Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (49 page)

I stood before a grave marker covered in green cloth of very dirty, frayed satin and I cried. Hilmi Amin asked, “What’s the crying for?”

“Poor in his life. Poor now and forever poor.”

“He was an ascetic.”

“He was a revolutionary philosopher. This is the aspect we love in him and this is what Salah Abd al-Subur looked for.”

We made our way back to the office. I was resisting fainting from the heat of the sun in the gray, desolate desert, without a single tree
or a flower. Oh God! My tongue was more silent than a tombstone! I could still smell the dust and the ancient history. I smelled death and oppression and the scent of my sadness burning with the fires of impotent anger. I wanted to tell Mansur al-Hallaj how much I loved him; I wanted to hug him, just hug him. I withdrew inside myself, hiding my dejection lest it escape and drown the whole world. We arrived at the office, my lips encased in solid black layers of dust and sweat. Hilmi Amin tried to dissuade me from going home but I left and braved August’s heat again.

Under the shower I shook off my body the red layers of vexation mixed with the black poison of oppression and the blue bitterness of impotence. I kept looking at the different colors, intermingling in circles and uniting in one ugly gray color that the walls of the shower stall absorbed gradually until it totally disappeared, leaving behind in my heart a profound feeling of loss, as if al-Hallaj had just died. I started crying in silence until Salah Abd al-Subur’s big, clear eyes paid me a visit. I said to myself that the intellectual’s battle with the authorities would go on forever. And I began to wonder about Iraq’s turbulent history and why I was there. Was it my good luck or bad luck? I thought how impossible it would be for any Arab journalist to really know his or her own country without studying Iraq. Was it a matter of journalism then? No, no! Absolutely not. In the evening Hatim came over to where I was sitting, holding Salah Abd al-Subur’s play, and started reading with me the following part of the dialogue:

     He says it is love: the key to redemption. Love and you shall prevail,

     Perishing into your beloved, becoming one with the worshiper, the prayer,

     The faith, the Lord, and the mosque.

     I gave myself over to love so completely there was room for nothing else.

     I kept imagining until I saw

     I saw my Love and He granted me perfect beauty

     And I granted Him perfect love

Hiding myself into Him!

Abu Omar: Hush! This is total abrogation of faith!

Ibn Surayj: No, this is just one of the states in Sufi practice!

Hatim walked me to bed, pointing to my head and saying, “What should I do with this mind of yours? The whole world is in there. Don’t you get tired of all the crowding? You need a traffic cop! Have mercy on yourself.”

“Hold me.”

“Why all these tears? He died a million years ago.”

“He hasn’t died. Read the rest of the scene.”

Ibn Surayj: Did you corrupt the populace, Hallaj?

Hallaj: No one corrupts the populace but a corrupt ruler who enslaves and starves them.”

Hatim held me by the waist and said, “I want this and this. Hallaj has lived his life and now it is our turn to live ours.”

A wind escaping from the dark road into Umm al-Jarra restaurant on Abu Nuwas Street blew and I heard the door close as someone came in. I remembered how cold it was outside and dark days from the past kept coming back.

The glow of the first few years of life in Baghdad began to fade despite Hatim’s successful career in the factory and my venturing into new areas in my writing and getting Yasir back to live with us. With the passing days I acquired new traits, which I learned from the silence imposed on me. I learned contemplation, digging deep inside myself and building forts and castles to protect me from the vicissitudes of time. I got deep inside myself for the first time and tried to explore it, and in the process I inflicted on it dark stains that required running rivers of joy to wash them away. Hatim tried to pull me to safety from drowning inside myself with
his simple lifesavers but his placid soul couldn’t give me security. The storms had started to blow and sweep away everything that had not struck deep roots within the good earth. Oh my God! I feel so lonely. I took up knitting and began to make a jacket for Yasir, then for Hatim, then for myself. I chose other colors and started all over again, filling the armoire, but I could not stop the howling of the emptiness inside the darkness of my soul. I looked around and saw Hatim outside my well-fortified castle, playing all the required roles and living in peace, having set his goals without getting involved in what I got myself into. He understood me without lifting a hand to change me, as if I were moving behind an invisible glass wall. He saw me but he also didn’t see me. He spoke with me but did not light a fire in my bones, nor did he put out the fire of joy that sometimes ignited within me. He was just there. I shouted at the long line of ants that had taken up residence inside my throat and started creeping deeper into me: “What more do you want, Nora?”

