Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (55 page)

I said, “Are his belongings still in Mosul? How would he leave Iraq without obtaining an exit visa from the Residency Department? No Iraqi exit point will permit him to leave without such permission.”

He said, “I think he’ll look for a secret route to cross the borders and this is what I am afraid of, for him. On the whole he knows a lot about Iraq now. I hope it all ends well and he doesn’t fall into the hands of a swindler or someone who tempts him to do something foolish that would cost him his life. Anyway, say hello to everyone in Egypt.”

Layla noticed how pale my face was as she gave me a bag of candy and cookies. I took it from her without thinking and sat down next to her absently until I heard the call to board the plane. I kissed her and proceeded to the gate without any expression on my face, waiting to be called at any moment and taken to one of those places about which I had often heard, about how brutal and frightful they were. Places like “the Palace of the End.” I smiled. I said to myself, “Don’t be silly. Nobody will know anything about me now that Layla has left me. Security would not dare arrest one of Iraq’s guests at a time when they need their efforts to win the world over to its side. Anyway, that won’t be an arrest but a cross-examination, a right to which the Iraqis are entitled. I met Basyuni in front of many witnesses hours before he disappeared. Arresting a visiting journalist would create a big scandal that they couldn’t afford to have.”

I climbed the plane ladder in the midst of a very cold and dark night. The scene brought back to me what Iraq had done to itself. What have you done, Basyuni, you poor fool? That was all we needed!
To get Iraqi security involved! What kind of trip is that? I leave my nursing baby behind and come to a country at war where I could die for no reason at all except the so-called struggle. What kind of struggle? Search for the truth? Did I find any truth? Or was it just one-sided information? I sat on my seat praying to God that the plane would take off. I followed the sound of its engines, inserted all my being into that sound; my veins expanded, reaching out to the cold metal parts as I welded my consciousness to them, pushing them to fly, willing them to fly. My body began to vibrate as the engines turned and the blood in my veins whirled in small eddies rising with the speed of the engines.

The stewardess came, smiling coquettishly. I fixed my gaze on her. She asked me, “Can I get you anything? Your face is pale.”

I said with a forced smile filling my face, “I have a stomach ache. I am afraid I might throw up.”

She said, “I’ll get you something for that right away.”

I began to hum, trying to get the engines to hurry up. I was afraid the man sitting next to me might hear my humming. I tried to muffle my voice, but it began to sound hoarse. The man will imagine that I am singing. He definitely won’t realize that I was gripped with terror. But it didn’t much matter, anyway, as he had fallen asleep the moment he sat down.

The stewardess brought me a glass of water, saying, “Here, please: this is medicine for motion sickness. We will take off right away.”

I heard the usual roar of the engines as the stewardess turned and hurried toward her own seat and fastened her seatbelt. The man sitting next to me smiled, then closed his eyes, as the plane raced at top speed on the runway, then ascended to the sky with its wings up and the roar of its engines that felt like a cool spring rain. I smiled even though my ears were throbbing with pain, almost jumping off of my head. I noticed a hand offering me chewing gum. It was the man sitting next to me. I took it from him, thanking him as my face radiated with the most beautiful smile I ever experienced in my life. I put the gum in my mouth and closed my eyes. In a short while the
seatbelt sign turned off and the lights were turned on. I went to the restroom and washed my face. I felt refreshed. When I went back to my seat I relaxed and felt comfortable. I also felt how small I was and how little I understood about the world. I was happy to hear an Iraqi song and the Iraqi captain’s voice. I said to myself, “This is another face of Iraq.” I remembered Basyuni and wondered where he was now. I recalled his laughter as he repeated, “I might arrive before you, Abla.” Abla? The jackass! Could he have learned from what Fathallah did when he smuggled some of his Iraqi communist friends? It’s impossible that Fathallah might have lost all discretion and told him how. But why not? He might even have used him in his operations. But Fathallah is wise and intelligent and it is inconceivable that he would trust such a child, no matter how brave he seemed. Because Basyuni is reckless and rash.

I heard the story about smuggling by sheer coincidence when Fathallah was visiting us at the office after the blow to the Communist Party. Hilmi Amin asked him for news about Muhammad Aziz, a cadre of the Iraqi Communist Party. He said, “He’s flown.”

