A Brighter Fear (8 page)

I resigned myself to the life I would have at Hana and Aziz’s. For now, at least. I accepted I would not be going to university. I had to, there was no choice. Aziz convinced Hana to let the boys go to school though, and every day circled around survival; the boys arriving at school safely, returning home safely; Aziz surviving another day driving his taxi, trying to earn some money; Hana finding food, there being enough power to cook, water to drink, to wash, to clean.

Aziz kept me sane. I felt the air suck from the room whenever he left. His over-sized, boisterous friendliness was an infectious disease. A massive teddy-bear of a man, who I wished I could tuck under my arm and carry with me all day.

Without him, I would fall to pieces.

I helped around the house and some days we took food and drink to the American soldiers to sell. It made a bit of money, but not much. After a while some would wait for us, they knew who we were; they liked Hana’s cooking and praised her on it. But it scared me, talking to them. I was scared they would steal from us, attack us, ridicule us. And seeing them reminded me of Papa. The memory and the pain still so real, so raw.

They spoke no Arabic, knew little of our customs and culture, and were clumsy in their dealings with Iraqis. A little knowledge and understanding would’ve gone a long way.

I kept my head down and I listened to them. Kept my eyes low and my opinions hidden.

But there was one, who always stayed towards the back when I arrived, who never caught my eye, never took off his dark glasses or his helmet, never offered a smile. Never looked at me. But despite this, and despite my feelings of guilt and fear, I looked forward to seeing him. There was something about him that drew me to him, some familiarity, something in his demeanour, something about that small part of his face that wasn’t obscured, that was familiar.

But it scared me, thinking that, because my very being screamed at me that it was wrong to want to see him. These soldiers were occupying my country, walking around with guns, pointing them at civilians, stalking around in mirrored sunglasses, cigarettes drooping from corners of mouths. Arrogant. Insolent.

Yet this one I dared to think I might like. And after a few days of seeing him at the gas station, I headed over to him and he finally spoke, greeting me in Arabic fashion.

“Asalaamu aleikum,” he said.

I looked at him, surprised. “Wa aleikum asalaam,” I replied.

I had my beliefs about America and their soldiers. He did not fit these beliefs. American soldiers did not greet us in Arabic.

I scanned his face, his eyes obscured by his dark glasses, his face creasing as he gave a quick, flickering smile.

I felt confused. He thanked me for the food, said it was delicious, and said he hoped I would come and see him again the next day. I kept my mouth shut. He didn’t know I could speak English, and I felt something of a spy as I listened to these men.

The following day he was there again, still wearing his dark glasses, and when Hana moved away I walked towards him, my stomach lurching, my face flushing and burning and my hands shaking as I handed him a cup of chai.

I willed the courage to speak to him in English, to let down my defences. “Why are you guarding the gas station?” I whispered.

He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Well, just to make sure there’s no trouble. Y’know, because it’s rationed, and there are huge queues.” He shrugged. “People get frustrated. Annoyed. Tempers get frayed.”

And he paused, turned his head and looked at me. Really looked at me. And I felt so uncomfortable that I took a step back, hanging my head, my hair falling in front of my face.

“Your Joe’s daughter, aren’t you?” he whispered. He took off his dark glasses and lifted down his helmet. And the shock of it took my breath away. I swung around to him, staring up to his face, my mouth hanging open, my face a deep frown.

“I’m Steve,” he said, extending his hand. But I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t touch him. “I came to your house that day,” he continued. “And the funeral.”

I was about to shake my head.

But I looked at him properly now. My eyes searching past the stubbled chin, flicking over his dusty blonde hair, his narrow face, those eyes, those bright blue American eyes, filled with compassion I thought no soldier could hold, and I saw him, the soldier who had given me such bad news, and despite the heat of early summer, I felt cold. Every inch of me prickled. The hurt and pain of that day and every day since, without Papa, flooded back and I gulped away tears.

“I recognised you a while ago,” he continued, “but I didn’t think you’d want to see me, so I tried to keep away.”

I watched him as he hid his head again inside the helmet, obscured his eyes and face again behind those glasses, but now I could still see him. I could see him sitting at my kitchen table, see his fingers edging the cup in front of him, hear those words coming from his mouth as he told me Papa had been shot.

I watched the Steve in front of me lift the cup to his mouth, watched him drink, watched his dusty fingers and broken nails wipe the corners of his mouth.

“It’s nice to see you,” he said, holding the empty cup out to me.

I didn’t have any words to say, couldn’t get them past the lump in my throat and the burning in my chest. I nodded and reached out for the cup. But for a second, he didn’t let go.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “about your dad, Joe.”

And I looked up at him. “I’m sorry for hitting you,” I breathed.

He smiled and let go, a shrug on his shoulders. And as I turned away from him, I felt my cheeks flush, and as I walked away, I looked up and saw Hana’s eyes boring into me.

I thought about Steve that night as I lay in bed, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think of how he made me feel. That, I was going to ignore. He was an American. An American soldier. Above all else, that was his label; that was his business here.

