The Baghdad Clock Read online

  One day, he decided to look after Umm Ali’s house. He took a key ring out of the toolbox, chose one, and opened the padlock on the iron chain. He went through the gate. After cutting the grass, pruning the withered leaves, and running the water in the irrigation canal, he opened the door to the house and went into the front room before wandering through the other rooms and passages.

  In the kitchen, he stumbled unexpectedly upon a black dog. It was stretched out on the floor, exhausted and unable to move from severe hunger and thirst. Before he could ask himself where this dog had come from and how it had slipped inside the house when all the doors and windows were locked, he brought a small dish of water to set in front of it. He went quickly back to his own house, took some pieces of meat and some bones from his refrigerator, and returned to give them to the dog, who began eating voraciously.

  ‘How did you get in here?’

  The dog looked into his eyes with a glance that implored his kindness, as if to say, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You would have died alone if I hadn’t come in here by chance.’

  ‘I’m not afraid to die alone.’

  Uncle Shawkat went over and patted the dog’s back. Then he carried him gently to his house, put him down in a small tub, and began cleaning his body with soap as he sang a sad song. He dried the dog in the garden sunshine and began caressing its body tenderly as the dog gradually regained its strength. The dog’s eyes shone as it rolled joyfully on the grass.

  From that day, Uncle Shawkat was never seen in the street without this dog, which he loved and grew accustomed to. The dog at his heels became part of his outward appearance as he walked down the street. It would stop when he did, and it would sit on its haunches whenever Uncle Shawkat became engrossed in conversation with one of the neighbours.

  One of the children came and wiped off the bird I had drawn on the wall, and in its place, he used coloured chalk to draw a small dog underneath the sofa that Uncle Shawkat was sitting on. The dog was looking at Uncle Shawkat, who was laughing. (The difference between a smile and a laugh is that the mouth is closed for the former and open for the latter.)

  My mother said to my father, ‘He has finally come across a companion. He now has a little dog, and he won’t die alone after all.’

  ‘What will the dog do when the man dies? Will he go out to tell the people that he is dead?’

  ‘No... You don’t understand me. By nature, a person is afraid of dying alone, and when Uncle Shawkat dies, the dog will be there close by him and will watch his soul as it goes up to the sky.’

  ‘And if the dog dies before him?’

  ‘That won’t happen.’

  The black dog that Uncle Shawkat had stumbled upon in Umm Ali’s house was the kind that could communicate through the language of gestures, just as though that were its native language. Uncle Shawkat took advantage of this natural disposition and became skilled at communicating with Biryad. This was the name he gave the dog, using as a good omen the name of a pet dog that had lived in his grandfather’s house in the Turkoman quarter of Kirkuk half a century before.

  Little Biryad became just another member of the neighbourhood. Everyone liked him and called out to him as they walked past. He knew each native of the neighbourhood individually and never barked at them the way he would at strangers. He would run playfully behind the children as they sped past on their bicycles. He would jump with the girls playing games on the pavement. He would greet the fathers joyfully when they came home from work.

  The truly remarkable thing was that the neighbourhood cats, born on the roofs and in the back gardens, were not afraid of Biryad. They would not keep their distance when he unintentionally crossed their path. Even more remarkable was that some of these cats formed a close relationship with him, one that went beyond merely wandering around freely with him at night. We even began to wonder whether Biryad was a cat in a dog’s body, or whether the cats had acquired the temperament of puppies.

  One of Biryad’s characteristics was that he knew all of them. I would see him cut back on his own food in order to share it with the white cats, and he always left them some bones, even if he was still hungry himself. Another one of his peculiarities that I hope you will not find preposterous is that he could predict things before they occurred. If he left Uncle Shawkat’s house in the morning and lifted his leg to urinate on the gate of one of the neighbours, that meant only one thing: these neighbours were getting ready to emigrate soon. Thus, by watching whether he urinated on this gate or that, we came to know who would be the next neighbour to make the decision to set off, never to return.

  On top of that, Biryad drew numerous inferences about the future. Some of these were a secret between him and Uncle Shawkat, and some he conveyed of his own accord to the sons and daughters of the neighbourhood. For instance, if he hurried up to a young woman and tried to lick her heels, that meant that she would soon get married to the young man of her dreams and live with him happily ever after. That happened often. Hind married Haidar after a courtship of two years. Maha married Hudhayfa, and Manal married Muhammad after Biryad gave each of them the well-known sign.

  If Biryad set about biting the book bag of someone as they walked to school, that meant the student was outstanding in their studies and that success was waiting for them in the end. And if he looked for a long time into the face of some old woman, that meant without the slightest doubt that her final hour was drawing near.

  10

  The sight of Marwa as she held the rifle and shot into the air was irritating on a personal level. I cannot say if I liked it, or if it just annoyed me. Were it not for the way she spun her rifle through the air in front of my face to frighten me, I would not have given the matter a second thought. This happened every Thursday during the flag-raising ceremony at our school.

