One Hundred and One Nights (9780316191913) (5 page)

After saying good-bye to Bashar at the gate, kissing each cheek, shaking hands, I walk the few hundred meters from his home to mine. Out in the noonday sun, without the protection of the shade of my shack, I feel my age more pointedly, sweating with the minor exertion of a walk across town. I stop in the shadow of a ruined building along the road where the U.S. convoys pass. There are no convoys in sight at this moment; no traffic from Iraqi vehicles, either. The gate, the border crossing, is just visible to the south: a Kuwaiti guard sitting on a chair on the far side with the door of an air-conditioned booth splayed open behind him. Such a waste. Such a waste of energy. Such a waste for Iraq and Kuwait to be separated in this way. Such a waste to have had this war, these wars. Such a waste to have light poles and an abundance of electrical power that end at an antitank ditch and a painted pipeline and a series of guard towers strung out in the desert like a barbed necklace.

I cross the road and walk to my house, where I spend the rest of the day and most of the evening thinking about Bashar’s family, his beautiful growing little family. And I think about how tribes have been split as men draw lines across the desert.

The day when Nadia and I built our fort in my father’s garage, I began my construction by searching in the loft for scrap materials. When I returned with my first armload I expected Nadia would already have arranged some of the chauffeur’s disassembled engine parts—headlight reflectors for cups, an oil pan for a teapot—on the upside-down cardboard box that would serve as our tea table. I expected she would already have tea ready and that, upon returning to her with my sheet of rusted tin, she would force me to sit for a while and pretend to drink. I would have to make small talk with her. I would maybe even have to kiss her again.

So when I returned to find the tea set abandoned, I dropped my building materials and rushed to find her. My first thought was that Yasin had come into the garage and done something to her, tied her up, hidden her from me. I searched the corners of the chauffeur’s workshop. I opened the back door of the garage to see if Yasin had taken her out by the chicken coops. I returned into the garage and ran down the line of shining black parked cars. I found her on her hands and knees, peering under the wheel of one of the cars. I watched her for a moment, her head cocked to the side, her body trembling, but still. I approached her as quietly as I could and knelt beside her.

“Do you hear it?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

I reached up, inside the wheel well, as deep into the engine compartment as I could angle my arm, and pulled a small crying kitten free from the tangle of wires and sprockets into which it had wedged itself. It was a mangy thing, emaciated and losing tufts of its white and orange fur. Blood caked its stomach, oozing from a spot where it had licked its belly bare, licked and bit and nibbled at a long cut slicing from the inside of its right hind leg nearly to the start of its rib cage.

Nadia put her hands to her mouth at the sight of the kitten’s blood. I cupped the little animal in the crook of my arm and took it over to the chauffeur’s workbench. There I turned on the overhead light and examined the wound. It was clean. It hadn’t yet started to fester. The kitten had done well licking itself, but I knew already then, at the age of twelve, that a wound so deep and long would not heal, not on its own.

“Go into the house,” I told Nadia. “In the room to the side of the kitchen, the little room where Fatima keeps her sewing things. Get me thread and a needle, also a candle and some rags.”

When she returned a few minutes later I had already lashed the kitten’s limbs to the table so that it could not bat at me with its sharp little claws. I made Nadia hold its head so that it could not bite me, even though she turned her own head away from the sight of the open belly, the green and blue glistening intestines, the matted fur, the mealy-white skin.

I lit the candle and ran the flame up and down the length of the needle, sterilizing it as best I could. Then I threaded the needle, doubled the thread over on itself, and pierced the kitten’s skin, first on one side of the wound, then on the next, knotting the end, drawing the suture tight. The two sides of the torn flesh puckered toward each other. I cleaned the needle on a rag, held it to the candle once again, and repeated the process of piercing and knotting for a second stitch and a third stitch. Untying the kitten’s limbs, I reused the lengths of rope to bind a clean rag around the site of the wound, wrapping it tightly and completely so that the creature, meaning to clean the area with its tongue, could not accidentally reopen the wound.

