The Tobacco Keeper (38 page)

‘It’s nothing. Just a body!’

After an hour, I arrived at the airport feeling utterly drained. I completed the procedures quickly. When the plane was high in the air, I cast a quick look at Baghdad. It was covered with a pall of dust and its river had the colour of mud. I began to repeat the
last words of ‘Tobacco Shop’: Eat your chocolate, little girl. Eat your chocolate! Believe me, there are no metaphysics in the world beyond chocolate. Believe me, all the religions in the world do not teach more than a sweetshop. Eat, dirty girl, eat!

My whole body was shaking.

2006-08
Baghdad – Tehran – Damascus

Amira Nowaira is a professor of English Literature at Alexandria University. She has previously translated Susan Bassnett’s book
Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction
(with Azza El-Kholy - Blackwell Publishers, 1993), Iqbal Qazwini’s
Zubaida’s Window
(Feminist Press, 2008) and Randa Abdel-Fattah’s
Where the Streets Had a Name
(Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2010). She lives in Alexandria.

First published in Arabic in 2008
as
Hareth al-Tabghby Al-Moasasa
by al-Arabiya lil-Dirasat wal-Nashr

First published in English in 2011 by
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing

This electronic edition published in 2012 by
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
Qatar Foundation
Villa 3, Education City
PO Box 5825Doha, Qatar
www.bqfp.com.qa

Copyright © Ali Bader, 2008
Translation © Amira Nowaira, 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978 9 9921 9450 8

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You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The
Tobacco Keeper
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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