  One day, Marwa was happy and proud to an unbelievable degree when, after firing into the air, she stood in the courtyard with a group of girls to explain the strength of the rifle’s recoil. After making sure that everyone understood what a recoil was, she added with vanity and something of a false naivety, ‘There’s no need to be afraid of it. The whole thing is very simple. I’m strong, and I can control the rifle. The head teacher of the school knows it – see how pleased with me she is every time I fire the rifle during the flag raising.’

  I did not understand why we had to fire a rifle every Thursday at the flagpole. Or why the flag always had to be accompanied by the sound of bullets. Our country’s flag had a relationship with bullets I did not understand. Bullets were fired for the sake of raising the flag, and when someone was hit in the head with a bullet, the flag was lowered and wrapped around his body. Without the flag, the dead would not be martyrs, and when we draw the flag on the map of the homeland, that means the homeland is a martyr.

  Marwa was a clever student. No one denied that. More than once they singled her out as an example for the class. In addition to that, she was a beautiful and alluring young woman with her prominent breasts, toned and curvy bottom and a long, elegant neck. In truth, she was one of the most beautiful girls in our school. She was cheerful and funny, and she had a remarkable ability to think up pranks. All the teenage boys in the neighbourhood liked her. They would block her path in the street, but she laughed at them and they would stand aside. There were many occasions when boys would take advantage of some situation to intentionally brush against her body. I do not know what to call the feeling that afflicted them all.

  Marwa was happy about the effect she had on the boys, but the boy she liked was Ahmad, and no one else. When she ran into him one time as he was walking in the street with Nadia, she became jealous of Nadia and told her friends, ‘Come on, let’s follow them and sing to embarrass them.’

  My love for you’s so crazy, my eyes for you so hazy...

  Ahmad turned and was about to make some crass remark, but he changed his mind and settled for a dismissive gesture of the hand. Marwa and her friends paid him no attention and kept singing at
the top of their voices.

  In order to get out of this predicament, Ahmad was forced to say a quick goodbye to Nadia and go the other way. Afterwards, he began to dislike Marwa, and when he happened to see her in the street, he would turn his face away. Nadia no longer liked Marwa either, and she would change direction if they ever crossed paths.

  Personally, I liked Marwa. Or at least, I did not hate her. I did not walk the other way when I ran into her. But I liked Nadia more and took her side. When I was with her and we met Marwa and her clique, I would sing in an almost audible voice:

  Stand up and greet him; ignore the people’s blame

  Stand up, stand up against them; let them stomp in rage

  Marwa began to hate us. She hated Nadia and Ahmad. She hated me too. And in order to take revenge on us, she went to the deputy head teacher at school and told her that Nadia had an improper relationship with a boy from our neighbourhood named Ahmad. The deputy head called Nadia’s mother into the office the following day. She did not, however, tell her, ‘Your daughter is in love with someone.’ The deputy head was capable of handling this complicated situation. She just advised Nadia’s mother to pay attention to her daughter’s behaviour at this stage of her life.

  To escape Marwa’s observations and pestering, Nadia began meeting Ahmad in back streets in the opposite direction from the ones we normally took every day when going home. We could always wind our way along alternative routes to avoid bumping into annoying people. It is true that Marwa was sometimes annoying, but she was not evil. She bothered Ahmad because she loved him, and she persecuted Nadia because Ahmad loved her. It is always easy for us to make it hard for the people we love. Even when we want to tell them we love them, we sometimes say it in a way that upsets them. I am the only person in this world who does not annoy the people she loves. I do not annoy the people I do not love either.

  One day, I got a surprise. I was approaching Abu Nabil’s shop to buy something when Farouq came up and stopped in front of me, face to face. ‘I like you,’ he said.

  When I hesitated, shocked at this surprise announcement, and couldn’t think of anything to say, he gathered his courage and added, ‘I love you.’

  I remained silent, still not knowing what to say. I forgot why I had come to the shop in the first place. I tried to remember, but I was trembling, and I nearly started crying. I ran home without buying anything and without saying a word to Farouq.

  That event was truly unexpected. I washed my face and stood in front of the mirror. I pinched my right cheek to make it pink, and indeed, a small red spot appeared and then disappeared again. For the first time in my life, I stepped away from the mirror so I could see my whole body in it, feeling a sense of shame as I did so. After glancing both ways to make sure that neither of my parents was watching me, I wet my hair with a little water and combed it with my hands. I gave myself a fleeting glance in the mirror and left the house without a second thought. From a distance, I saw Farouq and smiled at him. He tried to come over to say something, but I left him and went back inside without closing the door. In that moment I was afraid and felt that everyone was watching me from their windows or from rooftop balconies.

  A few days before that incident – when he told me he loved me, I mean – Farouq had stood at the door of his house as I was in our garden cutting some bunches of grapes that were still sour. He came over and asked for some of these unripe grapes, saying he liked how they tasted. When I cut a bunch and put it in his outstretched hand, my fingers brushed against his. He gave me a smile I did not understand. After he went inside, I thought about it a little and then put it out of my mind.

  I was not able to fall asleep easily that night. I tossed and turned in bed as I tried to drive this thought from my mind. But to tell you the truth, I was happy inside. I kept imagining Farouq standing in front of me, repeating, ‘I love you ... I love you,’ until I fell asleep.

