, drawing strange phantoms on the walls with its three blades. I gathered my strength and tiptoed back over to the record, its pages fluttering softly in the air of the fan. The ghost of the future was turning the pages of the past in front of me, smiling invisibly to itself. I recoiled to collect myself where I stood, two steps away.
A surreptitious hand reached out to open those folded pages in the record. Another hand took hold of my neck and brought my head close to the notebook. Once again, I took two steps back, my body shaking all over. But the hand on my neck forced me to return. With fingers weak from dread, I turned over the first page. I brought my eyes close to the words drawn in small, slanted letters and began to read.
Book of the Future, Page 1
I am the future. I live now in a continuous birthing from the womb of the past. Here I am on my way to you. Be calm; be not afraid. It is not only that which has occurred that has settled in the past. Do not tell anyone, I beg of you, but that which occurs in the time to come will likewise settle there too. The past rolls up the present and swallows that which is to come. It advances like a dust storm, billowing up towards the sky and blocking the horizon. No one has the power to block the storm of the past as it presses on to its end. No one has the power to push the future forward and keep it from its place.
I am here for your sake: for the sake of summarising your story; for the sake of cleansing the years and warding off any sense of tedium. Do not be afraid of me. All possible endings are still open. I will leave you to delight in their chaos, their surprises and their longed-for outcomes. The future is a theatre of suspense, the secret factory that produces all that is unexpected.
I do not want to ruin your life. I have some joyful news, news that you w
ould consider happy, and I also have some painful realities. I am sorry to bring them, but from a different perspective, they are unavoidable if you want the good news to bring any joy.
What is the use of happiness that does not dawn after the long night of pain? How beautiful is the rain when it bursts unexpectedly from the heart of a storm to clean the dust from the air! So that you will be glad about a good future, join me in skipping page two, and start reading on page three. When you reach page six, leave it folded as it is, both it and page seven as well. Take up the page coming next – page eight, I mean. Continue reading until the beginning of the ten pages right before the end, and stop there immediately. Do not read the last pages. Leave them folded just as they are. I warn you not to approach them, and I urge you follow my instructions to the letter. Just as I want to caution you that I am not like the past in its rigidity and its decisiveness regarding objects, realities and events. Being the future, I am ruled by my nature, by fits of sharp temper and by a rapid shift from state to state.
What is written in my pages is not put down in permanent ink. My pages are composed in light and shadow. One effaces the other depending on the conditions and according to ability, desire and temperament.
Are you feeling reassured towards me now?
Have the fear, hesitation and anxiety left you?
I advise you now to go to bed. I will leave you to sleep in the most tranquil peace and comfort. Tomorrow morning, when the sun rises in the east and light comes through the window, eat your breakfast and drink a cup of tea. Open the notebook once again and begin to read naturally, without shrinking back or becoming emotional, just as though you were reading an exciting new novel devised by the imagination of a crazy author, and not a completion of the past that picks up where your old book, The Baghdad Clock: The Record of a Neighbourhood, leaves off.
The Baghdad Clock Page 18