“And your father?”
“He says, ‘If God had created Huda in Adil’s place, it would have been better.’ ”
“And you?”
“I’m not ashamed of being lame in front of you.”
This was the first time she used the word that made up her title in front of me. I never saw her tears, but I cried in front of her, in front of Mahmoud, and everybody. She left me as I was, crying until I thought my hair and lashes would fall out. I sweated and trembled but she did not come to me. She did not touch me or dry my tears or wipe my nose. She did not think about me, or laugh when I laughed. She was sceptical and high minded. She stretched her leg out before me, spread her dress out, and covered her knee, moving as if she were feverish. Strangely, she looked like our class teacher, Miss Qadriya. She looked at me and at the other girls as if seeing them for the first time. She laced her fingers together on her chest and did not move. She looked at me as if I were one of her dolls. I did not envy her or hate her, or look at her, or forget her. Before me, behind me, her looks, her breaths, her appearance. Firdous came to me, taking the first step with only her left foot. She showed it to me. She got up, moved, and took her first step with her arm against the wall. When she reached the steps she stood there. She stretched her neck into the lane and took a calm look all round. The neighbours’ houses; muddy streams; the pregnant house cats. Alley cats from other streets. The neighbourhood men walking by. Housewives sitting on their stone steps. The street in front of us was important and confusing, crowded with bodies and ideas, radiating fear and illusions. She stood there, leaning her pelvis against the doorway as I stood beside her, hand in hand. Our hands were touching. She did not clasp my hand, but let me clasp hers. She never hurried for anything or trembled before anything. I never saw her afraid. It was as if she had bent the tree of fear under her arm and torn off its leaves, eaten its branches, still waiting in its shade for something greater than fear.
Firdous. This was the first holy day where I had not taken her in my arms and kissed her. She gave me a present of money, saying, “Spend it – buy everything you want for yourself. Only don’t make me play on the swings.”
“What if we play on them together? Would you do that?”
She did not answer. The five boys pushed us and she clutched the rope in one hand, with her other arm around my waist. She never batted an eyelid. She did not falter, but her face became livid and then went pale. We swung up high, and I only looked at her. She looked only up at the sky. We swung down and flew up. I shouted and sang as I watched her feet in the air in front of me. I knocked my shoes against hers and pinched her leg. She did not hit me or push harder against me. She did not frown at me or see anyone before her. Her eyes were fixed. Her lips were dry, and her voice could not sound, no matter what. When the swing swayed, the boys crowded around us and we slid off. Everyone laughed, everyone but she. Nizar came near her, and they looked into each other’s eyes calmly. She took a cold bottle of drink from his hand and said, “Thank you, Nizar.” She walked alone ahead of us. She stopped but did not turn around. I reached her, panting. She said, as faintly as a voice coming from a well, “I wish Nizar had agreed to ride the swing with us.”
This train looked like the swing. We stopped for a long time, then walked along slowly. They boarded and disembarked at the stations. The voices of the pedlars selling cigarettes, chewing gum, and cold drinks. The stations were ruins, workers’ rooms demolished in the middle. The rail employees in their dark blue clothing boarded the train, checked tickets, coughed, and looked at my aunt. I stared hard at them. I got up several times, and Farida pulled me roughly and pushed me down by the window. Adil had not run out of patience as I had. He was tired and fell asleep on my grandmother’s lap. I watched him and thought him to be more beautiful than the birds flying before me, the low houses painted bright colours, yellow, black, and a dirty shade of turmeric. The trees stood alone, naked, and dry, not moving as we passed them. Shops and garages were halfway open. Old, overturned automobiles, bicycles boys had dragged through the streams. Iraqi flags, limp in the heat and warm air, hung over police stations and official offices.
My grandmother had still not smoked or had anything to eat. I said to her:
“Grandma, I’ll get you a snack. You haven’t eaten anything since last night.”
“We’ll eat kebabs in Karbala, at the shrine. They call them Karbala kebabs.”
“What about my father?”
