Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (10 page)

Before that night it had been three months since my arrival in Baghdad. Pregnancy led me to a long sleep, then the perennial morning sickness and ever-present hunger exhausted any ability I might have had to wake up. I welcomed sleep and gave in to it anytime it visited me or whenever a passing breeze carried me to it. Hatim tried hard that evening to get me to pay him some attention but the inner call to sink into slumber was irresistible. He clung to me, took hold of my head and began to play with my hair. My face rose to face him. I opened my eyes and my eyelashes trembled with his hands’ rhythm. I saw his nose get so big it swallowed me. His lips roamed all over my skin, which completely detached itself from me behind a distant cloud that I could see but could not reach. The tickles of waking up were feeling their way to my chest but could not prop up my head, which had suddenly fallen under his neck and left me to the seduction of sleep. I felt him clinging to me as he pressed my body. Then I felt his regular breathing. He was fast asleep after he had given up completely on the possibility of having me back. I took shelter in his hands embracing me, leaving wakefulness behind toward colorless circles that glowed in front of me, then fled through a long tunnel that had no beginning and no end. I chased these circles until I almost caught them at the moment that all parts of my body went into hiding.

Suddenly I was stung by a compelling force, trying to wrench me from the well I plunged into with such pleasure. I opened my eyes with difficulty, then I felt them closing again, returning me to my fall into the abyss again. I was aware, even as I sank into the darkness, of the movement of the two hands, three hands, hundreds of hands tearing off the cloaks of sleep, flashing the lights of awakening on my cells by force. I tried to wriggle out from under, feeling choked. I wanted to scream. Where’s my voice? Wakefulness knocked on my door rudely. The desire to refuse bubbled in my blood, along with an overwhelming feeling of exasperation. My body whose clothes were being ripped at that moment stiffened and I could feel two hands turning me over lightly, rearranging my body in a position that made it possible to enter me. Before my mind had totally awakened a colossal being was tossing me hither and yon, twisting with every blow it dealt, embracing me then separating from me. I could hear the cracking of my bones as they were crushed under the force of the tornado, then I felt my breasts awakening before me, then getting crushed. The conflict between desire and sleep pulverized me into millions of cells. My moans rallied for the coming flood. I heard the cracking of the collision between the cries of refusal and desire. Neither wakefulness nor sleep was able to reassemble me as a whole. In the midst of my flowing fears I spoke the name of every part of my body again and saw them coming to me meekly, like little chicks hurrying toward their mother. In the morning, looking at my exhausted features as I played the reel of the story for him after his persistent asking, Hatim did not remember, and he learned to pay attention to my desire without anything being said.

Three Other Knocks

1977

Suhayla Bezirgan

Abd al-Rahim Mansur came into the office of
al-Zahra
in Baghdad at nine in the morning in a real state of panic. He cried out, “Thank God I found you here. An order has been issued to deport my wife Suhayla and her family from Iraq.”

The news hit us like a bolt of lightning. Hilmi Amin and I said at the same time, “Why?”

He said, “An order was issued yesterday to deport Iraqis of Iranian descent instantly and without giving anyone time to prepare or to dispose of possessions. The order was to take them right away to the border or the airport.”

Hilmi Amin said, “Is Suhayla Iraqi or Iranian, Abd al-Rahim?”

Abd al-Rahim said, “In Iraqi IDs there is a space for national origin which is marked by categories with assigned numbers and symbols denoting affiliation based on descent. Only Iraqis who have the Iraqi nationality recorded on their IDs that marks them as Ottoman subjects are Iraqi citizens, for this purpose. Other IDs are marked as Afghan affiliation, Iranian affiliation, Indian, English, or Russian affiliation indicating republics of central Russia. All ethnicities are marked in the ID and so are religions. Suhayla’s is marked as ‘Iranian’ not ‘Ottoman’ subject.”

“So, is she Iranian?”