I got no answer. I couldn’t ask my women friends who were busy with their own lives. I couldn’t ask my friend Hilmi Amin about what I was going through for I could see that he was like a lion held captive in a small cage, going around in circles looking toward the far horizon, seeing nobody, then circling some more, tirelessly testing every inch of the cage walls and realizing that there was no way out. I felt the whole time that he was suffocated and I wished Anhar Khayun would come back to him, for she had given him a life that was full, even if with pain. Tante Fayza and the girls’ visits sometimes helped him but he became even more miserable again when they left. He had changed considerably from what he was like when I first met him. He used to be quite optimistic even when things got really bad. He knew what he wanted without fearing consequences. The years of exile had cast a veil of gloom over him that kept him company until he couldn’t take it any more. One day he said to me, “I want to go to Beirut, meet my friends, and breathe the air of the Mediterranean.”

One week later I was climbing the stairs of the Sheikhaly Building, not knowing whether he had come back or not. For, even though Beirut was such a short distance from Baghdad, he hadn’t called me as he usually did when he traveled. I didn’t know when he was coming back. I saw a light under the door and rang the bell. I heard him clearing his throat.

“Hello, Nora.”

“Thank God for your safe return. Any news from Beirut?”

“There were many surprises. Do you remember Sulafa, the beautiful Kurdish woman, Jamal Abu Sargon’s colleague who came to visit us a few times?”

“Yes. What about her?”

“She is a fugitive in Beirut. She had been arrested and detained for a few days, then was released, and ran away with her fiancé.”

“I can’t believe it! What a strange turn of events! Who would believe that this sweet, lovely girl is living in exile? And in Beirut, in the midst of all this tension?”

“She invited me to her house and cooked a kibbeh dish for me and told me the story. It’s so sad! I also met Hadya Haydar, remember her?”

“Yes. She’s the Lebanese journalist, wife of Jalil Haydar. She has a lovely face.”

“They’re both in Beirut now.”

“Did you see Ragya?”

“Yes. She is working there and has been trying to go to South Yemen, but the South Yemenis insisted on her getting an approval from the Egyptian Communist Party. And since she belongs to a different party, the comrades are still reluctant to give their approval. Before leaving Baghdad, Ragya had contacted the Yemeni consulate, which gave her an appointment. While waiting for the appointment, the Yemeni chargé d’affairs was arrested and relations between Southern Yemen and Iraq got very tense.”

I laughed and said, “And that was the end of the Ragya story?”

He shook his head, “Not quite.”

I said, “Please tell me what else happened.”

*

The waiter brought a pitcher of salted yogurt drink and a pitcher of water and poured a glass from each. I picked up the milk glass, unable to keep away the memory of the days that were assailing me and completely taking over my mind. I remembered a period of time when the numbers of Egyptian intellectuals in Baghdad, especially the stars, had dwindled as they departed to other countries.

Ahmad Abd al-Mu‘ti Higazi left for Paris and shortly after that Mahmoud al-Saadani joined him there and started publishing a magazine that he named after the July 23 Revolution. Amin Ezzeddin left for London, where he established a center for Arab studies. Ahmad Abbas Salih traveled frequently to London as a prelude to settling there. Abd al-Ghani Abu al-Aynayn left Baghdad for some other place.

When things changed in Baghdad, when the Front collapsed, Tante Fayza suggested to Hilmi Amin to leave for Paris or London. Then she began to pressure him to leave. I felt that I, somehow, was responsible for her apprehension, but I had no way to assuage her fear except to stay close to her and reassure her through the example of my little family that it was safe in Baghdad, that she had nothing to fear. I couldn’t tell her that the threat to her had been removed when Anhar Khayun disappeared, God only knew where. Some friends said they had met her in Hungary. Others said they had heard that she was in California. Nothing definitive. I could feel Hilmi Amin’s pain and his bitterness and fear for her. Sometimes he would say a few words about her, then fall silent and say, “Who knows?”

