Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (45 page)

I got up and sat before your body outstretched and totally available to me, and began to kiss you as you sank back into blissful rest. I took my time, enjoying your being so close at a leisurely pace. I saw your netted stockings still covering your legs. I held the end and began to remove it little by little. I heard you laughing
and saying, “The Graduate.” I said, “I thought you were too young to have seen the movie.”

You began to relax again as my lips roamed all over your soft, supple legs. Then you sat up just so you could reach for a cigarette, which you lit and placed between my lips. You lit another cigarette and began smoking it as you kept your eyes on my prayerful watch over your body. You reached for my clothes, trying to take the rest of them off of me. I involuntarily recoiled, but you gave me that look of anger and defiance that I knew quite well and I also knew what followed. I turned off the light and took off the rest of my clothes. I came back to you in the dark to spare your eyes the shock of seeing what time and age had done to my body. You opened your legs and I hid my face, feeling the pleasure of tarrying and stretching the moment that you, at your impatient age, did not understand. I did not need you to overheat at this moment. I wanted a calm arousal of desire, wave after wave, to savor the journey rather than the destination. I didn’t worry about what you might be thinking at the moment for you were still in that phase of innocent not knowing, and it is I who will teach you loving. I reached with my tongue to the sacred portal, to the heart of the jewel that I had never had the privilege of penetrating for the first time before, as my wife was not a virgin. She had a short unsuccessful marriage before we met. I stared at it, then I felt it with the tips of my fingers: it was strong and well protected by layers of soft pink flesh. I had a strong desire to break it open, knowing that you would have no objection at all. But I desisted. I was content with pushing apart the lips guarding it, and licking it. You trembled again and you slid out of the bed and embraced me and began to kiss me all over as your feelings rekindled the fire, changing the quiet pace of the calm enjoyment that I had imposed on the whole situation. Your fire started to engulf me even though I just wanted slow, quiet loving and cumulative emotional fulfillment. The battle raging on the bed revealed the intensity of your feelings and your extraordinary joy as you relentlessly tried to break my slow deliberate rhythm and to bring back to life my dormant volcano, not yet ready to erupt.

I kept calling on all my strength to set the fire of desire to my body that had succumbed to inaction. I was anxious that the touch of your hand should not change course from lustful eagerness to pitiful pats. But I saw you rising and flying higher and higher to the sky while I was still on my way to reach full ignition. Then your escalating tremors overwhelmed me. You got up strong and happy, as stunningly beautiful as ever. You put on your clothes and kissed me as I was fighting off sleep. I asked you to close the door gently behind you.

I remembered Basyuni’s appointment. I took my camera and got down to the lobby. I discovered that I was the earliest guest to come down, with the exception of the organizers. Then the other member guests began to arrive one by one. The restaurant came to life and the smell of fresh baked bread permeated the hall. Delicious dates started finding their way to the tables, where guests helped themselves to European-style continental breakfast or an Iraqi breakfast of date molasses and hot bread. I remembered the smoke coming out of the carts serving turnips and molasses in the squares of Baghdad early in the morning and the restaurants for pacheh, made from lamb’s head and feet, which to my surprise served their meals at five in the morning. I also remembered the kahi pastries that were served with cream and syrup in stores that closed at seven o’clock in the morning. There were scenes and experiences that stood out and were noticed mainly by the eyes of non-natives. The first thing that drew our attention was the great attention Iraqis paid to food. Hilmi Amin once told me as he pointed to the many tikka carts dotting the street that he had an explanation for this phenomenon: “The Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula after the revelation of the message of Muhammad, peace be upon him, began to dream of gardens underneath which rivers flowed, quite different from their arid desert that had only a few springs and some palm trees, goats, sheep, and camels. So, when they came to Ard al-Sawad, the rural areas of Iraq, and when they saw the Tigris and the trees and the
vineyards and the fig and olive groves and the fruit orchards, they settled down and started eating and haven’t stopped till now.”