“What about him?” asked Farida crossly.
“Will we go and see him?”
Grandmother stroked Adil’s hair, not looking at us.
“We’ll bring you and Adil to him, and we’ll go to the holy shrine.”
“And after?”
“And after?” she said severely. “We are not going to his house. If he wants to see us, let him come to the shrine.”
“But we – ”
“What about you? If he takes you to his house, go. Your new brothers are there. One-eyed Nuriya is there. By God, she killed Iqbal.” My grandmother’s voice was clear and decisive: “God took Iqbal. Don’t listen to this talk. Give him our regards. Kiss his hand, and tell him God will bless him if he does honest work. I’m longing to see him and hear his voice. I want him to come to the house. I’d accept it if he got upset, or if he got drunk and the men carried him to the house. I’d accept it if he beat you. Tell him, ‘Your mother wishes you health and happiness and prosperity.’”
She lowered her voice. She removed her spectacles and wiped away her tears. Adil shifted in her lap. He hugged her and sighed deeply on her breast.
“Come here. Where are you going?”
“Let her walk about a little.”
Adil came after me and walked behind me. “Stop a little.”
We jumped over the luggage. Everyone’s eyes were on us. Their faces inspected us. We stood before the window, finding a place among the young men and girls. We stuck our heads out of the window; the hot air blinded us as we staggered and bumped into the others gathered at the window. I saw numbers of flies settling on the glass and on the nostrils of the people around us. I shooed them away but they came back.
“It’s one-eyed Nuriya who killed Iqbal?”
“Are we really going to my father’s house?”
“If you want to go, go.”
“And you?”
“No.”
“But if he takes us, what will we tell him?”
“Grandmother wants to see him, even if just at a distance. We’ll tell him that.”
“He might get cross and not come.”
“He might come with us.”
Iqbal cut my father in two.
The train stopped here, at Sakkat al-Hindiya, for a long time. It was the first time we had visited Karbala and the first time we’d ridden in a train. The call to noon prayer, the figures spreading out rugs and carpets on the floor in front of us, facing Mecca.
“Grandma, we’ll get off for a little while here.”
Farida replied, in her gruff voice, “Stay where we can see you. Don’t go far.”
The air burned us as if it were coming from a furnace. The tall trees around us surrounded the rest stop at Hindiya. Naked youths swam in the deep brooks, and women dangled their feet in the muddy water. Some of them were bent over, washing and rinsing clothes and squeezing them dry. They scrubbed dishes and metal pots with mud, washed them off, and turned them over on the ground.
Sheep, cows, and goats wandered before us, drinking from the other end of the brook, making their sounds and eating the greenyellow grass. The sound of love songs came from the other side of the brook, interrupted by loud cursing. Adil did not move; he was standing underneath the window of the train. He was watching me dipping my hand into the brook, washing my face and looking at the women, who looked back at me and laughed together.
Again the train released its sound. My hair was matted with sweat and my clothes stuck to my skin. I smelled my armpit. My aunt had a disgusting smell, like
burning excrement. I would sit far away from her. “We’ll be in Karbala shortly.”
Every time I heard my grandmother’s voice I thought I was hearing it for the first time. Adil left me space next to him. The toilets on the train were far away. My aunt said, “They’re all filthy and full of diseases.”
The sky looked like my father’s face. We all rocked forward and were pitched on top of one another. We were at Karbala Station.
My aunt attacked me with a stinging voice before I disembarked: “Where are you going? Come back. I swear, if your father saw you running round like this he’d kill you in front of everyone. Take this cloak and wrap yourself in it the way you’re supposed to.”
“Hold Adil’s hand tightly.”
“If either of you gets lost, say, ‘We are the children of Officer Jamil al-Maarouf.’ ”
I stumbled and fell, and Adil laughed at me. After a few minutes of walking I began to scratch my head. Every moment I put my cloak in order, it immediately tumbled from my head. My grandmother’s voice was lost amid the clamour of all the automobiles and the holiday noise. There were throngs of innumerable people. A woman who looked like a black cloud moved in front of us on the ground, so all we could see were some of the colours above people’s heads, the children’s white and blue dishdashas as they rode on their mothers’ shoulders.
