The Baghdad Clock Page 6

  He fell silent for a while and released Shuruq’s hand from his grasp. Then he took hold of it again.

  ‘I want to say something important, and I urge you to pay attention. A person lives in this world with two fates. The first is his personal fate, and the second is his social fate. Do you understand what I mean?’

  He waited a while, and when he did not get a response, he continued speaking with his head raised high, as though he were addressing the entire neighbourhood.

  ‘From this moment on, I urge you, from this very moment, think only of your personal fate. Do you understand? Think only of your personal fate. Whoever among you can get off the ship this very hour should disembark at once.

  ‘The ocean you are traversing seems calm, doesn’t it? Not at all, ladies and gentlemen! By God, it is not at all calm. Storms rage on the horizon. Most certainly, storms are coming. Whoever wants to put drowning to the test, let them remain. But whoever wants safety, let them flee today. Not tomorrow! Jump into the lifeboats that wait for you, and go far from this place.

  ‘Exile is no laughing matter. I know this well. But the heavens have written this fate for you, and there’s no escaping it. You will live as exiles whether you remain here in this neighbourhood or flee to distant cities. Your journey has begun with agony. Prepare yourselves!’

  A lament rose among the women, and tears burned their cheeks at this miserable news that fell on their heads all at once.

  The soothsayer fell silent for a moment. Then he raised his head to follow a small bird circling the garden. He lowered his voice and addressed them again in a subdued tone.

  ‘Listen to me. Don’t waste a single minute. There’s no time for crying. This is the hour to get ready for a long voyage away from pain. Don’t think – even for a moment – of remaining here. Make haste to flee because the storm is approaching with the speed of a madman.’

  As he spoke, he imitated someone reeling as though on the deck of a ship tossed about by the waves. ‘Look at me! The waves have begun to hurl me right and left. Do you see?’

  He straightened up and began walking calmly around the garden. He plucked a few withered leaves from the orange tree. Then he turned to the women and said, in a whisper: ‘I don’t wish exile upon you. And I don’t like to see you suffering from its terrors. I have no personal interest in whether you stay or you go. I passed through your street by chance, and I decided to tell you the truth. But most of the time, the truth is upsetting. In all honesty, I hesitated to carry out my plan. I’m not able to counsel you to stay, even as I’m pierced with sadness when I call upon you to flee. For in the moment of crisis when the pain of staying equals the pain of leaving, you will remember me and cry, “We’re ruined!”

  ‘You will live as exiles, and your tears will know no end. I see you there now, in countries of snow and painful winters. You will warm yourselves with memories. This neighbourhood of yours will become nothing more than a song you weep to remember. I see you on dark, lonely paths as you wander, lost, as exiles do. One of you lifts your head to the sky, and with a heart broken with pain, you cry, “What have we done, O heavens above?” And no answer comes.’

  With that, the soothsayer resumed his seat. He again put his hand to his forehead and was silent for two minutes, waiting for their tears to dry.

  ‘Do you know the song about the birds and the sun?’

  ‘You mean the song O birds above, bring them all my love?’ replied Umm Farouq.

  ‘That’s the one. That song will be like your homeland in the coming years. You will sing it a thousand times – no! A million. When you become tired, another song will come. Do you know it? I will tell you: “The Soul a Stranger.”’

  ‘This song is the new homeland for all of you. When exile comes timidly among you and then throws you into hopelessness, “The Soul a Stranger” will be the long anthem of sadness. When you forget its words, your homeland will be just an old memory you long for, but you will not think of returning. Remember this too.’

  He turned his deep gaze upon Shuruq, whose face went pale as he gripped her hand once more.

  ‘At the end of this month, someone will come to you, asking your family for your hand in marriage.’

  Before her features could relax with gladness at this happy news, he resumed staring into her face and added, ‘Do not consent. Refuse him immediately.’

  ‘What if he comes back to propose again?’

