Beyond Love (Middle East Literature in Translation) (6 page)

"I'm Mazloom al-Sa'idi. My wife is in labor."

"Oh, man, you are terrible. How can you come at
this time of night?"

"People don't choose the instant of their birthyou know this."

"But my joints won't help me. Can you wait until
morning?"

"It's not in my hands. If she could wait, I wouldn't
have come."

"It must be a girl; their delivery is hard, and their
lives are even worse."

He was deeply anxious while he held the hand of
the fat midwife, who carried her leather tool bag in her
other hand. He thought that perhaps God was punishing him for some offense he must have committed.
Otherwise, why was his wife giving birth to a fourth
female child? Although all these infants had died
just a few days after their births, Mazloom al-Sa'idi
was shattered every time his wife lost her baby, feeling responsible for its death because of his constant
prayers to God to give him a male child. He would
remain depressed and crushed for long days. But it
wouldn't take him long to ask God's forgiveness, saying, "Praise be to God. No one is praised for an affliction except him." Meanwhile, Juri remained broken,
feeling that she was responsible for giving birth to
female children who quickly died.

The midwife slipped, and Mazloom was so
absorbed by his memories that he would have fallen
on top of her if he hadn't at the last minute grabbed
onto a tree. Lamia yelled at the same time as the thunder, insulting the devils who ambushed good people
every time the sky grew dark. Mazloom thought she
meant him, but he ignored her. He helped her get back
on her feet and carried her bag for the rest of the way;
her woolen wrap was soiled with mud.

When they entered the house, they heard Juri s
screaming and choking. Lami'a said, "Heat me some water quickly," and by the light of the shaking lamp she started examining Juri and reassuring her.

"Don't be worried. Seek the help of al-Zahra, the mother of the Hassanayn.s
Don't clench."

Although the room was cold, Juri was dripping with sweat.

"Push. Only a little while to go. Open your legs. Don't squeeze them together. Don't worry, the baby is coming at dawn, and dawn is soon, God willing. Come on, control yourself. Push. Keep going."

Just before five in the morning, a lump of blue flesh fell into Lamia's palms, and after a moment the yelling increased. The two small legs were twisted together, so the midwife separated them to identify the baby's sex. Juri was still moaning and gnashing her teeth. The midwife wrapped the lump of flesh while Mazloom al-Sa'idi waited tight-lipped behind the door, his heart heavy with grief.

"Didn't I tell you it would be a daughter?"

Mazloom didn't answer; he was like someone who had fallen into a dark well. The midwife was about to hand him the little one when she heard the mother's voice. She returned to Juri and was surprised by the sight of another head. She guided it out. This one was smaller, and she didn't need to separate the baby's legs this time-they were open. She immediately called to Mazloom al-Sa'idi: "It is the son you were waiting for!"

He felt such strength that he almost fainted. The
midwife cleaned the baby's body, and when she had
finished, she wrapped him in a soft fabric and handed
him to Mazloom al-Sa'idi. As soon as he held his son,
he broke into tears. At that moment, Juri was quiet
from exhaustion. Lamia started cleaning her forehead
and sprinkled her face with rose water, moaning verses
from the Holy Qur'an. Juri slowly opened her eyes and
looked at Mazloom, who was breathless as he hugged
the child. Meanwhile, the other lump of flesh was
quiet, as if she hadn't come to life or as if she already
realized that from that moment on she was surplus.

Looking at the male child, Mazloom al-Sa'idi said,
"His name is Nadir."

"What about the girl?" the midwife asked him,
and, as if remembering a forgotten thing, he said, "The
girl? I leave it to you. Choose the name you want."

Without hesitation, the midwife said, "Her name
is Nadia. After my daughter."

When my father had been struggling in the mud
holding the midwife's hand, he had thought that
every female birth was equivalent to death. He was
sure that if there had been a male baby among the four
births, that son would have held on to life. But the days
deceived my father, for he himself died a year after
our birth. I survived, and a male in the family died.

WHAT COULD I DO with the lengthening hours? Time
had slowed down. I had nothing to do. My days in
Amman were quiet, like still water. But Nadia stirred it
after her death, nailing me down in front of her memories. I wondered what came after this difficult birth.

