As she lay dying in the little room next to the stairs on the upper floor, she whispered to me that she knew the whole truth and that my mother and paternal uncle had no right to so much as a brick of our house in Qadisiya, even though everyone had lived in it and it had served as a haven for my siblings and other family members—some of whom were down on their luck, greedy, or even rogues. They would arrive whenever they were out of work, angry with their spouse, or embroiled in some deal with a shady party member.
They were nothing but phantoms when Nabiha’s face shone on those evenings, caressed by summer’s fleeting breezes as the garden lamp’s pale light created a halo around her face and hair. In difficult times, following the countless family quarrels, she was like an angel arriving from the far horizon. She would smile, hold back her tears, and whisper her favorite phrase: “Brother, I would give my life for yours. No—don’t worry.”
I cannot believe that thirty years have elapsed since then. I was the last to leave Qadisiya, after my mother died and my four siblings departed. I fled with my paternal uncle and his wife, and then moved to my maternal aunt’s house in the canal area. From there, we headed to Kurdistan in a truck driven by my aunt’s son—a subcontractor hauling sand and asphalt for a project that would pave the Baghdad-to-Mosul highway. I didn’t care what kind of life I would have subsequently, because a person is more than a life. I’m not referring to the life of this world and the next—the way some of my siblings and loved ones who have become eschatologists would refer to it, including Reem, my wife. She remained religious, even when she handed me a glass of wine and the mezes I love. Never mind. Now I’m in a different time, but back in my original space. That is what’s important.
Time no longer concerns me. It’s true that I’ve lost love, youth’s vitality, and vigor; but in exchange I’ve become Amin. The rest of them have changed like chameleons and spread like cancer. Nabiha and I, however, remained resolute—like Qadisiya’s earth and the stars in Baghdad’s sky. After I left, Nabiha died and became a star that shined in every sky I saw. She was dearer to me than my mother, my wife, the whole world.
I’m in a different era now. Three decades later, and I’m waiting for a man who has a role to play in my history; I’ve got a lot to accomplish before he arrives. The most important thing is to find the key and the house title. Only Nabiha and I know where the title is.
Grandmother, when you were dying in the little room, before you took your final breath, did you foresee all the things that would happen to us?
I don’t know. Your final farewell gasps reached Reem and me like wisps of love. While you were breathing your last breath and Reem was weeping, an overwhelming desire possessed me. I clung to Reem, and my hand hovered near her shoulder. I put my palm on her breast. She smiled slightly and moved away—as if she feared hidden desires. We said nothing as Nabiha shuttled back and forth between the kitchen and the bedroom, offering food to you; your face had started to resemble a child’s. Then it went white, and you became a frightening ghost. The sound of your gasps grew ever louder, and you motioned for me to bring my face close to yours. I feared you would drag me along with you, wherever you were heading, then you whispered: “The title to the house is near my breast. Take it . . . take it . . . before your siblings come and wash my body.”
Yes . . . I did indeed take the title to the house. Then I made love to Reem as if it were our wedding night. I was ecstatic when I woke the next morning. My grief flowed into a channel I knew how to hide and suppress. My demons and nightmares resurfaced only when I let them, at various times and places.
Yes . . . I managed to repress them, just as I managed to obtain the deed when I was alone with Grandmother. By God, I did not apply any pressure to her neck—as my demons suggested—even though, during our quarrels, which exploded from time to time over the course of thirty years, Reem would angrily say I had.
By God, my hand did not touch Grandmother’s mouth. Instead, Reem wiped saliva away with her palm when it started to turn into revolting spume. Neither Reem nor I suffocated her, even though my worst nightmares suggested that I had—especially now, as I pulled the key to our house in Qadisiya from a hiding place I knew very well. It was strategically located at the base of the pomegranate tree, in a site not even the cleverest of surveyors could discover. There was a first hole some distance down, and then a cavity beside it. My hand descended and turned three times till I found the aluminum foil in which the key was wrapped. This was the key to the secret back door that no one knew about or had seen—except for two women, who were in the high heavens, and a third who has accompanied me, but at a safe distance.
