Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (58 page)

I had never seen an Iraqi driver driving so fast and also so calmly. He took us directly to the maternity ward and checked me in himself. I tried to ask him not to go through all the trouble, but he insisted.

The doctor examined me. The she asked me, “How long between contractions?”

“There are no contractions and I don’t feel anything.”

She led me into a room and said, “When contractions begin, tell the nurse.”

Sabah sat with me. Two hours later I began to feel intense pain. They took me to an operating room alone. I cried, “Don’t leave me, Sabah!”

The nurse said, “It’s forbidden. No one is allowed to come in here.”

I saw a woman in her fifties stretched out on the next table. The nurse whispered in my ear, “Umm Ali. She will be signing papers for a caesarean section. She’ll be moved to a surgery room now. She is fifty-four and this will be her fourteenth birth, all natural up till now.”

I looked at her after the nurse left. I saw her lying down calmly, her gray braids stretching on her body like a snake slithering coquettishly and her long white galabiya rolled up revealing two very white legs contrasting with her wheat-colored face covered with brown spots. She was staring at the ceiling murmuring a soft prayer of which I could only distinctly hear, “Ya Ali.” The nurse came in holding a sheet of paper and said to her, “Your son has signed the papers. This is the last baby, Umm Ali. Did you hear me?”

“It’s enough. Thank God.”

The nurse looked at me, saying, “You want a boy, of course.”

“No. A girl.”

She said in alarm, “A girl? Umm Nisrin, whom we’ve just admitted, was told by her husband that she would be divorced if she had a fourth daughter. Umm Sherweet is also under the threat of divorce. Umm Mahmoud has three boys and wants a fourth one. You are the only woman in this hospital who wants a girl.”

A very beautiful doctor came into the room, wearing surgical gloves. She inserted her hand to examine my cervix as she smiled. Then she asked me, “What would you like?”

“A girl.”

She repeated in alarm, “A girl. Why?”

“You’re a girl. Aren’t you?”

“Delivery, right away.”

I cried out, “What did you do?”

She paid no attention to me and left together with the nurse. A strange quiet prevailed. Then I heard Umm Ali shouting, “Ya Ali! Help me! Ya Ali!”

She shrieked in a high, shrill voice. And I saw a dry baby rushing out between her thighs, as she bent forward and clung to it
with her palm, her body not helping as the baby tried to get loose onto the floor. The nurses and the doctors came in running. One of them miraculously caught the baby. The room was filled with merry shouts: “Umm Ali had a natural birth!” I heard the sounds of scissors and feet coming and going. Then I saw a beautiful baby swaddled in white cloth like a little mummy. My tears flowed.

I heard a nurse saying, “She’s Egyptian. See how she has contractions like in the movies!”

The room became quiet again after everybody left. I began to feel anew the painful blows coming from my lower back. I called out to the doctor but no one came. Then after a while the doctor came in and began to pat my head calmly. I said, “Any chance of delivery, soon?”

“In a few minutes. It will come soon.”

She left me then came back with a nurse pushing a gurney on which a woman of about thirty was lying down, writhing hard and trying to muffle her groans. They stopped in front of me. The doctor got busy delivering the baby. The woman’s screams got louder. I myself had difficulty breathing and my tears flowed profusely down my cheeks.

The doctor ordered the woman, “Push. You’re strangling him. Push.”

I heard a baby crying. The woman asked, “A boy? Right?”

“No. A girl.”

Silence prevailed again. I saw the woman’s face covered with tears. A nurse brought the baby to the woman after taking her outside to show the father. She said, “Her father named her ‘Kafi,’ Umm Sherweet.”

“Did he say ‘divorce’?”

“No.”

“Thank God.”

My contractions came faster and were more painful. I let out a scream that must have scared all creation and gradually lost consciousness but soon came to with piercing pains tossing me back
and forth like a racquetball. I waited for the doctor to do something, but she just said, “Push. Push now.”

I felt a tremendous release and calm. The doctor said, “You have a frizzy-haired boy.”

“Is he all right?”

“Perfectly so. A true Iraqi boy, quite strong. Was he not conceived on Iraqi soil?”

I smiled and said, “Yes.”

I tried to sit up to see him, but I couldn’t. She patted my hand, saying, “I’ll give him to you right away.”

