Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (5 page)

I didn’t and Anhar Khayun had not appeared in our lives yet.

Tears filled my eyes. I said to myself, “I am returning to Baghdad without him. Oh my God! And without knowing where Anhar was either! Is she in some other country as some dubious reports would have it, or in a dark dungeon in the hands of the security service? Or did she depart this world altogether? Only God knows! And where is Basyuni and will I be able to convince him to go back to Egypt?”

I got busy working at the
al-Zahra
bureau. As time went by I got to know Iraq, its people, its streets, and its history better and at a deeper level. I laid down a plan at the bureau to visit the Iraqi sacred
shrines in Najaf and Karbala, the seats of civilization in Samarra, Babylon, and Ur, the Assyrian and Sumerian monuments, the land of the Kurds and the swamps of Basra, and from Iwan Kisra in Salman Bak to Baba Gargar where Sayyidna Ibrahim’s fire was. We wanted to write about this vast, varied, and splendid world that opened its doors wide and allowed us to enter.

I followed up on the problems of Egyptian workers and their increasing numbers in Iraq. I’d pass by a number of them in Tahrir Square in the morning on my way to the office as they waited for contractors’ cars to carry them to work sites that were mushrooming all over Iraq. I developed a close working relationship with the Iraqi News Agency and its journalists by working side by side with them on a daily basis. I also had good relations with
Majallat al-Mar’a al-Iraqiya
(The Iraqi Woman) magazine published by the Union of Iraqi Women,
Tariq al-Shaab
(The People’s Path), the organ of the Iraqi Communist Party,
al-Thawra
(The Revolution), the organ of the Ba‘th Party where many Egyptian journalists worked, and
al-Jumhuriya
(The Republic) newspaper. I also found my way to al-Khalsa village, owned by Egyptian peasants in a precedent of the utmost importance: transferring ownership of Iraqi land to peasants from Egypt with the purpose of reclaiming it.

My colleague Salwa al-Attar, sitting next to me in the VIP lounge, moved while preoccupied in conversation with Mona Abed and her shoulder unintentionally touched my chest. The contact was very painful. She realized what happened and sat up straight on the sofa and apologized to me. During the nursing period a sudden touching of my breast turns my whole chest into a mass of burning pain. The knocks on the door of my memory kept getting louder. I let the memories in.

The foreign correspondent office relayed to us an invitation from the Iraqi Ministry of Information to travel the day after tomorrow to the north of Iraq to meet the Kurdish families returning from Iran after a general amnesty was declared. I couldn’t sleep that night.
This three-day trip would be the first work trip for me outside Baghdad. I was worried that Hatim would refuse to let me travel alone to the north. I arranged my arguments in favor of the trip in my mind. I remembered our honeymoon on the mountain of Saffayn in Salah al-Din village and the wildflowers there. The Kurds told me at the time to come in the winter when the north was much prettier with the snow-covered peaks and the quiet after the summer visitors were gone. Hatim agreed to my going on the trip without much fuss. I started to fantasize about my first trip and what it would be like. Hatim asked me while embracing me, “Have you started your trip already?” I came to, and, apologizing, I turned to him.

The merrymaking began as soon as the cars started. I made the acquaintance of a Chinese man and his wife who looked to be about thirty, a Lebanese journalist, two Russians, a Yugoslavian, and a French journalist. There were only two women and that would be typical of all our subsequent trips. We arrived at a military airport where helicopters took us to the city of Erbil in the north. From the helicopters we saw flames coming from the ground. Our escort Hisham told us, “This is the sacred fire.”

I said, “Aren’t these the oil refineries?”

“Yes,” he said.

Hilmi Amin said, “Nebuchadnezzar used to roast his enemies in it.”

I said, “Isn’t this Sayyidna Ibrahim’s fire?”

Hisham said, “Sayyidna Ibrahim’s fire is in the city of Ur in Baba Gargar. This is Kirkuk.

I said, “They’re right. How can reason accept the eruption of fire from the ground all the time without fearing it? When life on earth was in its infancy, man created gods to stave off fear.”

