The Girl from Baghdad (26 page)

We stopped in the middle of the empty square. I couldn't mask my sadness. I liked being with him and I didn't want him to go away. He looked unhappy too.

‘I can't believe I'll be on a plane in four hours,' he sighed. Then he pulled me towards him. ‘Come here.
Do you know how much I'm going to miss you?' He gave me a long kiss. Then, staring into my eyes, he asked, ‘Why don't you come with me?'

It was a completely mad proposal. ‘I can't …'

‘Why not? You can stay with me. If it's because of your job, you can find one in Italy too. Or perhaps something even better. You're too pretty to be a shop assistant.' He kissed me one more time.

We started walking again, towards the Charles Bridge. The reflections of the statues lining the bridge shone on the river.

‘Well?' he said, breaking the silence. His question had left me dumbstruck and continued to make my head spin. ‘Have you decided to come?'

‘Are you serious?' I asked him dubiously. I didn't know whether he was kidding or not.

‘Of course. You've told me a million times you want to leave this country. Why not now?'

‘I don't know. Let me think about it a bit.' I knew with certainty that I would eventually escape this bleak country, where I had no future. It wasn't very important where I would go, and it was something I hadn't really thought about. So why not take a chance? Why not Italy?

The dream of getting out had never seemed so close to realisation.

The day of my eighteenth birthday, I arrived at Babička's house with two giant suitcases. I had moved all of my things from the filthy studio apartment, bidding farewell to it forever. My mother welcomed me, surprised and delighted.

‘What are all these bags? Are you coming back to live with us? What joy, you've been so missed,' she exclaimed, wrapping her arms around my neck. I squeezed myself against her, a lump in my throat. ‘Why do you look so serious?' She looked puzzled. ‘We'll be okay. Your sisters will be so happy.'

Linda and Klara gave me big hugs, shouting, ‘Happy birthday!' They didn't know how significant that day was for me, in so many ways.

They had baked me a cake and gave me presents. Babička had taught Linda how to knit and she had made me a pretty, colourful scarf. Grandpa hugged me tightly, saying, ‘You're really a woman now. Eighteen is an important age. Now you're an adult.'

‘I know,' I replied without revealing too much emotion, even if my heart was pounding.

I hadn't slept at all the night before. I had piled up all the money I had saved on the mattress and counted it repeatedly. I stared at the ceiling for hours, thinking over and over about what I had to say to my mother.

I called her into the bedroom before dinner. We were alone. She entered, and her eyes fixed immediately on the untouched luggage.

‘You haven't unpacked your bags. You must be tired. I'll give you a hand,' she said as she reached for the clasp.

‘No, Mum, I don't need to unpack.'

‘What are you saying? Your clothes will be crushed. It would be better to hang them in the wardrobe.' She opened the doors and started to shuffle around the clothes inside. ‘We'll need to make a little room, now that you're back.'

‘Mum, really, it's not necessary … because I'm leaving again soon.' There. I'd said it. She spun around quickly.

‘What does that mean?'

‘I'm not coming back to live here. As soon as they issue my visa, I'm going to Italy.'

My mother sat down on the edge of the bed. She looked confused, unbelieving. I went on, ‘I've worked a lot and put away some money. I decided a while ago. I need to do it. I really hope you understand.'

‘Are you sure?' she asked, under her breath. ‘This all seems so rushed …'

‘I've already waited such a long time. It's been such a difficult year in the city. But I promised myself that I would do this as a present to myself when I turned eighteen.'

‘And what gift is that? To go far away?'

‘I want to try and change my life. If I stay here, what can life offer me? Even you left, twenty years ago. I know you of all people can understand. I'll only be away for a while,' I said as I reached out to squeeze her hand. She stayed silent, staring at the ground.

I started again, ‘I at least have the right to try. Don't you want to wish me luck?'

‘But where will you go? And why Italy? You don't know anyone. You don't speak the language. How will you live in a foreign country alone?' she enquired worriedly.

