Although cigarettes were Suhayl’s greatest pleasure, he had other pleasures and other abilities that the women would whisper about. Some of the reports originated with Suhayl’s blind wife, who used to think that all men had what hers had, a member as long as her forearm. She would have gone on thinking that had one of the women not surprised her with an amazed groan, first out of envy, then out of amusement, and commented, “So that’s what made you blind, Umm Ibrahim!”
The woman said it as a joke, obviously, for Umm Ibrahim had been blind since birth. It was perhaps precisely because of her blindness that Suhayl the Damascene had married her, since no woman with the power of sight would ever have consented to marry him, given his small stature and a noseless face with its two yawning holes. The rest of the nose had been eaten away, leaving behind mere traces like the foundations of a collapsed mud house. The sight of smoke coming out of those holes was extremely amusing, and if the village hadn’t gotten used to this sight, they would have split their sides and died laughing. Likewise, the story Zahir invented for Suhayl had a sobering effect, transforming this strange nose from something ugly into a source of pride, a badge of honor and bravery reminding everyone of Suhayl’s participation in the War of Palestine in 1948.
He and Zahir had been young men, part of the Iraqi armed forces who passed through Damascus and crossed the south of Lebanon to Palestine. They were traveling together in the same army unit and standing in the same spot when an artillery shell exploded behind them. Zahir wet his pants, and Suhayl fell down from laughing at him so hard. Meanwhile, in his violent fear, Zahir lay flat on his stomach and couldn’t stop trembling and crying hysterically. This made the Turkish commanding officer pour upon him the harshest epithets of abuse and contempt before relegating him to the rear.
Ten days later, a boil appeared on Suhayl’s nose. It grew quite large and began to fester on account of the filthy conditions, the infrequency of washing, and the absence of any medical attention, which, even if it were readily available, would have been dedicated to the wounded and not to treating the boil of a midget soldier who was no larger than his boil, as one of the male nurses put it. It itched, so Suhayl kept scratching it, and both skin and soft flesh peeled away under his fingers. In the end, the nose had festered so much that when they got back to Damascus, the medics there were unable to do much besides amputate the dangling remnants and disinfect the nose socket to prevent the mangy inflammation from eating away the rest of his face.
Zahir kept Suhayl company in the hospital through all this. Afterward, in the markets, Zahir would gaze, sighing, at every local Levantine woman who passed by, while Suhayl wrapped his face up to his eyes, embarrassed about his calamity and mourning his lost nose. Zahir made fun of him in the café when he found him lifting the veil to insert his glass of tea to drink. “With that face veil,” he said, “the people will think you are a woman. They’ll think you’re my wife!”
Suhayl was furious and dragged Zahir by the collar out of the café and into a deserted side alley, swearing he would kill him if he didn’t stop making jokes and laughing. Zahir reminded him that it was Suhayl who laughed at him when he wet his pants and was humiliated by the officer in front of everyone, mocked as a weakling, more cowardly than a woman. “Maybe God cut off your nose as a punishment for making fun of me at the lowest point in my entire life.”
They both fell silent until they calmed down and went back inside the café, where they finished sipping their tea side by side without a word. Then they made their way back to the camp.
They had no choice but to agree on what they would say when they returned to their village. Zahir was the more eager about this, for a man wetting his pants out of cowardice was more humiliating than losing one’s nose to a boil amid army camp conditions. So he racked his brain on the desert road heading home until the solution crystallized in his mind. As they stopped to camp for the second night, he pulled Suhayl aside under the shade of a solitary tree. Without even noticing what type of tree it was, he said, “Listen, Suhayl. We have to make a solemn and eternal covenant between men that each of us will protect the other and take his friend’s secret with him to the grave.”
Suhayl nearly made a biting comment at the mention of the word “men” in Zahir’s statement, connecting it to his pants-wetting when the shell exploded. He thought it best to overlook that and asked, “How?”
“We’ll tell the villagers that your bravery was the main reason Damascus was saved from falling into the hands of the enemy.”
These words knocked Suhayl back a step in surprise. “What!? What is this nonsense? Listen, Zahir,” Suhayl continued after a pause. “This is the second and final time I will warn you not to mock me. And if you do, I swear to God Almighty I’ll slit your throat and leave your corpse to rot in the desert.”
In other circumstances, Zahir might have commented on the word “rot,” making reference to the decay of Suhayl’s nose. But as it was, he was eager to calm Suhayl down and make him understand what he was thinking. “Oh no, Suhayl! Just a minute, brother. I’m being serious, believe me!”
“How so?”
“We’ll tell them that the officer chose you on account of your bravery and your small, light body, which perhaps wouldn’t set off the landmines. He sent you on a reconnaissance mission at night to spy on the enemy’s front lines. You performed the mission expertly by slipping through and listening in just as a Syrian spy was explaining to the Israeli general that, by following secret and scarcely defended paths, he would be able to cross over to Damascus with minimal losses and surprise the Arab armies from behind. And because you couldn’t bear this spy’s treachery, you lost control of yourself and opened fire, killing him. As you were making your escape, they sent a volley of gunfire after you, and one of the bullets carried away your nose.”
