The Girl from Baghdad (23 page)

At the beginning of January, a letter from Baghdad finally arrived. Babička read it first, without letting us touch it. Mum said she was doing well. She had found a solution and was taking care of some business. She said she would return in fifteen days but didn't give any more details. I suspected she was lying so that we wouldn't
worry. All that mattered now was that she would come back soon and our grandmother would have to treat us better.

I was determined to endure Babička's meanness until Mum returned. Fifteen days wasn't very long. Nevertheless, she seemed to want to take every advantage of my mother's absence.

‘You still haven't finished with those shirts?' she scolded as she neared the washbasin. I had been hand-scrubbing dirty clothes for hours in ice-cold water. I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. There was a mountain of clothes to wash and it had taken an entire afternoon.

‘Get a move on. You haven't even cleaned the rabbit cages yet. You have to do them before dinner.'

‘I'll do them tomorrow. My back is hurting, I've been working all day,' I objected.

‘And me? What do you think I've been doing? You should be ashamed of yourself! You should be thanking me. Your mother took off and left you here. As if I don't have enough problems. Maybe you think I'm made of money? If I hadn't kept you here, you and your sisters would be out on the street!'

‘We've never asked you for anything!' I screamed back at her. There were so many moments when I would hold my rage back in, but this time I lost control.

She seized me by the arm and marched me to the ladder that led to the attic. The manhole door was enormous:
a green timber door locked with a deadbolt from the outside. Babička unlatched the lock and forced me inside the attic. It wasn't the first time she had done this.

There was no light and it smelt horrible. I heard rats scurrying around and felt their furry bodies brush against my clothes. I yelled out, pounding on the door with my fists, begging anybody to let me out, but no-one came. Dejected, I lay on the hay-covered floor, rigid and watchful. I was terrified by even the slightest sound, convinced the rats would gnaw at me if I fell asleep. Babička knew very well how scared I was of those filthy creatures. I stayed in there for hours. The deep anger I felt towards her in those moments was gradually replaced by a numb despair. I just wanted to get away. As far away as possible.

In February, during the long winter afternoons, we were imprisoned in the house by the ice and snow. Four months on, Mum had not come back. In her letters she was always very evasive and continued to postpone her return. ‘I'll be back in a month,' she would write. ‘We'll be back in each other's arms soon.' But it was never true. I started thinking that she wouldn't come back. When she wrote saying she had found a job in a bakery, I lost all hope. If she had gone back to live in Baghdad, why
couldn't we go too? Had she seen Dad again? Had she decided to free herself of us? Although I hypothesised every possible reason, I still couldn't understand.

I felt responsible for little Linda and was worried about Klara. She hardly ate anything, and had become very thin; she looked like a haunted creature. I had to defend my sisters against Babička's explosive rages, as she continued to punish us if we didn't obey her immediately.

She was a woman who liked to use corporal punishment. Sometimes she hit us with a reed, leaving whip marks on our skin. If my mother had been there, she never would have allowed this to happen.

Some days I asked myself where I would find the strength to go on. I looked at my blistered hands and thought, if only I were just a bit older, I would take my sisters away. But where could we go? We didn't even have the money to escape to Aunt Zdenka's house. Zdenka, my mother's older sister, was separated from her husband and lived in the north with her daughter, Iveta. Even if we had the money to go there, such movement was banned by the government. There was no way out. The thought of having lost my mother while being left with my vindictive grandmother had thrown me into a sense of complete desperation I had never felt before.

At night, I sank into dreamless sleep. In the morning, all the negative thoughts, the pain came flooding back.
Without our mother, there was no reason to hope. There had to be some place in the world where we could live peacefully. But where?

I opened my eyes in the dimly lit room and saw her seated at the foot of the bed.

‘Mum!' I yelled, hugging her tightly. Klara woke too and ran to her. We were speechless, our hearts beating happily at being reunited.

My mother returned without warning, just as she had left. Her arrival was as if spring had begun at that instant. Life was technicolour again.

Those eight months in Baghdad, she told us, had meant she was able to gain custody of us through the court. She had surreptitiously lived in our house, barricading herself inside so as not to be discovered. She had seen Dad again. They met in front of the judge. Dad was contemptuous and offensive. He had come with his new wife, and they regarded my mother with arrogant smirks. In the end, the judge ruled in Mum's favour, going against the Iraqi custom that children should remain in the custody of the father.

Mum had returned even thinner than before, now completely emaciated. I told her how Babička had
treated us while she was away and begged her not to leave us again.

‘It'll never happen again, Michelle. We'll always be together, I promise. I had to do this for us, do you understand?' Mum justified her long absence.

I nodded my head to say yes, even though I didn't fully comprehend what she'd done for us.

