by Sinan Antoon
“Do you ever regret it?”
“No. D’you know what al-Gubbanchi says?”
“What?”
‘“Do not think that in leaving there is comfort I see nothing in it but grief and weariness, All sleep was robbed from my eyes.
I never thought and no one knew
That it would be like this.”’
3
After translating the book, which the agency then published, I got a promotion and received a hefty raise. I dedicated myself completely to work and within three years, I had saved enough money to buy a good piece of land near Karrada where I wanted to build a new home for the family. Habiba had returned from Sulaymaniya to work in Baghdad and was betrothed to her first cousin on our mother’s side. She moved in with him at his parents’ house in al-Sinak, and then they got a place of their own. She offered to contribute to the costs of building the new
house as a gift to our father—she wanted him to be comfortable in his old age and to be surrounded by his sons and daughters, and any grandchildren that were on the way. Although we both agreed that his name should be on the deed, he objected vehemently, and so we registered the house in Hinna’s name.
Just as I recall the day I planted the palm saplings at opposite ends of the backyard, I also remember when there was nothing but the foundations back in 1955. I would come by every week to check on the progress of the work and Khalaf, the foreman in charge, would brief me. On one of my visits some months into the work, I was surprised to see that they had used palm fronds to build the arch that the architect had designed for the reception room. When Khalaf assured me that it was an old and time-tested technique, I remembered seeing pictures in the book about date palms and the way the inhabitants of the marshes built similar structures in their guest quarters and their houses.
The house was on a lovely quiet street near the Opera Gardens that was later named after Jaafar Ali al-Tayyar, a prominent man who lived in the first house ever to be built on the street. The main thoroughfare it branched onto became known as Street 42.
This was because people called the next street over from the main thoroughfare Street 52, after the bus that plied that route, and that was the roundabout way in which the streets in the vicinity were numbered.
I entrusted the design of the house to a friend from Baghdad College who’d gone abroad to study architecture and had come back and started his own firm. My main instruction was that the house had to be spacious enough to accommodate the entire family. Thus, we had six bedrooms, three on each of the two floors, a large reception lounge for entertaining guests, and an everyday living room. The architect suggested having a fireplace in the reception room and I agreed enthusiastically. There was a small yard at the front of the house, and a very large one at the back.
The blooms on the bougainvillea whose branches scaled the façade of the house came into view. In addition to its heat hardiness and its ability to bloom year-round, I had chosen it for the beauty of its flowers, which looked like so many vermilion tongues licking at a fire. From the distance, I could also see the crowns of the three Seville orange trees that I had planted in the garden at the front. How I love the smell of those oranges!
There’s really nothing like it. Whenever the harvest season came around, I’d pick and juice the oranges in the kitchen, and Hinna would freeze the juice to use in her cooking. I did this every year, even after she was gone. I would offer a container of frozen bitter orange juice to any visitors that dropped by.
Nothing else flavors food like the juice of bitter oranges, I’d tell them, and I had no use for it.
I looked up toward the upstairs bedroom windows. The curtains were drawn which meant Maha wasn’t home. I noticed that the metal
plaque hanging on the pillar to the right of the gate that had my name on it was so dusty that the Y was hardly visible. I wiped my finger across the plaque—it really needed polishing. I opened the gate and bent down to turn on the water spigot close by. I took out a pack of tissues from my pocket, pulled three out, wetted them with a few drops of water and stepped back out to clean the plaque. Although my lower back hurt, I was pleased that I had cleaned my name, and I cursed at the proliferation of dust and soot in recent years. I remembered that the myrtle tree between the garage and the garden needed pruning. I would ask Luay to do it when he could.
Once inside the house, I realized how tired I felt and that I needed to make up for the previous night’s broken sleep. I got undressed and went to bed.
4
Even though I was alone in the house, I could hear water running as if someone were bathing. Going toward the bathroom, I heard the sound of a woman singing an unfamiliar pop song. Outside the door, which had been left ajar, I recognized it was Maha singing.
I wondered why she had come down here instead of using the upstairs bathroom. From where I stood, all I could see was the very wet floor. She stopped singing, and called out my name.
“Youssef, come in. Open the door. Don’t be shy, come on in.”
How did she know I was standing outside the door? Had she heard my footsteps? This was the first time she hadn’t called me
‘Uncle.’ . . . I pushed the door open and saw her standing naked under the shower rocking a baby in her arms. The shower curtain had disappeared and water was streaming down her hair and shoulders onto the floor. She was trying to get the infant to latch onto the raised nipple of one of her breasts, which were round and rosy as pomegranates. The infant didn’t stir, he seemed fast asleep. I wondered how he could sleep with all the water and the noise around him. Maha looked at me and smiled; she showed no sign of embarrassment and didn’t try to cover up her nakedness.
“Come in Youssef,” she repeated. “Come close and look at how beautiful my baby is. I’m going to baptize him.”
