Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (26 page)

I said, “I am Hilmi. Hilmi Amin from Kom al-Shuqafa.”

She opened the door, Saniya said, “Welcome, welcome, Hilmi. Look at you, you’re a grown man.”

I gave her the box and thanked her and tried to take my leave to catch up with my colleagues, but she swore by all that’s sacred and insisted that I had to come in. She said that her husband Abd al-Fattah was away on some official business for three days and that God had sent me to her from heaven. She left me in the living room and I heard pots and pans clanking. Then she came in with a large tray on which was the food that I had brought her from Alexandria. When I declined her invitation to eat she said, “In the morning we’ll have to throw all of it to the cats.”

I sat and joined her, still very embarrassed. Then I tried to take my leave again. She said that transportation would be difficult at that time. She would not let me go and accompanied me to her bedroom.

I said, “I’ll sleep on the couch in the living room.”

She took down a mattress and put it on the floor in the guest room and gave me a blanket and said, “Have a good night.”

I was not quite fast asleep yet when I felt violet perfume tickling my nose and realized that she had slipped under the cover. I was dumbfounded by the surprise as she placed her hand on my organ, which came to instant erection under her palm. She started removing my underwear in which I had gone to sleep. I didn’t know what to do. I started listening in my mind for footsteps behind the apartment door. I looked in her eyes begging for help. She turned on her back and pulled me over her as if I were a cover. She said, “Let it be. It will know its way.” Of course it didn’t know anything. All I had were memories of my friends’ conquests in the world of women and the sound of a bed making rhythmic cracking noises in the room of my brother who got married and continued to live with us with his wife. She took my organ by her hand and placed it inside a very moist, wet hole that clamped it. I felt I was riding a wave of fire that kept going up and down with me on top, clinging to it and swimming smoothly. I fell down a seething chasm and a new world opening up for me that I didn’t want closed ever. I was visited by an overwhelming din that wanted to get out, then strong and quick convulsions that put me on top of a bolting horse that took me for a
frenzied ride. I heard a sound like a bleating of a goat that felled me to the ground, washed by the water of life and sweat. I fell back and started gazing at the ceiling unable to say anything. She rose on her elbows and kissed me on the lips, then she lay down on her back, naked, her hand on my chest.

She said, “Hello, novice!”

I could hear her regular breathing for a few minutes. Then she got up and lit a cigarette and gave it to me to smoke it together. When we finished the cigarette, I slipped under the cover to sleep. She said, “It’s early.”

Then she got on top of me, holding my head with both her hands. When I penetrated her unassisted she laughed loudly, saying, “Now you’re talking, you devil, you!”

She sat up rocking, massaging my body with her hands and kissing my face as if she were a different woman. She aroused me slowly as desire coursed through my veins, filled with the insatiable hunger for a vagina that I’d just met for the first time in my life, squeezing me slowly, then letting go. I succumbed to her soft fingers moving on my chest. I held the palm of her hand and kept kissing it as I recalled a scene between Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. She said, “Go easy.”

She placed one of her breasts in my hand and shoved the other one in my mouth. She wriggled as she smothered me with long, deep kisses. The rhythm of her going up and down quickened until I exploded and felt her clamping me more forcefully. Then I heard the sound of a thin, shrill bleating as her eyes looked absently at nothing. Then she withdrew and fell down to the mattress calmly, with tears covering her face. I asked her in my semi-conscious state, “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

She patted my body and took me into her bosom, saying before falling asleep, “May God protect you.”

In the morning she came in carrying a breakfast try, saying, “Sorry, I woke you up early so you can catch up with your friends before they go to the Pyramids.”

I have never forgotten Saniya. She remained a secret flame with permanent residence in my memory whom I summoned whenever I felt emotionally cold or lonesome. She has always been the spark lighting the fire of my lust.

Do I have the right to go on reading? How would I know what he wanted me to do with these papers if I didn’t know what they contained? I turned off the light.

