The President's Gardens

by Muhsin al-Ramli

  It went back to the early years of their boyhood, the days when they would swim in the Tigris during the burning heat of July afternoons, quarrel with the girls bathing and washing clothes near the shore, hunt at night for the sand grouse sleeping in the nearby deserts, root out snakes and jerboa from their holes to break off their teeth, and drive off the wolves and jackals. When the Bedouin herdsman Jad’an spotted them near his tent, he didn’t recognize them, even though he knew nearly all the villagers on account of his living there with his family and his flock of sheep for one month each year, right after the harvest. He asked Abdullah, “Whose son are you?” And because Abdullah didn’t know his real father, he was quiet for a moment and then said, “I’m the son of the earth crack.” Jad’an turned to Ibrahim and Tariq with the same question, and they gave the same answer out of solidarity with Abdullah. At that, the Bedouin fell silent for a while, stroking his beard as if in thought, and said, “Yes, we are all sons of the earth crack. The earth is our mother, all of us. Out of her we are born, and to her we return.”

  Jad’an ruffled their hair affectionately and invited them to his tent to taste “the best butter in the world,” as he called it, which was the butter of his wife, Umm Fahda, and to drink some of the milk from her village. The invitation pleased them to the same degree that it filled their souls with fear and trembling, for this was an unexpected opportunity for Tariq to see Fahda, daughter of Jad’an and Umm Fahda, inside her tent, instead of making secret rendezvous with her between the sacks of harvested wheat and barley or among the flock of resting ewes. Did her father know what had been going on between them, and was his invitation nothing more than an ambush to trap them and do God knows what to them? Stories of Bedouin cruelty and betrayals were notorious, especially when connected to questions of honor.

  Jad’an later told the story to the village elders as they sat together, drinking their morning coffee. They all burst out laughing and praised the boys’ solidarity and fidelity to the ideal of true friendship. The story circulated widely, just as everything said in the village reached every ear, even when whispered in confidence. From that time the name “sons of the earth crack” became commonplace.

  Abdullah wasn’t lying when he said that he was the son of the earth crack, for that is what he knew at the time, as did everyone else. But now, nearly fifty years old, he was the only one who knew the origin of the story. The mayor’s wife Zaynab, who had tarried in life until he returned from the long years of his captivity in Iran, had told him the truth of the matter.

  He alone knew that she was his grandmother, and that the dull-witted herdsman, Isma’il, was his maternal uncle. His story was like something out of the old melodramas from India, so it was no surprise that he was known for defining life as “a Hindi movie.”

  About himself he would say, “I am a victim and the son of victims. I am the son of the murdered going back to Abel, and I’m surprised not to have been killed yet.” Then he would add, “The logic of my ancestors’ history stipulates that my death be connected with love. Perhaps my failure to bind myself to the one I loved is what has come between me and my death. Or else that failure itself is my true downfall . . . Perhaps I am the final sentence in this volume containing the family tree of the murdered.”

  Abdullah did not clarify to anyone the true secret behind his allusions. And no one asked him for any explanation since they were used to such pronouncements, which they called his “philosophizing.” The inscrutability of these sayings usually baffled them, and people would interpret them as they pleased or else forget about them entirely. Abdullah didn’t disclose the secret even to his lifelong friends despite their implicit mutual pledge to secrecy. In turn, they too carried secrets in their breasts that they resolved would remain confined unto death. Everybody has a secret, maybe more than one, which they decide not to reveal to anyone. Sometimes because it is shameful, embarrassing, or painful. Sometimes because they don’t find the right opportunity to announce it: the secret’s time hasn’t yet come, or else it has passed, and its revelation no longer carries any meaning or importance.

  Abdullah was raised at the hands of good parents who loved him as though he were the fruit of their loins. If he had been a girl, they would have named him Hadiya, “gift,” because they believed he was “a gift from above.” Abdullah’s parents said that repeatedly throughout their lives.