I knew they’d changed the lock on the house more than five times during the past thirty years. Thieves belonging to the ruling party seized the house first. Subsequently, thieves from sectarian militias grabbed it. Some of them were crooked investors and realtors; others were creeps from intelligence agencies. The house eventually fell into the hands of a realtor allied with the regime. His boss rewarded him by installing him in the house. Now he wants to return it to its legal owners; he says that he has sincerely repented his sins and wishes to ensure that his life in this transitory physical world ends well.
* * *
One p.m. Typical October weather: breezes and dust. In twenty-four hours, I will meet with our contact. I need to leapfrog the thirty years I’ve been away from my Qadisiya. Where are my friends, neighbors, mother, Nabiha, and Reem? How have I reached this point? What decision will I make tomorrow?
He had offered me a choice: either accept an offer to sell the house to one of his relatives, who will pay me its price in cash as soon as I hand over the deed, or allow him to accompany me as I register the title with the current authorities—if I choose not to sell and prefer to return and settle here.
My God—will I stay in Qadisiya? Will Reem actually return so we can live together—after the experience of flight and migration from country to country devastated us? My mother and Nabiha were gone, and Reem was still vacillating between joining me, waiting for me, or leaving me, so who could I turn to for advice? In our last conversation, Reem said she would come. “Let the house in Qadisiya return to us; then we’ll return to each other,” she had whispered.
Would we really? I no longer knew anyone here. I didn’t know how I made it from the airport to where I sat now, beneath the dusty pomegranate tree, using my small suitcase as a seat. My pack of cigarettes lay on the ground, together with the plastic bag that contained what was left of the sandwiches I had packed and a bottle of water. I glanced around fearfully, as if I were an intruder or a thief. Once the taxi driver turned from Eagles Square to Umm al-Tubul Square, the beating of my heart became louder than his voice. He asked me to show him which turn to take after we passed the barracks of the military police on our left. Were these the same houses? Some seemed to be ruins, where briars and weeds grew to the road. The bas-reliefs there at Eagles Square resembled the scary skeletons I imagine when I call the Tower of Babel to a mind muddled by Iraq’s bloody history. The taxi reached the intersection of the fast public highway that linked the districts of al-Harithiya and Qadisiya.
I gave the driver faulty directions and asked him to turn right, only to realize we were heading toward al-Harithiya. I became lost among its houses, which had not lost their luster, although their walls showed their age. Mature trees and shrubs rose in front of garden gates, and the remaining high garden walls partitioned the area. I lost myself in their aesthetics, and in the contrast between what we were seeing and memories of visits to a wealthy friend who once lived there. When I realized where we were, I cursed the devil and told the driver to head back toward Qadisiya. We entered the intersection where Abu Kamil’s store was located—people said he had been wiped out, along with his whole family.
We passed the houses of my Christian and Sabian-Mandaean neighbors: the family of my friend Fakhry, who was a painter and sculptor; Umm Layla’s daughters Jamila, Su’ad, and Layla, who were Nabiha’s f
riends. Who lived there now? For some time, Abu Kamil’s grandchildren had lived in the house. Then they sold it and moved to Britain and America. Umm Layla’s daughters had joined their maternal uncles in Denmark.
Who said time and space are the same? No, my dear! Time is in your head, and space is located in this transitory world. It is born, dies, and propagates. This is my space that produced me, but its time is in my head—like my breathing and pulse. Time is spirit, while space is composed of bodies that pass out of existence—and of others that are born.
At that moment, the vehicle stopped in front of the Qadisiya house, which seemed well on its way to annihilation. To me, it looked like a tomb, with the pomegranate tree serving as the headstone. The vegetation looked like unkempt green and yellow hair. The house’s flat roof was filthy. The lemon tree, which was losing its fragrance, was caked with dust.