Then, satisfied, I took Nadia’s tea table box, tipped it upright, filled it with some shredded rags, put the kitten in it, and carried it up the ladder to the loft. There I stowed it in a corner behind a discarded portmanteau.

“That was very brave of you,” Nadia said as we returned to the house to get milk and a saucer.

“Very brave of you as well,” I said to her, and I took her hand in mine.

6

Saturday

LAYLA VISITS IN THE EVENING,
like most evenings, this evening no exception even after the passing of a day apart, this yesterday, the day my shop and every other shop closed for the Friday prayers. She stands in shadow under the awning of my little store, my shack, as a golden sunset reflects its light against the overpass where the road from Basra to Kuwait and the even larger road from the port of Umm Qasr to Baghdad intersect. The convoys flow north and south on this main road, as they do every day. I see a crane on the back of one flatbed truck, an army-green crane. I imagine it hoisting barricades into place in the streets of Baghdad as the elections near. I imagine it returning south on the back of a different flatbed truck, damaged, exploded, sabotaged, a shell of iron barely recognizable for what it had been. Where does all the waste from this war go? Is it deposited in the gulf, dumped overboard from hulking trash barges to make new reefs and new coral for the fishes? Is it left in the desert, buried, to rust and decay? Is it shot to the moon?

Today marks the sixth day of Layla’s visitations. Also the twenty-fourth day of business for me since I moved to Safwan. A good day, though a strange one. The Shareefi clan spent several hours at the shop, various cousins and uncles looking through my brochures on Nilesat, the satellite TV I can obtain for them, which has the sports, the drama, Dream TV, the news as reported in Egypt and Lebanon and Dubai.

The guard for the overpass leans on his three-legged chair as usual. He hasn’t moved since three or four o’clock this afternoon. The flaps of his tent are closed tight. Maybe he hides someone inside. A night visitor? A lover? Earlier, I started walking up to him to see if he was awake, alert, alive. I thought, perhaps, that I would scold him into doing his duty more passionately. But just then another group from the Shareefi family approached my shop and I put the need to correct the guard to the back of my mind. Perhaps I stall in scheduling an appointment with the sheikh on purpose. I do dread the visit a little, the formality, the bustle of people around him, the chance that I might mistakenly offend him. Any of a hundred little things could go wrong. I don’t know if it is worth a visit just to report on this guard’s bad behavior.

These particular Shareefi who visit me, from among the many today who have found a reason to inspect my satellite brochures and my mobile phones and my other wares, are the women of the clan, including Ulayya bint Ali ash-​Shareefi herself, daughter of the head of the clan. She has been widowed but not very recently, perhaps five years ago. Although she wears black, as do all the others—black robes, black
burqa
—she definitely appears no longer to be in mourning. She has managed to convey to me, even with several of her escorts chattering at a respectful distance, that she hasn’t lost her firm figure and that the two daughters left behind by Zayed, her first husband, are both well provided for, with dowries enough to ensure good marriages and stipends for their day-to-day expenses in the meanwhile. As she talks to me, Ulayya’s eyes gleam brightly, dancing black jewels deep within the slit of her
burqa.
Not altogether unattractive. I imagine myself in her company. I imagine her in my home. I imagine her in my bed. The image is an odd one, she clothed in black throughout all the imagining, though in truth she would shed the
hijab
behind the doors of any house we might share.

This woman, Ulayya, has a basket of tomatoes over one arm. I think for a second that I might ask her how much they have cost, just to make pleasant talk and to have some information for Layla if her mother once again sends her into town to spy on prices. Ulayya holds one of my satellite brochures in her free hand. Everything is proper: a widow shopping for a satellite. But also she is putting herself on display. I laugh a little at the absurdity of these things and at my inability to picture her in normal clothes or even to picture her naked. I can’t bring myself to imagine what she looks like, despite years of such practice. When I try to see her naked, in my mind I see nothing, a void, as though an explosion occurred in my imagination and left only a vaguely woman-shaped infinity of emptiness, black cloth and black dancing eyes and nothing deeper than that. The void, the inability to focus or to force my imagination toward this woman, makes my head hurt. I think, very briefly and guiltily, about shutting my shop early, returning home, and having an early drink to help wipe away the blackness.