  Salih and Maryam’s small mud house was at the very edge of the village, on the side of the hill by the river. One spring dawn, when the white of the first approaching light scattered the last remnants of the retreating darkness, Maryam awoke as usual and went out to the square mud stall that rose as high as the shoulder of someone standing beside it. At a distance of sixty steps from the door, it was situated in the farthest part of the dwelling’s courtyard, right above a deep crack in the side of the hill. This crack had been made by a torrential rain many long years before, and Salih had put it to good use as a toilet, which they called “the pit.”

  Previously, Salih and Maryam, like everyone living on the outskirts of the village, used to do their business in the river valley, the thickets, or out in the open after nightfall. With the crack, Salih did nothing more than construct the mud wall, and since it cost him nothing, he chalked it up to his own ingenuity. You only had to spread your legs to either side of the crack and squat down, then expel your excretions into the mouth of the dark opening, waiting to hear the sound of its fall, hidden in the depths far below.

  Some suggested this crack was an old well, reopened by the rain. Others said that perhaps the hill contained ancient ruins, for when digging wells or kneading mud to build their houses or make a bread oven, people often found urns, bracelets, earrings, tablets, belts, swords, and armor made from brass, gold, and silver. They would give anything made for women as gifts to their own wives and keep anything made for men as ornaments to put on the walls of their reception rooms. They used the urns—after dumping out the bones and washing them—to cool water or pickle vegetables. As for the ceramic tablets, which had drawings and inscriptions scratched upon them, these they used as doorsteps, or to reinforce doorframes, or as part of a window, or under the legs of beds or wardrobes to fix their balance.

  That morning, before Maryam went inside “the pit,” she saw a bundle of cloth propped up against the wall next to the entrance, near the outer opening of the crack. She was startled and put her hand to her mouth, then to her breast. As she calmed down and took a deep breath, she reached her hand out cautiously to the top of the bundle and slowly drew back the edges of the cloth. She was terrified to see the face of a newborn baby, asleep. She ran back to the house and shook Salih until the entire bed shook with him. He woke up and asked what was wrong. Maryam stuttered as she pointed outside, “A baby—a baby—the pit—a baby!” And if it were not the case that Salih had never before seen his wife in such a state of bewilderment, he wouldn’t have hurried out barefoot and in his pajamas.

  They carried the bundle inside and set it down. They kept looking at each other in silence, their unspoken thoughts hanging in the air. “Salih,” Maryam said at last, “do you think it is a gift from God in return for our patience? Is it an answer to our prayers?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But what could have brought it here? I’ll go to dawn prayers at the mosque and ask if anyone has lost a baby.”

  He got up and made his way to “the pit” in order to perform the ritual purification. He walked around the structure twice as though looking for something—perhaps another baby. He squatted inside and strained but only gas came out. He washed and went back to put on his clean robe. He stared at the face of the child and said, “Please check—is it a boy or a girl?”

  Maryam uncovered the infant with trembling fingers and burst into tears. “It’s a boy!”

  Salih went out as though a wind were at his back—and a second wind pulling him from the front. As soon as he arrived at the mosque, he told Sheikh Zahir, the imam, what had happened so that he could inf
orm the congregation. Contrary to Salih’s expectations, Zahir wasn’t surprised, a response Salih put down to the sheikh’s sophistication, the breadth of his knowledge, his equanimity, and the firmness of his faith.

  After the prayers, the imam addressed the people, asking them about the matter. Given that no one there had lost a baby or heard about anyone losing a baby, Zahir said, “Let those who are present inform those who are absent. Tell all the people of the village. And if no one claims the child and establishes his paternity within three days, then the infant belongs to Salih and Maryam. It is undoubtedly a gift from the Lord of Creation for their patience, their goodness, and their faith.”

  Everyone agreed, and indeed, it warmed their hearts on account of their affection for Salih. At first they hoped, then they said, and in the end they believed that the matter truly was a miracle, God’s recompense to the good and patient couple.

