When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad

by Mona Yahia

  Certainly not Dudi, his two sub-editors will affirm, weeks later, referring not only to his poor spelling, nor to his basic grammar mistakes. They will swear that he is unable to differentiate between colloquial and literary Arabic, that he mixes up biblical themes with those of The Arabian Nights. They will complain about that pricked lime of his with which he incessantly fumbles, shooting sour juice into his mouth, sometimes into their ears, too often on to the manuscript to indicate a passage he likes or dislikes. They will claim that he sits like an effendi, his feet sprawled on the desk, interrupting their reading with whimsical remarks, nagging them with endless instructions about what to cross out, what to correct, what to keep and what to cast into the waste-paper basket.

  —It doesn’t work when one pulls lengthwise and the other pulls across, he says, whenever they contradict him.

  They repeat what we all know, that he lacks concentration, that he is reluctant to compromise, that he is a blabbermouth, a bad listener, an obsessive liar, a spoiled brat.

  Finally they decide to dismiss him. Dudi breaks into a laugh.

  —If the founder goes, the sponsor will go with him, he quietly replies.

  The subject is never raised again.

  One month later, the three boys come out with a twelve-page newspaper. Dudi obtains paper from his father’s warehouse, the biggest wholesale paper store in the city. They say that his father’s partner designed the layout and that the secretary stencilled the texts. Dudi mimeographed a hundred copies himself, which his father’s employees cut, folded, and pinned.

  As every morning, Dudi is driven to school by his mother. He takes the front passenger seat, while five sisters, in five different sizes, squeeze in the back. They haul the five packages, wrapped in brown paper, into their brother’s classroom. Not even the sub-editors have yet seen the edition in its final form. In the morning break, Dudi releases the publication. The contributors receive a copy each. The rest pay. The adjacent classes crowd into the sixth grade. Teachers buy copies as well. The two sub-editors are thumbing and caressing and kissing the newspaper, laughing and crying at the same time, hugging each other and discussing the next issue with Dudi. Before the break is over, Eib is sold out.

  Eib, meaning a blemish or defect in literary Arabic, and shame in colloquial use, is drawn large on the top of the first page in an imposing beautiful calligraphy. The flowery ornaments around it prepare the reader for twelve entertaining pages of shameless variations on the subject. Eib bil Jeib, forget shame and tuck it in your pocket, goes the slogan of Eib, a streamer on the title page.

  The stories, songs, sketches, anecdotes, illustrations, and caricatures display, in one way or another, Dudi’s spirit of mischief, as if they were all conceived to quench his thirst for ridicule. Envy dries my throat. If Dudi had not repeated a school year, my name would have been printed on these very pages.

  My eyes fluctuate between the newspaper, hidden under the desk, and the colourful diagram of the human viscera, hung on the blackboard. I single out, under the circumstances, a short story.

  Sami is riding the bus, dressed up, on his way to a party. Knowing that he will be driven back home by friends, he carries not more than ten fils in his wallet, enough for a single fare. At one of the stops he spots his cousin stepping on to the double decker. He prays that she will remain downstairs, but she climbs up to the top deck. Propriety dictates that he pays for her fare. To elude the obligation by getting off (now that she has seen him) is eib. To confess and tell her the truth will bring about a double eib. Cheerfully she seats herself beside him. While she chats, his ears follow the footsteps of the ticket collector clambering up the spiral stairs. Sami opens the window, prepared to jump out and escape his shame. To his surprise, his cousin slaps his cheek. His eyes open and he finds himself in bed, wet with sweat. He pushes the blanket away, gets up and opens the window. A full moon is laughing in his face.

  By Peres Muallem! I cannot believe that that sluggard of a giant is capable of such sensitivity. On the blackboard, the metal rule is running over the digestive system. A headline grips me: The Curse of the Praline. It is a story about a wooer who visits his fiancée with a box of imported pralines, to impress her family.

