Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (48 page)

I fell asleep and woke up at nine o’clock in the morning to Naglaa’s broad smile as she handed me my box breakfast. I stretched or at least tried to, and in so doing I leaned my whole body on Layla, who cried out, laughing. We all got up, made cheerful by the new day. I saw some of the women standing up in the aisles and soon songs began to ring out. And even though I knew we still had nine hours to go before we arrived in Baghdad, our general feeling that we had covered half the distance added to our overall cheer. Our day was filled with chitchat and side stories, and friends vented their pent-up feelings and shared some sad stories. It was my first time to be with them behind the scenes and not right on the stage, as if the two years I had been away gave me the right to enter their private world as the doors to their hearts lay wide open to me.

We arrived in Baghdad in the late afternoon, and even though heavy rain was falling, we were happy to get off the train and into the white marble halls of al-Rashid Hotel with our very dirty shoes. They told us that the evening was free, so, if we liked, we could hit the markets. I thought of going to the office today instead of tomorrow as I had planned.

I apologized to my colleagues for not accompanying them to the market, and we all dispersed like a flock of sheep whose shepherd had left us. I went up to my room and turned off the telephone until I finished my bath and slept for two whole hours. I noticed that the rain had stopped and Baghdad appeared at its best, as it usually did on a clear winter day. I went down to the lobby of the hotel and heard a rhythmic beating of drums. I smiled. An Iraqi
bride would have her honeymoon in this hotel. The Iraqis usually had their bridal processions in the late afternoon and not at night as we did in Egypt. I found that the procession was ending and the families were taking pictures with the couple. I cried out, “Naglaa? I don’t believe it!”

Naglaa rushed toward me. She had just come back with me on the train from Basra.

I said, “What a surprise? Congratulations, my darling! Congratulations, bridegroom!”

She embraced me, laughing demurely, “God bless you!”

“I can’t believe that you had to go to all this trouble on your wedding day. Why didn’t you tell us? At least we would have spared you our silly requests and many demands on your time.”

“We were busy at the Union and thank God it all ended well. Tomorrow we go north and after a week we’ll come back to our house and have a celebration. I wish you’d stay in Baghdad.”

I said, “We begin by celebrating the wedding whereas you keep the celebration till later. What matters is that we rejoice for you.”

The bridegroom said, “You know the circumstances in Baghdad.” Then, looking at his bride, Naglaa, he said, “Come on, darling.”

She extended her hand to him and shrill ululations of joy rang out all around. I tried to mimic their ululations but my attempt sounded thin and funny. I stayed there, watching the couple as they disappeared and the drums with their beaters withdrew. I left the hotel and walked on the just-washed asphalt of the road. I finally got a taxi just as silent clouds were gathering, hiding the wan lights of the small, scattered stars that attempted to come out. The almost empty streets were quiet and the corners were dark.

On top of the Ministry of Planning building I read: “One Arab nation with an eternal message.” The taxi turned on Abu Nuwas Street. I didn’t find the yellow, red, and blue lights that used to shimmer on the fronts of the bars, taverns, and restaurants that were named after their colors. Then I could make out the Farabi Bar, the White Rose Restaurant, Bahmadun Bar, Harir Drinks. Wasn’t that
the Cellar Bar? The Gondola Restaurant? That one, as I remembered, was an Indian restaurant. That one was al-Sadir Café where chess players gathered. There was a faint light coming from one of the establishments. I could read the sign: Umm al-Jarra Restaurant. I asked the driver to stop there.

I could see the embers glowing through the holes in the grate as the attendant was busy fanning the air right and left. I remembered that Hatim and I had seen Anhar at that very restaurant with a young man whom I had never met or seen afterward. I sat down, trying to wipe away from my memory a green moss and red rust that had grown in the dark recesses of my soul. My days appeared clearly to me like a clear blue sky in which there lived an all-powerful siren tempting me to keep traveling, to keep following her, and to get lost in an endless, eternal labyrinth. I remembered Ragya, the doctor who disappeared suddenly from the office and from Baghdad and from the center of our attention when she left for Beirut to work there after causing a lot of anxiety for the Iraqi security services by her free and wide-ranging movements. I met her only once after that.

I had been invited to a movie shown at the Cinema Club in downtown Cairo. At the exit I saw her carrying a very beautiful baby girl that she introduced to me, saying, “My daughter, Merit. This is my husband, Hisham.”

