Mothballs (11 page)

This was the new bath on the roof. The silvery pitcher Aunt Naima had bought, the first washbasin, shining taps and door-knobs. Aset of new sofas was set up in the other room, all with broad wooden armrests. The women came up here, hung the velvet curtains, set out sticks of incense, and lit them at night. The odour reminded me of the Abu Hanifa Mosque on the nights of the great holy days.

My mother's coughing was absent on this day. The roof swayed once, but no one came up from downstairs and no one asked about the absent woman. From the glass of the roof, I looked down at everyone. Now the roof belonged to my aunt and Mr Munir, and I no longer owned an inch of this sky. And the ground – it was just another form of fever and coughing.

Firdous's voice behind me: “What are you doing here alone?”

She was staring. “God, Aunt Farida's trousseau is beautiful!”

She opened the wardrobe, looked, and sighed. “Quiet and sad. I know you're remembering your mother. Come, let's go down. Pretty soon your aunt will coming out to the house. Come see her in her wedding dress – she doesn't look like the same aunt! Please, Huda. God is good. Your mother will come back safely.”

Going down the stairs, she whispered in my ear: “Mahmoud is standing by the gate of the house. He wants to see you.” He, too, was wearing his school trousers and holy day jacket, and leather shoes with his clean toes sticking out. His uncombed hair was the colour of cooked turmeric. He had left his bed and the fever. I stood before him on the stone steps. Mahmoud had grown. Now you only looked at one another. The promises of the first laugh were gone. The school's bench was peeling and the flowers in the garden where you both got lost were crushed. Offer him baklava; let him taste Farida's wedding. Share with him the sugar that's dipped in dreams. Put Jamil on the ground and spatter him with the blood of your absent mother.

I had not hated my father enough until now. He did not come. He grew angry and quarrelsome, argued and threatened; he would not consent to this marriage. He stayed far away, but sent a message: “In a few months Farida will be divorced and sitting in front of you again! Munir's real home is in bars and with whores!”

My grandmother did not listen, and did not stop my aunt. My father's voice rang from room to room and in my eardrums. No one heard it but I. I gathered it in my head and approached it. The first time that voice blazed I followed it.

But still the house banished his voice. The nights approached. Baghdad rolled up its sleeves and boiled, and Mahmoud was still boiling before me. Adil's voice: “Dear Huda, I want some sweets.” I have a plate of sweets in my hand. We are standing, Mahmoud is ill, goodlooking, clean. “Why did you get out of bed?”

He did not reply. My hand touched his fingers. Silence and sugar syrup and the stupidity of people passing by.

The women came in, and among the silence the stickiness ran down.

“Congratulations, Huda, God bless your Aunt Farida.”

“Mahmoud – you! How are you now?”

“A little better.”

“But your hand is hot and your face is red.”

Adil turned. He loved Mahmoud and this sister of his.

“You're as pretty as a rose today.”

I would not bow my head. I will always remember this date.

“Your clothes are beautiful, and your hair – when are you going to let your braids down?”

Speak Mahmoud, write, announce, rejoice and don't hold back. I heard Mahmoud's mother's voice behind me:

“Who got you out of bed? Do you want to die and kill me too?”

I left, the baklava in my hands and mouth. Adil grasped Mahmoud's hand: “Go, I'll go with you, I don't like being here alone.”

The two shadows moved away. The call to evening prayers could be heard from the Abu Hanifa Mosque. The incense rose from the recesses of the house, and rosewater was sprinkled on everyone's faces. Prayers were read. The bride set out. Two highbacked chairs were put in the house. Palm branches were stuffed into big tubs and arranged amid the tall white candles, whose wicks, once lit, projected high flames. The little candle holders were on the steps, in the hallways, and the entrances to the rooms. Mint leaves, cardamom seeds, sugar ground with nuts were placed in small gilded glasses. Sweets were thrown at everyone. Umm Suturi's voice trilled, and I watched the movement of her tongue and my aunt's head in its first practice: she was the bride; she was Farida. My grandmother called her in a loud voice which everyone present heard:

“Lord, keep her feet on the path to goodness and comfort. Lord, make her happy and spare me long enough to see her children. Almighty God, blessed be the name of Your messenger Muhammad. Darling, trill with joy; all my dears, where are your voices?