My existence began there in that forgotten village of
just a few hundred houses in Abu al-Khasib. From the
first cry of my birth, my life was marked by neglect in
favor of Nadir. Our house was small, with a courtyard
separating its two rooms, and behind one of the rooms
was a storage area. Our beds were made out of palm
branches. In front of my mother's bed was a pile of
blankets, pillows, and sheets. The floor was covered
with woolen rugs on top of mats of palm leaves. The
roofs were made of palm trunks and fronds covered
with layers of dried mud; the walls were washed with
gypsum. When we had just learned to walk, the government decided to build a grain-storage facility in the
village. The compensation that my mother obtained
allowed her to move to the center of the town. There I
went to school and learned my first letters. Years later
we heard that the storage facility was converted into
a chemical factory, which would be destroyed in the
Gulf War.

WHAT HAPPENED TO us? How did we cross those terrifying desert distances, fleeing to save our tortured souls?
Why did Nadia have to die before she found a country
that would shelter her? And why did the embassy refuse
to repatriate her body to Iraq? Don't we have the right to
be buried on the land of our ancestors? Does the president have the right to retain his grip even on the dead
after having deprived them of joy during their lives?
What can a powerless corpse do? It can't claim compensation for years burned out by the wars. Yet the president
fears even corpses that are unable to object or resist. What
about me? How am I going to end and in which land? I'm the one who dared to say "No." I then found myself adrift,
leaving behind everything-my house, my memories, my
grandmother, and Youssef, my childhood's dream. They
planted him as a husband in my head, and I loved him.
Or perhaps I only thought I loved him because there was
no one else in my life. The last thing he said to me when
he was handing me the passport was, "Don t waste time.
Be ready at 8:oo p.m. Your permanent identity papers will
reach you later on." He gave me a piece of paper. "Here
is Hani's address. Do you remember him?" Yes, I remembered him. He was a Palestinian guy who had been in
college with Youssef. I had met him a couple of times.

"Don't forget your new name, Samia Shahine Hassan. Remember your birth date-we had to make you
forty-five years old to avoid the requirement for a male
chaperone."

I took with me just a small clothing bag and another
handbag with only a notebook, tissues, a pen, the passport, and a few aspirin. I wrapped my head in a black
shawl and wore glasses so that I looked older. Youssef
said good-bye to me quickly; he was still upset with meor at least that was how it seemed to me.

On the wide desert road across thousands of miles,
the car devoured the road and stole away my calm. I was
in the backseat, sitting next to a woman with her child.
Her husband was in the front, next to the driver. Some
drivers were willing to report any suspicious behavior to
the government, so I felt apprehensive about our driver.
Drivers would first start by pulling a passenger into conversation about living conditions and the state of the
country and then casually ask about the passenger's reasons for travel. I avoided taking part in the conversation. I feigned sleep, but I couldn't spend twenty exhausting
hours sleeping. After the driver had gossiped enough
with the man and his wife and knew about their motives,
he turned to me.

"I'm about to have surgery, and my father is waiting
for me in Amman, where he has made arrangements for
a hospital room," I told him. The woman wanted to know
about my disease. I improvised the phrase "removing a
growth near the liver," but I didn't take part in the followup comments about the diseases ravaging Iraqis, the scarcity of medication, and the high rates of cancer after the
Gulf War. Every time we had to halt at checkpoints, my
heart stopped, but I had to be patient and contain myself.

The wheels of the car were crushing my ribs, anxiety and fear overwhelming my dreams and expectations.
Youssef's face was following me; he looked upset, insisting, "Remember the new name, Sarnia Shahine Hassan. I
will join you after three or four months, as soon as I finish
my training." (I knew military training never ended. It
devoured the lives of youths, eating their dreams, until
they suddenly found themselves in their forties.)

My grandmother's face took the place of Youssef's,
insisting, "You are lying. You are not headed to Najaf."
As I had held her hands, she had been certain that we
would never meet again; if I hadn't been in such a hurry,
she would have sewn me a talisman and hidden it in my
breast. But there hadn't been that much time, so she had
offered me a camel-bone necklace, placing it around my
neck while saying, "It will bring you patience and luck."

