Mothballs

by Alia Mamadouh

  When Aunt Najia came into the courtyard, we knew that the door of secrets had opened before us. When she laughed, our house shook. She shouted, “Huda, wipe off the platter, what’s wrong with a little cleanliness?”

  You, Adil, and your mother squatted in the corners. Your brother spread out the old newspapers, and pulled the thread off spools to make his kites. He worked like a patient adult; he did not shout or grumble. He was the youngest, the prettiest, the plumpest, the most delicate. You used to divide the world between you and him. He was order, melancholy, and introspection. You were anarchy, insolence, and violence. Your footsteps annoyed the people in the house and the way you walked in the street provoked danger. You were nine years old; Adil was eight. He was possessed by a surpassing ability to bear anguish and pain; you loved to apportion grief, hatred, and love, toward everyone, and among everyone. His head was strong and his eyes were wide, shining with sects and minorities. Their colour at night concealed the echo of sensitivity; in daylight, lights mingled in their honey-coloured waves. He was beautiful – venerable. He stood before you and you looked at him. You gave him titles – you barked at him. The day passed, and another, and another. You knew that his beauty was your greatest joy. The lines of his face, his nose, his lips, his silence, his backbone. The shadows of his casual sympathy, the depths of the resistance which people like you never know. All of this turned you against him. Siblings’ fears are not written down or publicized. They proceed, step by step. You lit all the lights so that he did not walk alone. You were with him; no, he was with you. He was the one everyone loved, he was the one who loved you. It was you who pushed him towards the wheels of the wagons drawn by decrepit horses. It was you who were frightened by the creeping of the horses, though he was silent. You cried “God is great!” in the street, you shrieked. You took him behind the graveyard to frighten him. You dressed him in your father’s uniform and saluted him. You got him embroiled in wild dreams. You were sure of nothing but his regal face. Adil’s face was created as if he were meant to return to Heaven young. You used to take him up to the roof, place him at the top of the steps and push him down. He did not raise his voice, cry, or whisper. He did not give away this secret. You were burdened by the ways you tortured him. You were an expert at capturing him and hiding him. You stole the money that his father gave him, sweets, apricot paste, dried apricots, and the bunches of wrinkled figs that your grandmother put aside for him alone. He never protested, he gave you things in front of everyone and away from everyone – when they were asleep, when they were out, when they returned. He loved you as if you were the last sister in the world. He knelt before you, gave you his portions, made winged animals for you, frightening bears, gentle toys, and did not bother with talk. You imagined him standing up, his chest ready to receive bullets. He would close his eyes, his tears would flow, his pulse would stop, he would not raise his spindly but soft arms in the air and say “No!”

  Since that time you have been alone, sinking into infernal stoicism. He stood in the doorway, defending you from their hands and feet, the whip, and shoes. He cried instead of you, and your rage mounted. You have brought all these curses upon yourself yet you always found someone to blame.

  Your mother moved as if she were climbing a high mountain. She brought tea and biscuits on a wide, flat tray. She offered each person a fan. She sullied no one with her voice, responding to Aunt Farida’s shrieks and shouts with a brief nod of her head. She gave them Adil and Huda – what more do they want from her?

  She was extraordinarily slender, fair-skinned and tall. Her hair was the brown of an old walnut; her eyes were honey-coloured but showed no light. The skin of her face was dry, her cheeks hollow, her teeth crooked. When she laughed, she asked God’s protection from Satan, and her facial features became tense as she remembered that laughter is asort of sin.

  After pouring and serving the tea, she sat on the low wooden bench like a dejected sentry. She opened and closed, rinsed and dried, came and went. She finished everything slowly: cooking, eating, loving her husband.

  Her sharp coughing travelled through walls and windows. You heard your grandmother reading prayers to her, your aunt as she cursed her. You and Adil were encircled, by that cough. You were moved to your grandmother’s room, because of fear …

  We did not know. We did not understand. We did not want to know. And they did not want us to know.

  We called her “Mama” only when we were frightened or needed help, but after giving birth to us she lowered a dark curtain of secrecy around her narrow domain.

