Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (4 page)

When I returned to the Cairo offices of
al-Zahra
after a year in Baghdad, carrying my first articles on Iraq, I met Latif Girgis, who said to me, “We’ve sent Hilmi Amin to open a bureau for us in Baghdad. Have you heard of him?”

I said, “Yes. I’ve read his coverage of the Afro-Asian writers’ conference.”

He said, “You’re lucky. He’s here on vacation. Here’s his number at home. Call him.”

I called him. I said, “I am Nora Suleiman. I live in Baghdad and I write for
al-Zahra
from there.”

He said, “Welcome. They told me you’re great. Let’s meet in two days at the office at 10:00 a.m. Our address is Sheikhaly Building, Mashjar Street from Saadun Street, the eastern entrance. Take an issue of
al-Zahra
magazine with you to the Ministry of Information in Tahrir Square.”

I said, “God willing, I’ll do it.”

I knew Saadun Street well. I kept asking about Mashjar Street until I found it. It was a big side street filled with electrical appliance stores and offices and doctors’ offices and various service stores. In it new four-story apartment buildings stood next to old houses belonging to Assyrian families. A fifty-year-old man received me. He was tall and very dark. I knew at once that he was from the south of Egypt, not Aswan but perhaps Sohag. He had a thick head of frizzy hair with gray sideburns extending to his jaw. He looked to me like a black guitar player who’d just come out of the pages of a novel by Faulkner. His general appearance was a mixture of artist chic and the spontaneity of day laborers. When he spoke, welcoming me, I
discovered that his Akhenaten-like lips, his black eyes, and his thinness made him a model Sa‘idi, standing under a big white sail of one of those clay-pot vessels that sailed down the Nile all year long.

He said, “The chairman of the board of directors has approved your appointment in the bureau, which as of now is made up of the two of us until, God willing, we expand in the future. The bureau offers press material on Iraq in return for ads to be published from time to time on our pages. We work under the auspices of the foreign correspondents section in the Iraqi Ministry of Information which gives us freedom of movement throughout Iraq.”

I smiled happily and said, “Finally I’ll have a regular job. What are the hours?”

He said, “You come in from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., and if we have evening assignments, we’ll work them out together. I need a photograph of you and tomorrow we’ll go to the Ministry of Information to get you an Egyptian correspondent ID.”

He went to get some tea. I noticed that the office was pleasantly cool despite the very high temperature outside. I realized there was a small cooling machine next to the desk. I had not seen such a small size before. Baghdad’s dry atmosphere makes it possible to cool the air by circulating water in front of an air current that brings the temperature down. They call this type of cooler a “desert air conditioner.” There was a set of bamboo chairs in front of a simple wooden desk, above which was a seascape painting. I noticed another seascape painting on the side opposite the chairs and several wooden vases colored with abstract patterns. Ustaz Hilmi came in carrying a tray with small glasses. He said, “Pardon me, Abu Ghayib will come to clean the office shortly. He usually takes our orders in the morning then comes a second time in the evening. We rely on ourselves. The office budget is modest, but it will increase after three months. You’ll work with me on features on social life, especially women and youth.”

I blurted out, “Why is my work confined to these areas? I’d like to write about art and literature.”

He laughed, saying, “We’ll see as the days pass what you can accomplish. How come I haven’t met you in the magazine? Who trained you? How did you join it? Did you study journalism?”

I said, “I had filled the grounds of the Faculty of Arts with ‘wall magazines’ of cardboard on which the students expressed their opinions about the ‘year of decisiveness.’ Some journalists came to follow our demonstrations and among them was a group of
al-Zahra
writers. They stood there reading the ‘magazines’ weighted down to the floor with bricks. They engaged us in a conversation. Abd al-Fattah al-Tawil asked me to work with him. I moved among the various departments. I wrote about sports and various features. Then I wrote for them from here as I traveled between Cairo and Baghdad. I live here with my husband, who works as an engineer in the Amin factory. I have one son whom the doctor asked me to let stay in Cairo under his care for some time. In other words, I am totally available full time.”

He got up to the bookcase and grabbed a large, square package. He lost his grip on it. I tried to help him but he refused. I noticed that his hand did not move normally. He handed me the package saying, “This is a gift from the bureau on your first day on the job.”

I said, “Thank you. I hope your hand is ok.”

