Dates on My Fingers: An Iraqi Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (9 page)

When I was with Pilar, she confirmed for me that she had seen them herself. On the morning of the first night that she slept here, just after waking up, a pair of pigeons startled her by taking flight when she first entered the kitchen. She said, “You left the kitchen window open! Why don’t you get a cat? I know a shop with beautiful cats. Beeeeautiful! My God, how beautiful they are!”

I had left her that night sleeping in my bed while I passed the time in the darkness, remembering Aliya and our times alone in the hiding place that we discovered in the middle of the thicket, the place that we called our nest. We found it on the second day after we brought Istabraq back from the house of the Kurdish sheikh who had slit her ears. Mother had prevented her from going out, from housework, and from putting in her earrings until she was on the road to recovery. I was walking around, looking for Aliya in order to give her a new poem that I had written for her, along with a letter. I kept passing by their house and didn’t see the horse. Then I went among the houses, shacks, and reed huts of the village. I wandered around our Qashmar peninsula, going through the forest toward the shore on every side until I found her on the northern end, closest to the mountain.

She was wading in the water, washing her face. Behind her was the head of the horse, taking a long drink. I got confused, and I hesitated as I thought about getting away or hiding. But she turned and saw me, and the surprise stopped her.

“Oh!” she said. “Hello, Saleem.”

She turned around and looked in every direction; I did the same. We didn’t see anyone.

I took the carefully folded piece of paper scented with my mother’s perfume out of my pocket. I said, “I want to give you a letter. Istabraq can’t leave the house. I’d like to talk to you. Are you able?”

“Quick!” she said. “Get into the woods!”

I ran a few yards back and waited at the edge of the forest, keeping my head turned toward her. After waiting until the horse had drunk as much as it wanted, she took a rope out of the saddlebag it was carrying. She put the halter around its head while still turning to look in every direction. She led the horse toward me, its hooves sinking in the sand just as the words which I had prepared in advance sank into the trembling of my heart and were lost. We pressed further into the forest, opening a track for the horse behind us, until we tied it to the trunk of a giant willow tree, where it grazed on the thick grass around it. We explored the area until we found a sandy, circular clearing, shaded by a jumble of poplar branches interlaced in the sky above. There were smaller trees, such as the tamarisk. Reeds went around the clearing, reaching as high as our chests, such that when we sat down on the circle of sand, they were a little higher than us.

We looked at each other. It was the first time that we had been so close. We could hear the racing of our breaths and the beating of our hearts. Aliya asked me how Istabraq was doing, and I began relating to her the details of our journey for her treatment, taking advantage of the narration to regain my voice and my composure. We spoke in low voices that betrayed the pleasure of confiding secrets.

After I finished, I gave her the letter and the poem. I said, “You’ve never told me what you think of the poems I write for you.”

She said, “They are not very precise. Actually, they are one lie after another.”

Her words were a shock, and I found myself placing a hand on my heart and swearing to her the truth of my feelings for her.

She didn’t let me continue and clarified, “I don’t mean that your feelings aren’t true. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have exchanged letters with you, nor would I have come here with you. What I mean is, your poems aren’t convincing because they are filled with lies. You describe yourself as a knight who, for my sake, cuts off a thousand heads with one blow of his sword. In reality, if you actually killed anyone, I wouldn’t like you in the least. So this isn’t right, Saleem. And you’ve never seen a sword except for your grandfather’s sword that hangs on the front wall in the reception room for guests. Maybe you’ve never even touched it. What’s more, you’ve never ridden a horse in your life.

“Next, you describe my eyes as being as wide as two lakes, whereas you see that they are small, like the rips that rats make in a dress. Even my mother herself compares me to a Chinese girl, saying, ‘Bring me the china tray, my little China girl!’ My sister Salwa describes them as something else entirely when she is mad at me ….”

“What?” I said.

“No, no!” she said, “I’m too embarrassed to say.”

I pleaded with her to tell me. “You must never be embarrassed with me after today.”