  Salih couldn’t hide the tears gleaming in his eyes. And as soon as he found himself outside, he hurried home, carried along by the same gale at his back. Beaming, he came in to where Maryam was waiting and said, “It really is a gift, Maryam, just as you said! And if it had been a girl, we would have named her that, ‘Hadiya.’ But now, we’ll name him . . . we’ll name him Abdullah, after my father, who died dreaming of a grandson to carry his name.”

  Maryam was about to trill with joy, but Salih stopped her, even though the force of his own exultation would have made him trill had he known how. “Not now,” he said. “Wait another two days, and at that time we’ll slaughter our bull and hold a huge feast for everyone. A party with dancing, just like a wedding. Then you can trill all you want.” And so it was.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Lives of the Ancestors, or, A Secret Understanding

  Tariq, son of Zahir, the imam of the mosque; Abdullah, son of the earth crack, who became Abdullah, son of Salih; and Ibrahim, son of Suhayl the Damascene: these three were born in successive months in the year 1959. Ever since they first crawled and played, with naked bottoms, in the dirt near their mothers—who gathered together in the evenings around the bread ovens or in front of their homes to chat and exchange gossip, which they regarded as a science—they were inseparable, parting only to sleep under their parents’ roofs. Even then, they would sometimes spend the night in one another’s homes if they had stayed up too late or if one of them was angry with his parents.

  Together they came down with the measles, and together they got better. Together they learned to walk, swim, hunt sparrows, train pigeons, steal watermelons and pomegranates, practice their aim with arrows and with rocks, play soccer and hide-and-seek, and compete at the high jump. Together they entered school, defended each other against bullies, and studied for exams out in the fields or at night in one of their bedrooms.

  Beyond the common name by which the people knew them, “the sons of the earth crack,” these three gave each other nicknames to use among themselves, names adopted from some characteristic behavior or trait. These names quickly spread among the people, just like everything else that was said in the village, even if the original source or reasons were unknown.

  Tariq was the most meticulous with regards to his appearance, and the most passionate about reading and girls alike. They called Tariq “the Befuddled” because he would always show childlike amazement upon encountering any new thing or idea, no matter how banal, and he enthusiastically embraced any idea or ideology, even if he forgot that enthusiasm the next day. It was no surprise, therefore, that contradictory inclinations roiled within him until in the end he became devoutly religious. It was Abdullah who gave him that epithet, always calling attention to Tariq’s passionate reactions. “Take it easy!” he would say. “What’s wrong with you, always so befuddled like a dimwit?”

  For his own part, it was Tariq who gave the name “Kafka” to Abdullah in the days when he was amazed to discover Franz Kafka and burned through everything written by and about him. That was because Abdullah was typically attuned to the blackest side of any idea or situation, and even when he laughed, a deep and firmly rooted sadness appeared in his eyes. There is no question that uncertainty about his real parents played a part in that. And if Tariq had kept reading foreign authors his whole life instead of being diverted to the religious books his father had left to him, he would have named him Abdullah Beckett, given that Abdullah’s face started to resemble the fiercest photographs of Samuel Beckett in all his creased dejection. Sharp wrinkles covered him until he resembled the crumpled skin of a flayed animal, or the ground when the water has receded, and it dries and cracks. But Abdullah liked the nickname “Kafka” very much, especially after Tariq told him about this literary man’s melancholy and his obscure relationship with his father, and Abdullah took the name with him throughout life.

  As for Ibrahim, who had the strongest body of the three and was the kindest and calmest, they called him “Ibrahim Qisma,” “Ibrahim the Fated,” because he accepted every report and every accident with an astonishing equanimity, always repeating afterward, “Everything is fate and decree,” or simply, “It’s my fate.” In the same way, for the sake of variety, they gave him the nickname “Abu Qisma,” or “the father of fate.” And he actually did give his daughter this name later on. If he had fathered a boy instead of his daughter, Qisma, it wouldn’t have been out of the question to choose a related masculine word, “Naseeb,” meaning “decree,” as Ibrahim himself explained one bantering evening, happy in the presence of his two closest friends as they reminisced. It was Ibrahim’s fate to be his parents’ firstborn son and the oldest brother to a crowd of siblings, a fact that demanded sacrifices that would redirect the course of his entire life.