I sat down eating the hot bread, which brought back the memory of the aroma of clay bread-baking ovens that arose out of the houses all at the same time as the noon prayers. I remembered my good neighbor women who would send me gifts of bread from time to time, knowing that no one could turn down hot bread. I put a dried date in my mouth, of the kind they call “dijla nur” because of its luminescence. I had a hard time chewing it because of the copious salty tears of remembrance.

I did not believe my eyes when I looked up and noticed one of the hotel workers pointing in my direction. He was accompanied by a young man who looked as if he was looking for me. It was Basyuni in the flesh. But where was the flesh? When I first met Basyuni he looked like a body builder, with bulging muscles, a broad chest and shoulders, a chubby face, and a very fair complexion. How did he become so brown and emaciated? I remembered Shahira al-Asi saying as she commented on the appearance of the Iraqi cabinet ministers, “Dried and mummified, scrawny, miserable ministers!” So, what happened to Basyuni? What did war do to people, Nora? He approached, all smiles, extending his hands. I welcomed him very warmly. He said, “How are you, Abla?”

I smiled. So, he has kept his innocence despite the brutality of the war in which he was plunged; he still thinks of me as his big sister. I said, “The war has consumed you, Basyuni. Tell me, are you all right?”

He said, laughing to hide his bashfulness, “What could I do? Things are so hard here. I came today only by a miracle!”

I handed him his family’s letter. He opened it eagerly. His face changed color and he didn’t say a word.

I said, “While you wait for them to bring you tea, tell me what has happened to you since you left for Mosul and how you ended up in the war.”

Laughing he said, “All of that before tea? We might need a whole breakfast first. To begin with, Engineer Fathallah took me to his
house. And even though Maha is not much older than me, they both treated me as if I were their son. I was appointed to work in the highway department. I discovered that he is held in very high esteem in Mosul. I don’t know the reason for that: was it the letter of recommendation that he brought from Khalid Muhyiddin? His gentle nature and his skill as an engineer? Or for all those reasons?”

“Most likely, all those reasons,” I said. “

I found out that Fathallah was the official in charge for managing the highways in the Nineveh governorate, even though I am certain that he hasn’t joined the Ba‘th Party. He gave me a monthly salary that, with incentives, came up to five hundred dinars, a sum that I couldn’t spend in a year even if I tried. Let me tell you that the difference between my salary and Fathallah’s was only forty dinars. He took me to the shop as an assistant to the mechanic, Amm Sayyid al-Mursi, and said to him, ‘Teach him everything.’ Amm Mursi is a very capable mechanic usta, even though he is illiterate. But he can read the catalogue for the parts. And yet I got a salary higher than his. They appointed me to the Mosul–Sheikhan road that connected Mosul with the Yazidi Kurdish towns. I befriended the Kurds and came to like them a lot. They were overjoyed that the government made it possible for them to get loans to build new houses. So, any young man who wanted to get married would get a three-thousand-dinar loan, one-fourth of which would be forgiven when they had their first baby.”

I said, “All Iraqi young men had that same right to the loan and enjoyed the same privileges.”

He said, “Yazidi Kurds enjoyed greater privileges than other Kurds and far greater than those enjoyed by the Arabs, since they got the loans as soon as they applied and needed nothing more than their own ID cards to finish the procedures.”

I asked him to which party the Yazidi Kurds belonged to, the Kurdistan, Democratic, or …

He didn’t let me finish. “Neither. They don’t join the Kurdistan Workers Party. But some had joined the Ba‘th Party right before the
war in view of the steps taken to improve their living and economic conditions, for they had been totally marginalized before.”

I said, “You got an unusually high salary. What tempted you to enter the war?”

He said in great alarm, “No! And I swear to you. I didn’t enter the war as a volunteer soldier. An administrative order was issued to transfer the group working on the northern Mosul highway to the south to keep the roads in repair to serve the movement of the army forces. So I moved with my unit to Abu Ghurab al-Sharahani. When I went the fighting was still ferocious and shelling went on day and night. Sometimes I got up in the middle of the night terrified, finding myself up in the air, half a meter away from the ground. Amm Sayyid al-Mursi was also transferred there. He was a miracle worker, I swear. He could repair any equipment that had been blown up even if one half of it, and sometimes more, had been a total loss. I assisted him and he encouraged me, always saying, ‘Have no fear. You won’t find better conditions to learn.’ That was why I acquired great technical skill.”