  ‘Refuse him a second time.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘My daughter, I know he loves you. By God, I know that. And I know that you melt with love for him. I know your entire story. Besides all that, I know that he is a sincere man, a faithful man, and successful in life. He is handsome, powerfully built, and he will put a baby in your womb on the very first night. But that is not the whole story. Refuse him without hesitation.’

  ‘Why?’ The word tore from her throat in the hoarse voice of agony.

  ‘The truth is painful. Go ahead and say yes if you don’t like my words. What do I care? What do I care if you’d like life as a widow, caring for your orphaned boy who will never once see his father?’

  He jerked sharply as he spoke these words. Getting up, he left amid Shuruq’s confusion and the women’s entreaties that he stay a little longer to tell them more about the unknown that was coming their way.

  Without another word, the soothsayer headed towards the door with firm steps. He turned in the direction of the main street, walking quickly, his chest puffed out. Biryad followed him to the end of the alley, bade him a respectful farewell, and came back with his tail in the air, hurrying towards Uncle Shawkat’s house and jumping over the wall that bordered the garden.

  The women’s feet froze in place, and each of them began staring at the others as though unable to believe her ears. The owner of the house asked them to sit back down and began preparing tea. Umm Hussam stood up and cleared her throat. Then, in a voice that resembled her husband’s, she said, ‘This man is a spy. He has foreign troops and wants to terrify us. Their goal is to empty the country of the middle class.’

  ‘It’s true. I agree with you. He looked like Lincoln,’ replied one of them who worked as a history teacher.

  Umm Nawar brought tea and began chatting with them. Before long, they were talking over each other and no one was able to understand a word that was said. When the Baghdad Clock chimed three in the afternoon, they rose and went their separate ways.

  Shuruq had left before them. She sat in her room and went between crying for her bad luck and cursing the lying soothsayer, who may have been sent by one of the other women as part of an accursed plot to separate her from her beloved for the sake of some purpose that God alone knew.

  ‘Otherwise,’ she said to herself, ‘how do I explain his running away after reading my fortune, mine alone, and not reading the others’?’ Addressing her image in the mirror, she said again in an audible voice, ‘I’ll say yes, even if I’m married to Khalil for one night only!’

  12

  Previously, I had been living the love story of Nadia and Ahmad, enjoying it like a television series whose events were happening immediately before my eyes. I knew they loved each other, but what did it mean that they loved each other? How did this love happen? Why did their features change when they met? I did not know any of that. I only knew their love from the outside, as the events of a love story that my friend was living, and not from inside the love itself, nor in the midst of the secret feelings that were born in the soul, igniting the mind and making the heart beat faster.

  Then Farouq came, calm and quiet. He stood before me, face to face, and said, ‘I love you.’

  He stole my peace of mind and infused my spirit with anxiety. I began to think about him all the time. I would look for him in the street. Each time I passed by the door of his house, I would turn to look. His name was on the tip of my tongue; his image filled my mind. I felt love like a gentle current of electricity touching my soul. I became obsessed with songs and music. Wh
ereas I had previously been devoted to television, the shows no longer interested me. Not Adnan and Lena, not Sinbad and Yasmina. I had new heroes: Kathem Al-Saher, Haitham Yousif, Hatem Al-Iraqi, Ismail Al-Farwaji, and Muhannad Mohsen.

  You ask me why I love you, why I love you

  You ask my torment and madness, my longing

  People don’t ask the sun why it shares its light

  People don’t ask the moon why it brings them together at night

  I would not ask Farouq why he loved me, nor would I tell him why I loved him. Because people do not know why the sun bestows its light, and love is like the sun. We cannot ask why it makes us fly above the ground. It is not true that he loved me because I cut him a bunch of unripe grapes in the garden and put them in his hand. He loved me for some other reason. He did not know why; nor did I.

