by Mona Yahia
—Say Hai, why didn’t you ever get married?
—What? You should be watching your breath, son, not chattering. Don’t thrash the water, Haqqi, it’s not a donkey you’ve got under you. Your breath has got to be regular kids, like the verses of a qasida, do you hear me? Once you’ve regulated your breathing, you can swim for hours, for days, take my word for it.
I am doing the crawl, advancing with firm armstrokes as if the human race has never stood on its feet. My breath sounds regular enough, let Hai compose poetry with his. My body is cutting the water, swaying left and right, like a motor-boat. I have entrusted my weight to the river and it has lent me its swiftness in return. I am overtaking the other children, and for once even Selma. Once Selma is behind, all that is left ahead is immortality.
I swim into a red tissue. It feels like the tentacles of a cockroach on my stomach, like the fingers of a stranger wandering on my thighs. I push it away and scream. Hai is standing in his boat watching me with folded arms. Is that all he does when he is needed? Now that I have released myself he is guffawing. The children copy him. I crumble the red cloth into a ball and fling it at him. It opens in the air. He catches it by the edge and unfurls it. A red décolleté dress falls dripping in front of his body.
Whistles issue from the water. How it becomes you Hai! It’s been made especially for you. Come on, try it on, you’d break so many hearts, old boy.
Hai scowls.
Did she drown? Did she commit suicide? Hai shakes his head. The evening dress is undamaged. It has not been torn off her body.
Without further comment, he kneels down and gently drops the dress into the water.
—When my mother died, we cast her clothes into the river. It was an old custom to help us forget our cherished ones. On me, it had the opposite effect. Not even once have I plunged into the water without thinking of her, as if she herself had been buried in the river.
I have never considered Hai in terms of his being a son, nor has it occured to me that an old man such as he could long for his mother.
The dress dwindles to a red splodge drifting downstream. I wonder what are its chances of reaching Qurna, the spot where the Tigris at last joins the Euphrates.
PART II
Six Days, a War, and a Transistor Radio
The morning break seems never-ending. Teachers have gathered in the headmaster’s office. War has broken out, students are saying. War with Israel. My mind tries to classify the news into the familiar range of internal disturbances, somewhere between uprisings and government collapses. Yet the excitement which such occasions usually provoke is missing. Excitement makes me light, but this tension sits like a fist on my chest. Strange, it is the description mother uses whenever she is engulfed by worries. Are we exposed to a closer threat now or have I simply grown older? The headmaster is glued to his revolving chair in a daze, as if he has sunstroke. The meeting is destitute of words, I notice, as I peep through the gap between the curtains of the office.
At noon, Abd drives us back home. The school will be closed until the war is over. I am not ungrateful for the unlimited break. The bus radio is on, blasting out national songs, war songs, victory songs. Baghdad, too, is taking the day off. School children, students, factory workers and office staff are relieved from their duties and dispatched to sing and dance in the streets, in support of our troops helping out on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. Abd is unusually quiet. Whatever he is thinking, he is keeping it to himself today.
Father comes home shortly after me. He and mother are anxious to have Shuli back from the university.
They are having lunch in the dining-room, while I am browsing through the newspaper in the sitting-room. “The Battle of Revenge”, says the headline. Smaller headlines follow underneath: “Soon, our brave soldiers will tear the hearts from the bodies of the hateful Jews and trample them in the dust”, “In a few days, valorous Arab armies will convert Palestine into the graveyard of its greedy occupiers”. At the bottom of the page is a cartoon. The Wailing Wall is razed to the ground, a flag with a six-pointed star is burning, and three crooked-nosed Jews are drowning in the Mediterranean.
At least I now know what the flag of Israel looks like.
