Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (28 page)

I noticed that many of my friends were pregnant. It was a phenomenon that might have passed unnoticed because Iraqi women, on the whole, loved to have many children and large families regardless of education or work. Iraqi women amazed me by their physical strength and multiple pregnancies and the way they took care of large families and large homes. They, for the most part, lived with the husbands’ families until the husbands built homes of their own. Some of my friends had stopped having children after a certain number and some of them had already married off sons or daughters. What happened? I gathered bits and pieces of information as we were having lunch. Manal al-Alusi began to ask the participants about their pregnancies and about news from the front. Layla, my escort, said, “The party has called upon Iraqis to have children after a large number of young men were martyred. The Women’s Union has adopted the call. Did you know that Manal had a new baby girl after you left?”

I said, “Is it possible? With all her responsibilities?”

The population of Iraq when I left it was about twelve million, most of whom were young. Those of conscription age were drafted and the others volunteered to serve and were placed in the reserves, men and women. That is why they are all wearing military uniforms. The war had created among women a new kind of relationship that I hadn’t perceived before in the circles in which I moved. They were united by fear of the unknown that was awaiting them all. They made concessions to the sovereign decrees that struck at the heart
of their earlier gains. There was a decree to give any man marrying the widow of a martyr ten thousand dinars, a car, and a lot to build a house on. It permitted a man to have a second wife after it had been outlawed except with a court’s permission after proving that his wife was barren or had an incurable disease or was totally incapable of fulfilling his conjugal rights. They told people that these were emergency laws to fight the extermination of the Iraqi people. Some workers at the hotel told me that dozens of Egyptian young men married widows of martyrs all over Iraq and that many enticements were offered to Egyptian youth to join the Iraqi army for extremely high salaries, especially since most of those young men had received prior training in the Egyptian armed forces. They told me that the Murabba‘ Café on Rashid Street was witnessing these kinds of deals between brokers and young men daily, in addition to direct recruitment by Ba‘thists of Egyptian workers in factories and companies.

I asked Imad al-Bazzaz, an Iraqi Ba‘thist journalist friend whose knowledge and integrity were unimpeachable about these issues, and he told me, “There are marriages between Egyptian men and martyrs’ widows, but not as extensive as you’ve been told. Iraqi families are wary of strangers in general. Besides, Egyptians are not permitted to join the Iraqi army. What you heard had to do with an auxiliary logistics corps that undertakes paving roads and repairing them to help the movement of the troops.”

I asked another Iraqi journalist and he said, “There are no Arab volunteers in the army, but there are volunteers in the militia called ‘special task forces’ who undergo commando training.”

I said to myself, “Oh my God, whom should I believe?”

I remembered that the chef Said al-Sheikh had promised to arrange a meeting for me tomorrow with an Egyptian hotel employee who had married the widow of an Iraqi martyr, so he could tell me about his experience.

I looked at the glass I had placed on the nightstand and noticed that it wasn’t totally full even though my breasts had stopped producing milk. I was quite alarmed. I jumped into the water in the
bathtub and my muscles were so relaxed I almost fell asleep. The steam got thick and gathered on the ceramic tiles, then it formed clear crystal droplets that glistened on the wall, looking like a magic lantern displaying the varied colors of the spectrum that carried me to a different world.

Hilmi Amin got ready for the arrival of his family by buying different kinds of cheese. Baghdad had witnessed some relaxation in the regulations limiting the import of food products. They distributed dairy products in small quantities, not more than two tins at a time. Hilmi Amin began to hoard them and ask his friends to tell him where to get some other kinds, which he would then go and buy from far away. I never saw him so energetic before. He asked Abu Ghayib to clean more thoroughly and made sure to buy different kinds of apples, bananas, and chocolates. I went with Hatim to the airport to welcome the family. He had three beautiful daughters, one of whom was about my age. We followed their arrival from behind the glass barrier. They didn’t see us because they were busy trying to get his youngest daughter to stay in her baby carriage, but to no avail. She insisted on walking and holding her mother’s hand. Hilmi Amin waved to them and the two older daughters ran and embraced their father. The young one tried to escape from her mother’s grip but the mother would not let go. The little girl cried out, “Mimi, Shasha, come.”