The Russian journalist, Izak, said, “I know Arabic, but please speak slowly, Nefertiti, so that we might all follow you. Sayyidna Ibrahim the Prophet, right?”

I said, “Yes. He is the grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad and the father of all the prophets. The Glorious Qur’an says:
O fire
,
be cool and safe for Ibrahim
. Can you imagine that the fire would stop and oil would stop erupting from the ground?”

Izak said, “We have our own beautiful myths.”

I replied in protest, “This is not a myth.”

Laughing, he said, “That’s the beauty and your beauty.”

I ignored what he said, noticing resentment on Hilmi Amin’s face. I said to myself, “I hope this is going to be all right. This Russian seems to be brash. I hope to God he doesn’t cause any trouble for me.”

The cars took us to a small building. Hisham said, “Let’s have some breakfast before going to the camp.”

I sat with Chen. She said to me, “I have a daughter your age living with the rest of my children in Peking.”

I gasped in astonishment. She was delicate and well dressed in a simple manner and looked very young. She never left my side throughout the trip. I felt her hand patting me on the shoulder kindly from time to time.

She said in her broken Arabic, “My husband Yang and I visited Cairo before and we hope to do so again.”

We went back to the cars that took us over rough mountainous terrain to a camp where hundreds of refugee families lived. I tried to understand why they had not returned to their original villages and towns. One of the officials said, “They assemble here first for their papers to be verified and to be revalidated; then arrangements are made to return them to their occupations and previous way of life.”

I looked at their faces. They had beautiful Arian features: a strong fair complexion, blue eyes, and blond or red hair, svelte bodies, mostly short. I could sense the secret anxiety that they hid. I came close to one of those who returned, a doctor who spoke with some correspondents in very good English about being happy to return and the wisdom of President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and the integrity of the political leadership.

He said, “I regret having left my country and I am sure the Kurds will turn over a new leaf under a unified Iraq.”

I felt that his words were somewhat sycophantic, but I wrote them down verbatim, saying to myself, “Why this feeling? He’s truly sorry and he also has to flatter them so that he may go back to his country safely. He has taken part in a revolt against the regime in an Arab country, Nora.”

I looked for his family and found his wife sitting on some cushions on the floor with the other women. She was a beautiful woman in her thirties with three children, the oldest eight and the youngest still nursing calmly at her breast. She said to me, “I am happy to have returned to Iraq. One’s fatherland is home where one grew up among family and friends.”

I talked with several women and young men who had returned. I noticed that most of them were educated and they said they were happy to return. We listened to officials as they took us around the camp. They condemned what Mullah Mustafa al-Barzani did and described him as a lackey of the Americans who sought their help to break the unity of Iraq. The officials threatened to deal forcefully with secessionist calls. They explained to us the importance of autonomy and the plans for the future of the region. We had a short meeting with the governor of Erbil in which he explained to us the preparation for the return of Kurdish families to model villages that were constructed hastily to house them temporarily until they were returned to their normal life in their villages, or in other places if their villages had been destroyed during the clashes.

We sat for a break in a rest house. Everyone else ordered alcoholic beverages while I ordered juice. They served us some fancy Kurdish dishes of cooked green wheat and goat meat and some kind of rice and meat pie they called “parda pilaw.” The place came alive with our loud conversation and laughter. The waiter asked me, “What would you like to drink?” I heard Izak say, “Get her some anise or goat milk.”

I didn’t appreciate his comment but before I could answer the waiter, Hilmi Amin said, “Juice, please.” I said to myself that Hilmi’s intervention meant that he was following the situation and that he was concerned.

