The President's Gardens

by Muhsin al-Ramli

  Ibrahim said nothing, so his father asked, “What do you say?”

  Ibrahim still said nothing. He just inclined his head and gave a little nod as a sign of assent, or rather, a sign of obedience. Then he went off in a very different state from before. Moving slowly and dragging his feet, he left the house, the square, and the village. He went off toward the hillside overlooking Hyena Valley, looking for his friends there, where they usually sat. He found Abdullah alone, trying to bore through a small, snow-white stone, from which he said he would fashion a necklace to give his future beloved. Ibrahim sat beside him without a word. Abdullah felt the weight of his friend’s silence, and he tried to break it by showing him the stone and saying, “I’m trying to file it away a little on this side to make it look like a heart. What do you think?”

  “My father wants me to abandon my studies.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I can’t refuse his wishes.”

  “So it goes.”

  “But I had hoped to keep going until the end. Now you and Tariq will be in school while I’m in the field or with the animals. I don’t like to be separated from you.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll quit school with you.”

  “What! What about your parents?”

  “They won’t refuse anything I ask.”

  When they told Tariq what was going on, he too wanted to leave school to be with them, but his father wouldn’t allow it. This made his subsequent studies merely a formality insofar as he cheated on his exams and skipped lessons to keep the other two company, going out to look for them in the pastures with the cattle or in the fields where they sat on the edge of the irrigation canal to eat watermelon and talk.

  In Tariq’s eyes, as Abdullah and Ibrahim carried their hoes, sickles, and shovels—cigarettes in the corners of their mouths, turbans wrapped around their heads, the edges of their robes tucked into their broad leather belts to reveal powerful legs sinking in the mud—they did what men did, and it all provoked envy in his soul. As a way of compensating and expressing his manhood in the face of their manly appearance, he would talk all the more about women and his adventures with girls. He would sometimes goad them into races to see who could come the fastest. They would hide themselves in the thickets, facing each other in a circle, and then spread their legs and uncover their penises (or their “sparrows,” as they called them) and “One . . . two . . . three!” they would start jerking themselves off until they saw someone’s semen spurting out, and he would be the winner. Usually, Tariq was the fastest, but as he lay in bed he would envy the size of their cocks, Abdullah’s in particular, which was the biggest and blackest on account of his dark skin. Abdullah was also the first to grow pubic hair, beating them to that sign of manhood.

  Of course, these competitions didn’t go on for long. They were growing up, and their friendship changed with their interests and concerns. That is why, when they reminded Tariq about the stories he told of his relationship with the Bedouin girl Fahda—about whose love he used to brag, describing her enormous breasts that moved freely under her robe like two rabbits, or how he would hug her, resting his head on their softness or touching them through the wide neck of her dress and making her groan with eyes closed as soon as his fingers reached her erect nipples—he would confess that she smelled like the sheep and would say, “It’s as though you were embracing a ewe, brother!” And they would laugh.

  As soon as they reached eighteen, Abdullah Kafka and Ibrahim Qisma were called up to perform their compulsory military service. Tariq the Befuddled’s student status exempted him from that duty, and he felt empty and alone in their absence. He sought an escape by filling his time with independent reading that went beyond his textbooks. He sought himself in literature, ideas, and ideologies, wandering from the furthest left to the furthest right: communism, socialism, existentialism, nihilism, surrealism, mysticism, and fundamentalism.

  Meanwhile, Abdullah and Ibrahim were inseparable. Their journey to the Ghazlani army base in Mosul was their first trip to a city. The harsh military training was, in their eyes, just an athletic exercise and a way to get to know new people and places, different foods, and different ways of doing things. As far as they were concerned, it was all a delightful opportunity to explore life far from the eyes of parents and the village and its traditions, which seldom gave way to anything new. They always stood together in the drills, they slept in the same tent, and in the evenings they left the camp to take four-hour strolls through the markets of Nineveh Province.

  After six months of training, they were given the same classification—infantry—and transferred together to a military unit in the south, in Hilla, where they became acquainted with the remaining ruins of Babylon, as well as with new types of fruit, new styles of singing and dancing, and new ways of life. After that, they were transferred to Basra to guard the Umm Qasr port, and they saw the sea for the first time. Their military service carried them from the north to the south and back again to their village during their monthly leaves. It brought them to many cities and villages, and put them up for a night in Baghdad, which they passed in one of the cheap hotels of Martyrs’ Plaza, also known as “the Square.” It made them better acquainted with their homeland than had the maps, pictures, and anthems in their schoolbooks.

  While on leave, they would tell Tariq about what they had seen and learned. He, in turn, told them about what he was reading. He gave them titles to bring for him when they passed by the city bookshops. Likewise, he would recommend something he liked or a page-turner for the road or for nights in camp and their long hours keeping watch. Just as every transfer was a new discovery for Abdullah and Ibrahim, for Tariq every new book was a journey into a different world. Such was the day when he became acquainted with the works of Kafka, which he considered a great discovery. It was at the pinnacle of this craze for everything Kafkaesque that he had given Abdullah his nickname.

