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 anything that Ibrahim told her from being preserved in memory. She hadn’t wanted her memory to become a storehouse for the remains of his memory, especially during the years of living, studying, and getting married in Baghdad. She had wanted to expunge her childhood in this village and bury the truth that her parents were poor, simple villagers.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim’s sole consolation existed in the wish to tell her things; she was his only daughter. And if she were not an extension of his own memories and the memory of him, all that he represented would dissolve and vanish, and nothing frightens a man more than that. He had wanted to seize every opportunity to tell her stories. Sometimes he would repeat the same stories and go into detail. Indeed, sometimes he would cry or laugh as though he were reliving that which he related.
This cautious, 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 pieces. Anointed by a feeling of regret, she began trying, after his death, to gather these stories, to recall them, to tell 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.
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 this 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 is 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, having grown up and returned to the village as a widowed mother, 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.”
She knocked on the door quietly at dawn. She hadn’t expected that he would hear her first attempt, but it opened at once. She didn’t see any sign of surprise on his face or anything that suggested he had been asleep, but he assured her he had been sleeping, and it was just that it was now in his nature to wake up in an instant. He only had to open his eyes to be fully awake—it was something he had gotten used to during his captivity.
Abdullah closed the door. She sat in the living room with the baby sleeping in her lap. He asked if she wanted him to make her tea or breakfast. “No,” she said. “Please, sit.”
He sat in front of her, smoking. Then he moved farther away when he saw his smoke wafting close to the baby’s nose. She began with a long introduction, starting off with an apology for coming in this way, at such an hour and without any prior notice. But she insisted on searching for her father’s body no matter what it cost her. She was of the opinion that Abdullah was the best person to accompany her in this mission and that her father had trusted and loved him more than any other person. But Abdullah mumbled a few words and shook his head in refusal.
“I beg you.”
He thought for a moment, and then shook his head without a sound.
“Why?”
He said that he wasn’t interested. It wasn’t important to him, nor was anything else, so he wouldn’t be of any use to her. Once more she insisted, and he repeated that he couldn’t help her in this mission because he hadn’t seen Baghdad for many long years, and things there had no doubt changed. Or rather, everything. There was nothing there he knew, and he didn’t even know how to interact with people when it came to such matters.
She told him she knew Baghdad well and would take care of everything—all she was asking was that he be her travel companion so that there would be a trustworthy man at her side through the chaos. He was the most suitable person because he had no obligations and could stay with her however long the search took. He told her any other man would be more useful and a greater help to her in this matter. But she came back to her insistence that he was the best man for the job, for besides the fact that he was free from any obligations, everyone in the village respected him and knew how close he had been to her father. Therefore, no one would make any indecent comments about them, but rather they would see the matter as entirely proper and would esteem his stance.
The room was beginning to fill with Abdullah’s cigarette smoke, so he opened the door. Qisma kept insisting, and he kept refusing. Indeed, he tried to dissuade her from her decision to travel, saying that what she intended to do had no meaning, and that it wouldn’t change anything now that Ibrahim had met his end and died.
Qisma asserted that this matter meant very much to her, just as it had to her father. He deserved this simple, final honor at least, when he himself had spent years striving to gather together the limbs of corpses and arrange them for burial as befits a human being. He had risked his life and endured a gnawing terror for the sake of guiding people to the bodily remains of their loved ones. For that reason, his body deserved to be treated in the same way he had treated the bodies of thousands of people.
“There’s no use in any of that,” Abdullah told her. “No meaning. Everything has come to an end. Ibrahim has come to an end.”
Qisma rose in anger and yelled at him: “Ibrahim has not come to an end and he never will! Ibrahim is present and will remain present in me. I am Ibrahim. This son of mine is Ibrahim. Iraq is Ibrahim, and Ibrahim will remain in the memory of the people who knew him, to whom he always extended a helping hand!”
Abdullah stood up in front of her, confused. Her anger and harsh tone had surprised him, and he seemed to wake up only in that moment. He was shaken by her vitality, and he submitted in some way to this explosion of hers.
Qisma let herself go as the words kept pouring out. “If you have come to an end, or if that’s what you claim, that’s your business, so do what you want. As for Ibrahim, he won’t come to an end. Ibrahim is in all of us. He’s in you too, even though you spout denial and meaninglessness on account of laziness, fear, and despair. You were always on Ibrahim’s mind, whether you were present or absent. But you’re an egoist who thinks of nothing but himself, and that’s why you don’t see a meaning in anything or anybody. If things have no meaning, then it’s up to us to create meaning for them. Take gold, for example. If life has no meaning, then it’s up to us to produce some meaning for it, even if it’s only an illusion. Isn’t nihilism another illusion?