The conversation in the dining-room has developed into a row. He is blaming her for our still being in Baghdad today. Again and again she had opposed emigration, he says. She denies her responsibility and claims that he has always been the decision-maker in the house. He reminds her of that missed opportunity, years ago, when they had resolved to leave – had she not at the very last minute refused to budge. She shoots back the familiar justification. Here at least the boy is studying and not peeling potatoes for Polish Jews in some kibbutz. Here, the boy is not conscripted. Would he rather have his only son break his back in some Jewish army, and perish in somebody else’s war?
Shuli shows up at last.
—An insult to intelligence these students! They’ve gone wild, delirious with joy over the war. Their bloodthirsty speeches would turn the stomach of a cannibal. If only they had the grace to bear arms and go to the front themselves.
He grabs the transistor radio, and throws himself on the sofa without removing his shoes. I wonder if today mother will let it pass.
He switches on the radio. Kol Israel, the Voice of Israel, reports in Arabic that the Israeli Defence Forces resisted artillery and air attacks from the Egyptian and Jordanian borders this morning. Father walks into the sitting-room, chewing his last mouthful, frowning. Shuli’s feet dart to the floor. Father rebukes him for the high volume of the radio. From now on, he should listen to Kol Israel under the staircase, where he cannot be heard, and remember, as always, to turn down the sound each time the broadcaster announces the name of the station.
—My life as a mouse, Shuli remarks theatrically on his way out.
Father shakes his head in disapproval and leaves for his room. Mother joins me in the sitting-room, the second transistor radio in her hand, restlessly switching from one Middle East station to the other.
Radio Baghdad claims that Iraqi warplanes are raiding Zionist towns, and that the traces of the enemy will soon be erased. The Voice of the Arabs reports that Egyptian armed forces have penetrated occupied Palestine, and that fire is devouring Zionist settlements. Radio Amman maintains that seventy enemy planes have already been shot down, and that the cancerous growth will at last be extracted from Arab soil. Radio Damascus calls on its soldiers to be the first bullets to pierce the Jews’ cowardly hearts.
Radio Cairo is broadcasting an interview with Um Kalthoum. The Nightingale of the East promises Egyptian troops a concert in Tel Abib in the near future.
Father returns to the sitting-room with some documents and asks mother to check them. Without casting an eye over them, mother impassively consents to their destruction.
—What about the picture on your night-table?
—What about it? I don’t care. You can have it too. Burn it if you want.
—What’s wrong with the picture on your night-table? I protest. It’s only your sisters, and they’re living in New York.
Father and mother exchange glances.
—Tell her. She’s no longer a child.
Mother’s two sisters do not live in New York, father reveals. In fact, they have never been to America. Neither has Uncle Baruch, Uncle Moshi, Uncle Naji, or Aunt Rebecca. All mother’s family, as well as father’s, are living in Israel, in the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
—But their letters, they definitely came from America! I tore off the stamps myself. Always the same small one with the picture of Abraham Lincoln …
What did I expect, mail service between Israel and the Arab countries? Correspondence with our relatives was only possible through a third party, and it went without saying that such contacts were strictly illegal. Consequently, a letter from Israel should by no means provide clues as to its place of origin. Nothing in its appearance or content should ever suggest that it had started out from Tel Aviv, that it had crossed
the ocean to reach the hands of a friend in New York, that the friend replaced the envelope with a new one, wrote down our Baghdad address, affixed an American stamp, and mailed the letter back to the Middle East.
Their letters were always dated ten days in advance, to fit the date of postage from America. They hardly said anything – it dawns on me now – apart from banal reports, as if addressed to the censor. Everybody was always well, so and so got engaged, so and so was graduating. Sometimes they enclosed a photograph of a boy standing in front of his birthday cake, or a girl celebrating her Bat-Mitzvah in a sitting-room which could have been anywhere.
Did Shuli know this? Since when? That’s not fair. So what if he’s six years older? Now it’s too late, just before you burn them I know. No it’s not a trifle. I don’t care what you think. No I couldn’t find a better moment for such a scene. Oh yes it is, it’s the right moment and a half.
