The Baghdad Clock Page 7
He raised his head towards the window through which the sunlight spread over the stairs and said, ‘Does this dust coming through the windows as a broad beam of sunlight find its way back to you? Are these your heavy spirits, which you left behind in this place, your spirits that forgot to go with you? Every speck of dust contains a memory that wants to stay here, suspended in the air. Here’s a dream that has not yet been explained. Here’s a song that Sulaf left behind. A laugh that Sundus forgot. This dust is all of you, Abu Salli. This dust is your souls.
‘Do you remember when you invited me in for the first time, twenty years ago, and we sat in the garden, getting to know each other? Since that distant evening, we have been brothers: brothers who have shared our joys and sorrows every day. Here I am, making a bench out of a dusty stair in your house, cut off by desolation, with no wife to care for me, and no daughter to tell me, “Don’t cry, Papa!”
‘I am going to cry, Abu Salli. I am going to cry until the river of my tears dries up. Other neighbours departed after you, and still others will leave. I am here alone. I do not have family to go to. You were my family, my loved ones, and I have lost you. I am afraid, my friend, afraid that I will die alone. Do you know the loneliness of dying alone?’
His eyes let the hot tears flow, and he wiped them with his shirtsleeve. He tried to get up and go home, but he felt utterly exhausted. His heart constricted painfully with a renewed desire to weep.
‘Don’t worry your mind about your house, my friend. I will take care of it. I will look after your garden like I care for my own home and garden. I will care for all the houses. This is my task, O neighbour of my life. After some time, I will sell this house to strangers and send you the money. Neighbours who aren’t you will come. I will not get to know them, nor will I want to, because my life does not permit me new friendships. This life, my dear neighbour, does not permit new friendships. I am on the verge of retirement, and I do not know what I ought to do with all this depressing time.’
Another burning tear fell on the stairs. Uncle Shawkat returned the photo to his pocket and got up to leave.
He closed the inner doors behind him, picked up his things, and went out through the gate. Only in that moment did he realise that Biryad was not with him. He went back and looked in every corner of the garden but could not find him. Uncle Shawkat called with his usual whistle, but the dog had vanished. Going back inside, he unlocked the doors again, went up the stairs, and looked in the room where he had found the photo, but without any luck. He decided that Biryad must have gone home ahead of him. He picked up his things once again, pushed the lawnmower in front of him, and left the abandoned house, wrapping the iron chain around the gate.
At the end of the alley, Biryad was jumping up on the legs of a tall man, as though he were talking to him. Uncle Shawkat rubbed his eyes at this strange sight, and when he was able to focus his eyes again, he could not believe what he saw. The man disappeared in a flash, and the dog came hurrying back towards him to lick his feet.
What he had seen was so strange that Uncle Shawkat did not realise he was walking in the opposite direction from his house. After approaching the wrong door a number of times, he came back to his senses, turned around, and pushed the lawnmower with its tiresome rattling until he got back home. And rather than focusing his doubts on the behaviour of the dog, he began to doubt his own mind.
14
Our neighbourhood had not been the same since the soothsayer’s visit. It became somewhat depressed, and its people were afflicted with misgivings about the future, having lost hope that any sense of well-being would return to their lives. The soothsayer was not, in fact, responsible for this dejection. Like a doctor who informs you that you are sick and must take a bitter medicine immediately, he had merely told us that we were unhappy.
In those days, men, women and children would sit in small circles, occupying this corner or that, reviewing the man’s tidings amongst themselves, with each person explaining it according to their point of view. They all agreed that everything he had said was correct, but they disagreed about the nature of the truth in his words.
Some people thought everything would happen exactly as he said. They even went so far as to assert, ‘We are now living aboard a ship, directly under our feet, that is sinking in the sea. One day this ship will carry us away, or it will sink right where we stand.’ The other group said he had exaggerated many things and conflated the real with the imaginary. Strange, unexplained things began happening, however, especially in those days. In Abu Manaf’s house, there was a small hole under the tiles, through which salt water began seeping in. After a few days, this hole became bigger, and some large, shiny fish came through it. Umm Marwa said her house was rocking at night, as though it were a small boat with a wave bottled up underneath that wanted to pass to the other side. Umm Nawar said she saw a small whale appear suddenly in her kitchen and then vanish into thin air. I too saw strange things, but I did not tell anyone about them because people do not believe us when we tell them things that have not already occurred to them. I find it strange when they believe their own feeble minds but do not believe others. When people do not want to believe you, do not tell them the things you know.
Abu Hussam had a different point of view. He believed ‘that man’ – meaning the soothsayer – was ‘just a liar and a meddler. He’s working for the interests of foreign countries that want to fill our souls with terror because we defied the sanctions.’ Everyone fell silent in the face of this opinion that Abu Hussam expressed with such confidence. It was not in anyone’s interest to justify and defend the soothsayer because no one knew anything about him other than what he looked like when he suddenly appeared in the neighbourhood. But deep down, we believed the soothsayer spoke the truth, for indeed, things were becoming more complicated for us day by day, and our life in that place had become very hard. It was difficult to know what the future held in store. Our ship rocked amid the buffeting of fierce waves, and our appointment with departure was only a matter of time.