Had she lost her mind? She was going to baptize this strange child in this bathroom? Where had she found him? Would she get angry if I told her he wasn’t her son? I looked for a towel with which to cover her, but as soon as I stepped into the bathroom, I slipped on the wet floor and fell.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I was startled awake, feeling guilty about the visions in my dream. For me, Maha was like a daughter and I certainly didn’t want to think of her in that way. That kind of thing wasn’t much on my mind anymore—after being loud and insistent, my sexual urges had abated and no
longer rattled my bones on a daily basis, the way they used to.
But I have to admit that the feelings of the man had superseded those of the father on two or three occasions already. . . .
Once, when her nipples stood up under a see-through top she wore on a very hot day . . . and another time, when I looked out of the window and saw her sitting on the patio swing in the backyard, with her legs crossed and her thighs showing. My paternal feelings truly vanished the time I came across her waxing her legs. I was on my way to the roof that day because I had noticed that every time I turned on the water, it smelled putrid, and I thought there might be a dead pigeon in the rooftop tank, as sometimes happened. To get up there, I had to go through their apartment on the top floor. I hadn’t realized that Maha had come home early from university. I opened the door to the apartment and there she was sitting on the ground, her legs splayed wide open, dressed in skimpy white shorts and a tank top without a bra underneath. She was holding a small square of fabric and a jar of wax was on the floor with more fabric squares stacked beside it. She snapped her legs shut and scrambled to her feet, visibly shaken. I shut the door quickly and apologized.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was home,” I called out. “I was going up to the roof. I’ll come back later.”
I got out of bed, slipped something onto my feet, and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Maha wasn’t in the bathroom when I went to wash my face, as she had been in the dream. Dabbing my face dry, I thought about the fact that she and her husband would be leaving in a few months, and how I would remain alone after they were gone. I went back
to the kitchen to put the kettle on, I really needed some tea. I would certainly be able to find someone to whom I could rent the upper floor but I would miss them. Especially Maha. Her husband was nice, he was a polite and helpful young man, but he was at work most of the time. It was with her that I interacted the most and she was clearly interested in getting to know me better. It didn’t feel as if her interest was just a matter of being polite and repaying my hospitality—it resulted from a true closeness that had grown between us in spite of our disagreements. She had suggested I set up an email account and had helped me to do it. At first, I’d said no, I didn’t have a computer and wasn’t going to buy one, but she offered to let me use her laptop. She taught me how to get into my account and send messages to my sisters. She wrote down the instructions for me on a piece of paper, including the username and password, yusif1933 and zahdi . She laughed when I told her what I wanted the password to be.
“It’s always dates and palm trees with you!” she exclaimed.
I was so thrilled by the new discovery that I immediately sent my sister two messages. But it wasn’t long before I decided it was better to talk on the phone after all—I couldn’t keep track of the various steps and found it all slow going.
Maha was also the one who showed me new pictures of relatives on Facebook. And she’s the one who introduced me to a YouTube page that features recordings of traditional Iraqi maqam music, including rare ones. We’d been talking about classical music and I had told her about my passion for the maqam and the extensive cassette collection of which I was so proud. I didn’t know anything about YouTube but she brought the laptop downstairs to show me. Together, we listened to the latest song that had been uploaded to the anthology, interpreted by Filfil Gurji, and I was astounded.
Maha helped me to get on Skype to talk to my sisters, Amal and Salima, too. The whole thing reminded me of sci-fi films and Star Trek, which used to run on Saturday nights decades ago. I never would have dreamed that one day I’d be able to see a person on a screen as I talked to them on a computer.
On a call to Canada a week ago, my younger sister, Amal, asked me whether I’d arranged a special service in Hinna’s memory. I said I had, and that I planned to go to the cemetery the week after the service to place a wreath and pray by her graveside. She asked who would be there.
“Who else besides me, Maha, and her husband?” I replied. She said nothing and then burst into tears. She begged me to sell the house and leave the country, just as she always did whenever we spoke on the phone.
“Why stay in the big house all alone? And who’s going to look after you once Maha’s gone?”
“Well, didn’t I live alone before Maha came here? Don’t worry about me, nothing will happen.”
“What are you talking about, Youssef? Don’t you see how they’re killing priests and attacking churches?”
“Who told you I’d become a priest?”
Humor was my sharpest weapon in such conversations, but Amal wasn’t amused.
“Right now, everything’s fine,” I went on. “There’ve been a few bomb attacks here and there, but they’ve stopped. Where we are, things are quiet.”
The lyrics of a song I hadn’t heard in a long time came back to me as I sipped on my tea. It had been ages since I had intoned those words! I picked up the istikan and went to my room to find the recording. I put the tea glass down on the small coffee table and stood in front of the neatly ordered tape collection on the shelf. I glanced over toward the Youssef Omar section, and my eyes fell on the spine of the cover with the words, Youssef Omar: Maqamat . Exactly what I’d been looking for! I pulled out the
tape and slipped it into the cassette recorder. I must have stopped at the end of the zuhayri last time I listened to it because Omar was singing,
What have I done for you to hurt me so?
