When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad

by Mona Yahia

  Sometimes, the trials would end with capital punishment. But, as in a film, the convicts were not, in reality, put to death. Or only seldom. Abd al-Salam himself, for instance, had once been sentenced to death by the Mahdawi Court, charged with the attempted assassination of Abd al-Karim. He was released after three years’ imprisonment.

  Father, a passionate philatelist, transfers his mint sheets of Abd al-Karim stamps over to another drawer, stacked with older sheets of King Faisal I in Bedouin attire, King Faisal I in a European suit, King Ghasi in profile, King Faisal II as a child, a youth, a young man. What a shock it would have been for Abd al-Karim had he known that his revolutionary icon would be stored in royal company – a bunch of disgraced celebrities.

  National anthems, flags, stamps, currencies, street names, and other state emblems do not last long in Baghdad. They do not age, wear out, or fall apart. They abruptly burst in and out of history, at a pace no individual memory can adapt to. Even now mother calls the first modern bridge in the city by its original name, Maude, after the British General who captured Baghdad in the First World War. It was the boundary her family forbade her to cross without the escort of a male relative. By the time my mother was a young girl, however, the British army had left Iraq and the bridge had been renamed after King Ghazi. When the monarchy was overthrown, and the statues of both General Maude and King Faisal I were torn down by angry crowds, while the corpse of Abd al-Ilah was dragged from one side of the capital to the other over this bridge, it became the Shuhada’, Martyrs Bridge, adjusting itself, like a linguistic chameleon, to the vocabulary of the latest supremacy.

  Nine months later, in November, we are sent home early again. Abd al-Salam has initiated another coup. He expels the Ba’ath, his Ramadan fellow revolutionaries, dissolves their National Guard, and forms a new government.

  On the next anniversary of the Ramadan Revolution, helicopters whirr in the skies of Baghdad, dropping small nylon bags filled with sweets. Although faster than paper, the little gifts still take their time, swinging and hovering, indifferent to our cries of impatience. One such bag is toppling above my head, about to land on our roof. Just when it appears within reach, the bag changes its mind and drifts away. I dart downstairs to follow it from the street. A puff of wind drives it further south, towards the river. From a side-street a striped dishdasha rushes in the same direction. The serifa girl, smaller than me and barefoot, soon overtakes me. I try it her way – take off my shoes, and sprint along. In no time, a sharp stone grazes my sole. I stop to examine it. Only scraped, not bleeding, but my chances of winning have been crushed. I put on my shoes again and walk back, slowly recovering my breath. The sky is quiet and clear, devoid of surprises. I have been deprived of the sweets of the Revolution. When I reach home, a bag of toffee is awaiting me in the garden! I rip it open and try the first candy. It turns out to be of the worst quality. The serifa girl passes by, a similar bag in her hand. Nestala, she says, flaunting it proudly. Nestala is the slang for chocolate, a corruption of Nestlé – a brand so expensive that I doubt the girl has ever tasted it. I smile back. She gathers the hem of her dishdasha, and seats herself at the threshhold of our house. I join her. We have never been so close before, although the Bedouin clan has been living for years in serifa, squatter huts on the bare piece of land behind our house. A blue spot is tattooed on her forehead. A golden ring pierces her nose. Her skin is ebony, dark as her own shadow. Her soles are callous, asphalt black. Mucus is about to run down from her nostril. A sniff calls it up again. A bronze anklet adorns her left foot. I offer her my pair of shoes for the one anklet. No way. She shakes her head, slurping and sucking the sweets strewn in memory of Abd al-Karim’s fall.

  Three years after the Ramadan coup, we are sent home early again. It is now Abd al-Salam’s turn to give his life for a day off. On its way from Qurna to Basra, his helicopter explodes. The event is reported as a tragic accident. Nobody in Baghdad believes such reports. Abd, our bus driver, a loyal fan of Abd al-Karim, is mostly enthusiastic about the news. It inspires his imagination and, by nature, Abd verbalises. At each gate where he lets a child out, his pleasure regenerates as he conveys the account to the concerned mother.