Laughing, he said, “This is the price I had to pay for taking part in the people’s defense army in 1956. I got a bullet in my left hand, which did not disable it completely, but the elbow lost its range of motion as a result of being cast for a long time. They tried to correct it but even the largest hospital in Moscow couldn’t. They decided that the best course of action would be joint surgery, but that kind of surgery was still in its early stages so I decided to leave it as it is. It’s not interfering in the least with my work as a journalist or with writing and many people don’t notice it at all.”

I said, “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Come, let me show you around. This is my desk and naturally we’ll buy one for you and put it in the foyer. I am using part of the apartment as a residence and I have separated the two spaces using a small door, as you can see. My family lives in Egypt because
Mervat is about to finish college. Rasha is in primary school and I have a young baby daughter, Rana. I travel to visit them and as of now there’s no intention to bring them over here to Baghdad and change their lives. In this case, I mean, if we decide that they should come, I’ll move my residence to somewhere else.”

I descended the stairs full of optimism. I figured that the street parallel to Saadun Street would be Batawain Street. I knew this neighborhood well. The doctors’ offices that we frequented last year are in it. Traffic here never stops, day or night. There are many cheap hotels on both sides of the street and in the middle there is a vegetable and fruit market. There are several inexpensive restaurants and coffee shops. Around every corner stands a man grilling small pieces of lamb called tikka on a cart equipped for that purpose. Workers gather around the cart in the early morning. Some peasant women sit on the sidewalk, selling cream next to carts selling turnips and molasses. I remembered the streets of Shubra and Sayyida Zaynab in Cairo. Life of the working classes is the same, only the features here are different. Those casually going through the market have large eyes, huge noses, and varied manners of dress. One can distinguish them from the Assyrians who live in the neighborhood where the Jews used to live. When the Jews left they were replaced by different minorities: mostly Assyrian, some Turkomen, and some Chaldeans and Armenians. Their skinny bodies tended to be short. Their complexion was white or red. There were blond people with blue eyes. I noticed as the days passed the presence of a large number of mentally retarded people in this neighborhood as a result of constant inbreeding among relatives.

I got close to the garden. In that building over there was the office of the pediatrician who looked after Yasir since he was born here in Baghdad. He had bouts of upset stomach whose causes were beyond me. I was by myself and without experience in mothering, waiting for Hatim to come back from work to take us to the doctor who tired of our visiting, so much so that he would shout when he saw me come through the door, “Your son is totally normal, Madam.”

I’d say, “But he’s crying.”

He tells me in the Iraqi dialect something to the effect that he has a ‘twist.’ Hatim immediately translates, saying, “He means an upset stomach.”

The doctor hastens to say, “Give him some gripe water for colic.”

Hatim, laughing, said to me, “Our grandma Eve when she gave birth to her first baby knew more than you do.”

I would reply, also laughing, “Our father Adam knew how to make babies more than you do.”

I took Yasir to Cairo two months after his birth. His health improved but the doctor told me to keep him in Egypt. He said he had a simple herniated navel and placed a bead from a string of prayer beads in it and covered it with a Band-Aid. He told me that Yasir was bothered by the heat and said that I should keep him in Egypt for a year, after which I could take him back to Baghdad. Hatim would not hear of my staying with Yasir in Egypt and told me to come back and leave Yasir with my mother or his mother.

I postponed my departure several times and kept trying to balance my desire to stay with Yasir and going back to Hatim who was threatening to quit his job and return to Egypt. I looked for the Cairo that I knew and it wasn’t there. I had left it three weeks after graduating from college. My friends had left for the Gulf or to Europe. I followed up the publication of my articles on Baghdad in
al-Zahra
magazine. I met Latif Girgis and here I was in the bureau where I had dreamed of working when I read one morning the headline: “Baghdad from
al-Zahra
Bureau: ‘Writers of the world ask: Do you know a magazine called
Lotus
?’”

I wondered where the bureau was and how to get in touch with it. When I arrive in Cairo I’ll find out all the details and I’ll join it. My mother-in-law encouraged me to leave Yasir behind, telling me not to worry, that her daughters would take good care of him. Besides, the doctor was nearby and he would follow up on him, and a year was such a short time and then I’d come back and take him
to Baghdad, that that was better than needlessly creating a problem with my husband.