I would try to change his mood by making references to lines from characters in comic programs and he would laugh but fall silent again. We didn’t know whether she had actually left Iraq or whether she was in jail. We did not get any news that she had been arrested and that in itself was somewhat reassuring. But questions remained.

We got a hand-delivered letter that Abu Ghayib gave to me. Hilmi Amin read it, then he handed it to me.

Dear Hilmi,

I had to leave. I am in a safe place. When I settle down I’ll let you know. Don’t ask about me and don’t worry. I left this letter for you to reassure you.

Anhar Khayun

I said, “This is her handwriting indeed.”

He said, “Before her departure. Is there one guarantee that she actually left safely?”

I said, “No. But we should assume the best.”

I couldn’t tell that to Tante Fayza, of course, even though she had learned of Anhar’s disappearance. I found out from Mervat that her mother was often suspicious of her father and that Tante Fayza intervened between the two of them in spats concerning young journalist interns that he was training. I told Mervat, laughing, “My mother has suspicions about my father even though he is the last person you’d call a womanizer. It seems that mothers are always afraid of young girls for no reason at all.”

Mervat looked at me, laughing and squinting. She knew that I was in on all her father’s secrets and that I wouldn’t say a word. We both laughed. We were true friends.

That day there was a big flare-up between Hilmi Amin and Tante Fayza. We had organized a picnic for Zora Park. My son Yasir enjoyed the company of Hilmi Amin’s daughters and Hilmi Amin loved running after his daughter Rana on the green grass. We took a toy pigeon that had a spring that enabled it to fly. We noticed that the turns and durations it took hovering depended on the number of turns we applied to the spring. We began to turn it more and raced to reach it before it fell to the ground, and we kept a score of who got to it first. Then we got tired and returned to the table where the adults were sitting, while still laughing. We could hear them arguing from a distance and we could sense the tension, but there was nothing we could do to stop it. Hilmi Amin and Tante Fayza paid no attention to us, even when we tried in vain to get them to change the subject.

He was saying, “I won’t go to Paris. The writer Medhat Kamal is playing the violin on the streets. Do you know how much it costs to live in Paris? Just getting an apartment? Ahmad Abd al-Mu‘ti Higazi is teaching Arabic at the university because he is a well-known, major poet, and he left Baghdad early.
July 23
magazine cannot afford my salary because its budget is based on funding donations rather than distribution. Its advertisements still do not cover the cost of publication. The maximum they can give me is the price of one article, which wouldn’t be enough to cover one week’s expenses in Paris. Here I get a modest salary from
al-Jumhuriya
newspaper. True, it is not much, but it pays for the rent and for your expenses in Cairo. Whatever is left over from my freelance work you can save for the girls and their marriages.”

Tante Fayza said, “We have enough money for you to live in Paris for a few months without work until you find a job in an Arab newspaper. I don’t like London, but Ahmad Abbas Salih told me about the possibility of your working at the center opened by Amin Ezzedin with a good group there. Mahmoud Amin al-Alim is in Paris: there you can continue to write for
al-Jumhuriya
newspaper and so you can continue to get the same salary. The only difference would be the rent of an apartment in Paris and that you can get from the articles you write for
July 23
.”

Hilmi Amin replied, “They won’t cut off my salary so long as I am here in Baghdad since they consider it exile pay, even if I did not commit to writing my weekly article. But if I move out of here they would cut off my salary right away. They’d pounce on the opportunity. I am an Egyptian communist. Don’t you understand? Things have changed. If things here didn’t work out, you’d all starve to death.”

She said, “Baghdad will always be unsafe. And I’ll be afraid you’d be arrested for any reason or that Sadat would get you one way or another. In Paris, it is different. There you’d enjoy quasi-international protection. If you don’t like living in Paris, go to the Soviet Union or to any socialist country.”

He raised his voice, saying, “Iraqi communists have taken up all available places in all communist countries. They have descended upon Europe in huge numbers, making it almost impossible to accommodate even a single additional Arab intellectual. And the Iraqi communists open their homes to fellow Iraqis and take them under their wings until they find work. Where would I go?”