  But why did he not write me a letter with cologne on it, so that I could send one back scented with perfume? How would I tell him, ‘I love you too!’? That was the problem. It was not appropriate for a girl to go up to boy and tell him, ‘I love you.’ That was something that was neither easy nor proper.

  When he said that to me in front of the shop, I hesitated, but I smiled at him later the same day. I gave him a smile with meaning in it. I wanted to tell him, ‘I love you.’ No, I wanted to tell him, ‘I like you.’ And when he became confused and hesitated in front of me, I would tell him, ‘I love you.’

  Did I love him? Why had I not felt this love before he declared his own? Was love sleeping before it woke suddenly in my heart? Or was love itself the thing we loved? Living in a thrilling story, where the identity of the protagonists does not actually matter? Everything disappeared from my life, and only this love remained to occupy my mind.

  Before I slept, I opened the window and looked towards his house. His room was half-lit. At that moment, he was writing me a long letter. That is what I told myself as I threw myself onto the bed.

  In the morning, my feelings had subsided. All of a sudden, everything had changed. Farouq no longer occupied my mind, and I was thinking about other things. But when I found him waiting for me near the school gate, I became confused again and was afraid I would be at a loss for words a second time. Here he was coming towards me – what was I going to say? I like you, or I love you? Or would nothing like that happen at all?

  Here he was, calmly approaching, like someone secretly aiming his penalty kick to take the goalie by surprise. My hands were trembling, my heart was pounding, and before he could say a single word, I told him in a whisper, ‘Farouq, I love you,’ and ran towards the door of the school. I was happy to have freed myself from the weight of these words. I brought them out of my soul and cast them upon him. At the same time, I was afraid. This was the first time in my life I had a secret of my own, private feelings, something I could not tell Mama and Papa.

  A few days after that, we started writing scented letters to each other. We began stealing brief, secret meetings with each other. Our neighbourhood became more beautiful. I breathed the air deeply and smelled the intoxicating fragrance of the gardens. In the evening, I would wait for him at my front door. He would pass by and smile at me, and I at him. Then I would run to the mirror and melt from love.

  Are you like me? Do you melt when you fall in love? Why do we melt from love? And who invented this beautiful expression, combining the word ‘melt’ with the word ‘love’? Certainly, the first person who said it melted from love and disappeared from this world. Do you remember the story of Mando, who melted from love for the beautiful young woman Joanna, and became a creek?

  Nadia shared in the details of our story, but she was not overly passionate. Every now and then, she would say something that I did not like and did not know how to respond to: ‘Your love for Farouq is greater than my love for Ahmad.’

  I myself was not sure. Did I actually love him more than she loved Ahmad? How would I know? Can love be measured with a ruler?

  I loved him. I also loved Mama and Papa and Nadia and Grandmother, and I do not know which of them I loved most. But I thought about Farouq more than I thought about all of them. Indeed, I thought about him all the time. I asked Nadia the same question to find out her thoughts on the matter.

  ‘Do you love Ahmad or your Mama more?’

  Nadia laughed because she did not know how to reply. As I have told you, I did not know the answer either. I took her by the hand, and we went out walking down our street. When we reached Abu Nabil’s shop, she stopped in the middle of the road as though she had remembered something important and said, ‘Listen. I love my mum, but I don’t write her secret letters. And I love my dad, but I don’t long for him with every song. When you and I meet, my heart doesn’t pound. I only write letters to Ahmad. I listen to songs only for his sake. When I meet him, I want to fly.’

  I would have been happy for her to keep going, but I could see in her face that she was waiting for my astonishment. I truly was surprised at her response and playfully told her, ‘You’re a philosopher, Nadia!’

  She looked up and composed her features with a feigned haughtiness. She started telling some kind of joke, but Ahmad passed in front of the store and instantly made her forget what she was going to say.