I lay back, giving in to the sounds and voices around me, feeling that I was on top of a wave carrying me to an endless horizon. I wished to sleep and let the wave take me wherever it wanted to, but it forced me to wake up. I longed to see my son. I once again tried to sit up, but my attempt was feeble. Then I saw the nurse bringing my son to me, a brown boy with a forehead covered with smooth thick black hair. I embraced him and kissed his head and lay down again. I realized they were washing me with water. I felt pain whenever they touched my exhausted body. The nurse pushed the gurney outside. In my room I found Sabah picking up my boy from another nurse. I said as I laughed, “He undid the baby blanket. He knows he is Egyptian.”

They bound his body in a white cloth, tied each arm to a leg, and rewrapped his body, turning the swaddling cloth into something like a tube from which only his head appeared.

My life changed when Yasir arrived. I was constantly reminded of my being a mother and of his right to a normal life. I had wanted to work in Beirut to follow closely what was happening there. I realized that the experience of working with the Palestinian resistance was a must for anyone who wanted to live a life like that. I told my husband and he said, “Don’t worry about anything. I, together with your mother, will look after Yasir until you come back safely.”

His ready acceptance pushed me to confront the question, “Doesn’t Hatim have the right to live with a conventional wife and to secure for his son a mother who would watch over his schooling,
even if she were a journalist?” I went back with both of them to Egypt. I didn’t know if that was the right decision or not, but it has changed my way of life forever.

I chose to be a mother first and then a journalist. I gave birth to Haytham one year after going back to Cairo. But am I really a mother first? I left my son in the care of his grandmother and a wet nurse. My breasts have almost run dry in order to attend a conference. But it was Baghdad, calling after a year and a half of absence. And it was in a state of war. What mattered now was for this crazy trip to end well. I needed to sleep. If only I could, just for one hour, O God! Why don’t I go to the bathroom, empty my breasts, give myself a sponge bath? I might fall asleep or at least feel clean. I got up heavily, trying to do what I had been doing for a whole week. I went behind a small and narrow door, hearing the steps of women coming in and going out with their children. I could hear them cleansing the children or taking them into the toilet stalls, calmly cajoling them. Where did we get all this patience to look after our children? It is the child who is the dictator and not the husband. No other creature besides us mothers would understand that. My body began to feel refreshed. The scent of the fragrant cream soothed me some more.

A family, all clad in black, came into the lounge. It was an Egyptian mother holding three children, walking in staggering steps. I had seen a similar scene before, and in fact I was deeply involved in it.

Hatim told me, “I am going to tell you a sad bit of news. Today at the factory, Adel had a heart attack and we took him to intensive care at Medical City Hospital. He will be in critical condition until tomorrow. If he survives until then, he’ll live. We should go to Nahid at home. She needs you. Please get Yasir ready quickly.”

I said, “This is shocking! Adel is still in his early thirties. How did that happen? True, he is overweight but his face speaks volumes of health and vitality. Why the heart? Does he have a family history of heart disease?”

He said, “The real problem is that Adel is profligate and, as you know, he likes to live as if there is no tomorrow.”

“I know he comes from a well-off family.”

“He owns some agricultural property, but what good is that now? He should’ve put it to good use rather than travel so far from home to find a better life.”

Yasir pulled me by the hand as he sang. I was not in the mood to play with him. He loved to visit Adel’s house. We found Nahid in a terrible condition. She couldn’t stay by her husband’s side in the hospital. Hatim promised her to stop at the hospital and call her from there and give her the latest doctor’s reports. She agreed, nodding in resignation, and got up to prepare food for Yasir and the girls.

I said, “Let me do that, Nahid. This is not the right time for you to be working.”

“Aren’t they going to have supper? They have to eat.”

We went to the hospital. They would not let us go in. We called Nahid and told her that he said hello but that he was not supposed to move until the following day at noon.

The crisis was over and Adel survived, feeling revived. He ignored doctors’ orders completely even though they told him clearly that a heart attack at such a young age was worse and more dangerous than if an older person suffered it, because a young person’s strong body would trick him to move about normally, taxing his heart, and because the arteries would be so strong they wouldn’t let the blood through if a clot blocked them. Adel’s illness brought us closer to his family and we accompanied them on picnics to Zora Park and the bank of the Tigris.

Hatim called me at home as soon as I went inside and, without any preliminaries, said, “Adel has died. Leave Yasir with the neighbors and go to Nahid at home until I arrive.”

