Before the economy went into freefall, Hatim made a good living as an architect. Ally could easily picture him at a drafting board, pencil tucked behind his ear, measuring angles and plotting dimensions. Now, his family scraped by on his wife’s teaching salary of five dollars a month, government rations, and whatever Hatim could make ferrying passengers to and from the market.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Arasat Street,” Ally mumbled sheepishly. It was Baghdad’s ritziest strip of boutiques and restaurants. She and Tom had been there for dinner once or twice, but it was hard to have an appetite when she knew her meal would cost more than her taxi driver made in a month.
Hatim nodded and smiled. Ally wondered, Did he ever take his wife to Arasat Street, back when he was an architect? Hatim never betrayed any bitterness. If their situations were reversed, she hoped she’d have such a generous heart.
“You should have come to Baghdad twenty years ago, my Australian friend. Every street was as lively as Arasat.” Hatim pulled out to overtake a boy on a donkey cart. “Even now, if you bring a bottle of wine to an Arasat restaurant, they’ll pour it into a coffeepot and bring it back to your table.”
“Really?” said Ally.
Hatim grinned conspiratorially.
“You want to stop at a liquor shop?”
Ally laughed.
“Whereabouts should I drop you?” he asked.
“At al-Reef Restaurant,” she said. “I’m going to eat and then do a little shopping.”
Ally stared out the window so she didn’t have to look Hatim in the eye. She had no intention of lunching at Baghdad’s finest Italian restaurant or wasting time in fancy boutiques. She had an appointment with the sculptor, Miriam Pachachi. Gunter had managed to track her down at her brother’s home, three short blocks from Arasat Street.
Hatim’s Passat rolled to a stop outside the restaurant’s red-and-white awning.
“Can I meet you at the opposite end of the street?” Ally held tight to her handbag, as if her falsehoods might escape its leather mouth. “In front of the big fountain?”
“Sure, take your time.” Hatim gave her a thumbs-up.
As he motored away, Ally’s shoulders softened with relief. She’d figured she could get to Miriam’s house and back again without Hatim noticing—unlike Abdul Amir, who rarely let her out of his sight. Tom maintained Abdul Amir was simply being protective, but regardless, she felt stifled.
With her eyes hidden by dark glasses, Ally discreetly scanned the street. A shoeshine boy dozed in the narrow strip of shade by the restaurant. Across the road, a waiter swept the sidewalk outside an ice cream parlor. Ally pulled her scarf over her hair and hurried away from Arasat, into well-kept backstreets lined with sturdy gates.
Ally stuck close to the walls and did her best to keep her pace steady, not too fast or too slow, trying to look like she belonged. She pretended to remove a pebble from her sandal, so she could check if she was being followed. The only person she spotted was a gardener pruning back a stand of pink flowering spurge, the same thorny plant used to make Jesus’ crown of thorns.
It took less than ten minutes to reach the address Gunter had supplied. Ally had imagined a house like Rania’s: grand but crumbling, with peeling paint and sagging gutters. Instead, a silky-smooth driveway led to an eighties-era villa of brick and tile. A row of faux-Roman columns sat out front.
Staring through the bars on the gate, Ally’s heart galloped. Would Miriam remember her mother? Would she help to fill the aching hole she’d carried inside since she was five years old? Or would she recall only that her mother was American and throw her out on the street? Ally took a deep breath and pressed her finger to a button on the wall. An electronic bell blared from a hidden speaker, startling a sleepy pigeon from its tree.
The bell tolled on and on, like Big Ben at midday, until Miriam’s older brother, Farouk, pried open the gate. He’d been expecting Ally, and politely waved her past two concrete lions guarding the front door.
“How did you learn of my sister’s artwork?”
“I came across one of her pieces in a souvenir shop,” said Ally. As far as Farouk knew, she was just a diplomat’s wife with a fondness for art. She was careful not to mention seeing the statue in Rania’s garden. If her mother’s citizenship caused any strife, Ally wanted to make sure trouble rained down on her alone.
“Well, my sister’s work is not everyone’s taste,” sniffed Farouk. “That’s for certain.”
