When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad

by Mona Yahia

  —Of course not, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’ll try a piece, and keep you company for a while, but not for long. By the life of my father, I promised to be back in a minute.

  After the toast, while fishing for the kubba in the red sauce, Dudi asks,

  —Say Lina, what happened at Hai’s saba’a? I heard ustad Heskel created turmoil. My sisters came home with their jackets torn. Some parents were outraged. Everybody’s telling a different story. And what the hell did Job have to do with it?

  “Slain like a dog, and mourned like a dog. Do you call this a proper saba’a, when security men – may their eyes be gouged out – are patrolling across from our house? The criminals, what are they after now? His soul? His ghost?” Sitting beside Hai’s sister, ustad Heskel was trying his best to comfort her. He assured her that nobody on earth could ever deprive a man of God’s compassion. Quoting the Zohar, he said that Hai’s soul was wandering to and fro between the house and the grave, mourning his body for seven days. He said we should pray for it with all our hearts before it departs to the eternal world, and he read out all sorts of verses from his holy books. In one ear and out the other, as far as Hai’s sister was concerned. She did not even pretend to be listening. Her flippant reaction gave the ustad to understand that if he was to reach her, he had no other option than to join her in her disconsolate grief. So he stood up and, with his clasp-knife, he tore his jacket from the right lapel down to the chest.

  The keri’a is a mourning ritual reserved only for close relatives. Hai’s sister hugged the ustad and called him her brother. But as soon as the other guests had recovered their speech, they got into a heated argument with him. A young woman maintained it was wrong to tear one’s shirt when – Allah leykul, may God not utter it – none of one’s own family members were deceased. An elderly man added that once misused, such a ritual called forth bad fortune. It was – hasha assema’a, may the listeners be spared – as if asking God to take somebody’s life away. Weren’t they confusing religious belief with superstition? The ustad answered calmly. Did they really think that the Almighty was so susceptible? Did they forget how manifold our Torah was? To prove his point, he read out the passage from the Book of Job, in which Job’s three friends rent their garments to commiserate with him over the death of his children.

  —So she gets carried away by the Bible and ruins her brand new woollen jacket! mother complains. We buy it for her at the beginning of the season, no matter how tight money is, because we won’t have our daughter dressed shabbily. And what does she do? She goes and cuts it with a knife.

  —Everybody did it! All forty students. We all stood up, and, one after the other, tore our jackets for Hai. It was the only thing we could do, virtually wear our wound.

  I turn to Shuli, seeking his approval. He smiles back, faintly, with an air of detachment which makes me doubt whether he has been listening at all.

  —What’s done’s done! father concludes with a measure of discomfort. Didn’t we agree to close this subject?

  Mother reaches out for Dudi’s empty plate and, without asking if he wanted it, serves him a second helping.

  —You haven’t heard yet how Baba was released. The commander of the prison himself put in an appearance in their cell early this morning and delivered a speech about how they had been wronged by the former regime and how the revolutionary government was…

  Our meal lasts until Dudi’s sister comes over and drags her brother back home. His family has, in fact, been waiting for him to start lunch.

  Mother calls me to the kitchen. She needs my help, she says, and thrusts a bundle of rags into my hand. Shuli’s room has not been cleaned for over a month. Carrying a bucket of water, and a blue rubber glove under her arm, she marches upstairs. Reluctantly, I follow. Shuli is standing by his window, absorbed in some scene outside. From his stiffness, I can tell we are not welcome. His good humour at lunch has sunk into melancholy. Mama, you really don’t have to, he falters. But she has already put on her glove and is rubbing the bedrest. The night table. The table-lamp. First with the wet rag then with the dry one. I am in charge of the window sill. Mama, it can wait, please do it later, do it tomorrow, he implores. Everything will shine in a minute, she replies, moving him gently aside, to proceed with the cupboard. Brown water is dripping from the cupboard. Mother wipes it dry, then plants the bucket on the desk. Shuli’s colour changes. Not the desk, he cries out, and grabs the cloth from her. And who did he think had been cleaning it all this time? Or did he imagine that dust flew back the way it came, all by itself? Mother laughs. Shuli does not look amused. He declares in a firm voice his wish to be alone. Alone? Hasn’t he been alone long enough? Can’t he wait five more minutes? NO! Don’t shout at your mother, she replies and snatches the dust cloth back from him. Now they are wrestling for that ragged muddy undershirt, half playfully, half in earnest. The undershirt sails out of the room, followed by the blue rubber glove. My hand, stop twisting my hand, you’re hurting me! He grips her by the shoulders and forces her to the door. Barrah, out! She is tittering like a little girl. Let go of me! You’ve broken my hand, she groans, displaying her unscathed wrist. He removes the bucket from his desk, slams it down beside her foot. Barrah, he repeats, now to the bucket, and bars the door with his arm. Mother beckons me.