I found all the friends surrounding Nahid. I hugged her while tears flowed down our cheeks. She kept asking us, “What am I going to do?”

She called her daughters, one after the other, and her baby son, who had begun to run and stumble behind his older sisters. “What am I going to do?”

We tried to calm her, but we didn’t know how. We remained silent until the men came into the living room.

They told her, “We have taken care of all the preparations concerning the shroud. Right now, he is in refrigeration until we finish the shipping procedures, get the necessary papers, and book a flight.”

Hatim said, “Tomorrow, Nora, you will go to the hospital and get the forms listed here, because that can only be done in the morning. Then you will go to the Egyptian embassy, I mean to the chargé d’affaires, and get the papers signed also. From there you will go to the passport department in Karrada. If you can, please also go to the Iraqi Airways office or get in touch with Engineer Ali to find out if he can expedite travel. It is not easy.”

Mahmoud Isam said, “I will finish the procedures of end of service at the factory and get the pay and find out if he had accumulated vacation days or shares in profits or any compensation for the children.”

Nahid said, “My dear Adel has turned into figures and compensations. O my love!”

Hatim said, “Your sorrow over him will never end. But let’s first make sure you all get back safely to Egypt.”

We spent a whole week chasing the paperwork in the morning and taking our children and going to Nahid in the afternoon. Nahid surrendered herself to her women friends, letting them take care of the kitchen. She said, “Adel has filled the freezer with meat and chicken. Take everything out and distribute it to the neighbors.”

No airline would agree to transport the body. I was so surprised by that refusal. Engineer Ali said to me, “The pilot must agree. I will try with the Dutch plane coming at the end of the week.”

We no longer knew who was responsible for the delays. Was it the company management or the central bank, which every day demanded new forms and papers, or the airline and freight companies? Nahid
tried as much as possible to lighten the amount of items to be shipped, but it was to little avail. She told us, “Each of you take what you want.”

We cried. Nahid clung to the electrical appliances, saying she would take them all, even if shipping cost more than double their price, because Adel was happy to buy them. The house was almost empty except for things necessary for her and the children for the few remaining days. Relief finally came. Engineer Ali was able to arrange for the body to be shipped on a plane going to Cairo via Cyprus, and booked tickets for the family on a plane going via Damascus.

Nahid asked him, “Will I arrive with him?”

“No, actually you will arrive a few hours earlier. Sorry, you will have to wait for him at Cairo airport.”

“What matters is to attend the burial,” she said.

On the way home, Hatim told me that Nahid would not attend the burial because her trip would take two days, and he would arrive before them, but that they agreed not to tell her or else she would refuse to take the trip. Nobody knew when another pilot would agree to transport the body. This information created a transparent barrier between me and Nahid. So I kept silent until it was time for them to leave. We stood at the gate bidding her and her children goodbye in a somber funeral-like group. We gathered outside the airport gate in circles that made us look like the flock of black ravens that I had seen from the window of my country house one morning. We suddenly heard shrill loud cries. I opened the balcony and saw more than a hundred ravens landing in circles while shrieking, then flying up together, fluttering their wings. At the same time lines of ravens stood in front of a dead raven. After several times of flying up and landing, they shrieked in unison, then descended upon the body, carried it off, and disappeared. I remembered that it was the raven that gave Cain the idea of burying the corpse of his brother Abel. I haven’t heard of another bird having a funeral for one of its kind.

Nahid said goodbye to us, then fell silent and dried her tears even though we were all crying. She had suddenly turned into a
typical peasant woman, one of those widows I’ve often met, devoting their whole lives to raising their children, stern and firm and strong, shedding many of life’s little details and in the process coming to look alike, with the same austere features. I had always thought that such women acquired such features with the passage of time as they faced problems of pensions, family courts, and the complexities of inheritance, all on top of raising their children alone. Mahmoud al-Saadani’s famous dictum, “as dizzy as a widow in Egypt,” came to my mind. Furrows of sadness, despair, and loneliness suddenly appeared to occupy her face as if she had been born a widow. I accompanied her to the furthest point I could go at the airport with the help of my colleague Imad al-Bazzaz. We said our goodbyes in the hope that we would meet again soon in Cairo. When I came back to the lounge most families had left. Hatim took me to another building. I asked him, “Where to?”