As soon as the first American air raids began over Baghdad, specifically around the presidential palaces, everything was thrown into disorder. The work there was neglected, and most of the gardens were turned into military camps. On the hills and in the middle of the forests, they set up artillery, antiaircraft guns, and small rocket platforms. Earthworks were constructed and sandbags piled up. It was all turned into a garden for weapons of every size and type. As Sa’ad had once told him, all the palaces and splendid buildings were constructed over bomb shelters. In some corners of the gardens, trenches had been dug out beforehand, hidden among the plants, flowers, and henna hedges. On both sides of the paths inside the palace grounds and along the roads leading there from the city, they quickly reinforced the military checkpoints with sandbags stacked high to meet the foreign invader. The palaces were transformed into barracks teeming with soldiers and munitions. The air was filled with tension, alarms, and the smell of gunpowder, blood, and smoke.
The civilians working there were given envelopes of money and AK-47s and pistols. They were told, “Take an extended holiday until we send you further orders over the radio. Use these weapons to defend your homes and the government institutions in your neighborhoods. Kill the invaders and the traitors. You are allowed to kill anybody whose devotion to the country you doubt, anyone in whom you sense treachery or reluctance to defend the country.”
Ibrahim returned home. Like everyone else, he bought all the tinned food and beverages he could, and then he locked the doors. Alone in his living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, alone with his television and radio, Ibrahim would occasionally look out the window or go up on the roof to see the smoke rising from all sides of Baghdad. The explosions from missiles and air bombardments, especially in the vicinity of the presidential gardens, never ceased. Day blended into night. The city was transformed into a living hell for days and weeks that seemed to last forever. Finally, in April, he saw American tanks passing through the streets of his neighborhood, in front of his house. He remained secluded, coping day to day with as little cold food, drinks, and candles as possible because the electricity had been cut off. Telephone lines had also been cut, as had the roads in and out of the city. Nothing reached him from the outside world except a radio broadcast with a broken signal and that which he saw with his own eyes from the windows, the roof, and the keyhole in his front door, which he hadn’t opened since hiding himself away.
It continued like this until, one afternoon, he heard the sound of people calling out, including the voices of women and the cries of children. He opened the door and saw several individuals and families carrying suitcases and bags, in cars or in carts pulled by horses or donkeys, the kind of cart used to distribute propane tanks. A man carrying a big suitcase on one shoulder passed by, his other hand pulling along a child. His wife was beside him doing the same thing in her full black robe—carrying a suitcase on her head while leading a disheveled girl by the hand. They were hurrying along, panting, and Ibrahim found himself calling to them, “Where are you going?”
The man breathlessly informed Ibrahim that now was his chance to escape: everyone was leaving the capital. “The world is turned upside down, brother! If you have relatives or acquaintances outside the capital, in the villages, seek refuge with them. And if you can, leave one of your sons in the house to guard it—there are thieves everywhere. Chaos and plunder! Everything is a shambles! The world is turned upside down, brother. Upside down, upside down! Come on! Come on! Trust in God and save yourself.” The man went on in this way without turning to face Ibrahim, as though talking aloud to himself, until he disappeared around the corner.
Ibrahim went back inside and filled his pockets with stacks of cash. He made sure the windows and doors were locked, and then he left, taking nothing more than a bottle of water. He headed toward the Alawite Garage, walking for a while and riding for a while with a crowd of people in the back of a pickup truck. At the station, he found a car to give him a lift to Samarra, and from there, another car to Balad and another to Baiji. It went on like that until he reached his village at sundown.
From the time Ibrahim left his house in Baghdad until he reached his house in the village, he had seen dozens, if not hundreds, of corpses lying along the streets and roads. For a moment, he thought he might have an opportunity to bury some of them, but it wasn’t a question of his wishes and his abilities. Everything was left to chance and luck—or rather, to fate and decree. And Ibrahim’s qisma was to arrive at last at his home in the countryside. He had saved himself, but he had returned without his Qisma, and had no knowledge of her whereabouts or what she was going through. That was what concerned him the most, and he thought about her all the more when he found himself alone once again in the house where he and his daughter had both been born. Alone, since his mother had died while he was away, and his sisters and his younger brother had set themselves up in their own houses long ago, accepting that the family home would pass to the eldest son.
Ibrahim spent the days slowly refurbishing everything, starting with the garden. He repaired the corners of the house, the door handles, window latches, and the empty livestock pen, which had all become dilapidated during his absence. Fortunately, his family had continued caring for the fields, so there wasn’t much for him to do there. So Ibrahim contented himself with visits to his siblings, visits to the graves of his parents and his wife, and meetings with Adbullah, usually in their old place on the banks of the river.
