I went with her, taking along two packs of cigarettes and a heart beating with noisy commotion. She opened the door for me cautiously and whispered, “You go in; I’ll stay here.”
I saw my father lying on the couch in the dark living room. His hair was disheveled. One arm was hanging off the edge of the couch, holding a glass, and he took a drag from the cigarette in his other hand. As soon as he saw me, he rushed over to embrace me. We cried on each other’s necks, each of us asking the other’s forgiveness. He said he was a failure of a father, and I said I was a disrespectful son. “Forgive me! Please forgive me!”
When we stepped back from our embrace, I found him turning his right cheek to me, saying, “Hit me! Hit me!”
“No, Dad! No!” I kissed his cheek and embraced him again.
He seemed thinner to me, exhausted, defeated. I had never seen weakness like this in him before. When we had calmed down, we sat down next to each other on the couch with empty glasses all around and an overflowing ashtray on the coffee table in front of us. We felt more united than at any other time. We felt our loneliness and our true exile in this “fucked-up” world more than ever before.
Now that calm had the upper hand, I wondered whether I should take advantage of the situation by making it a condition of my forgiveness that he abandon his determination to carry out his goal. But I contented myself with leaving things as they were, for I was the one who needed pardon from him. Moreover, I wanted to avoid stirring up the subject a second time.
But during our subsequent conversation, I found myself indicating what I wanted in another, less forceful way, with feigned neutrality. He was the one who brought the subject up when he exposed the truth of his hidden weakness, or more precisely, what I knew to be his strength. He revealed to me the struggle inside himself over this issue, for he was, as he put it, caught between two fires. One of them was what I earlier called his moral and religious heritage. I knew the power of an oath on the Qur’an, especially because he had given it in Grandfather’s venerable presence. I also knew the meaning of vengeance and its importance, to the point of holiness, in our social customs.
The other fire was his private conviction, which suited both his personality and my own, that he, in all honesty, rejected violence and the culture of revenge, and that he disapproved of fanaticism. “Believe me, Saleem, even if I appear in the hide of a wolf, I have the heart of a meek lamb.” He said that if he carried out his goal, he would regret it and torture himself. And if he did not carry it out, he would regret it and torture himself then too.
“You will not regret it, Father, and you will not torture yourself. Believe me!”
“But I took an oath on the Qur’an, Saleem. I made a covenant with my father.”
“It says in the Qur’an, ‘God will not blame you for speaking rashly in your vow.’”
“I wasn’t being rash. I was speaking honestly and seriously in my oath.”
“It was the effect of the moment. It took place during an exceptional moment, filled with anger and devoid of clear thinking. God is great; he knows this and everything else. Grandfather will understand when things are clearer and more open in the world to come.”
I supported my argument with what I remembered from the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet, especially when I noticed how easy it was for my father to accept them. It may have been that he, at his core, wanted a justification from this exact source. “The Qur’an also says, If you dole out punishment, dole it out according to what was inflicted upon you. But if you exercise patience, verily, that is better for the patient ones.”
“And Azad? What will I say to my brother Azad?”
“Tell him anything. That you carried out the deed. Or that the person you were pursuing wasn’t the right one. Or that he went off to another country, in an unknown direction, to hell. Or that he died. Or anything! Or tell him the truth about your new conviction. Indeed, you could even try to persuade him to stop the series of his acts of vengeance and reprisal. The principle of an eye for an eye is bitter, Dad. It’s true that we’re the ones who established it, but humanity’s subsequent experiences have shown that applying it will, in the end, leave us all blind.”
“It’s not that simple, Saleem. I’ve piled my hatred upon this person for all these years. How could it be possible for me to rid myself of all that in a moment?”
I was silent for a little while, conscious of how the speech had poured from my tongue and how easily the wisdom had come—if it is permissible for me to describe it in this way or to ascribe such a thing to myself.
“In order to get it all off your chest, I think it would be good to call him right now on the telephone. Make him hear everything you want to say.”
I got up and took hold of the telephone book, flipping through its yellow pages, while he looked on with a grave expression. The cigarette was never far from his mouth, and a cloud of smoke wrapped around his face. Then I heard him say, “I have his name and telephone number.”
He pulled out of his pocket a small address book and opened it up. He held it out to me, pointing to the name and number.
Without looking at his face, I began to turn the dial of the telephone, and when a woman’s voice answered, I asked her to connect me with the person in question. “Please, it’s important.”
She said, “Just a moment, please.”
I held the receiver out to my father and began to watch him. His hand was trembling, his lips quivering. After some short moments of waiting, he burst out in a loud, choked voice, “Why?” Then the awful shout poured out of him to the point of shaking his whole body, “Why?! Why have you done all this to us, you criminals?! You ignoble pigs! You bastards! You—”
Through the phone’s receiver, I heard the other line being cut off, then the dial tone came on. Meanwhile, my father continued shouting, “Why? Why?”
I fell upon him with a hug as he broke into tears, gasping like a slaughtered bull. Rosa burst in anxiously. She embraced us both together, asking desperately, “What happened? What happened?” Then she hurried to the kitchen, coming back with a jar of water, which she used to wash my father’s face and give him something to drink.