That evening, seated in front of the fireplace, I saw her throw some things into the flames and watched them burn slowly. Stepping closer, I discovered she was burning our Iraqi passports. I reached my mother, embracing her, and we stared into the fire. The flames turned a bluish hue as they engulfed the paper. Our prayer rugs had suffered the same fate a few months earlier; we had brought them with us from Baghdad and Babička had burned them as I watched helplessly. In just a few minutes, what was left of our past turned to ash. I suspected I wouldn't see my father or my birth city again.

My mother turned to me and held me tight. Perhaps she hadn't wanted me to witness such a dramatic severance with our past.

‘I know you don't want to live here. If I could, I would take you to live elsewhere, but we have nowhere else to go. The good news is I'll immediately start looking for a job and, as soon as we can, we'll rent a house just for us,' Mum reassured me, squeezing me tighter.

In mid July I had permission to stay with Aunt Zdenka. I would stay with her for three weeks and would finally taste freedom again. Aunt Zdenka was very pretty – curvy, dark, and very feminine. She looked a lot like Sophia Loren. She held herself proudly and always gave the impression she was a strong woman, someone destined for greatness. Aunt Zdenka hosted me willingly, as her daughter had left the house to get married.

She lived in Ustì: a small, leafy city, a few kilometres from the German border, divided into two parts by the River Elbe. The city centre had kept its charm, even during this tough period of the Communist regime. We spent the afternoons walking through the narrow lanes or seated at an outdoor café, enjoying the mild climate. It certainly wasn't like the hot Baghdad summer, but, far away from Babička's oppressive presence, I was finally able to breathe again.

My aunt knew about her mother's tough character, the beatings and punishments. She advised that Mum had to get out of there as soon as possible.

‘There's no future here, Michelle, believe me,' she said to me one day, speaking to me for the first time as one speaks to an adult. ‘People don't have ambition in this country. Girls go from one prison to another: from their parents' house to their husband's. We're so used to
being subdued we don't even dream anymore. I had to get married in order to get away from my mother's house, but it took twenty years. It's unbelievable that it's still this way – it's not right. It can't be the only way. You girls need to fight for what you deserve: dignity and freedom.' Her eyes shone with an intense light as she added, ‘You're different. I can see it in your eyes. Get away from here as soon as you can. Build a life for yourself elsewhere, if you want to be happy. Look for your place in the world. You have your entire life in front of you.'

Being young, I didn't completely understand what she was trying to explain to me at the time, but her words rooted themselves inside me and took hold.

It didn't take me long to make a few friends in Ustì, teenaged boys and girls who lived in the same building as Aunt Zdenka. My aunt gave me permission to go out and was always curious to know what happened when I came back home. She wanted me to tell her about the boys I liked. It wasn't that she wasn't protective; she simply trusted me, believing I was a responsible adult. I gathered she might have found something of her lost adolescence in our closeness. We often chatted till the early hours of the morning. I felt like I had finally found a like-minded soul.

When I returned to my grandmother's place, I felt older, different. I felt surer of myself and resolved to no longer put up with her mistreatment.

But Babička had other ideas. ‘Is this what you think? Now that you're almost sixteen years old, you think you're a grown-up? Good. Starting from tomorrow you'll also have all of the obligations of an adult. Before going to school, feed the rabbits and chickens. And when you get back, rake all the leaves from the courtyard. And don't take three hours like you usually do. There's also ironing to be done –'

‘I can't stand you anymore!' I screamed. ‘I'm not your servant. Why do I have to do everything?'

She stepped towards me and slapped me hard across the face. Then, jabbing me with her finger, she hissed, ‘Listen here, little miss. Now that your mother has found a job, she's never around to take care of you. I break my back for you girls all the time. Start doing what I say or there's going to be trouble. Now don't make me lose any more time. Grab a bag and come with me. The truck has already arrived and if we're not quick, the neighbours will get the best pieces of meat.'

Full of resentment, I followed her, my cheek still flaming.

The butcher's old truck parked at the bus station once a week. Fortunately there wasn't much of a crowd today. Babička sent me forward with the precious coupon. With this we were entitled to one ration of meat, but only those who arrived first could choose the most favoured cuts.

‘Make sure that he gives you a nice big piece,' I heard her say, as I walked towards the front. Then, overtaking me, she snatched the coupon from my hand, and pushed her way through the crowd. ‘Oh, come on. Stand aside. You let him cheat you every time,' she muttered as she passed by me. She started arguing with the butcher. Finally she emerged with a yellow paper package.

After we had come back from the store, where we did the rest of the grocery shopping, she started grumbling. ‘Grocery shopping has become a fight, worse than when the Nazis were here – damn them! For a kilo of bread, I have to wait in line for half an hour. And all because of you four and those other two good-for-nothings I have in this house.