  She took all her guidance from your father: she did not dare refuse. She walked toward the supernatural with her ailing chest with the same noble forehead, dreaming of truffles and the nourishment of her cheeks and thighs in case the inevitable faltered. Your grandmother loved her. And she hated no one.

  Aunt Najia began to pace in front of your grandmother. She joked with her, she chatted her up, and teased her with grand titles. This aunt made no distinction between any of the women. When your grandmother appeared, she wanted her to herself, and when your father’s sister came, she got her into new positions, saying things she never thought of saying before. When a changing rapture appeared on the horizon, she embraced it fully, never remembering what had gone before: the past, apprehensions, the first stammering. Your grandmother now admired her; this was what she wanted in her possession. She sprinkled flame on her and emerged from all discords. She fell with her whole height and width as if struck by an all-consuming itch. Her voice vanished and the dripping of blood was heard. Her long robe was drawn back a little from her taut thighs, and legs as long and slender as a goat’s. She kicked off her pointed sandals and they landed across the room. She rolled up the sleeve of the robe, higher, higher, up to her armpit. This was where the smell of steam and sweat came from open pores and the extending folds of her limp forearm. The hair between her armpit and forearm was long and black. When she was intoxicated, she undid the brooch and it dropped on the floor. Aunt Farida sat across from her with her legs open, and your grandmother asked God’s forgiveness:

  “There is no strength or power save in God!”

  The words detour: “Even God’s words sound good coming from you.”

  “Listen, Najia, God help you.”

  “Oh, even my name sounds good coming from you.”

  “Listen, you know I don’t like that kind of talk.”

  “Fine, fine. Don’t get upset. By the way, is Bahija Khan going to drop in?”

  Their voices rose, your head bowed to that remote depth and you chose your first relation between the edges of the mysterious split: the enigmatic body.

  You gave off strange vibrations, you don’t know how, or where they went, or who would feel them.

  You will never see these strange women again in your life. You love listening to them. They are gold mines: if you go and extract it, the sun will shine; if you leave them in the belly of the earth, the belly will split asunder and produce a different posterity.

  Were these the corrupt women you have heard about?

  Women: souls painted with fire, bodies over which the open air passes, making them radiant, over which the salts of the sea pass, making them blaze, at whom fear fires its incomparable rays.

  They screamed at you; they watched you.

  You were there, in that courtyard, listening to horns that bleated at the threshold of your soul. The neighbourhood in which your body lived was agitated. You did not retreat. They dragged you, gently at first; they beat you, and your mother went into the distant kitchen. Her shame was striking in its candour, among those brilliant souls.

  Aunt Najia started shouting again. Her voice had become riper than any other voice you’d heard in your life:

  “I want Bahija Khan.”

  They gave the title Khan to proper ladies between the Baghdadi period and the Ottoman occupation. The father, grandfather, or brother drove them into isolation and degradation, so the women took both the title and the abandon
ment.

  Bahija was your grandmother’s younger sister, the daughter of her stepmother.

  Beautiful, plump, tall and broad, proud and haughty, she was about to turn thirty. All the women you knew plot against her. If she stepped into Aunt Najia’s trap, it was because she resembled her. If she went to another, it was because that was her nature.

  You did not realize all this. What was occurring in front of you left its mark, a step and who knows where it is going to lead you. That whole network of arms and legs met unwritten covenants and invisible charters. What went from this to that was bound as a kind of love from whose shadow there was no escape.

  Your aunt’s voice emerged sharply from her throat: “I want you to go like lightning to your grandfather’s house and tell my Aunt Bahija to come quickly.”

  Chapter 2

  The big house was one kilometre away from our house. Our grandmother’s sisters lived there, and the widow who had suddenly grown senile after the death of her wealthy husband, leaving behind Bahija and Zubaida and Nahida. Nahida had two daughters younger than me, and two sons older. Zubaida was barren, and Bahija loved women. When I entered, everyone looked at me with constant superiority and turned their heads the other way when I passed. We called this the house of dreams. We wore our finest clothes when we went there. My aunt combed my hair and pinched me on the arm, saying:

  “I swear to God, if you break anything over there, I’ll kill you.”

