Dates on My Fingers: An Iraqi Novel (Modern Arabic Literature)

by Muhsin al-Ramli

  The political discussion not only revealed to me another side of my father, but it was also a view of the bitter state of affairs there in Iraq, where the long-suffering hope for a release from oppression was now exhausted. Up to this point, the conversation had revealed to me how much my father held on to his other personality, to vengeance, and to the demands of religious obligation. Now I sought to call forth the other side of him so that I could see both sides together at the same time, or at least, so that I would be able to sense the power of each, relative to the other.

  I asked him whether he had spoken to Rosa on the phone, and how she had responded. The enthusiasm in his voice fell a little, and he lit another cigarette. He said she was very angry with him and that he hadn’t been able to understand anything except her refusal. He couldn’t hear everything she said because she was sobbing violently on the phone as she cursed him.

  Then he commented, savoring the carefully enunciated words, “She seems like a wounded bull, to use a Spanish expression. Or like a wounded lioness, to use an Iraqi one. She’s like that. I understand her. And I don’t hold it against her.”

  There was silence for a few moments, and he began to stare out the window. I asked him what he was thinking of doing. He sighed and shifted in his seat, putting his hands on the table and shifting his gaze to scrutinize my face in a serious and direct way. He said, “I don’t want to take you away from your private life and drag you into my affairs. But I need you. I need your help. Can you do it?”

  I had been slouching on my side of the table, but now I sat up straight in my seat, alert and curious.

  He went on, “Rosa is very angry with me. And she’s right to be angry. I understand. But I’m also certain of her love for me, and a passionate woman is always ready to forgive. Indeed, she wants to forgive and looks forward to it. But at the same time, she’s waiting for some creative or special apology. That’s the price she feels will earn her forgiveness. Gifts, flowers, and special words are appropriate, of course, but with every new falling-out, it’s necessary to search for a new and fitting apology.

  “Therefore, I was thinking that you could go to her. Yes, you! Tomorrow you could go to her house in Barcelona. I could give you her address, her telephone number, the location of the flower shop and the type of flowers to buy, the words to say, and the appropriate time. That way, it would all be a big surprise for her. She knows how important my children are to me, and you in particular. This would also be a way for me to acknowledge my love for her in front of my family, which is important to every woman. A woman feels more confident whenever she sees her lover introducing her and acknowledging her in front of people she knows are important to him. This arrangement would also be a good opportunity for the two of you to get to know each other better.”

  (At that moment, I thought again about asking him what his relations with women were like after what had happened to him when he was tortured, but I didn’t dare.)

  My father demonstrated his characteristic tone and fluency in putting forth his wisdom, as well as with his persuasive style. To a certain extent, this presentation surprised me, and to the same degree, I liked how intelligent it was. A certain feeling of satisfaction came over me because he was restoring our close relationship in a significant way. Or maybe because I felt that he needed me. So I wasn’t refusing, and indeed, the matter intrigued me. But I told him I had to work, and that it wouldn’t be easy to go to Barcelona, solve the problem, and return, all in the same day, then go to work immediately. For that reason, we had to think of some way to arrange a suitable schedule for it, or he needed to give me time to ask for a few days off.

  And here came my father’s final surprise, which he expressed with more certainty and desire than the previous two. He said, “What do you think about leaving your job and coming to work with us in the club? We—no, I need you to be there. We’d pay you a better salary, and you’d be free to choose your hours. You would be one of the managers, not one of the regular employees.”

  I smiled, and I may have gasped like someone who had been splashed in the face with cold water. I responded, again not refusing, but with an answer like my previous one, saying, “But I don’t understand the least thing about your work. I don’t have any experience in it at all!”

  He leaned back, knocking the ashes of his cigarette off to one side while shaking his other hand to make light of the matter: “No! These are minor issues. You don’t need experience or professional training for this work. You could take charge of the cash register, for example, or of ordering things we need and negotiating their prices and transport. You know, general administrative issues. Really, Fatima can teach you all the other aspects of the job in one night. These are minor issues, Saleem, minor. So, what do you think?”

  CHAPTER 13

  When he heard my assent, I saw his eyes flash with a restrained desire to jump up and shout for joy. He reached for his wallet and said, “Take a plane to Barcelona. It’s faster and more comfortable.”

  But I’m one of those people who prefer traveling by train. It makes me feel as though I possess the freedom for long reflection, which flows easily with the rhythm of the train’s motion as it darts through various landscapes. How pleasant it is to sit near the window, looking out at the movement of the ground and the trees, rivers, hills, villages, cities, animals, mountains, plains, fields, and clouds. A long parade of open land and spacious skies. During such times, my mind wanders freely: reviewing, remembering, analyzing, planning, dreaming. Unbroken silence and undisturbed reflection, alternating between the internal and the external. If I’m not contemplating the view, I’m pondering my inner life, and vice versa. While my eyes are focused on one, the mind’s eye excavates the other. Or one of them will bring me to the other by invisible channels of insight. Moreover, train travel has a romantic character, impressed on my mind, perhaps, from watching old movies filled with encounters, farewells, lovers waiting at train stations, or wandering journeys (like mine, now) for the sake of remembering and reflecting. The director usually chooses seats by the window for those characters too.

