A Brighter Fear (14 page)

“We will pray for you. He will return. Inshallah.”

We drove around all day. We visited hospitals, police stations, bars. We asked street vendors, café owners, taxi drivers. We showed his photo to soldiers, journalists and foreign TV crews.

Nobody had seen him or his car.

We arrived home just before the curfew and, with or without God’s will, we were still intact.

It was me who heard the phone ringing as we stepped through the door, but for a second I didn’t move, scared of what it could be. I thought about ignoring it, rushing everyone back outside with some excuse. If we didn’t answer the phone, then it couldn’t happen, they wouldn’t talk to us, and they wouldn’t tell us what we didn’t want to hear.

But I moved towards it, and I picked up the receiver and with my eyes closed, I listened.

A deep voice, a male voice, my mind tried to make a picture of him in the darkness behind my eyes. I felt Hana close by, I felt eyes upon me, watching for my reaction, waiting to hear news. I opened my eyes to see a piece of paper and pen had been put in front of me. I took the pen and wrote.

Ransom. Fifteen thousand dollars. Two days. No police. No troops. Left in a bag in a bin. Zawra Park. Eleven o’clock.

Listening to him, writing the words, seeing them there, real on the page, made me feel physically sick and as he, whoever he was, finished the call, I dropped the receiver and ran for the bathroom. With my head hanging over the toilet, I heard Hana scream.

Aziz had been abducted.

I was so angry, so shocked.
Why Aziz?
my head screamed. Why him? What had he done? Such a lovely man. So kind and caring. Why? He wasn’t an educated man, I wanted to scream to Hana. And they had given no reason. Had they been watching me with Steve? Was that why?

We couldn’t go to the police; because the kidnappers would kill him. We couldn’t go to the Americans; they might skew his abduction into a terror plot and arrest him if we ever got him back. We had no choice.

We were alone.

We had to pay the ransom.

Fifteen thousand dollars.

Exactly the amount my father had left for me, in the box in the wall. The money I was going to use to get out of the country.

I stared at the piece of paper in disbelief at the words I had written.

Hana wept and wept. Where were they, a small family, Aziz a taxi driver, Hana a housewife, going to find that sort of money?

“We have no savings,” Hana cried. “Nothing. It’s all gone, trying to survive this war. A generator, fuel, food, everything’s so expensive now.” I didn’t know who she was talking to, maybe trying to justify it to herself, or to the god she so vehemently believed in, or to our neighbours, that she had no way of saving her husband’s life. “I don’t work. Where can I get the money from?” Words fell from her mouth and we could do little to console her.

“I can give you some,” Saad said. “But only five hundred. I don’t have much, and I must keep some in case this happens to us. You know that, you understand, I’m sure.”

But I had the money. I had the answer. The key to Aziz’s survival. To Hana not losing her husband, and the boys not losing their father, and to me, of course, not losing my dear uncle. Still hidden, in a tin, behind the broken brick, at the top of the wall, at the bottom of the stairs, in the basement. Fifteen thousand dollars.

I could fix this.

So why didn’t I say the words?

Why did I stand there, mute, watching Hana suffer?

What about leaving? That truck would be waiting for me in two days. My escape. My future.

The dilemma bounced around my head. I had been promised this thing, this lifeline, this hope. And now? Now it was being torn away from me. I would have to stay. I thought how selfish I was. Surely if I cared, really cared, really loved Aziz, I wouldn’t even have paused? I would have given the money with no hesitation. Aziz’s life was at stake and I was withholding what was needed for his survival.

But I wanted to leave so badly.

Whatever happened to Sacha? Part VI

And Sacha went mad.

She crouched on the ground, rocking back and forth, shouting and wailing about bombs and orchestras, water and jewellery. She paced the floor, scraping her fingers along the walls, crying, ranting, then collapsing, exhausted, for a few moments. And her head would pound, images of her life gone by flashing before her; the last time she kissed her husband goodbye, the last time she waved her daughter off to school, her last day at work, the last time she walked across the foyer, her last images of Baghdad as she stepped from that door.

