Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (25 page)

I got up to call Anhar Khayun’s house in Kazimiya. I dialed the number and heard it ringing for a long time. I asked myself whether it was that late. Maybe the young members of the family were out and Aunt Fatma was an old lady who wouldn’t answer this late. I shouldn’t be disturbing people like this. Tomorrow I’ll try again after breakfast. I changed the world music station on the radio and heard Nazim al-Ghazali singing an Iraqi mawwal:

Boast your superiority to wearers of crowns of ivory, roses, and light

Boast your wine superiority to the best of vineyards.

Play hard-to-get, for that inspires poetry

And melodies are sought after by those in captivity.

I called Fathallah in Mosul, “How are you and how’s Maha? I am here in Baghdad for a week and I’d like to see you both.”

“Hello, Nora. We miss you very much. We are fine and Maha is swamped in her graduation project which gives me patience to stick it out under these circumstances until she is done with school.”

“Are circumstances so hard?”

“Here in Mosul, it is safe. But things have changed considerably, what with the pressure of work because of the war and conscripting all young men into the army. All of that has added to stress in our lives. Besides, we, Maha and I, hardly see each other and Maha is always in the middle of an emergency. Leaving now means looking for a new university and having equivalency procedures that we don’t need and endless paperwork.”

“In socialist countries there are many universities that accept transfer students.”

“Socialist countries are chock full of Iraqi communists after the party crisis. Unfortunately, Maha is still at school. I’ll let her call you as soon as she comes back.”

“Do you know where Basyuni is? I have a letter from his family.”

“He is in an area near Basra, working in a shop that’s part of the roads department.”

“Great. We have a trip to Basra in three days as part of the conference schedule. Would you please tell him that I’ll be at the Sheraton? He can confirm the appointment with me by telephone at al-Rashid Hotel. I can be reached after midnight or before 9:00 a.m.”

He said, “I’ve tried many times to convince him to go back to Egypt, but he is reluctant. Sometimes he is persuaded when the war situation gets bad or when he receives a letter from his mother or his fiancée. But usually the temptation of the money is too strong, especially since his salary increased threefold in one fell swoop. Maybe you can convince him to go back.”

“Is there a chance to see you and Maha before I go back to Egypt?”

“I’ll do my best to get some time off. Maha will be very pleased.”

I remembered Maha, her very kind heart and spontaneous spirit. I wished that I could see her and that their circumstances would permit them to come to Baghdad.

I called Tariq Mandur for whom I also had a letter from his sister. He was now working in Suleimaniya after a long story of failure in Baghdad that ended when he settled down in the beautiful north. The owner of the tea and beer garden where he works told me, “In the morning I’ll let him know you called.”

I postponed calling Abd al-Rahim and Suhayla until the morning when I could reach Abd al-Rahim at work and find out news of the rest of the group. I opened the door to the balcony and looked into the dark, trying to see the sleeping birds. I remembered the way I sat in the balcony of my apartment in the Dora neighborhood looking at the sky over Baghdad and wrote:

I love you, winter night,

Looking from the window

At the trees and the empty streets,

Waiting for the moon to rise,

And the wind to calm down.

Looking for the sleeping birds,

Seeing the flowers trembling in the dark,

But standing their ground.

The universe does not feel me spying on it.

I love it in its silence

And when it erupts in revolt.

I love the universe the way it is.

I wanted to re-live my days in Baghdad. I pulled a woolen kilim that was spread on the floor and placed a pillow behind my back and began to contemplate the emptiness in front of me. I was trying to penetrate the rubber wall of the dark. My mind lit up with days that have not been erased from my memory and have given me as much feeling of success and happiness as they have caused worries in my life. I remembered my visit to al-Khalsa after returning from my first visit to Cairo.

I was almost done collecting my material when I learned that an Egyptian documentary film crew was shooting there. Hilmi Amin told me that Abd al-Barr had offered his memoirs to the director Hadi al-Nahhal but that the latter did not accept them. And he said that Hadi would not give in to Abd al-Barr’s sneaky ways of course.