“Umm Suturi, Bahija, Naima, darling Umm Mahmoud, God willing when Iqbal comes back from her trip we shall have a proper wedding.”

The trilling and voices, the commotion, the prayers sprinkled over them all. The shut-in women of the neighbourhood stood and watched from the corners, looking on and resting for a moment. They were unveiled and coloured; their faces painted with red and blue and adorned with gold taken from its boxes. They wore robes and gorgeous Iraqi over-dresses, worked in gold and small jewels.

Najiya coughed and trilled. Bahija shook her middle and, taking my grandmother's hand, danced amidst the din of the women and children. My aunt was ready to collapse. There were a few metres between her room and the courtyard, and she crossed it in minutes. Everyone was a watcher, wanting to see this ambiguity in the face of brides.

Farida was tinted: her face gleamed, and her eyebrows were more fully arched. But she looked ugly! Her teeth shone white, her fine skin was radiant, her lips were the colour of a new beet. Her finger bore the gold wedding ring, and another finger an emerald-coloured one. On her chest lay a pearl necklace, a gift from my grandmother; the pearl earrings were a gift from Aunt Bahija. Her rings and bracelets, and necklaces were from her sisters and sisters-in-law, Naima, Zubayda, Nahida; the buttons on her white dress twinkled, and around her waist was wrapped a wide belt that hung as low as her haunches.

The wedding tiara on her head was entwined with small artificial roses. The veil flowed over her neck, shoulders, and arms, and down her back. She did not know what to do with her hands. Now she raised them; now she laid them down. On her right was Aunt Najiya, to her left Aunt Bahija, and before them Naima kept the path clear and quietly watched the two aunts. The rest of the women walked behind them, stopping or slowing down, reciting Qu'ranic verses and trilling, shooing the children out of the way, bearing cushions and trays of sweets.

So this was the bride. She looked nothing like the original Farida. Idid not like her this way.

I stood near a tray of candles. My aunts and grandmother called out to me: “Come take the tiara from your aunt. Look – even on a wedding day she's stubborn.”

I did not move. I looked down at everyone from the top of the stairs. Beside me, Firdous took a step. I took morsels of the dripping wax and made little balls with faces. I looked up. My mother was coming, wearing a long white silk dress. Her bosom was round and prominent, and her height was exaggerated; she was like a goddess fleeing the earth. She did not turn or speak. She looked only at me as if intoxicated, walking and acting like a woman who knew her private fortune. She walked toward me and touched my face, held my hair in her palms, turned with me, held my hands, pressed them and lifted them up, kissed them and smelled them, and held them to her cheeks, which had grown more plump and healthier, more pink and glowing. Her hair was longer than mine, hanging loose, combed and shiny, clean, and parted in the middle. She wore glittering diamond earrings, which moved whenever she moved. I turned with her; I danced, and we danced. We opened the rooms in the house one by one. We opened the closets, the drawers, the suitcases, the bundles, the boxes, and pulled out all the contents. We opened the windows, walked on tiptoe and sang as if meeting each other for the first time. Our voices rang out and we paid attention and called out to no one else. We did not even recognize the people we knew. She held me by the waist and I embraced her arms; I grew tall, we stretched and grew bigger. Now we had wings, and the great and small houses opened up to us. We did not repeat the same songs or remember what we said. Everything came out of us spontaneously, as if the words knew their cue. She carried me off like a fabulous roc bird, from the house, the lanes, and our street. She ascended and I ascended. I flew and pressed my face against hers, and her eyes saw me as if for the first time. My mother's eyes had grown as large as the ceiling as she slipped out of my arm. I did not see her or pursue her.

Suddenly silence fell. Munir cleared his throat. The trilling grew louder, but with one movement of his hand he silenced them all. He called for my grandmother, and they both entered the room. Only I could hear her cry out: “Oh, God, she's gone, alas, poor Iqbal! Almighty God, I will not resist your wisdom, most merciful of all the merciful.”

“Tell me, Grandmother, is it true my mother is gone?”

Look and let her go. Slam the doors behind you and open the windows of all the houses before you. You piss on the cushions and the gold, on Munir's baldness and Aunt Farida's rear end. You trample the mats and the carpets. If only I could have screamed. It was the twenty-seventh day of the month of Ramadan. “A wedding on this day is a blessing,” my grandmother said.