  Before her father and the entire clan, she undoes the flowery giftwrap, the cellophane wrapping, and dreamily examines the picture of the snow-covered Alps on the lid. He swallows. They can see how expensive it is. She unties the black ribbon, and uncovers the sumptuous box. Nineteen paper cups contain nineteen assorted pralines in different shapes of hearts and flowers and sea shells and leaves and diamonds. The twentieth cup is empty. One piece of praline is missing! What can he say? How will he save face? The family members offer no succour. Did he get it from a proper store or was it a bargain he found at the market, inquires the mother. Was it sealed when he bought it, continues the great-aunt, inspecting the cellophane. Did he offer the box to someone else before? jokes the sister. Are they insinuating that they trust in the Swiss trademark more than in their future son-in-law? He loses his temper. So does her brother. Before the evening is over, they bid him farewell. He walks back home, the open box in his hand, offering costly pralines to astonished passers-by. Except for one heart, which he saves in his pocket, to melt and to solidify for seasons to come.

  Dora Naji. Her aunt is a matchmaker. No wonder, she must possess a treasury of such stories. I switch over to the following heading: “Best Children’s Lies of the Year”.

  The teacher calls me to the blackboard.

  I explain the functions of the heart, which looks like anything but a praline, and go back to my seat. The teacher will certainly leave me in peace until the end of the lesson. I spread the newspaper on my lap. Selma, sitting at my right, points to the long story on the second page, Kan u-ma kan, and thrusts up her thumb as a sign of recommendation. It is written by Delal Shina, a fatherless girl, quiet and withdrawn. Kan u-ma kan, it was and it was not, that is the traditional way Arabic tales begin, couldn’t she have thought of a more original title?

  The teacher is reading out a passage from a textbook. I embark on Delal’s story.

  Kan u-ma kan, al-allah wattuklan, fi kadim azzeman, once upon a time, there was a girl called Semira. Semira had plenty of trouble at school. Geography, maths, religion, sport. But Semira’s main source of trouble was Arabic grammar.

  —Stand up, Semira, cries ustad Radi. Explain the rule of kan, the verb to be, and name kan’s twelve sisters.

  Semira stands up, red-faced. Kan has twelve sisters all right, and grammatically, they all take after her, which makes sense – otherwise they wouldn’t be sisters. But how do they act?

  —Kan puts her subject in the accusative and her predicate in the nominative.

  She has confused them with another family, inn and her sisters. Ustad Radi beckons to her with the thick wooden ruler. Semira obeys. She stretches out both arms, opens her hands. The teacher strikes her left palm so hard that the ruler breaks into two. The class bursts into laughter. The teacher fetches a new ruler from his drawer and delivers twelve blows, six on each palm. A blow for each sister. When Semira asks why he didn’t count the first blow, she is assigned to write the names of the twelve sisters one hundred times, for the next day.

  In the evening, Semira’s hands are constantly shifting between ice water and the pen. Her palms are sore, the tips of her fingers are so swollen that touching the pen alone is painful.

  From the open window a cloud sneaks inside her room. Before she has realised what is happening, the cloud explodes and a giant emerges from the smoke. His glossy skin is copper brown, his orange eyes are sparkling. His nostrils are as large as walnuts, his ears as long as aubergines. A thick black plait grows out from the back of his bald scalp and falls down his back. He is wearing a green vest, black baggy trousers, and is standing with folded arms barefoot on her desk.

  —Sabeik labeik, ana abd bein ideik, I’m your obedient slave, to answer your wishes and serve your will, he says and bows low. Before Semira
can decide whether he is a jinni, ifrit or ghoul, the giant grabs her and mumbles some incantations. This time, the smoke accompanying the explosion is blue.

  When the blue smoke dissipates, Semira finds herself piggyback on the jinni’s shoulders, holding on to his plait as to the reins of a horse. They are wandering around a huge hall, in which thousands of people are lingering, talking, smoking, drinking coffee, reading or just staring into the air. Among the masses, Semira detects pilots, policemen, princesses, nurses, belly dancers, pirates, beggars, soldiers, surgeons, judges, and more.

  —Where are we? And who are all these people?

  —Just supernumeraries, waiting to be summoned into some dream, the jinni replies.

  Semira is bewildered. Are those the characters who appear in her own dreams?

  —But where on earth are we?

