A Brighter Fear (3 page)

Sometimes the bombs were so loud, and the ground shook so much, I imagined the earth was splitting, a crack forming, chasing its way to me and Papa, stretching wider and wider as it sneaked towards us without us knowing. I imagined that with the next explosion it would reach us, the basement floor would open up and the earth would eat us alive.

One of those nights, still sleeping in the basement, I dreamed our house was hit and it crashed down upon us. We were captured in the basement, encased in a concrete prison, trapped by the rubble of our own life. And we waited for rescue, but no one came. Then when freedom came to the city, Mama returned, and she dug us out with her bare hands, split and bleeding. But when she found us, we had died. And she cried and cried; cursing herself, saying that if she had come home a minute earlier or walked faster, we would still be alive.

I told Papa about that dream and he looked at me with such compassion and love that I finally found the courage to ask him what had happened to Mama.

I knew she had disappeared, of course.  I was aware that one day she was there and the next she was not, and that afterwards Papa would not again speak the name of Saddam.  And I thought she had been taken, but I had never asked about the details. I had never wanted to
know
the details, because knowing them might make her gone forever.

Papa rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his curly hair, and through the banging and crashing of bombs, and the ground shaking and the house foundations moaning, he finally told me.

“On October 28th 1999, at half past four, I went into a meeting at work. As I left my desk, my phone rang. I ignored it; I didn’t want to be late. Five minutes later, as I sat in the room, talking to my bosses, my mobile rang. I apologised, and turned it off without checking who was calling. Ten minutes later the secretary knocked on the door and told me I had a visitor. I was annoyed. My boss was looking to see if I was suitable for promotion. I asked the secretary to tell the visitor to call back tomorrow.

“A few minutes later, there was shouting coming from the corridor and doors opening and banging shut, and Tariq, a man who worked with your Mama, barged into the office shouting and waving his arms around. To me it was a stream of words; I couldn’t tell what he was talking about. It was my boss who understood what had happened.

“Your Mama had been arrested. She… she had just gone and I… I’d been too wrapped up in what I was doing to think. What if I’d answered the phone in my office, or my mobile? I could’ve followed. I could’ve found her. Got her back again.”

His voice trailed away and I kept my eyes away from him, afraid that if he looked at me he would’ve seen my face saying he was a fool to think that. Probably I would have neither of them now.

“Your Mama’s legal success rate had earned her respect from unlikely admirers. She was wanted by the… the highest authority, to serve them. That went against everything she believed. Refusing the offer to work for them was to defy the regime and its leader. That wasn’t acceptable. She refused to bow to pressure.

“I can guess where they took her. I reported her missing, of course, but after a week of going to the police every day I was told it would be in my, and your, best interests if I didn’t return. That I should forget her and if I did keep coming back, you might not have a papa any more. I couldn’t put you in danger. Your mama had purposefully kept going to work, not hidden away from them, or run away, to keep them from us.”

I had listened to whispered gossip on street corners and knew some of what happened to those who were arrested, especially those considered to be political prisoners. I had heard the stories of torture. But I never knew if it was true or not, and there was nobody to ask. Were they urban myths made to keep us in fear? Or true accounts from the few who made it out alive? I didn’t know. I assumed Papa had heard these things too. I wondered how he managed to keep his hope in her still being alive. What would he have left if he could no longer hope for her return?

As I sat in the protection of his arms listening to the bombs drop, I thought of the possibilities: if Mama was still in prison, had been there for nearly three and a half years, then how much suffering had she endured? Was she still enduring? Was it selfish of Papa and me to want her to still be alive, if every day for her brought more torture? Was it better to believe she was dead, and had been released from her pain?

But
I
wanted her to be alive.

I
wanted there to be a knock at the door and when I opened it, for Mama to be standing in front of me with a smile on her face, the sun reflecting off her black hair, her green eyes glinting with love.

I
wanted her to pick me up off my feet and hold me tight, the smell of her wrapping round me, her warm breath on my skin, her eyelashes fluttering like butterflies on my cheek.

And I wanted time to stop at that moment, and never start again.

Papa said very little for the rest of the night and when I woke in the morning I was lying on the mattress pressed into the corner of the basement, a steaming cup of tea left on the floor for me.

As I walked around the house that day, thoughts of Mama rushed around my head, and for the first time in a very long time I saw the shadow of her memory; fleeting, hiding in the edge of my vision. She breezed through the door after a day at work. She stood at the cooker, turning her head to smile at me, and strolled towards me while I sat at the table. I closed my eyes and felt her presence. I kept my eyes closed because I knew that when I opened them, she wouldn’t be there. Would she ever be there?

I felt desperate to get out of the house, so I closed the door behind me, leaving those memories of Mama inside, and I called for Layla. Together we walked down to the river, barely a word shared between us, because the only words that came to my head were those of war and sadness.

And as we walked I hoped that my friends would be there, that they were alive, as I always assumed they would be, as I used to assume Mama would be. It went without saying. Just as you assume your house will still be standing when you wake in the morning, the windows and the doors, the rugs and the curtains, were all there when I went to bed, as was Papa that day and my friends. Why shouldn’t they be there in the morning?

Change was hanging over my city like a black cloud. I wanted to tell Layla about Mama, but the words weren’t there. I wanted to ask her about her family, but was scared to hear the answers. Instead we walked in silence, words not necessary, our friendship holding us together.

Everything became so wretched. Bad news came every day and to everyone. Good news was if you awoke in the morning, and if you survived the day. We lived as animals, thinking only of survival.

