The American Granddaughter (2 page)

One or two years. Then things would settle down. I would cleanse my mother’s lungs of the cheap cigarette smoke she’d been inhaling every night, year after year, while she sobbed in her room. I could hear her through the wooden walls. Sometimes she sobbed soundlessly, like a broken TV, but later I would see her wet cheeks and learn that women didn’t cry from loneliness alone, but also from want. Money was another happiness. And I would bring happiness to my mother. I wouldn’t let this opportunity pass me by.

In the days that followed Sahira’s visit, private companies contracted by the Department of Defence started spreading the news in immigrant communities, on the internet, on local TV, and through word of mouth after Sunday mass in the churches of Detroit and Chicago and even in the Shia mosques of Dearborn.

As if at the touch of a magic wand, an endless emporium of bid and counterbid, tips, schemes and three-card tricks laid out its wares. There were those who offered encouragement, applauding and embellishing the experience, and those who looked away, spitting warnings against the betrayal of the land from whose Tigris and Euphrates we had drunk, even if it was for the good of our new land that poured us Coca-Cola morning and night.

The war was about to begin, and there was talk of nothing else. We heard the drums of war beating in newspaper headlines and Congressional speeches, on the flags popping up on front lawns, in the planes passing overhead and the ships assembling their crews to carry them to warmer waters.

So, on one of my identical mornings, instead of starting my automatic round of tidying the house, I sat down, dialled the number of one of the companies recruiting Arabic-speaking translators and left the details required. I wasn’t afraid of the war or of dying or returning with a disability. There was no time to think about such real things in the midst of the raucous carnival of excitement. I repeated after Fox News that I was going on a patriotic mission. I was a soldier stepping forward to help my government, my people and my army, our American army that would bring down Saddam and liberate a nation from its suffering.

I pulled into the spacious parking lot in front of Wal-Mart, but instead of getting out of the car, I sat still and watched the snowflakes on the windshield. I no longer needed to buy a blouse or a new pair of shoes. From now on my clothes would be different. Resting my arms on the steering wheel, I saw a soldier in army uniform walking across the parking lot under the falling snow, heading towards the honour that awaited her only a dream or two away, there, in the country of my birth.

The poor people of Iraq. They won’t believe their eyes when they finally open onto freedom. Even old men will become boys again when they sup from the milk of democracy and taste of the life I lead here. These were the kind of thoughts glowing in my head and almost lighting up my car. The glow intensified in unison with the idea of the one hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars, the price of my precious language, the price of my blood.

What did patriotism feel like? A load of nonsense that never meant much to me, neither during my Iraqi childhood nor during my American youth. Then came 9/11 and it was like an electric shock sending its energy through the bodies of all my friends and neighbours. We turned into creatures that shook and trembled, emitting sounds of panic and indignation, clasping hands above heads or using them to cover mouths. ‘Oh my God ... Oh my God,’ ceaselessly repeated, as if the rest of the language had been forgotten and these three words were all that remained.

I had woken up that morning, as usual, to the sound of my mother coughing in her bedroom. It wasn’t yet nine. Like a robot executing its pre-programmed morning routine, I headed for the kitchen to put water in the electric coffee machine; then to the living room to tidy the newspapers and cushions; then to Yazan’s room to wake him up; then back to the kitchen to prepare his school lunch, before finally settling with my coffee – cradling the mug with both hands – in front of the TV to watch the news. Things that I did half-asleep, my hands moving without the need to engage my brain. But on that day I went straight from my bed to the TV and reached for the remote while I was still standing. I don’t know what impulse diverted me from my usual routine. Perhaps someone had put a bug in the robot’s programme the night before.

I watched a plane crashing into a tower. There was another tower burning right next to it on the screen.

I froze where I stood. I knew these two buildings. I knew New York. Every American did. Whether or not she’d ever been there. I had visited New York, stood in front of her twin towers and had a bite to eat on the plaza that led to one of them. Yes, there used to be an Iranian selling kebabs from a cart at the foot of the World Trade Center.