Precious as my eyes
My heart’s desire
Why hurt me so?
Have I wronged you?
Are you weary of me?
Of vexation, enough
Be kind, I beseech you
Relinquish your displeasure.
In the intervals between verses, a collective moan of pleasure swelled up from the audience. The musician’s fingers plucked the santour as if enumerating all the sorrows the lyrics and melody invoked before handing over to the singer once again.
O my heart, dissolve and melt, wail and break into pieces O my eyes, let the tears fall from your reddened eyelids Weep, my soul, and weep again
Weep for those who left you
You who left so distressed
Tell me, what is your wish?
Whatever it is, I will do as you wish Your love rules
It is him my heart loves
What is it to others? Each to his own My love left me and went away
Who will bring him back?
I will never implore him or his beloved Weep, my soul, and weep again
Weep for those who left you
The key to the heart Is gone and lost at sea
Not even Job was as patient
As I was with you.
I was close to tears, but pulled myself together. Why was I choking up? Because I felt sad about Hinna, because I was upset with Maha, or maybe both? Perhaps it was just life itself: the things that had been done as well as those that were left undone.
These songs, and the maqams in particular, were like secret passageways to the soul and I meandered through them alone, between wondrous walls held together by an invisible mortar that was a mix of sadness and longing, and I peered through their windows listening for another song or for the sound of silence. I spent a couple of hours searching through my cassette library, listening to songs that I loved and hadn’t heard in a long time.
After that, I went back to bed because I still felt tired and sleepy. Rather than bemoan the days of my youth, I gave thanks for old age. It gave me permission to be lazy and indolent. Old age gave its subject the liberty of taking more than one nap for no good reason. I had worked hard all my life and now I had a right to be lazy.
5
From my bedroom window, the courtyard looked forlorn. I had picked the last jasmine flower three weeks earlier. It was fall, and everything was in mourning. It would all be reborn in spring, I told myself as I dressed to go to church, because everything is born again. The carnations, the climbing roses, and the snapdragons would fill the garden with color again. In the warmth of the spring sun I would again sit on the patio swing and drink tea, close my eyes and smell the flowers. Everything would bloom again, that is, everything except for Hinna. Her grave wouldn’t bloom again because autumn is the only season that the dead know.
Nothing but autumn, until the Resurrection. . . . How long until I took my place next to Hinna and the others, I wondered? To secure my spot on this last journey and to spare others the burden, I’d already paid the Rahma Association for all the expenses related to my passing—the coffin, the burial, as well as the church service.
I was by no means convinced about the resurrection of the body. I just didn’t see how a collection of bones can rise up and reclaim the flesh and skin that covered them. If that were true, the world would turn into a zombie movie. But a person’s spirit is another matter and I did believe it doesn’t die. Where it goes, I wasn’t sure. Who knows, I might end up being a bird flitting from courtyard to courtyard—and still get to eat dates. I might even end up coming back to this house and living right beside my
beloved palm trees. The idea that death offered the body eternal rest and the spirit a new birth was very appealing and it soothed my heart. Hinna’s spirit would be either in Jerusalem or in Rome.
And who knows, she might even come back to her room or step into the dome of the church when she heard her name being spoken and the angels told her that her renegade brother was praying for her eternal rest.
6
I dressed in a light blue shirt and black trousers and put on my walking shoes and the jacket I had worn in the mor
ning to go and see Saadoun. I heard the sound of movement upstairs. Was Maha back? Perhaps she’d come down and apologize? If not, I would see her in the courtyard of the church after the service. I decided to walk there, it was only twenty or twenty-five minutes away, and taking the car was a nuisance because of all the checkpoints in the area around the church. Besides, driving made my back hurt.
Today was a day for walking, I decided, and I could always come back with Maha and her husband.
Reaching the end of the street, I passed the building where Artine’s used to be—I bought my coffee there for over twenty years but then he too closed up shop and left the country. It became a chicken rotisserie place and even though I loved chicken, I missed the smell of roasting beans laced with crushed cardamom. I turned right onto the main thoroughfare and the National Theater building loomed into view on the left. When I bought the plot of land on which I built the house, it was rumored that an opera venue was being planned for the site, but the project never saw the light of day. Beautiful gardens had been created where people still strolled in the evenings, but instead of an opera house, the National Theater was built. In long-gone days, I occasionally went and saw a play there or attended a classical music concert.
I passed by what used to be known as the Opera Gardens across from the air force command. Four more streets and I would turn left and then go straight all the way to the church. Another fifteen minutes, and the high arch bearing the distinctive cross inside a circle loomed into view. Walking toward the church building, I noticed that the palm tree in the courtyard had grown taller, its upper fronds practically embracing the cross. I was early and there weren’t many people making their way to church yet. A guard stopped me at the entrance but he didn’t search me and was satisfied when I said I was a Christian coming to attend a service.
“Please come in,” he said respectfully.