I got up at five in the morning as usual. I pumped the milk out of my breasts, took my bath, and sat down to look over the paper that I would present in the first morning panel. I had prepared an educational program listing simplified books in literature and other disciplines, as well as the various branches of science that had a direct bearing on the target group of women who had just barely learned how to read and write. I went to the restaurant for an early breakfast, setting aside time afterward for making telephone calls. Before going to the session I called Anhar’s house again and let it ring until it automatically stopped. I called the exchange operation and asked her if I could ascertain that the number and line were working properly. In a few minutes she called back and said that the number and line were okay but that there was nobody home. I asked her to please call them and tell them that I was in Baghdad and that I wanted to visit them. I called Abd al-Rahim Mansour at the Central Authority for Quality Control and left him a message to call me.

The hours passed quickly. One of the women speakers dwelled on the phenomenon of citing non-Iraqi thinkers. I raised my hand and said, “When you ask experts from other countries, they will not give you the answers that you already have, otherwise why invite us to take part in the discussion?”

I ran to the bathroom before my breasts overflowed with milk to avoid public embarrassment. When I went back to the hall my wonderful escort, Layla, came to me carrying a glass of tea with milk. Mona Abed smiled, then laughed out loud. Layla asked why Mona was laughing and why they were all smiling so slyly.

Mona said, “I remembered a naughty joke that says that a customer in a coffee house ordered tea with milk. The waiter took the glass of tea to the woman manager of the coffee house to add milk to his tea from her breast. The customer protested loudly and the waiter told him, ‘We’ve run out of milk. You should thank God that the man who owns the coffee house is not here!’”

Layla looked at me for a long time then at Mona Abed, not understanding the joke, then when she did she burst out laughing so hard she almost spilled the tea.

The second panel was devoted to combating illiteracy among peasant women. During the question and answer period, Widad Iskandar asked me about the experiment in al-Khalsa and I told her that the Egyptian peasant women did well.

We sat around a big table to have lunch at the invitation of the minister of planning. My friend from the Iraqi News Agency came and sat by my side. I said to him, “What a nice surprise! I was going to call you today.”

He said, “It’s been a long time, Umm Yasir.”

We got into a long conversation about Egypt and Iraq and all kinds of topics. Then I asked him about Anhar.

He said, “I don’t know whether she got a long unpaid leave or resigned. I’ve heard she’s in Brazil. Abu Lu’ay, her boss at the Agency, said that he had met her in what-do-you-call-it, Detroit, in America.”

I said, “Is she alive?”

He seemed to be taken aback but he said, “Why shouldn’t she be alive? Yes. She’s just gone abroad. You know how communists move.”

I said, “Did her mother join her?”

He said, “I don’t know. She’s your friend. No? I remember that I saw you together often.”

I said, “She used to work with us in
al-Zahra
bureau. Then she suddenly disappeared.”

He said, “Let me ask around. Many people went to Europe and America. And even to Yemen and Beirut.”

I said, “I just want to find out how she’s doing. Unfortunately I don’t have the telephone numbers of her relatives.”

Layla came to say, “We are going to the mosque of Mawlana al-Kazim. Are you coming?”

I said, “Yes. I’ll come right away. Do I have five minutes?”

“Sure, sweetie.”

I ran to the bathroom to empty as much as I could of my breast so I could catch up with the buses. Ten minutes later, I was getting on the bus, out of breath. I sat in the back watching the streets that I loved as we crossed the suspension bridge. The streets were still crowded with cars. The rain stopped and the sun’s rays began to dry the water that gathered just below the sidewalks. I leaned my head on the glass of the window and remembered an incident that took place at the final resting place of Imam Musa al-Kazim and which had remained with me for a long time.

Baghdad had caused quite a stir when it held a conference on Zionism in the fall of 1976. That was the first conference that I covered as a correspondent for
al-Zahra
. A high-caliber Egyptian delegation came to the conference, some of whose members I had met and some I had only seen on television. Among them were Mahmoud Amin al-Alim, Abu Sayf Yusuf, Ahmad Hamrush, and Fathi Ghanim.

I asked Hilmi Amin, “Who is Abu Sayf Yusuf?”

He smiled and said, “He was the head of the Egyptian Communist Party at one point. When they arrested him, Alexandria had a blackout and he was escorted under heavy guard.”