I said, “I didn’t come to Egypt of my own free will. I came because I couldn’t get much help from Yasir’s doctor and because Hatim and I stayed up many nights to take care of Yasir. So, why do I have to make that choice?”

She said, “You’ll have difficulty in the beginning of course. But when you hear his voice on the phone and know that he is safe near the doctor you trust, you will be able to tolerate the pain of separation. Join the bureau that you were talking about. Think of it as an opportunity to enhance your career.” My mother-in-law also said, “What more do you need than encouragement from your mother-in-law and your mother to start working? Don’t waste this opportunity.”

“But Yasir …”

“No buts.”

I left Cairo, saying to myself, “A psychologically healthy mother would work and succeed a thousand times better than a depressed mother.” I remembered the long nights of boredom, the loneliness, the emptiness inside, and the confusion. I couldn’t forget the hours upon hours of small talk with my neighbor. True, Hatim was gentle and affectionate, but where was Hatim? He worked day and night in a factory thirty kilometers away from Baghdad. So why don’t I open the door to a new world that would restore me to life? But, will Hatim accept my new life? I was totally devoted to him for a whole year. Now my life will be turned upside down. Why do I let these questions muddy my life?

One week later I became a member of the Iraqi press community and Iraqi society. I spent most of the following five years working closely with Hilmi Amin, traveling all over Iraq. We would begin work together in the morning by identifying the news stories we’d work on and developing them into features. Then we would go to the Ministry of Information to follow up on news and events. We would have an early lunch in the cafeteria and meet friends then go back to the office to continue working according to the weekly schedule.

I gave him one of my poems to read.

He read:

The strings of your guitar from my heart

Cautiously touch my soul.

“This is not your poetry,” he said.

I was taken aback and protested strongly, “Of course it’s my poetry!”

He said, “I’ve noticed that prominent poets nowadays are influenced by contemporary French and English poetry. This sounds like that kind of poetry.”

I said decisively, “That is not true!”

He shook his head. I did not argue with him. He doesn’t know much about me yet. Soon he will find out that this spoiled girl has lived the life of a champion athlete, and cannot find a single reason to attribute to herself something she hasn’t done for she is quite convinced that what she does is enough to satisfy her vanity. I smiled, saying with a confidence befitting my twenty-one years, “It is my poetry and I’ll bring you my collection of poems tomorrow.”

I invited him to my house and introduced him to my husband. My library was how I introduced my real self to Hilmi. I immediately sensed the warmth of his changed attitude toward me. Laughing, I listed the names of the authors of the books that Hatim had bought for me before my coming to Baghdad to entice me with a life resembling mine in Egypt. “Manfaluti, Mazini, Muhammad Farid Abu Hadid, Abbas al-Aqqad, Taha Hussein, and Mahmoud Hasan Ismail.”

He said, “Beautiful.”

I said, “Boring! Boring! Boring!”

Hatim embraced me, saying, “You don’t like my taste?”

I said, “It’s too classical. Where’s Abu Nawas, Al-Mutanabbi, Adonis, and Rimbaud? Where is
The Waste Land
,
Bonjour Tristesse?
Where are Sartre, Camus, and Proust?”

Hilmi Amin sided with Hatim, saying, “They are the modernist generation!”

Hatim said, “She bought all she wanted as soon as she arrived.”

I said, “These are Iraqi books about art, history, and literature. Leisure enabled me to finish three novels every week. Would you believe it?”

Hilmi accompanied me regularly every Tuesday morning for five years to the bookstores on Saadun and al-Rashid Streets, looking at the new books and buying what we needed. He introduced me to Salama Musa and, of course, Marx and Lenin, in addition to the works of Hemingway and Somerset Maugham. We bought Jack London’s
The Iron Heel
. He also introduced me to John Steinbeck and gave me
The Grapes of Wrath
as a gift. But Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea
remained a key work that implicitly charted the complex relationship that grew between the two of us, a relationship whose lines got so entangled that unraveling them was not possible any more. Our office in the heart of Baghdad, and under the weight of our exile, came to resemble that little boat on which the old man sailed to try to catch a giant fish, helped by his deep knowledge of the sea and a little boy and how he came back empty-handed after the sharks ate the fish he caught. Hilmi would tell me in an affectionate tone, “You are the catch I am betting on. Please don’t ever let me down.”