Farouk’s plump wife was waiting inside the foyer, all brassy-blond highlights, crimson nails, and leopard print. Amal purred like a fifty-year-old kitten and kissed the air beside Ally’s ears. Her heels click-clacked as she led the way to a sitting room. At the threshold, Ally faltered. A larger-than-life Saddam Hussein stared at her from a painting above the mantel.
The president was decked out in a white suit with wide lapels, like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Instead of a disco ball, white doves circled above his head. Ally choked down her surprise. She didn’t know where to look. At the ostentatious fountain splashing in the corner? At the mural of the Swiss Alps that covered an entire wall? Or at a second presidential portrait—a toga-clad Saddam in a Roman chariot, elbow bent like an archer’s, shooting rainbows at the sky?
Amal emitted a screech, and a maid scurried into the room. She set a tray of tea on a low table with four naked brass nymphs for legs.
“Is Miriam here?” said Ally. “I haven’t come at the wrong time, have I?”
She’d arrived at the gate full of contrary emotions: excitement, fear, longing for the mother she never knew. Now she felt absurd, sipping tea while Saturday Night Saddam boogied over the mantel. A voice inside her whispered, Is this really happening?
“My sister doesn’t get many visitors these days.” Farouk frowned. “You should know, she’s a little eccentric.”
“Eccentric?” Amal raised one ruthlessly plucked eyebrow. “Be honest, she’s crazy. It runs in the family.”
Farouk’s features darkened.
“Not you, habibee.” Amal patted his cheek. She turned to Ally and whispered conspiratorially. “It’s only the women in his line who are crazy. Lucky he only has one sister, or we’d need a bigger house to keep them all.”
“There’s plenty of space,” grumbled Farouk. “My sister has a room on the upper floor and a small studio on the roof terrace.”
Amal rolled her eyes. “That scrap heap? I’d like to—”
“You’d like to what?” A skinny woman with close-cropped silver hair strode into the room. “Grind up Michelangelo’s David to make a marble counter for your kitchen?”
While Amal reminded Ally of a pampered house cat, her sister-in-law looked more like a scrappy feral, the hairless type, without an ounce of fat to smooth her wrinkles. Miriam bared her teeth in a caustic smile.
“Or perhaps you want to melt down Rodin’s Thinker for bracelets and earrings?”
“Farouk!” cried Amal. “Tell your sister she can’t talk to me like this.”
“Ladies, please.” Farouk raised his hands. “We have a guest.”
“Actually, she is my guest.” Miriam crooked her finger at Ally. “Please, follow me.”
Ally followed her up the marble stairs, nose twitching at the peculiar perfume that lingered in Miriam’s wake. It was only once they crossed the roof terrace and entered the studio that she realized it wasn’t perfume but the scent of linseed oil, charcoal, and loamy oil paints embedded in Miriam’s hair and caftan.
At the far end of the room, sunlight streamed through the windows and made a million dust motes dance. The walls were papered with paintings, sketches, old photos, and pictures torn from magazines. Paintbrush bouquets protruded from tin cans. Shelves held jars of nails, screws and bolts, coiled lengths of copper wire, bottles of ink, a hammer, saw, and pliers. Stacks of old newspapers rotted in the corner.
A dozen flimsy watercolors had been strung up on a line to dry, all with the same snorting hor
se galloping through sand dunes, watched on by a dark-eyed woman in a translucent veil. Miriam eyed them disdainfully.
“A first-grade art student could produce this rubbish, but it’s the only thing that sells nowadays.” She stopped short. “That’s not what you’re here for, is it?”
Clumsy with nerves, Ally rifled through her handbag and removed the figurine of a woman transforming into a dove.
“I bought this recently.” She held it forth, like a peace offering.
Miriam plucked a pair of spectacles from a pocket in her caftan. She turned the figurine upside down and squinted at the markings on its base. A small snort of recognition escaped her lips.
“I don’t work much with brass anymore. Too expensive.” She glanced at Ally. “Is that what you want? Another figure like this?”
“Uh, not exactly. I have something else you created.” Ally pulled the photo of her mother from her bag. Her fingers trembled. “Do you remember taking this picture?”
