Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (41 page)

I went back home. I found that the cake I had baked in the morning had cooled down. I drew a model of an elephant and began to work on the icing. My tears flowed. I had never gotten used to Yasir being away from me despite my frequent visits. I was beset by anxiety that something might have happened to him or that he was in an accident. I spent hours at the Central Post Office on Rashid Street to try to hear his voice on the telephone.
I put icing on the cake and the elephant appeared in its full glory—a splendid Indian elephant, I told myself, and began to work at break-neck speed. I finished arranging the food and hanging decorations. Nahid arrived and her daughters brought liveliness to the place. I loved that family for their simple goodness and generosity. Nahid reminded me of the families in which the wife lived just to feed the kids and the husband and take care of them, letting the man devote himself to working outside the home without saddling him with any more worries.

The girls ran with Madu, Titi’s son, to the garden. Mahmoud Rashid and Samia came with Basil and the house was filled with children and joyous noise. Then Hilmi Amin’s family came, accompanied by Ragya. I placed the big bear on the middle chair at the table in front of the cake and we blew out the candles noisily despite my tears. We laughed and took pictures. We heard the telephone ringing the long distance tone.

Yasir said, “I love you very much, Mama.”

Hatim and I kept snatching the receiver from each other. We finished the telephone conversation with the family in Egypt. I noticed that Ragya was totally silent. I offered her some cake, which she accepted only after my insistence, then she placed it next to her. Samia, who put her up in her house when she arrived in Baghdad, tried to talk to her but she blocked every attempt to have a conversation. Nahid also tried to engage Ragya and, when she found out that she was living by herself in Baghdad, invited her to her house.

I asked Hilmi Amin in a whisper what was wrong with Ragya and he said, “She came to visit us without an appointment so we invited her to come with us.”

Titi started pouring the tea and offered some to Mahmoud Isam, saying, “My husband first.”

Madu ran after her trying to snatch a balloon that she had placed on her arm to save it for his younger sister.

Ragya said, “I am sorry. I want to go home.”

I said, “It is early and the children haven’t eaten cake yet.”

She stood up and persisted: “No. I want to go now, right away.” Then, addressing Hilmi Amin, she said, “You can stay. I’ll go out and find a taxi.”

Rasha said, “I want to stay with Nora. Stay with me, Mervat.”

Tante Fayza said, “We’ll come some other day.”

Ragya insisted on not waiting. She sat down for a few minutes until the girls had some cake, then she left with Hilmi Amin and his family.

Nahid asked me, “Who is that sourpuss?”

I said, “Poor woman! She had some tough circumstances.”

Samia said, “I noticed that she was tired and sad. It seems she has many problems. I didn’t ask her because I didn’t want to bother her and she hasn’t told me anything. It is obvious that Tante Fayza likes her a lot.”

I said, “She performed an abortion on herself just one day before coming to Baghdad.”

Nahid said, “Dear God!”

I had noticed that Tante Fayza sympathized with her, but the two girls were detached. I understood how someone like her found it difficult to get along with them.

Hilmi Amin’s family’s holiday was drawing to an end, quickly as usual. I woke up one morning realizing that we had to have a farewell party for them. I agreed with Hilmi Amin to have it in the office that evening. I quoted the Egyptian proverb: “A wolf’s den is big enough for a hundred lovers.”

He said, “We have no choice. During the day we have a lot of work and official appointments and Anhar has run away. When she comes back, I’ll have a talk with her. This mixing up of things is not acceptable.”

I looked at him for a while without saying anything. He said, “What do you want? Say whatever you want. I am listening.”

I said, “Nothing.”

Dahlia came in with Abd al-Rahim. Her face was quite pallid. We had agreed to help her find a place to stay with an Egyptian family. Her appointment with the family that we had approached was yesterday but she didn’t turn up, putting Hilmi Amin in an awkward situation. We had interpreted her not keeping the appointment by assuming she had solved the problem with her neighbors, of whom she complained bitterly.

Tante Fayza asked her what she wanted to drink and she said, “Tea.”

Abd al-Rahim said, “Dahlia has a problem with the police.”

