The Corpse Washer (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Antoon, Sinan

  I climbed back over the mound of rubble and felt the wreckage I’d been carrying inside me mount even higher, suffocating my heart. I passed by the department of plastic arts. Its building was intact except for the windows. The glass had been shattered and the air conditioners removed from their metal racks. Before leaving I said goodbye to the doorman and asked him to tell Professor al-Janabi that I’d asked after him.

  TWENTY

  I’m standing next to a washing bench. It isn’t in the mghaysil, but rather in some other place I’ve never visited. There are high ceilings, but no windows. There are neon lights, some of which blink. The bench is very long. It extends for tens of meters and has a white conveyor belt. Bodies are stacked on it. The belt moves toward the right and leads to a huge opening, and outside men wearing blue overalls and white gloves carry the bodies and throw them into a huge truck. Scores of water faucets protrude from the wall, each with an empty washbasin and a bowl under it. I hear a voice yell: “What are you waiting for?”

  I turn to look for the voice and see Father sitting on a chair in the corner, his worry beads in his hand. Again the question: “What are you waiting for?” But now it comes from a different direction. I turn and see Father in another corner. I rush to the closest faucet to open it, but there is no water. The same happens with all the other faucets. I look everywhere, but Father has disappeared from every corner. The corpses keep moving to the opening on the conveyer belt.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The beginning of the summer break after my first year at the academy had been a pivotal point in my confrontations with Father. I’d agreed that I wouldn’t work with him during the school year in order to focus on my studies, but that I would be by his side during my summer breaks. But after my first year of studies, I became convinced that I should channel all my energies on art and not go back to the suffocating atmosphere of the mghaysil—no matter what. I’d heard from one of my colleagues about the possibility of getting work as a house painter. He said it paid well, and I figured it could help me buy my art supplies. I could even contribute a bit to expenses at home.

  Father came back from work one evening soon after I had passed my final exams and said: “Come on! Haven’t you had enough rest already? When are you coming to work?”

  I told him that this was something I wanted to discuss with him.

  He stood at the door of the living room, his worry beads in his hand. “What is going on?”

  “One of my friends … his father is a contractor. He paints houses. He has work for me this summer and it pays well.”

  Father frowned. He looked down and then stared me right in the eye and said: “Why would you want to do that? You have a good job with me.”

  “I thought I’d just give it a try for a few days and see.”

  “Do you even know how to paint?”

  “It doesn’t take much, Father. He said he’d teach me.”

  Father’s disappointment was visible on his face: “So that’s what it comes down to? A painter? I’ve been waiting all these years for someone to help me out on the job and ease my burden.”

  “It’s just for the summer. And I’ll help out with expenses here at home.”

  He repeated the word “painter” again as if it were a disgrace.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I said. “It’s a decent job.”

  “And our profession isn’t decent? Not good enough for you, is it? My father, my grandfather, and his grandfather all did it. Now you’re too good for us. Well, thanks ever so much.”

  He went into the hall on his way to the stairs. My mother had overheard our conversation and came in from the kitchen to ask what was the matter.

  “Your son would rather be a painter than do what I do,” he told her as he climbed the stairs.

  She asked: “Is that true, Jawad?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Why, son? Your father needs you to be by his side.”

  “What? Is it so shameful to work as a painter?”

  I got out of the chair, turned the TV off, and went out for a walk. I wanted to avoid the tense atmosphere which would continue all evening if my father and I stayed in the same room. I hadn’t expected him to be happy with my decision, but I didn’t think he would be totally surprised. He must have known that this day was coming. It’s impossible that he didn’t sense that I had lost all interest in his line of work. Once when I was young I had asked whether he had ever thought of closing the mghaysil or selling it when the war with Iran came to an end and Ammoury would be discharged and able to practice medicine. He said he would never retire and that his work wasn’t some ordinary job but rather a way to gain favor with God. He said that I would inherit the job from him just as he’d inherited it from his father, and his father from his.

  My mother told me to donate my first month’s salary to Father, as tradition dictated. I did so, but he pushed my hand away and said, “Give it to your mother.” My mother refused to take it—so I gave her fifty dinars as a gift that day. I used to give her a good amount of my income every month and told her to spend it on herself. Our economic situation wasn’t that good, but Father owned the house, so our monthly expenses were less of a burden than for others.

  My mother said that she was going to save the money I was slipping her for my dowry.

  I laughed and said: “Who told you I intend to marry?”

  “Sooner or later you will, my son.”

  When my brother Ammoury came back on leave from the front line, I told him what had happened. He scolded me because I had spoken of my plans with Father without awaiting his return. He would have known how to talk to Father and convince him, he said, or at least soften his reaction to my decision. Ammoury knew well that I could no longer deal with the mghaysil and its corpses. I also told him that the wages I would make from painting were twice what my father would have paid me.

  Ammoury told Father that there was no sense my doing something if my heart wasn’t in it. As long as I was doing something decent, he added, why not painting? He reminded Father of his own words: that in washing bodies, volition is crucial. How could I wash if I possessed no desire to do so, he asked. Ammoury made him see reason, but Father never forgave me for straying from the path.