Ragya looked full of life with her captivating Egyptian beauty: light brown complexion, red cheeks, big black eyes, and long eyelashes, which we could finally see as she did not have those strange dark sunglasses on. She was moving naturally and spontaneously among a group of friends. I was about to ask her about her lawsuit and how it was resolved or not and what she had done, but I didn’t. When I told Tante Fayza afterward about meeting her, she was surprised and said, “You met her here in Cairo, Nora?”

“Yes. And who knows? She might have solved her problem with Iraqi security.”

“That’s very strange!”

*

Ragya came back to my memory together with her friend Dahlia.

I remembered that she had come to visit us two days after that famous evening when the police interrogated her about a vice complaint. She had not, as usual, bothered to inform us she was coming beforehand. We were writing the Baghdad letter to Cairo, working on important news that we had only gotten with the morning bulletin from the Iraqi News Agency. We welcomed her to the living room and not the office, and Tante Fayza came to keep her company, since Mervat had gone out with Rasha to do some lastminute shopping before returning to Egypt. We finished what we were doing and I got up to ask her to join us. Then I heard someone knocking merrily on the apartment door. When I opened I saw Maha and Fathallah. They had just come from Mosul and they looked very happy. Fathallah said, “Maha’s application to the college of engineering has been accepted.”

Mervat and Rasha, who had just come back, and I kissed Maha and sang a line from a famous song by Abd al-Halim Hafez. We all went into the office and I brought out a bottle of black grape juice in place of the usual Egyptian red sharbat served on such happy occasions. We started chatting about pleasant subjects. Then we were surprised when Dahlia got up suddenly and said in an angry tone, “I am leaving!”

We turned our attention to her. She stood there with tears in her eyes, even though she was not crying, not yet anyway. She headed quickly for the door and didn’t give any of us a chance to talk her into staying. She ran down the stairs. I said to myself: “Wow! The mountain has finally moved and the snow has melted! Dahlia’s feelings have come to the surface.” The rest of us began to talk about Dahlia.

Maha, with that calm demeanor of hers that we all loved, said, “She actually does finish work at three o’clock in the morning and that was ascertained and included in the police report, and that was a point in her favor. One of the Egyptian men who worked with her used to give her a ride home. The car he drove had a ‘Kuwait Export’
license plate because it had not cleared customs yet. This is what made the landlord somewhat suspicious, despite her innocence. But the real problem was: she partied until the morning.”

Then she added, “I’d like to tell you all that I am very surprised that a young woman should behave this way. I don’t mean the morality aspect, for she was indeed proved innocent of those charges, but I mean her irresponsible behavior!”

I looked at Maha, so young and yet so clear and decisive in her judgment. Then I heard Tante Fayza asking, “Is she in an organization?”

Maha said, “Yes, she belonged to an organization that is now defunct. Dahlia was with Sawsan in the detention camp and she and her group caused many problems. Sawsan has declared that she wanted to have nothing to do with Dahlia because of their history together.”

Hilmi Amin said, “Actually it was her sister who belonged to that organization.”

I said, “How is that, Ustaz Hilmi? I know she was in Ragya’s organization, ‘the rockets,’” and laughed.

Fathallah nodded, smiling. “Yes, even though Ragya left the organization, with her husband, even before coming to Baghdad.”

I said in alarm, “But Ragya …”

Fathallah reluctantly said, “She collected some contributions for the party before her departure, then she took the money and left the country. It was a strange organization that caused us many problems. It had uncalled-for clashes with the prison authorities and when we sided with its members against the prison administration, they withdrew to their wards, leaving us to face the wrath of the jailors. As a result of their behavior I was wounded and had seven stitches in my head.”

He then bowed his head for us to see the deep scars on a spot on his head that had no hair.

Sometime later Hilmi Amin noticed that I was writing about Dahlia in my new novel. He asked me why I was doing that.

I told him that she was a unique dramatic character.

He said, “Nora, I don’t like what you’re writing in the novel. You will indict a whole movement involved in the struggle for the sake of the homeland because of the irresponsible behavior of some members or their petty acts!”

I said, “But the greatest revolutionaries are ultimately human beings.”

He said, “Yes. But set that aside until you’ve understood life and the human psyche at a higher level. Postpone the novel. Maybe you’ll come to see in these characters aspects that you don’t see now. Write about any other subject.”