I met these illustrious men in the lounge of Baghdad hotel. I looked at Abu Sayf Yusuf’s face, looking for things that made him so frightening and dangerous that it required them to blackout the streets of Alexandria to get him out of the city, but I found nothing of the kind. I was happy comparing the image I had for each of them in my mind and their reality.

From my younger days I summoned the image of Mahmoud Amin al-Alim as I saw him providing a weekly political analysis of
the news, with his halo of gray hair. Now I saw a simple jovial man, although time had left some of its heavy traces on his face. He told us about Paris and his exile there. The big surprise, though, was with Ahmad Hamrush whose articles I have been reading regularly but whom I had not met before. I found him to be very spontaneous and gentle in his demeanor, reminding me of my paternal uncles and their openness and love of life, qualities that made me fall in love with those that resembled them the most. Mr. Hamrush told me to wait for his wife to whom he wanted to introduce me. When she arrived everyone got up to greet her, showing great affection for her. They asked me to take her on a walking tour in the city because she loved the sun. She was tender and kind and I saw why everybody loved her.

When we returned to the hotel I found Fahmi Kamil sitting in the midst of the delegation. I had met him while I worked in the sports section in Cairo. The head of the section had introduced me to him, saying, “She wants to be a literary writer.” He said, “Great! Good for you!” When I heard he was coming to Baghdad I decided to interview him and to sit with him for a long time. Hilmi Amin agreed that we would conduct the interview for
al-Jumhuriya
.

Hilmi had taken him to the office the night before and showed him the physical aspect of the bureau since he was the editor in chief. He introduced me to him, saying, “Nora says you’re her favorite writer.”

I smiled as he asked me, “Have you read
Zizi and the Crown
?”

I said I didn’t like reading novels published serially but that I’d buy the book as soon as it came out.

He said, “I advise you to read it.”

He seemed happy to have made my acquaintance and said, “Do you know that your father and I were classmates?”

I said, “Yes, and Father told me about your meeting this week.”

He said with a surprised look on his face, “Really? Does the news travel so fast to Baghdad?”

I said, “I was on the telephone with my father yesterday.”

Hilmi said, “The driver is here. Let’s go to al-Kazim.”

On our way I told Fahmi Kamil that al-Kazim was a low-income neighborhood that was crowded because Iraqis loved Mawlana Musa al-Kazim and thought his shrine a blessed place. The mosque was built in a unique Islamic style of architecture decorated with faience and colored mosaic and that its dome was pure gold and that its walls on the inside were lined with mirrors and had silver and gold doors.

The car stopped and I took my leave to get an abaya from one of the stores in front of the mosque. When I returned a few minutes later I heard Fahmi Kamil’s angry voice—his back was to me—saying to Hilmi Amin, “Why did she come with us? I don’t have time to waste.”

I was annoyed and I tried to get over my annoyance before talking to them. “Please, let’s go to the mosque first.”

I noticed how pallid his face had become and it was obvious that he couldn’t contain his anger, which showed on his face more clearly as we crossed the street. Indistinct words came from his mouth at great speed as he gritted his teeth in vexation. I didn’t understand what he was saying and he seemed about to explode. I asked myself whether the reason for his rage were the few minutes that it took me to get the abaya, or was it something that had to do with Hilmi Amin and the bureau? He stood inside the mosque for a few minutes, then went out to the courtyard, saying: “I suggest we go to the bazaar. The bazaar is the real place. As for shrines, they were built to be in the service of the marketplace, to attract customers.”

Then he added in an annoyed but very confident tone of voice, “The merchants understand that, which makes me respect them because they are realistic.”

Hilmi Amin said, “Materialism and the scientific approach to life would not exactly put it like that. We start by loving the poor and try to understand why they are like that: is it because they are sick or prisoners of ignorance? Those merchants that you respect are the reason behind the poverty of the poor. The poor look upon
those shrines as the abode of leaders for justice. This also calls upon us to respect their dreams, because they strive to assert certain values. And even though those heroes died more than fourteen centuries ago, the poor are still loyal to their principles.”