‘I have a friend in Rome. He's going to look after me, at least in the beginning, I hope. He'll help me find a job. You'll see, it'll all be okay. As soon as I get settled, I'll call. Or I'll send you a letter.'

Mum gazed into my eyes. Then she threw her arms around my neck and squeezed me tightly. She cupped my face between her hands and said, ‘I don't like that you're going so far away … I can't even think about it.'

‘It's the right thing to do, Mum.'

‘Try to at least take care of yourself.' She drew me close to her once again, as if already stocking up on hugs. It would be just a matter of weeks until I flew to Italy.

I sat down next to the plane window and fastened my seatbelt. The last of my savings were in my purse. It wasn't much, but I knew I would manage somehow. I thought of the last time I had seen Baghdad – the kingdom of my childhood – three years before, from a porthole identical to this one. I also thought of all of the planes I had taken in my life, all of the farewells, all the departures. But I felt this was a start. Who knew if even my mother, on her first trip to Iraq many years ago, had felt this same strange brew of fear and happiness? In the pit of my stomach, I could feel the weight of the adventure that lay before me. I gripped the armrest as the ribbon of asphalt quickly slipped by beneath the plane. Then the wheels left the ground and we were
airborne. The plane rose higher and higher, crossing the dense, grey clouds of the Prague sky. It was pointed straight towards the sun, which suddenly warmed my face.

I was suddenly filled with expectation and excitement as the plane flew into Italy. I had left Czechoslovakia, possibly forever, travelling to a new and unknown country.

I wondered what my new life would be like, and I imagined a romantic love story with Giovanni. The prince who comes to pick his princess up from the airport on a white horse and takes her to his castle on a hill with a huge garden full of palm trees. But will there be palm trees in Italy? I wasn't too sure … I was in love with him; he was so kind, gentle and honest.

The passenger next to me, an ageing man, noticed the photo of Giovanni I was holding between my fingers. It was a photo taken at his high school graduation.

‘Is he your boyfriend?'

‘Yes,' I whispered, as I felt the heat from my cheeks turning red.

‘He's a good-looking guy. Is he Italian?'

‘Yes. He's going to pick me up at the airport in Rome and take me to his beautiful white house surrounded by palm trees,' I said in a decisive tone, as if to convince myself that was how things would turn out. ‘Are there palm trees in Italy?' I asked the old man.

‘Of course there are. I'm from Sicily and there are lots of beautiful palms there.'

I felt relieved. If worst comes to worst then we'll go and live in Sicily instead of Rome, I thought to myself.

The captain's voice announced that we would be landing in the capital in less than twenty minutes and that we had to fasten our seatbelts for landing.

I arrived at Fiumicino Airport with my heart the lightest it had ever been in the past few years. Minutes later, it was shattered.

‘You can't stay here. Do you understand what I am saying?' The policewoman kept repeating this question, pronouncing her words very clearly.

I had guessed perfectly well what she was saying to me, namely that something wasn't right. But she insisted: ‘If you don't have anyone in this country to put you up then we have to send you home.'

I tried to explain to her in English that a boy – Giovanni – was waiting for me at the airport exit, and that she should let me pass through customs.

‘A boy? Maybe an Italian who has come to take you away on his white horse! You poor deluded girl! There is no boy waiting for you outside.' She laughed in my face.

I didn't understand the exact meaning of those words, but I grasped the aggressive and offensive sarcasm.

‘He is there! His name is Giovanni and we are going to get married!' I replied, trying to hold back tears.

‘Is that right?! You're going to get married? Of course you are! What we've got here is a little girl who doesn't know men yet!'

With a sneer on her face, she looked me up and down: a girl of eighteen, completely alone. Throughout the 1990s, girls from Eastern Europe weren't looked on favourably. Generally, they were seen as easy girls in search of money and comfort in more developed countries that hadn't suffered through the Communist era, unlike Czechoslovakia. They were girls who were often young and beautiful and who could take away the local women's husbands. It was a secret competition which, although unspoken, made other women hate them no matter what.

As much as I didn't want to believe that my dream of starting a new life – away from the misery of
Czechoslovakia and the haunting memories of Baghdad – was disintegrating before my eyes, I had to. Giovanni never arrived. I was deported back to Prague the next day.