How did I feel? Like I was living on a knife edge. Like there wasn’t enough air to fill my lungs. Like I should be grateful for being alive. Like I should be making the most of my life because it could so easily be taken away. But there was no way to do this. I was scared. So scared.

Papa’s friend was killed and I cried although I barely knew him. He was running home, through a residential area, and a bomb landed. Not on him. Not close enough for him to be lifted off his feet with the force of the blast. But close enough for a piece of shrapnel to hit him in the stomach.

He died in a hospital bed among hundreds of others, all waiting for a doctor or a nurse. He died with a six-year-old boy on one side of him, half a leg missing, his face and arms covered in dirt and blood.

Rumours flew around like grains of sand. Americans killing civilians and children because they were in the way; Iraqis targeting their own, bombing their own civilians, yet blaming the Americans.

Two of my friends’ houses were destroyed. They survived but were forced to live with relatives, their brothers and sisters sent in different directions, families divided. Those who left the country, I don’t know what happened to them, I wish I did.

Then Baghdad fell.

My city, my home, was occupied. Americans were everywhere. Tanks. Guns. Soldiers.

It scared me. I didn’t know how to feel or what to do. My life was on hold. I wanted to go to school, but couldn’t, and worry filled what space was left in my head. What about my exams? My application to university? But there was nothing I could do about it. Everyone I met, everyone I talked to, had a million questions, but nobody had any answers.

The Americans shouted their orders in their brusque English, but so many didn’t understand them. I’m lucky my English is good, I have Papa to thank for that, speaking English around the house, keen for me to learn early and learn properly. His fluency and his vocabulary hadn’t come from Western films and music like so many people’s had; it came from living and studying there for years.

“English history books teach you a different kind of English,” he told me.

When I hear the Americans talk, I think they could do with some lessons from Papa.

Was I glad the regime had fallen? Yes, I suppose, I was. But so frightened and so worried.

Papa and Aziz talked about it over dinner – they chatted and argued and debated about what it would mean to us as a country and as a people. Papa, always the historian, reasoned his argument with fact, Aziz went with what he saw and what he felt. As I watched them and listened to them I sensed the change already; they were Iraqis and they were talking. But even when the debate heated up, it ended in one of two ways: either Aziz’s contagious laugh forcing up the corners of Papa’s mouth, or Hana mentioning the prisons, questioning when they would be opened, and the prisoners liberated. The opposite ends of the scale, one lightening your heart, the other making it feel like lead. Both bringing the family together.

I saw clouds cross Papa’s eyes whenever prison was mentioned. I saw the muscles fall slightly in his face.

Life in the city was beyond dangerous, a curfew in the evening, gunfire across the skies, explosions rattling the windows and doors in their frames. I felt closer to Papa than I ever had. We were a strange family for this city, this country. I didn’t know of any other single fathers and I thought of what he did, bringing me up alone, waiting for Mama’s return, and I wondered if he was lonely. He went to work and came home. He did very little else. And I wondered if his belief in Mama’s eventual return ever dwindled, if he ever dared to let himself think she wouldn’t come back.

Maybe if he had, he would’ve taken Aziz’s advice; left this country, returned to England, found a job there, at least until Baghdad was safe. Things would have been better if he had done so, if he had left. Things would not have ended as they did.

But his belief in her survival seemed forever undaunted, and he stayed.

Some days I believed she wasn’t meant to be found, that I should accept she would never come back. Other days I believed it was kinder to think she had died. I knew there had been no justice in this city, and still it eluded us, but always a smallest shadow of hope, the tiniest chink of belief, lurked somewhere inside me, and I could never let go of the possibility that one day she might just return to us.

But as we waited and we hoped, our lives continued to change before our eyes.

I watched strange men, in strange uniforms and with strange voices, march and drive into my city with weapons at their shoulders, pointing right, left, up, down, uttering promises of a better life. Safety and security. Freedom and democracy. Liberation.

When these things would come, I never heard.

I saw shops with fronts blasted out, schools with roofs caving in, holes in roads, burnt-out cars, piles of rubble that had been homes, plumes of smoke, shells of buildings, husbands comforting crying wives, mothers nursing injured children.

People at school disappeared; stopped coming, were injured, some killed. My class was suddenly only twelve.

I cried. Selfishly, I cried for everything I had lost. I missed my friends so much. I sat next to different students, spent my lunch times and breaks with girls I had never spoken to before. I felt lonely. I hoped it might bring a sense of camaraderie between us; all in the same position, all with the same feelings, but it didn’t. It brought a bigger division.

One of the girls asked me what it was like being the only Christian in the class. I was shocked. She said she couldn’t sit with me. “Baghdad isn’t a place for Christians,” she told me. “You should leave.”

Teachers left too. My science teacher, my favourite teacher, was forced to leave. A member of the Ba’ath party, he had no choice. But he was ambitious, hopeful and aspiring for his future; he joined, I’m sure, in name only, like Papa. To achieve anything, to get anywhere, to be promoted, to thrive in your career, was impossible if you didn’t join.

But to the Americans, you were a Ba’athist, so you were a threat – your job was taken.

And so Papa lost his job too. His passion for education and learning which had followed him throughout his life, pulled from under him. I could see the disappointment in his shoulders, the depression tugging at his body and his mind, the frustration in his eyes at being unable to help his students, who battled in to the university, past roadblocks and checkpoints, through explosions and gunfire. His students so loyal to him.

My poor Papa. He was lost. He was drifting.

I wished I could do something for him. Help him in some way, but there was nothing I, nor anyone else, could do.

And now, what do I wish for?

I wish that I had thought of something, anything, before it was too late.