Between Two Worlds

Table of Contents

 

 

Praise for
Between Two Worlds
:

“ . . . freshly poignant and newly galling. . . . a personal, intimate look at the soul-crushing impact of Hussein’s Iraq. . . . Salbi deploys a straightforward, easy prose that is powerful in its simplicity. . . . Now, with her chilling memoir, the lies end.”

 

“Salbi has direct personal knowledge of Hussein that is both insightful and disturbing. . . . There are secrets her mother never reveals, but [she] recognizes the importance of letting her mother’s generation decide how much of their own stories they are willing to tell.”—
Ms.
magazine

 

“. . . a torrent of vividly recalled memories [that] reads with the sort of artless verve that can come only from one who’s been unshackled from a lifetime of repression.”
—Vogue

 

“[
Between Two Worlds
is] a stomach-churning memoir ... ”

 

“[S]ometimes a painful experience, this memoir ... is also [Salbi’s] hopeful vision, both for her own life and for the future of her native country. . . . a remarkable tale of emotional and mental resilience.”
—Bookpage

 

“ . . . engrossing . . . a unique insider perspective. . . . [A]n evocative and haunting memoir that proves that one courageous woman can rise above her own painful past in order to make a difference in the lives of others.”—
bookreporter.com

 

“ . . . provides very important observations about Saddam’s character and his ability to intimidate even close friends. [Salbi] vividly describers her late liberation from his ”charm“ . . . Through a journey colored with loss and hope, readers encounter a story of self-awakening and of realizing the will to live and survive.”
—Library Journal

“[A] steadfast visionary spirit prevails, rendered with remarkable literary skill and complex personalities.”
—Bust

 

[An] engrossing memoir . . . riveting. . . . This may be the most honest account of life within Saddam’s circle so far. . . . an enlightening revelation of how, by barely perceptible stages, decent people make accommodations in a horrific regime.”

—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

 

“ . . . a powerful portrait of an ordinary Iraqi family reluctantly entangled in Saddam Hussein’s world. . . . Zainab’s inspiring story is a gripping combination of fear, humanity, and personal strength.”—Jean Sasson, author of the #1 internationally bestselling
Mayada, Daughter of Iraq

Zainab Salbi
is the founder and president of Women for Women International (
www.womenforwomen.org
), a nonprofit organization providing women survivors of war with resources to move from crisis to stability and build peace one woman at a time. She holds degrees from George Mason University and the London School of Economics. She is often interviewed in the media, including frequent appearances on
Oprah
. She lives in Washington, DC.

 

Laurie Becklund
is an award-winning Los Angeles journalist and author. This is her third collaboration. A former
Los Angeles Times
reporter, she wrote the first story about Salbi in 1991, when Zainab was a young woman stranded in America due to the Gulf War.

 

GOTHAM BOOKS
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

Published by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

First trade paperback printing, August 2006

 

Copyright © 2005 by Zainab Salbi and Laurie Becklund

All rights reserved

 

Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

eISBN : 978-1-592-40244-1

 

 

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PROLOGUE

I STAND ON THE balcony of the old house with the courtyard on the Tigris where my mother spent her childhood. I take in the sea-gulls as their shadows scatter-fly the clay-colored water. I hear the overamplified call to prayer from a mosque near the ancient shrine of Elijah and think of the simpler voice at Pig’s Island. Across the river, near the place the boatmen can moor once again, is one of the world’s oldest universities. Downstream a wisp of smoke rises as the remains of another of Amo’s monuments falls in upon itself. How many cities on earth are so old, and yet still unborn?

I keep returning to Rumi’s poem about the three fish.

The first fish was wise. When he saw the men and their nets, he said, “I’m leaving.” He became a moving footprint and finally made it to the edgeless safety of the sea. The second fish, the semi-intelligent fish, said, “My guide has gone. I ought to have gone with him, but I didn’t, and now I’ve lost my chance to escape.” So he played dead, floating belly up to avoid being eaten. The third fish, the dumb one, thrashed about as the net closed around him. As he lay in the pan, he thought, “If I get out of this, I’ll never live again in the limits of a lake. Next time, the ocean! I’ll make the infinite my home.”

Except for the bearded old
haggi
playing backgammon on the floodwall beneath me, I can see few faces from where I stand. Clearer are the faces in my mind, the faces of my mom and dad and our friends whose families Amo cracked neatly apart like pistachios. All of us faced an asynchronous choice: home or future. But Amo commanded fish to swim in his lakes and reduced the ancient Tigris to a trickle. When did our choosing time come?

 

Baghdad
May 2003

1

THE ABBASID COIN

MY MOTHER GREW up in a house on the Tigris River that must have been grand then, with its courtyard and sixteen rooms. The house belonged to my grandfather, who died before I was born. Mama inherited from him a modest fortune—a share of the house and his factories, a quantity of gold, and a family name that means something still. But the one physical object of his that I ever really cared about was a gold coin forged a thousand years ago by Abbasid caliphs who moved the political and cultural center of the Islamic empire from Damascus eastward to Baghdad. Baghdad yields its secrets reluctantly, to those who dig, and a friend of my grandfather’s discovered a bag of the coins in the course of demolishing an old building. He gave three to my grandfather, who gave one to each of his three young daughters. Mama, the youngest, designed a frame for it in the shape of a small chain and wore it around her neck always. It had a dent on one edge I can still visualize because I so often wondered what sort of blow might have caused it.

She was a teacher when I was little and when she came home from school she would take a nap on the sofa. She had the gift of being able to fall asleep almost instantly, and she radiated utter peace as she slept. I would squeeze in next to her, take in the slightly sweaty smell of the classroom she brought home with her, and try to make my breaths match hers exactly. Between her full breasts lay the Abbasid coin. I remember breathing to the rise and fall of that ancient coin against her skin, its worn symbols gleaming softly in the afternoon light. I assumed I would wear it when I grew up and became, hopefully, as smart and beautiful as she was. Of course, I also assumed back then that Iraq would always be my home.

Though it is hard to imagine, given all that has happened since, growing up in Baghdad was for me probably not unlike growing up in an American suburb in the 1970s. I spent many hours driving around with my mother, running errands and shopping, driving to and from school, going to piano lessons, ballet lessons, swimming lessons, and just tagging along. She kept a busy social calendar then, and in the car was the place I got to spend time with her. She loved Baghdad—she was
of
Baghdad—and as we drove back and forth along the boulevards lined with palm trees heavy with dates, she would tell me a little about each neighborhood as we passed through it. I took in my city through the passenger-side window—old Baghdad with its dark arcaded souk where men hammered out copper and politics, and the new Baghdad with its cafes and Al-Mansour boutiques. What I learned of my heritage, as was true for almost everything else in the first nine years of my life, I learned through her.