Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (16 page)

I would say, “Yes,” hoping that she would explain to me why she asked, but instead she would smile even more broadly and say nothing.

I asked Hatim one day why Sabah was asking about my bathing. “Isn’t it natural for people to bathe?”

He laughed and patted me on the cheek, “This is women’s stuff. She’s snooping around about our intimate relationship.”

I would write to my mother about the details Sabah asked me about and which sometimes brought me to tears, but which I was too embarrassed to tell Hatim. I expected her to just barge into my apartment as soon as Hatim left. The delicious breakfast filled with laughter turned into a big chore. She got angry if I picked up a book to read or if I did anything but cook. I began to make up excuses, that I was going on errands, or that my husband had asked me to run to downtown Baghdad. She would ask me sharply, “Where do you go three, four times a week? Are you keeping secrets from me?”

I would smile and not answer her. I just took my books to the Zawra Park and sat there and read. When I came back she would be angry. “You haven’t cooked for your poor husband who will soon come back, hungry.”

I asked her calmly, “How do you know I haven’t prepared dinner?”

“I know everything you have in your fridge.”

“I’ll grill some meat.”

“And you call that a proper dinner? Your husband is a young man who needs a lot of feeding. Give me two pieces of liver because Shukri craves it.”

I got to the seventh month. I booked a plane ticket to give birth in Egypt. Sabah tried to persuade me against it, saying, “I gave birth to Hanaa at home last year with help from the nurse who lives in front of the bridge. I’ll also give birth to a new baby before you, here also. There’s no need for all these travel expenses. Fathiya and I will take very good care of you.”

I felt the truth in her words and that she genuinely wanted me to stay. She went on, “There’s no need to burden your husband with
additional expenses. You should keep your money for yourselves instead of throwing it away. Save it for a project in Egypt that brings income for the two of you.”

“I haven’t witnessed any births in my life and have never gotten close to a baby. I need my mother’s advice and help.”

“We are here.”

I discussed the subject with Hatim. He refused to consider Sabah’s suggestion, saying, “Why the risk, without the family’s help? Come back safely with the baby and don’t worry. We have enough money, thank God.”

I went shopping every day, buying gifts for the two families and for our friends. I felt light in spite of the pregnancy, wearing my usual clothes. Then I bought a maternity dress and put it on. I waited for Hatim.

“What’s that?”

I got close to his chest, “I want a picture in this maternity sack. I want to feel that I am really pregnant.”

“You still have two months during which your belly will get larger and you’ll feel you’re pregnant.”

He began to take pictures of me in various parts of the house, saying, “Stand there, Umm Atris, there, Umm Sharbat,” calling my baby other funny names. We went out on the balcony. He placed the camera on a table and ran toward me and embraced me hard. We heard Sabah’s voice before the lens shut and before the flash lit, saying, “What’s with all the pictures?”

She was standing in the garden directly under the balcony. Hatim said, “She wants to send the pictures to her girlfriends.”

“Who likes being fat and flabby?”

“Look what a graceful gazelle she is.”

A very tall and statuesque African woman carrying a baby girl on her back in a brightly colored wrap tied around her belly entered the departure lounge at Amman airport. The baby’s legs dangled from the sides of the wrap as she slept in spite of the crowds and
the movement all around her. I was unaware that three hours had passed, then this baby with her peaceful face and her fresh, glistening black face came into my view and aroused my longing for Haytham and Yasir. I was drinking my coffee and enjoying thinking of nothing in particular when milk poured out of my breast all at once, a sudden rain without any clouds or lightning or thunder. I had not counted on this surprise, thinking that being at the airport would make it possible for me to go to the bathroom without any problem. I stood up, stung, trying to avoid being inundated, but it was too late. I remembered that I had not put an extra blouse in my carry-on bag. I thanked God that I didn’t let my suitcase go to the storage area at the airport. I opened it, extremely embarrassed, even though all of my traveling companions were women since the men in the delegation had gone ahead of us to Baghdad. I took out of the suitcase a clean blouse, a bra, and a slip and put them in my handbag.