The next day Hana sent me by myself. And I told myself I was going for Hana, because she wanted me to. And as I walked there I told myself I was feeling nervous because it was dangerous, because of the bombs on street corners and guns hiding inside windows, not because of the idea of looking again into his blue eyes.

And when I arrived, I told myself that my stomach was turning because I was so relieved I was safe, and as I saw Steve again, as I poured his drink, my hands were shaking because I was pleased to be earning Hana some money.

I sat with him in the shade while he drank, and all the caution I had told myself to exercise diminished as we talked. He showed me photos of his family he kept in his pockets; his parents and his sister, Maggie who, he said, was the same age as me and studying at university.

I stared at the photo of her and felt an overwhelming jealousy: to be allowed and able to go to university. I had promised myself I wouldn’t speak to him about my life, about me, yet I found I was telling him everything; about Mama going missing, Papa before the war, having to stay with Hana and Aziz, not being able to study.

He made me feel so comfortable it was like seeing an old friend again. It was as if we had known each other for years.

He asked me questions about living here, about what it was like before, if it was better now. And I spoke more honestly than I ever had about life and about my disappointment at the present and my trepidation about the future.

He told me that if he could, he would pick me up from the house every day and drive me in a tank to university, then later he would take me home again.

He made me smile, and I think it was the first smile to touch my face in a long time. Its warmth spread down me and I wondered if I’d made a friend. I hoped I had. It was the most I had talked to anyone in months and months. It was the most I had ever talked to a man who wasn’t family, yet oddly, the thought of him being male never entered my head. He was someone to speak to and to share thoughts with.

But he was an American soldier.

We fell silent and I realised how long I’d been talking, how much I’d told him, how many questions he’d asked, and for a moment there was a gap between us that neither of us seemed to know how to fill.

In silence still, I gathered together my things and packed them away, and as I paused, not knowing how to say goodbye, he took off his sunglasses and looked at me.

“Let me take you somewhere,” he whispered.

I didn’t move, I just stared at him, confused and shocked. Speechless.

“Just for a few hours. Let me take you out of the city. Take you somewhere… oh, I don’t know… somewhere peaceful.”

I scoffed at the word, at the suggestion even. “That’s impossible,” I replied.

“Maybe not,” he said.

“How?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Not yet. Let me see what I can work out. See what we could do, where we could go.”

And suddenly I felt scared, the reality of the situation crashing on to me. “I can’t do that,” I said, moving away, shaking my head, my hands trembling.

He frowned.

“You’re a soldier. And you’re American,” I said. “That’s it. There is nothing else. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have spoken to you. I shouldn’t have told you about me.” I turned, striding away, leaving him standing alone.

And I felt so angry as I walked home. Why did he have to say that? Why did he have to spoil things? I wanted to be able to look forward to the next day, to seeing him again, to chat with him again. I wanted to feel that elevation and excitement that I hadn’t felt for as long as I could remember.

But now? Now he had said that, it all seemed so much more real.

I knew this friendship, if that’s what it was, couldn’t last. I knew what he was suggesting could never happen; that mouths would gossip and fingers would wag. Decent Iraqi girls do not fraternise with American soldiers, and just talking to him was risking bringing shame on the family, and making a name for myself. It was thoughtless and it was dangerous and I knew I must remember what happened with Papa, and how his relationship with the soldiers was seen, that maybe he was killed for it. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere with Steve. Yet I longed for a friend to be with, to speak with, to share things with.

Was that so wrong?

At the house there was no one to talk to. Hana hated me. Aziz was never there, and when he was, he was tired, or worried, or wanting to be with his wife and children. He always had a smile for me, and I knew he cared, but where before Aziz had always been the epitome of fun and laughter, slowly it seemed to be leaving him. I missed his booming laugh and his huge smile.

So many smiles were lost in the war, and so many tears were found.

I thought about what I had found, what had found me. This American soldier. This strange thing appearing from out of nothing but anguish and turmoil and destruction and fear and hatred. He gave me something different. He was a breath of fresh air to me.

But he was dangerous. Or would be, if I kept seeing him. And his suggestion? It frightened me. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere with him. That it could never happen. Then why, why did the mere idea of it keep coming to my head? Why, when I closed my eyes, did I still see him?

Why did I think of him when everything to do with him was impossible?

Whatever happened to Sacha? Part III

What hell is this
? Sacha thought.

She kept count of the days as November, December and January disappeared inside the cell. She knew it was February 16th when she was called out for the last time; day number one hundred and ten. She had been beaten, raped and tortured.

The same clothes still hung off her, stained with food and vomit, sweat and urine. But she wasn’t ashamed of how she looked and smelled. She was ashamed of her weakness when she cried for her husband to rescue her, her mother to hold her tight, and her daughter to cuddle in her arms. She was ashamed of the screams which ripped through her when she could take the pain no longer.