After some time—I can’t say how long exactly—of this burning rage, the likes of which I’d never known in my life, and which I doubt I will ever witness again, my father calmed down more than we expected. He was like someone who had vomited out the poisonous food that was hurting him, as though the “why?” was a hurt that had been eating his heart. Little by little, the pallor in his face subsided.
At that point I said to him, “What do you think about us going together to the mosque today for Friday prayers?”
I read a sort of relief in his features, and he nodded to me in agreement.
“In that case, I’ll go home now while you shower and eat something. I’ll come to get you.”
I kissed him and went out. Rosa’s glance followed me, filled with gratitude and questions. She still had one arm hooked around my father’s neck and was holding a jar of water in her other hand.
CHAPTER 16
After we left the mosque following last Friday’s prayers, my father shook my hand. “May your prayers be acceptable in God’s sight!” he said, giving the customary blessing. “Thank you, Saleem.” After he was quiet for a while, he added, “I didn’t expect to find so many Muslims here, or this beautiful mosque.”
He was calm, as though his heart were made of still water. A halo of spiritual contentment clearly enveloped him. I felt at the time that I had regained my father, finding him much as I remembered him to be. So I decided to stop digging up whatever he was hiding. I would stop wondering about it entirely. I would forget. Or, to be more precise, I’d pretend to have forgotten it all, especially everything connected to how Grandfather died. And I wouldn’t ask if he had given up his goal of fulfilling his oath, or whether he had only delayed it and would carry it out without my knowing.
I reinforced this resolve with what the mosque’s preac
her said, even if I was only using it as an excuse: “O my brothers, God says in the Qur’an, Don’t ask about things that, if they become clear, will hurt you. It is not necessary to know everything. If sometimes there is a comfort in knowledge, at other times ignorance and forgetting have a comfort that is even greater.”
I felt a certain satisfaction as I recalled my sense in recent days that the details of my life were coming back under control. I painted the walls of my living room, covering the nail holes with white. My father dyed his hair black. Fatima said that her family had agreed to her marrying me.
“All that’s left is for us to inform your father!”
My father and Rosa, after having confirmed that everything was ready for the party that night, were sitting harmoniously in front of us on the other side of the bar, looking very elegant. My father said to me with a laugh, “Your hair has gotten long. Do you want me to cut it for you again?”
My father hadn’t stopped drinking and smoking, but more than once he had mentioned his intention to cut back. I remembered how he had said to me a couple of days earlier, “I think that it would be good for us to try to go to the mosque every Friday.” He raised the glass that was in his hand and added with a smile, “At the very least, in order to cut back on our sins!”
It was evening, and just the four of us were in the club. The two Spanish waitresses hadn’t arrived yet. My father and Rosa were whispering together happily. Fatima murmured to me, “Come on, let’s tell them.”
“Dad, Rosa. Fatima and I have something we’d like to tell you.”
“We have a surprise for you too.”
“What is it?”
“No, you two go first.”
“Fatima and I have decided to get married.”
They leapt up together out of their seats, joyfully congratulating us and reaching across the bar to grab our heads and kiss us. Then they said to pour us all something to drink, and we began clinking our glasses and exchanging celebratory toasts. “We’ll put on a huge party for you here!”
In the midst of the jubilant commotion, Rosa asked, as any woman might, “And what will you name your children? I mean, for instance, if the newborn baby is a girl?” This may have been her way of creating a greater sense of familial intimacy and letting us know the extent of her hopes. Or maybe she said it because she found in us a way to experience vicariously her unrealized dream of being a mother.
Giving me a significant glance, Fatima responded, “I know what it is.”
My father said, “And I know too.”
“What?” Fatima asked him.
My father looked at me and said, “Aliya.”
Fatima jumped up, clapping for him, “That’s it! That’s it!”
We clinked our glasses again, joining their music with our laughter. After a pause, Rosa said, “And if the child is a boy, I would suggest that you name him Noah.” Her hand massaged the back of my father’s head.
But he interjected with a tone that was meant to be ironic, “No; that’s a bad omen. What sin has the poor little one committed to deserve our making him carry my misfortunes?” His smile widened, and he stared at me, sure that his irony would strike home this time when he said, “We’ll name him Sirat.”
We gave each other a high five like kids, bursting out in loud laughter to the surprise of the two women. I was carried away by the energy of the laughter to take it further, commenting, “But will we add the dot to make it Dirat?”
We gave each other another high five, and my father fell back from the force of his laughter. When he regained his composure and sat back up, I said in all seriousness, “We’ll name him Mutlaq.”
My father clasped my hand and said, “Yes, that’s good.”
Then Fatima asked, “And now, what’s your surprise?”
Rosa looked at my father, saying, “Should I tell them or you?” Then, without waiting for his response, she went on, “We’ve decided to move to Germany and leave the club and our apartment to you, if you want them.” Smiling, she added, “Provided you pay the rent, of course!”