“Hmm, no. No. Let’s leave out the story about killing the spy and find something else.”
“Fine. We can say that their guards discovered you. You fought them hand to hand, blades flashing in the dark, and one of their bayonets sliced off your nose. But you were able to escape and get back, making them realize that sneaking up on Damascus was no longer possible because the Arabs would reinforce the paths.”
“No . . . no! Who would believe a story like that? And how in good conscience could we claim for ourselves a fake heroism after we’ve seen with our own eyes men fighting like lions and becoming martyrs through the real thing? What’s more, surely the people will know the truth from the radio reports.”
“Listen to me—what matters as far as we are concerned is that they are simple villagers. I’m certain that they’ll believe the story. Leave it all to me. You’ll see. What’s more, we’ll tell them that the Syrians called you ‘the Damascene’ as a way of showing you gratitude and honor, bestowing upon you the name of the city that was saved thanks to you.”
“Do you really think that would pull the wool over their eyes?”
“Of course! Trust me—you’ll see. Then, if someone asks us why they didn’t hear anything like this on the radio, we’ll tell them that delicate political matters and military secrets like these are not announced publicly. And that’s not all! Indeed, we’ll also say that the governor of Damascus asked to meet you and threw a magnificent party in your honor. He offered you any house in Damascus you wanted to live in, granted you Syrian citizenship, and promised whichever girl you desired to be your wife. But you humbly refused all that, saying you were just doing your duty. You said you’d be content to receive the title ‘the Damascene’ as a memento of the honor, and that you preferred to live in your own village among its people, who are your people.”
“Oh, you devil! Where do you come up with all these ghastly ideas?! Well, yes, okay. But let’s drop this business about the house and the wife.”
“No, Suhayl! Adding that will heighten your position in the eyes of the villagers—especially the women—when they know that you preferred a mud house among them to a palace in Damascus, and that you p
referred to take a wife from among the daughters of the village rather than the most gorgeous beauty of the Levant. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about! Trust me, brother.”
“And what will we say about you?”
“About me we’ll say—and of course, the lion’s share of this is on you—that I would ignite the zeal of the soldiers with my orations. I was the first to shout ‘Allahu akbar’ at the beginning of each attack, and I would lead the charge, waving the Iraqi flag, or the Palestinian one. What do you think?”
“No! No, let’s leave out this business of the flag and be content with the rest.”
“Fine. We’re agreed?”
“Yes, agreed.”
They shook hands and embraced, but that wasn’t enough for Zahir, who said, “Come, let’s swear on the Qur’an to confirm what we’ve promised each other.”
“But we have no Qur’an!”
Zahir took a piece of paper and a pen out of his pocket and wrote the short sura about God’s oneness—only four verses long—three times. He said, “The prophet said this sura is equal to a third of the Qur’an. So repeating it three times is equal to the whole thing. Put your hand on it and swear.”
So Suhayl put his hand on the paper and took the oath, followed by Zahir. They spent the rest of the journey home and their three days in the camp in Mosul reviewing and modifying the details, weaving them together, memorizing them, and practicing their recitation until it all became a real part of their memories and they almost believed the story themselves.
CHAPTER 3
Ibrahim and His Qisma
Qisma wavered a long time: one step forward, two steps back. But in the end, she decided to go to the house of Abdullah Kafka. He was the only one who could help her carry out her intention of searching for her father’s body. He was her father’s closest friend, and to him alone had Ibrahim revealed the secret of those days when everything was crashing down around them. She remembered what her father said to her one time: “Tariq and Abdullah are my closest friends, but I love Abdullah more.” Abdullah also had no family or work to hold him back, and he wasn’t afraid of anything, not even of death itself.
In these ways, Qisma shored up her conviction that the decision to approach him was sound, despite the doubts and rumors, followed by scandal, that would result if a young widow were seen entering the house of an unmarried man in the farthest corner of the village. But she hadn’t wanted to broach the issue with him in front of the villagers, the very people who had dragged her away on the burial day and rebuked her, together with fat Amira. And given that Abdullah sat at the café most of the time, from when it first opened in the morning until it closed after midnight, she had no choice but to seek him out at dawn. It was not easy for her to make such a risky decision. But, in any case, it was not the first of its kind in her life.
She passed bitter nights of broken sleep, when hot tears of sorrow for her father alternated with racing thoughts of what she wanted to do. Then she made up her mind to proceed. She wasn’t sure why she carried her baby with her, still sound asleep. He stirred uneasily but didn’t wake up as she pressed his head into her shoulder as though tucking in a corner of her shawl. Perhaps it occurred to her that bringing him would dispel doubts should someone happen to see her, or that she could somehow protect herself with him. Or maybe she thought Abdullah would feel more sympathetic when he saw the little sleeper, even though she knew his wrath at the name of the baby. Her husband, a native of Baghdad, had wanted his son to bear the name of the President out of admiration for him. At the same time, the name was a type of insurance against any doubts regarding his own loyalty to the Leader. Or maybe he chose the name as a way to ingratiate himself with his superiors, a method adopted by many other strivers. For what else could he do, being an officer who truly loved his military identity and was sincerely devoted to his superiors, from the generals to the government officials? He admired the President, with whom, about whom, and for whom he dreamed, fantasizing that he himself would one day become president, with all that power in his hands.