Dahlia said, “The neighbors objected to my guests, and my having parties at home. They got insolent and we had a quarrel. There were several complaints from many neighbors to the vice squad. They wanted me to leave the house. I was going to leave it anyway but now I am reluctant. They have no right to kick me out with an accusation like that.”

Abd al-Rahim said, “This is not the first time. The problem is that that has happened at a previous residence. The police came at three o’clock in the morning and took her along with her female roommate and investigated the complaint.”

Hilmi said, “But an arrest warrant cannot be issued because of a problem with your neighbors.”

Abd al-Rahim said, “She is right in front of you and she is not saying anything.”

Mervat brought the tea. Dahlia said, “I want milk with it. I don’t drink tea without milk.”

I said, “Oh, persnickety!”

We all laughed. Hilmi said, “What happened exactly? I cannot help you without knowing the details.”

Dahlia said, “The man claimed that we received Kuwaiti and Saudi men and that I go out at ten in the evening and don’t come back before three in the morning and that the visitors came at this time before dawn. But the officer reassured us that there were thousands of lawsuits because of the housing shortage and that landlords
resort to these kinds of complaints to build cases for eviction. Then he said, ‘We are sorry for what happened, but the person who filed the complaint is one of you and we cannot do anything to him.’”

We all said at the same time, “Is the landlord Egyptian?”

Dahlia said, “No. But we’ve sublet part of it because it is huge.”

I said, “If we had an Egyptian association we would have taught him a lesson. Five million Egyptians and we can’t have one association?”

Dahlia said, “We left after Atef called the company where he works and the company lawyer said he would sue for libel. I had a discussion with the officer about liberation for Iraqi women, who disappear from the streets at a very early hour whereas women in Egypt enjoy greater freedoms.”

I exchanged glances with Hilmi Amin and I said, “That’s all they need!”

Dahlia said, “But the officer said he had visited Cairo and discovered that Egyptian women are not seen in the streets after seven in the evening.”

Hilmi said, “How observant!”

“I vehemently denied that,” Dahlia said.

Hilmi asked, “Okay. So, what have you decided?”

Abd al-Rahim said, “We met at my house yesterday and decided to come to you. Maybe you can solve the problem and maybe Dahlia can pledge to simmer down a little.”

Dahlia turned to Hilmi and said, “As for the new house you were going to move me to, please don’t tell the family with which I’ll live what happened.”

Hilmi Amin got up, saying, “Wait for me. I’ll be back right away. Nora, come with me.”

I followed him hurriedly as he descended the stairs, while lambasting our rotten generation, permissive upbringing, and the consequences of irresponsible behavior. I remained silent, not knowing where we were going. We stood in front of the apartment building, thinking how we would handle the situation, especially with
respect to the family that we had asked to put Dahlia up. We discussed the matter and decided that it would be unfair not to tell the family what happened, for they would be surprised when the police descended upon them one day and they found themselves saddled with a problem they had nothing to do with.

Hilmi Amin walked into the supermarket and I followed him. He called an Iraqi lawyer friend of his and explained the situation to him. He took out a piece of scrap paper and a pen and wrote down the lawyer’s name and telephone number. Then he hung up. I stood waiting, afraid to ask him why we were waiting. He redialed the same number and said, “Thanks a lot. We’ll be there shortly.”

He turned to leave the store and said to me, “Finish what you’ve started writing, then go home. I’ll cancel all our appointments and deal with this bimbo, even though I wish she’d just leave Baghdad. Instead of getting respectable people, we get this one. She wanted milk in her tea! Here’s a woman, implicated in a vice case, and she wants milk in her tea?”

I couldn’t help but laugh, without making a sound though, for fear of the whole situation turning against me. He said, “Go up and send her down with Abd al-Rahim. I’ll wait here.”

Tante Fayza and the girls asked me, “Is she really going to jail? Is she going to be deported? What did the two of you do?”

“I don’t know. I think Ustaz Hilmi has made an appointment with a big lawyer. If there’s nothing to it, as she says, and if it is proved that she has done nothing wrong, she’ll get off. But if there are things she’s hiding, that would be a different story.”

Tante Fayza said in exasperation, “That’s all Hilmi needs. More problems!”