On rare occasions, Tariq would join them. Tariq was resentful and angry about what had happened. He would launch into tirades, his blood boiling, cursing “the invasion, the occupation, and this new imperialism that has devastated the country and turned its borders into a drinking hole for everyone and his brother from the neighboring countries, for intelligence services, death squads, terrorists, suicide bombers, spies, and all the various merchants of war.” He would go on in this way, furious, with spittle spraying onto his beard: “They’ve come from every direction, assembling here to settle their filthy accounts on our soil, above our heads. Times past were better than what these people have brought, for at least then there was one enemy we knew to keep at a distance. But now there are a thousand enemies from a thousand factions. We no longer even know who’s an enemy and who’s a friend.”
Abdullah would interrupt from time to time, exasperated by Tariq’s fiery sermon, saying, “All epochs have been shit. That which went before was no better than what’s happening now, and what is to come won’t be any better either. All of it is shit piled on shit. Since the day this country was established on this soil, it has never seen ten continuous years of peace, and it appears it never will.”
They watched the sun slowly set behind the mountain across the way, as the magic of the twilight reflected off the surface of the water, and returned to the village before the gnats intensified their attacks, passing along narrow dirt tracks between the fields, the same tracks they had followed as children. They felt an assurance, a sense that nothing had changed and that all that had happened was merely a transitory external disturbance, something outside them, not internal. They recalled the same memories, anecdotes, and tales they had been repeating since childhood, laughing as they traded the same jokes and jibes.
Some evenings, Abdullah would pass by the cemetery because he knew he would find Ibrahim there. Other evenings, Ibrahim would go to Abdullah’s house to drink tea and then they would go together to the riverbank and sit in silence. Abdullah was content to smoke and stare at the water, and Ibrahim would wash the stones in front of him before throwing them—burying them—in the water. If they spoke, their conversations consisted of Ibrahim sharing his questions and Abdullah providing answers that wove their way toward the conclusion that there was no meaning to anything, and that the best available solution lay in letting go of illusions, abandoning all ambitions along with greed, desire, and the urge to possess.
“So don’t desire anything, brother Ibrahim. Don’t expect anything. Then
you’ll feel at peace and nothing will make you anxious. Everything will be all right, no matter what happens, because you didn’t want anything different.”
Ibrahim told Abdullah that the only thing he wanted now was to be sure that Qisma was safe; there was nothing, nothing at all beyond that. He was tortured by how helpless he was—where could he begin his search? He didn’t know her address—he didn’t even know the name of her husband or his family, just as he was at a loss as to what name he would ask for, Qisma or Nisma. It was something he mulled over in his head a hundred times every day, and each time he would arrive at the same defeated conclusion.
Abdullah Kafka explained to Ibrahim the meaning of tending herds of donkeys over the bodies of the dead, and it was Abdullah who provided Ibrahim with some semblance of peace, comfort, freedom, and security. Tariq wouldn’t always join them since he was off putting his affairs in order and rearranging his relationships with all the opposing factions, just as he was wont to do—a practice he had inherited from his father. He sought to establish connections with the occupiers and with those fighting against the occupation, with the thieves and the police, with the remnants of the former regime and the vanguard of the new regime, with Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Christians, and foreigners and Iraqis. He sought to find a profitable balance that would allow him to keep living the life he had grown accustomed to.
If Tariq did join them, he would argue with Abdullah. Meanwhile, as usual, Ibrahim would stay silent. But their affection for each other didn’t change. Each of them knew the others like the lines on his hand, and each of their meetings, no matter how much they yelled and contradicted each other, would end with a sense of catharsis, the feeling of a man meeting himself. Each of them took an interest in the details of the others’ lives as much as in the details of his own. Each would help the others organize their thoughts and the affairs of daily life. And the one thing they shared above all was Ibrahim’s sorrow and anxiety over Qisma.
Until the day she came back, carrying in her arms a baby she said was her son.
CHAPTER 26
Where the Living Meet the Dead
Qisma appeared to have grown a great deal older, old beyond her years. Her features had matured: they were those of a woman who was a mother, not a woman who was a daughter. In addition to patience and endurance, it was clear that motherhood had taught her to be more understanding and accepting of those around her, and to leave behind—if only a little—the veneration of the self at the expense of others. She had grown calmer.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim remained as he ever was, eager not to do anything that might provoke her. What mattered to him was that his daughter now lived under his roof, in the same mud house in which they had both been born. In addition, there was this new blessing that filled their home with life and broke the usual silence between them. Ibrahim displayed a devotion to the infant that rivaled even a mother’s love. He didn’t neglect the baby for an instant, attended to all his needs, and brought him along with him wherever he went. He would carry him on his shoulders, feeling that the head of his grandson ennobled his own, as though the child were an emperor’s crown. He granted him all the time and attention he had been prevented from showing his daughter, and he would sometimes take him to visit the grave of Umm Qisma, telling the infant all about his grandmother.
The only thing Ibrahim didn’t like about this child was his name, since his father had chosen to name him after the President. Everyone, including Qisma, was aware of Ibrahim’s distaste, even though he never referred or alluded to it. But Qisma and the others did notice that Ibrahim didn’t call the child by his name even once, but rather would say, “Come along, my son!” or “Take this, my dear!” And if he presented the boy to someone, he would say, “This is my grandson, the son of my daughter, Qisma.”