  Firas, the friend I painted with, had a great sense of humor. Although the work hours were long, they passed quickly. His father was in charge of the work and coordinated between the owners of the houses and the workers. He provided the supplies, paints, instructions, and other details. Most of the houses we worked on were newly built and unfurnished. Their owners had yet to move in.

  A third coworker, Salam, was a bit older than both of us, and seasoned. He was the one who mixed the paints. If it was an old house, before we started painting, we would scrape the walls with sandpaper and fill any cracks. We would start with a coat of primer and then add the second one. I enjoyed the various stages of the process, but especially seeing how beautiful and spotless the walls and ceilings were when we were done.

  After my military service, I was appointed as an arts teacher in Ba’quba. The salary was barely enough to cover one week’s transportation to and from work. Why was I so naïve as to nurture the illusion that I could make a living as an artist, especially during the years of the embargo? There were some artists who were selling their paintings to foreigners. The number of foreigners had dwindled, but some journalists, diplomats, and activists still visited Baghdad and frequented the Hiwar gallery, looking for artwork. Artists also sold to Iraqi expats returning for a visit. However, most preferred traditional works or natural landscapes over abstract art. And so I began to feel bored and bitter in the late 1990s, especially as we were painting the houses of the nouveaux riches who had acquired obscene amounts of wealth by exploiting the embargo.

  When I started painting houses, I’d thought that I’d only use those thick-bristled brushes temporarily before returning to the fine and feathery ones with which I felt more intimacy. But instead of the blank canvases that I could
color any way I wanted and on which I could spread my imaginative visions, I found myself, for years on end, reduced to using no more than two or three colors. Pale colors on cold and monotonous surfaces. Surfaces without details or surprises, except for the odd electric switch panel or the occasional hook for a chandelier. At times a stupid fly would buzz into the sticky surface of paint and struggle there for a few seconds before dying.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Father rarely mentioned my uncle Sabri, who was eight years his junior. The few times the topic of Communists and their clashes with Ba’thists came up, he would say: “Sabri’s people.” Uncle Sabri used to visit us every now and then when I was a kid and would sleep on the floor of the guest room. He was a jovial man who always filled my pockets with sweets and played soccer with Ammoury and me in the street in front of our house. He was obsessed with the al-Zawra’ team and he told me that I, too, would one day become a Zawra’ fan. He was right.

  The first time I attended a soccer match was with him. I was only eight years old. We went to the opening game of the national league season. I don’t remember why Ammoury didn’t come with us that day. It was scorching hot and there were throngs of people when we got out of the car at the Sha’b stadium. After standing in a long line, my uncle bought two pink-colored tickets for the south of the stadium. Then we stood in another line with lots of pushing and shoving to get inside. A man standing at the gate tore the two tickets in half. We made our way in and climbed to our seats in the bleachers.

  The seats were beginning to fill up with fans. Some of them sang and others were beating drums. Uncle Sabri chose a spot high up, next to a group of fans carrying the white flags of Zawra’. From that spot, the field looked like a beautiful green rectangle. My uncle spread newspapers on the concrete seats and we sat down and waited for the game to start.

  When the al-Zawra’ players emerged from the underground locker rooms wearing their traditional white jerseys, everyone got up. The stadium filled with applause and cheers. Uncle Sabri lifted me high so I could see. The entire team stood in the middle circle, and the players raised their arms to salute the fans on the opposite side. Chants rose. When they turned around and faced us, the applause grew even stronger. They took the field, warming up, passing balls to each another or taking shots on goal. I saw a group of photographers surrounding a bald player wearing the number eight. I asked my uncle about him. “That’s Falah Hasan, the fox of Iraqi soccer,” he said.

  Suddenly I heard everyone around us booing and someone yelled: “Tayaran are sacks.” I figured that they were heckling the opponent, Tayaran, who wore blue. But I couldn’t understand “sacks.” My uncle explained: “It means we will score so often they will be like sacks full of goals.” My uncle put his hand on my head and stroked my hair saying: “You are a diehard Zawra’ fan already.”

  After a scoreless first half, Falah Hasan scored with a header in the first few minutes of the second. My uncle was ecstatic and lifted me again so I could see the players hugging one another. But our joy was short-lived, because Tayaran equalized with a penalty kick. The game ended in a draw, and my uncle called the referee blind: the Tayaran striker had faked being fouled to win the penalty kick, he said. The fans chanted “Zawra’, Zawra”’ as we left the stadium. We walked to al-Andalus Square to catch a bus back to Kazimiyya.

  I was still excited after the match and told my parents all about it and about the stadium. Father got fed up and said “Enough! You are giving me a headache with your Zawra’. God!”