  Their monthly leave from duty kept them tied to life in the village. After a year and a half of military service, Ibrahim learned while on leave that his family had chosen a bride for him. The young woman was a relative, the daughter of one of his mother’s paternal cousins, and he didn’t know her well. His mother had suggested her, and his father had confirmed the choice, thinking the blood ties would make the bride obedient to a blind mother-in-law and a good helper when it came to the house chores. Ibrahim, as usual, did not object. He requested marriage leave, which was forty days, and they got married. His parents set aside the biggest and best room in the house.

  Soon afterward, Abdullah’s adoptive father, Salih, passed away from heart failure. Exactly twenty days later, Maryam died out of sorrow for him. Their deaths were a cruel blow, bequeathing Abdullah a rich inheritance of sorrow, depression, and pessimism. At that time, a hatred for fate and its caprices began to grow inside him. He suddenly found himself alone in the house, and he took little pleasure in his trips home—still less once Ibrahim began spending his furloughs with his wife.

  It was here that credit goes to Tariq for making Abdullah a guest in his house. He put him up in his own room, among his family, which is how Abdullah got to know Tariq’s sister, Sameeha. He fell in love with her from the very first glass of tea she served him. They would steal glances at each other, their eyes communicating without their lips saying a thing. The whole affair frightened him at first since she was the sister of Tariq, the friend who trusted him and made him a guest in his home. For that reason, he was determined not to reveal anything to her. Instead, he tried to master his desires and his emotions so that his face wouldn’t betray what raged in his heart.

  Sameeha blushed furiously whenever Abdullah visited during his leave. She took more care in combing her hair, painting her nails, and dressing as elegantly as she could. She moved more energetically, a permanent smile fixed upon her face, often lost in thought. She would wake up early and wait for Tariq and Abdullah to rise so she could make them breakfast herself. She was bolder than Abdullah and more eager t
o see him as often as possible. She sometimes created opportunities to brush his shoulder with her own. This behavior made Abdullah feel awkward and put him in a difficult position morally; it deepened his silence and contributed to his chain-smoking.

  Nevertheless, he took part in everything and felt that he was a member of the family. At night, he and Tariq would converse back and forth until the small hours. Even after Tariq went to sleep, Abdullah would stay up reading his books. Between one page and the next, he would stare through the window at the stars, thinking of Sameeha, whose every breath he would sense as she slept in the next room. He knew the sound of her footfalls as she moved between the living room and the kitchen. Indeed, he could almost smell her perfume, hear the rustle of her dress, feel the beating of her heart, and see how her hair spilled across the pillow.

  When it came time to pick the cotton, he was sure her glances were following him. Sameeha didn’t let any opportunity pass to get close to him and brush their fingers together when they poured their palm-leaf baskets into the burlap sacks. Once, she timed it carefully to match their trips to empty the baskets, and when they were alone, she quickly reached out her hand to squeeze his with a tenderness that pressed his heart and shook him to the core.

  He submitted to her hand while embracing her with his gaze. He looked deeply into her eyes with an expression of pleasure and torment, as though his eyes were two birds about to tumble from their nest in his face and take their first flight—into her face, the open air, the horizon, paradise. The constricted words in his chest nearly made him weep.

  She understood all that. She read it and heard it and loved him all the more. “Me too,” she said to him, without having heard a word.

  He looked around to make sure no one saw them as he stammered in confusion, “And I . . . very, very much . . . but . . .”

  “We will get married.”

  “Ah, yes!” he groaned. “Yes, there’s nothing I want more. But let’s wait a year, until my military service ends. Then I’ll never have to leave you.”

  That is how they declared their love for each other and came to a decision in their very first conversation. After that, his life had meaning. Every moment was filled with daydreams of Sameeha. They didn’t tell anyone about their love but began meeting in secret so he could smell her perfume, feast his eyes on hers, and embrace her slender, supple waist. He was afraid she would break between his arms when he crushed her to him, as though wanting to pull her inside his chest.

  He decided abruptly to return to his own house. He no longer felt his solitude and isolation so long as he was thinking of her. Indeed, he began seeking out this delicious isolation all the more in order to think about her and to savor the details of his few memories with her.

  He gave her the necklace with the white stone that he had pierced and shaped by hand into a heart. Using a heated piece of metal, he had etched the first letter of her name on one side, and on the other, the first letter of his own. She was as delighted with it as if it were a real jewel. “I’ll keep it safe to wear with my white dress on our wedding day,” she said.

  Abdullah said, “For the wedding, I have to give you gold, just like every other bridegroom.”

  She said, “This necklace is more precious to me than gold and will always be my most beautiful gift.”

  He began renovating the house during his monthly leaves, having neglected it entirely following the death of his parents. He repaired the doors, cabinets, and windows that were falling apart. He changed the curtains, rugs, pillows, and cooking utensils. He imagined Sameeha keeping him company in his solitude and filling the place with splendor, picturing how she would sit here, how she would walk or stand there, holding this and touching that. Instead of asking for her hand in marriage while living under her parents’ roof, he thought it better to move back to his house and wait a respectable amount of time before venturing to return and ask for the engagement.

