Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (11 page)

The hotel had not been officially opened yet. They were still finishing work on it and there was no telephone service. There were only three workers on the staff. Anhar arrived in the evening and we were very happy that she had come. I took my leave to go to my room after I felt a fever coming on again. I fell soundly asleep right away.

I awoke in the middle of the night not knowing what time it was. I rang the bell but no one responded. I found myself sweating profusely. I decided to take a hot shower, then change and go out looking for a waiter to get me something to drink. I left the room and headed for the front desk. The whole hotel was pitch dark, except for a faint light at the end of the corridor. I looked for anyone from the reception staff and didn’t find anyone. I turned around to go back to my room, irritated. I caught a glimpse of someone moving at a distance. I was startled, but my eyes got used to the dark as I walked further in the corridor. I saw a person moving on tiptoe with his back to me. I realized that it was Hilmi Amin. I moved quickly to wish him goodnight without waking those asleep. I saw him turning to look behind as he knocked on the door. I stood still and saw Anhar opening the door and saw him go in quickly. I went into my room and began to ring the bell in anger, knowing that nobody would respond. I asked myself why I was angry: was it jealousy? God forbid. I was afraid he might be abusing his authority or exploiting her. After all, he was a married man and she was a young girl. That’s their business. I picked up
al-Jumhuriya
and began to read but I couldn’t understand a thing. The headline was “The American Recipe, and the Artificial Severance of Diplomatic Relations.” I gave up on reading. I felt my fever getting worse. I took some aspirin as I heard the sound of a door being closed carefully, then the sound of another door closing more carefully. I didn’t know how much time passed. I felt the sun’s rays stinging my eyes. I had forgotten to close the curtains and Iraqi windows don’t have wooden shutters like ours.

I got off my bed. According to the clock it was five in the morning. I remembered Hatim saying, “If I wake up at three o’clock in the morning I’d find it (the sun) right in the middle of the sky.” I smiled when I remembered that. I’ll call him from the nearest public telephone in the evening when he comes back to our house. I left my room and sat in the lobby. The waiter brought me a glass of hot milk and said, “Drink it right away. It will make you sweat and get well, God willing.”

I said, “You speak Arabic fluently.”

He said, “Yes. Most people in my generation speak Arabic. We’ve learned it in school. Some mothers still don’t know Arabic but they follow Egyptian movies and speak some sentences.”

Laughing, I said, “Thank you, Kaka Abu Sami.”

Smiling, he said in Kurdish, “You are a beautiful lady.”

I went out for a walk in the city. The sun was sending its soft rays to tickle the dew, which I saw trembling as the rays touched it, revealing very dense green foliage of walnuts and wispy pines. I looked up at the top branches and swayed as they swayed in the light wind. I walked until I got tired and I felt the fever coming back. I went back to the hotel and found that Ustaz Hilmi Amin and Anhar were waiting for me to have breakfast together.

The waiter served me some hot orzo soup, saying, “Drink it and take something to reduce the fever.”

I said, “Okay, Doctor Kaka Abu Sami. I needed it at night and not now.”

He said, “I am at your service.”

I said, “I am going to work. I am tired of being asleep.”

Hilmi said, “Let’s go and on our way stop at the hospital so the doctor can see you.”

I saw that Anhar was somewhat distraught, not showing the happiness that was expected during the first few days of a love story. Was it fear of the future or a sense of guilt? I looked at him as he moved with great confidence. I saw that he was calm, his face displaying a relaxed joy or maybe it was an arrogant sense of victory.

We met Jamal and Sulafa at the Culture Palace. Jamal talked to me about the difficulty faced by Kurdish writers especially publishing literary works. I asked him in jest, “Are you not one of them?”

He said, “No, I am Syriac. And I also have difficulty publishing my work.” Then he added, “When will you publish your first collection of stories?”

I said, “I’ll finish my first novel first, then a story collection.”

He asked me, “Who is your favorite author?”

I said, “I don’t know precisely. At every phase I have a different favorite author.”

Hilmi Amin was surprised and said, “Fahmi Kamil is her favorite author as far as I know.”