I remained frozen, not blinking, not breathing, not registering what I was seeing. The only thing moving was my finger pressing the remote. I turned up the volume to find out if this was a movie or a special effects scene being shot, but my eyes fell immediately on the phrase ‘breaking news’ at the bottom of the screen. America was on fire before my eyes, and I could smell the ash. The name of this movie would have to be
The Towering Inferno
.

A week later, the FBI was recruiting Arabic translators and advertising a web address for applications. I read the advert and felt a mixture of vulnerability and enthusiasm. What could I do to help my country in its adversity? How could a powerless immigrant like me serve the great United States of America? It was impossible to remain indifferent after witnessing that inferno, impossible to be content with my small hopes and to carry on living with my mother’s coughing and my brother’s drugged stupor. Quickly, without thinking too much – which would have changed little, anyway – I filled out an online application. But it wasn’t a rash decision. I knew exactly what I was getting into.

After a week I received a phone call from Washington DC to go and take the assessment. Now, one thing I was confident about was the flawlessness of my Arabic. I’d caught the language like a contagion from my Assyrian father. He never used to buy me toys suitable for my age, because our favourite game was Poetry Pursuit. He would recite a verse of poetry that ended, say, on the letter
nun
, and I would have to reply with a line starting with the same letter. Sometimes when I got stuck I would make something up, and he would pinch my earlobe and repeat the religious saying, ‘Those who cheat are not of us,’ then add, ‘but exceptions can be made for little poetesses.’

Apart from Calvin, I mostly mixed with Arabs. ‘You, my darling, represent the American minority in our midst.’ He liked that joke, just as he liked everything I said, mostly. My Calvin, my poor, unassuming, drunk Calvin, unemployed most months of the year and who, when I raised my voice in conversation with friends, would think we were fighting.

‘Don’t worry, my dear. We’re discussing politics.’

‘Politics, always politics!’

At home I never heard my mother speak anything but Iraqi Arabic, although my father wanted us to learn Chaldean too, his mother tongue. English remained the language of the street, work and the news. We would contort our jawbones and speak it the moment we stepped outside the house. Our cars took us and our English around from street to street and from mall to mall. Then they brought us back to the zinc-covered garages in front of the house, where we changed language again and slipped indoors.

‘How come your daughter hasn’t forgotten the language of your country?’ the neighbours would ask when they heard me chatting on the phone to Sahira, and my mother would smile and look at me with a pride that bordered on gratitude. How she wished she could have given me the surname of her respected Mosul family: Zeina Behnam
Saour
. If only my destiny had led there and I’d married one of my maternal cousins. Or if I’d carried my mother’s surname alongside my father’s on my ID, like Spanish women did. Oh, the hopes of
Sitt
Batoul, and her stubbornness and her constant arguing with my dad. Wasn’t he the one who deserved credit for my language, that jewel around my neck that was the source of her pride?

Something, perhaps divine good fortune, stopped me forgetting how to read and write in Arabic after we left Baghdad. There was, of course, Hermes, my sensitive friend from Alqosh, whom I considered my most faithful ‘girlfriend’. A poet in the style of Nizar Qabbani, Hermes wrote plays and stories in Arabic and asked me for feedback on what he wrote. Lots of books and novels came for him by mail, ordered from a bookshop in Dearborn or from neelwafurat.com online. He’d devour them like fast food then pass them on to me. I loved to read slowly, savouring the weight of every word. I would read aloud, as my grandfather would do when I was little, holding the newspaper in front of him while my grandmother listened. My father, too, liked to read aloud. That was his job, and it put food on our table, but then that turned into poison.