  Every evening since the death of his parents, the mayor’s wife Zaynab would drop by his house when he was there, bringing him pita bread along with cooked meat, rice, soup, and grape leaves. She would help him by sewing pillow corners that had come unstitched or the buttons of his clothes, which she insisted on washing for him. She spoke to him with extraordinary tenderness, calling him “my son.” The extreme sincerity of her tone and the way she watched over him like a mother was such that in his depths he felt it truly was so.

  Everyone knew of this lady’s generosity and goodness. Of all the mayor’s wives, it was she alone who stayed with him, putting up with him and bearing all his children. He had married her young and poor from one of the Kurdish villages, and in her first years she didn’t know a word of Arabic. The mayor would speak to her in Kurdish, a language he knew well on account of his long relationships and business dealings with the Kurds, which he had inherited from his father. Zaynab quickly learned Arabic in the dialect of the village, and just as quickly she became one of them.

  It was no surprise that the mayor’s family took care of those in need, given that he was the richest man in the village. His fields were the largest, his livestock the most numerous, and his business ventures unceasing because he was the one who bought the village’s harvest and sold it in the cities. Several people worked in his service, including dull-witted Isma’il. Isma’il’s parents had been refugees, and the mayor built them a small mud house, which was handed down to Isma’il and his sister after their parents’ deaths. The mayor had built the house next to his own, without a wall in between, and he entrusted Isma’il with the tending of his sheep and goats, as well as the sheep of anyone in the village who was willing to pay Isma’il for that work. The mayor treated the two orphans like his own children, even though he profited more from their labor than he did from his own children, whom he pampered and never burdened with any task. The mayor and his lifelong friend, Tariq’s father, Zahir, were the ones who paid the costs for Isma’il’s dull-witted sister to marry one of the distant villages, as the people phrased it. In doing so, the mayor earned everyone’s respect. Anyone in need sought recourse to him, and in the reception room of his house all the village’s conflicts were resolved.

  Zaynab would shower Abdullah with the most extraordinary tenderness. He always expressed his gratitude and left her the key to his house when he returned to his military service so that she might keep an eye on things in his absence. She used to tell him, “You must get married, my son.” He would respond, “I will, as soon as I finish my military service.” She supported his decision and expressed her readiness to help him with everything he needed, such as a dowry and planning the wedding. She assured him, “Choose whichever girl in the village you want, and I’ll make the engagement happen, no matter who her father may be.”

  He took her hand and thanked her, saying, “This promise I accept, Umm Jalal.”

  What no one expected was that war would break out in 1980. A war that would last eight years and sweep away many dreams and destinies.

  CHAPTER 4

  Ever More War

  Abdullah and Ibrahim were calculating the few days remaining until the end of their military service, counting them up and crossing off each day on a calendar as soon as the sun rose. They spoke about the rapture of freedom they would feel back in the village, the projects they would undertake, and the sons they would father. Each promised to give the other’s name to his firstborn son, laughing as they went on to say, “Only the first name, of course!” meaning Abdullah, and not Abdullah Kafka; and Ibrahim, not Ibrahim the Fated. They sipped tea, legs hanging over the edge of the watchtower guarding Basra harbor as they looked at the distant ships out at sea. They forgot about the weapons strapped to their backs and about their duty to keep a lookout, refreshed by the April breeze, cardamom tea, and their dreams.

  That was the last time they sat together at ease, for the harbor, the camp, and the entire country soon sounded the alarm and burst into tumult. War was declared against Iran, and instead of being released from military servic
e according to schedule on their birthdays, birthdays became a day of conscription for many others—both young and old.

  At that time, they recalled distant, foggy memories from their childhood about what the adults had called “The War of the North,” which had taken place in the mid-sixties when the Kurds rebelled against the government in Baghdad. The elders of the village had asked the Bedouin Jad’an what he had seen of the war in his wanderings, and he related stories filled with pain, injustice, exile, and death. The only thing left in the memories of the village youth from that war was the sight of the first dead person they had seen in their lives. It was the corpse of Sergeant Nawaf stretched out in the courtyard of the mosque. The adults were praying over it. They carried the body on foot to the cemetery and buried it without changing its military uniform, stained with dirt and blood. Then they went home in silence.

  Like everyone else, Abdullah and Ibrahim hoped and expected the war with Iran would end at any moment through the offices of some intermediary. After a few hours, that day or the next, they would be rejoicing at the news on the radio. Later, they began hoping for the war to end within a matter of weeks, then months. Then a year passed, during which their martial destiny brought them to more than one theater of war.

  During this time, Abdullah confessed to Ibrahim his love for Sameeha. Ibrahim was the first and only person Abdullah told about it, fearing he would die without breathing a word of the passion that stormed in his breast. He talked to Ibrahim about his love with delight and anguish, as though he were discovering her, or discovering himself, and he recounted their earlier promise to marry as soon as he was released from military service. “But it’s the war, my friend. It’s the damned war, as you see.”