  So it was that I didn’t read more than seven pages of the book I brought with me. I became distracted in recalling the previous night, my first night of work at Club Qashmars, where my father danced with a joy that I knew perfectly well was the result of my being there with him. My agreeing to what he wanted had a big part in it too. After performing his comic opening monologue, he undertook Rosa’s role of general oversight without neglecting his own role of circulating among the customers. Even though he always had a glass in his hand, he didn’t finish more than two beers throughout the night. He had also arranged that things wouldn’t go on as late as dawn, as happened on other weekends. By some clever adjustments, he managed to bring the night to an end by 3:00 a.m. Perhaps he was thinking about Fatima’s fatigue and my own after my first shift, and of my journey the following day. But he definitely didn’t notice Fatima’s and my delight at our growing intimacy and physical contact.

  I kept recalling last night’s feeling that barriers between Fatima and me were collapsing. She was teaching me how to manage the accounts and take the customers’ orders. She also pointed out to me the different kinds of drinks and how to prepare and serve them. She was doing double duty, performing her own job and training me at the same time, and we were together behind the bar throughout the night’s enjoyable work. She moved like a bee, buzzing between neighboring flowers, never forgetting anything and always flashing her smile. During that time, due to the narrowness of the place, one of us would often bump into or brush past the other. We felt this contact to the core, and we would shiver—a delicious shudder—even as we feigned indifference and apologized routinely to each other at first. But after it kept on happening, we began to be content with a smile, even when we did it on purpose sometimes.

  During all those collisions, I wasn’t able to stop my arms from repeatedly brushing against one of her breasts. Nor could I avoid rubbing my thigh against
her butt when I passed behind her in order to take something from one of the waitresses in the lounge while Fatima was bent over to take out more appetizers and olive cans tucked away on the floor under the lowest shelves. My thigh brushing past her butt. It’s an image I’d replayed many times since last night, and now again very deliberately, like a movie scene in slow motion, frame by frame, as though immersing myself in a detailed examination. To be honest, I was just taking delight in it all. My thigh, as it rubbed against her right buttock, found it soft, firm, round, and succulent all at once, like a child’s balloon inflated by his mother. Then my thigh continued its advance, descending into the depression between her two buttocks like a train passing down through the valley between two hills. It sent a shiver passing from my thigh to my loins. My thigh continued its intimate caress onward and up the other buttock, feeling that it had spread them apart a little. I trembled as I imagined it.

  The work wasn’t as hard as I had imagined it would be. On the contrary, I found that I liked it, especially in that it allowed constant interaction and working directly with other people, something that I had lacked and consequently suffered from in my former job. I was just a driver there, and my relationships were limited to my friends at work such as Antonio, Mario, and Mario’s girlfriend, Carmen, as well as the owner of the distribution agency. For that reason, isolation and loneliness were the defining characteristics of my life.

  This work was entirely different because it provided interaction with different kinds of people. Indeed, it forced you to find strategies to communicate with them and understand them since the idea was to win them over as customers. It was something that had other advantages too, such as the shifts passing by quickly and being full of energy and life, never boring. You don’t feel any fatigue or boredom at the time, but afterward, when it’s over and you decide to take a rest, you’re exhausted, and your legs hurt from having stood for so long. But you do get to rest.

  I wouldn’t say that what I felt for Fatima was an irresistible or unavoidable love. Instead, I might be able to describe it as the common situation where you follow the lead of the head, not the heart. There is another person who you believe suits you, the sort you want to be in a loving relationship with. You realize perfectly that you will truly come to love her. Then you start living together. After you get to know her better, you start to feel that she is right for the kind of relationship that might end up with your becoming partners in life, a married couple. So it’s not something that started with an irresistible first glance, nor with obscure feelings of attraction and seduction that overpower your self-control. Rather, it was a kind of persuasion and choice. Or even a kind of conscious and planned intentionality.

  As far as I was concerned, this is what I felt toward Fatima. At least, this is what I thought, which is more correct than to say “feel.” The experience was entirely different from my bewildering passion for Aliya, who was my first love, and perhaps my one and only. To me, her small eyes were bewitching and impossible to resist, for in them I saw life’s pleasure and meaning. It’s true that Fatima had large eyes and long, black eyelashes of the sort that I know general, traditional taste considers to be fascinating. Without a doubt, they were enchanting eyes. But they didn’t do to me what Aliya’s eyes did.

  As for Fatima, it was possible for me to communicate with her, and there was both affection and sexual attraction. She was a good person, suitable to me, and ready to enter into a loving relationship. I could love her. Her glances, her way of interacting with me, the tone of her voice when she talked to me, her reactions, her affection, and her constant smile all confirmed that she felt the same contentment and willingness that I did. Indeed, taken all together, it formed a kind of call that invites you to the next, familiar step.

  There is a certain kind of feeling, which no doubt everyone has experienced or heard about. It is the feeling that the other person across from you shares the same satisfaction and the same readiness. There is an aspect of silent, mutual understanding, and the other person is waiting for the right moment to begin building the relationship.