  —Didn’t you hear what your brother said? He wishes to be left alone.

  I shrug my shoulders. Shuli utters no word.

  —Come with me, I said! I need your help in the kitchen.

  —Later! I reply, and rest my elbows on the window sill.

  —Later, everything can wait for later when you’re fourteen! she grumbles, shakes her head in disapproval and flounces away.

  He, too, is shaking his head, in much the same way, until he turns round and lets out a cry of alarm. A circle of dark water on the desk is crawling towards the nearby folder. I throw my rag on the formica desk, rub it until the water is soaked up. Shuli picks up the folder, feels its base. Dry, thank God. He browses through the loose scraps of paper inside – notes, addresses, bibliographies, and many smudged sketches. Such a fuss over a trifle, he murmurs, as he replaces the folder on the table. He then picks up the pencil case, unzips it, scans the row of pens and pencils, and zips it up again. He repeats the procedure with the set-square box and the compass box. He undoes the top of the ink bottle, and, shutting one eye, peeks inside. What are you looking for? I ask. Nothing in particular, he mumbles. Looking for nothing in particular, he squats down and starts pulling out the desk drawers. Just pulling them out and pushing them in again, as if the friction of the wooden drawers sliding in and out evoked some remote memories, the way music does. Wearied with the music of drawers, or maybe just with himself, my brother gets up, pads to his bed, and lets himself fall. Absent-mindedly, he stretches out his hand, and clicks the table-lamp on and off, like a little boy. Suddenly he sits up and clutches the transistor radio.

  He moves the dial left and right, right and left, mumbling numbers to himself, as if having a discussion with his memory. Only when he has precisely located it, does he turn it on. The deep-throated female voice restores the pride into his leaden face. After one and a half years, he can still remember the wavelength of the forbidden station. They are broadcasting a lengthy agricultural report. The pips on the hour are sounded at last. The newscaster announces the time – one hour behind us. The name of the station is about to follow. With a vicious smile, Shuli turns the volume up full-blast.

  —Let’s see how long it takes Baba to run upstairs and …

  —Shuuuuliiiii … mother yells from downstairs,

  —All right, all right! he yells back, and switches off the radio.

  Then he winks at me,

  —We don’t want the old man to have a heart attack, right?

  Missing a sign of complicity from me, Shuli placidly returns the transistor radio to the night table.

  —What am I sulking about? It’s so much easier to silence the radio announcer than to shout for the warder each
time I’ve got to shit.

  He pauses, as if to reflect upon his words.

  —There, my days were identical, infinite repetitions, the same pattern. All stolen days.

  —But Shuli, you’re back now!

  —Right. And now that I’m back in our sunny spacious house, I’ll have to allow fear into my life again.

  I go over to the window. Shuli continues,

  —Speaking about fear, I suppose you people still wet your pants when the bell rings late in the evening, right?

  —No! We switch it off at night-time. Baba says if it’s the security police, nothing will stop them anyway, but if it’s a mistake or a bad joke, then we’re spared the fright in the middle of the night.

  A look of horror passes over his face. He has not taken such routine into account. He joins me at the window, leans his elbows on the sill, and stares dreamily outside.

  —Did you see my new jacket? I say after a while. Mama has stitched it, but the cut still shows, like a scar!