I paid the driver—the rate had climbed into thousands of dinars. In the old days, I could reach this house from the airport and pay less than ten dinars. All those different eras were raging in my head—except for the current era, which I entered now like a director preparing the stage for the final act of his play, before ordering the curtain to close.
But what happened to me less than an hour after I arrived was the work of another director, whose voice I heard assail me from behind before I saw his face: “Hajji Karim’s son? What brings you here, traitor?”
The iron rod struck my head violently, even before I could turn. I fell—astonished, frightened, and nauseous.
The Second Day
This wasn’t my first trip back to Baghdad, but it was my first back to Qadisiya. Over the last five years I had come and gone several times, ever since there was a glimmer of hope of recovering the house in Qadisiya. All the same, discussions with cousins on my father’s side and mother’s side about countersigning Nabiha’s document, which surrendered all rights to me for the house, took place once in Mosul, several times in Kurdistan, and twice in Baghdad’s Karadat Maryam District—where the first house my paternal grandfather owned stood.
It has been occupied since then by a succession of uncles and grandchildren. The grandson who owned it now was a civil servant in the government’s supreme council. He promised me a happy ending—that I would reclaim the Qadisiya house, sell it, and pocket the money, or retain it for my children and grandchildren, as he put it. During all those visits, I never had the courage to set foot in Qadisiya. It always felt like some ghoul was stalking me. This nightmare tormented me day and night, as I fluctuated between bursts of desire and aversion—unable to ward them off or submit to them. I would get halfway there, approaching the house from al-Rashid Street, passing by Bab al-Sharqi Square, either in a taxi or a car belonging to a cousin. We would cross the al-Jisr al-Muallaq bridge heading to the al-Muhandiseen District, and from there to al-Harithiya. Then I would hop up as if stung by a scorpion and shout: “No! No, brother! Let’s turn back, for God’s sake!” This place jumped back and forth from my head to my heart, astonishing me.
My cousin, who drove me during these visits, would ask: “So, are you Amin or someone else?” He shepherded me through routine import-export procedures, which have never changed over time, although the faces and goons of the customs officials have. Then he would add: “You’re Amin, the nice guy, an astute contractor who doesn’t negotiate; a refined man, and a friend to members of the cultural and artistic elite. We call you the family sage; the trustworthy depository of the family’s secrets. After Baath rule swept over the land at the end of the 1970s, you were the last to leave. You preserved the family’s archives and the Qadisiya house, which symbolizes its continued existence. Everyone realizes that, in your own special way, you are a combatant who defends his convictions and who isn’t swayed by a desire for wealth or influence. Does such a person fear the ghost of an old house now? Are you afraid of a family that has vanished into oblivion? Where are those folks, my dear? What do you fear? It’s your house and it belongs to you. They occupied it and seized it, but weren’t able to claim title to it.”
My cousin continued and praised me in a profuse way that I won’t deny enjoying. I was moved by his words, but my submission only lasted a few moments. Then my demons attacked once more. “No! No, my dear—I don’t want the house in Qadisiya. Let’s forget about it. That would be better.”
Later, it became obvious to me that I would never forget the house, and that my desire to reclaim it was stronger than my desire to sell it. I knew that the money I received for it would delight my three children, who together with their own spouses and children would anticipate an undreamed-of fortune. They each lived with some amount of public assistance from whichever country was sheltering them: whether it was the UK, Sweden, or Germany. They were alienated from me and accused me of neglecting them. My daughter married and settled in the UK; her brother became a physician in Germany; and my other son shuttled between countries in North and South America, guiding tours and jibber-jabbering in many of the world’s languages. Yet the only phrase he knew of his homeland’s tongue was, Hallo, ayni, meaning, Hello, darling.
My children had no idea that their mother ruined our life. I informed all of them of my decision not to apply for asylum in any country, and instead began to travel with Arab contractors on jobs in various Asian and Gulf countries. I refused to relinquish my Iraqi passport and join them. Reem stayed with me for a time, but eventually her maternal instincts won out. So, she left me and joined them.