  Their fathers had been friends too, even if their friendship had involved an element of collusion and an acceptance of the need to coexist, however possible, in a small village. Hajji Zahir, father of Tariq the Befuddled, was remarkably intelligent and clever, always smiling, and the only blond-haired man who lived there. Stout around the middle, his belly and his beard both shook whenever he laughed. He had studied at a Qur’an school in Mosul and afterward returned to become the teacher in their school and the mosque imam. He liked food, women, and jokes.

  Zahir married three times. Tariq was the son of his second wife, whom Zahir had met during a visit to a neighboring village to attend a wedding that ended before it began when the groom was killed by the revolver of the bride’s cousin, who had wanted her for himself. Zahir came through that bloody night the clear winner, for the cousin, after killing the groom, put the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. Thus, before the consummation of the marriage, the bride became a widow on her wedding night.

  The parents clamored around the bride, and the gathered assembly erupted in turmoil amid overpowering perfume and dinner tables piled high with meat, rice, and stew. The bride clawed her fingernails into her face as she lamented her ill fortune. Her father was about to kill his brother, the father of the murderous cousin, while the father of the murdered groom was about to kill the dead murderer’s brother-in-law. Bloody intentions mixed with the blood already shed in the marriage courtyard until the people imagined they would soon be up to their knees in it.

  No one knows how Zahir magically calmed the opposing sides and dissolved the strife with quick handshakes mediated by Qur’anic verses, sayings of the Prophet, and decrees of the imams, which pacified the raging souls and satisfied everyone. It may have been that all of them, deep down, hoped to arrive at any solution that would prevent them from being swept along by their rage to uncertain ends, in which they too were either killer, killed, or fugitive. Zahir convinced them that the solution lay in the sister of the murderous cousin paying the blood debt by marrying the brother of the murdered groom. As for the bride, who was widowed, and whom it was likely no one would ever marry again on account of her being an ill-fated omen of calamity, Zahir declared, “I will marry her.”

  So on that night, Zahir returned from his visit to that village with a bride of his
own, having been invited to her wedding. He married her and brought her home, still in her gold necklaces and perfumed wedding gown—even if her face was scratched and the dress was stained with drops of her blood. And that same night, Zahir was able to make her forget everything that had happened, such that she awoke the next morning happy and smiling. He employed an abundant supply of caresses and kept her laughing with witticisms and amusing stories that sprang from his expertise in the comings and goings of men—and even more, those of women. And she bore him sons and daughters, including Tariq the Befuddled and his sister Sameeha.

  Zahir loved feasts. He loved being alive, and in all things he lived a charmed life. The only exception was his excruciating death, after he and his friend the mayor were struck down by a strange disease and suffered horrible pain for an entire year. They watched festering ulcers cover their bodies as the illness peeled away their skin and ate their flesh down to the bone. They died on the same day, disintegrating in their putrid sickbeds.

  Tariq resembled his father in many ways, but according to the testimony of everyone from his father’s generation, Tariq had the kinder heart. He studied at the same school as his father, after it had been changed to an institute of Islamic law. His father, Zahir, was one of only four people who knew the identity of Abdullah Kafka’s real parents.

  As for Suhayl, the father of Ibrahim Qisma, he seemed to come straight out of one of the tales of the ancestors: slender, short, strong—or “strong-boned,” as they put it—missing his nose, always smiling, playing, or cracking a joke, with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue, passionate about smoking. He preferred the cigarettes he rolled himself with such remarkable speed that no one could beat him in a cigarette-rolling contest. After a challenge and an entire night dedicated to this activity, Suhayl reached the point where he was able to roll seventeen in a single minute. He never failed to offer his cigarettes to anyone who sat and talked with him, even if that person didn’t smoke. When they were younger, Zahir had given him a silver cigarette box, but Suhayl seldom used it. He had no need for it as long as he could roll a cigarette in the same time it took to remove the box from his pocket, open it, and take one out.