Dates on My Fingers: An Iraqi Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (18 page)

I kept recalling last night’s feeling that barriers between Fatima and me were collapsing. She was teaching me how to manage the accounts and take the customers’ orders. She also pointed out to me the different kinds of drinks and how to prepare and serve them. She was doing double duty, performing her own job and training me at the same time, and we were together behind the bar throughout the night’s enjoyable work. She moved like a bee, buzzing between neighboring flowers, never forgetting anything and always flashing her
smile. During that time, due to the narrowness of the place, one of us would often bump into or brush past the other. We felt this contact to the core, and we would shiver—a delicious shudder—even as we feigned indifference and apologized routinely to each other at first. But after it kept on happening, we began to be content with a smile, even when we did it on purpose sometimes.

During all those collisions, I wasn’t able to stop my arms from repeatedly brushing against one of her breasts. Nor could I avoid rubbing my thigh against her butt when I passed behind her in order to take something from one of the waitresses in the lounge while Fatima was bent over to take out more appetizers and olive cans tucked away on the floor under the lowest shelves. My thigh brushing past her butt. It’s an image I’d replayed many times since last night, and now again very deliberately, like a movie scene in slow motion, frame by frame, as though immersing myself in a detailed examination. To be honest, I was just taking delight in it all. My thigh, as it rubbed against her right buttock, found it soft, firm, round, and succulent all at once, like a child’s balloon inflated by his mother. Then my thigh continued its advance, descending into the depression between her two buttocks like a train passing down through the valley between two hills. It sent a shiver passing from my thigh to my loins. My thigh continued its intimate caress onward and up the other buttock, feeling that it had spread them apart a little. I trembled as I imagined it.

The work wasn’t as hard as I had imagined it would be. On the contrary, I found that I liked it, especially in that it allowed constant interaction and working directly with other people, something that I had lacked and consequently suffered from in my former job. I was just a driver there, and my relationships
were limited to my friends at work such as Antonio, Mario, and Mario’s girlfriend, Carmen, as well as the owner of the distribution agency. For that reason, isolation and loneliness were the defining characteristics of my life.

This work was entirely different because it provided interaction with different kinds of people. Indeed, it forced you to find strategies to communicate with them and understand them since the idea was to win them over as customers. It was something that had other advantages too, such as the shifts passing by quickly and being full of energy and life, never boring. You don’t feel any fatigue or boredom at the time, but afterward, when it’s over and you decide to take a rest, you’re exhausted, and your legs hurt from having stood for so long. But you do get to rest.

I wouldn’t say that what I felt for Fatima was an irresistible or unavoidable love. Instead, I might be able to describe it as the common situation where you follow the lead of the head, not the heart. There is another person who you believe suits you, the sort you want to be in a loving relationship with. You realize perfectly that you will truly come to love her. Then you start living together. After you get to know her better, you start to feel that she is right for the kind of relationship that might end up with your becoming partners in life, a married couple. So it’s not something that started with an irresistible first glance, nor with obscure feelings of attraction and seduction that overpower your self-control. Rather, it was a kind of persuasion and choice. Or even a kind of conscious and planned intentionality.

As far as I was concerned, this is what I felt toward Fatima. At least, this is what I thought, which is more correct than to say “feel.” The experience was entirely different from my bewildering passion for Aliya, who was my first love, and
perhaps my one and only. To me, her small eyes were bewitching and impossible to resist, for in them I saw life’s pleasure and meaning. It’s true that Fatima had large eyes and long, black eyelashes of the sort that I know general, traditional taste considers to be fascinating. Without a doubt, they were enchanting eyes. But they didn’t do to me what Aliya’s eyes did.

As for Fatima, it was possible for me to communicate with her, and there was both affection and sexual attraction. She was a good person, suitable to me, and ready to enter into a loving relationship. I could love her. Her glances, her way of interacting with me, the tone of her voice when she talked to me, her reactions, her affection, and her constant smile all confirmed that she felt the same contentment and willingness that I did. Indeed, taken all together, it formed a kind of call that invites you to the next, familiar step.

