Dates on My Fingers: An Iraqi Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (10 page)

“It’s wrong,” she said.

“But we are going to get married,” I said. “Aren’t we going to get married?”

Her face lit up, and she hugged me tight. Then she gave my hand freedom to slip down the front of her dress, and we stretched out on the sand. Later on, she offered herself to me entirely. I loved her completely, as though I were “in a lofty (aliya) garden, where grapes hang low.”

She would reserve the ripest dates to the end of our meal, which grew more elaborate with bread, cucumbers, and figs. She would open the date with her teeth and remove the pit to throw into the thicket. Then she would pass the hollow date around her fingers like a ring before offering me the fingers to suck. I saw her close her small eyes, turning them into two lines with projecting eyelashes, just as they looked whenever she laughed or smiled widely.

Sometimes she would leave the date-ring on her finger for me to eat off before I sucked the finger, and sometimes she would eat it, when the date wouldn’t stay fixed to her finger. After the fingers, she would smear her lips with the next date
as though she were putting on lipstick. She would then smear mine and push the date into my mouth, and we would give ourselves over to a long, gentle sucking of each other’s lips.

Aliya had a light fuzz on her top lip, which only two kinds of people saw: those who loved her and those who hated her. The lover, myself, saw in it the consummation of her beauty and, later on, a way to preserve the nectar of dates so that our kissing lasted longer. As for anyone who hated Aliya, he would take the fuzz to be a blemish to be harped upon because there was no other fault to be seen in her body. It was just like the matter of her small eyes. I came to love them precisely for how small they were and the way they disappeared into her face when she laughed or surrendered to the pleasure of our caresses.

After a while, when Istabraq was regaining her strength, she asked me about my letters. I told her about the nest where Aliya and I met, without indicating its location. I said that we left our letters to each other there when it was impossible to meet. We would put them in an agreed-upon cleft at the bottom of a tree trunk rising on the edge of the nest, against which Aliya would sometimes lean, or under white stones we had designated.

“Istabraq,” I said, “please don’t ever tell anyone about this!”

“Don’t worry,” she said, as her mouth gaped open in astonishment. Perhaps she and Sirat also made their own special nest because she began disappearing from the house whenever she found an opportunity.

Later, Aliya began opening the buttons on the top of her dress or taking it off entirely. Then she would smear her breasts with the juice of dates and lie back in the sand, closing her eyes and letting me lick them, suck them, love them as she moaned and trembled. That is what made me always look at
a woman’s breasts afterward. Aliya had ideal breasts, neither too big nor too small. Each one was only a little larger than my cupped hand, and its nipple would stand up under my tongue.

Aliya was like Grandfather and me in her passion for dates, but she loved the river more than I did. The intensity of her love for it is what made me first love it too. But I began to feel jealous later on because of how much she would talk about it when it flowed in front of us. She imagined the river more beautiful than I saw it to be. Afterward, my relationship with the river became a mix of enmity and intimacy when Aliya, at the end of that summer of ours, drowned there.

I had once asked her not to go too far out in the water when she was swimming.

“Don’t be afraid,” she replied. “It’s my friend.”

She used to say, “Life is a beautiful gift from God, Saleem. It is not for us to object about how big or long it is. Rather, we receive it with gratitude and enjoyment.”

That’s why I thank God whenever I remember Aliya, and I blame life for taking from me the most beautiful gift it gave, for taking Aliya from me. I blame the river. I hurl rocks, and I cry. Then I throw myself into its embrace, wishing that it would take me to her.

It took her from me on the night of the festival, when we all went down to the riverbank. The families gathered on the shore where the sand and the pebbles came together. They spread out their sheets on the ground, and the mothers arranged dishes of food and sweets made the night before. The children played, running around the groups of adults, with the mountain echoing back their cries. The fathers tended the fires and grilled the meat. Tears caused by the smoke mixed with tears caused by laughter. We all swam in the river in specified
areas not far away: the men in one part and the women—without taking off their dresses—in another. Only the children had the freedom to cross between the two areas, pleading with the adults to teach them how to swim. Grandfather kept repeating the Prophet’s traditional command, “Teach your children archery, swimming, and horseback riding.”