As in the homes of all immigrants in our community, the corners of our apartment – one of four apartments that made up a derelict wooden building in Seven Mile – were also piled high with cassette tapes and CDs of Arabic songs by Fairuz, Um Kulthum and Kazim Al-Sahir. Plus, I had my gang in Detroit. The movie about us would have to be called
Zeina’s Gang
.
That’s how my mom referred to my group of Lebanese, Iraqi, Palestinian and Syrian friends. There was one Egyptian woman among us, and she never tired of talking about the plays of Mohammad Sobhy, which meant nothing to me at the time. My gang met for dinner on the first Saturday of every month at one of the Arabic restaurants in the city. We chatted and laughed, ate
tabouleh
,
mejaddareh
and
shawermeh
, and danced to the rhythms of
oud
and
tabla
. That was the one evening that Calvin eagerly waited to be rid of me.

So of course I passed the language test.

I waited for them to contact me but they took their time and the war started without me. I heard on the news that the president had secured the support of Congress. Who cared about the United Nations? What nations anyway, and what bullshit? With the start of operations, we all became slaves to the TV screens. We were addicted to the news and never got our fill. If you nodded off in front of the screen, dozens of hands would shake you awake. If you sleep, you miss out on history!

Despite my enthusiasm for the war, I experienced a strange kind of pain that was hard to define. Was I a hypocrite, a two-faced American? A dormant Iraqi like those sleeping cells of spies planted in an enemy land and lying in wait for years? Why did I suddenly go all Mother Theresa – the namesake of my patron saint – over the Iraqi victims? I collapsed into myself as I watched Baghdad being bombed and the columns of smoke rising after each American attack. It was like watching myself use my mom’s cigarette lighter to set my own hair on fire, or cut my own skin with my nail scissors, or slap my left cheek with my right hand.

Why couldn’t I sit still for five minutes? I told that other who was also me that there were terrified children and innocent civilians dying in Baghdad. I told her those children could be the children of your classmates from school, and the dead civilians could be the sons of your uncles or the daughters of your aunts. That charred body at the entrance of Al-Karkh Hospital might be Suheil, the son of your neighbour
Sitt
Lamiaa, the boy who tried to kiss you on the roof of your house in Ghadir. Have you forgotten your very first kiss, on the day you’d gone up to the roof to watch the solar eclipse, clutching in your hands the cardboard sunglasses that had come with the day’s newspaper? You were not yet ten.

The TV wouldn’t stop charging us with emotion. It pumped us with adrenaline as it carried images of smoke and the noise of explosions, scenes of men running to escape death, and of boys yellow-faced with panic but waving victory signs to the cameras all the same. I watched people enter government buildings and leave with tables and chandeliers and chairs and plastic plants carried on their heads or their backs. Everyone racing for a share of the pillage. Some laughed at the camera when they realised they’d been caught unawares, but the majority looked away and rushed on. Baghdad had become a free-for-all. Iraq was leaderless.

But in spite of everything I saw, I wasn’t afraid or tempted to withdraw. So when Sahira came and threw that burning coal into my lap, I applied again. I didn’t wait long this time, but soon received a phone call from a man who didn’t introduce himself. He gave me a sentence to translate into Arabic as a quick phone test, and asked a few questions about my age, qualifications, health and social and financial status. He wanted to make sure the applicant wasn’t in debt and just after the money. I answered all of his questions calmly and with few words, trying all the time to visualise his face. I don’t know why I attached the face of Sean Connery to his voice: I was applying for work as an interpreter, not as a secret agent. It seemed that my calmness persuaded him that I was suitable for the job, because he asked me to come in for a meeting and, two days later, sent me a plane ticket to the capital.

I said goodbye to Mom and Jason and travelled on a grey morning to Washington DC, joining dozens of other Arabs who had applied for the same work. From there I called my dad in Arizona and told him that I was going to Baghdad. At first he said nothing, then he mumbled a few words from which I gathered that he didn’t like the idea, not because of the war but because he imagined that his death sentence was still in effect and feared they might arrest me in his place.