  —Don’t worry Sister, it’s only Abd al-Salam. Al-Mushir, the Guide, has just exploded in the air. Boom, like a balloon. See the black cloud up there, that’s the victor of three revolutions, July, Ramadan, and November. One was not enough, he had to grab three, and all for himself. Now they’ll drop carbon paper from the sky, some mourning leaflets for our charred hero, don’t you think?

  The cautious mother draws her child quickly inside, before any neighbour or passer-by associates her with the big-mouthed driver.

  In spite of the rigid and demanding education we are subjected to, the school authorities take no chances as far as our safety is concerned. We are sent home at the slightest unrest. Even a demonstration about domestic politics can, at any moment, be twisted into agitated support for the Palestinian cause, and wind up at the gate of our Jewish school.

  —The whole year, chirri mirri, goings and comings, Abd says one day. How can one learn anything under such conditions? Your headmaster’s overdoing it with his safety precautions. There’s no need to tremble whenever a cracker explodes.

  It is 10 o’clock in the morning. A restive crowd, roaring and catcalling only a few streets away, is advancing in our direction. Not even shellfire, and our tyrants of teachers are acting like guardian angels. No time to assign homework. The maths problem can wait till next week. The premises are to be evacuated as soon as possible. Upon my arrival home, mother switches on the radio. The local station does not report any unrest in the capital. Not even in the evening. Only the next morning does it appear in the papers. An inflamed crowd of impassioned men was babbling and whistling, chasing after an Egyptian female singer, who made her mistake of the day by wearing trousers and exploring, on foot, the city of The Thousand and One Nights.

  Brother

  Sultan lies stiff and motionless in my cupped hand. His eyelids are closed, his claws withdrawn, entangled in one another. My little finger caresses the canary’s yellow feathers. Delicate as ever, and yet, it does not feel like Sultan any more. Were those tiny breaths all that made him? I press my finger on his chest then let go, press down briefly again, hoping to revive his heart. His body remains petrified, destitute of will. I open his beak and blow my own air inside him, the way they demonstrated artificial respiration on dummies last week on the television.

  Nothing doing. Sultan is no more.

  Brother digs a small pit in the garden. My canary is laid inside. He does not even look as if resting, Sultan used to doze on his feet. Unlike the multitude of dead cats I have seen sprawling on rubbish dumps, or the carcases of dogs squashed flat on the roadway, I have never come across a dead bird before. Do wild birds simply plump down from the sky when they are done for, the way rotten mulberries let go of their tree?

  Tears wash my eyes. Sultan turns into a yolk, sinking in thick chocolate.

  —Didn’t I tell you that Samson would outlive Sultan? brother exclaims. I knew it!

  I snivel.

  —Don’t worry, he goes on more softly. My Samson too will eventually die. As well as the new Sultan you’ll be getting very soon.

  My tears stream in currents.

  —You’ve got to face it. Every bird must die one day…

  I suck my thumb.

  —Everybody must die. Without exception. Even Mama and Baba, and so will you … and … so will I. Everybody.

  No, I am not prepared to take it – that Sultan is only the beginning, and that mother and father will follow. Father! Father is older, he will certainly have to go first. Or worse still, they might leave this world together, he and mother. In that case, brother will be in charge of me. I do hope nothing of the sort will happen, at least not before I am grown up. Otherwise, brother will demand unconditional respect and boss me around all day long, the way he does whenever our parents go out in the evening.r />
  Brother. It is time he got a name. Time I accorded him a chapter in my life.

  Let me call him Shuli, short for Shaul – after our maternal grandfather – and place him a few years ahead of me in the world.

  A framed photograph of him, riding on the unfinished sculpture of the stone Lion of Babylon, hangs in our sitting-room. The lion is trampling on a man. Shuli is seated on the lion’s head. His legs are astride its mane, and his hands clasp what could have been the lion’s ears. The ear-to-ear smile of a winner lights up Shuli’s face. He is almost six.

  Those were his happiest years, he tells whoever happens to be looking at the photograph. Years when his parents had made him the most valuable of all their valuables, their one and only God. When she arrived, the word “fair” was admitted to the family. Whatever it originally meant, “fair” granted her the natural right to grab half of his possessions. Half the room, half the cupboard, half the carpet, half the bath, half his father, half his mother, and all cakes and sweets divided in half.

