Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (21 page)

They both said, “Goodbye.”

Third Text

Three knocks on the door of memory restored life to days that were lingering as they turned toward disappearing forever. I tugged at the end of the thread of time that used to tame mountains and humans. The days broke loose and came tumbling down on my heart. I tried to stop their ruthless flow and pay attention to what was happening around me, but I couldn’t. Inside of me there was a rush seeking to recapture the flow of the days and once again feel the pleasure of the pain that didn’t contain the moment. I was carrying my suitcase to the airport on my way to Baghdad, not believing that I have indeed arranged to leave my six-month-old son with my mother-in-law in Maghagha, two and a half hours away from Cairo. I was hoping to find out why and how Anhar Khayun, my Iraqi friend and colleague at
al-Zahra
, had disappeared. I also wanted to visit my house in Dora, hit by Iranian bombers, and see if my neighbors there were all right. I wanted to meet with Basyuni Abd al-Mu‘in who joined
the Iraqi army and to give him a letter from his family urging him to go back to Egypt. Among the tasks I set for myself was visiting
al-Zahra
’s office to complete liquidating its affairs and to look for Hilmi Amin’s articles. I planned to do all that while attending and giving a paper at a conference for educating women after teaching them how to read and write.

I asked myself as I set foot on land at the airport, “Did you want to bring Haytham to a country in a state of war? Just to breastfeed him?”

The officials welcomed us, apologizing repeatedly for what happened in Amman. We exchanged glances, surprised at how fast the news traveled. They asked us to go to the line of cars waiting outside and to take the cars, saying that we’d find our suitcases at the hotel.

“The capital is calm. No one knows when the rockets will hit the city. There are skirmishes on the borders. Whenever a building is blown up we rebuild it quickly. There’s only one building that we’ve left as is, in ruins, downtown on al-Rashid Street as a reminder of what Iran is doing to us. You’ll see that tomorrow,” the escort who took the car with us summed up the situation, and then fell silent. The convoy proceeded in a joyless manner, quickly and without any interruption, along the rain-battered roads. I was familiar with Iraqi officials’ silence. They showed the guest great respect, but also placed a distance and an impenetrable wall between themselves and that guest. They would politely inquire about one’s health and work, then fall totally silent. I learned to observe the driver as he looked at the rear-view mirror with a sweeping glance without anyone realizing it: a quick neutral glance that didn’t overlook a detail. The instructions usually flowed from one official to another with a small gesture. Everyone was so polite and stiff. That was the Baghdad in which I lived my most beautiful years. There were now bridges I had never crossed before and towering gates of a new neighborhood in the heart of the old city. I had seen that neighborhood totally surrounded by shantytowns that were blown up and rebuilt. I had left Baghdad before it was completed. There was a
new Baghdad erupting. Huge apartment buildings were replacing small homes in the ancient and venerable Salhiya neighborhood. There was a gigantic picture of Sadam Hussein, five stories high. I had never heard of such a colossal size except for those of Mao Zedong. The car turned right from Gamal Abdel Nasser Square, crossing the Tigris and passing by the Radio and Television Building and proceeding parallel to Abu Nuwas Street. I remembered the masgouf fish grilled there over an open wood fire and the famous restaurants along the river and summer nights and the Baghdad Hotel, the only deluxe hotel in the capital until I left it in 1980. The al-Mansour Hotel loomed high in the distance. The cars suddenly turned toward a building I had not entered before: al-Rashid Hotel, carefully proportioned, white marble magnificence, thermal doors, “the world’s most technologically advanced hotel, fully automatic, Baghdad’s pride,” according to our escort as he opened the car door.

We could see a faint light at the entrance. The garden was totally dark. We slipped into the hotel noiselessly. Rooms were assigned quickly, then we found ourselves having dinner in a cafeteria that was open twenty-four hours a day.