Hilmi said, “Are you sure?”

Fathallah said, “Yes. I saw him myself as he flew.”

I gathered the papers I was working on and went out to welcome him. He was startled to see me.

Hilmi Amin said, “This is my daughter, Fathallah.” Then, laughing, “My beloved Nora.”

I said, “Did they arrest a military wing of the Communist Party or is it just a story that they fabricated for some reason or another?”

Hilmi said, “It was an organization of eighteen officers, according to official announcements. Military intelligence arrested them and after torture they confessed to being the military wing of the Iraqi Communist Party.”

I said, “They made a mistake. In 1973 they joined the ruling coalition and were the second strongest party in the country. It was decided that they would be represented by three members. The
agreement, after the release of dozens of detainees, was that communists would not enlist in the army.”

Fathallah said, “Everyone lived up to the agreement, from 1973 until the end of last year, when those officers were arrested and they discovered their affiliation with the communist party. And, since they had formed a military organization, naturally they were thinking of staging a coup d’état. But why hit the lower ranks, the second and third tier rather than the leadership who were not subject to even a simple interrogation?”

Hilmi said, “This is quite an intelligent move. First, the military members who were convicted were executed. Do you remember vice president Saddam Hussein’s visit to Moscow, then Yugoslavia, then his meeting with Castro in Havana later on?

Fathallah said, “Yes, of course. It was immediately after uncovering the organization.”

I asked Hilmi Amin, “You mean Saddam Hussein got the green light from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc before handing down the death sentences, even though they were legal and part of the coalition front protocols? Didn’t Castro, Tito, and Brezhnev try to get the sentences commuted, especially as Iraq and the Eastern Bloc were on a political honeymoon?”

Hilmi said, “According to the theory of non-capitalist transformation advanced by some theorists, it is all right for developing countries to be led by non-communist parties and nationalist leftist parties may lead the transformation process.”

I said, “That’s what Samir Amin, Khalid Bekdash, and the Egyptian Communist Party say.”

Fathallah smiled and Hilmi said, “These theories were advanced first by Gramsci and also Jean-Paul Sartre when he wrote
Critique of Dialectical Reason
. Lenin approved of national liberation movements against colonialism even if such movements were not communist. He supported the 1919 revolution in Egypt led by the Wafd Party. What happened recently was the result of an article written by Yevgeny Primakov: “Joy on the Banks of the Nile,” and that’s
where all those you mentioned got their idea. When Saddam Hussein went to Brezhnev with documents indicting the participants, of course Brezhnev would say to him, ‘If you have an agreement, that’s all there is to it.’ The same thing happened with Castro. This way Saddam Hussein would be blameless. And that proves that Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr was quite smart: not taking any action before sending his deputy to consult, and this way the move to strike the left would be seen as legitimate.”

Anhar arrived, earlier than her usual starting time. She looked merry and welcomed Fathallah and asked him about Maha. Then she sat next to me and said, “How’s the Egyptian journalist today?”

I said, “Never better.”

Hilmi said, “What we have here is a forty-year-old political party, secret for thirty-five years. All its printing presses and organizations are underground. It’s a well-established party with street support and subject to repression throughout its long history. When it clashes with the authorities, its leaders are arrested or executed. The second tier then moves to the front to keep it going. That second tier is not known to the authorities. The party is fully functional again, keeping its strength despite the blow dealt to it. When the Ba‘th Party leaves the base alone, arrests the mid-level leadership, tortures or even executes its members, then leaves the door open for the top leadership to get away, the result, as the Ba‘th Party predicts, is a psychological blow to the members of the Communist Party and resentment of the base toward its leadership, as you hear from the comrades in this office every day, Nora.”

I kept shifting my gaze between Hilmi Amin and Anhar and got worried. “Why does Hilmi trust her so much, when he is usually so careful?”

Anhar said, “Yes, the disappearance of the midlevel leadership finished off the organization.”

The stewardess brought some snacks. She was moving quickly between the seats since it was a short flight between Baghdad and
Amman. I took the food tray from her. The pain I felt in my soul seemed to move to my body. I began to munch the cookies absently as I told myself: “It is not plausible that Fathallah had told Basyuni of any help he had extended to the comrades. If they have executed the Iraqis, what would they do to an Egyptian who smuggled them out of the country? But Hilmi has told us that they had left the door ajar for the top tier leaders to undermine the reputation of the party among the youth. Did they know what Fathallah had done but left him alone, free to act under their watchful eyes and ears until he overstepped the mark they had set for him, when they would arrest him? That way Basyuni’s case would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. But Fathallah didn’t know where Basyuni went.” Now my worry shifted to Fathallah. My head was about to explode.