I grab my bicycle and ride on to the street, flee my foolishness and the smell of burned paper spreading around the house. War songs are blaring from radios all over the neighbourhood, from shops, roofs, gardens, and courtyards. From passing cars. The grocer across the street is shaking his fist to the martial music. It used to electrify me, too, especially the marches. But now that it shuts me out, the canons and missiles evoked by the music seem to be aimed in my direction. If only I could flee Baghdad and its blatant soul. I ring the bell of my bicycle and overtake the lettuce-vendor’s handcart. The old man waves back cheerfully. The road is vibrating under my wheels. The days of playing hopscotch on the roadway while soldiers are slaughtering each other a few streets away are over. My feet keep falling off the pedals – what is the matter with me? Selma’s house is only a few streets away, and nothing in my appearance gives me away as Jewish.
She is cutting roses in the garden, listening to a play from Radio Baghdad. “Heskel surrender …”, the Palestinian fedayee and the Iraqi soldier are bellowing by turns. Heskel is a common name among Iraqi Jews.
—How can you listen to such bullshit! I exclaim and silence her transistor.
—It amuses me. Besides, what else can you listen to out here, Hebrew lessons from Kol Israel? Selma replies, without forgetting to drop her voice at the last two words.
—I can’t hear their abuse any more.
—Better get used to it, we’ll be hearing a good deal of this stuff for a while, she says, sounding as wise as a prophet.
I ask her for a few back issues of Nous-Deux, the French photo-romance.
—Suddenly you’re interested in love! Congratulations. Decided to grow up at last?
As Selma goes inside, I switch on the radio again. Not that I am curious about his fate – it is evident that Heskel is done for – but I am keen to try out Selma’s philosophy. Can one ever get used to abuse? Can I hear the name on the radio and remain composed before its ugliness? Heskel, Heskel, let me just listen to the sound, as if for the first time, as if Arabic has not distorted my ear-drums. Forget old ustad Heskel, forget the two unbearable Heskels in the back row of the classroom, and let me hear a neutral sound. Heskel, you are nothing but two gutturals, separated by a dry whistle, esssss, after which the mouth promptly opens and keeeeel, it dribbles your second half, like the yolk of an egg slobbering on an old Jew’s beard.
Damn the old Jew, damn all Heskels, and damn every Arab on earth. I switch off the radio again.
Selma fetches me a stack of Nous-Deux. Just before pedalling away, I begin,
—Tell me Selma, we don’t want Israel to lose, right?
—Right.
—But then, do you think … is there any chance that … we, here, will be hurt?
Selma’s grimace makes me instantly regret my question. All I wanted to hear was a carefree remark that would brush away my apprehension.
—Well, Mama thinks that if the Arabs win they’ll certainly leave no dog alive over there. But if they lose … hmm, she reckons they might well yeberdon samem, cool their poison on us.
—Do you mean we’d …
—No, they’d kind of … come on, you know it yourself, they’d persecute us, she replies in an impatient tone and reverts to her roses.
What exactly did Selma have in mind, I wonder as I cycle back home, exploring the connotations of persecution. Will they beat us up, throw us in jail? For how long? Certainly not women and children. What is the range of persecution? Does it imply murder? Related terms like maltreat, oppress, harass, and abuse come up, but fail to elicit concrete images involving me or anybody I know.
I reach home with an empty mind. A foreign car bearing a CD plate – corps diplomatique, is parked in front of Laurence’s house. Laurence’s mother is speaking to the man in the car who looks as English and as upset as herself. I wave hello but she does not notice me.
In the evening Dudi’s parents drop by. Mother serves a snack of toast, cold peeled cucumber, and hard Kurdish cheese steeped in tea. The four grown-ups wallow in self-reproach. They should have left long ago, they keep saying. They should have known better – it was evident that we would never be safe in this country, not after the birth of Israel.