I heard the clock ring two o’clock in the morning as I opened the door to my room. I ran to the bathroom and opened my blouse, and before I could take out the pump from my bag, milk had flowed out of my breasts. I was soaked in a pool of warm liquid. I let it flow and wet my clothes, no longer in a hurry to take them off. I turned the water on and got into the shower and began to watch the milk drops as they dissipated in the water, changed color, and disappeared down the drain. The strong gushing stopped. I held the pump and pressed it hard against my breast. I felt my veins relaxing and the quick pulse slowing down gradually until the heat cooled off. I wondered at the pain caused by my fingers as they pressed against my body. I remembered Haytham’s mouth, which I felt at the beginning but which I forgot as the sucking slowed down and settled into a rhythm. I never thought of my breasts as vessels. And despite my knowledge of women’s physique and their makeup, the
mental image was quite different from what we felt. I never felt that my son was sucking milk from a container outside my body, but rather from my whole body, as if the milk came from all my innermost veins, from a spring spread all over the cells responding to what my son needed. But here I was, becoming aware of the vessel.

I decided to begin the day early in the morning by pumping the milk and collecting it in a glass so that I would know the amount I had to keep producing every day. The sound of Haytham’s crying at the time of his first nursing awakened me. My breast was softly stinging, not yet at a crisis level, just a little tickle allowing me to move around in the room to fully unpack. During the night I had just taken out my woolen suit and left it out so that the wrinkles might disappear before the opening of the conference. I found the music channel and let the music fill the room. Now the room was mine. I placed my papers and books on the desk, my perfumes and makeup on the dresser, an empty glass on the nightstand, my toothbrush and body creams, towel and slippers in the bathroom. I created my small world and would soon get acclimated to it, even though in hotels I am usually woken up by every whisper outside my door, or every movement in the corridors.

I asked myself as I was going to breakfast, “Why wasn’t I afraid of bombs or being in a city under bombardment? Was it because I had known and lived in peaceful Baghdad for such a long time? Did I summon that city to mind as one of its daughters deserving to share in its collective destiny? Or did I know that the real war was out there, not in the capital?”

I shook off those thoughts and got busy thinking of setting up my own program, parallel to that of the conference. I would do that by the evening at the latest. I would meet my women friends from the women’s union and
al-Mar’a
magazine and also some politicians and journalists. I had to arrange other times to meet authors and visit the office, al-Khalsa village, and my friends. When? One of the hotel workers approached me and said, “Good morning, Ustaza. I am Said al-Sheikh from Sharqiya province in Egypt. I have been
working here in this hotel ever since it was opened. Are you, Ma’am, a journalist from Egypt?”

“Yes. Can I be of service?”

He said, “I and any of the Egyptian workers in this hotel are at your service. If you want to change dollars, I am at your disposal. The dollar in the black market is much higher than at the bank. May I ask you for a favor: would you take some money to my family in Sharqiya? I’ll give you my family’s telephone number in Zaqaziq and my brother would come and get the money from you. Please, I have children in school and you know the rest.”

I said, “But you, Said, don’t know anything about me.”

He said, “Pardon, Ma’am. The Egyptian pound here has a very high value because customs officers at departure time don’t ask any questions about Egyptian pounds and they prevent us from taking dollars and Iraqi dinars out. Therefore we sell them at any price. Why have we left home if we can’t send money to our families?”

I said, “They have every right to protect their economy and you have every right to send your savings to your country. But you knew what the law here was before you came. Anyway, prepare the sum you want to send.”

I remembered a conversation with the Iraqi minister of labor at the end of 1976, almost six years ago. Baghdad then had opened its doors to Egyptian workers without a visa. Millions of young Egyptians came. It was estimated that before the end of the eighties they had reached five million Egyptians.

I asked the minister, “Why aren’t Egyptian workers permitted to transfer their money except for a small percentage of their wages?” (Twenty-five percent for those hired and contracted inside Iraq and fifty percent for those signing their contracts outside Iraq.)

He said, “They should bring their families here and spend the rest of their savings buying land or investing in commerce or real estate like all Iraqis.”

I said, “Not every expatriate can bring his family. And even if that were possible, he cannot bring all those he’s responsible for.
This creates a black market for the Iraqi dinar and the dollar which leads to smuggling, not because they are criminals, but because they are in need.”