Miriam inspected the photo quietly. She flipped it over and read the inscription, then eyed the faded image again. Ally’s blood rushed in her ears. The twirling dust motes reminded her of musty light in her mother’s bedroom. The turpentine and moldering newspapers smelled like disinfectant and despair. She remembered her mother reaching out to stroke her face and almost cried out at the memory of how she turned away.
Miriam glanced up at her.
“I should have seen it earlier.” Her eyes glowed like tiny torches. “You’re Bridget’s daughter, aren’t you?”
“You remember my mother?”
Miriam took another long look at the photo, then returned it to Ally’s hand.
“I didn’t know her well. Not really.”
“But you took the photo, right?” Ally refused to let this turn into another dead end. “Do you remember anything about that day?”
Miriam began to pace back and forth, caftan swishing at her feet.
“If I recall, I took that photo the first time I met your mother. A group of us had gathered at the promenade along Abu Nawas. We were celebrating the launch of a new literary magazine. I still remember the slogan: ‘Radical art and radical politics.’” She glanced at the door, then lowered her voice. “It was published by the youth wing of the Communist Party.”
Ally blinked in surprise.
“A communist magazine? In Iraq?”
“It was communist for a while, then socialist, then democratic socialist, then back to communist again.” Miriam redoubled her pacing. Watercolor horses fluttered in her wake. “The British colonialists were gone. We’d overthrown their puppet king. For a brief moment, we believed we could create a new world.” Her chin jutted forward at an angry angle. “We were young. We didn’t realize that moment of daylight was just the eye of the storm.”
Ally struggled to digest the news.
“I had no idea my mother was involved in politics.”
“I don’t know either. It’s possible she was just there because of Yusra.”
“Yusra?”
Miriam stopped pacing.
“Your mother never mentioned her?”
“She didn’t get a chance. She passed away when I was very young.”
“Did she?” Miriam cocked her head to the side. She gave Ally a strange, probing look. “You really do look just like her.”
A worm of anxiety wriggled in Ally’s chest. Had Miriam remembered her mother was American? Enemy number one. Miriam pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked a tall cupboard. The shelves were a jumble of string, glue pots, and fabric scraps, like the brightly colored lining of a bower bird’s nest. Muttering to herself, Miriam rifled through a shoebox.
“Here.” Miriam thrust a bony hand toward Ally. A photo quivered between her fingers. “This is Yusra Hussain.”
Ally’s heart leaped. It was the nurse from her mother’s photos. She was out of uniform, leaning back in a swing, long hair streaming behind her, wearing that same tell-it-as-it-is smile. A two-story house with gray and white trim sat in the background. Beyond that, purple-flowering tamarisk trees framed a line of silvery water.
“I took that photo in Yusra’s garden on Eighty-Second Avenue, by the river,” said Miriam. “Her mother served the most delicious baklava I’d ever eaten.”
“So this is Yusra, my mother’s friend.” Ally held the photo tight. If Miriam hadn’t been watching, she would’ve pressed it to her heart. “Do you know where I can find her?”
“Yusra can’t help you,” she said slowly. “You should leave it alone.”
“What do you mean?” said Ally.
“Some things are best left in the past.”
Ally frowned. “That’s what my father always said.”
Miriam held out her hand for the photo. Reluctantly, Ally passed it back. The older woman put the photo back in the shoebox and locked the cupboard.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her hands against the folds of her caftan, “I have another appointment. You better go now.”
“You want me to go?” Dismay dragged at the corners of Ally’s mouth. “Did I do something to offend you?”
“I’m tired, that’s all.”
It was obvious that wasn’t true. Miriam opened the door to the roof terrace. A rectangle of light slanted through the opening, illuminating a shelf of plaster heads, hands, and rounded hips. Behind the body parts, a portrait of the president, plump-lipped and smiling. Turpentine fumes caught in Ally’s throat.
“Would you at least give me Yusra’s address or a phone number?” Ally pressed her palms together. “I don’t need to mention your name. We can keep this between you and me.”
Miriam laughed sourly.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you? Two can keep a secret only when one of them is dead.”
