Then, with a playful turn, Abdullah remarked, “Of course, Tariq, they were unaware of the name you had given me, ‘Kafka.’” Abdullah’s companions smiled at that. Tariq put a hand on his shoulder and then embraced him. Abdullah went on:
“Behnam was the only one who ever called me by that name, for he knew Kafka. He had read his works and read about his life, and he would talk to me about him sometimes, so much that I liked Kafka more through Behnam’s words.”
“They say Iran is a beautiful country.”
“So they say. The views I had of its landscapes truly were beautiful.”
“They say its women are very beautiful.”
“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see any woman, not even a picture of a woman, for nineteen years.”
Abdullah had trouble getting these words out. Ibrahim sensed his distress and said, “Let that go, Tariq. Can’t you leave your jokes out of it, at least when we are talking about such tragic things? Well, what else, Abdullah?”
“Some of us read the Qur’an intensively, conducted the prayers, and called upon God to bring a visit from the Red Cross. And in fact, a delegation came to us. Among its members I remember there was a Swiss doctor and a number of psychologists. The delegation had a private plane, and its pilot was blessed with diplomatic immunity that allowed him to land in any camp he wished. We heard the plane’s descent without any warning. Trills and shouts of joy rang out as prisoners called the good news to one another. The delegation entered the camp, and we received it with the best welcome we could put together, which they were not expecting. There were some among us who spoke English, so we informed the committee what had happened to us. We told them the number and names of those who had been killed—with bullets, with clubs, under torture, or due to illness.
“When the Iranian escorts tried to enter, the head of the delegation—the Swiss officer—asked all of them to leave, and they left! We felt a wonderful moment of freedom, and like children gathered in front of a father who has just returned from a journey, we began vying with each other to recount the details. One of the things they told us was that the Iranians had informed them that this camp was reserved for the mentally ill. We quickly wrote our testimony for the delegation, using the time and paper available. Then we presented them with a video recording that we had filmed with the cooperation of one of the Iranian guards who resented the regime. He was from the province of Khuzestan, and the government had executed his father. He secured a small camera for us, and we used it to film many scenes of torture, and even some shots of solitary confinement. The delegation was astonished. Actually, they had a significant amount of detailed information about our camp, and as soon as they entered they asked about some prisoners by name, including Dr. Behnam, Sami and Hamza Azuz, and Professor Salim al-Wahib. They recorded each of our names and told us to write letters, as brief as possible, to our families and loved ones. That was when I sent you that single letter. The officer heading the delegation said to us, ‘I want to go to the prison they call Death Rock. Where is it located?’ Abu Jamal al-Baghdadi and others who knew gave him the information.
“At the end of the visit, we conveyed to the delegation the punishment we would receive after they left. They only nodded their heads as a sign that they expected that. And in the final moments, some of us told the delegation, crying, ‘Greet our beloved Iraq on our behalf! Kiss every grain of its dirt for us!’
“I didn’t say a thing, and I didn’t kiss the ground or the flag even when we returned, as the others did. I saw through everything, and I thought how strange were the fanatical commitments people feel toward ideas or things that others create to control them, even to the point of dying or killing for its sake. When I look at the flag of any country, I see nothing more than a scrap of cloth devoid of any color or meaning. In Iran, the streets were filled with pictures of their leader. Here too. Both sides claim the truth and the right, and they both try to cram the heads of the unfortunate masses with these ideas—or else they cut them off. How is it that a person is not satisfied with what occupies his own head, such that he strives to take possession of others’?
“There are so many things I wonder about. Where do the pains of torture go after the torture ceases? And what exactly is the stuff of torment and suffering? What does the executioner think about in his quiet hours? What is the meaning of all this pain? Why? What does the killer think when he remembers his victims? How can people put so much effort into all these atrocities just because someone else holds a different opinion?”
“What befell the penitents afterward?”
“Their fates were varied. Some were killed and buried along the front, or in the cemeteries of Qom, Mashhad, or Zahra’s Paradise. After the ceasefire, a number of them went out to integrate into Iranian life. Some went to the countryside to marry village women and find work. They were granted refugee ID cards. Some of them bore children and settled in Iran, abandoning their past for good. Some of them remained deep in the mire of politics, moving about among the ranks of the opposition with a practiced opportunism. Some of them entered Iraq in 1991 after the Iraqi army collapsed in Kuwait. A group of the penitents contacted the UN, using their Red Cross numbers, and they acquired asylum in other countries. There were some who wanted to rid themselves of the heritage of their ‘penitence,’ and they organized a private escape to different countries around the world, where they put forward petitions for asylum as Iraqis. And some of them continue to this day working as organizers, politicians, and military men on behalf of Iran.”
“Are there still prisoners, even now?”
“Yes.”
“Did many return with you?”
“There were nearly three hundred in our group, most of whom were considered missing in action. We were handed over at the Muntheria border crossing. The guards were lined up on both sides, each carrying their country’s flag. The Iraqis clapped and cheered as we made our way with slow, halting steps. Some of our families were there to receive us with tears and trills of joy after two nights waiting out in the open. Some prisoners were seeing their children for the first time. One member of our group had been captured in the third year of the war, two weeks after his honeymoon, and the reception he had from his wife and daughter was deeply moving.