The wife came in slow steps carrying the little girl and pushing the baby carriage. She stopped in front of us in a dignified manner. Hilmi Amin shook her hand and gave her a formal kiss on the cheek. I couldn’t help noticing how reserved he was. He snatched the child from her hands and she cried, “Mama! Mimi! Shasha!”

He kissed her as he hugged her fondly. The mother extended her hands and took the child, laughing and said, “In a short while, like every time, she won’t leave you alone.”

He introduced them to Hatim. “Fayza, Mervat, Rasha, and Rana. Of course you know Nora.” The girls rushed to embrace me. “And this is Hatim, her husband about whom I told you a lot.”

We crossed Baghdad until Bab Sharqi and we left them at the door of the building, agreeing to meet for dinner at our house in two days and then start work the morning of the third day.

They arrived at our house in the evening, a beautiful and happy family. I had never seen him so happy. I wondered if he was in love with Anhar. I remembered his formal kiss with Fayza at the airport. Was he acting dignified in front of us? Had the news of his relationship with Anhar reached her? How did he manage that balancing act with the two women? And what would Anhar do? Would she go on working at the office while the family was there or would she stay away until they were gone? Wouldn’t the wife discover that thread tying Anhar to Hilmi? Women have radar focused on the area surrounding husbands and Fayza’s radar must be working overtime because Hilmi was living by himself away from her. Mervat came into the kitchen to help me get the dinner ready. We hit it off right away, and before inviting them to come and sit for dinner I had found out that I was two years older than her, that she was in love with a classmate in college, and that he would propose to her next summer. We found Rasha standing behind us, then suddenly she said in a harsh tone, “What are all these secrets?”

They all burst out laughing. Rana threw her body on Rasha’s leg while laughing. Mervat carried her and sat down for dinner. Hatim started telling Tante Fayza anecdotes about Baghdad, while she remained silent for the most part. I attributed her reserve to the difference in age between Hatim and me and her. I invited them to a tour of the house. Hilmi Amin said, “You go ahead. I’ll smoke a cigarette.” We went around the garden and the first floor. Then we went up on the roof. I told them that the Iraqis slept on the roof during the summer.

Tante Fayza asked in alarm, “And you? Do you sleep on the roof? Aren’t you afraid that the neighbors would see you?”

I said as I smiled, “We don’t hear or see anything. Just the sky.”

Rasha said, “See or hear what?”

I said, “Cars and people in the street and the neighbors.”

Mervat said to Rasha, “Hush. You don’t understand anything!”

Tante Fayza’s smile disappeared. We went down to the second floor and found that Hatim had made the tea. I held Rana from her armpits and whirled her around the living room as she screamed, and her eyes opened wider with splendid slyness. I let her go and she ran toward her father, then came back looking for me. I went to her making a fake growling sound and I snatched her up. I opened Yasir’s room and gave her many toys. She clapped her hands in glee. Mervat and Rasha came and I told them, “Finally we’ve signed a love contract.”

I begged Ustaz Hilmi to let the girls stay with me, at least Mervat and Rasha. He thanked me, saying that Fayza needed them both to look after Rana. He promised to send them to me some other time.

In the morning they opened the door for me and made a big noise. I said, “Please lower your voices, otherwise the director will fire me.”

I went into the office in which I smelled uncharacteristically strong coffee. I apologized to Tante Fayza that we would work for a short while and not keep Ustaz Hilmi long.

Hilmi, noticing the girls’ excitement, said, “They know that I am not on vacation.”

I presented him with the bulletin and the news, saying, “This is from the listening department’s brief from Monte Carlo and London broadcasts.”

Mervat said, “When did you get it done? We only left you at midnight.”

We took Mervat and Rasha to the ministry. Colleagues gathered to greet the two girls, inviting the family to their homes. We reviewed the dates for upcoming conferences and trips and the latest news, then we went out to al-Rashid Street. We bought some gifts, then I left them to go home after I promised to take them to al-Khalsa the following day.

I bought some candy for the peasants from Batawain market. I knocked on the door. Hilmi Amin smiled when he saw me. He told
his family how I had spent the whole winter wearing wet clothes and he described how he told my father in Cairo how I looked when I came into the office every morning with the legs of my pants wet with mud. He coughed and he laughed without taking the cigarette out of his lips, until tears came to his eyes.