He was alone there in the middle, up on a low hill, sitting on the one chair he owned and watching everybody. My father had brought this chair for him from Kirkuk when diabetes had eaten away at his body so much that his bones jutted out, such that sitting directly on carpets would hurt his back and his pelvic bone. For that reason, he kept with him a square, spongy pillow that he would use as a cushion wherever he sat, including on that chair, the only one in the village. It provoked everyone’s amazement because it would fold up. We felt how light it was when one of us carried it, walking behind Grandfather to the place he wanted. My father said the Germans had many kinds of chairs, and this kind was used for nude sunbathing.

All the mothers brought samples of their specialties to Grandfather, but he ate only a little and distributed the rest to the children who came up to him. All of us young men were stealing glances to the women’s area, hunting for glimpses of dresses clinging to bodies in order to meditate upon the image afterward when we secretly jerked off. Some of us were going especially far out into the river or being creative in our jumps to attract the gaze of the young women.

Suddenly, a cry went up from the women’s area. “Aliya! Where’s Aliya? She dove and didn’t come up! Aliya is taking too long to come up!”

We all ran over there, mingling together. The women had all come out of the water and stood in a row on shore, pale, terrified,
pointing to the place where Aliya last dove. Her mother was screaming the loudest, crying out and beating her breast. Yet of all those present, my heart was the most anguished.

All of us men threw ourselves into the place where the women had come out and where the fingers were pointing. I dove as deep as I could and opened my eyes, not caring about the strands of seaweed that got into them. For a wide expanse, I only saw rocks at the bottom. I didn’t come up until I was about to suffocate. I pushed off the bottom with my feet and shot upward, thrusting my head to the surface. I gulped the air, panting rapidly, sweeping my gaze to those around me in case anyone had found her. Then I dove before my lungs had gotten their fill of air. Those were tense, bitter minutes. A nightmare of minutes, days, years. A nightmare lasting a lifetime.

My father caught hold of me when he noticed me stumbling about nearby, about to pass out. I was vomiting up the water I had swallowed. He lifted me in his strong arms and pulled me to shore, scolding me all the while. There were women’s legs standing around me in a circle, and Mother dropped down next to me, wiping the water and the snot from my face with the hem of her dress. Meanwhile, I pulled my face away from her hands so as not to lose sight of the search. My chest rose and fell with the speed of my breathing and the drumming of my heart. Mother pressed down on my arms to prevent me from getting up again.

Moved by compassion, Istabraq approached from behind me. She draped a towel over my shoulders and embraced me. Her hands dried my shoulders with calming caresses filled with compassion. I felt her trembling. Then she exploded into tears and fell on me, her arms around me, when we all saw one of the men raising Aliya’s body to the surface. My hands came to my face, but I didn’t turn my eyes away. I wasn’t able to get up.

The lament echoed back from the mountain even louder than it had gone out. The swimmers circled around the man carrying her. One of them pulled down Aliya’s dress to cover her legs as the one carrying her approached us. She was sleeping in his arms as the water dripped off of her. Her arms hung down, as did her long hair, the ends of which were the last to take leave of the river. Even when her hair broke free, it stayed connected by a thread of water, making her hair look like her horse’s tail when she would wash it. It wasn’t like the wings of a happy bird, flying behind her head when she shot off on the horse.

They came toward us. Aliya was sleeping meekly in the arms of the man bearing her. She rained down on the river from every side. Everything about her pointed down to the water—her feet, her arms, her fingers, her hair, her dress—everything except her breasts, which rose up just like I knew them. Two domes, their details revealed by the wet dress. That was the last that I saw of her before she disappeared behind the surrounding bodies.

They brought her to where Grandfather was sitting and laid her out there in front of him on top of the soft pebbles, waiting for what he would advise them to do. Everyone withdrew up there, and the surface of the river cleared. I was not strong enough to stand. My head fell between my knees. I wrapped it in my arms and broke out in sobs, weeping. Istabraq embraced me from behind, and our tears shook us together, while Mother hugged me to her chest, kissed my head and said, “I know, Saleem. I know everything.”

Mother never said anything else about my love for Aliya after this, but she would look at me with pitying eyes and a broken heart.

