“Where am I?” he asked.
She said, “You’re home, my son. You are in Zubair. Praise be to God for your deliverance!”
“And Ahmad?”
“He is coming now.”
“I’d like some water.”
“Just a little since you’re wounded.” She took a nearby container, dipped her fingers, and wet his lips, letting a few drops drip from her fingertips into his mouth as though he were a sparrow. Then she wiped his face with her wet hand.
The cold of the water invigorated him. From the corners of his eyes, tears ran down either side. He said, “What happened, ma’am?”
“This is war, my child. This is the madness and evil of humanity. The catastrophe continues, and we have no idea when or how it will end.”
As she was saying this, a young man in his mid-twenties entered, his head draped with a keffiyeh. His body looked strong and vigorous. He said, “Well, Mother, how’s it going?”
She moved aside from where she had been sitting, allowing him to look down at Ibrahim’s face. “This is my son, Ahmad, who saved you.”
Reaching up to shake his hand, Ibrahim said, “Thank you, brother. For a moment back there, I thought you were angels.”
The mother remarked, “They certainly are angels, true friends indeed, those who save the wounded when everyone else is focused on saving himself.”
“And my friend Ahmad?” Ibrahim asked. “I saw him fall close by me. He may have been wounded in the stomach.”
“I don’t know, brother. There were only three of us, on donkeys. We saved perhaps nine or ten. Then we urged two good men who were staying in the hospital to go out to the road and save more. It was a huge risk to take a car out there.”
Ibrahim began describing his friend Ahmad and where he fell in case the other Ahmad would remember anything about him. But the young man couldn’t recall any specific details—the ground had been so covered with corpses it was hard to spot the living among them: “We were watching for movement, breathing, things like that. As for you,” he added, “I had passed you by, but I heard someone behind me calling out ‘Ahmad, Ahmad’ in a weak voice that gave me goose pimples. I thought it was someone who knew me, someone I knew. So I came over and picked you up. You were calling out with your eyes closed.”
Ahmad smiled and went on. “I thought you were calling me. Who knows? It was God’s will. You truly were calling me. When I picked you up, I only found light wounds on your body from small pieces of shrapnel, but your right foot was just dangling, barely connected to the leg by a strip of skin. So I cut it off and bandaged the stump with my shirt. Then I took you to the hospital.”
That was when Ibrahim realized he had lost his foot, and that the horrendous pain he thought had been the explosion of a landmine underneath him was a shell that had crushed his bone. The young man went on talking in order to comfort him.
“You may have been the luckiest of the wounded. Many had fatal injuries, and there were others who begged us to kill them to put an end to their suffering. Of course we didn’t do that, but you saw the piles of dead men yourself. All of us who saw it—no matter how badly hurt—we all know how lucky we were.”
Ibrahim said, “How long have I been here?”
“About two days. One in the hospital and another here.”
“Is there some way that I could check on my friend Ahmad? Could I call the hospital or his family?”
The young man smiled bitterly. “What are you saying, brother? Which hospital are you talking about? There’s nothing left besides the name. Just about everyone there fled, and people have stolen the beds, the chairs, and the equipment, everything. Nothing remains, apart from a few doctors and nurses who preserve what’s left of conscience and mercy, carrying out their moral duty as far as they are able. Meanwhile, the wounded lie on the floors in the rooms and hallways, and the tiles are covered in blood. In any case, all the telephone lines have been cut.”
Ahmad began describing for Ibrahim the chaotic situation: “They’re still bombing everything—military camps, bridges, communication stations and towers, power plants, water treatment facilities, government buildings, police stations, businesses, houses—everything, just everything. The prisons have been opened and the inmates set free. They’ve taken up the weapons of the police, as well as the guns left behind by the army. Killing, chaos, and looting are rampant. The banks were robbed. Museums too, and universities, schools, hospitals, all government agencies and offices, and even the schools. Many of the buildings were set on fire. Some of the bombs hit the markets. You can’t imagine it! Corpses fill the streets.