Abla Widad Iskandar asked me, “Do you need anything, Nora?”

I turned toward her. Milk had covered a considerable area of my blouse. She laughed and said, “Go quickly to the bathroom, or else you’ll catch cold.”

Sarah Badr said, “I swear women are such poor creatures, even the intellectuals.”

The restroom attendant said, “I’ll go out and not let anyone in until you’ve changed.”

I told her, “There’s no need to cause anyone any trouble. The airport is filling up. I’ll go into the stall and when I need to wash up I’ll call you to hold them off a few minutes.”

I undid the blouse buttons unable to control the milk gushing out of my breast at top speed. I pressed the rubber ball of the pump and let the air out as I placed the horn of the pump. Milk flowed until it filled the cavity and I heard the sound of it sliding off. I emptied it, then pressed it against my breast again, feeling as if my muscles were coming apart. Some tears escaped my eyes brought on by feelings of longing for Haytham and fear for him. I remembered my grandmother’s words, “Do not nurse while crying. Tears poison
the milk.” Does the makeup of the milk and its taste really change when one is crying? Yasir was very sensitive to my feelings and would shun my breast if I was sad. Haytham did more than that: he would burst out crying if I gave him my breast without giving him my undivided attention. He would take it while whimpering, then would stop, opening his tearful eyes, letting me hear the sound of his anger without letting it out of his mouth, then would go back to sucking it. The intervals between the pauses would get longer until he got busy sucking again, then falling asleep, his message of rebuke having been delivered: “Don’t take me when you are not totally devoted to me, otherwise, I also don’t want you.” I let my tears flow all over my face, asking myself if there was anything in life worth leaving my nursing baby for. I moved the pump to the other breast, just in case. I called the attendant, saying to her, “Give me five minutes.”

I heard distant footsteps and her voice telling me it was okay to come out. I washed the upper half of my body then put on my fresh clothes. I asked the attendant if she had a plastic bag for my wet clothes and she said she did. I gathered my things and left, remembering airports and other places I passed through in various parts of the world that had breastfeeding rooms with cribs and facilities for babies. I said to myself, “A breastfeeding room when passengers spend days in the street to catch their planes? You are really weird, Nora!”

One of the airport officers came and asked us to stand in lines in front of passport control and asked us to pay the fee for leaving Jordan. A buzz of refusal by the conference participant women rose. I knew these details and that it was useless to object. Jordan had decided to levy those taxes. In the end the women gave in. Then we were surprised to see two men running toward us, in handsome official suits, black hair, and rugged features. One of them said, “Please excuse us. We are from the Iraqi Embassy. Our colleagues responsible for your trip were involved in a traffic accident on the way and have been taken to the hospital. We only knew about it half an hour ago. Give us your passports.”

We heard voices of protest from passengers who had arrived before us. Some, as we came to know, had been waiting at the doors of the airport for three days. The voices got louder and we heard people knocking on the glass barriers. Then we heard a loud commotion and saw, as we went through, a fire hose turned on, drenching the passengers waiting at the door. Tears rushed to my eyes as snow fell and the young came to blows, trying to force their way through the door. The picture grew fuzzy and they appeared like ghosts dancing, falling, then standing up again in one colossus as if it were a giant snake divided into hundreds of parts, slithering but not leaving their places despite the water hoses and the insults. Oh my God! We were united by sorrow, so we proceeded to the plane in silence.

We sat in the jumbo plane. Some Egyptians came in. Most of them were educated youth and some were peasants with deep and dry furrowed faces. Behind them came a group of Kurds in their traditional attire: the billowing pants, broad fabric belt, the vest, and the large turban. Noha asked me, “Are these Iraqi costumes?”

I said, “Yes, Kurdish.”

She asked, “Do they really worship Satan?”

I laughed and said, “No, they worship God. Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi was a Kurd. They have Indo-European origins. They are Sunnis even though they have long borders with Iran. As for those who worship Satan, they are a very small sect called Yazidis. They believe that Satan, in all of creation, has the strongest faith in God Almighty because he refused to prostrate himself to any other.”

She said in surprised innocence, “Can any creature disobey God?”