My father said, “We are also going there to look for friends from my oil days in Kirkuk: Kristof and his wife, Sabine.”
The Spanish waitresses came in at their usual time, a little before darkness fell, and of course, the reasons for our festive atmosphere were revealed to them, which led to abundant kisses all around. This delight that some people show in sharing the happiness of others, or a person’s empathizing with the concerns of another, always touches an emotional cord in my breast. It sometimes moves me to tears, as happens to me when watching this sort of thing in the movies. I know that this sympathy of feeling is intuitive and as ancient as the humanity of humans, but as far as I’m concerned, it never gets old. I feel happiness at some good or prosperous thing, just as I feel pain at misfortune.
As darkness descended outside and the city’s street lamps lit up, some of the regular customers arrived early. They postponed the dancing by ordering something simple to eat in addition to their drinks. It was a way of equipping themselves to enjoy the night from its beginning until the time their bodies reached an absolute limit.
As the numbers increased, so too did their noise and smoke. I also noticed that my father was drinking and smoking more too. Whenever he came over to order another glass, he would say to us, “It’s okay, it’s okay. One time won’t hurt, and tonight is a special night. It deserves the biggest possible celebration.”
Instead of reviving my fears and my attempts to explain and judge his behavior, I preferred just to believe him. I said to myself, “I have to learn to accept him as he is, with all his contradictions. For who doesn’t contain contradictions? No one! It’s not my place to keep imposing, both upon my mind and upon him, the image of him that I want.”
As usual, when he saw that the place had filled up, and after the band members had taken their places, he mounted the stage. He took the microphone off its stand and brought it up to his mouth in order to inaugurate the nightly festivities with his multilingual monologue: some humorous, joking passages and some words to warm up the crowd. Every night he adopted a different personality to act out: a taxi driver, a famous singer, a soldier, a chattering woman, a vegetable seller, a soccer player, a doctor, and so on. Rosa got up next to him to translate whenever necessary. Tonight, he was lighter, more cheerful, more joyful, and more into his character than any previous night. I discovered as I watched him up there with the lights pouring over him that my father was extremely handsome, self-confident, and strong. He exuded life.
He began in a purposefully exaggerated tone of voice, saying, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! I hope you’re having a wonderful evening, O my magnificent people!”
They lit up, as usual, with a surge of claps and whistles, and one of them shouted, “Long live the king!”
The rest repeated it, laughing, “Long live the king! Long live the king!”
After that, he gave a little cough, like someone clearing his throat. He mimed straightening his tie even though he didn’t have one, and the crowd laughed. From what he said and his bearing, his facial expressions, and the tone of voice he had assumed up till this point, it seemed that his performance today would facetiously adopt the guise of a king or a political speaker.
“I order you today to loosen the belts around your waists, for we have an endless supply of drinks, and we need the oil to gush from your pockets. Furthermore, I command you to dance until you burst the seams of your underwear. Because tonight I have magnificent news for you: my royal heir, Prince Saleem, will marry Princess Fatima!” Everyone turned toward us with applause, whistling, and congratulations.
“As for Queen Rosa and my own royal highness, we will move to the great country of Germany. My crown prince will remain to take my place. Therefore, I caution that none of you dare annoy him, for in that case I’ll come flying, and you know what I’ll do to you!”
Someone shouted, “What will you do?”
He responded immediatel
y, “I will invite you to have whatever you want, and I’m paying!”
There was laughter and applause. My father continued his speech, skillfully intimating what he wanted to be taken seriously and what he intended to be humorous. He kept repeating the word “magnificent” frequently.
Next to me, Fatima’s cheeks were flushed, and her constant smile was even wider and sweeter tonight. She moved so lightly that she scarcely touched the ground as she filled the customers’ orders and replied to their congratulations. I let her know that I was thinking of changing this place’s function later on, perhaps from a club to an Arabic restaurant.
“I’m no good at balancing all these contradictions. I couldn’t handle managing a club like my father, Fatima.”
She agreed with the idea and said that she would cook amazing dishes: “I’ll make them line up for couscous in droves.”
My father said into the microphone, “I want to thank everyone for their warm hospitality toward us in our exile. I want you to know that the idols in Iraq will certainly fall. I say the idols, and I don’t mean the statues. At that time, we’ll return to rebuild our beautiful village so that it will be a land for tourists, not for graves. We’ll call it Freedmen, or The Absolute, or Dignity. O God, maintain our love for freedom and for human dignity. Kill us as you want or as we want, not as our enemies want. And let the people say ‘Amen’!”
The crowd echoed, “A-a-men!”
“And everyone is invited to be our guest! But, well, we won’t open a club there, of course.”
One of the women called out, “Then what will you open for your guests?”
“I’ll open your legs for them!” There was laughter, applause, and whistles.
I let Fatima know that I thought we should bring my Cuban neighbor to work with us in our future restaurant. I also told her that I thought we should take my father’s and Rosa’s apartment because it had two rooms. “That way, it would be possible for your sister to live with us too. We’ll also need it for the children. And we will ….”
Dates on My Fingers: An Iraqi Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) Page 17