Istabraq became closer to me in the following days. With compassion, she frequently consoled me and shared my tears,
alone together in my closed bedroom or at the shore. She sometimes came with me during my secret visits to Aliya’s grave. It sat alone at the foot of the mountain before being transferred later to a larger graveyard for our village’s departed. Istabraq helped me search for white pebbles to arrange on the grave, and she cleaned the two stones marking it.

Istabraq confessed, “I was the one who told Mother about your relationship. She was so happy, and she said that Aliya’s mother was happy too. They agreed to pave the way for your wedding to take place at the next festival.”

I didn’t find any letters from Aliya in the cleft of the tree trunk in our nest, against which she used to lean her back, offering to me her breasts smeared with dates. I didn’t find a letter under the white stones. And I never returned to the nest after my last visit, when I found that someone had taken a shit in the middle. Our nest was no longer a secret, as long as someone had seen fit to take a shit there.

The sight of Aliya sleeping, her body raining down on the river, was the last I saw of her. Her breasts, alive in the midst of death—it’s the most vivid of all my images of her. I always have it with me. It was my close friend, along with dates, in those moments when I burned with desire for her.

Only twice did I call it up when masturbating in secret. Once when I was in the army, stationed at the three-way border between Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, on the bank of the Khabur River. It was after my guard duty on a long night, during which Aliya had been my only companion. I yearned for her. I yearned to touch her. Her image diffused a warmth and a sweet trembling in my veins.

I went down to the river after turning over the watch to the next soldier. The moon was radiant, bathing the entire sky and all
of creation with glorious silver light. I left my rifle on the shore. I took my clothes off and put them on top of it, next to my shoes, and I slipped quietly into the river. I reached my hand under the water to my taut erection. I closed my eyes on the memory of Aliya and the scene of her domed breasts under her last wet dress, and I began to stroke and stroke. I stroked until the climax of desire and pleasure. Afterward, I felt empty, ashamed, and guilty for what I had done with her when she was dead. And I wept.

I resolved never to repeat what I had done. But I did repeat it four years ago when Pilar was sleeping in my bed after an orgy of our kissing and my caressing her breasts. After I sensed that Pilar had fallen asleep, with her perfume filling the apartment and me stretched out on the couch in the living room, I felt the erection under my pajamas, and I remembered Aliya. There was still half an hour before I had to leave for my job distributing newspapers.

I got up and went into the bathroom. I closed the door cautiously behind me, taking care not to make any noise. I filled the tub with water and quietly stretched out in it. I reached my hand under the water to my taut erection. I closed my eyes on the memory of Aliya and the scene of her domed breasts under her last wet dress, and I began to stroke and stroke. I stroked until the climax of desire and pleasure. Afterward, I felt empty, ashamed, and guilty for what I had done with her when she was dead. And I wept.

I hurried to wash up. I put on my work clothes and ate a couple of dates with a mouthful of cold milk. Then I went out, leaving Pilar in my bed and lighting a cigarette as soon as I passed through the door of the building.

When I reached the office, I found Antonio sitting in the truck, smoking as he waited for me. He had already finished
bundling and loading the newspapers we had to deliver. I sat behind the steering wheel next to him and turned the ignition. We set off as usual, with me driving. He slapped my right thigh and said in a significant tone, “I knew you’d arrive late …. So, how was your night?”

“Perfect,” I said. “But I left her sleeping in my apartment.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Pilar’s a good girl. I’ve known her a long time. By the way, she’s especially attracted to foreigners. Her last boyfriend was Italian.”

I gathered my laundry from the clothesline. Remembering what Pilar had said, I made sure to close the kitchen window so the pigeons wouldn’t get in. I had resolved to go to my father’s club that night. Pronouncing the Arabic words badly that morning, Rosa had said tonight’s party would be beautiful. But that isn’t what impelled me to go. Rather, it was my father. I had to find a chance to talk to him, or else we could pick a time to meet. My new father who had emerged, just like that, in my life here. As surprising as a head bursting out of the water after being submerged for a long time. I wondered whether my father still remembered the evening of the festival when Aliya drowned. Did he still remember her like I did after all these years?