I said, “You are my witness. Al-Khalsa is a village to which I go every day and it wets my clothes with water and mud.”

Tante Fayza said, almost in disgust, “I will not go to some place where it would be difficult to keep Rana clean.”

Hilmi Amin said, “Get ready. We are in the summer now and there is no rain.”

Abd al-Barr met us at the entrance of the village. He wanted to take us to his house. I said to him, “The fields first. We’d like to see the donkeys.”

He sent his son to Amm Wadie’s house and brought a big mule. Rana screamed and we helped Rasha get on top of the mule’s back. She stayed up there all day long and refused to eat with us and took sandwiches from Mimi while she kept a little stick with which she beat the mule’s leg as she screamed.

Tante Fayza said, “If you’re afraid, why don’t you get off?”

Rasha said, “No.”

Rana went reluctantly to the mule and asked Rasha to take her up. Mervat put her in front of Rasha, but before she returned to where she was, Rana cried, “Mama! Mama!” Mervat went to her and put her on the ground.

My tears flowed. The memories were too much even though they were beautiful. I wrapped my body in a large towel and came out to the room. I heard Nazim al-Ghazali continuing his traditional Iraqi mawwal.

I picked up a piece of paper and tried to arrange my own schedule to coincide with breaks in the conference program. I was used to their surprise announcements of unscheduled activities due to security precautions. I must go to
al-Zahra
’s office as soon as I can
first, but I have to make sure the new owner would be at home. I still had the key. Oh my God! How I miss Hilmi Amin. I opened the balcony. It was the first time for me to see the city from such a height. I remembered Hilmi’s words: “Baghdad is changing, Nora.” I sat staring at the space in front of me, imagining the houses. I was surrounded on all sides by the calm of a capital expecting an air raid.

I recalled all the Egyptian friends with whom I lived in Baghdad: young leftists, colleagues, and neighbors of the office. I wondered where Anhar was now and whether I could reach her. Could Imad al-Bazzaz get me concrete and certain news about where she was? He seemed certain that she was still alive. I remembered my neighbors in al-Shurta neighborhood and at Dora and my fellow journalists. Could I wear the clove necklace and find Nariman who had given it to me as a gift before the big fallout which resulted in betraying the Iraqi Communist Party? Could I call Erbil? Would I be able to see my Arab and non-Arab friends whom I had left behind before my departure? Or Baghdad’s own denizens who had left? I wish I could recover those days and return all of Baghdad, with all its people, to my bosom in a fond embrace.

The rain stopped. I wrapped the wool robe tightly around my body and imagined the houses of Baghdad hidden in the dark, shining as they always were and as I had known them. I remembered my visit to Syria and the material I gathered about the joy of both the Syrian and Iraqi peoples about the restoration of relations. I tried to understand the history of the relationship between the two governments. But I found it to be very complicated and whenever I was able to obtain information about that relationship between the two branches of the party, I was surprised by other pieces of information that would complicate matters even further. I tried to make use of Hatim’s anecdotal knowledge, but it turned out that he knew only those parts of the story that were known publicly. I couldn’t find a book in the bookstores that would give me a detailed history. I consulted the “Encyclopedia of Iraqi Civilizations,” but I found that the banned volume eleven covered that
period. I began gathering information from Ba‘thists and Iraqi communists and from some of the party’s own publications. I also consulted the revolutionary leaflets about the Syrian Ba‘th Party that I had brought with me from Damascus.

Hilmi Amin insisted that I do all of that without help from Anhar. When I asked him, “Why doesn’t Anhar give us a detailed report?” he said, “It is the effort you yourself exert that will teach you, and you will never forget a piece of information that you worked hard to get.”

I thought about it but I came to the conclusion that what he was saying was not the whole truth. I had been noticing some troubles in the love story. But what did work have to do with personal relations? I spent many nights trying to gather all the threads. I found that the Ba‘th Party had been established first in Syria in 1947 and was led by al-Bitar. Then it merged with the Syrian Arab Party led by Akram al-Hurani and Michel Aflaq and was named the Arab Socialist Ba‘th Party.