“No. The only thing that Suhayla knows about her family in Tehran is that she has an old maternal aunt there. Suhayla’s family came to Baghdad several generations ago and she doesn’t have anybody left in Iran. Borders in the region were open during the Ottoman era for all inhabitants. All members of Suhayla’s family work in Iraqi government departments and they own houses in Baghdad. Suhayla’s father is deceased and her only brother is a middle-school student. Her mother is a housewife.”

I asked, “How about the rest of her family? Did they leave?”

He said, “Her maternal aunt is married to an Iraqi of Arab descent, her paternal uncles are deceased, and her male cousins are studying abroad. She has female cousins who are married to merchants. The police took the men to the airport and the families were ordered to follow them.”

I said, “Oh, Abd al-Rahim! Did you need more complications? An Iraqi who turns out to be an Iranian? Are you trying to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records in the category of impossible love? It will all be resolved, God willing. What have you done so far?”

He said, “I went to Security Headquarters and told them she was married to an Egyptian. They asked for papers stamped by the Egyptian embassy. They told me that, so far, there have been no exceptions, and that she had to be deported first. But one of my friends advised me to hurry up and get her an Egyptian passport. Even if we had to send her to Egypt, it would be better. I’ve come to ask you for help.”

I said, “But Egyptians don’t need a visa to enter Iraq and getting her an Egyptian passport requires that she get Egyptian nationality.”

Hilmi Amin left with Abd al-Rahim to go to the Egyptian embassy. I went to the Ministry of Information to get official information for publication purposes.

Abd al-Rahim had fallen in love with Suhayla the moment he saw her when he went for the first time to start his new job at the Central Authority for Inspection and Quality Control in Baghdad.
He married her right away and now she was five months pregnant. Abd al-Rahim was a gentle, decent man on the up and up and he was an intellectual to boot. I noticed that, during our weekly book run in the bookstores on Saadun and al-Rashid streets, Hilmi Amin bought foundational books on economics and international relations and that these books were a source of joy for Abd al-Rahim and other young members from al-Tagammu‘ who frequented our office: Sawsan, Atef, Dahlia, Ragya, Maha, and Fathallah. They were all recent graduates who came to Baghdad to work immediately after getting married and they settled in Baghdad and some other Iraqi towns.

From the Ministry of Information, I got a copy of the official statement. It was brief, referring to al-Da‘wa Party and its responsibility for the explosions that took place in Baghdad recently, and to the fact that the political leadership had no choice but to deport those Iranians who were playing a double role as spies for Iran. I tried to recall Suhayla’s beautiful face, with her big black eyes, thick eyebrows, and dazzling beauty, trying to imagine how she could be a spy. We got some more information and waited for Anhar to get us additional news from the Agency’s evening bulletin and to arrange a meeting for us with one of the families being deported so that we might monitor the situation on the ground. Iraqi society was preoccupied with what these people would do, and whether Iraq would witness once again what happened when the Jews emigrated and had to sell their property in a hurry. Would these deportees be able to come back? Or was it final?

Anhar took us to a place where cars carrying deported families gathered. We stood in front of a car loaded with foam rubber mattresses, clothes tied in large sheets, and sacks chock full of everyday household items. Some children stood on these piles and two women, an old one and a middle-aged one, sat next to the driver. Young men and women in their twenties gathered around the car. A man who seemed lost was trying to keep an eye on his possessions, going around the decrepit car, standing in a line with other decrepit
cars. I asked Hilmi Amin in shock, “Would those cars make it to Iran? Or even to the next village? Where are the new cars?”

“It’s a state of chaos in which everyone gets whatever they can find.”

I approached one of the families. I asked the woman, “Do you know anyone in Iran?”

“My husband’s grandfather, an old hajji.”

“Do you own anything there? Land? Real estate?”

“Where from? That was a different time, the time of the Osmanlis.”

The husband said, “We don’t own a single fils there: no house, no land, no store.”

“What do you do?”

“I own a grocery store in Inner Karada.”

“Who did you leave it to?”

“To my neighbors. They are good people. I handed over the store to my neighbor for a bogus sales contract so that when we come back we would find a source of income. I took my things from the house so they wouldn’t be looted. If we were spies, good lady, what would they do with our things when we are away? I took all we’ll need there, until God provides a way out and until my family finds a way to make a living. What little money I have will barely last until I find a job. In the meantime we can use our things.”