  Smarties are sorted according to their different colours, each of which is thereafter divided in two equal shares. He swallows his share within minutes, while I store mine in the fridge. I hardly care for sweets, it is the fifty-fifty principle for which I stand. Like a watchdog, I count my Smarties twice a day to make sure he is not pilfering.

  He is wearing a Robin Hood hat and practising archery. I am holding the target. His arrows whizz. My ear escapes by a hair’s breadth. Father spots us and spoils the game. So he dresses up as a cowboy, with a ten-gallon hat, a red waistcoat, a lopsided cartridge belt, and a brace of pistols which he easily slips in and out of his holsters.

  “Gemaaar,” fresh cream. The rotund voice is coming from the street. We streak out to the garden and hide behind the gate, in ambush for the enemy. A vendor is passing. She is bearing a round tin tray as big as a bicycle wheel on her head. That’s no real um-el-gemar, he growls, that’s a spy. He shoots, bang bang, not too loud, lest she hears and curses us back. The fake vendor drops dead. We take hold of her tray, and devour all the cream.

  A tall Bedouin in a white dishdasha is passing by, selling salt from the desert. A camel is walking beside him. Bang bang, I cry, not too loud, aiming my water pistol at the spy from the desert. Wrong, Shuli grumbles and shoots down the camel, who falls on the Bedouin and kills him.

  A familiar tolling is approaching. The paraffin-cart has just entered our street. “Nafet,” sings out the driver. That’s a fake abu-el-nafet, I growl and, bang bang, shoot down the donkey. Wrong again, Shuli groans as he fires at the green tank, throws himself on the ground and shields his head with his hands. I do the same just before the paraffin tank explodes with driver and donkey.

  We watch the Flintstones on television, then mould mud cakes, and let them bake in the sun on the balcony. They will serve as ammunition for the Stone Age War we will be staging at Shuli’s tenth birthday party next month.

  Before my fourth birthday, I am determined to learn to piss standing. As I drench my trousers again, he pokes out his cock and makes a comparative study between his penis and my wee-wee.

  —You’ll never make it! Not in a hundred years.

  Years go by and reduce the ratio between our ages, and shift the proportion between my reverence for and my defiance of him.

  The red waistcoat, the cartridge belt, and the silver sheriff badge pass on to me. I paint, with mother’s kuhul, two horizontal black lines above my lips. Then I put on the ten-gallon hat, and wink at the cowboy in the mirror. I am ready for a fair fight at last.

  He is lolling on the sofa in the sitting-room, reading.

  —Stick em up! I yell, holding the pistol in two hands, and aiming at his heart.

  My hands remain stable as his eyes take their time to rise from the page and sweep an empty gaze over me.

  —Aren’t you a bit late in the day? The Red Indians have been exterminated, the black slaves are free, the Second World War is over, and they’ve just captured Eichmann.

  That said, he returns to his book. A dog-eared book, bound in brown, with a cream shelf-mark on its spine. 421 KAL 238. That far I am able to read. Had I not feared for my skin, I would have snatched his Kalila wa Dumna and flung the animal tales out of the window. It would not have been of much use though. Shuli has outgrown our battles, our peace treaties, our cops and robbers, even our pillow fights. When did we last hose each other down? Growing up seems, indeed, like a voyage of no return. Poor Shuli, there is nothing I can do for him. I slip the pistol back into my holster, and slam the door behind me. When I have learned reading and writing properly, I will write a book and re-capture his soul. Hair-raising stories about Antar, the famous black slave who raided all the other Arab tribes and at whose name alone fear and wonder echoed through the desert.

  But Shuli’s attachment to any book ends once he has finished it. After that it will be lost amid the dusty mass of comic strips, paperbacks, and hard covers piling against the wall in the corridor, and threatening to collapse on my head whenever I rush down to our room.

  After we have moved into a bigger house, Shuli piles the books in his room. Father proposes buying him a bookcase, but Shuli turns down the offer.

  —But books eat dust, son, mother adds. Better you sorted them out.

  —Tsk, Shuli replies.