The cameras were shooting throughout the village and all of a sudden Abd al-Barr was accused of stealing some chairs that the moviemakers had been using. The missing items were actually found in Abd al-Barr’s house but the director went to the police and got Abd al-Barr released by claiming that he had asked him to guard the equipment while the team was away. Hilmi Amin spent many hours talking to Abd al-Barr about the new beginning and the
dream that he was living now and which was being jeopardized by petty things. Abd al-Barr denied everything, but his wife added her voice to the recriminations, “Yes, he does all that people are accusing him of. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

Abd al-Barr said, “What does a woman who worked as a servant in other people’s houses understand? She’s still living with the mentality of slaves and cannot run the affairs of her own house as its mistress.”

I was done collecting my material and organized it in the form of charts of agricultural output as the time drew near for al-Khalsa to celebrate its first anniversary. Then I thought, while writing the history of the one hundred families I should write a history of Egyptian peasants. I asked myself whether I could present that history in a short chapter or not. I began to look for reference works and Hilmi Amin gave me some and helped me find some other works in the bookstores. Then I brought back the rest of what I needed from Cairo and began to write.

Hatim let me devote my time fully to writing after coming home from the office. He started a small project: to change the landscaping in the garden. He got totally engrossed in it and when I went to him while working, he would tell me, with the hoe still in his hand, “The results will surprise you.”

The garden did indeed look bigger, simpler, and more delightful to look at. Hatim had removed the unused chicken coop and planted flowers of one color in one of the garden beds. I finished writing my book and gave it to Hilmi Amin. The following day he signed his approval of it and we submitted it to the Ministry of Information and it was accepted for publication.

I found myself thinking about the village as it entered its second year. The peasants had gotten the better breeds of cows that the project provided, and the addition of these cows introduced improvements into every family’s house and added something that had been missing: fresh cheese, milk, cream, and butter. The output of the crops was rising and the land was responding and
becoming more pliant under the peasants’ hoes. There was a ready market for grains and produce. Debts were forgiven and monthly salaries kept coming thanks to a resolution from the farmers’ union. Access from the village to the capital was made easier when a new bus line started operating. Public health improved and you could see results on the faces and bodies of al-Khalsa villagers, whose higher income was also reflected in the furniture and the courtyards of their houses. The fields acquired new vitality thanks to the work sheds that the peasants built and the cattle and other animals that lived there. The family reunification plan was proceeding smoothly. Peasant and land became friends after it drank up his sweat.

Out of the blue the Egyptian newspapers reported that Abd al-Samad al-Bahrawy (Chairman of the Board) had stepped down from his job. I told Hatim, “So, his illness was political. He knew he would be forced out of his post.”

Press circles awaited new orders, changing the editors in chief of some Egyptian newspapers and magazines. With uncertainty in the air and Hilmi Amin’s apprehension about being arrested if he went back to Cairo, especially now that his reading of the situation proved to be correct and Sabri Hanafi’s and Mahmoud Muwafi’s assessments had missed the mark, I decided to go to Egypt as soon as possible to find out what my status in the magazine would be and how the bureau would fare.

When my father saw that I was in a great hurry to go to Maghagha to see my son, Yasir, before nightfall he said, laughing, “He is just a little piggy.”

I decided to deliberately greet Yasir as I did the rest of the family and to sit down normally without grabbing him and showering him with my kisses while my heart was being torn apart. I made a gesture to his grandmother and his aunts not to tell him anything, but it didn’t take him long to come to my bosom. I had sat down, putting all the new toys that I had brought for him on the floor. I wound the spring of the bumblebee and it began to buzz and rise a little from the floor, then land after a little while. I played by
myself without inviting him to participate and watched his eyes as he watched me. He came and leaned on my shoulder and reached out to touch the bumblebee. Before long he was rewinding the spring without saying anything. Then he smiled and played some more and then he brought his mouth close to my cheek and kissed me. Tears ran down my cheeks and I did my best to hide them. We spent an enjoyable time together and I was happy that he hadn’t forgotten me, as my last vacation had brought us a little closer to a normal relationship. I stayed for two days in my mother-in-law’s house. I noticed that the southern Egyptian accent I had detected in my previous visit was getting thicker and thicker. It wasn’t the influence of the family as such but rather that of peasants working in the fields. I thought it was more likely the influence of his nanny, Nadia, and the neighbor’s children. I caught him as he was chasing the old dog with a stick while the dog panted. I said to him, “Have pity, Yasir.”

