Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (53 page)

Cairo, 5/10/1978

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Beneficent

Dear, respected father Abd al-Salam Muhammad Hasan:

After greetings and best wishes:

It gives me pleasure to write this letter to you, expressing my love and longing for all of you. Now then, dear father Abd al-Salam, I have received your precious letter and the letter of my wife Fadiya. We praise God for your good health and ask the Almighty to keep you and preserve you always and forever.

My dear father, I miss you just as plants miss water and the sick miss medicine, and the child misses his mother’s loving embrace.

Dear father, I would like to tell you that the writer of this letter is Mr. Abd al-Basit Ali Shukr, from the house of Ali Shukr who send their greetings, especially Ramadan, Muhammad, Gum‘a, Eid, and Ustaz Ahmad, and Sitt Umm Ramadan. A thousand greetings to you and to all the people in al-Khalsa, Diyali, and al-Kut. I would also like to tell you that we are all well, thank God, and we lack nothing except seeing you. From here we send greetings from brother Qurni and his wife and brother Rabie and the esteemed mother, a thousand greetings, and brother Auf and all the brothers old and
young. My own greetings to Sitt Fadiya, my wife, and my dear son. A thousand million greetings. May God make it possible that I come to you very soon, God willing. By the way, I would like to tell you that this is the third letter I have sent.

Writer of the letter:
Oweis Ali Shukr

I had taken that letter from Fadiya, daughter of Amm Abd al-Salam, to include it in the book on al-Khalsa. She was visiting her family and hoping that her husband would join her at the project.

I felt a sting in my chest. I remembered Haytham. It was the time for his first nursing of the day. I looked at my watch. It was close to dawn. I got up and opened the window. A cool breeze sneaked into my room. I stood watching the thin threads of daylight as they were making their way to the Baghdad sky that I loved. The city in the distance was awaiting an Iranian rocket or a shell, ending one era and beginning others. I remembered reading how the Mongols overran Baghdad and the rivers of blood and the Tigris that was filled with books and manuscripts and the palaces that were razed to the ground. I asked Baghdad: What’s your story, Baghdad? Could this land really be accursed?

I said to myself, “Impossible. This is the land of Sumerian writing, of the Hammurabi code, the land of Akkad, Ashur, and Babylon. I remembered the Iraqi mawwal that always began with “Yawayli” or “Woe is me.” So, was it the land of tragedy? But tragedy is a human construct, here or in Greece or India or in Karbala. It is man who brings misery upon himself and others.

I looked at the huge mess in my room. Books and papers were everywhere, plates of food that had not been touched since yesterday, tea cups, a juice can, an almost empty glass of milk on the nightstand. I arranged the books that I would take with me to Egypt and packed my clothes together with the important papers in the big suitcase. I left space in the smaller bag for what I would be using the day before my flight back as well as things I’d need during the flight.
After a warm bath I felt I could face my long day at al-Khalsa, then the trip back home—God knew how that would go.

Tariq Mandour arrived. I told him about the trip to al-Khalsa and took him to the car and introduced him to Layla.

On our way I told Layla, “I hope the war has not affected the village. I am optimistic especially if Engineer Mahdi al-Mu’ezzin is still in charge of the project. I think he is old enough to be past the age of conscription.”

She said, “They are conscripted wherever they are serving. The village is still receiving the attention and care of the party and I know that its inhabitants have been settled there for a long time.”

I said, “Yes. The village was inaugurated in 1976. It is entirely inhabited by Egyptian families, each of which has been given twenty dunams and a house, plus a monthly salary of thirty dinars that they get for the first few years until they have managed to reclaim the land and live off it. Then land ownership for each of the families was raised to twenty-two dunams and, as the project expands each family’s holding will rise to thirty dunams.”

She said, “I know that you’ve published two books on the subject.”

I said, “They considered it an experimental model of Arab economic integration: land and money from Iraq and peasants from Egypt.”

Tariq Mandour said, “Why has the project stopped? I thought it was just the beginning, that it would be followed by other villages?”