“There has been a determined uprising against the government everywhere. They say it was sparked suddenly when people saw a soldier returning from the disaster in Kuwait who was brave enough to piss on a big picture of the President in one of the city squares. Then he riddled it with bullets. The regime has collapsed entirely in the south, and there are reports that it has fallen in the north as well. They say the tyrant and his entourage are packing suitcases with everything they’ve stolen and are getting ready to flee. They’re killing government employees, policemen, and soldiers according to their religious and ethnic identities. In the square in the city center, I saw a group strip some women naked, douse them with gasoline, and set them on fire. You don’t know who is killing who, or why. The cities have been transformed into labyrinths of savage ghosts.”
“But why do they continue the bombing? Didn’t Iraq announce an unconditional surrender and retreat?”
“Yes, but foreign forces are still entering Iraq and destroying everything. The worst of it is that the people, our countrymen, are taking advantage of this destruction. Some of them are like wild beasts set free from their cages.”
Ibrahim tried to picture the scope of the devastation, even though in reality it was far greater than he could imagine. “How awful!” he murmured. “What are you saying, brother? This means the country is finished.”
“A tragedy,” the young man replied with fervor, choosing his words deliberately. “But take comfort! The people are suffering, but they will never submit. These are the birth pangs of revolution.”
“Revolution!”
“Yes. But unfortunately it lacks direction. The uprising by the common people and the truly oppressed was lost amid the havoc wreaked by infiltrators. With my own two eyes, I saw armed foreigners in the streets. They were with Iraqis jabbering away in some foreign language. As you know, Iraq didn’t leave any significant forces to secure the rest of its borders, and at a few places on the border with Iran, as soon as the guards retreated or were killed, well . . .”
Ibrahim shuddered at hearing the mention of Iran, as though in a single moment that entire long war he had experienced was replayed in his mind.
Ahmad noticed the tension distorting Ibrahim’s face. “I’m sorry, brother,” he said. After a pause: “I saw corpses being eaten by dogs in the markets.”
“I too saw dogs eating bodies. It’s as though the age of dogs has arrived.”
Ahmad’s mother entered, carrying a crutch that she offered to Ibrahim, saying, “This crutch belonged to Ahmad’s father, may he rest in peace. It’s for you.”
“Of course, you’ll just use it in the beginning,” Ahmad said. “Later on, they’ll make a new foot for you. Medicine is advanced these days, and that sort of thing is easily done. The wars have left behind so many amputees that Iraqi doctors have become experts at fashioning new limbs. I heard somewhere that the number of handicapped people in Iraq has exceeded a million.”
Ahmad would sometimes be gone for the whole day and come back only as evening fell. If he stayed out into the night, his mother would become anxious and start pacing back and forth. She relieved her fear by talking about him to Ibrahim, just as he told her about Qisma. She told him how she had tried to convince Ahmad to get married. He refused. Books and university friends had won him over. “He has married the cause,” she said.
Later on, when Ibrahim a
sked Ahmad about what she had meant, he replied, “The cause of Iraq.”
“Don’t you see how everyone stakes his marriage claim upon her?”
“You said it yourself, ‘everyone stakes his claim.’ But I’m not an opportunist or a plunderer. I’m a native son of the country—we’re the real thing.”
For more than two weeks, Ibrahim would learn from Ahmad what was happening in the outside world since from his bed he couldn’t hear anything besides the rattle of bullets and continuous explosions. The fighting was so frequent that it became the natural state of affairs, and it felt strange whenever it stopped. People would wonder about the reason for the silence and ask each other what just happened.
As for the official news, he heard it on a small radio that Ahmad provided to keep him company, but the broadcasts would make him dizzy with their contradictions. On top of that, they spoke about leaders and politicians more than about what was happening on the ground around him and how the people were faring. So he had to rely on Ahmad for information.