“Fine,” she said. “Salwa says that my eyes are like … are like rabbit vaginas!” She said that with a smile, nearly laughing, and I noticed that her small eyes squinted completely to become small lines, which made her even more alluring, like someone beckoning with a wink.

She continued, “Then you say that my walk is what teaches the branches of trees to sway with the wind. You talk about a necklace for me made from stars and the moon, and that I am the mistress of the universe. But I’m just a girl who doesn’t know what goes on outside her own village. There are other things too. I’m talking about all these lies, Saleem. There’s no need for them. Your letters, with their authenticity and sincerity, are enough to convey your feelings for me.”

I felt crushed by the magnitude of this surprise as I contemplated the failure of my efforts and the late nights spent by the light of a candle, squeezing out my soul, tossing and turning in bed as I attempted to compose my poems, which never exceeded a dozen lines. But I sensed Aliya’s earnestness, and I saw that she was right. I didn’t comment but rather changed the subject to other details of daily life, taking care this time to avoid slipping into embellishments and dreams—despite the unreal quality of our encounter and a feeling that my growing love for her was exactly like a constantly expanding dream.

We agreed to meet daily in this place, which we called our nest. I stood up, extending my hand to help her rise. Her palm was soft like a new pillow. I felt that her touch had a flavor too because it left a sweet trace in my soul unlike any of the other hands I had shaken throughout my life.

I walked with her until we reached her horse. I helped her untie its rope, then accompanied her until she left the thicket in the direction of the shore. She brought the horse to a trot with a quick kick and off she went with a wave to me. I stayed where I was, watching her depart until she went out of sight, her hair flying behind her like the wings of a happy bird. Then I went back to the spot where we had sat together. I lay on my back and recalled the details: her breath, her voice, the touch of her hand, how
her eyes closed, and what she had said. The delicious coolness of the sand seeped into my body as I stared up at a pair of pigeons sitting on the intertwined branches with the sky behind them.

When the nearby sun went behind the even closer mountain, twilight pervaded the place. I got up and tidied our nest, smoothing out the sand, breaking the branches that extended into it, arranging the stones around the circular edge. Then I returned home.

I didn’t tell Istabraq anything. I was still sobered by what Aliya had said about the lies of my poems. That night, I kept waiting for an opportunity to ask Grandfather about it. I hesitated quite a while, fearing that he’d get angry or rebuke me. It took me a long time to think of the appropriate words to pose the question.

Since I had noticed that his speech never stumbled when reciting poetry, I said, “Grandfather, have you memorized all the poems of Antara?”

“I have memorized many by him and by others,” he replied, “but I don’t know if I’ve memorized all his poetry or not.”

Then, knowing that Grandfather hated lying and considered it “a scourge worse even than murder because it is the first step on the path of every sin,” I asked, “But don’t you think that the poems of these knights have many exaggerations? Or even that they come to the point of lying sometimes?”

I expected his reaction would be violent or that he would be silent for a while in thought, as happened with him whenever someone asked him about matters related to Islamic law. But he answered immediately with one sentence: “The sweetest poetry is the most fabulous.”

Then he resumed the story he had been narrating that night, leaving me stunned by the force of this second surprise, which was no less than the one caused by Aliya’s words.

I wasn’t able to comprehend Grandfather’s expression very well at the time, but I resolved the matter by abandoning the composition of poetry for good in order to be free of the contradiction that it led me into. And why should I write it if Aliya didn’t expect that from me? I read less poetry after that too, and the poetry that I did read from time to time, I began to regard in the light of what both Aliya and Grandfather had said.

I only resumed writing poetry four years ago, here, during moments when a deadly longing for Aliya became unbearable. I wrote a few disconnected fragments. I didn’t publish any of them, and I’m not planning to do so now. My childhood dream of becoming a significant poet, or even a professional writer, had dissolved. The three short stories I published in the Iraqi opposition papers in London were only memories of my army days that I composed for myself in order to put them in context or to be done with them. Or else they were a way to use my free time here in an attempt to understand myself more fully.