I laughed and said, “He acted like a child. What can we do? He refused to obey but accepted God’s will so that the earth would be populated. This is what makes his personality appear charming and captivating in some people’s eyes. Interestingly, they never pronounce the Arabic letter ‘shin’ so as not to summon him up, ever.”

She asked, “Where did the word ‘Yazidi’ come from?”

I said, “Perhaps from the name Yazid, son of Mu‘awiya, who killed al-Husayn ibn Ali, may God be pleased with him.”

Kamilia said, “Have you been able, Nora, to understand the different sects in Iraq: Kurds, Arabs, Shi‘a, Sunna, Alawis, Turkomen, and Armenians?”

Noha asked before I could answer Kamilia, “Is it true that the Shi‘a believe that Sayyidna Muhammad took the mission that was originally intended for Sayyidna Ali?”

I said, “The region of Iraq and Greater Syria had witnessed bloody conflicts during the early phases of the formation of the Islamic state. The divisions resulted from political rather than religious conflicts, the way we all agree on the meaning of the word ‘religious.’ The Shi‘a believe that Ali and his offspring from his wife, Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, are the main authority for Muslims after the death of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and that they are more up to the responsibility and more worthy of being followed than others. They also believe that Ali was more worthy of succeeding the Prophet than all others, and that’s the root cause of the conflict.”

Salma said, “But there is a group that believes that Sayyidna Ali is God.”

I said, “Yes, they are called the Alihiya and they can be found in Iraq and Kurdistan. Imam Ali fought them and ordered their bodies burned in Kurdistan. They are still under the influence of Indian and other eastern philosophies. They believe that the message was coming to Sayyidna Ali. When he ordered them burned they said, ‘This is the greatest proof that Ali is God, because God punishes by the use of his fire.’ They are very small groups, and there are others such as al-Birgwan al-Sawliya, and they have been disowned by all Islamic sects, because they don’t read the Qur’an and are no longer considered Muslim.”

Kamilia said, “Isn’t it really strange that everything that has to do with religion in human history is the most fanatical and violent and dangerous part of it? People forget secularism and all the logic they
have learned in life whenever the clarion call of religion is sounded and they let the genie, the mindless genie, out of the bottle. Religion of whatever kind is humanity’s real pain, and reaction to it is not governed by any logic.”

I said, “You are right. Science disciplines reactions but does not eliminate them. We still don’t know much about the human psyche. Perhaps because religion touches upon those areas of fear that were handed down from the first humans when they were alone in the wilderness and they looked for a god and worshiped whatever they feared: fire, the wind, or ferocious animals.”

Silence prevailed in the plane for some time. Some passengers busied themselves reading and others in hushed conversations and some went to sleep. The Kurds came knocking on the door of my memory.

The Iraqi Ministry of Information informed us that peace had prevailed in Kurdish villages and on this occasion invited us to visit the village of Harir in the middle of the mountains and to accompany a caravan of health and social workers and artists, including singers, a musical band, and a theatrical troupe. We knew through the grapevine that there were pockets of resistance still holding out, but faced with insistence from our friends at the ministry, we agreed to go on the trip and took with us Mervat and Rasha, Hilmi Amin’s older daughters, who happened to be in Baghdad at the time. Tante Fayza refused to come along out of fear for Rana’s safety. Anhar was not invited. The caravan took us to the city of Erbil at noon and we found our friends from the culture directorate waiting for us. They were very happy to see us and told me that my articles in the newspaper
Hokari
have made me very popular among the Kurds. I noticed the impression those articles made whenever I met a group of people and mentioned my name. Mervat said, “You’re quite a celebrity!”

I said, embarrassed by the attention, “I didn’t imagine this kind of reaction, and in a different language? I think it’s because it’s a small society.”

In the evening we rode with Hamid, the director of the cultural center, in a new four-wheel-drive car that made it easier to negotiate the rough terrain to Harir Valley. We moved as part of a motorcade, preceded by police cars with specially armed officers and protected in the back by armed vehicles.

I said to Hamid, “Are we in for a battle or a concert?”