Though my head spins in this way and though my stomach also tells me it is time for dinner, Ulayya continues with a description of the house where the satellite dish will be placed, if her father does indeed decide to purchase the equipment and the plan from me.

“It is a nice house,” she says, “with a big garden—two gardens, actually. One for the growing of vegetables. One for pleasure, to sit under date fronds in the evening. To hear music playing softly in the background. To be in pleasant company, to have pleasant conversation…”

I look up from her and see behind her Hussein, the leader of the Hezbollah, lounging in the shade of the store directly across the street from me. Some of his gang members stroll from store to store but Hussein does not. He watches his subordinates as they collect money from other shops along the sides of the road. He watches them as they warn Rabeer’s employees, playing cards in their shop as usual, against the vices of gambling. He watches them as they dole out a quick lashing on the calves of a woman whose
abaya
does not reach all the way to the ground, leaving her sandaled feet showing. He watches his men, but he also watches Ulayya from his partially concealed place beneath the awning of the store.

I think about calling to Ulayya’s attention the fact that she has an admirer. I wonder how she might react. But before I have a chance to do this, behind Hussein I see another thing. Little Layla runs toward me. Hussein sees that I look beyond him. He turns to look at Layla but doesn’t seem to understand what I see: he must be blind to Layla just as the other store owners and guards and helpers in the market seem to be. To them she is only another street rat, nothing of concern, as invisible as Ulayya’s body under her cloaks. Ulayya also notices where I glance. What is more, she must also notice something about the quality of my glance, the way it lingers, the way it lights up, the way it focuses, for she does not dismiss Layla’s rapid approach without comment.

“What a horrid little creature,” she says. “How could any mother let a daughter out of the house looking like that!”

Indeed, as Layla pulls to a halt in front of my shop, I see that she is especially dirty this evening, her face nearly black, her strange blue eyes flashing through the soot or mud or oil that covers her. I sing a little song in my head, one I remember from my schoolchild days:
aini zarqa tubruq biruq
. It means something along the lines of “my blue eyes shine like lightning.”

“Abu Saheeh,” she shouts, still from the far side of the street, where she has paused to let the traffic pass. “I have found a geyser. Black gold.”

“Obviously,” I say.

Ulayya looks at me.

“You know this girl?” she whispers.

“She visits the shop,” I say. “She is funny. She dances, she sings, she begs.”

I regret this last epithet, for Layla has never begged, not from me.

I let my gaze return, flickering back to Layla. She runs across the road, through the last bit of the market. Ulayya is obviously offended by our familiarity. The posse of Ulayya’s escorting aunts and female cousins also shows its displeasure. They gather together more closely, as if Layla were a tiny little lioness and they a herd of water buffalo, all horns pointed outward. Layla appears not to care. In fact, she smiles as she stops in front of the venerable aunties and does a small bit of her Britney Spears routine, possibly the most inappropriate part, with a thrust of her bony hips in the direction of Ulayya herself.

Ulayya stands her ground.

Ignoring Layla, she says, “I will discuss the satellite with my father.”

Then she and the cousins and the aunts and the great-aunts and the friends of the great-aunts gather their long
abayas
about them and waft back into Safwan, from whence they originally came. Behind them, at a moderate distance, Hussein’s patrol of Hezbollah follows. As he leaves his shaded spot, Hussein takes from the front breast pocket of his
dishdasha
the mobile phone I lent him when he first visited my store. He touches it to his forehead, a little salute. I wave back at him, being friendly, but he does not smile.