Waiting for the flight that night on the small bench of a secured room, I felt hopeless and defeated. I thought about Mum, Klara and Linda. Tomorrow I would return home – a loser. I couldn't cope with that idea. I had left that house to find fortune elsewhere, to earn enough money to make them happy and to buy them lots of gifts – everything we had missed out on since my father had left. Never again did I want to see Mum slave away for a pittance, waking up at four in the morning to walk three kilometres through the fog and the freezing cold to that squalid office on the outskirts of town. I wanted my Mum and sisters to have the opportunity to study and to have a warm and spacious home of their own. I wanted to put our family back together. I was determined to come back to Italy at any cost.

I studied the city from the window as the train approached Termini Station – the end of the line. After returning to Prague I started working full-time at the crystal shop to earn enough money for a train ticket to Italy. It wasn't easy, but I got there.

It was getting dark and thousands of lights began to turn on. The draft of the autumn breeze made me shiver slightly, and I clasped my arms to my chest. Rome was like other cities after all. I shouldn't be afraid, I kept telling myself: even though I was very young, I had come through a war and had already experienced my way of life being turned completely upside down. What could be more frightening than that?

The beginning of my adventure in Italy was anything but easy. The fairytale I had dreamed of and wished for was merely an illusion. Instead, I encountered men who expected ‘something more' in return for accommodation and job offers; lonely and bitter characters, whose negative dispositions only heightened my sense of despair; and a series of dead-end jobs that left me fatigued by the end of the day.

My first night in Italy I stayed in the cramped room of a shabby hotel, where I slept on a bedsheet dotted with stains. I lay on the bed, fully clothed, and pulled the hood of my jacket up over my eyes. I listened for a while. Voices and the sound of breathing came in from the other rooms: the walls were like paper. Every now and then someone would pass noisily along the corridor, possibly a drunk. Thankfully, I had locked the door. As soon as my nerves relaxed a little, I sank into the deepest sleep. I had awful dreams. A group of homeless people had kidnapped me and taken me to
a cave with a wood fire. They seemed to be preparing their dinner – me.

A few days later, I went around the neighbourhood asking at all the tourist places if anyone needed a waitress who spoke good English. But as soon as the owners heard my Italian they quickly shook their heads. I don't know how many times I saw the same performance. I was just about to give up, when I was hired at a little bar frequented mainly by foreigners. The manager asked me a couple of perfunctory questions, made sure that my English was fluent and I went to work right away. I rushed frantically back and forth all night, dizzy from confusion but eager to prove myself.

When I got home after the first day of work, I had a small amount of money in my pocket and an aching back. Three days in Italy and I was already exhausted. Regardless, I wanted to stay whatever it took. I knew that I wouldn't be satisfied with temporary jobs. A bit of loose change wouldn't be enough to live on. I wanted more: the opportunity to do something important in my life. I had left Prague and my family because I saw a chance to find my own way and to stop being at the mercy of circumstances. But that would take time, and for the moment I could only put aside my ambitions and grit my teeth.

For a while I continued to make a living by doing odd jobs. Working at places in the centre of the city, I would
get to know guys or girls who had a free room, which was invariably described to me as if it were a suite. I have always believed everything and maybe I still wanted to believe in fairytales, so I would quickly pack my bags, leave the place where I had been staying for a few days and close the door behind me, happy to say goodbye to one rundown room. Then two hours later I would be in exactly the same situation, but in another part of the city. It was during this period that I moved house three or four times in quick succession. I felt like a nomad; it made me yearn for our old house in Baghdad. It was hard to fathom that it was now reduced to rubble.

Looking back, it seems strange that the first ‘real' job that got me to where I am now was at a karaoke club near Via Veneto. I would work there a few nights a week, singing and preparing cocktails. I sang in English because my Italian still wasn't good, but there were some customers who complimented me nonetheless: they insisted I had a great stage presence and that I was wasted in a place like that.