“In order to give a different picture of how they had treated us, the Iranians made a big show in front of the journalists by having some of their officers carry disabled prisoners when handing them over to their Iraqi counterparts. But actually, all of us were suffering from some malady. Some of us had lost our sense of hearing. Others had lost an eye or had gone blind. Some of us had tuberculosis, others cancer, others had scabies, while others had inflamed bowels, and so on. Apart from the two broken ribs, I have a chronic slipped disc in my back.
“The Iraqis gave us a pile of money, fifty thousand dinars, saying that it was a gift from the exalted President. Some of us were overjoyed, thinking we had become rich since—the last we knew—dinars were each worth more than three dollars. We were quickly disappointed when we realized the magnitude of the devastation that had befallen the country and saw that the scales had shifted, so much so that a single dollar now buys more than a thousand dinars. I immediately spent a quarter of what I received on cigarettes.
“The Iranians gave each of us a small prayer mat and a pair of shoes. The shoes are for you, Ibrahim, and the mat is for you, Tariq. For as you know, I don’t accept any gifts.”
“Your safe return to us is the only gift we need,” Ibrahim said. “And your being in better shape than many who came back. Some of them burst into tears merely at being reminded of their years in captivity. Do you remember the crazy man with the beard you asked us about? That was Sabry, son of Hajji Rada. They brought his parents a charred and disfigured body, saying that it was their son. The family buried it and conducted the funeral rites. After a time, one of his brothers married his widow to preserve her and his nephews. Suddenly, after fifteen years, Sabry came back to them. His brother couldn’t
bear the situation and killed himself. As for Sabry, the poor guy, when he learned what had happened, the shock made him lose his mind.”
Tariq said, “A cousin of a friend of mine from Hamam al-Alil was a fighter pilot. His plane was shot down in Iran at the end of 1981. No news about him reached his family, and he was classified as missing in action for a long period. But in 1998, information reached us that he was a prisoner. Imagine, after seventeen years! A year later, he was released to us. The unfortunate man didn’t live much longer. He came down with tuberculosis and died two months after arriving. Some people say they had jabbed him with thallium.”
They went on telling him stories about many prisoners who had returned with the hope of showing him that he came out better than they had, but Abdullah asked them to stop, seeing as he knew and had lived through things yet more cruel and horrible. At that, Tariq said, “Let’s go, then. I told my wife to prepare a special lunch of sand grouse. Do you remember the days we would hunt and grill them out in the desert?”
CHAPTER 11
The Sea Urchin
Abdullah wasn’t able to sleep even though it was his second night in the village. He needed more time to adjust to his new situation. He didn’t sleep the third night either, since every time the pressure bore him down and he nodded off, he saw whips flying at him and would jolt awake, sometimes even leaping to his feet, thinking he had to get out to the morning prisoner count. Or he would feel Behnam’s elbow jabbing him in the ribs.
As soon as he realized he was at home and not in the Cage, he would immediately splash cold water over his face and hair. He would open the windows and doors and start smoking, preferring not to sleep over seeing images from the past years in his dreams. He decided to remain in the house for as long as it took to get used to it. He would find himself dozing off at noon even though the door and windows were open and a bright light shone into the room. So he decided to embrace his ability to sleep during the day and not at night. That is how he started staying up late in the village café until it closed its door after midnight.
On the morning of the third day, someone knocked on the door. Then he heard Ibrahim calling him, and he shouted back, “The door’s open!”
“Yes, I see the door’s open!”
“So come in then!”
When Ibrahim entered, Abdullah asked, “Can I make you tea?”
Ibrahim said, “No. I brought the farmer who will put your land to work. I advised him that half would go to him, and half to you. Does that suit you?”
“Yes, yes, certainly. But enough! You make the arrangements with him as you see fit, and I will agree.”
“He’s an excellent and hardworking young man, of good character. You can put your trust in him entirely. He also needs this work in order to provide for his siblings. He is Anwar, the son of poor Sabry. You know Sabry, the crazy prisoner you saw.”
“Ah, yes, Sabry.” Abdullah was silent for a moment, then added, “Yes, yes, enough! I told you I agree.”
“But don’t you want to see him?”
“There’s no need for that as long as you’ve arranged everything with him.”
“You have to see him, at least so that you’ll know who he is. He may need to ask your opinion on something in the future, or else bring you your share. He’s here.”
“Here?”
“Yes, in the courtyard.”
“Why didn’t he come in with you?”
“He’s shy. You go out to him.”
Abdullah went out and saw a young man in the middle of the courtyard, perhaps eighteen or a little older, tall and thin, with his head down and hands clasped in front of him. Abdullah greeted him. The youth hastened to come a few steps forward and timidly shook Abdullah’s hand, saying, “Hello, uncle!”
Abdullah said, “Welcome! Please come in and drink tea with us. Come in! And there’s no need for you to call me uncle. Call me Abdullah, or address me with ‘O Kafka’ and nothing else.”
