Perhaps the best explanation for the absence of any delay on Grandfather’s part in choosing the place and deciding to move there is that, over the years, he used to stand and gaze for long periods out the window of our guest room in Subh Village. Perhaps he was forming this plan.
Grandfather’s insistence on accepting the insulting name in the beginning, and his promise to change the name to Dignity after we took revenge, was a tactical, premeditated step. It demonstrated his intention to establish a goal that we needed to struggle to achieve. Tying the goal to the name of the village meant we would always remember it. At the time he had said, “Let the Prophet be our model in everything, for he is the one that changed the name of the city Yathrib to ‘Medina, the Illuminated City’ after emigrating there to establish the core of the Islamic state, which would stretch to all corners of the earth after he was gone. When we avenge our dignity, we, too, will name this village of ours Freedmen, The Absolute, or Dignity.”
That was then. And till this day, I haven’t liked those names because of how diluted those generalized, traditional concepts have become. What’s more, deep down I preferred the name Qashmars, at least from the point of view of how pretty the sound was to pronounce. Perhaps my father was of the same opinion, seeing that he had bestowed upon his club here that very name.
In the first two years after our move, we noticed a newfound vigor in Grandfather’s body and mind. What’s more, there was even an improvement in his health, so much so that he was usually not content just to give orders and plans (even the architecture!) and to oversee the work, but he found it hard to keep his hands from taking part.
He used to say, “This will be a good town, with the Qur’an as its constitution and sharia as its legal system. We will make it a model of virtue and an earthly base from which people depart for heavenly paradise!”
In the village, Grandfather filled the role of absolute governor. No details escaped his notice. Leaning upon his Pakistani cane, he shouldered his almost eighty years and made daily rounds in the village: writing marriage contracts and blessing those who married young, determining the punishment for wrongdoers, and reconciling adversaries. He would visit the sick, and he would recite incantations and Qur’anic texts over the places of their injuries. He would censure the women who revealed their legs when sitting in front of the washtubs and call to account whoever among them overburdened their donkey. He would proffer advice and teach both young and old about their religion and their world. He meddled in everything and exercised control over everything, doing it all out of zeal to apply “God’s statutes” in their entirety.
He made the mosque’s prayer hall, which was next to our house, his dwelling place and a headquarters for administering all village affairs. Prayers, meetings, and religious celebrations took place there. There, too, were the judgment council, conversations, colloquies, and worship. There was the school where we all learned. And there were the books, the box of sweets, the bag of dates, the poison for rats, and the hereditary family sword.
When picking the muezzin, who performed the call to prayer, he chose the darkest and strongest person among us, thereby imitating Prophet Muhammad’s choice of Bilal the Ethiopian. And because he didn’t want to change the man’s name, he commanded the muezzin to name his son Bilal. Then he called him “Abu Bilal,” that is, Father of Bilal. Actually, he did this even before the son who would confer this name upon the father was born. He ordered stairs to be built that would lift Abu Bilal to the roof to recite his call to prayer from there. So we all woke up at dawn to his voice, which became more beautiful with the passage of time and Grandfather’s instruction. In the same way, we would measure the time according to his five calls to prayer. Meanwhile, Grandfather reserved the Friday call to prayer for my father, perhaps with the intention of forcing him to come back every weekend from his job in Kirkuk.
My father was the only one who left the village, so he became, in this way, our sole link to the outside world. And judging by the intensity of my father’s obedience to Grandfather, I was certain that he would have left his job, which he loved, had Grandfather asked that of him.
Grandfather stipulated that my father take a path across the mountain and not through Subh. So in order to cross to the other side of the mountain and reach the highway that connected Mosul and Baghdad, my father followed a trail made by the livestock. He would flag down cars going in the direction of Mosul, and from there to Kirkuk. He would sometimes travel by foot, taking more than an hour to cross the mountain. Other times, one of us would accompany him on a donkey. I was the one who liked doing this the most because my father would talk to me on the road about the outside world and about the Germans, whom he liked a lot. He would say, “They really like eating sweets, and they have many different kinds. Next time, I’ll bring you a piece of their chocolate. They are like our family, which is obsessed with dates, but their sweets have an infinite number of colors and flavors.”
Along those lines, I also remember him talking one time about German women. He was talking freely, as though he were alone, or—who knows?—he may have meant to inspire a sense of friendship and treat me like a man. “Their hair is like a field of wheat at harvest time. The fuzz on their breasts and their pubic hair is like a handful of golden grass. But their smell! Their butts are their least beautiful parts since they are not rounded at all, but just a continuation of their backs and thighs. Butts without personality! If they would encircle their green eyes in the middle of those golden faces with black eyeliner, it would be amazingly beautiful—amazing! Their breasts are large and swaying. Faces and bodies as smooth as butter, but bland and boring—is it because butter is eaten with sweet things rather than savory? There are lots of fat ones with huge bodies. Tall ones, some of them reaching as high as that tree—that one, do you see it? Yes, I’m serious! They are less talkative than the other foreigners I know. Somewhat cold. Is this what makes them love the sun? In the sun, they become red like tomatoes.”