And when the torture finished, she would think,
Am I lucky for being alive? Lucky is making it to the house a second before the rain comes. Lucky is dropping your car keys near a grate and them not falling in. Lucky is finding a 250-dinar note lying motionless on the dusty ground.

Being alive is not luck. Being alive is a right.

As she walked barefoot from the cell that last time, she wondered if this would be the time she would die.
Wouldn’t that be better?
she thought.
For death to release me from this?
She accepted what would happen next, she prayed for it to end and with her eyes low, she watched her feet shuffle towards that room.

But when the guard led her past it, she woke a little, felt her breath quicken, her face flush, her palms sweat.

He paused to unlock a door, and Sacha struggled to keep the idea out of her head that she might be being released. His fingers squeezed into the purple bruises around the top of her arm and dragged her forward. Another guard joined them, keys spinning around his finger, and another set of boots walked their way. She heard a key click in a lock, the heavy creak of a door.

And sunlight drenched the room. She screwed her eyes up, a greeny orangey hue dancing behind her eyelids. The heat hit her as she was dragged outside, her toes scuffing on the concrete, loose gravel pressing into her heels. She breathed in, sucking in the fresh air, new smells coming to her nose, new sounds to her ears. She eased one eye open a crack, desperate to see more than concrete and walls.

A man barked at her, ordering her on to the back of a truck. But with her wrists tied together and her body weak, she could barely lift her arms. She felt herself pulled upwards, felt the strain in her shoulders as she was dragged up by the rope around her wrists and thrown on to the truck, her elbow skidding across the floor, her head stopping the momentum as it hit a metal bench.

Sacha didn’t move.

She woke to find herself surrounded by people. Prisoners sat with her, all silent, fearful of where they were going, what was to happen next.

She breathed heavily, sucking in the fresh air, the smell of the desert, a faint scent of wild flowers somewhere in the distance.

Am I being released?
she dared to think.

The engine stopped, a prisoner spoke. “Thank you for travelling with me,” he said. “I wish you all luck. Inshallah.”

He bowed his head. And for a few moments before they were dragged and pulled and ushered off the truck, a silence fell, heavy with trepidation; fear of the unknown and fear of the fate that waited for them.

The heat was white, silver, molten. It willed her to close her eyes. She thought of the cell she had left that morning; she thought of opening a fridge door on a hot day, exhaling cool, damp air; she thought of her father standing on the banks of the Tigris, pulling off his shirt, his belly hanging over his trunks, the layer of sweat on his body, collecting on his brow, in his moustache. She remembered him jumping into the water, feeling the cool drops as they splashed on to her skin. How old had she been? Five? She remembered telling her mother of that memory as they sat together in the shelter.

“How do you remember that?” her mother had asked, shaking her head.

Sacha wobbled on her feet, the heat punishing her, torturing her, bringing forward memories long forgotten.
What would my mama think of me now?
she questioned.
What would she say to me?
And she imagined her holding her in her arms, rocking her gently, whispering in her ear.

The prisoners stood in a line. How many? She couldn’t remember.

A shot rang out. Sacha jumped, looking round, checking herself, checking she was breathing. She saw a man at the beginning of the line, fallen to the floor, his face in the dirt, a trickle of blood leaking on to the ground.

And another shot. No cry, no shout, no scream. Just a thud.

And another.

She counted them. That was the third. She felt panic in her skin, her body, her blood.
What number am I?
she thought.

Shot number six rang out. Another thud. Closer this time.

Am I number seven?
she thought.

She kept her eyes down, watching her own feet as she gently moved her toes in the sand, feeling the grains between them, tiny indentations where they rested. A line of crimson crept into her field of vision, crept along the floor towards her feet. Fear rose in her chest. She moved her head slightly, her eyes reaching out to the left, searching for the owner of the blood. Wanting to know, but not wanting.

She saw him.

Number six was lying dead next to her. The man who had wished them all luck.

She
was
number seven.

A strange calm fixed over her.

She lifted her head and looked the gunman in the eye. She watched him load his weapon, watched the bullet that would kill her drop into the chamber. She watched him raise his right arm, steady it with his left, his head leaned to one side, his left eye closed, his right looking through the sights, down the barrel, across the yard.

To her. Straight into her eyes.

She didn’t look at the finger on the trigger, she kept both eyes fixed on her killer.

She saw his deep brown eyes, his thick eyelashes, a mole on the side of his nose.

She waited.

She watched the man open his left eye, straighten his head, lower his arms. He grinned at her. A grin of power, of hatred. “Maybe not today,” he said.

Then a bang, and a thud.

Number seven lay on the floor.

Sacha was number six and a half.

Out of the twenty prisoners on the truck, fifteen lay dead on the ground in a sandy field next to a tall concrete building. They were all shot in the head.

Sacha stood in a sea of bodies.

With spades in their hands, the five survivors chipped away at the earth with the little energy they had left, none muttering a word, all immersed in their own shock and grief, and guilty sense of relief.