Never mind. Reem and I enjoyed a special time far from our children and any home base, even though she finally departed to be with them. When she said that at last we could reunite and revive our beautiful time at the conclusion of our lives, I summoned the inner strength to settle all the open questions about the Qadisiya house. We would either recover it and live there, or I would use the money from its sale to buy another house in some other area of Baghdad—one she loved, like the Arasat al-Hindiya District—or we could head off to Kurdistan and settle there. During our last long-distance call, when we were both on the road—she in the East and I in the West—I asked her: “Why can we live together . . . even though Qadisiya once seemed desolate? Why not die together now?” She caught my drift, and was currently on her way to Baghdad.
I found myself repeating all this, as if attempting to memorize a lesson that I had long struggled to master. I was still in the same place beneath the pomegranate tree, trying to regain consciousness. Is this a nightmare? The speaker, the man who called me a traitor, was dragging the iron bar behind him while circling me, after eavesdropping on my conversation with our house. He hadn’t said anything for a long time. I hoped to shake off the nightmare completely. But then he started singing in a voice that sounded beautiful to me, even though I hated him furiously:
The pomegranate flew over me, drop by drop,
The lemon came and gave me a helping hand,
I don’t want this nice guy,
Take me back to my folk . . .
My God! What’s become of me? His voice resounded, repeating that stanza and bringing tears to my eyes as it awakened my chagrined heart. I wanted him to continue singing, and to stop tramping circles around me. I wanted to see his face but couldn’t look up. Apparently, I was afraid to unmask him and get clobbered. I still imagined him as one of the phantoms that swarmed my nightmares. What did he want? Why did I tell him all that? What connection did he have to Reem, our children, the Qadisiya house, and me? But I didn’t dare ask. Did he have a revolver? Where was the iron bar he had dropped on my head? What else did he want to know?
He surprised me by responding in a husky, hoarse voice: “Nothing. All I want to know is your relationship to the Yarmouk Hospital fire.”
The Yarmouk Hospital fire? The hospital located behind the Qadisiya house? That happened last August—two months before I came back to Baghdad. How was I connected to that fire? Moreover, what relationship did the specter interrogating me have to it? I couldn’t even see his face, though he wasn’t veiled. He
was wearing a kaffiyeh, jeans, and a cotton T-shirt. But I couldn’t examine his face or his frame well enough to identify him. His footsteps and limberness suggested he was a young man. He was wearing dirty sneakers that betrayed his social milieu. At least that’s what my wife said about footwear. So, he was a guy from a rural heritage—from a group that had developed among settled Bedouins. He didn’t know that we were the original inhabitants who made Baghdad a highly cultured city. In any case—that didn’t matter. He was clenching the iron bar firmly and putting me squarely on the defensive—thirty years after I left this city without ever being accused of belonging to a party, a movement, or an orientation. Every faction assumed I belonged to some other one, even though they all considered me a potential ally, should the need arise. They excused me on the grounds that I was an outsider, whenever they made deals to cooperate and support one another.
He wasn’t listening for a response; he began to sing again. My God, how could my captor have such a touching voice?
Oh mother, don’t watch over me,
Give up the guarding,
What I want will be,
There isn’t another way out . . .
His voice, steps, and body language reminded me of my lifelong friend Fakhry, who was from this neighborhood. Was this his son? After he drained his third glass, Fakhry would always sing:
O you oppressed women,
Go all on foot to al-Kadhim Shrine,
By the head of the Prophet’s sons,
Put an end to your grief,
The pomegranate flew over me, drop by drop.
He would repeat that and add: There’s no hope, none . . .
There was no hope; you were right, my friend. I must wait to learn what ties you and I have to the Yarmouk Hospital disaster. Naturally I’ve heard about it. I wept like everyone else at the death of eleven infants—all newborns.
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