  13

  When Uncle Shawkat returned from work and arrived at the gate to his house, he was perplexed to see a group of neighbourhood women leaving Umm Nawar’s house together and heading for their own homes, their eyes filled with tears. He stopped in the middle of the street, his heart pounding violently out of fear that a tragedy had befallen someone, given that he was not accustomed to seeing so many women gather in one place at that time of the afternoon.

  He tried to understand the situation from Biryad, but the dog was moving around him in circles without looking into his eyes. Left to his own thoughts, he guessed that the women were saying goodbye to yet another family whose hour of emigration had come, or that something terrible – God forbid – had happened.

  His heart did not calm down until he knocked on the door. Umm Nawar came out to him, her eyes swollen from crying.

  ‘Hello, Umm Nawar. Are you okay?’

  ‘Hello, Abu No One,’ she said, using her nickname for the childless man. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘How can it be nothing when your eyes are red from tears?’

  ‘No, really, it’s nothing. This man was reading fortunes and it was too much for me. He says we’re all going to drown.’

  ‘We’re going to drown? Where in the world would all that water come from?’

  He said goodbye and walked sadly home with Biryad in tow. After changing his clothes, he ate lunch and tried to take his usual nap, but he was not able to sleep. He got up, put on a pair of overalls, and went out with Biryad keeping watch like his shadow. He carried his tools in one hand and pushed his lawnmower with the other. Today it was time for Umm Salli’s house. He had been passing by it for a while now without going inside to tend its garden.

  Uncle Shawkat opened the gate and went into the garage. He set his box of tools down, pushed the lawnmower to the edge of the garden, and began running it back and forth, making a pattern of long stripes. He deeply regretted the growth of thickets and weeds in the irrigation canals, and that some ripe blood oranges had fallen from the tree to the ground.

  Uncle Shawkat finished cutting the grass. He left the lawnmower where it was as his small dog played around it. He began uprooting the long stalks growing wild in the canals. He picked up all the dried leaves that had fallen to the ground, and he turned on the garden hose to wash the dust off the trees.

  Uncle Shawkat went over and let the water flow into the irrigation canals. Then he went inside the house to examine the water pipes and the electrical wiring. He made sure that the entrances and exits were locked. He tried the doors to reassure himself that they actually were locked tight. He found everything as it should be, but then he decided to check the upper floor of the house, which was not part of his normal routine. He climbed the stairs with tired steps a
nd tested the door of the first room. Finding that it was unlocked, he pushed it open and went inside. The room was entirely empty of furniture. A photo had fallen from the wall and lay face down on the dusty floor. He picked it up and examined it more closely. The picture was of an old family. Abu Salli was there with his wife, sitting on a bench in the middle of the garden. On the mother’s lap sat the youngest daughter Sulaf, while the other four daughters stood behind them. A thin man with elegant clothes and a trimmed beard was in the background. Uncle Shawkat had not met him and did not think too much about his presence here.

  A tear ran down his cheek and fell to the floor. He took out his handkerchief to dry his eyes and resumed examining the faces of the daughters, one after the other. He was surprised to discover that traces of the watches he would imprint upon their left wrists in the days of their childhood were still visible, pointing to some uncertain time.

  He put the photo in the pocket of his overalls and went down the stairs. Feeling tired, he sat on one of the steps and tried to hold back the tears. His mind spontaneously recalled his wife, who had disappeared so far away. He remembered that he had no family now, no small daughters whose wrists he could bite. What he most needed in that moment was for a small, slender girl who looked like Baji Nadira to come out of that photo and tell him, ‘Don’t cry, Papa!’

  That word, papa, rang in his ears. In his entire life, he had never been addressed as Papa. He took the photo out of his pocket again and spoke to it.

  ‘You did well, Abu Salli, when you took your daughters away. The neighbourhood is no longer a suitable place to live. The sanctions and the government have ruined our lives, my friend. Day by day, life becomes harder in this place. Many things have changed since you left. Even this house of yours has become a dwelling for loneliness and pain.’