“I am playing with him,” he said, not fully pronouncing the letters.

He skipped away from my hands and ran after the dog, which slowed down as it wagged its tail.

“Come here,” he said in his not fully formed words.

I smiled. I took out a packet of sweet crackers and called out to him to come and get it. He took the cracker out of my hand and ran with it to the dog that was lying down in the sun. He placed the cracker in the dog’s mouth, which it opened wide, revealing an absence of teeth. I saw my son’s forearm disappear and I was paralyzed by fear. The dog gave in, wagging its tail happily while my son threw himself down on it. How can I convince him? And convince him of what? He was living his life and availing himself of its pleasures. I remembered Hilmi Amin telling me that the Arabs used to send their children away to other communities in the desert with their wet nurses to open up to the world and run and play with sheep and camels and that, according to him, was more healthy. He also told me about the English sending their sons to boarding schools. “So, you are not the first person to leave their son in
a different place.” The tears well up in my eyes. I asked the doctor, “When, doctor, when?”

“Not much longer,” he said.

I picked up the tape recorder and began a conversation with him which I recorded, noticing how, in the new dialect he was acquiring, he pronounced the “q” as a “g” and the “g” as a “d” sometimes, and I sang with him a children’s nonsense song.

I took Yasir and the recording to Cairo. There I met Sabri Hanafi. He was calm as usual and told me he would do his utmost to help me. I went to the office of Ahmad Harfush, who welcomed me warmly. Then Fahmi Kamil came and he also gave me a warm welcome with a broad smile and asked me, “How’s Hilmi Amin and the bureau?”

I said coldly, feeling that his smile did not mean anything, “Fine.”

The telephone rang and Ahmad Harfush picked it up. His face changed color as he said, “Yes. Is that so? Any reason? Thank you.” He put down the receiver and looked at us in silence, then said:

“They have decided to stop publishing the series I am writing on the July 23 Revolution, without any comments.”

I said, “So, they are changing the magazine’s publishing policy?”

No one said anything. I took my leave, totally disheartened. I met the chairman of the board of directors several days later. He told me that they would discuss the whole situation concerning the bureau in Baghdad in a special session and that my own position would be discussed as part of that overall picture. I went back to Sabri Hanafi who told me, “The real threat to the bureau now comes from the Iraqi government itself. With the changes that took place in
al-Zahra
magazine, Iraq might have it shut down.”

I didn’t know where he got this idea from, and whether it had any Iraqi sources. I made no comment. Things were moving faster than I could catch up with.

When I told Hilmi Amin he said, “Sabri is an eternal optimist even when he is beaten down.”

My Days

I stretched my arms as far as I could. I need flexing exercises to realign my bones. I yawned as I closed the balcony door. When I went into the room, I was pleasantly surprised by the warmth. I saw Hilmi Amin’s file on the desk. I took it to bed and leafed through it. It seemed he transcribed the tapes that he had recorded with me and filled in the gaps. I read:

When I was dictating these memoirs at Nora’s suggestion, I knew that of course there was much that I would not record, that I needed to write myself, directly. Our daily recording sessions helped refresh my memory. Her question to me today, which she asked me deviously while laughing, about women, has whetted my appetite for writing about the subject. Nora has avoided talking about Anhar and I appreciate that, even though I know full well that she notices things. I had told her about Ismat but I didn’t tell her anything about the joy of my first discovering a woman’s body. Now the time has come for these memories to be a true autobiography.

I was visiting Cairo on our first school trip. My next-door neighbor gave me a cardboard box in which she had placed a roasted duck, noodles, some loaves of bread, and a few oranges and bananas to deliver to her married daughter who was living in Cairo. And even though it was December, and there was no way the food would go bad, she made me swear that I would deliver the food to her as soon as I arrived in Cairo. I was too embarrassed to refuse even though I wanted to stick to the trip’s program with my classmates. After sunset I looked for the address she had given me in Shubra Gardens until I found it. It was a two-story house where the bride was living in a small apartment on the first floor. I rang the bell and heard a gentle voice and the little window in the door opened: “Who is it?”