“Some people call it a revolution, but the government says it’s mob violence,” Ibrahim once began. “What do you say, Ahmad?”
“It is a genuine uprising of the downtrodden, and I’m playing my part. But unfortunately, various opportunists are diverting it from its course and corrupting it. Many people, Arabs and non-Arabs, are vying to control the movement. The Americans have withdrawn from the south, abandoning to their fate all the people who rose up. By retreating just when the government was about to fall for the final time, the Americans gave a green light to the regime to crush the people, and now they’ve gathered up what remains of the army and the Republican Guard to launch devastating raids against all the cities and villages that revolted. They’re bombing schools, houses, mosques, and mausoleums, killing without mercy. The bodies in the streets outnumber those buried in the communal graves. Many people have been separated from their families. Some sought refuge with the American forces in order to be taken with them. Some families fled across the borders to neighboring countries, and others were forced by the regime into exile or placed in isolated desert camps. The regime and the Americans—they’re no different in what they do to the people!”
When Ibrahim decided to travel back to his family, Ahmad and his mother tried to dissuade him due to the ongoing chaos and the dangers of the road. But Ibrahim said he was better now: the stump where his foot had been was healed, and he could walk with the help of the crutch. Moreover, his family was no doubt sick with worry, and there was no way to let them know how he was doing since the telephone lines were still down. In any case, even if they were repaired, there were no telephones in his village.
Ibrahim wanted them to give him their address and telephone number so he could visit them in the future and thank them properly for saving his life. Ahmad refused, saying that he hadn’t done it for the sake of recompense. But when Ahmad was away, Ibrahim kept asking the mother until she repeated the address and telephone number enough times that Ibrahim learned them by heart, even though he was terrible at memorizing numbers. He couldn’t remember any apart from the year he was born, 1959, and, even then, he didn’t know the exact month or day. The only other numbers he had memorized were Abdullah Kafka’s Red Cross ID, the address of his friend Ahmad al-Najafi, and this new one.
Ahmad and Ibrahim set off for Baghdad in the car of some trustworthy friends who were heading there to search for one of their brothers, about whom they had had no word since the beginning of the war. Ahmad told Ibrahim, “Once we get to Baghdad, it’s up to you to work out your own way from there.”
Ahmad gave Ibrahim some of his own civilian clothes and a little bit of money. Meanwhile, the mother gave him a bag containing three plastic containers filled with food she had cooked, some pita bread, and a bottle of water, saying, “So that you’ll have some provisions on the road. Greet your family and kiss your daughter, Qisma, for me.”
On the road, Ibrahim stared out the windows on both sides, noticing how the scenery had changed around him: the land, gardens, and houses he had come to know through all his military travels appeared emptier and darker, older and sadder. He was informed that black rain poured from the sky because the clouds were weighed down by smoke from Kuwaiti oil wells, which the Iraqi forces had set alight before retreating. There was also smoke from the fires around Baghdad and other large cities in a vain attempt to impede the vision of the warplanes making raids.
The military checkpoints scattered along the length of the highway would wave them through without demanding any papers or identification when Ibrahim lifted up his leg, amputated at the foot. As they passed near Najaf, he urged his companions to make a detour for a few minutes to the house of his friend Ahmad. But they refused: “There’s no time, and traveling in the cities is very dangerous now.”
He didn’t press them, for deep down, he wasn’t really sure he wanted to make the visit, nor was he convinced it would do any good. What would he tell them? That he and Ahmad were together for months and all through the retreat, but then he just lost track of him? Would he say that Ahmad was injured or dead? And if he was injured, why hadn’t Ibrahim tried to save him? Why had he abandoned him? How? At the very least, he should have confirmed that Ahmad was dead or alive, or determined the spot where he fell.