The best indication of the truth of the soothsayer’s predictions was Abu Nabil’s shop, which had become empty. Many goods were no longer available. The bare top shelves gathered dust, and were it not for the share of provisions he received from the government to distribute among us on the first day of each month, his shop would have closed long before. Our streets became worn out and filled with potholes. The cars going by looked older and older, their windows broken. Fatigue appeared on fathers’ faces. Mothers began making substitutions for everything that was no longer available. My mother took out the old sewing machine that we had completely forgotten about. She cleaned it, put oil into the little holes on its sides, and brought it to the living room. We no longer bought new clothes. It was better to repair old clothes and wear them as though they were new.
The sanctions broke forcefully into our lives and spun our heads right around. The neighbourhood women lost their elegance. Likewise, the men no longer paid any attention to their appearance. Even our school building became somewhat faded as despair overwhelmed the head teacher, the deputy head and the staff. All of them, with the exception of Ms Arwa, became more tense and distracted during the lessons. They often gathered together at the door of one of the classrooms to discuss the sanctions and the possibility of quitting their jobs and leaving the country.
In those days there were many protests and demonstrations. From time to time, the deputy head would come to our classes and ask us to go out into the courtyard. There, along with the other schools, we would be organised into wide columns to head out to the main streets carrying banners that criticised the United Nations, the international community, the Security Council, America, Israel, Great Britain, and even France.
Nadia and I took advantage of these opportunities to see Farouq and Ahmad, whose schools would also go out. We would meet in Al-Zawra Park or in the gardens around the Baghdad Clock. Love always makes its own world far from reality. Birth, death and love – these three
do not care about reality.
I put my hand in Farouq’s and we sat in the shade of an old tree, on the roots of which lovers had been carving their initials for decades.
‘Farouq, I’m going to sing you a new song.’
‘You don’t have a pretty voice, but somehow I’ll bear it.’
I crumble before you, just you
But mute, I hold myself high
Farouq laughed his childish laugh that killed me every time. He was laughing because I closed my eyes and sang in all seriousness, as though up on stage in front of a large audience, even though my voice was not at all up to the song. I knew it, but I still wanted to sing in spite of Farouq.
He moved deliberately closer and stretched out his fingers, seeking my own. I kept my hand away, pretending to be preoccupied as I sang the song again. He tried a second time without success.
Give up! I do not love you, tho’ you rage and sulk
Give up! Don’t make me burn when I see you
Farouq laughed again. ‘You truly are crazy.’
Farouq, give up! I do love you, love you entirely
Give up! I burn when I see you!
Farouq choked with laughter. I got up and playfully ran away, my plaits dancing in the wind. He followed with the grace of an athlete and ventured to reach out and grab my fingers, which resisted for a few seconds and then gave in, melting in his hand as a fire blazed in my soul. My God, how lovely to intertwine fingers as they make love like blind white cats born in the cold.
‘Farouq, let go. It’s killing me!’
He stopped in the middle of the road and burst out laughing.
‘Don’t be afraid – you’re not going to die!’
‘No, let go! That’s enough – don’t be greedy.’
Farouq did not let go of my fingers, and my fingers did not want him to. I did not know what I wanted. When some diabolical influence brushed his fingertips against mine, light flooded my veins. When he looked at my lips, I knew exactly what he wanted, and I turned my face away. In those few seconds, when I turned my face away to escape his meaningful look, my head spun with the kind of dizziness I loved. I felt my head get light, and I forgot the world. In those moments, I forgot the world entirely, and this forgetting is the sole blessing of love. I looked into his eyes again, and I knew in that instant that he forgot the world too. In our whole lives, we experience only a few seconds in which we forget like that. How can I explain it to you? The one thing I can tell you is that love works against memory. I do not know how that happens, nor why. I just love this dizziness that lasts for a few seconds while I forget the world.
The next day, a pupil from a different year – her name was Shams, as best I can remember – knocked on the door of our class and handed a piece of paper to the teacher. The teacher read out my name and Nadia’s and said, ‘The deputy head wants to see you in her office.’
Mrs Athmar appeared angrier than usual this time. She spoke with fire and brimstone as she rebuked us for having left the procession. But at the same time, she was a good-hearted woman, and her anger quickly subsided. After her outburst quietened into a kind of reproach, she said, ‘This is the last time.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
We went out of her room, laughing with joy. In love, there is no last time, Mrs Athmar! Nadia and I do not grow tired of love; we melt from love, Mrs Athmar!
Marwa too: she did not grow tired of telling on people, and whenever she brought Mrs Athmar the names of pupils who had left the procession to sneak out the back, Nadia and I were at the top of the list. Mrs Athmar did not like Marwa. One day, she became fed up and told her, ‘After today, I don’t want any news about other pupils. Everything that happens outside school is not the school’s affair.’ She ordered Marwa to leave and slammed the door behind her.
That same evening, Marwa went to Nadia’s home and told her brother Muayad, ‘Your sister left class to go out with Ahmad.’