* * *
The wind had picked up by the time Hatim turned onto Eighty-Second Avenue. Grains of sand bounced off the windshield and scratched at the Passat’s rusty flank.
“This doesn’t make sense.” Ally peered at a grimy oil depot ringed by razor wire. “We should be near the river.”
“This is Eighty-Second Avenue.” Hatim frowned slightly. “But there’s no river out here.”
Ally scanned a smattering of houses surrounded by gray sand. None looked like Yusra’s home. A guard post appeared on the side of the road. It was a little larger than a phone booth, with a thatched roof being slowly shredded by the wind. The young soldier on duty shielded his eyes as they approached, and Ally pulled her scarf higher over her hair. Hatim threw her a skeptical glance.
“You really know someone out here?”
“Not exactly,” mumbled Ally. “I’m looking for a woman who lives on Eighty-Second Avenue. At least, she used to.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Yusra.” Ally paused. “Yusra Hussain.”
“Hussain?” Hatim shook his head. “There’s got to be half a million of them in Baghdad.”
Ally searched for a flash of purple tamarisk or a glimmer of silver water.
“This is not the most scenic route.” Hatim glanced in the rearview mirror. “Maybe we should go back to Arasat Street.”
“But she said Eighty-Second Avenue. . . .” Ally squinted at what appeared to be a scrapyard. No one moved about in the wreckage-strewn compound. She wondered if it had been bombed by the United States or Iran, or if its owners went out of business after the sanctions hit and abandoned their plant to the sun and the wind. In Baghdad, it was hard to tell what had been destroyed and what had simply been forgotten.
“If we keep going,” said Hatim, “we’ll end up near the Rasheed Airport.”
“The airport?” Ally’s heart accelerated, abruptly, like a runner at the bang of the starter’s gun. Rasheed Airport housed the regime’s grounded air force jets. It was the sort of location that embassy security had warned her to avoid. The authorities wouldn’t take kindly to foreigners who ventured there, diplomatic status or not. “We should turn around.”
Hatim nodded
with relief and made a U-turn at a small gas station.
There were no jokes about kangaroo stew or emu pie on the journey back to Karadah market. After Ally paid and unbuckled her seat belt, Hatim motioned for her to wait.
“Miss Ally, I am always happy to drive you.” He lowered his gaze to his lap. “But I like to stay near the market. Much better for you too, if you stay close to this neighborhood. This is a nice area, but other places, other people . . .”
Slowly, he raised his eyes. They were like mine shafts, with truth glimmering at the very bottom. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t mouth any words. Instead, he allowed her a glimpse, rare and dangerous, of things they both knew, but couldn’t speak aloud. It was intimate, in a way that made Ally ache.
“I understand.” A lump formed in her throat.
Hatim turned away and stared through the windshield.
“I don’t want you to get in trouble,” he said. “That’s all.”
He kept his eyes on some undefined point in the distance, until long after Ally closed her door and disappeared down the street.
* * *
The wind slammed the front door shut behind Ally. She hurried to her desk and flipped open her laptop, determined to write everything down while it was still fresh in her mind. As the laptop powered up, she struggled to make sense of what she’d learned from Miriam. Her mother? A communist?
Ally’s hands hovered above the keyboard. Finally, with a clack, her fingers hit the keys.
Radical art and radical politics.
She eyed the words on the screen dubiously. It was true, the 1970s was a freewheeling time in Baghdad. But were young women really banding together to agitate for political change? Ally reached for the small collection of memoirs and textbooks that Peter had brought from Dubai and selected a history of Iraqi politics. It fell open to an image from 1958, when the Iraqi army rebelled against a puppet king installed by the British. In the grainy photo, the mutilated body of the crown prince dangled from an ornate balcony.
Ally grimaced and turned the page to a timeline of coups, crises, and countercoups, stretching through the sixties and seventies. She ran her finger down a long list of political groups: pan-Arab Nasserites, social democrats, Baathists, Kurdish nationalists—and communists. It said the communists had enjoyed great popular support, but by the end of the seventies their leaders had largely been exiled, executed, or locked up.
When the Apricots Bloom Page 16