—Now we’re stuck in a war that we can neither escape nor take part in, a war which we can only lose. Lose Israel and all our relatives if Israel loses, or lose ourselves if Israel wins.
It is the second time today that I hear this dark prediction. They do not bother going into details as if the sequence were all too obvious. Persecution, I presume, as I bite at the Kurdish cheese. Mother casts me a compassionate look and blames herself out loud for having raised her children in this turbulent country. I enjoy being declared the victim of my parents’ foolishness. Let’s hope they remember it next time they tell me off me for my moods. Now she is counting our male relatives likely to be drafted over there. When their concern shifts to the family members in Israel, I sneak away, bored and fed up, unwilling to swallow another dose of gloom. Shuli is sitting on a stool under the staircase, listening to the forbidden station and manipulating his slide rule. Nothing new, he signals as I pass by.
—I couldn’t care less, I yell back and climb up to my room, fling myself on my bed, and sink into Nous-Deux, the French world of love and passion.
The nurse, who is crazy about the doctor, discovers that he is having a secret affair with another nurse, from the adjacent ward. At the same time she finds out that she is pregnant. Her face is washed with tears, but it only adds to her beauty. The nurse is seriously considering suicide, as she desperately drives along the Seine. He’s a pig, unworthy of her love, that must be the moral of the story. I skip to the last page. Instead of her white uniform, she is wearing a white wedding dress. Bride and groom are kissing, mouth on mouth, in front of all their guests. Like in films, the kiss is lengthy, reproduced in close-ups taken from different angles. What about that other nurse, from the other ward? I read the story from the end backwards, and once again, from beginning to end. As its name suggests, the star in Nous-Deux is the couple, and all third parties must eventually leave the stage. I wonder why it is only Arabic, then, which differentiates the dual from the plural and accords to them a separate grammatical construction. My eyes close, the magazine falls from my hands. Mlle Capdevielle suddenly appears, hugging the man who was talking to Laurence’s mother today. Our French teacher is getting married to him, but he is a doctor and they are sending him off to the front on the very day of their wedding. My thoughts swing between sleep and wakefulness. My daydreams are hijacked by the night. By the time I hear our guests saying goodbye, my characters seem so remote that I no longer recognise them. What follows is running out of my control, and the last sentence cannot possibly have been the product of my mind.
Mlle Capdevielle is saying that as long as he is away, the dual form will never pass her lips.
Radio Baghdad wakes me up the next morning, pelting insults at Britain and the United States, accusing the two countries of a conspiracy against the Arabs, and of direct intervention in the war in favour of Israel.
—Y
ou’ll have to go under the staircase next time you listen to the BBC, I tease Shuli at the breakfast table.
—You’ll have to keep clear of your English darling, he replies with a sly smile. Otherwise they’ll accuse you of espionage for the British enemy.
—Don’t be silly, we’re only children.
—No, you aren’t, mother retorts.
—She behaves like one though, Shuli says.
—Stop this persecution, you two! I cry out.
Mother and Shuli gaze at each other, open-mouthed. Have I misused the word? Was I rude to mother? Shuli bursts into laughter. He is just having fun at my expense, I assume, whereas mother is definitely using the war to separate me from Laurence. She has been growing ill at ease with our friendship lately, and has on several occasions maintained that, at thirteen, girls should no longer be playing with boys. I try to catch father’s eye, but he is immersed in the bowl of cornflakes before him. If only some important news were broadcast right now, then the Laurence issue might be postponed for a while.
Father wipes his mouth with a napkin.
—Children or not, you might well put ideas into some informer’s head. Stay away from Laurence, will you? – just to be on the safe side. He’s a reasonable kid, I’m sure he’ll understand. Don’t play with him, don’t speak to him – not in the street, not at his place, and certainly not here. Is that clear?
As clear as the end of my world.
—And the telephone, is it also … forbidden, dangerous I mean?
—Don’t haggle, daughter, not in such matters. I said don’t speak to him? Don’t speak to him. Period.