My grandmother and aunt dropped their veils over their faces. Now we could only distinguish them by their voices. The men in front of the shops wore white clothes and undershirts, and all their wares were spread out: rugs, carpets, fabrics of every colour, gold, swords that glinted whenever the sun caught them, fruits, vegetables, watermelon slices set out in rows on large platters, and glasses of cold laban. There were bookshops and shelves of thick, dark-green books whose titles were written in gold. There were pictures of Imam Ali, behind which forked swords shone. I forgot to draw the cloak around me and one of the women smacked me on the chest and kept walking. We stopped behind them and all got into a horse-drawn carriage, then sat opposite them. My grandmother said, “Take us to Karbala Prison.”
“Yes, today is the holiday visit. Who have you got over there?”
“My father,” said Adil.
“God willing, he’ll be safely released.”
Grandmother, who was praying, replied, “No, he works there.”
“Hmm.”
He lashed the horses vigorously, and they led the carriage at a run through Karbala’s paved lanes, high and bare, filthy and hot. We went a long way and emerged outside the city, where the air was dusty but the sky revealed. There were no plants, no trees, no houses or garages, no cars, no donkeys. The soil was as white as lime, and the fine, delicate dust settled on us. The carriage crushed the pebbles as it ran over them on the long dirt road.
“By God, I’m only taking you there for the children’s sake. No one goes there at this hour.”
“We’ll drop the children off and go back to the shrine with you,” said my grandmother.
“This is the prison. We’re here.”
Adil’s voice: “I’m afraid, Grandma.”
Grandmother took him by the head, hugged and kissed him, and Ipulled at him. We got off. The cloak fell to the ground. I picked it up, brushed it clean, and put it on my head, the tray in my other hand.
“Listen, if you don’t come back soon we’ll leave.”
“But if – ”
“You’ll come with us to the shrine. We’ll spend the night there.”
We took our first step on this ground. We could see the faraway building; it looked like an upside-down lorry and had a high wall the colour of used iodine. All I could see behind it was the sky, with creatures dispersed around it, whose cloaks shone when the sun caught them. Children turned their heads toward the gates which were higher than the gates of our mosque, wide and intimidating, with iron plates in the middle and on the sides and round iron rings from the top to the bottom. The children played with them, poking their fingers inside and pushing their bodies against them. There was a huge hole in the middle in which I saw a key that did not move.
Two jeeps were parked close together in front of the gate. Women were leaning on them and some children were asleep inside. The doors and roofs were open. There was a smell of burning rubbish whenever the wind blew, and the rancid smell spread.
Adil walked in silence, playing with the pebbles and kicking them away. All eyes were on us, and did not leave us. I stood at the gate and placed the tray on the ground, letting the cloak slip down to my shoulders. I looked around me. One of the women asked in a low voice, “Do you have a watch?”
“No.”
“Visiting hours start at three.”
I knocked at the door and the children laughed at me and crowded around me. I looked at the movement of my palms, as if they were the wings of a fly on the verge of death. I lowered my head to the big hole and shouted, “Mister, we are the children of Officer Jamil.”
The children fell silent, and the women turned away from us. A few minutes later the door creaked open sharply and the face of a police officer appeared before us.
Everyone moved towards me in a wave, standing and surrounding us in a circle. They grabbed us by the shoulders and pushed us away, and the man wheeled around, searching for us among the throng. My cloak swept the ground, and I grasped the tray and Adil’s hand. The man drove the people away and walked on, holding our hands and pushing us ahead of him. He turned to them irritably:
“How many times have we said visiting hours start at three?”
Before going in I looked back to see the carriage. My grandmother’s head looked like an eagle’s. I waved to her. We then entered, and the gate closed behind us.
Chapter 13
“So you are Adil.”
He did not reply.