Muayad became angry and informed his mother and father immediately. He went up to Nadia’s room and searched her books and notebooks. He began watching her as she left school, and it became hard for her to leave home in the afternoon and wander around the street as we always used to do.
During this time, Nadia began loving Ahmad more than ever. She began to long for him every moment. She dreamed of running away with him to some distant country, like Adnan and Lena, who ran away to the Isle of Safety. She filled her notebooks with ideas about separation, love, sleepless nights and desire. She drew candles dripping wax in a dark night. She closed her eyes and sent her soul into his arms. She wanted him to come in through her window and suddenly take her in his arms and kiss her. He would whisper, ‘I love you,’ a thousand times in her ears and say, ‘Nadia, I die in your eyes.’ But Nadia was besieged by her mother and her brother. In the evenings, Muhannad Mohsen appeared on the television screen. He looked straight at Nadia and sang for her:
Their fear for you so great
Their guard, he keeps me apart
One day, we left school for a new procession. That was the day of the big tour that the British parliamentarian George Galloway made through the streets of Baghdad. It included a review of the ‘Children of Iraq against the Sanctions’. Standing in the main street, we waited for Galloway’s red double-decker bus. We raised old photos of the president and sang patriotic anthems together with the school head teacher. At the same time, we were thinking of a way to slip away without anyone noticing.
A little before the procession arrived, Nadia and I secretly moved into the back row of students and took a few steps back. When the procession had arrived directly in front of us and everyone surged forward, we hurried towards the fence of Al-Zawra Park, walking along it until we entered the gate and disappeared among the trees. The gate of Al-Zawra marked the moment you entered forgetfulness. It was a deep passage into ourselves, far away from politics. Politics took people away, stealing them from themselves and blending their feelings with those of others until a person no longer even knew their true self.
One time, when we passed near the gate of Al-Zawra, we found it closed with a sign that read, ‘The park is closed for renovation.’ The Al-Zawra had driven us out of its walls and into the world of politics and slogans. The world became narrow, and I felt stifled. The existence of gates like Al-Zawra’s was a kind of hope. Do you know what I mean? In order to make myself sufficiently clear, let me say that love needs merciful places too. It chokes when the air is filled with slogans.
‘Down with the tyrannical sanctions!’ Nadia shouted as she ran longingly towards Ahmad, who had arrived before us with Farouq. Nadia used the international blockade to break her familial blockade. Blockades came in different forms, and one drove out another. Nadia put her hand in Ahmad’s, and the two disappeared among the thick trees.
I crumble before you, just you
But mute, I hold myself high
Farouq and I sat in the shade of a tree. In an embarrassed voice, I sang him a song by Haitham Yousif while my hands planted themselves in his.
I turned around to look back. There, in the shade of a giant eucalyptus tree, Nadia and Ahmad were forgetting the world and creating another moment for love. From that distance, I saw her smile, and my heart was at ease.
I lived my whole life looking back, watching from a distance for her smile to put my heart at ease.
15
In a state of shock at the soothsayer’s words, Shuruq did not sleep the night after she left Umm Nawar’s house. She turned over in her head what he had said twenty times, though not for the sake of finding the answer, for she had decided the matter within herself and no longer debated the idea of marrying Khalil. The question was settled as far as she was concerned.
What occupied her and caused all this anxiety now was what the future held after the wedding.
‘Say yes if you’d like life as a widow, caring for an orphaned boy who will never once see his father.’
She touched her stomach and felt the movement of a foetu
s. He kicked inside her, and she could almost hear the sound of him crying, even though she had not yet got married let alone become pregnant.
She imagined the wedding night she had long been planning: the long, white dress; her new blonde hair, with small, shiny sequins spread over it. She imagined the small cottage where she would live with Khalil, who would return to her in the afternoon, tired from his back-breaking work in the military manufacturing division. She imagined all the details he had mentioned to her regarding their life together. She sat on her bed and began to cry.
Shuruq had fallen in love with Khalil less than a year before when she met him by chance. At that time, she was still a student in her final year of college. He had preceded her by several years and graduated as an engineer from the University of Technology. After graduation, he had joined one of the secret plants connected with military manufacturing. His elegant appearance, his tall stature, his fit and graceful body and his powerful manliness all attracted her. So did the strength of his muscular arms, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. When he looked at her for the first time, she had stumbled, had forgotten the world, had nearly fallen down in the street. This was the man she had been dreaming of since her first days of puberty.
Her dreams never carried her far in terms of her desires. All she wanted in life was a man like this. A young man with a reasonable level of income, a small house and an old Lada car. She did not know precisely why she had chosen that type of car, but she was unable to imagine any other kind.
Shuruq tried as hard as she could to maintain her composure under the power of his gaze as she walked past. But she could not resist the temptation to turn back, overcome by the urge to steal a fleeting glance at his athletic build and his broad shoulders.
Her turning around coincided with his own as he looked her over. In that moment, all the inaccessibility she had practised in the face of solicitations and flirting from students at the university collapsed, and she smiled at him. She was rooted in place and forgot to keep walking. He came over and asked her name.