I said, “That was the idea. The target was fifty thousand families, with five members in each. But despite the success of the peasants and the prosperity of the village, the Iraqi and the Egyptian sides did not agree and so the project came to a standstill. As I learned later on, the Iraqis tried duplicating the experiment with Moroccan peasants but the project failed quickly. Who knows? Maybe in the future, after the war is over, we will make an effort to revive it.”

Layla said, “I feel so lazy today. The sun is so beautiful we really needed a trip.”

I told her, “Come on, get some shut-eye. We have an hour before we get there.”

Tariq told me how he ended up settling in Suleimaniya. He said, “A friend took me to a restaurant whose owner he knew. One week later I had decided to leave it, but the bitterness of my experience with unemployment in Baghdad convinced me to be patient. One evening I went with my friend to a cafeteria on a mountaintop. There I got to know the owner. I don’t know how we became friends so fast. I visited him frequently, then he offered me a job. I discovered that he owned several cafés. As time went by, he gave me financial supervision of most of his businesses. Here when they trust someone they give him everything. And here I am: successful and happy and I work night and day, especially after the beginning of the war and conscription of the young men.”

I said, “That’s the Tariq I know.”

The news of my arrival at the village traveled fast as usual. Engineer Mahdi and the young women working at the agricultural unit came to meet me. I went into Amm Wadie’s house and many people from the village followed me. I learned that the young bride had given birth to two children. I also met Abd al-Hayy and Zaynab and learned that they had finally settled down after he bought a Toyota in which he hauled his produce to the market. She told me that Abu Ahmad was helping them in farming the land. Amm Ahmad insisted that his wife bake some fitir mishaltit for us to eat with them. His son, Gamal Abdel Nasser, came with his sister and greeted us. I said, “Do you know who Abdel Nasser is?”

He said, “The president.”

Layla said, “Bravo!”

I finally took my leave saying that I had a tight schedule and promised them to come back to Baghdad at the next available opportunity.

On the way back Layla said, “I had no idea!”

I said, “The dream stays alive so long as people like that are still there.”

Tariq said, “I have to go to the train station to catch the train. Please reassure the family that I am fine and that things couldn’t be better.”

At
al-Jumhuriya
newspaper we were received very warmly. Friends came and gathered around us asking about details of life in Egypt and reminiscing about Hilmi Amin. I asked the editor in chief to tell me where I could find Hilmi Amin’s articles. He said, “That’s an impossible task. Leave it for scholars studying the press of this era.”

I said, “But his family wants to keep them and perhaps reprint them in a book.”

He said, “Try to save the articles he wrote for
Alif Baa
magazine, since they were published over a short period. I’ll send one of the colleagues with you to help you get them from the archives.”

After great effort we were able to find most of the articles. We left exhausted as the night was chasing away remnants of the day.

Layla said, “You don’t have time to pack. You must get some rest. I’ll leave you now and come back at 10:00 p.m. to arrive at the airport in time.”

I threw myself onto the bed and was soon fast asleep. I woke up feeling sharp pain in my chest. I found that I was soaked in sticky milk. I ordered a room service dinner and got into the water in the bathtub. The milk I pumped out of my breasts came to only three centimeters. I must be tired, that’s all. Tomorrow there will be more milk, God willing. I made sure my suitcase was closed well and the box of books was sturdy enough for the trip. Hilmi Amin’s memoirs were still on the nightstand next to the bed. I picked them up and stretched out on the pillows and began to read before putting the notebook with Anhar’s memoirs in my carry-on bag and taking them to Egypt.

The Bitter Honey of Full Maturity

The ultimate love,

Flowing from my heart

To the tips of my fingers,

The love that mixes with blood

In the arteries, veins, and all the cells

Resting and coming to with the pulse,

With inhaling and exhaling,

With reveries and dreams

Accompanying the beats of the heart

Turning into percussion beats

Of the song of our love.