There is a certain kind of feeling, which no doubt everyone has experienced or heard about. It is the feeling that the other person across from you shares the same satisfaction and the same readiness. There is an aspect of silent, mutual understanding, and the other person is waiting for the right moment to begin building the relationship.

The additional thought came to me that my father was aware of the matter, given things he had suggested or joked about with one of us while the other was nearby. Deep down, he may even have been wanting it and planning for this relationship to happen.

For the whole seven hours to Barcelona, the lion’s share of my reflection went to Fatima and to remembering details from the previous night. Far fewer were my memories of Aliya, which wove through my other thoughts and would usually overpower me whenever the train passed near water: a river, a lake, the sea.

Meanwhile, there was a single thought that I expelled from my thoughts as often as it pushed itself to the front of the line. That was my father’s decision to fulfill his oath. That oath had brought him here with a goal, namely, to insert the remaining bullet from that youth’s revolver into the anus of this diplomat in the Iraqi embassy; that is, the very same anus.

I felt a severe difficulty in swallowing this thought. It seemed so incomprehensible to me, at least after the marks that ten years of experience in the West had left upon me. I could only see it as a kind of recklessness and an inhuman cruelty, a sick behavior leading to disastrous results. How could I divert my father from it, when it was his goal and the vow he swore on the holy book in front of Grandfather?

I wasn’t able to think clearly about the matter, and I didn’t see an obvious method for dealing with my father since this issue was so central to his life, his thought, and his determination. So I turned my mind back to remembering some of the specific recommendations that my father had given for this mission of mine with Rosa. He had spoken a lot, but I was content to focus on the essentials, which were that I buy her a bouquet of large, white jasmine flowers from a shop close to her house. I was to bring them to her after attaching the card that he had written on and folded up. I had used the interlude of his writing the card to read a book, not feeling any curiosity to see what he was composing. Nor had I cared much about memorizing the details of what he wanted me to say to her. I would let the meeting and the conversation proceed spontaneously since all that he wanted was that she be convinced and come back to him. Therefore, if she wanted that deep down, there was no need for much talk, and likewise if she had decided in her heart to leave him.

So I decided to be content just to say things with the purpose of getting her to come back. That idea would be my guide for the natural direction of our conversation. The only thing I had to do was bring her a jasmine bouquet and ring the doorbell of her house at the address which he had written for me. I wasn’t nervous, nor did I feel any uncertainty about how to interact with her. Indeed, I had a strange confidence, or something like that. It was as though we knew each other well. Perhaps that feeling came from how well I understood the Spanish personality and culture in general. Or maybe a certain coldness and nonchalance on my part, if I can put it like that. Many who know me describe me that way. I sometimes think that it’s due somehow to Aliya’s effects upon me.

In any case, I knew where I was going in Barcelona perfectly since I’d spent two weeks there during last year’s summer vacation. It had drawn me in with its mixture of ethnicities as well as buildings. The extremely old and the extremely modern lived side by side, regardless of when they were established. And the festive atmosphere of Las Ramblas Boulevard, which was always a delight to walk up and down, day and night—I’d go between one end leading to the sea and the other leading to the crowds in the vital city center.

What I liked most about Barcelona were the two things that in my opinion are the legs upon which this city’s surprising and attractive personality stands. These are the sea and the imprints of its genius, Gaudí. I spent days there, never bored, drawn in by what could be described as an expansiveness, an enormity, a richness, or a universality that leads you with a jolt or a soothing playfulness to touch both sides of the existential anxiety. Something gives you the sense of interacting with nature in its vastness. Indeed, as a whole, the city seems to form a majestic cosmos in and of itself, and not just be part of one.

Barcelona also has a spirituality, inspiring its visitors with the extent of its varied, uninterrupted history. It takes you in and recognizes you as family in some way, by the strength of its life, its greatness, its sweetness, and its festivity. I wonder what my father likes in Barcelona.