And the bag over her head, and the prison cell, and the pain, the humiliation, the fear.

Through her thoughts and the images flashing black and white and red behind her eyes, she could hear Nahla shouting at the guards, the words echoing, but making no sense.

“I’m scared,” Sacha heard her cry. “She’s crazy. She’s going to kill me. She’s going to kill herself.”

She felt the sting of daylight as the lid was pulled off, and she heard the taunts and laughter from the guards, smelled a brief waft of clean air.

Am I dying?
was the only question to come to her mind.
Finally. Finally. Am I dying?
This was the last thought before she collapsed to the floor, lying on the ground, not moving, not responding, her eyes open and glazed, sweat dripping from her forehead, circles around her armpits, a flood between her legs.

She couldn’t hear Nahla’s cries; relentless, begging and pleading, shouting and screaming that she was dead.

And she didn’t feel herself hoisted out of the hole, or feel her body thrown to the ground. She didn’t feel the sunlight dancing on her skin, the fresh air swirling around her, over her clothes and through her hair. She didn’t notice a guard lean towards her, watching her chest and her lips, baulking at her smell, his hand over his mouth, disgust on his face.

And she didn’t hear him mutter that she was still breathing, to dump her back in the hole.

As she hovered in and out of consciousness she heard a different voice, a different guard. “I’m not picking her up again,” he said. “She can stay there. Leave her to die there.”

As the orange and green shapes behind her eyelids grew, and as she breathed in the first fresh air in such a long time, she realised she was out of the hole. But before even the idea had sunk in, she felt a boot in her face, felt her body lurch to one side, felt her head hit the baked ground, and tasted the blood in her mouth.

She waited to die.

She lifted her swollen eyelids, two dark shapes against white sunlight, walking away.

She heard the metal lid clang shut and, standing in front of her, blocking out the sun, was another pair of boots. She waited for the pain in her face, in her chest or stomach or arms or legs.

Wherever he chose to kick her.

She waited for her hair to be pulled or her arm to be grabbed. A rag doll at the mercy of everyone.

But nothing came and her eyes carefully tilted upwards, slowly up his legs, past the gun at his waist, over his chest and to his face.

“She isn’t dead,” he shouted.

A reply came over the yard, carried on the slow breeze. “Will be soon.”

Sacha watched the guard in front of her crouch down. She looked into his eyes, so young, and saw something there. Something like kindness, or compassion.

She opened her mouth to speak, tried to form the words, but none came. Her throat was dry, the words too difficult, too final.

“What?” he asked, leaning in, his face close to hers.

“Kill me,” she whispered. “Please.”

She watched his eyes. Watched him look away. Watched him following the backs of his colleagues. Waited for his reply.

But he shook his head.

And again she tried to speak, her mouth opening and closing, no sound coming.

And again he glanced to his colleagues. Still walking. Their backs still to him.

And Sacha watched. Hope and resignation filling her. Willing this man to help, to show her kindness that she hadn’t seen in so long. She watched as he took a flask of water from his belt, twisting off the top, and she felt the best water of her life, the coolest water, the purest, touch her lips, trickle into her mouth and down her throat, and for a second, just a second, she felt alive again.

“Please,” she said, her voice low, difficult, rasping. “I want to die. I want to go.”

Her green eyes saw compassion flick over the guard’s face as he looked at the state of the woman in front of him, and she wished she could tell him everything, her story for him to keep safe, to carry with him and tell the world, tell her husband, tell her child.

And tell them that she loved them, would always love them.

But she just stared at him, into him.

And from somewhere she found the strength to lift an arm, to stretch a hand, to reach her fingers into a pocket and pull out the necklace with a green stone and filigreed gold.

And holding it outstretched in her palm, her eyes stared into him.

And there were no tears.

There was only hope.

I remember there was no electricity that night. I remember we had no fuel for the generator. I remember watching as everyone slowly disappeared into the darkness that was growing, hiding us, the house, the furniture, inside it. I lit some candles, and the light flickered and danced on our faces; no romance in it or magic.