  At school they say that he has set his sights on the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  It is true, he can sketch the lives of Tolstoy, Trotsky, and Telemann as well as territorial behaviour or the sinking of the Titanic. He can shed light on the sources of tango, on Tibetan dialects, the shroud of Turin, telepathy, and tandoori cooking. He is able to simplify and explain the theories of time and the basics of the Talmud, the telegraph system, thermodynamics, the structure of tragedy, and the construction of trumpets.

  He must have finished with T.

  Besides, no other pupil can solve problems in maths, physics, and algebra with his swiftness. And he does not even wear glasses.

  Teachers credit him with brilliance. Classmates maintain a distance of respect and mistrust. He is an exception, he concludes, and behaves like one, condescending to the ordinary.

  Secondary school. Shuli is still coming first in his class. Father is displeased. The boy is getting used to effortless success. Mother, too, is concerned. Her boy is growing edgy, remote, impenetrable, like a closed book.

  Their class excursion to Ur. Shuli set about on an endless journey on the staircase of the ancient ziggurat, climbed up and down the whole day. What did he see? Hundreds of stairs made of bricks, and thousands of bricks made into stairs, yellow dust above and yellow sand below, and then vice versa. What did he hear? His own footfalls, treading behind him, whispering who knows what promises in his ear.

  He spends all his trip allowance on a chalk model of the ziggurat. It displays a three-storeyed buttressed tower, with a rectangular structure at the base. Like a pyramid, the walls slope inwards as they go upwards. An exterior triple stairway, each of a hundred steps, he says, leads up to the shrine at the summit.

  A fly lands on the summit. It chafes its forelegs then stands still, like a black queen resting on a white throne.

  —The construction of the temple tower had begun during the third dynasty of Ur, about the 22nd century BC. Later, the ziggurat was also employed as an astronomical observational post. Forty-two centuries separate the original ziggurat in Ur from the model on my desk, can you imagine? More centuries BC than AD!

  BC-AD? I thought the right order was A-B-C-D!

  The triple stairway tempts me. Two of the flights of steps lean against the wall while the third projects at right angles at the centre of the building. My forefinger touches the foot of the central stairway. One by one, it climbs up the white tiny steps, smooth and cool.

  Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen … thwack.

  His hand hits out at both finger and fly.

  —Don’t touch! How many times must I tell you not to touch my ziggurat. White chalk easi
ly gets stained.

  A black and white drawing is pinned on the wall behind his desk. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the bank of a river, the Euphrates. Shuli copied it recently from an illustration in the Britannica.

  The gardens are laid out in a series of ziggurat terraces, and roofed with stone balconies, supported by colonnades. Climbing plants, tropical trees, shrubs, and greenery appear on every terrace. A flight of stairs connects one storey to the other. A water-fountain pours at each landing. People are strolling along the gardens. A couple is leaning on the parapet at the top. They look as if lost in the clouds.

  —The Hanging Gardens were set up in the 6th century BC, by Nebuchadnezzer, the great military commander who crushed the Egyptian army, invaded Syria, and attacked the Arab tribes in Arabia. The same king who occupied Judea and deported us to Babylon.

  Shuli points to the river in the drawing, as if it provided the proof to his words.

  —There, by the Rivers of Babylon, our ancestors sat down and wept for Jerusalem. Ironically, Nebuchadnezzer’s wife, a Median princess, shed tears just as well. She too was longing for her homeland.

  It must have driven the poor king mad. Everyone about him homesick and tearful.

  —So, to comfort his wife, Nebuchadnezzer worked out a replica of her native land in Babylon. He constructed gardens that hung in the air and simulated the green mountains rooted in her memory.

  —Was the queen satisfied? Did she stop crying?

  —History reports scarcely anything about Amytis. As to the Hanging Gardens, there is no trace of them, neither in archaeological remains, nor in cuneiform texts. Perhaps they were only a legendary monument preserved by dreamers of all times.

  Why is he telling me all this if it is only fiction?

  —What about our ancestors? Did they weep very long? I ask, reverting to history.

  —Oh no! Soon after that famous sobbing by the river, the Judean captives got up and set to work. From a people of farmers, they turned into a people of traders, replaced their Temple with synagogues, and made their home in exile.