I arrived at four in the afternoon. My only luggage was the shoulder bag that I usually carry, in which I had packed some books to read, a notebook and paper, pens, Kleenex, a pack of cigarettes, and a small comb. That made me the first one off the train. I headed straight for the train station’s bathrooms, where I emptied my bowels, my bladder, and my nose. I washed my hands and face with cold water, and I put water on my hair, running my hands back and down to my neck. Then I took my little comb out of the pocket of my bag and fixed the hair on my head, my eyebrows, and my mustache. I left the bathroom feeling alert and refreshed.

I took a taxi in the direction of Rosa’s address. But once there, I didn’t ring the doorbell at the front of her building. Instead I headed directly to the flower shop, which I found just as my father had described it. I bought a bouquet of jasmine flowers and slid the card out from between the pages of my book. I asked the young shopkeeper to tie it to the jasmine bouquet, which she did with an elegant, colorful thread.

After that, I went to the café next door, where I called Rosa. She was shocked by the surprise and said she would come immediately. I selected a table for us by the window, near a small glass fountain. The surface of the water was distorted by light from multicolored lamps submerged at the bottom. I ordered a café con leche, which I sipped as I smoked and stared through the window at the door to Rosa’s apartment building.

Rosa came out. She was wearing a white dress with a collar decorated by pink ribbons. On her arm she carried a purse that resembled a basket because it was made of dried plant leaves—perhaps hemp or palm fronds?

Rosa was tall and voluptuous, with blond hair that flashed in the light of the late-afternoon sun. She swung it from side to side as she watched for traffic and hurried straight across the street, without going to the pedestrian crosswalk. She came closer, moving quickly, her ample breasts bouncing under a white bodice and two necklaces. One necklace had silver beads and the other’s were a yellowish white, bone colored or else actually made of bone. Whoever saw her would never suspect she was nearly fifty. And here is her perfume coming through the door before her. She greeted the café workers. It was clear they had known each other for a long time. Then she looked around for me. I lifted my arm to wave to her, and she rushed over. We embraced.

She sat down across from me, unable to contain her joy, which she emphasized by repeating, “What a surprise! My goodness, what a lovely surprise!”

The waiter come over and asked, “The usual?”

She nodded to him and continued telling me how happy she was. I hastened to push the bouquet of flowers over to her, which I had put on the seat next to me. They made her gush, “Ooh la la, how beautiful! Thank you so much, Saleem!”

“Don’t thank me,” I said to her, “Thank the one who sent them. He wrote the card.”

Her fingers tore open the envelope and then the card, which had more than one fold. When she lifted the cover, it began to play softly the music of “Happy Birthday to You.”

“Oh! Because tomorrow is my birthday!” Rosa sighed deeply, and as she read her smile radiated passionate love and
rapture. She didn’t notice the waiter, who put a full glass of beer, very tall in the German style, in front of her and then withdrew in silence.

Meanwhile, I lit another cigarette and sipped my coffee, watching her face intently. I saw tears stream from her eyes. She let them drip onto her lips, which contorted with emotion and radiated joy by turns. At that moment, it would be impossible for anyone looking at her to doubt, even a little, the depths of this woman’s passion for Noah.

She closed the card and pressed it to her breast. Then she kissed it and burst into tears again. I hurried to pass her a Kleenex I had taken from my bag. She wiped her tears and laughed with a mouth tightened by emotion, saying, “Your father is crazy. And I’m just as crazy because I am madly in love with him.”

At that moment, I regretted not having read what he had written to her in the card. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I got up and went around to the other side of the table and hugged her where she sat. She cried on my neck for a while, shaking and a little hysterical. I let her squeeze me to her for a while until she calmed down. Then I kissed her forehead, helped her wipe away the tears, and went back to my place.

“Thank you, Saleem,” she said.