  —Since when? he asks, pointing at the construction site in the street behind us.

  The building is surrounded by ladders and scaffolding. The brickwork of the outer walls of the ground floor has been completed, with holes left for the doors and windows. A concrete ceiling has been laid on top, but above that there are only projecting steel reinforcements. The place looks deserted. The workers must be having a break somewhere in the shade. When did the excavation begin?

  —Sometime in the autumn. Semi-detached houses.

  —I can see that. The standard shit. When will they understand that such buildings are no good for the climate here? Thanks to those French windows the inhabitants will grill in the heat most of the year. In the old oriental houses, there was always shade because of the hosh, the inner courtyard, and you had the cellar if you wanted a cool place for an afternoon nap. They’re both out now, sacrificed to modernity. I bet you, in a few decades, when they finally wake up to the alien city they’ve created, they’ll put the blame on imperialism again.

  —You can’t wait to start your own thing, right?

  Shuli is taken aback.

  —My own thing? Here? You’re kidding. Who’d let me? And even if they did, what would I build? New palaces for the new dictators? Larger avenues for their military parades? More squares to stage still more spectacular executions? Or should I devote myself to cosy houses for the middle class while I myself am living out of a suitcase?

  I do not reply. Shuli goes on after a while, quietly, as if talking to himself,

  —How can their history be filled with such meditative architecture, and yet so much violence? This will always be a riddle to me.

  Mumbling indistinct curses, he bends down and goes over his books, jerking from one stack to the other, selecting the large, hard-covers, beating the dust out of them, then slamming them down on the window sill. No, he is arranging them along the sill – putting them down flat, one next to the other, spine inward. The second row is laid in such a way that the books overlap those underneath, and the gaps at the edges are filled with smaller paperbacks. Only by the fourth layer do I realise that my brother is bricking up his window. Volumes of history, archaeology, philosophy, eastern and western architecture, Renaissance Art, and various dictionaries and lexicons, pile up and bar the daylight. Except for those sunbeams that sneak through the gaps between different-sized books, and reveal the motes of dust fluttering in the air. After he has laid the last row, just beneath the curtain rail, Shuli considers the variegated structure with a mixture of pride and irony.

  —There you are, I’ve set up my own thing, my own Wall of China, for now and until our last day in this place.

  Why is he fuming? A wall of books has always stood between Shuli and the world. I draw my forefinger into a shaft of light and adjust its position until the nail shines.

  —We may not be here when the new neighbours move in! Selma says we’re likely to get passports pretty soon.

  —Passports? Tell your Selma she’s living in a dream-world. Why would they allow us to go? We’re breeding spies for future conspiracies. Forget it, Lina. They won’t let us out. Never in a million years.

  —Don’t say that. I don’t want to grow up here.

  —And I don’t want to rot here. That’s why we can’t wait until this or that regime feels revolutionary enough to grant us passports. We’ve got to find our own way out.

  He goes over to his desk again, pulls the drawers open. When he finds the map of the Middle East, he nails it to the wall. I switch on the light. Shuli emphasises Iraq’s frontier with a red “Magic Marker”. The outline of a curly head stands out in the north. Long straight lines reach out for the west and for the south, and a dent appears in the east – as if jostled by the elbow of neighbouring Iran. Like arteries, the two blue rivers wend their way through the country from north to south.

  The concrete mixer outside is rasping again. The noise will last until sunset. Shuli is too busy painting the frontier to be disturbed.

  —Needless to say, we can rule out an escape to the west and to the south. We certainly have no wish to jump out of the frying-pan into the fire.

  I follow the capped marker as it wanders along the border with Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and nod attentively, as if he were teaching me something.

  —Our good fortune won’t come from the north either. Turkey’s known for its tough policy towards fugitives. If they catch us, they won’t hesitate to hand us over to the Iraqis.

  Shuli’s arm sags as he eliminates one alternative after the other.

  —Our only chance is the border with Iran, thanks to the Shah – may God grant him long life.

  This is no news either. Shuli taps on the blue line in the south-east, Shat al-Arab.