‘You should be on television,' they kept saying. They said I had everything that was needed to work in the entertainment world. It was something I had dreamt of as a young girl.

Soon enough, my karaoke performances had been noticed and I was asked to perform at other clubs. It wasn't a huge step forward – I had only broadened
my circle of contacts – but I hoped that by performing at different places someone would finally offer me a real job.

Socialising and getting to know more people in the entertainment industry seemed to work. One night, an acquaintance took me to dinner with some of his friends in an upper-class district in Rome where I met Lory, who introduced me to the world of show business.

‘All the important people come here,' she explained to me as we sat down at a table in Bar Vanni. I saw elegantly dressed men come in, going to the bar as if they owned the place. On closer inspection, they didn't look like managers: they had the faces of traders intent on negotiating. They made little jokes and smiled shiftily, sniggering at crude innuendo.

‘They are probably setting up a job for one of their new protégées. They're in television. He's an executive from Rai, but the one next to him is from a private casting agency,' Lory noted as she watched them. Then she added in a low voice, ‘They're not all honest; a lot of them are completely untrustworthy.'

All the people I subsequently met were just that: untrustworthy. People who claimed they were agents but weren't and just wanted to get girls into bed by promising them non-existent TV roles. I landed an appearance in a film and some small advertisements – that was all. This was partly because I wasn't willing to accept you-
give-me-something-and-I'll-give-you-something types of arrangements. No, that certainly hadn't helped my professional ‘growth'.

I found that the entertainment industry had been disenchanting and realised it would be better for me if I found a more serious and stable job. I went to work for a real estate company that dealt with foreign clients buying and selling property in Italy. I spoke English and now Italian too. I was good at it and was able to pay for an apartment of my own. Finally. It had a spectacular view of Saint Peter's, and reminded me of the time Dani took me to her church and taught me how to pray.

But I knew full well that it wouldn't last: I would soon have to deal with my own natural restlessness.

I was about twenty-two years old when I found work as a sales representative for a big chemical company based in Milan, where I sold chemical products. I had never expected I'd be doing anything like this.

I had moved to Reggio Emilia after falling in love with a man, but three years later we parted ways. In the meantime I had met a writer who worked on a well-known nightly TV programme: a local talk show in which everyday people told their stories. The producers thought my life story was interesting, so they decided to invite me on again – and again. So I began to take my first steps into the world of television. I was a natural, and did well in front of the camera.

It was then that I decided to go to Milan, prompted by my natural instinct to seek new and greater opportunities for myself. In reality, sooner or later I intended to go overseas. But before leaving Italy completely, I had decided to have one last go in Milan: I would give myself a maximum of six months and then, if I hadn't found what I was looking for, I would leave.

Armed with a felt-tip pen, I began to pick out some of the notices: small apartments that weren't too far from the city centre. I chose one that seemed interesting; the rent wasn't too steep and looking at the street on the map, I saw that it was just around the corner from the canals. I immediately phoned to ask for some more information and managed to find out the exact address.

It was night when I started driving in the direction of Milan. I wanted to see what the building was like from outside. After an hour and a half I found myself in front of the main entrance. The atmosphere had a kind of melancholy that those old buildings have, but there was something that intrigued me. I decided right then that it was all right: I would move there.

I didn't know anyone in Milan, but I wasn't too concerned by this. I was about to start a new life. Again. But this was the last time. At least in Italy. My job at the chemical company was going well; I was able to cover all my expenses, but I felt like I was missing something.
I wasn't totally satisfied. It wasn't the job that I had dreamed of doing.

Following on from my stints on the talk show, I was asked to appear on television programmes I didn't like. I was always made up as an Arab, with heavy kohl makeup. When I refused, I was told that the audience liked ‘exotic' things.

Maybe I was being too picky, but this kind of television really wasn't for me and I soon stopped agreeing to take part in those programmes. I would see other women go straight in tooth and nail, without any of the qualms I had. They probably thought I was a fool for refusing offers of this kind, but I didn't see it that way. I didn't want to be stuck in the role of an extra, in the hope that someone would notice me, and I was determined to show that I could do something more on television.