When they all have gone, Layla’s voice assumes a tone similar in its huskiness to Ulayya’s way of speaking. She says, “I will discuss the satellite with my father.”

“You should be more respectful of your elders,” I say. “And more respectful of Allah. Your stories disturb me. I still wish, as I said when we last met, for you not to compare American movies to a messenger from Allah!”

For just an instant Layla looks at me as if I have said something strange, or funny, or inappropriate. Then she moves closer to my shack, leans on the sill, and says, “Jed Clampett and his whole family moved to Beverly Hills because he shot the ground accidentally and black gold came up. I borrowed the guard’s Kalashnikov and shot the pipe on the far side of the road. I thought it would have water for our tomatoes but it has oil, not water. Useless oil.”

“You shot the Kalashnikov?” I ask. “How’d you get it from the guard?”

I look up, see the man fast asleep on his stool. My question seems suddenly silly. The rifle rests an arm’s length away from him, leaning against his tent.

“He has only one bullet, you know,” she says. “So returning the gun isn’t as difficult as taking it.”

“You need a bath,” I say.

“I look like the black soldiers in the American Humvees.”

“But stickier,” I say.

I run a finger through the smear of oil her elbows leave on the front counter of my shack. I picture Bashar’s daughters, fuller, heavier, fleshier than Layla. And cleaner. The difference between them, though, is the difference between the sand and the sandstorm. I think of asking Layla to sing again, to sing the
Close Encounters
song. But I can’t imagine the semidivine sound of that song coming from a face so covered in filth. I can’t imagine any sort of saintly presence emanating from a girl so happily dirty.

“Is the oil still leaking?” I ask.

I look up again, under the overpass, toward the pipeline and toward what I imagine must be Layla’s home, her family’s tomato farm. It’s a rundown shack half hidden behind the far embankment of the overpass. Like every other Iraqi farm, it is dun-colored, low-slung, thick-walled, with a scruffy palm tree sprouting on the edge of the hole in the earth that serves as an irrigation well. I see a flurry of activity nearby, just beyond the house: U.S. Humvees and British Land Rovers gathered around the leaking pipe.

“You’re a terrorist,” I say. “You’ve ruined the economy.”

“I’m a jihadist,” she replies. “And I’m moving to Beverly Hills tomorrow! Do you want to come? You would make a fine butler for me!”

I take a swipe at her, as if to hit her in reprimand, but she skips away. I am glad for it. My
dishdasha
would have been hopelessly soiled by the dripping crude oil she wears. I shake my head and my fist at her instead. I decide to speak no more to her, at least not this evening. I send her away, quite forcefully, telling her she had better wash herself and look presentable if she should wish to visit me again, telling her she had better treat her elders with more respect. I think I go so far as to call her a little urchin or maybe even a little devil but perhaps that is just the voice in my head, my conscience, as compared to the words I actually spoke.

Whatever I have said, Layla leaves, as quickly as she had come, running and sliding back under the overpass and keeping a wide expanse of desert between her, the broken pipeline, and the assembled multitude of U.S. and British vehicles.

I shut and lock my shop and walk into Safwan.

Bashar asks me about the oil on my finger and whether I had any interesting visitors today. I tell him about the broken pipeline and the hullabaloo it caused. I do not gratify him by mentioning Ulayya’s visit, but I order my tea and my falafel and ask him why he does not call himself Abu Saleem in honor of his healthy, smart little son. I know it is because he has a girl as his firstborn. His feelings are delicate about the matter and he pretends not to hear me, touching his mustache once, nervously, and then flitting away to help another customer.

A few mornings after Nadia and I found the kitten, Yasin thumped down the back stairs into our kitchen to give me his typical surly good-bye. He didn’t look as bleary-eyed as usual. He didn’t look as if he had only gone to sleep a few hours earlier. In fact, his face glowed with what I took to be excitement. The idea crossed my mind that he might offer to walk me to school. I felt in my pockets for spare change in case the opportunity presented itself to buy us
daheen
cakes from a street vendor.