And even though Ibrahim did get used to the name and was resolved not to ask Qisma about anything, over time she began to tell him of her own accord the reason she was so late in returning to the village. Ever since the Americans entered Baghdad and the regime fell, she had occupied herself with two main tasks. The first was to remain in her magnificent home in order to guard it against looters. The second was to search for any information that would shed light on what had happened to her husband. Qisma’s sister-in-law had joined her in this search, together with other relatives of missing persons she had gotten to know during the process. She said her husband suddenly went missing shortly before the fall of the regime. Neither she, nor his family, nor any acquaintance or friend had been able to discover anything about him, even though they knocked on every door and followed up on every lead. Qisma had hoped, for instance, that he might have been put in jail and would return after the collapse of the prison system. Or maybe he had fled the country and would now return, or that she would come across his grave if he had been killed. But none of these things had happened, and from the day of her husband’s disappearance until then, she had learned nothing of his fate.
She told Ibrahim how, before the fall, she had gone to all the hospitals and police stations, asking them to inform her of any news that reached them about her husband. She gave them her telephone number and home address in case they came across an unidentified corpse or even a lost madman. But now thousands of unidentified corpses littered Iraq from one corner to the other, and great hordes of the insane had been released when the doors of all the hospitals for those with nervous disorders and psychological illnesses were opened after the invasion. The former patients now roamed the streets and back alleys as easy targets for murder, rape, and enslavement, if they didn’t first fall prey to illness or injury.
Little by little, Qisma told her father the story of her sufferings, a bit more each day. But just as Ibrahim kept the secret of his sterility hidden from her and everyone else, Qisma was also holding something back. She had decided to cover it up, even within herself, for she had no other solution. It was a way of protecting herself from being destroyed by memories and doubts, for it wasn’t long after that accursed night that she discovered she was pregnant, and she didn’t want to plunge into the whirlpool of unanswerable questions about who her baby’s father was. Fortunately for her, when the baby was born it resembled her alone. “He’s my child, mine,” she said to herself. “That’s the important thing.”
Qisma’s husband had been elated and proud to the point of giddiness when they were invited to a private party in one of the presidential palaces. She adorned herself as beautifully as she could, and she felt, just a short time into her marriage, that she had climbed the social ladder quickly. Indeed, that she had jumped to the rung that led to the throne.
At the palace, it was necessary for women to enter through one door and men through another before arriving at the magnificent party chamber, which opened on one side to long tables loaded with food and drink under the festive lights of the gardens and fountains. Qisma entered through the women’s door, then passed through another door, then another and another, until she found herself alone in a lavish bedroom. She was confused, and then shocked when the President came in to meet her. Without any preliminaries, he ordered her to do what he wanted. So she did what he wanted, and he did what he wanted with her. Afterward, Qisma spent the rest of the party sitting beside her husband, deaf and mute. She was not conscious of the crowds of revelers, the voices of the musicians, the food, or anything beyond a foggy mix of vibrating, intermingling colors. She certainly couldn’t eat anything, telling her husband that she felt sick and had a pain in her stomach. When they got home, she didn’t ask him about who or what he had seen at the party, nor about what he had eaten. Indeed, she was unable to mention it in front of him, or even to recall it on her own, ever. She decided to doubt that it had actually happened. She decided to forget it.
She told her father about her journey in search of her husband after the fall of the regime, saying she had discovered a different Iraq, one that didn’t tally with what she had known before, and that once would have been unimaginable.
Together with hundreds of others who had also lost relatives, she went to dozens of community centers that had recently opened—most of them staffed by volunteers—to help people find information in archives taken from the offices of the security apparatus and the old intelligence service. She said those archives listed about half a million Iraqis who had gone missing over the last two decades, not counting those who had been lost in the wars or those who had been executed but whose bodies had been turned over to their families.
Qisma went around to many communal graves that had recently been discovered in various parts of the country, including some that contained thousands of skeletons. Some people had information, death certificates, or identification numbers for their missing relatives. They exhumed one grave after another until they found them. But Qisma didn’t have any official information or certificate. All she had were stories and clues she had gathered from people who had known either her husband or those who had disappeared with him. She followed the threads of every rumor or story that reached her, including what she heard from astrologers, palm-readers, and diviners, as well as other old women who performed magic. She resorted to them in desperation, willing to pursue any glimmer of hope, even if it was just the kind of nonsense that she would never have believed before. She was told many things. That her husband had loved another woman; they had married secretly because her family had resisted the relationship, seeing as he had joined opposition parties working outside the country, to which he ended up fleeing. She also heard that he had been assigned a secret assassination mission and was killed in the line of duty. That he had taken part in an attempted coup with forty members from the special unit of guards he belonged to: the plot had been uncovered and they had all been executed.
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