The young man came in and sat on the edge of the rug beside Ibrahim. Abdullah offered him a cigarette, but he said, “I don’t smoke.”
Abdullah felt a liking for the young man and sought to discern from his features—though his glances were mostly directed at the floor—the magnitude of his dejection. He went out to prepare the tea, and when he brought it back, he noticed the remarkable harmony between Anwar and Ibrahim, as though Anwar were his son. Indeed, he even sensed a similarity between them. They seemed to understand each other, united by a contented submission to fate.
In this way, his confidence in the youth deepened greatly, and as he offered him a glass of tea, Abdullah said, “Are you satisfied with what Abu Qisma has told you? Regarding your share, I mean?”
He said, “Yes, if you also agree.”
“I agree. And you are completely free in what you do and what you plant. How many siblings do you have?”
“Seven.”
“And you are the eldest?”
“Yes.”
Later on, when the young man had left, Ibrahim said, “Just he and one sister are Sabry’s children. As for the other six, they are from his uncle who married his mother, the uncle who killed himself, poor man.”
Later that day, not long after noon, Abdullah was reclining in the living room alone. He had finished what remained of the cold tea and lit a cigarette. He was waiting for sleep to overtake him, even if just for a little, but thoughts of Sameeha kept him awake. He was still thinking about her just as he had through all the years of captivity, when he never once fell asleep without recalling her face or woke without her being the first thing on his mind.
Abdullah thought about how he hadn’t shared with Ibrahim and Tariq the thing that most occupied him during those long stretches of time. He didn’t explain that for most of the hours he had spent in captivity, he had replayed over and over, without ever growing tired of it, the details of each memory with Sameeha: her smile, her glances, her smell, her voice, the touch of her hand, her embrace, her kiss—which had been the only kiss of his entire life. He didn’t tell them that it was only the memory of her that had kept him alive. After young Anwar had left and Abdullah was alone again with Ibrahim, he wished to ask: Had she come with the others on the night of the homecoming party? Was she here, and I didn’t recognize her, Ibrahim?
Suddenly, he heard someone knocking on the door. He started up to a seated position, swallowed, and said, “Come in!”
After a moment of silence, the same soft knocks were repeated. He said in a louder voice, “Come in! The door’s open.”
But there was another period of silence, and afterward, the same knocks yet again. Abdullah got up. He found a child about ten years old standing there, twisting his fingers together nervously. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Samir. Grandmother says, ‘Come and have lunch with us.’”
“And who is your grandmother?”
“Zaynab.”
Then Abdullah remembered his agreement with her, recalling that this child had been her guide to his house and had sat beside her.
“Now?”
“Yes, now. We have killed a chicken for you, and my mother cooked it with okra and tomatoes.”
“Fine. Wait one moment.”
“And garlic too. My grandmother loves garlic. But I don’t like it.”
Abdullah went inside to adjust his clothes. He washed his face, combed his beard in front of the mirror, and put two packs of cigarettes in his pocket. Then he went out. He began walking beside the boy in streets covered with smooth stones, hearing their crunch under his feet. He looked at the houses on both sides. Only a few of the mud houses remained, and in their place, many concrete ones had been constructed, some on top of the foundations of earlier mud houses, and others beside them, or even butting up against them to form an integrated unit. Of the homes he had known, only a few remained.
The child outpaced him by a few steps sometimes, and for a moment Abdullah wanted to take him by the hand and be guided like Zaynab. How would th
e child’s hand feel? What would it be like to walk hand in hand with him? But he quickly put away that thought and tried to fill the silence with questions to keep the young boy from getting too far ahead.
“You told me you don’t like garlic?”
“I don’t like it except when it’s cooked.”
“Me neither. What is your name?”
“Samir.”
“Is your father at home too?”
“No.”
“Where does he work?”
“In the oil refinery in Baiji.”
Abdullah couldn’t think of any other questions, so he resumed his silence and contented himself with the sound of the crunching stones and with looking around. In the end, they entered a wide-open space that he recognized immediately as the grounds of the mayor’s house. The big eucalyptus tree still stood in the middle. A trellis covered in grapevines circled around it, casting shade on a huge water cistern made of clay. The livestock corral was in the far corner, behind a new plow attached to a big tractor. So, they still had a tractor. Next to the corral was the house of Isma’il the herdsman, just as it had been, one room with mud walls. In the other corner, he recognized the storerooms for crops, where the mayor used to conduct business. He saw the large scales in their familiar place, even more rusty than before. In the center was the balcony of the house, the wide entrance, and the big doors, which had been painted blue—he remembered them being gray. To the side was the door leading to the reception room—what they used to call the divan.
Abdullah saw a number of boys and a woman coming out to receive him. Hajja Zaynab appeared in the door to the divan, leaning on her cane and calling out a loud welcome. She looked like bliss incarnate, and she squeezed his neck tightly, just as she had done on the first night. Zaynab led Abdullah into the divan, which he found more luxurious than he remembered. There were expensive chairs and couches lined up along three of the walls, with magnificent carpets and many pillows spread out in front of them on the floor.
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