  Farouq did not have brothers and sisters. His father worked as a university professor in Libya. There, he got married to a Tunisian woman – not a very beautiful one, according to Umm Farouq – and lived with her, writing short letters to his wife and son. In the letters, he said that he was doing well, and that he hoped the two of them were also well. He sent them some dollars at the beginning of each month. Farouq was very clever at school, but he was crazy about football and went to the club to practise every day until, later on, he became a famous player.

  I do not know why he chose me of all people and told me he loved me. I had never spoken with him, nor had I taken any interest in him. I actually did not think about love at all. I had been enjoying the story of Nadia and Ahmad, and that was enough for me.

  Letters from the Unknown

  11

  In those days, many soothsayers began passing through our neighbourhood, claiming to know all manner of things. Biryad would follow them and bark in an attempt to prevent them from coming down our street. When their persistence had exhausted his patience, he bit the leg of a fat woman who said she could read fortunes. After that incident, it became very rare for one of those people claiming knowledge of everything to pass our way.

  Biryad lost some of his admirers on account of his surprising behaviour. He was no longer loved as much as before because most of the women in our street were superstitious and encouraged anything that they thought might bring them good luck. Even though most of them were educated and had degrees in medicine, chemistry, law and history, they were curious about the future and the world of the unknown. It was not easy for Biryad to deter the visitors because of the women in our neighbourhood.

  One day, a tall, thin man with a well-trimmed beard came down our street. He was elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit with the chain of an old watch hanging down from his jacket pocket. The watch itself was in a small pocket on the left side. He told us he could read fortunes, but that he would not offer any help related to summoning good luck. The man was a little suspicious and definitely peculiar. He spoke with a voice that seemed to come directly out of his chest. From time to time, he would pause to pass his right hand over his forehead and then continue speaking where he had left off.

  Without a single mistake, this slender man could recite the names of the members of any family when the name of just one of them was mentioned to him. Then he would state their birthdates, one by one, or the father’s occupation, along with a description of him and his habits. He even knew on which side a man slept at night.

  These were not the only things that made the people trust him and respect him. Biryad’s unusual behaviour towards him, which was different from how he treated other strangers, was what made the women feel so comfortable with him. When Biryad saw this man for the first time, he approached calmly to sniff at his heels as he walked. Biryad looked up at his face as though he had known him a long time, and then he went away without barking. When the women saw that, they wondered at first, but they were grateful to Biryad for not driving him off.

  To get things started, Umm Manaf – who always stood at her door, watching people – plucked up her courage and went over to the strange man and, without any embarrassment, began to speak to him in the middle of the street. This, of course – speaking to unknown men, I mean – was not considered acceptable behaviour in our neighbourhood, but Umm Manaf wanted to test him and discover for herself his hidden truth, to confirm whether he was a liar or whether his words were true.

  The soothsayer gave her a scornful glance and told her, ‘This is the first time I’ve allowed anyone to test me. And also the last.’

  He brought his mouth to her ear and spoke about especially personal and private matters related to her married life. Umm Manaf gasped, and her soul nearly escaped through her mouth at the precision of the things he was telling her, as though he had been watching her life on a movie screen.

  After Umm Manaf’s audacity, the other women became bold enough to approach this soothsayer. Umm Nawar opened the door of her house and invited him to sit on the swing in her garden.
She went into the kitchen to bring him a cup of juice, and when she came back after a few minutes, she found most of the women from her street had entered the garden and surrounded the man, begging him to read their fortunes. Umm Nawar asked them all to calm down, to have a seat on a rug she spread over the grass, and to wait their turns, one after another. The women complied with this request.

  The soothsayer raised his head to look into the distance as he grasped Shuruq’s palm. Following all the others, she had gone up to him, beseeching him to tell her future. He squeezed her hand, while at the same time he glanced sharply at the other women, making them anxious. He put his right hand to his forehead, and after two minutes of reflection, he addressed them all and said, ‘None of you has a future in this place.’

  After another expectant silence, in which he nearly exhausted their patience, he produced a deep rattle in his chest and continued to speak. ‘Sooner or later, this ship will sink with all of you on board.’

  ‘Ship?’

  His sentence had landed on their heads like a thunderbolt as they wondered what ship this soothsayer was talking about. Before any of them dared ask for clarification, he changed his tone of voice and said, ‘A person is born into this life not from any desire of their own. He comes out on board whatever ship he happens to be born upon. Small ships dock in the large ocean of this world, and each of them carries a group of people whose destinies are bound together. Some of these ships are as big as a continent, some as big as a country, and some the size of a small neighbourhood. Whenever the ship is big, the relationship between its passengers is not strong. The converse is also true. This neighbourhood of yours is a small ship. When the birds pass through its air, they know they are circling a small ship. You don’t know that, for it has remained in place for as long as you’ve been on it. Consider a nursing infant. When it sleeps on a still, motionless bed, it feels like the edges of this bed are the boundaries of the world. You are the children of this boat, you who have lived on it for decades without it taking you anywhere. Thousands of years ago, people used to live upon the earth without feeling it spin them around like a ship moving through infinite space.’