  The additional thought came to me that my father was aware of the matter, given things he had suggested or joked about with one of us while the other was nearby. Deep down, he may even have been wanting it and planning for this relationship to happen.

  For the whole seven hours to Barcelona, the lion’s share of my reflection went to Fatima and to remembering details from the previous night. Far fewer were my memories of Aliya, which wove through my other thoughts and would usually overpower me whenever the train passed near water: a river, a lake, the sea.

  Meanwhile, there was a single thought that I expelled from my thoughts as often as it pushed itself to the front of the line. That was my father’s decision to fulfill his oath. That oath had brought him here with a goal, namely, to insert the remaining bullet from that youth’s revolver into the anus of this diplomat in the Iraqi embassy; that is, the very same anus.

  I felt a severe difficulty in swallowing this thought. It seemed so incomprehensible to me, at least after the marks that ten years of experience in the West had left upon me. I could only see it as a kind of recklessness and an inhuman cruelty, a sick behavior leading to disastrous results. How could I divert my father from it, when it was his goal and the vow he swore on the holy book in front of Grandfather?

  I wasn’t able to think clearly about the matter, and I didn’t see an obvious method for dealing with my father since this issue was so central to his life, his thought, and his determination. So I turned my mind back to remembering some of the specific recommendations that my father had given for this mission of mine with Rosa. He had spoken a lot, but I was content to focus on the essentials, which were that I buy her a bouquet of large, white jasmine flowers from a shop close to her house. I was to bring them to her after attaching the card that he had written on and folded up. I had used the interlude of his writing the card to read a book, not feeling any curiosity to see what he was composing. Nor had I cared much about memorizing the details of what he wanted me to say to her. I would let the meeting and the conversation proceed spontaneously since all that he wanted was that she be convinced and come back to him. Therefore, if she wanted that deep down, there was no need for much talk, and likewise if she had decided in her heart to leave him.

  So I decided to be content just to say things with the purpose of getting her to come back. That idea would be my guide for the natural direction of our conversation. The only thing I had to do was bring her a jasmine bouquet and ring the doorbell of her house at the address which he had written for me. I wasn’t nervous, nor did I feel any uncertainty about how to interact with her. Indeed, I had a strange confidence, or something like that. It was as though we knew each other well. Perhaps that feeling came from how well I understood the Spanish personality and culture in general. Or maybe a certain coldness and nonchalance on my part, if I can put it like that. Many who know me describe me that way. I sometimes think that it’s due somehow to Aliya’s effects upon me.

  In any case, I knew where I was going in Barcelona perfectly since I’d spent two weeks there during last year’s summer vacation. It had drawn me in with its mixture of ethnicities as well as buildings. The extremely old and the extremely modern lived side by side, regardless of when they were established. And the festive atmosphere of Las Ramblas Boulevard, which was always a delight to walk up and down, day and night—I’d go between one end leading to the sea and the other leading to the crowds in the vital city center.

  What I liked most about Barcelona were the two things that in my opinion are the legs upon which this city’s surprising and attractive personality stands. These are the sea and the imprints of its genius, Gaudí. I spent days there, never bored, drawn in by what could be described as an expansiveness, an enormity, a richness, or a universality that leads you with a jolt or a soothing playfulness to touch both sides of the existential anxiety. Something gives you the sense of interacting with nature in
its vastness. Indeed, as a whole, the city seems to form a majestic cosmos in and of itself, and not just be part of one.

  Barcelona also has a spirituality, inspiring its visitors with the extent of its varied, uninterrupted history. It takes you in and recognizes you as family in some way, by the strength of its life, its greatness, its sweetness, and its festivity. I wonder what my father likes in Barcelona.

  I arrived at four in the afternoon. My only luggage was the shoulder bag that I usually carry, in which I had packed some books to read, a notebook and paper, pens, Kleenex, a pack of cigarettes, and a small comb. That made me the first one off the train. I headed straight for the train station’s bathrooms, where I emptied my bowels, my bladder, and my nose. I washed my hands and face with cold water, and I put water on my hair, running my hands back and down to my neck. Then I took my little comb out of the pocket of my bag and fixed the hair on my head, my eyebrows, and my mustache. I left the bathroom feeling alert and refreshed.

  I took a taxi in the direction of Rosa’s address. But once there, I didn’t ring the doorbell at the front of her building. Instead I headed directly to the flower shop, which I found just as my father had described it. I bought a bouquet of jasmine flowers and slid the card out from between the pages of my book. I asked the young shopkeeper to tie it to the jasmine bouquet, which she did with an elegant, colorful thread.

  After that, I went to the café next door, where I called Rosa. She was shocked by the surprise and said she would come immediately. I selected a table for us by the window, near a small glass fountain. The surface of the water was distorted by light from multicolored lamps submerged at the bottom. I ordered a café con leche, which I sipped as I smoked and stared through the window at the door to Rosa’s apartment building.

  Rosa came out. She was wearing a white dress with a collar decorated by pink ribbons. On her arm she carried a purse that resembled a basket because it was made of dried plant leaves—perhaps hemp or palm fronds?