  We tasted all sorts of fruits there, fresh meat, and exotic types of sweets and sugary pastries, liberally given to us by Aunt Bahija.

  When you saw yourself in the street, your fire was stoked. There you flung yourself into the tumult and different ways. You stood in front of the vendors, shooing the flies away from the white cheese wrapped in fresh palm leaves. You greeted the cheese seller, Abu Mahmoud: “Hello, dear Abu Mahmoud,” and stole a fresh cucumber and a date whose sweetness burned your mouth. You did not look up. The alleys of your neighbourhood were filthy, littered with onion and aubergine peels, okra tops and fragments of rotten bread, remnants of black tea – all of it took you by surprise. You slapped cross-eyed Hashim, the son of Razzuqi the carpenter, called him a name, and ran away.

  “Hey, still cross-eyed?”

  He ran after you, the edge of his dishdasha, his ankle-length shirt, in his teeth, his feet trampling through the mud and garbage, and then slipped and fell, and everyone laughed.

  You ran and jumped over the gutters and the children. You ran through the house of Mrs Rasmiya, the neighbourhood nurse. Her door was always open; a stained white curtain with holes in it hung in the doorway. You heard the voice of her husband as he beat her and snatched the proceeds from the injections she has administered, and he laughed as he bumped into you: “Hello, Huda. Give my regards to your father.”

  The houses of Baghdad had stone steps on the outside. You loved standing on these steps, getting to know the herd that waited and knew how to stand. You stood on one of them one day and said to Mahmoud, the son of the cheese seller:

  “Look, I am as tall as you are.”

  There the Baghdadi women sat or lay on cushions, old carpets, and straw mats. They all held fans, and their veils covered only their heads. Their nightgowns gave off the smell of onions and parsley, eggs and sweat. They opened them a little, as if opening their souls. When astranger walked by, they exchanged glances among themselves and covered themselves until he had passed.

  The doors to the courtyard were made of old blotchy wood whose coats of paint were peeling in every corner. When winter attacked, everyone waited for Abu Masoud, the painter. In the middle of the doors were shiny or rusty hand-shaped iron knockers. We stood before them, banged the knockers, and ran away into other streets, far away. We raced and gradually became familiar with this district of houses where no one complained of hunger, which were tidy, tall, spacious, surrounded by towering trees and unfamiliar flowers, and built of gorgeously coloured or painted bricks. The girls here wore wide, pleated skirts and short-sleeved blouses, with coloured ribbons in their hair or around their braids. Their hair was always combed, and their faces freshly scrubbed. Their skin was clear and radiant; their blood sang with health. Their food was fresh meat from Mr Hubi the butcher. Hubi was about forty, fat and red-faced, with a big belly and a broad, slow voice. He butchered lambs, singing, as if he were watering his garden.

  This was the only man whose orders were obeyed. Everyone in our street wanted to find room in his shop. Even the dogs and cats bathed in the smell of his tender, freshly killed meats.

  Cows, calves, and lambs hung there, bathed in blood and soothed with verses from the Qu’ran.

  Anyone who stopped in front of his shop would be greeted with every compliment and blessing that came into his head.

  Hubi knew everyone: the family trees of the people who lived in the palaces far away, overlooking the Tigris and the old wooden bridge, the pedigrees of the houses that ate their meat in silence, the histories of those who ate bones and broth, and those who threw meat to their dogs or into the garbage.

  To us, Hubi was more important than the king. The King of Iraq was young. A portrait of him with his uncle hung in Hubi’s shop, surrounded by spatters of blood and animal remains. Hubi sold meat only in the afternoon: the morning was for slaughtering and butchering. He sold the hides and heads to Abu Mahmoud, and the sheep’s livers and testicles to restaurants. His shop produced everything: problems, quarrels, and even secret leaflets.