He said with utter and amazing simplicity, “We are one nation with an eternal message. The laws give contractors the right to transfer half their salaries. This is enough to support their families in Egypt.”

He was a young man, about forty. He had on a white suit and striped shirt of the latest fashion back then. A model Iraqi official par excellence: a rare smile, calm nerves, total self-confidence, and an unseen barrier between himself and anyone he talked with. Only the deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz had any popularity among intellectuals and journalists.

The situation remained the same. Egyptian workers were still smuggling their money to Egypt.

The cars took us to the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. I climbed the stairs to find a large, expansive plaza, with Iraqi army soldiers and officers standing on both sides. Behind them were lines of non-army officers wearing the dark khaki army uniforms. I was struck by the great number of women wearing black. I rushed to my friends among them to shake their hands as my tongue could not form, let alone articulate, questions to them. I saw friends who appeared strong in their everyday lives, not easily revealing their true feelings but rather telegraphing them in a way that often shocked me. For the first time I saw them gushing with emotions and as we hugged I heard many stories of martyrdom. There was not a single Iraqi home that had not lost one or more of its men. They were now overcome with tears as they led us forward to recite the fatiha for the souls of the martyrs. Some of them went to the front of the lines after regaining their self-control and took upon themselves the task of organizing the delegations. I knew that they organized this type of visit almost weekly to present the point of view of the state and advocate its cause. Ilham stepped closer to me and told me in whispers that she had heard a message from her brother whom
they had officially declared to be a martyr a year and a half earlier on the Red Cross program on the radio. His wife and children had been in mourning since the announcement. Now she didn’t know anything additional, but she hoped he would return safely soon with the prisoners-of-war exchange. The ceremony ended. I tried to ride with her in a large car carrying Iraqi journalists but I heard a calm, commanding voice, “Please, come to this car.” I obeyed to spare my friend any kind of rebuke. Here she was just a public employee doing her job. Our own arrangement placed me in a special car with three other guests. We arrived at the conference site. The hall looked like a beehive. One sign indicated that the conference was being held under the auspices of the prime minister. The ministers entered the hall quietly. I noticed that they were all wearing military uniforms and solid shoes, that they were all thin and had frowning faces. The speeches touched upon Iraq’s struggle against imperialism, Iranian occupation, and the people’s ability to stand fast. Then we were invited to lunch, compliments of the minister of defense.

The Egyptian scholar, Shahira al-Asi, said as she laughed, “Why are these ministers so skinny?”

Manal al-Alousy, chairwoman of the Union, laughed as she said, “It’s the slenderizing law.”

Shahira said, “There’s nothing wrong with slenderizing, but still they look too skinny.”

A few words were said, about how just the cause was and how defending the homeland took precedence over all else, even though Iraq did not want the war. I was amazed but I said nothing. I looked at the Iraqi women sitting at the tables around me: Arab women, Kurdish Ba‘thist women, and nationalist women. After the collapse of the coalition of five parties, including the Communist Party, that used to rule, Iraqi communist women totally disappeared from Iraqi conferences. The Iraqi censorship office objected to their being mentioned in my book on Iraqi women and crossed out the names of pioneers. Even actresses and piano players, all of a sudden, have become enemies.

I heard from my friends that President Saddam had been a neighbor of Shahira and Naima al-Asi in their house in Dokki during his studies in Cairo and that they had remained in touch. Shahira’s laugh resounded throughout the dining hall. She was a strong, vivacious lady whose way of thinking and learning I admired. She dealt with the place confidently, but how well did she really know people here?

We went back directly to the sessions, and papers were given one after the other. I was happy because, among non-Iraqis, I was the most knowledgeable about the Iraqi experiment in combating illiteracy. I was there from the very beginning and wrote several articles about it. The plan for the project was to eradicate the illiteracy of men and women under forty-five within three years. A presidential decree was issued stipulating that all men and women were to attend classes in the evening and punishing those who failed to attend. Thus a man would be summoned to the police station in his neighborhood if his wife missed one class. Everyone attended regularly and the project was a success. The irony, both sad and funny, was that the project was modeled on a previous Iranian experiment, but the Iraqi success rate was higher because they were more strict.