The captain announced that we’d arrived at Amman airport, asking us to fasten our seatbelts and return our seats to the upright position. I closed my eyes. I wanted to put a piece of chewing gum into my mouth and offer the man sitting next to me another piece. I looked for the bag of chocolates but discovered I had left it in Baghdad airport. I waited for the plane to land. Thank God I had three hours in Amman. That would give me a chance to go to the bathroom to empty my breasts first, then get some rest in the transit lounge before boarding the Cairo-bound plane, God willing.

I got into the small airport at midnight. I remembered my trip with Hatim and Yasir and how we got so bored after the three days that we spent in Jordan that we decided to go to Syria to spend the rest of our vacation. I asked an officer where the transit lounge was and he said, “There’s no transit lounge. Stand in the passport control line.”

“I was here a few days ago with an official delegation and they put us up in a lounge.”

He examined my passport, then looked closely at me, then asked me, “Whose picture is this?”

“It’s mine.”

“And the baby?”

“He’s my son. But he’s not with me. When I got the passport two weeks ago I planned to have him accompany me, but I changed my mind at the last moment.”

“The photo is quite faded.”

“It’s one of those instant pictures that I had to use to make it on time to a conference in Baghdad.”

I reached in my handbag and took out my Egyptian and international press IDs and the letter of invitation to the conference and presented them to him.

He pushed them aside and said, “Take your passport and check with Jordanian intelligence tomorrow.”

I said, “I am going to Egypt. Why should I check with Jordanian intelligence?”

He said, “Your name is similar to someone wanted by security.”

I said, “I don’t have any money, so I can’t enter Jordan, book a room in a hotel and check with intelligence. That might take God knows how many days. Isn’t there another solution?”

“There’s nothing you can do except enter Jordan and check with intelligence.”

I said, “I am not going to enter Jordan and you have no right to make me enter against my will. I am just a transit passenger and where I am standing is an international zone. I am very sorry. I am a member in an official delegation. I was told in Baghdad that a protocol official would wait for me in Amman to facilitate my travel. Please let him know I am here.”

“As you can see, there’s no one.”

“Please inquire.”

“Look around you. There’s no one. If an official from the Iraqi embassy came, he would’ve come before me or my colleague.”

Another officer came over to find out what was happening because our voices were tense and loud. He took the passport from him and looked at it, spoke to the other officer in a low voice then told me, “Get out of the line and wait a little while.”

Other passengers around me said loudly: “Don’t enter Jordan.”

An Arab passenger said, “I am a man of the law. He has no right to make you enter Jordan. Insist on staying in transit. Don’t give in in any way. You are young and you don’t know what it means to be a suspect. You’ll be lost if you enter.”

“Thank you. But what will he do to me if I refuse?”

“He cannot force you. Believe me.”

I got out of the line and moved toward a wall to lean on since I couldn’t find a seat. I felt a stinging pain in my chest. The veins throbbed hard even though the milk had decreased considerably. I had not pumped the milk in hours and whenever the tension increased, I felt sharper stinging. But it had not started flowing out yet. I was terrified when I began to think about my situation—Jordanian intelligence, without anyone knowing a thing about it, as happened with Musa al-Sadr? And without money? Why did I spend the last of my money yesterday? Books. Have I read all the books I bought before? Was it just the lust for buying? Okay, now I reap the fruits of mindless spending. What exactly was the story? Somebody’s name similar to mine? Who? My name is purely Egyptian. “Nora Ibrahim Fahmi.” As for Suleiman, Hatim’s name, it was not listed on the passport and had no Palestinian connection whatsoever. He asked me if I had visited Jordan before and I said, “Yes.” He said, “Why?” I said, “As a tourist.” And is that not the truth? But how could someone like him believe that some crazy people like us spend their hard-earned money to see the rest of the Arab world? All he wanted was the money of the poor Egyptian workers who paid fees to enter and exit Jordan for no reason.