I said, “At some stage, yes. But I wish I could write like Erskine Caldwell or Albert Camus who uncovered hidden traits in the human psyche. But now my writer is incontestably Steinbeck.”

I couldn’t, as I talked, separate the author from the human being. I let my feelings lead me. I had met Fahmi Kamil in Baghdad and accompanied him to visit the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim, but the way he acted that day shocked me so much I couldn’t forget it. And when I saw him in Cairo later, I didn’t get near him. A curtain of mystery and arrogant impatience stood between him and me. When he visited Baghdad a second time, I couldn’t care less.

When I returned to Baghdad, I didn’t tell Hatim anything about what happened.

April 1977

Troubles Looming

The bureau director got ready to go to Cairo for the second time since I worked with him. Today he asked Muzaffar al-Mosuli to bring requested articles to take with him to Cairo. Muzaffar asked him, “Will Mrs. Nora be in the office while you are away?”

“No. She’ll be off and so will Anhar,” he said curtly as he looked at me angrily. In the evening he gave me strict instructions not to open the office and to deliver the complimentary issues of
al-Zahra
that we got from the National Company directly to the newspapers. Then he said, “It’s likely that I’ll be detained in Cairo.”

He noticed my crestfallen look and the panic on my face and went on, “Nora, you know I am a Marxist and that my name is on the top of the list for arrest at any time. In case of emergency, and of course if I am barred from leaving Egypt, you have fifteen days after my scheduled return. If I haven’t come to Baghdad, take over affairs in the office: get in touch with our colleague, the Egyptian journalist Galal al-Sayyid. He is a respectable man who’ll help you liquidate the affairs of the bureau and dispose of its possessions.”

His words made me sad, but I soon overcame my sadness. It occurred to me to ask him: if he was arrested in Cairo, why should he close the bureau? Couldn’t the magazine send another journalist?
But I thought better of it and said instead, “There’s no reason for Egypt to have a disagreement with the communists now, especially when you live and work in Baghdad.”

He said, “When the time comes, they will not ask where I live or work. Just do what I told you to do.”

I went home in disbelief. Things couldn’t be turned upside down so simply, the world I’d fallen in love with couldn’t end just like that when I was just taking my first steps toward success. As usual he was exaggerating and if I pointed that out, he would say that my youth led me to a false reading of the situation.

Reading took up all my time throughout the vacation. My neighbor Sabah would come and ask me, “Why don’t you go to the office any more? Is Ustaz Hilmi Amin not coming back from Egypt?” Panicked, I would tell her, “No, he’ll come back, God willing.”

I was afraid she would go back to her old ways and take up my whole day. Going to work for
al-Zahra
put a stop to most of the problems she had created for me. She would say, “What are all these books for? You’re wasting your money and your husband’s money on this nonsense. Ever since you started working, you have been reading even after he comes back from the factory. He and Shukry, poor things, are busting their backs. You are neglecting him and he doesn’t complain.”

I said, “Hatim married me knowing I am a journalist. My work does not interfere with my taking care of him. As for reading, what bothers you so much? Hatim loves it and he reads with me. Don’t worry.”

I got fed up with Sabah’s morning litany. I was afraid she might be right and told Hatim what was happening and asked him if I were really neglecting him. He said, “She looks at your work as simply a means to making money and does not understand why you are living abroad if you were going to spend the money before you go back to Egypt. I love you and I love your work.”

I didn’t realize the days were so long. I would begin my morning by dragging a foam rubber mattress chasing the sun all over the
house, lying on my stomach and placing a book in front of me. If I stopped reading for one moment and if Sabah and her children were not around me, I would see Yasir crying and asking about me, and Ustaz Hilmi behind bars. I saw myself running around trying to liquidate the bureau in Baghdad. I tried to banish those thoughts and get busy baking a cake to surprise Hatim and ask him to take me to the central post office on al-Rashid Street to call my mother and ask her about Yasir.

I said to him, “How is it there’s no telephone at the magazine office in Baghdad, and no telephone in your house in Maghagha in the seventies of the twentieth century?”

Hatim embraced me and said, laughing, “When will you come back, Ustaz Hilmi?”