  My uncle took me to Zawra’ games many times, and once he took me to Madinat al-Al’ab park. He and Father loved each other, but sometimes they would argue passionately about things I couldn’t understand. I was ten when he visited us the last time. He would always hug and kiss me upon arrival and departure. But that time I glimpsed a sadness and clouds in his eyes when he kissed me goodbye, saying: “Don’t forget your uncle.”

  “No, I won’t forget you, but don’t you forget me,” I responded.

  He laughed and kissed me again on my forehead. He hugged everyone tightly, especially Father.

  Afterward, I asked Father about my uncle. He said that Sabri had gone to Beirut. I missed him and asked often when he would return. My mother would say, “He can’t. He’s busy there.” I would ask about his work and when he would be finished. She never gave a straight answer, sometimes saying, “Ask your father.” But Father evaded my questions too. Months later, while doing my homework, I heard on the nightly news that a number of Communist officers in the army had been executed. I heard Father tell my mother, “That’s the fate of Sabri’s people. They won’t leave any of them alive. Thank God he escaped.” I understood then that Uncle Sabri was a Communist. I asked Father, “What does it mean, being a Communist?”

  “None of your business, son.”

  “Uncle Sabri’s a Communist?”

  He shushed me. “Stop asking questions. I told you it’s none of your business.”

  When my brother Ammoury came back home, I asked him about Uncle Sabri and what communism meant. He said the Communists and Ba’thists were sworn enemies and Uncle Sabri had fled because the regime was arresting Communists. Two years later, when I was in middle school, we were all given papers to fill out to join the Ba’th Party. There were questions about relatives living abroad, and a separate sheet on which to list the names of relatives who belonged to the Communist Party or the Da’wah Party. I wrote in my uncle’s full name: Sabri Hasan Jasim—Communist.

  We would receive letters from him once every year or two. He would always include a line for me alone, like “kisses to my handsome Jawad. Is he still a loyal Zawra’ fan cheering on my behalf?” I wrote a letter of my own to him, and we included it in the family letter. I wrote about school and Zawra’s performance in the league and its new star players. I told him that I missed him very much and was waiting for him to come back.

  He once called us on the phone to let us know that he was all right. Father was summoned to the directorate of secret police and was interrogated for three hours because of that one call. He wrote to my uncle after that asking him never to call again. I used to think of Uncle Sabri a lot, especially when I heard the news about the civil war in Lebanon. After his letters from Beirut, we received two from Cyprus. Then we heard that he’d gone to Aden, and we received letters with Yemeni stamps on them. He had started working as a teacher there. A civil war erupted there as well, and he had to go to Germany, where he was given asylum. He would send us money from time to time, especially in the late 1990s, when the embargo suffocated us.

  After my father’s death I sent a letter to Uncle Sabri in Berlin, at the last address we had for him. I told him that phone lines were all down after the bombing and we had no idea when they would be repaired. One day three months later, my mother was fluttering her hand fan, saying: “We thought the Americans would fix the electricity. How come they’ve only made things worse?” The absurdity of the situation could be expressed only with equal absurdity.

  There was a knock at the door, and I quipped, “Maybe that’s the electricity at the door waiting for your permission to come in.” She laughed for the first time in weeks. I looked out the window and saw a white-haired man with sunglasses standing at the door as a taxi idled. He had turned to the other side so I could see only his back and shoulders. I went to the door and asked, “Who is it?” “Sabri,” he said. “Open the door. It’s Sabri.”

  The years had turned his hair white, leaving only some darker ash on his sideburns and eyebrows. I yelled in disbelief: “Uncle Sabri!” He hugged me tight and laughed: “Oh my, Jawad. You’re taller than I am.” We both cried as we kissed each other seven or eight times. He held my face in his hands as he used to do so often two decades before and repeated my name “Jawad” as if he, too, was in disbelief. My mother came to the door and said, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe my eyes.”

  They embraced and she thanked God for his safe arrival, but chastised him: “Why didn’t y
ou tell us you were coming, Sabri, so we would prepare something.”

  “Prepare what? I’m not a stranger. I came to see you.”

  We took his suitcase out of the car and brought it inside. He paid the taxi driver and asked him to come back eight days later at six in the morning. Then he took out another small bag from the back seat and slung it over his shoulder. We went in and my mother led him toward the guest room. He said, “What is this? Am I a guest? I want to sit where we used to.”

  We sat in the living room. My mother offered him food, but he asked only for some water. He took off his sunglasses and put them on the table. He took out another pair of plain glasses from his pocket and put them on. He said that he was late because he had gotten lost and couldn’t find the house: “Baghdad has changed so much.” He had tried to call us from Amman, but the phone was dead. He looked at the black-and-white photographs of Ammoury and my father on the wall and said, “May God have mercy on their souls.”

  My mother brought a tray with a jug of water and a glass. She apologized that the water might not be cold enough and complained again about the electricity. She had changed into a black dress from the nightgown she had been wearing when he arrived. He thanked her and drank the whole glass. He offered his condolences to her, and she started to cry, saying: “He left me all alone.”

  My uncle told her, “All alone? How can you say that? Jawad is here for you.”