We were lost in our own worlds. I felt more weary, more frustrated, more confused and more angry, than I’d felt since the beginning of this war.

Saad said he would help Hana get some money together. He would visit colleagues of Aziz’s, and friends. Hana would sell her jewellery, what little of it she owned. What was I to do? Fetch the tin with the money in it? Would Papa want me to do that for his brother-in-law? Would Aziz want me to do that?

I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do. Either way I would lose. If I gave Hana the money, I couldn’t leave. If I kept the money, I would be allowing Aziz to die. Was I selfish? I felt it.

What good had this war done? I had felt such hope for my country and my people, all that time ago. We were promised so much; things which were unimaginable to us then. I’m glad Saddam has gone. The man who took my mama away. I desperately am. And I await his trial with glee.

But what do we have in his place?

The night went on. The silence in the room bore down heavy on us all. What were we waiting for? Hana paced the room, back and forth, wringing her hands raw, sobbing, shaking, and we watched her, not knowing what else to do. In the early hours her eldest son came through, his eyes heavy from lack of sleep, his body unbalanced with tiredness. He told me to give her Valium.

He was eight years old; his brother six. I called him over to sit with me, and as he sat on my knee, I wrapped my arms around his tiny body. He whispered, inaudible to Hana in her world and worries, he told me about when the bombing was at its worse, when you worried for your life with every second, the explosions rocking the ground at your feet, cupboard doors clattering, glasses rattling to the edge of the table, that during those times, his brother would not settle. He screamed and cried, shouted and trembled. The first night they had tried to calm him, the second night Valium calmed him. He told me it was kinder, for him, for everyone. And he told me how Hana had held him on her lap, cuddling him, watching his chest rise and fall, and his anxiety drifted away.

I looked at this boy on my knee, who annoyed me so much with his pestering and shouting, his arguing and his moaning, and I thought the words could not have come from him. He stepped down, took my hand and led me to the bathroom.

“Give her two,” he whispered, taking the box from the cupboard. I smiled at him and watched him go back to bed. Shortly after, Hana was sitting again in the living room, her tired, heavy eyes struggling against consciousness.

Saad and Fatima went home, with instructions to call if anything happened, if Hana or I needed anything, and the house fell into silence. I listened to it, my ears searching through it for sounds of life, for movement. I felt alone. But I knew I had to be strong.

I went up on to the roof and stared across the city. We slept on the roof sometimes, me and Papa, back at home, when the temperature was so high you couldn’t bear to be inside at night. But when the war came and occupation began, it was noisy at night, it was dangerous, and being out there, surrounded by the noise, watching the explosions light up orange behind your closed eyelids, was too much to bear. I missed those heady nights from before.

But as New Year’s Day left us, the air was chill and I pulled a blanket around myself, looking out across my city. We had seen no fireworks that New Year. We had heard only explosions. And we had seen no singing or dancing. It had escaped our house.

Staring across the city, there was little to see other than darkness. So many people without power, and so little fuel for generators. Everything was turned off. I wondered if the Green Zone had power, the army bases. Probably, I decided. I wished my eyes could search through the darkness and find where Aziz was. He was somewhere out there, I was sure. I wished I could close my eyes and think really hard, and lift my arms up and my fingers would stretch out, my index finger would point, and I would open my eyes, and that would be where he was.

I could name the street, find the building and the room. I wished.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to find help, who to ask, what to say.

A few car headlights were visible in the distance, and I watched them as they turned left or right, continued straight a while, the streets and corners and junctions barely distinguishable in the darkness. I wondered who they were, where they were heading and I wished they were heading here, and that inside was Steve.

I wanted to talk to him, to tell him what was happening to my family, to ask for his help. Not because he was a soldier and not because he was an American, an occupier, an invader. But because, regardless of all that, to me he felt like a friend, and at that moment, it felt like I needed a friend.

But the headlights didn’t head towards me, and they probably didn’t have Steve inside. But a friend, I thought; and I thought, I must see Layla before I leave, because in the morning there would be only one day left before I had to make my decision, between my uncle’s life, and my own.