  —Not on earth! Somewhere in the sky, the jinni replies. Constantly on the move, chasing the night.

  Although she does not understand his answer, Semira thrills with delight at the sight of famous faces. Cleopatra, Tarzan, Robin Hood, and Salah el-Din are having a drink together. Churchill is offering Um Kalthoum his cigar. Haroun al-Rashid is playing poker with the Marx Brothers. Queen Esther is walking arm in arm with Napoleon. Semira springs down from the jinni’s shoulders and runs towards the Queen, eager to touch her. Her hand penetrates her belly, as if passing through air. Esther smiles kindly and pats her head. Semira feels a ring of heat around her hair, a sort of halo.

  The jinni leads Semira into a storeroom filled with index cards, like those in a library. In a drawer marked “interiors”, he riffles through the cards picturing dining-rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, classrooms, offices, parlours. The jinni picks a card with a picture of a corridor and takes it to the black woman, chewing gum behind the counter. She stamps the card with a date and time, inserts it into the slot of a toaster, and presses a brown knob.

  A new explosion.

  When the yellow smoke dissipates, Semira again finds herself astride the jinni’s shoulders, in a corridor – identical to the one on the index card. The doors on both sides are closed, and have no handles. A sign is fixed on each door. Sun Letters. Moon Letters. Defective Letters. Why that’s a grammar school, Semira exclaims. Fanciful names for torture chambers. The Unknown. The Dual. The Intact Masculine Plural. The Broken Plural. Semira lets out a cry of panic. Ustad Radi is walking twenty feet in front of them.

  —We’ve trapped him in a dream, the jinni reassures her.

  Aware of being followed, ustad Radi accelerates his pace. He swerves to the right and swerves to the left, clatters up stairs, and tries to slip into whatever escape route the labyrinth of corridors and stairways seems to offer him. Semira is delighted, ustad Radi looks so small from the height of the jinni’s shoulders, whose wild guffaws are setting the teacher’s teeth on edge.

  Suddenly a door squeaks ajar. Ustad Radi grasps its edge, with the obvious intention of pulling it open and escaping. The jinni stops, takes such a deep breath that his walnut nostrils blow up as large as melons, then noisily breathes out, and boom, the door slams, trapping the teacher’s right hand.

  Ustad Riad twists his body with pain. He groans, he calls God and the Prophet, begs for mercy. But he cannot free his hand. He cannot wake up either. The jinni has sealed the passageway between the world of dreams and the world of wakefulness with a curtain of dew, which will only evaporate with the first ray of the sun.

  Terrific! Fabulous! Serves him right! I only wonder why Delal has written ustad Riad instead of Radi at the end? Isn’t the similarity between the two names enough of a hint? It must be a misprint which I hope will pass unnoticed by our teachers.

  Do I hear my name again? No, it is someone else. I leaf further through the newspaper, unaware of the impending raid on the sixth grade.

  Almost everyone in the sixth grade has contributed to Eib. Their faces have always looked insipid to me, conveyed no associations. Now that fiction has entered their lives, their names will be connected to stories and songs. Imagine the small spectacled Tania coming out with a song about the son of a sheikh. God knows what Tania has to do with songs, let alone sheikhs!

  The sheikh is deceased. His son, poet and teacher, sets out from Baghdad to the Middle Euphrates, to claim his share of his father’s personal belongings. The tribesmen receive the city dweller with a kasida:

  To whose lot falls the sheikh’s scimitar, to whose lot?

  The scimitar’s gone, oy oy the sheikh’s scimitar is gone

  to nobody else but the brave among the sheikh’s sons.

  To whose lot falls the sheikh’s gold watch, to whose lot?

  The gold watch’s gone, oy oy the sheikh’s watch is gone

  to nobody else but the rich among the sheikh’s sons.

  The headmaster marches into the sixth grade, a copy of Eib in his hand. Without an introduction, he fires off a speech on social values, a subject which is under-developed in our school, due perhaps to its close connection with patriotism. The headmaster plunges into what he calls the three corner-stones of society: respect, compassion, and the third will escape Tania’s mind who will later relate the scene to me. However, he soon comes to the point and demonstrates how Eib has offended all three components.