  In the afternoon, our neighbourhood in al-A‘dhamiyya came to a stop. The noon, afternoon, and sundown prayers were called from the ancient Abu Hanifa mosque. Faces came, figures passed by, and arms strained. Hubi sliced away the shanks and legs, intestines and shoulders as if he had been created a butcher at birth.

  The day your grandmother sent you to him, you raised your head to hers.

  “Huda my girl, don’t lose the money, or we won’t have meat for a week.”

  She said no more and you were on your way down the street, absorbed by the jingling of the twenty fils coins. At that very moment you could have flown to the next street. Buy candy floss, colourful lollipops, and currants. Fill your hands and your empty pockets, your reckless head, and your tongue dry with all the forbidden things you had seen only in the hands of the children in these other streets.

  Steal and lie. Argue and make up excuses, for in Baghdad people take opposite paths: if you steal, your corpse will not be laid open, and if you lie, God is forgiving and merciful.

  That is what your grandmother taught you, who stood before her prayer carpet all the time, and between times, in heat, cold, and rain. Her only passion was for God. She explored herself with prayers that never ended; she drowned everyone in supplications, and divulged no secret. She contrived no tricks, she stirred up no scandals, or played with anyone’s nerves. She stood in the courtyard or on the roof, saying:

  “Lord, bind me unto you, and never let me close an eyelid without a thought of you, O most merciful God.”

  She used her imagination, wit and wisdom and the stories of the prophets shone as she put us – Adil and I – on her lap. She came to the tale of the prophet Joseph. She spent a long time on this prophet, describing him in a reverent voice: “My dear, it was he who was the death of Potipher’s wife.”

  You asked her: “Who was Potipher’s wife?”

  “He stood alone against that treacherous woman and his accursed brothers. She was like Lucifer himself, but Joseph pushed her away. Later on he got an inspiration from Almighty God.”

  Adil’s voice: “Who did our lord Joseph look like?”

  “No one looks like him. I don’t know anyone he looks like.”

  She wasted no words. She freed herself from all her difficulties, by referring them up to the Omnipotent Deity. You learned about the first of the devils – Potipher’s wife – from her. That wanderer, seduced and exposed, became my premonition. There my gaze fell on her for the first time. I saw her, named her, and compared her with the other
women, dividing up what she had among all: your aunt Farida, your mother’s and father’s sisters. But what remained was still abundant.

  The day I read the Qu’ran, I read the Sura of Joseph. It opened before me new territories for questions and battles.

  With one blow I tore up all the tombstones, as if going into darkness with everyone.

  You continued seeking lazy mornings when you did not have to go to school, for vast distances in which you exhaust your anger and love of questions. You did what you were asked in a different way. You wished you had Mahmoud’s muscles, Hubi’s fingers, and your father’s legs. Your head was dizzy from being hit. They had stuffed it with slaps and commandments. You took the remains of sins and stayed that way, peeping through the cracks in the doors and window panes at Potipher’s first wife – Aunt Farida – and your mother’s two sisters. They were in one another’s laps, their flesh trembling, liquids and lapses coming from their lips, new truths from their heads.

  When your grandmother went up to the high roof, she took her prayer carpet in one hand and the Qu’ran in the other. She murmured prayers to protect us all. She did not look down or turn around. At that time the two beloved aunts came in and went down. They left their arms linked, their cloaks slipping from long famine; the whole of the room enters into the madness, sighs, appointments, streets, and people. Drops flew off them: “Kill me, dear Bahija, kill me, my dear.”

  Some went this way, as if it were fate. If your grandmother stayed away, it was because this match was between her and another entity: her soul. And if your mother was absent, it was because she accepted her only good fortune: your father.

  But these women were descending to Paradise, not waiting for a lift or contrary sura. They were arm in arm and heel to heel. The flowing channels of the body freed things that were pent up. Aunt Farida stood behind these boundaries, waiting, ready, trained to be ready. Her training was done from the onset of first awareness; when the hour came, they did not delay a second. Women, women, were all around you, recorded in the maps of cities, desired until the Last Judgement; they grew, they proceeded slowly, marching, listening to rumours, walking carefully around the forbidden area: men.