He would talk to me about other foreigners, whom I would imagine to be tribes like us—French, Thais, Americans, and Indians. Also the English, about whom he would say, “I don’t like them because they have yellow smiles.”
I wondered to myself at the time about the secret behind his hatred of the English because of their yellow smiles while at the same time he loved the Germans, who had yellow hair. But I quickly gave up wondering since I didn’t understand what it meant to have a yellow smile, and I didn’t want to interrupt his fiery discourse about the Germans: “There in Germany, Saleem, everything an Arab longs for exists in abundance. I mean water, plants, and attractive faces. All of Germany is one big green field. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s true they might be so serious as to be dry in their interactions, as though they live for work alone. They are stubborn, like your grandfather, and for that reason, iron suits them. They use it to make the best cars. They are very successful in iron and music. A challenge strengthens them, and therefore they built their country up quickly after the war, surpassing their enemies in construction. They have freedom there. Everybody says what he wants and does what he wants, without anybody interfering in his choices. Freedom, Saleem. Ah, freedom! Do you understand what I’m saying, Saleem?”
“Yes, Father,” I said, even though I was picturing his words in my own way more than really understanding what he meant. As far as I was concerned, these were startling images, like the ones Grandfather etched in our imaginations about paradise. I mixed my father’s descriptions into Grandfather’s until they seemed the same to me. The only difference was that what my father described was present on earth while what Grandfather described was found in heaven.
When the donkey went up the mountain, my father would put me in front of him so that his enormous body wouldn’t lean on my small one. And during the descent, he would set me behind him so that I would lean against his back. The moments when I would wrap my arms around his chest and embrace him were my favorite of all since I felt so close to my f
ather, as though I were at one with him. I felt a wonderful tenderness, trust, and warmth because these were the times of my closest contact with him. I felt a great love for him, and I felt his love for me. As though he were the one embracing me and not the other way around.
When we got to the highway, he would get down and take his bag out of the saddlebag and then say, “As you well know, God’s satisfaction comes from the satisfaction of parents. I am satisfied with you, Saleem, no matter what you do. But you must try hard to please Grandfather and your mother too, okay?”
I would nod my head in agreement and murmur, “Dad, don’t forget—”
Smiling, he would cut me off, “Yes, I know. I’ll bring you the glossy German magazines. Don’t worry.”
Without taking me down from the donkey, he would wrap his arms around me and kiss me. These were the only times that he would kiss me, for he would absolutely never do that in the presence of anyone because Grandfather rejected an indulgent upbringing for boys.
“Go, now. Goodbye, Saleem.”
I’d pull on the donkey’s rope to turn it around. “Goodbye, Dad.”
As I got further away, I would keep turning back toward him until he had gotten into one of the cars. If we were still close enough to see each other, he would wave to me from the car window, and I would wave back. I would keep watching the car as it got further away until it became a small dot moving along the black line of the road and disappeared. Afterward, heading back home along the same path, I would think about him and the glossy German magazines he’d bring for me. I would cut out the pictures and glue them in my notebook to show to Aliya, promising her a dream similar to those pictures.
My relationship with my father was one of emotion and spirit while my relationship with Grandfather was one of intellect and rules. I wasn’t different from any of the other children in Qashmars Village with regard to my feelings and my total adherence to the system that Grandfather created for us and bound us to. Especially since that system was comfortable and successful in the first two years. At that time, contentment and harmony prevailed in the lives of everyone. Our most joyous moment was the Friday prayers, when we would all gather together, young and old, the males forming the front rows with the women in rows behind them. We would wear our best clothes and put on perfume. In the spring, we would spread our prayer mats on the pebbles and sand outside the mosque, and Grandfather would stand in front of us, using the external stairs as an elevated platform to preach to us. We felt our complete unity, our brotherhood, the purity of our spirits, and our closeness both to the sky and to God. When our “Allahu akbar!” pealed out during the prayer and we uttered “Amen!” in unison, our voices resounded together with the lapping of the river’s waves and the rustling of the trees, producing a distant echo from the foot of the mountain. Such moments filled us with a mythical awe, similar to what we imagined for the day of resurrection.
Those were the moments when we were most unified, most at peace, and most spiritually pure. We truly felt that we shared one spirit. On the intellectual and conceptual level, we felt complete concord. It was as though we had one shared mind, with which we thought, or which would think for us. Was this not Grandfather himself?
He would undoubtedly have realized his dream of an ideal village, had not the roar of bulldozers surprised us one morning on the top of the mountain. They were plowing a wide road toward our village, following the course of my father’s small footpath. The government came along this road with their officials and their power lines. They gave us televisions and built a school for us out of concrete. All Grandfather’s efforts to prevent these things met with failure, and he became all the more sad, angry, and emaciated.
The war on the Iranian front intensified, so the government sought additional young men and adults from all corners of Iraq for the draft. Grandfather’s health collapsed even more as he saw the further failure of his dream. He vomited blood when he learned that the government had recorded our village in its official papers under the name of Faris Village, meaning ‘knight’ and referring to the dictator. For that reason, Grandfather resumed his emphasis in subsequent Friday sermons on our holding on to the name of Qashmars until the day we avenged our dignity, the day when we would exchange that name for the awaited name, such as Freedmen.