Would Abdullah agree to go with her to the burning city of Baghdad to search for one corpse amid thousands, when he was the one who hadn’t stirred from his seat in the café to attend the burial? Would he tell her what she wanted to know—more about her father—when he was the one who remained silent nearly all the time? She kept returning to these questions as she tossed and turned in bed, recalling everything she could about her father and suffering pangs of guilt for having fought with him and abandoned him for many years even though she was his only daughter.
At the same time, she was impelled by the challenge to prove to everyone that a daughter too is worthy of carrying her father’s name and can defend his memory; that it is not only the male child who bears the father’s name and continues his line, as those people thought who said, “He who fathers only daughters is no father at all!”
She realized now, more than ever before, the extent to which her father Ibrahim had suffered on behalf of his parents and his siblings. And also for her and because of her, especially now that she was a mother and a widow, like him, who, as a father and a widower, had refused to marry again after the passing of her mother, both to spare her a stepmother who would harass her—and for the sake of the secret.
Ibrahim had wanted to talk with her about everything, but her young suitor had swept her away. And her desire for a different life, to be like the others, and her egotistical preoccupation with herself and nothing more, had prevented what she heard from being preserved in memory. Intentionally or not, she had avoided hearing the details he told her about his life. She hadn’t wanted her memory to serve as a new storehouse for the contents of his—she wished to have no memory at all. During the years of living, studying, and getting married in Baghdad, she had wished to expunge every recollection of childhood and bury the truth that her parents were poor, simple villagers.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim’s sole consolation was telling things. Specifically to her, for she was his only daughter, the extension of his own memories and the memory of him. Otherwise, all that he was would dissolve and vanish, and nothing frightens a man more than that. He would eagerly seize every opportunity to tell her stories. Sometimes he would repeat the same ones and go into detail, occasionally even crying or laughing as though he were reliving that which he related.
This earnest desire, visible in his eyes, had forcibly left a part of his memory within hers, even though it was in the form of scattered pictures. Anointed by a sense of regret, she began trying, after his death, to gather these stories, to recall them, to repeat them to herself and to hear them in her own memory this time. She realized there were many holes in her father’s biography, many gaps in her knowledge of him, which she needed to fill with the help of others if it were to be complete, or at least as complete as it could be.
And deep down, she decided to tell her son too, when he got older, about his grandfather. She now saw him as a hero, even if heroism was no longer esteemed in a country where heroes and traitors, humanity and savagery, sacrifice and exploitation were intertwined, and everything mixed together amid battle smoke, chaos, blood, and destruction. True heroism lay hidden in self-denial, and that was primarily what her father Ibrahim had practiced throughout his life with a remarkable patience and submission. She had found those qualities so detestable that she searched for the exact opposite in her husband. But now, as a widowed mother in her mid-twenties who had returned to the village, she began to see things in a different light. “With all its blows,” she said to her neighbor Amira, “life teaches a person to understand better the meaning of life.”
As soon as Ibrahim had finished primary school his father put a stop to his education and the dreams Ibrahim held for it. Ibrahim never forgot that morning, when he hadn’t yet reached the age of fifteen. After the diplomas were awarded in the school courtyard amid the clapping of some students and the crying of others, Ibrahim embraced his friends Tariq and Abdullah, overjoyed at their r
esults.
Then Ibrahim took off, running home to show his diploma to his father. Or rather, to share the good news of his success, as his father couldn’t read or write. As usual, he would stare at the piece of paper, uncomprehending, looking for red lines under numbers that he would be told were the official grades. Then he would point a finger at his name and say, “This is my name . . . isn’t it?” He knew by heart the shape of his written name from the days of military service when he had recognized it as a drawing and wrote it as a drawing, without understanding the letters or knowing how to pronounce them.
Ibrahim’s father said to him, “Congratulations, my son.” He handed back the diploma and said, “Sit. Well, you have become a man, and we must talk together like men.”
Ibrahim sat down in front of his father, confused at his tone, in which he sensed a blend of reverence and earnest affection that he had never before observed in him.
His father cleared his throat and lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he’d just finished, exhaling its smoke up through his nostril holes as he said, “Listen, Ibrahim. You’ve now learned to read and write, and that’s enough. So it’s time to leave school and start working. I need you, for as you know, the burdens of providing for the family weigh heavily upon my shoulders, out there on my own, and you are the eldest of your brothers. You have to help me. Sowing the field and tending the livestock is more than my energy allows, so I need you with me. At the same time, we also need to think about getting you married next season, or the one after. Just like every man, I too want to see my grandchildren before I die.”
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