  —Unfortunately, the way over the stream is no longer possible for us. There are large armies on both sides of the southern frontier, and they’ll stay there as long as the conflict over the oil fields hasn’t been resolved.

  I wonder how his information has been up-dated within half a day.

  —That means only the north-eastern frontier is left, through the Kurdish provinces. The region is mountainous, and it won’t be as smooth as crossing a river. But I’m sure …

  —Shuli, you know how cautious Baba is, I interrupt him impatiently. You think he’ll ever take such a risk?

  —I don’t care. I only know that I’m taking off at the first opportunity. With or without Baba.

  —But how, for heavens’ sake! Since war has broken out with the Kurds, just travelling to the north in itself has become next to impossible.

  Shuli gazes at me with stupefaction, then hate, then despair.

  —In that case, I’m afraid we’re trapped … inside this map, he mumbles, flinging the red marker on the desk.

  I spare him the news of our thirty-mile restriction.

  Liberation Monument

  —The Passport Office please, father says to the taxi driver.

  —Can you believe it? I whisper in Shuli’s ear, sitting between him and mother in the back.

  —There’s still nothing to believe, he answers dryly, loud enough to be heard by all.

  Mother turns to him, and when Shuli meets her gaze, she bites her upper lip to indicate an imprudence on his part, and cocks her head in the direction of the driver.

  —Why? What’s wrong? What did I say? Shuli replies sulkily, and looks away.

  We ride through Sa’adoun street, the shortest and most convenient route to the city. Shuli is engrossed in the scenes sliding past his window. No wonder, considering that he has hardly left the house since his release six months ago. When we pass by Abu Yunan, the new hamburger take-away, my brother lets out a cry of surprise. But it used to be just a kiosk! he exclaims, and wows in admiration at the long white counter and the huge blue sign above it. And the hamburger used to taste much better, the driver comments. But Shuli’s attention has shifted to the next innovation, to Mackenzie, the English bookshop at the crossroads, which ha
s changed hands and been converted into Majid Bookstores. Shortly after the Martyrs’ Mosque, the driver slows down, rolls up the window, honking and cursing the never-ending roadworks for the dust we are breathing in. Further north, at the Nasr Cinema, abi fauk al-shajara, “My Father on the Tree”, is still playing. It is the first Egyptian film with a predominantly psycho-analytical theme. Selma and I are dying to see it. As we approach Bab el-Sharji, the East Gate, dread surges up within me in anticipation of Tahrir Square, and the ghastly memories it harbours. Shuli nudges me, and points at Nasb al-Hurryiah, the Liberation Monument, which overlooks the square: a wall-relief about 160 feet long and 30 feet wide, made of stone slabs on which bronze figures are mounted.

  —Did you know it’s a narrative of the Revolution?

  —Tsk, I reply curtly, hoping the driver did not hear his remark.

  —You mean the 14th of Tamuz Revolution? asks the driver, peering inquiringly at Shuli through the front mirror.

  Father, fidgeting in the passenger seat, lowers the sun visor and tries, unsuccessfully, to catch his son’s eyes in the vanity mirror.

  —Exactly, it’s the story of the revolution of ’58, and it reads like a chronicle, from right to left.

  —What do you mean like a chronicle?

  —Look at the far right, over there. See that horse? It means in the beginning there was a horse! As simple as that.

  But the monument is already behind us. Instead of proceeding forwards to the city, the driver, without asking if anybody minds, turns left, around the square, giving us and himself the opportunity to view the primal horse. Mother prods father’s shoulder, urging him to react.

  —Shuli, stop this at once … father reels back and snaps in English.

  Shuli callously ignores father’s appeal, and continues to enlighten the driver, in the Moslem dialect,

  —In the beginning there’s a horse, an Arab horse – a symbol of purity and vigour. The horse’s rearing up in fury. The people around it are twisting their bodies in pain, and stretching out their arms and legs in agitation. Two men are locked behind bars. Three mothers are wailing for their murdered sons. The image is one of violence and oppression. It’s the initial stage before the Revolution.