In the evening we had a party for the family since they would be leaving in two days. Many friends came. When Hatim and I arrived, Dahlia was already there. She looked composed, so I assumed the problem had been taken care of. I breathed a sigh of relief and didn’t ask her anything. Abd al-Rahim and Suhayla arrived and a short while later they were trying to convince her to go home with them
to protect her from her neighbors. I found out that what Dahlia had said, that the whole problem was just a tempest in a teapot, was not exactly what everyone thought. It turned out that the lawyer had spoken at length about the police report in a manner that was not in Dahlia’s favor, nor did it do her image a lot of good.

We were surprised to see Fathallah and Maha show up unexpectedly. We were happy to see them, as always. Fathallah had been awaiting the verdict in a political case and he was acquitted, but the fact that the verdict was published in the newspapers bothered him because he had kept his political activities in Egypt to himself. He said, “I want to lead a quiet, simple life here, to make enough money to rent a bigger apartment for Maha’s sake because we were married in a small apartment quite far from my work. I don’t want any political discussions here nor any invitations to join the party. When the verdict was published, my cover was blown. One of my fellow engineers asked me and I told him it was just a case of mistaken identity.”

Hilmi Amin said, “No one should be ashamed of his political activity. The fact that you were part of the student movement calling for liberating Sinai and that you had been arrested because of your political activity is quite normal. You have every right to do what you are doing here. Your present job has nothing to do with politics. I’d say ‘good job.’”

Maha was the exact opposite of Dahlia and Ragya. She was a model leftist woman who understood politics properly as a means for struggling for justice and propagating ideas of brotherhood. Her study of engineering made her more focused and more guided by logic. That was also what I noticed in Hatim and his engineer friends.

It was Maha’s model behavior that prompted me to think of all the women I had met and dealt with in Baghdad. Some were types that I had never dealt with before in my life: contentious and quarrelsome women intent on picking fights with me after my first book came out, even though they were not working journalists. The one thing that really surprised me was Tante Fayza’s transformation during her current visit to Baghdad. Previously, in earlier visits she refused to go
out on visits or to travel to other cities for recreation. She accepted our invitations only after earnest pleadings, and often Hilmi Amin would take the daughters by himself on social occasions. But when she met this group of leftist youth, she opened up, welcoming them at home and fostering close relations with them despite the great age difference. I don’t know whether Ragya was behind all that or not, but I was happy that she became more outgoing.

The party was over and friends said goodbye to the family since the days remaining before their return to Egypt were workdays when no one had the time to visit again. Dahlia went back to her old house with no prospects of moving to a new lodging.

On the train going to Basra, my fellow women journalists and writers were singing a famous song by Nazim al-Ghazali. When I began to join in singing the Egyptian version of the song, Naglaa cried out, “You’ve totally ruined the tune, Nora!” and went back to the Iraqi version.

I said, “Isn’t this one of our songs?”

Laughing, she said, “They are all Arabic songs and the words are the same all over the Arab world.”

I said, “Not exactly. You’ve changed ‘battikh,’ the word we use for watermelon, to ‘raggi,’ and our word for melon, ‘shammam,’ you’ve changed to ‘battikh,’ and so on and so forth. You use Kurdish words, Persian words, and Turkish words. You even use English words.”

“What English words?” she asked in alarm.

“Well, you say ‘glassat’ for ‘glasses’ and ‘tankaji’ for ‘metal worker’.”

“And you? Don’t you have the same thing?”

“We say ‘merci’ and ‘bus,’ but you have many more loan words.”

Naglaa laughed and said, “Come on! Tell us the latest joke. Our dialect is much easier.”

We all laughed. A beautiful voice began to sing another Nazim al-Ghazali song and soon many other voices joined in.

The train whistle sounded intermittently, then the train stopped moving. We all looked toward and through the windows, but there was no movement and no sound and no one knew or told us anything. One of the passengers said, “Maybe a military train is moving. But trains carrying troops and military equipment usually travel at night, not in broad daylight.”

I said, “That’s not necessarily true. Egyptian soldiers crossed the Suez Canal at 2:00 p.m. to surprise the Israeli troops in the middle of the day rather than the usual night attacks everyone had expected.”