The situation kept tormenting Ibrahim, especially since he couldn’t forget the pain felt by Zaynab, Tariq, and everyone who loved Abdullah Kafka when he brought them the news that Abdullah was missing. What does that word mean anyway? “Missing.” He would never forget Zaynab’s face as her hot tears fell. It was so hard that he wished in that moment he could have placed Abdullah’s body in her hands. That way, she would see him and cry, and her heart would know for certain he had died. But for Ibrahim, together with the paper in his hand, to tell her Abdullah was “missing” was a worse torture, insofar as it cruelly suspended her between hope and despair on a thread that was neither reinforced nor cut. Every moment of waiting was a slow torture, and all her thoughts scattered into confused absentmindedness.
Ibrahim didn’t want to experience the same thing a second time with the family of Ahmad al-Najafi. He didn’t want to shirk his duty, of course, but he just couldn’t endure the encounter, and feelings of guilt were tearing him up inside. He had a strong sense of his own inadequacy and failure, a disappointment in himself that he had never before experienced. In those moments when the weight of the rebuke grew heavy on his soul, it was enough to make him wish he had died with Ahmad.
In Baghdad, they dropped him off at the Alawite Garage bus station, where they found some cars heading north. Ibrahim shared out the remaining food and thanked them warmly, expressing his hope that they would succeed in finding their brother.
On the road, his new travel companions spoke about what had happened in their region: “The Kurds rose up too, as you know, and all the government’s control over them crumbled. We came here looking for our relatives. Some of us fled Baghdad to relatives in the countryside because only the small, secluded villages are safe now. They don’t have anything that would tempt the government to steal, and no power to suppress. It’s true that some people attacked the schools and clinics, and stole chairs, tables, and medical equipment, but the thieves returned those things the next day seeing as they didn’t benefit from them at all. In addition, everyone knows everyone else in the villages, so the people’s disgust at what they had done outweighed the value of the stolen goods.”
They told Ibrahim that all the villagers who were able, both soldiers and officers, had fled and returned home. They listed names of people he knew so he would believe them. Otherwise, who could ever have imagined an officer running away when the penalty just for being absent or late in reporting for duty was death? What would it be for desertion?
“Things have spiraled out of control, brother, and nothing is more common than death. A man’s death these days means as much as pissing in the sea. There’s nothing to be gained! That man loses himself, and his family p
ays the price. So the real hero now is he who knows how to preserve his own life and limb until the storm has passed.”
CHAPTER 7
Sick and Besieged
Ibrahim made it home. He asked about his brother Wadih, the other soldier in the family, and they informed him that they didn’t know anything, just that his unit had been in Kuwait. Besides Wadih, there were many young men from the village about whom there was no news.
“Do you know anything?” they asked.
“No.”
His brother’s young wife held him and cried before going to sit in the far corner to cry some more. Ibrahim’s father embraced him from his seat. Weakened by sickness, fear, and old age, he had lost weight, and it was hard for him to stand unaided. Ibrahim smelled his father’s characteristic odor of cigarettes, familiar since childhood. His blind mother began touching the end of his leg and had difficulty imagining him without a foot, a foot she had known and measured with her fingers as it grew. She cried not to find it.
The face of Ibrahim’s wife radiated joy at his return, and were it not for the tears of Wadih’s wife nearby, she would have let out a trill of joy. Meanwhile, his daughter, Qisma, embraced him. Or rather, he embraced her. She pulled away and gave him an odd look, regarding his leg with its missing foot like a dirty walking stick stretched out in front of him. The other siblings wanted to slaughter a ram and hold a feast to celebrate Ibrahim’s return, but their father said, “Put it off for a few days until Wadih returns. Then slaughter a bull and make it a real feast.” Ibrahim agreed with his father on the matter.
After the villagers had finished their congratulations and dispersed, his father remarked with a smile, as they were drinking perhaps their tenth glass of tea, “I lost my nose in one war, and you lost your foot in another. I don’t know which is preferable, losing a nose or a foot. In any case, anything is better than losing one’s life.”
The President's Gardens Page 7