The cars carried us to the hotel where we would stay throughout the trip in the town of Shaqlawa, about fifty kilometers from Erbil. The road was rough but of splendid beauty. I followed the towering trees as they receded. I imagined them as mythical beings that moved and extended their arms trying to catch us but were hampered by the dark. Small villages with soft lights glittered in the distance on the mountain. The narrow road began to curve back on itself, each curve about a half kilometer. The bus kept swerving as it ascended with difficulty and our ohs and ahs rose in a cacophony of languages until every turn was completed, whereupon we burst out laughing. Then we began to count: three, four, five, until we reached fourteen as the bus reached the top level. We opened the windows and reached out to touch the fruit trees whose branches extended inside the windows. We put our suitcases in our rooms quickly, put on warm clothes, and ran out to the inviting street that encouraged us to take walks. The air was cool and refreshing. We stopped in front of simple open ovens watching the dough being formed into loaves and baked, emerging with that distinctive smell of freshly baked bread. The stores displayed inexpensive goods with very loud colors. I noticed an abundance of wooden vases like those complementing our office decor and realized that Hilmi Amin purchased them here. The village was built in the middle of a plain ringed by mountains. Terrace farming gave the fields a beautiful distinct character as the water gathered from natural springs in the higher elevations trickled down, forming streams that ran down until they hit a certain elevation whereupon they formed a little waterfall. Despite the dark and the long journey I had no desire to sleep. I wanted to stay up and live here the rest of my life.

We returned to the hotel and went into the restaurant where, even though we had been eating all day, we had a great appetite. Izak sat in the opposite chair at the table and got very drunk and began to flirt with me in front of everyone. I didn’t know what to do so I didn’t say a word. After a short while I asked someone sitting at a distance to exchange places with me. I found refuge with Firas,
the Lebanese journalist whom I noticed was following the situation. We started talking about Egypt and his travels there. My mind was not focused as Izak kept calling out loudly for Nefertiti. I said to myself that he was crazy. He had been drinking a lot at every stop when we took our breaks. I saw him coming toward me with a comb in his hand, saying, “May I comb beautiful Nefertiti’s hair? Please let me … let me.”

I said to him, “Go to her in Berlin. She would be happy if you did.”

He didn’t understand what I meant and said, “No, I want to do it here now.”

Firas got up and escorted him to the lounge. I was terribly embarrassed as the eyes of the foreign correspondents and Iraqi officials looked at me. I took my leave to go to my room. I heard some movement outside the door of my room so I opened it quickly in anger. I found a young man on the hotel staff standing guard. The telephone rang. Hilmi Amin asked if I was all right. I said, “Yes. I am very sorry for what happened.”

He said, “Have a good night. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

I sensed an angry tone in his voice. I tossed and turned, unable to sleep. I heard some movement outside the door of my room. What was happening to me on my first trip as a journalist and how would that affect my position in the bureau? I remembered that every time we stopped, Izak would comb his hair. He looked at his reflection every time we passed in front of glass windows or doors and every mirror. He seemed merry and pleasant and pleased with himself. But the day ended on a sour note. I got tired thinking of what happened, my sleep interrupted by anxiety and vexation. I didn’t realize that what happened on this trip would leave an imprint on my work and movement in Baghdad for five years.

In the morning we went to the village of Afiya, still bearing traces of the dew of dawn. The peasant women led the cows and goats with the children in tow. We got busy snapping shots of Kurdish homes hidden behind trees. The sheen of the peasant women’s
attire easily made them stand out in the landscape. We visited some rug and tobacco factories. I wanted to pick some wildflowers as I did with Hatim on our honeymoon but was afraid that that might elicit comments from Izak after last night’s scene. We went to the markets of Erbil and I bought Kurdish brocade fabrics. Chen, the Chinese lady, said, “Why buy so much?”

“My friends in Egypt will use the fabric to make evening gowns.”

We went up to the fort and Hashim said, “People left it and built houses far away on the foothills after diseases and epidemics spread inside.”

I returned to Baghdad, happy, carrying material for a feature, and gifts for the house and my friends. I wrote the feature and submitted it to Ustaz Hilmi in the morning. He added a paragraph about the Kurdish problem and the revolt of Mullah Mustafa al-Barzani and at the end wrote that we would follow up on the application of the autonomy laws and their impact on the Kurds in our future coverage. He asked me to re-read the feature after his additions and try to understand why he made them. Then he called me and said, “You’re making good progress in your work as a journalist, but I cannot tolerate any problems in a country as sensitive as Iraq. I received an official letter of apology from the Soviet office as soon as we came back last night.”

“So they know that their correspondent misbehaved,” I said.