I began reading about Egyptian expatriates and understood what Hilmi Amin was after. I liked his calm demeanor and his ability to convince me. I knew he was very interested in my writings. I stopped writing what I had started and picked up a new blank page and a pen and started writing every day tirelessly. One morning I surprised him, saying, “Here’s my first novel!”

After all these years, has my attitude toward those characters changed? Yes. It changed a lot. Now I have greater appreciation of them. I’ve grown more tolerant and more understanding of the price they had paid. I came to from my reverie, confused, regretting the fact that I had not kept writing and recording the raw emotions of those days regardless of whether I published what I wrote or not. Memory is traitorous. It burns down certain parts and leaves behind certain other parts as ashes mixed with grief.

I became aware of the waiter standing in front of me, asking whether I wanted something to drink before dinner. I said, “Tea, please.”

I followed him with my eyes as he walked away lightly. I saw in the corner behind a latticework partition dozens of beer bottles arrayed on young people’s tables. I remembered the old routine: each patron naming the number of beer bottles that they wanted to consume which would then be placed in front of them on the table. In that river of memories a fish came to the surface. I tried to catch
it, but it turned and looked at me, blankly but deeply. My whole body shook when I saw that it was a blind fish.

Hilmi Amin said, “Salah Abd al-Subur is in town and he is waiting for us at Hotel Baghdad.”

We accompanied him to al-Kazim Mosque. We spent an enjoyable day with him. He was a beautiful, polite man. I adored his poetry. I told him that as soon as I met him, as I gave him my book on al-Khalsa village. Then I asked him, for an interview. He told me his schedule was very tight but that if I were to write my questions, he would answer them at night. I tried to dissuade him, since questions and answers bred other questions. He said, “I am sorry. I can’t.” Hilmi Amin intervened, saying, “You can fill the gaps with a short interview the following morning.” I had no choice, so I agreed. Then I dropped in on him at the hotel to pick up the answers and took them to the office to read them.

Hilmi Amin said, “They don’t give him an appropriate welcome here. They don’t like his politics and they prefer to have dealings with Ahmad Abd al-Mu‘ti Higazi.”

I said, “Higazi wrote for Iraqi newspapers before going to Paris, and he is still writing for them from exile. Is it necessary for each intellectual to engage in a battle with authority?”

“No. But in the end, it boils down to attitudes and positions. Salah is a conventional Egyptian bureaucrat.”

I said, “Salah Abd al-Subur is not Yusuf al-Siba‘i, nor is he Tharwat Abaza. He is the greatest living poet. Is that not enough?”

“A poet is a stand, Nora. No one can cast doubts on how patriotic Salah is, but Arab authorities use intellectuals for their own ends and whims.”

“I am going to go look for al-Hallaj’s tomb and write about Salah Abd al-Subur and his poetic verse drama that will live on in people’s hearts forever.”

I had learned from my earlier visit to the tomb of Zumurrud Khatun where to get information that I needed to get to Iraqi
monuments and shrines. But there was no trace of al-Hallaj’s tomb in any Iraqi publications. Some fellow journalists told me that I had to search among the traditional tombs in al-Karkh. Hilmi Amin decided not to let me go by myself to the cemeteries this time also. We made an arrangement with a cab driver to come and pick us up at six in the morning before Baghdad’s August temperature reached its highest degree. That temperature, usually not spelled out in forecasts or announced, was usually above fifty degrees Celsius. I was fasting. We met some visitors at the tombs and each gave us different directions. The taxi kept going around in various directions for four hours. The driver would let us off at one of the side streets, then we would go on foot, then go back without finding anything. A man working in the vicinity met us by chance and we asked him for directions after we had given up and decided to go back. The man pointed forward and gave us the name of a street. He said to keep walking until we found a sign with his name on it. I stood looking at the scene in front of me. Graves extended to no end as the horizon lay open before us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The heat must have created a mirage of stones rising and moving in their color of dust under the burning sun. We kept walking until we were swallowed up by the dust and the graves, and no one could tell us from the endless expanse of holes in the ground. It was only a minor difference in time that let us walk steadily above ground rather than beneath it. Finally we found the sign with al-Hallaj’s name on it. We followed the arrow until we stopped and stood before a short, one-room building on one of whose walls was written, “The Tomb of al-Hallaj.”