And a death on this day?

Today the new visitor, Iqbal, is “gone”, today the holy little hairs emerge from her precious flask. God has abandoned me.

Only the prophet is left. Cry out all the curses you have learned by heart in the burial shrine of Naaman Ibn Thabit. Release your amplified scream everywhere, and lift your mother's coffin, containing the future days of both of you.

To the Abu Hanifa Mosque. I ran, fell down, picked myself up, cried, and struck my face with my hand. I was thinking of no one.

I stood with the crowd, the drowsy people of our neighbourhood. The long rows pushed and shoved, people bending, their arms and legs. Their voices mingled together in prayer and supplication: “God, have mercy,” they cried as they revolved around the tomb with its silver dome and scalloped columns. They wandered and trembled. There were children and elderly people, tying green and white scraps of paper to the window of the tomb. Their hands were like flowers scattered by a storm. Mothers and grandmothers lifted up their little boys and girls, and perched them upon their shoulders. They kissed the columns as if they were suckling breasts; their whole bodies craved the blessing. Their voices were hoarse, heavy, delicate and helpless. Their black cloaks undulated over their statures, rose and fell, and returned to their passionate heads. Handkerchiefs, covers, and towels were drawn over their sweaty necks. There was incense I had never smelled before that reminded me of penitence. I did not know where it had been placed, but it stole through the confines of the space and drifted by our noses like the drowsiness of dawn.

Their faces glistened with sweat, fatigue, and prayer. Their backs bent over, then straightened up. Their steps were uncertain and shaky, and their knees knocked together. The worn-out mats and tattered carpets got shoved aside, revealing stained but cool and beautiful tiles.

Their feet were bare, their toes slender, their eyes swollen. Their nails were long and dirty. The space was wide and vast, dozens of times bigger than our house, and in each of the four corners gilded yellow candles burned. They were tall and thick, like the palm trees we played around on holidays, and their high flames rippled every few moments, whenever the ranks of people passed before them. They flared up and the melted wax ran down through the cracks.

The women thronged together, waiting for Mr Aziz who served as the Abu Hanifa Mosque's administrator: the
mitwalli
. The doors to this place were crammed with mothers, widows, and sisters. I cried amongst them: “Mama, Mama,” among the loud prayers to clear the way for the
mitwalli
.

The night of the twenty-seventh of Ramadan, our whole neighbourhood took refuge here. They knelt before the dome and dreamed, stayed awake, listened to the prayers, exulting with them and waiting for the Prophet's hair, hidden all year long in the small room, in the golden casket, in the clean and pure place, by the burial plot behind the mosque. Today it came out of its hiding place, wrapped in a length of thick, perfumed green woollen cloth. The hairs floated in an elongated bottle, whose glass was flattened and slightly bumpy, swimming in rosewater.

Hundreds of hands wanted to kiss and touch it. All these heads glowed and made noise. They bit their lips with joy: “God bless the Prophet Muhammad.”

Their bodies twinkled, and the whole multi-layered throng uttered the Prophet's name in loud reverberation, secretive and pure, that rose from their hearts and permeated the entire district of al-A‘dhamiyya.

Mothers carried their children into the odours, reaching Mr Aziz's palm.

I shoved and pushed, slid through and jumped between the rows of people: “Hajj Aziz, I am coming through! I want to kiss the hair!”

I was carried by the crowd and pushed far back. I was suffocating, striking out at everything about me and before me. I turned about and cried out, “God keep you, hajji.” I clamped down on my braids with my front teeth, and bit down hard on them. I pulled and pushed, came and went, like a maddened wave. My clothes rode up and descended again. I was thirsty. I cried out, “Hajji, my mother is gone!”

Above me, the voices intermingled and flew about. “Your intercession, Prophet of God!” Hands and bodies pushed me, and I crumpled to the ground before the Hajj Aziz. I pulled at the 
mitwalli
's new belted robe and brown cloak with my hands. I turned my face up to him. His face was middle-aged and sad; his beard was uncut, and his eyes as white as my grandmother's skin. His voice was moist: “Go – kiss and pray, because today all prayers are answered. God protect and guide you on the right path.”