I take refuge in writing to you to alleviate my sadness over my family’s departure, a departure that reminds me of my inability to go back to Egypt. I ask myself if I will see my daughters again. And that young bright girl that came to me as I prepare for my last journey from this earth: how many years that I don’t have does she need to grow into her own as a young lady? Will Rana recognize me next time after long months of separation? I wait for the hours, and bleeding, count the seconds until you knock on the door and I open it, having dimmed the light just as you like and prepared the nest of our love after a long deprivation. You come in, opening your arms to embrace me, and give me a long kiss as you lead me to our room, telling me while laughing, “If you betray me, that’s how I’ll kill you.” You move your clenched fists pretending to break my neck. You push me onto the bed, forcing me to lie on my back. I laugh and gasp as I cough, shouting, “The cigarette, Anhar!”

You shower me with kisses and you squeeze me passionately. We spend minutes wriggling and twisting on the bed. I reach my hand between your thighs and feel a sticky liquid. The surprise stings me. I ask you to calm down until I light a cigarette. I ask you where you’ve come from, and you tell me a long story about guests who have come from Kubaysh, your village, cousins who are staying at your house. You complain about your fiancé who no longer leaves your house, claiming he has to keep the cousins company, you tell me you’ve tried many times to end that story by breaking the engagement, but you can’t because everyone is taking his side.

I lick my wounds and slowly swallow my pain as you keep talking and talking, placing your head on my belly, which I didn’t bother to cover despite the light filling the whole room. You bring me tea. I ask if we can drink it in the office, but you refuse adamantly and persist in rubbing against my body and touching and feeling while I am away, far away, being consumed by jealousy whose fires put me face to face with a reality in which I see nothing but betrayal.

Then I tell myself: Wake up, Hilmi. Enough. Get up from your fall. She is not yours. She is not yours regardless of all the passionate love she professes for you. You’ve lost your compass and you no longer know where you’re going. A young girl has played you for a fool: all she wants is to get through you to the elite circle around you. You are her ticket to society and her password to rise to the top. Get up, old man. Stop this farce, protect your dignity and your status! Don’t fall for it! Don’t fall!

You finish the tea, then you begin to take off your clothes. You reach for my shirt, trying to take it off. I cling to it, but you don’t give me a chance. You sing the line from Umm Kulthum’s song, “Except that the fire of longing keeps burning brighter day after day.”

You hold my palms and guide them between your thighs, twisting, announcing a desire that has gone out of control. I lose control over my body and my organs. The bitter taste in my mouth turns into sweet honey as your tongue plunges into my mouth. I start looking for the rooster’s crest and I find it oozing like a flowing river, wetting your upper thighs. I jump from the bed, cursing you loudly.

“Clean yourself of … of him. Two weeks? You couldn’t bear to wait two weeks? Fifteen days, my friend? The one I thought was the most pure?”

I swallowed with difficulty as I coughed, “Where’ve you come from now? You were with him?”

“With whom?”

“You sleep with him in your house, in the midst of your family? You seized the opportunity of him being there and you invited him to your room. It was you who invited him, right? It was you!”

“Who?”

“Your lover. The lover you say you can’t stand. You come to me with his vestiges still on your body?”

“Have you gone crazy?”

“No. I just woke up.”

“You accuse me of betraying you when I haven’t slept one minute since yesterday because I missed you so much! You’re hiding your own satiation after the days of love you spent with Fayza.”

“Look at your body: what’s all this wetness?”

“It comes from my own desire and nobody else’s.”

“You are a liar. You lie all the time. You’ve deceived even me, the experienced old man. Yes, the
old
man. But now I say no. I can kick you out of my life, banish you.”

“Please. This is all untrue. I love you. So why are you pushing us into this abyss? You’ll regret what you’re doing.”

“So, now
you
are threatening me. Has it come to this? I don’t want to see you again. Go, there is no work for you today.”

You went to the office. I heard you crying for one whole hour. I clung to my bed, lighting one cigarette after another. I heard your footsteps going toward the apartment door. I got up in alarm, saying, “You’ll come tomorrow on time, your regular time. Work is work. Otherwise you know I know how to get you.”

I heard you saying in a dejected voice, “I’ll be here.” I wanted you to stay, but you, in your naïveté, opened the door, then looked over your shoulder at me in humiliation, and left.