We began to meet daily in our nest, which became a little wider, cleaner, neater, and more cozy. The rendezvous was usually during the hour of the midday siesta when our families were sleeping. The better we got to know each other, the deeper we fell in love. I brought Aliya my notebook, in which I had taped pictures of actors and actresses. There were also photos of dream-like scenes where I would talk about bringing her. These were pictures in advertisements which I clipped from the German magazines that my father brought, such as a white, wooden house, surrounded by trees and a garden with colorful flowers, sitting on a lake shore with water of the deepest blue. Behind it was a mountain, whose peaks were white domes of snow touching the other white of the clouds.

But Aliya was less affected than I was by dreams. I learned from her to be satisfied and content. I learned a sense of realism and how to find pleasure in working with the simple but real things around us. From her I also learned self-composure and confidence in the present moment.

In my notebook there were other pictures of women with green eyes and blond hair, for whom I would invent names and say that they were international actresses. I pretended to have a wide knowledge of the world’s celebrities despite never in my life having set foot in a movie theater up to that point.

Because we could think only of each other and would hurry to our rendezvous, we would get up from the family table before eating our fill. I would take a handful of dates with me, wrapping them up in a piece of paper that I would push into my pocket. Aliya was like me, Grandfather, and the majority of the Mutlaq clan: she loved dates. The first time, when the handful of dates was gone, we kept our sticky hands raised in the air, delaying our descent to the shore. I don’t know how, but I got hold of her hand and began sucking her fingers. She liked the idea and grabbed my fingers in turn to suck on them. At first, she laughed. Then we gave in to a delicious daze of obscure shudders which drew our lips together without our hands slipping away from each other’s fingers.

That was the first and sweetest kiss of my life. Aliya’s lips were delicate, like the rest of her body, the details of which I began to discover later on. Her body was soft and firm at the same time. Not soft like butter, but rather like fresh cheese. Her lips combined the flavors of date and human. I discovered only then that even humans have a particular taste, just as every fruit or creature does.

After the first kiss, we were silent for a long time, staring at each other, shaken up and afraid. For the rest of the meeting,
we communicated with our glances, not uttering a single word. We got up and went to the shore, where we washed our hands and faces. After that, she left and I stayed behind alone, as usual. I didn’t return to the nest but stayed on the shore, throwing stones far out in the middle of the river. Then, just as my father used to do, I sat on a rock and hung my feet into the water until the sun set. With a grave expression, I recalled the taste of the kisses and feared God.

I fell asleep late that night after tossing and turning in bed for a long time. I awoke before sunrise, sweaty and terrified from a dream in which I saw myself in the fires of hell. I also saw the angels of hell, whose gigantic size and cruelty Grandfather had described. They were heating iron with which they seared my lips. There was a fearsome sizzle, and the smoke rose up, together with the smell of grilled flesh. Meanwhile, I sensed the presence of God, who was supervising my punishment as it was meted out, watching from a high place that I couldn’t see. The voice of Grandfather was ringing out angrily, “He deserves it! I warned them all! O God, my God, I told them! O God, my God, bear witness!”

I pushed off the covers and looked around. Smoke was rising along with the smell of my mother’s bread from the oven at the edge of the courtyard. I jumped up and hurried over to sate my thirst from the jar I had left by the door. I drank a lot of water, but it wasn’t enough. I felt the dryness of my lips and a stinging sensation.

During our meeting the next day, I hesitated for a long time before kissing Aliya because hell was on my mind, accompanied by Grandfather’s voice and the gaze of God. But I couldn’t resist the temptation of that pleasure. So I decided to ignore those other things, to put off thinking of them, deciding that
this sin of mine wasn’t serious like adultery. I justified it to myself, saying, “The sweetness of kissing Aliya in this world is worth the pain of my lips being seared in the world to come.”

We began to spend less time talking because we spent most of our time kissing. I loved her. It was as though I were “in a lofty (aliya) garden in which no babbling is heard.” Our hands reached out to the other’s back, butt, neck, hair, and the curve of the shoulder. But Aliya pushed my hands away the first time they moved down to her chest toward the alluring bulge of her two nipples, which looked like chickpeas lifting up the thin material of her dress.