He fell silent for a moment then said, “Believe me, I’m not bragging.”

“I know, Basyuni. Go on,” I said.

“That’s it,” he replied.

“Where is that area?”

“I don’t know where it is on the map exactly. It’s one of the first areas to be occupied by the Iraqi army. The cars took us to the Amara Highway and from there to a road leading to Iran.”

I said, “Why are you fighting in this war, Basyuni? Your family is worried sick about you and they want you to go back as soon as possible.”

He said, “I am not fighting. I was transferred in my job from one place to another in a country that is fighting a war. I will soon go back to Egypt.”

“When?”

“I can’t tell exactly, but in a few days.”

Then he added, laughing, “I might arrive in Egypt before you.”

“Can you get out of the army that easily?”

“With God’s help.”

“What are you going to do, Basyuni? Don’t do anything foolish or crazy. Request permission to travel, legally and officially. You know the system here.”

“This is not my war and my blood will not be shed in it without rhyme or reason.”

“You are saying that now? You should’ve known that from the beginning, before you got embroiled. Wouldn’t your leaving now be considered desertion? Running away from the war? Wouldn’t that be grounds for a court-martial? What made you change your mind?”

“I asked my Iraqi colleagues: ‘Why are we fighting?’ They said, ‘To regain our land which had been taken from us in the 1975 treaty.’ I told them, ‘Didn’t Saddam Hussein himself sign it?’ They said, ‘He had no choice. He had to sign it so that the shah would stop aiding Mullah Mustafa Barzani. The Kurdish insurgency was at its worst, so Iraq was forced to give up that territory.’”

I said, “Iran’s problem is that Muhammara and Ahwaz have a commanding view of Iranian oil sources. For Iran that’s a strategic position that it won’t give up easily. But I still don’t understand what made you change your mind.”

He bowed his head lightly, then bent forward, clasping his hands together, then letting them drop between his legs, and didn’t say a thing.

“Talk to me, Basyuni. You are talking to your older sister. If you believe that you are helping Iraq because you consider it your country and that you are responsible for any war it enters, I will not argue with you about it. But I don’t feel that you believe that.”

He said, “They told me that they were fighting the Shi‘i Iranians. I didn’t know what the word ‘Shi‘i’ meant. I thought they were infidels, but when I asked them if the Shia were Muslim, they said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Do they say,
There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God
?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ So I didn’t understand. Believe me, I tried
to understand. So I asked them, ‘Why do you fight the Shia when they are Muslims?’ They said, ‘It’s a long story.’ As time went by, I realized that the historical battle between the Sunnis and the Shia in the land of Iraq since the family of the Prophet was killed was still going on. I realized that it had been a political battle from the beginning, and that Islam had nothing to do with it. When I figured that out, I decided to leave.”

I said, “You needed two whole years in a war to understand? I also want to understand a few things. Please bear with me. You have gone to Abu Ghurab al-Shirhani and other places deep in Iran. As far as I know, Iraq continued to occupy towns in the south such as Muhammara, Qasr Shirin, Mehran, and Dezful, rough terrain that is difficult to fully control. You were near that region and took part in what was happening there. One day those territories were in Iraqi hands and another in Iranian hands and so on. Describe for me what happened in the first major defeat of the Iraqi army in the battle of Taheri last October.”

He said, “I was not in the battle itself, of course, because the Iraqi army at the beginning of the war, in September 1980, had crossed the Karun River in Iran. It’s a big river like the Tigris and Euphrates and it ends in Shatt al-Arab. Then after almost a year, Iran launched an effective large-scale offensive that the Iraqi forces had not anticipated. The Iraqi forces tried to retreat, but they found the river behind them. So, they fell into the trap. Thousands of officers and soldiers were killed, as I heard, and Iran took more than twentyfive thousand Iraqis as prisoners of war. Didn’t you get the news at the time? A profound sadness descended upon the whole of Iraq. I don’t think they have gotten over it yet. Have you not noticed a difference in the Iraqi personality which you knew and dealt with during the years you worked here?”