The front against Grandfather grew wider. Nevertheless, he didn’t stop fighting what he was up against, and his strongest means was his sermon after the Friday prayers: “Television is the devil in your homes. It will corrupt your women against you! It is the one-eyed Antichrist spoken of in the Qur’an. That’s why it has only one eye! The government school teaches your sons unbelief and godlessness. The police are the dogs of the tyrant. The war against the Muslim nation of Iran is an aggression that God does not accept. This is a hard time, when holding fast to your religion is like grasping a live coal. Be patient! Hold fast to your religion however much the burning coal of your times sears you. For that is easier to bear than entering the tormenting fire in the hereafter and remaining in hell for all eternity!”
But the people feared the government’s violence more than they feared Grandfather’s threats, which were postponed until the world to come. Thus, even though the people in the village still showed him deference and obedience, the threads of control began to slip from Grandfather’s fingers.
The government was able to conduct a new census of us after they came with a police force that outnumbered us and was better armed. They issued us new identity cards, omitting the nickname Qashmar as well as our old surname, leaving us in their records with just our first names and our fathers’ names. After they established the number of young men and adults fit for military service, they ordered them to join the army. The men refrained, however, after a vengeful sermon from Grandfather. Therefore, the government decided upon a sudden nighttime raid to seize them one by one. So Sheikh Mullah Mutlaq prepared them to resist and distributed the men—armed with rifles, pistols, multi-pronged fishing spears, axes, clubs, and knives—out on the roofs of the houses, in the ditches between them, in the middle of the thickets, and behind the boulders at the foot of the mountain.
On that night, which would have led to ruin and a real massacre, my father got credit for saving the village when he managed to cut the electricity at the main converter in the center of the village. This made the government give up on their night assault on the village. They came by day to the houses, one by one. The men were then forced to go willingly with the police in order to avoid being shamed in front of their women and children.
Grandfather had no remaining stratagem. He could only promise imminent relief and insist that the people be patient. As a response to what had happened, he increased the frequency of his lessons with the children at the mosque, competing with and correcting what the government school was attempting to teach them. He kept on in this way until the decisive blow came and utterly crushed his spirit.
That was the day when, a little before sunset, a convoy of government cars came, like red ants, crawling down the black road’s switchbacks. It stopped in the middle of the village, and seventeen coffins wrapped in flags were lowered to the ground. These coffins contained the corpses of the young men of the village who had been killed in the latest attack on the front. Among them were Ahmad, Fandi, Salih, Nasser, Qays, Hasan, Jamal, Mahmoud, Mudhi, Khayrallah, Abdallah, Sirat (my sister Istabraq’s beloved), and my brother Hakeem. They put them down and departed, disappearing up the foot of the mountain in their convoy of cars. They left our village with the blackest night, stricken with bitter lament. The women tore the flags because they needed to tear something out of anguish for the dead, especially after Grandfather forbade them from rending their garments. The village square around the coffins was transformed into a scene of weeping hell.
Grandfather sat silently on his chair, suppressing his tears until midnight, when sorrow burst the dam of his endurance. He exploded in tears and fell down unconscious. We carried him to his bed in the corner of the mosque.
There, after we had splashed cold water on his face and sliced an onion under his nostrils, he revived a little and ordered the men huddled in a circle around him not to bury the corpses this time until they had been avenged. Then he drifted away, sinking into his final stupor.
For a whole week, the corpses were rotting. Their odor spread everywhere despite the efforts of the women, who sprinkled them with perfume and piled bouquets of flowers on the coffins. The men returned to where Grandfather was laid out, repeating their request for permission to bury the corpses. Given that he knew better than they did, none of them dared remind him that Islam stipulated speedy burials for the dead. Nevertheless, and without opening his eyes, he refused with a shake of the head.
No longer able to bear the odor and the people’s anguish, our village morphed into a suffocating nightmare. Conversations between people dropped off. Silence reigned, except for the wailing of women. Children stopped playing and were content to pass their free time wandering about aimlessly, staring. My father didn’t go to work. Instead, he remained beside Grandfather, washing him before every prayer and turning his face toward Mecca. He saw Grandfather praying with his eyes. At least, he saw Grandfather’s closed eyelids flicker and his lips move. That was when—after spending the final days wandering about, visiting Aliya’s grave, our nest, and the shore where she drowned—I decided to leave.
I wasn’t able to sleep the night I made the decision. I tossed and turned in my bed. Then I got up, wandered out around the village, and came back to the house. In the end, when the night was hastening toward dawn, I resolved to inform my father and then go. I set off in the direction of the mosque’s main hall because he was sleeping there beside Grandfather. As soon as I passed near the window, I heard his voice in a fierce debate. I stopped and looked in the window, but I wasn’t able to see anything because of the shadows. Nevertheless, I remained nailed in place, trembling to hear my father’s voice with this strange tone for the first time in my life. His voice was powerful and confident, as though rupturing all inhibitions, and it contained a bitter reproach. He directed his words toward Grandfather, whom I didn’t hear make any response.
Dates on My Fingers: An Iraqi Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) Page 10