  —Shame on you, a hundred times eib, he lashes out at them, waving the newspaper in the air.

  To whose lot falls the sheikh’s prayer-rug, to whose lot?

  The prayer-rug’s gone, oy oy the sheikh’s rug is gone

  to nobody else but the pious among the sheikh’s sons.

  To whose lot falls the sheikh’s attar, to whose lot?

  The attar’s gone, oy oy the sheikh’s attar is gone

  to nobody else but the queer among the sheikh’s sons.

  In the sixth grade the headmaster has obstructed time. The lesson will not proceed until the hundred copies are on his desk. Thirty-five girls and boys sit still. They are held hostage while Dudi and his two editors wander from one classroom to the other, recovering their Eibs.

  Hurriedly I skip the sheikh’s fifteen sons to find out whether the one from Baghdad will return empty handed.

  To whose lot fall the sheikh’s dentures, to whose lot?

  The dentures’re gone, oy oy the sheikh’s dentures will go

  to nobody else but the poet among the sheikh’s sons.

  I hand over Eib, and get back my twenty fils. Within twenty minutes, the three boys have retrieved all hundred copies and stacked them in the headmaster’s office.

  Three mothers are summoned to the school. The three delinquents stand against the wall, like prisoners about to be shot. Two heads are bowed, dmuem btulem, their tears streaming down to their feet. Dudi is staring straight ahead, as if nobody exists, or so they will relate. From time to time, and to his mother’s dismay, he harps on the fact that the newspaper is devoid of politics and pornography. Dudi is not acting brave. Everybody knows that, due to his father’s huge donations to the school, nobody will dare to harm a hair of his head. Not even the headmaster, whose slaps often resonate from the distance of three classrooms, and whose fingerprints remain visible for hours on a boy’s cheek.

  Dudi’s mother is too shocked to shed tears. She refuses to believe that her Dudi could be a source of shame! Hadn’t she already had her share of shame, and much more? When Dudi’s elder brother had been caught spilling plates of food into the street, he had explained without embarrassment that the street was hungry, and that only since he had been feeding it, it had been growing and expanding. The boy was immediately packed off to an institution in that country whose name, like his, was never mentioned.

  For Dudi’s sake most probably, he and his accomplices receive an educational punishment instead of a physical one. On that very afternoon, they tear the hundred Eibs before the entire class. It is the first time that I witness Dudi indignant. He will strike back, he swears, later that evening in my room. An eye for an eye is too mild a revenge. He will pull down the whole institution, he will demolish
the concentration camp. I do not know what the words mean, but deem it is not the right time to ask.

  A few days later the three rebels linger at school after the pupils have gone home. They carry rags, a box of matches, and a bottle of petrol. Some preliminary tests are made in the small back garden. In their agitation, they forget about the farrash, whose hut stands around the corner. He is awoken from his afternoon nap by their giggles and excited exchanges. The smell leads him to believe that the boys have sneaked in for a smoke. He attacks them with kicks and punches, and pulls them by the earlobes to the school office. As the farrash possesses only two hands, it is Dudi, needless to say, who manages to slip away.

  Laurence

  —Inglis, Khaled brakes to report as I come out to the street with my kite.

  Pointing at the newly-let house on the opposite side, he gasps out,

  —I was the first to see them. Yesterday. They brought fourteen suitcases along. The place has been rented for 400 dinars, imagine!

  I glance at the large two-storeyed house, which was recently redecorated, its front repainted in light green. No curtains are hanging at the windows yet.

  —Is that a lot of money?

  Khaled shrugs.

  —I don’t know! But they came by taxi. All three. Father, mother, and son. He’s our age, eleven or twelve. He’s got yellow hair. They all have yellow hair.

  —Any idea what they do?

  —IPC, Iraq Petrol Company. The father’s the chairman of the Kirkuk pipe-line, Khaled replies, breathlessly demonstrating his knowledge, as if in a civics lesson.

  —Phew … we’ve got some important people here. A French manager, a Danish diplomat, and now an English …

  —So what? My father’s a lawyer too, and my grandfather was a cabinet minister during King Faisal’s reign.