Hilmi Amin came back from Cairo in a strange mood: happy somehow, but distracted and not quite at peace with himself. He said to me with a sorrowful face, “I submitted an official memorandum to appoint you to the magazine, but the request was rejected by Fahmi Kamil, the editor in chief.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“Postpone this request for the time being.”

I recalled the unpleasant trip on which Fahmi Kamil accompanied me to the shrine of al-Kazim and I had a hard time understanding the whole thing. I asked Hilmi Amin for an explanation. He said, “I don’t know precisely what goes on in his head, Nora. Just focus on your work. That is your strongest point and that’s what will enable you to respond to him in the future.”

I tried to find out from Hilmi Amin what happened in Cairo and whatever happened to his expectations that communists would be rounded up and the bureau closed. But it was no use. Talking to him only made things more unclear. Sometimes he would say, “It’s a critical situation,” and at other times he would say, “Nobody knows anything.”

I would say, “But we are still at work. What determines whether we continue to work or not?”

His answer sometimes would be, “Yes, we are. For the time being. Nobody knows the circumstances of the two countries.”

I got a little depressed, then I got rid of the sad feelings, saying to myself, “Nothing stupid will keep me from my work. I will work more and more and gain experience.” I agreed to write for any newspaper or magazine that asked me for a feature or an article. The newspaper
Hokari
translated my features into Kurdish and published them in a regular column with the title: “The Kurdish Woman.” I impatiently looked forward to being published. It hurt when I remembered Fahmi Kamil’s unfriendly position, but I carried on, determined to succeed.

I noticed a few days later that Hilmi Amin was in a very jovial mood: he was no longer frowning all the time and he looked much younger. I asked him, laughing, “You’re hiding something from me. What happened in Egypt? Is it a new love story? Your face is all lit up and your eyes have an unusual gleam.”

He laughed and admitted it, saying, “Stop it, you naughty girl!” Then he sat on the armchair in front of the desk saying, “Okay, what do you want to know, Sitt Nora? I was surprised to receive a telephone call from Ismat. You know her, don’t you?”

I said, “Of course, your first but not your last choice.” Anhar’s picture appeared at once in my mind’s eye.

He said, laughing, “Anyway. She wanted to meet. My time was very limited, as you know, so I invited her to lunch at home. She took a car from Alexandria that waited for her outside. She said, ‘As you know, your friend Farid bought our old house for his son, but his son is not keeping up with the payments and I don’t know what this whole deal will come to and I don’t know what to do. My daughter is getting ready to be married and I need the money.’

“I asked her about the details of the contract and promised to send for Farid and compel him either to honor it or we would revoke it. I asked her, ‘How is Gamal? I know that you’ve raised him well.’ She said, ‘He’s fine. He’s doing very well.’

“Then she looked at me a long time and before she got up to go back home, she said to me, as her face turned red as if she were still
sixteen, ‘Life has passed us by.’ I patted her on the shoulder and said, ‘God knows what’s in the heart, Ismat. May God bless your children.’ I saw her tears flowing and my heart almost shattered. If I could I would have embraced and held her but neither time nor place allowed any of that. I said goodbye to her while Fayza and the girls stood there.

“I did not believe it when we were granted a general amnesty. Ismat had gotten married. I came out of jail to find that I had been fired from the customs department. I worked at
Rose al-Yusuf
. We, Ahmad Bahaeddin, Salah Hafez, Hasan Fuad, Abd al-Ghani Abu al-Aynayn, Salah Jahin, Heba Enayat, Higazi, the painter and cartoonist, and a large number of young men and women wanted to change the world. But most of us were arrested and sent to the oases detention camps for five consecutive years. I had gotten married and my wife worked in an attorney’s office and raised Mervat, which was very hard on her. She waited for me all those prison years tirelessly until I got out and went back to work as a journalist but this time for
al-Zahra
magazine.”

I saw some tears. I stopped recording, saying, “We’ll get to the details tomorrow.”

I wonder what happened to those memoirs that I transcribed myself? Has Tante Fayza taken them or did Hilmi send them to a publisher? I remembered us singing together Wadie al-Safi’s mawwal:

I don’t know who to cry to,

Or who to complain to,

Where can I get patience and fortitude?

To bear this sleepless, tear-filled night