A boy standing on top of the car waved a cassette tape at me as he followed the conversation between me and his father. I asked him, “What’s on the cassette?”

Laughing, he said, “Adel Imam in the play
A Witness Who Witnessed Nothing
,” and he started to mimic Adel Imam: “Why did you bring me here? Okay, shall I go home now?”

The grandmother cried in anguish, praying to God to deliver them and to turn the evil directed against them back at those who had done them wrong, and went on to say, “What is this Da‘wa and where did they come from? What have we got to do with them? They are not human. Who’d agree with those explosions? By God,
child, we know nothing except our home and livelihood and our children. Those Iranians, what’ve we got do to do with them? We just mind our own business, just that.”

The man said, “God is generous, Umm Ali. He’ll resolve it.”

I moved on to talk with another family, some of whose younger members were standing next to the car. I asked one of the young men about the reasons for their instant deportation. He said, “I don’t know. I was coming back after visiting my father in the factory and I was surprised that my cousins were arrested and there was this order of instant deportation, as you can see. What saved me was that I was at school in Jordan and have just come back by chance to visit my family. I swear to God we’ve done nothing. They have released one of my cousins. As for the rest, we don’t know if they are still here or were forcibly deported. And the girls: one is married to an Ottoman Iraqi and the other to an Iranian Iraqi. We’ve been dispersed. Whoever asked about marriage and who was subject of what? We are all human, we are all from Iraq.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll go with them to look for this family about which we know nothing, except for tales from our grandfathers. I know the name of the village they say we came from in the Ottoman era. Maybe I’ll find relatives of the old lady there. And after the family settles down I’ll go back to school in Jordan.”

“Do you expect help from the Iranians?”

“Please! Who’d accept us? If the Iraqi government considers us—Iraqis born here going back several generations—spies of Iran, what would the Iranian government consider us?”

A group of policemen arrived on the scene and ordered that everything loaded on the cars had to be brought down. Women screamed loudly and children began to jump out of the cars and the policemen began to search the cars and throw everything they found on the ground until the search was completed and orders were given to proceed. The noise made by the decrepit cars was drowned out by the sound of weeping.

Afterward I found nothing in the newspapers and magazines coming out of Egypt except for a short news item saying, “A number of Iraqi families of Iranian descent were deported on suspicion of their involvement in recent explosions, along with al-Da‘wa Party.” I remembered the boy carrying the Adel Imam cassette and Suhayla who was miraculously spared deportation through the personal intervention of the minister of the interior, as a single exceptional case of an Iraqi-Egyptian woman.

I asked Hilmi Amin why my investigative reports that I had sent to
al-Zahra
were not published. He said, “This is a very sensitive situation, Nora. There must be other considerations. Let’s wait for what the coming days will reveal.”

March 1977

Love

We gathered a lot of information on the Kurds. The office filled up with reference books in Arabic and English about their history, their revolts, their heroes, and their customs and traditions. We traveled to Erbil to complete our on-site research and Anhar promised to catch up with us in Erbil. She didn’t. I noticed that Hilmi Amin was worried when he talked to her in the morning. She did not say absolutely that she would not come. He said he would call her the following day, adding that her boss had given her an assignment that she hadn’t finished yet. Her boss had made it clear that she couldn’t go to Erbil before she had.

I said, “We still have three days. I want to take some aspirin. I think I have a fever.”

He said, “Yes, please do us all a favor and stay. We have a lot of work to do.”

We finished our work at the rug factory and the car took us back to the hotel. We passed by the old city. Hilmi Amin stopped the car in front of a man who sat on the ground with a pile of fresh shelled walnuts spread on a cloth in front of him. We bought some and Hilmi Amin pushed them toward me and said, “Eat these right now, right in front of me, to get rid of that cold.”

The restaurant prepared some hot soup and the waiter said as he served me, “I’ll put the pot on a special table for you so it will be ready for you at any time.”