“I know you through my father. I even know your favorite word and how you always respond that everything is ‘shit.’ This word, by the way, is frequently on the lips of those proud, vain people who are the exact opposite of you, the rich, stupid ones with power in their hands, the people who brought you where you stand today. Ibrahim always strove to be useful in some way wherever he was, in everything he thought and said and did. That’s what he had to be, for every living creature—indeed, every single thing—has a role and a particular use in this universe. Even shit, by the way, has its uses. Do you hear me . . . Kafka?”
She fell silent, catching her breath and looking sharply into his eyes as he looked back. It lasted a moment, and then they started laughing together. She sighed, calmed down, and said, “Well, and now?”
When Abdullah shook his head, Qisma stormed out, slamming the door behind her. He called to her through the window, and she stopped without turning to face him. “Talk to Tariq,” he said. “He’s better at this sort of thing. If he says no, tell me. I’ll know how to convince him.”
She didn’t reply, nor did she turn around. As she receded into the distance, pressing her child to her chest, Abdullah kept watching until she disappeared. He felt something new stirring in his depths. This woman had shaken him. She had awoken within him feel
ings that he had considered to have died. It was as though she had placed before his eyes glasses that restored his ability to see things in a different way—a better way. It wasn’t because of her logic, of course, but rather her trusting tone, which had truly pleased him.
He remained standing at the window for a long time, smoking and giving in to the imaginative possibilities that bubbled up inside him. Maybe if he lived with this woman, his life would change. Maybe he would find the illusion of some meaning for life, or else something that would divert him from feeling its lack of meaning until it was all over. It was as though he felt eager, or compelled, to be useful. He allowed himself to think that if he married her, perhaps, he would try to get his Uncle Isma’il married too, and Isma’il would come and live the rest of his life with him as a compensation for the injustice that they had laid upon him. And if she married him, perhaps, then . . .
But then he said to himself, “This is useless prattle. It’s impossible.” He closed the window and went back to bed.
A little before noon, Qisma went to Tariq’s house. She found him in the living room, playing with two of his young daughters. He was delighted to see her and welcomed her warmly, taking the baby out of her arms and hugging it to his chest. He kissed the baby, and it reached its hand out to Tariq’s beard, which Tariq bent down to him. As soon as they were seated and Tariq learned that she had come to him with something important, he sent his daughters out of the room, saying, “Go and play in the garden!” They left, and Qisma told Tariq why she had come.
Tariq remained silent for several moments, watching her and thinking as he combed the edges of his beard with his fingertips. This was an opportunity that had never occurred to him. Indeed, she was a miracle that God was secretly sharing with him, a gift from the heavenly Lord. For since she had arrived as a widow in the village, he had privately been thinking that this woman would be a treasure to marry. If his two oldest sons, Ibrahim and Abdullah, hadn’t already been married, he would have persuaded one of them to marry her. Indeed, he thought about trying to convince either of them to take her as a second wife, but he gave up that thought because he knew his children too well. They were different from him and from his father: obedient and submissive to their wives, loving them and fearing their anger. As for the other son, he was still young.
And so he had turned his thoughts to himself. If she would be content to marry him, things would turn out as well as could be. For she, like him, knew life in the village and in the city. She was connected with important people in the capital, and he heard earlier that she had married an important man, someone from a rich and well-known family, and that she had an impressive house in the center of Baghdad. But he had put aside all these thoughts. He realized it would be impossible to bring that about. She would never be content with him as a husband—he was her father’s age and her father’s friend. Indeed, he was almost a father to her. What would people say?!
“But God’s compassion is bountiful, and He grants you blessings where you don’t expect them.” Thus Tariq thought with a rush as he focused his thoughts on how he could take advantage of this opportunity. Merely the attempt was a chance to take delight in his gift with words. Going out of his way to repeat the word “you” (stressing the feminine form of the pronoun) so that he would know its impact on her soul, he said, “You and your father are part of me, and I am part of you, as you well know. For that reason, you are always welcome here. You do not ask—rather you command, and I am prepared to do everything you request of me, no matter what the cost. Be assured that I am ready to sacrifice anything to please you and help you.”
He observed how his positive words fell on her. As he saw it, expressions of this kind, no matter how generic, oft-repeated, and traditional, had an effect on women as though they were new words, and the words themselves brought joy regardless of whether it was actually possible to put them into effect. Women felt words more deeply than men did, and they valued them more. Rather, they found different interpretations for them than men did. Women savored words as though they were pieces of candy.