“And you are Huda.”
“And you?”
“Jasim. Sergeant Jasim.”
“Is my father here?”
“He’s here, but he’s doing inspection.”
“So he’s here?”
“Yes.”
I calmed down a little when I heard what he said. I thought of cross-eyed Hashim. When he grew up he would look like him. He wanted to help me; he tried to take the tray, but I refused, moving it from one hand to the other. The abaya was in my way – I stumbled in it; it twisted round and opened up, revealing my thin body. Before it fell down, Adil helped me lift it and took the tray. When I wore it, I looked like Firdous’s ugly and comical rag doll. Pulling the abaya from the ground I wrapped it round and looked down at my shoes.
Adil walked. I could not tell whether his feet were pulling him or he was dragging them. My knees knocked together and my fingers trembled as I clutched the cloak; I tried to swallow but could not. If only I had tried my cloak on before. Oh, we had done that before, Firdous and I, we laughed for a long time, calling out in voices like the voices of my aunt and her mother, and we quietened down before anyone came in.
The sergeant walked quickly, then stopped to let us catch up, then resumed walking ahead of us.
It was a long, open path, paved only with old footprints, and shiny pebbles both small and large. The soil was red and rippled, covering and uncovering itself as the wind opened up hollows and then filled them, forming mounds and throwing them up into our faces. The edge of the cloak flopped over my face and I nearly fell, but Jasim grabbed me from one side and Adil grabbed me on the other and we stopped. I closed my mouth, pursed my lips and smelled the sand that had got into my hair and between my toes.
“He will be delighted to see you two.”
Calcite air, yellowish, white, red. The wall was behind us, and rooms I could not count before us, distant and small like sand in a swollen eye.
I did not distinguish the colour; I thought I would ask Jasim about it but I kept quiet. I said to myself that it was perhaps the colour of cooked olives. Sweat had begun to trickle down the top of my neck to the top of my spine, and I felt it moving down my back. It ran and I did not know ho
w to stop it. Now my scalp began to itch as well. I reached up to scratch it and then I did not want to stop. Yesterday I had washed in the bathtub at home; it had been months since we had gone to the market bath. When I came out of the bath Firdous stood in front of me and said, “When you grow up you’re going to be tall, and you’ll look beautiful in a cloak.” I was still short, and this cover made me smother and stumble constantly. My skirt was black, as was my blouse; I had borrowed it from Firdous the night after the death. My waist was wet with water. I touched my middle and let go of one side of the cloak; it dropped down, and grains of sand and sweat wiped off my hand.
There was not a single tree in this whole expanse. I did not know what time it was; my watch had not worked for months. My father had brought it for me when I entered the third grade in elementary school. I did not mind all this walking, but my thirst, and the tribulation of my bladder! How was it that Adil had not yet asked to urinate? How could I ask? He was so patient and reserved, and could piss on himself if he saw my father in front of him.
Now the inner gate of the prison was in front of us. It was wide, and high as well. We entered the way cats enter the gate of a mosque; first voices emerged, then the men appeared, their moustaches, their big black boots notched with nails, the smell of their armpits stirred me up as I stared at them. They turned their heads. One of them was clean shaven, and his skin was discoloured, as if the sun had never shone on him for a single second.
We walked down a long, dark corridor. Men walked in and out, turning around and looking. The floor was of old yellow broken brick scrubbed very clean, and reeking of disinfectants, yet flies buzzed all round us, heedless of cleanliness and unintimidated by the police. They buzzed round the men’s noses and bare heads. No one shooed them away or killed them as we did in our house.
“Please come in. This is his room.”
We stood in the middle. Adil walked round a little and placed the tray in the middle of the room and sat at our father’s table. I looked all round me, turning and glancing about. I went to the mirror but saw only the top part of my head. I stood on tiptoe, stumbled, and fell, me and the cloak. I looked at the floor, stained with this piece of diaphanous silken cloth. I gathered it up in my hands and threw it on the only bed in the room.
Mothballs Page 13