In the car, I anxiously tried to be patient. Through
the fogged glass, I saw a star sparkling in the dark night.
A small window opened before me, and so I returned again to my grandmother. I entered her distinctive room.
It was a special world. As soon as you crossed the threshold, you would notice the change in the atmosphere, a
mixture of scents-henna, incense, and mastic. Her mattress was on the floor, for she had refused to sleep on
the bed since the death of her husband. In the corner
across from her mattress was a thick woolen carpet that
she had made herself, placed on mats, and surrounded
by soft woolen pillows. On top of a small wooden table
near the bed was a copy of the Holy Qur'an. My grandmother was educated and literate, which was uncommon
because females of her generation and even the generation that came right after hers were usually illiterate. She
says that she completed the reading of the Qur'an when
she was nine. Her father was one of the students of the
Islamic learning center in Najaf, but he never finished
because he died from malaria. In her closet were a number of dresses, and in the lowest drawer she still kept
her wedding dress, a faded pistachio color embroidered
with white glittering beads. Next to it were a few objects
left by my grandfather: a rosary from al-Hussein, a silver cigarette box, and an oak cane with a serpent head.
Although my grandmother had not been preoccupied
with the past and wouldn't cry over it, she nevertheless
missed those days. She always used to repeat, "How is
it possible for life to go on without me? I lived it fully, a
simple, safe, and sweet life. Now wars have disfigured
life's beautiful face. The present doesn't mean much to
me; it just confuses me. Sometimes as an escape from it, I
think about the past, and that's enough."

I used to envy her. I envied the strength with which
she fought the hardships of life. The bright memories of the past and her sense of humor never left her. She used
to have difficulties with modern names, still calling the
pillow lulah, the chair sakmali, and the medicine cabinet
sandagja, and oftentimes she would finish her stories with
the expression, "It was back then, in the days of plenty."

Someone was snoring in the car, and the image of my
grandmother disappeared. I looked at the woman sitting
next to me; she was deep in sleep. Fear of the unknown
overwhelmed me. Time was slow; it weighed on my
chest and suffocated me. My patience disintegrated even
though the necklace my grandmother had given me
encircled my neck. I swerved away to the furthest skies
of the past, to where I had played in that wide street. I had
snatched the sunflower seeds from al-Zayir Jabr's store,
and then I had run away with the small black grains,
holding them like a treasure. I had been flooded with
pleasure when I succeeded in distracting al-Zayir Jabr
and grabbed a handful. But the pleasure had disappeared
when I realized that al-Zayir Jabr had turned a blind eye.
I threw the small grains on the side of the street and hid
under the blankets in my bed, ignoring my mother's calls
to help her string beans. Hoping that she would stop calling, I feigned sleep, but she called me again and again.
I suddenly felt her near my head. I refrained from moving or making noise to fool her, and the taste of the small
stolen grains came back into my mouth. Then I needed
to urinate but waited a little bit lest my mother called me
again. Time pressured my bladder. I shriveled under the
blankets and then did it in my bed.

The cold crept into my bones, and time was still slow.
I plunged into distant memories to avoid my confused
feelings. My mother's serene voice sprang up from the past, telling me on one of the afternoons during a forgotten year, "I threw your umbilical cord in the Tigris; you
fell on the sand of its bank because I couldn't wait until
I arrived back home." I had placed my chin between my
palms while listening to her with clear eyes.

"I was with my neighbors washing clothes and dishes
on the verge of the river. We had been laughing and joking when all of a sudden I cried out for help. My friends
rushed to me, repeating prayers. They tried to take me
back home, but you didn't wait, and you fell like a limp
worm. Suddenly, the place turned into a festival of joyful cries. One of the women wrapped you in her woolen
robe after she cut the umbilical cord and gave it to me. I
threw it into the river. Then they took me home. This is
how you came to life, easily and conveniently. I was hoping you would live with ease and comfort. But the river
that witnessed your birth and preserved you from its
treacherous currents took your father two months later.
He was a skilled fisherman, and I just couldn't believe
that he had drowned. They said that the strong current
swept him away after his fishing boat capsized, but I still
don't believe it. No one ever tried to find out the truth.
The police were convinced by the witnesses, but the witnesses' motives were suspicious; they might have wanted
to get rid of him because he was their only rival in the
fish-marketing trade."