“In order to undertake this mission—and I salute you for considering it, just as I am honored that you have chosen me to share in it with you—it is necessary for us to think how to go about it in such a way that the problems it brings do not exceed the relief it grants our hearts.”
She asked what he meant, and he launched into a long explanation, marshaling his entire linguistic ability and his experience to select the words that would persuade her it was necessary to find a social description for their companionship, a description that would not leave any space for doubt or gossip, especially since he was a teacher and a mosque imam. He was an honorable man and the son of an honorable man, and his reputation was the most valuable thing he possessed. Given that the mission might last a long time, they would be forced to spend numerous nights far from their homes, staying at her house in Baghdad. Certainly the people would start winking at each other and dropping certain remarks, and he was concerned for her reputation as much as for his own. He was a transparent man who preferred to conduct all his actions under the bright light of day.
She realized what he was getting at, even though it had never previously crossed her mind. But she didn’t feel any shock, nor did she reject either his logic or him as a person. His experience allowed him to sense the opening, and he sought to take advantage of her encouraging reaction. He began by repeating how highly he valued her idea of searching for the body of her father, imbuing the matter with a certain sacredness and expressing his sense of delight and honor that she would choose precisely him to share in this mission with her, saying that he wanted to do that with his entire heart and soul. After that, he went deeper into the subject, assuring her that if he obtained this good fortune, he would make her the apple of his eye, he would care for her and he would allow her the freedom to live either in the village or in her house in Baghdad, or else to go back and forth and live in them both. She would be able to work with him, teaching in the village school or in Baghdad, or she could choose not to work, for prosperity was assured. (“Thanks be to God!”) He would be the best father to her child, and so on. “We have to do this, even if only on paper, orally and legally in front of the people.”
“Let me think about it,” she replied as she got up.
Tariq tried to make her stay for lunch, but Qisma made her excuses, thanked him, and left. Meanwhile, he remained in the living room alone, stroking his beard, rubbing his hands together and smiling with a dancing heart.
CHAPTER 28
The Sons of the Earth Crack
That night, the three of them scarcely slept. Abdullah Kafka, Tariq the Befuddled, and Qisma Ibrahim—each of them, isolated in their houses, was thinking, both of themselves and the others at the same time. Not one of them had anyone nearby, the closest kind of friend who knew them and understood what was going on inside their heads, someone they could ask for advice. In any case, each of the three had become accustomed to trusting their own way of thinking and their independent convictions.
Upon reflection, Qisma found that the justifications for accepting were greater than the reasons to refuse. She hadn’t thought before about whether she would remarry or not, much less when or where or how. Nevertheless, resolving this question early and under these conditions would be better than making up her mind to wait for an ideal person she might never find, someone who suited her situation as a widow and a mother, half of her in the village and the other half in the city, and with her former husband half a hero and half a traitor, according to how different people saw him. Tariq knew her, and she knew him. There were bonds of trust between them that were almost familial. She felt no desire to waste time introducing herself to someone else and getting to know him with all the details of his life and his memories and all that.
Tariq and she were similar in many ways. Apart from their age, there were no significant differences. Like her, he was a native of this village who loved the city and was dra
wn to fine appearances, numerous social relationships, the enjoyment of life, and the seizing of opportunities. His level of education matched hers. Through him, she would find the security and the father figure she had denied herself by causing a rift with Ibrahim early on, not realizing how important was the bond between father and daughter until she became a mother. Through Tariq, she would learn more about Ibrahim. She would restore him in her memory and in her spirit. She would find a concrete way to work through the regret she felt for her cruelty toward him, a regret she had only come to know when it was too late. Despite the house, the fields, and the memories her father had left her, Qisma imagined that his spirit would feel more at ease about her future were she in Tariq’s hands. And she didn’t doubt that Tariq would respect her and would share her desire to preserve the memory of her father.
As for what might be considered reasons for refusing—namely, the difference in their age and the fact that he was already married—they didn’t appear as such in that society in general, particularly in a village. On the contrary, in her relationship with him, these differences would be points of strength, working in her favor, and points of relative weakness for him.
Qisma kept going back and forth in this way. She recalled that distant memory from her childhood of when she had seen Tariq’s son, who was her age at the time, sitting in his father’s lap as Tariq played with him tenderly. She remembered Tariq’s laughter, his witticisms, and that piercing cologne of his that never varied; she had smelled it again that morning when he received her. The memory was one she had recalled many times given that it formed a turning point in her life, when she began comparing him with her father, and she wished—or even longed—for Tariq to be her father. It was from that moment too that she began to feel her femininity and her independence.
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