by Alia Mamdouh
The words detour: “Even God’s words sound good coming from you.”
“Listen, Najia, God help you.”
“Oh, even my name sounds good coming from you.”
“Listen, you know I don’t like that kind of talk.”
“Fine, fine. Don’t get upset. By the way, is Bahija Khan going to drop in?”
Their voices rose and your head was lowered to that wide cavity and had its first encounter with the edges of the hidden split: that mysterious body.
You gave off strange vibrations, you don’t know how, or where they went, or who would feel them.
You will never see these strange women again in your life. You love listening to them. They are gold mines: if you go and extract it, the sun will shine; if you leave them in the belly of the earth, the belly will split asunder and produce a different posterity.
Were these the corrupt women you have heard about?
Women: souls painted with fire, bodies over which the open air passes, making them radiant, over which the salts of the sea pass, making them blaze, at whom fear fires its incomparable rays.
They screamed at you; they watched you.
You were there, in that courtyard, listening to horns that bleated at the threshold of your soul. The neighborhood in which your body lived was agitated. You did not retreat. They dragged you, gently at first; they beat you, and your mother went into the distant kitchen. Her shame was striking in its candor among those brilliant souls.
Aunt Najia started shouting again. Her voice had become riper than any other voice you’d heard in your life: “I want Bahija Khan.”
They gave the title Khan to well-to-do women who lived during the first decades of the twentieth century. The father, grandfather, or brother drove them into isolation and degradation, so the women took both the title and the abandonment.
Bahija was your grandmother’s younger sister, the daughter of her stepmother, pretty like her, and you too loved her.
Beautiful, plump, tall and broad, proud and haughty, she was about to turn thirty. All the women you knew plotted against her. If she stepped into Aunt Najia’s trap, it was because she resembled her. If she went to another, it was because that was her nature.
You did not realize all this. What was occurring in front of you left its mark, a step, and who knows where it is going to lead you. That whole network of arms and legs met unwritten covenants and invisible charters. What went from this to that was bound as a kind of love from whose shadow there was no escape.
Your aunt’s voice emerged sharply from her throat: “I want you to go like lightning to your grandfather’s house and tell my Aunt Bahija to come quickly.”
2
The big house was one kilometer away from our house. Our grandmother’s sisters lived there, as well as the widow who had suddenly grown senile after the death of her wealthy husband, leaving behind Bahija and Zubaida and Nahida. Nahida had two daughters younger than me, and two sons older. Zubaida was barren, and Bahija loved women. When she entered, everyone looked at her from above and turned their heads the other way when she passed. We called this the house of dreams. We wore our finest clothes when we went there. My aunt combed my hair and pinched me on the arm, saying:
“I swear to God, if you break anything over there, I’ll kill you.”
We tasted all sorts of fruit there, fresh meat and exotic types of sweets and sugary pastries made by Aunt Bahija herself.
When you saw yourself in the street, your fire was stoked. There you flung yourself into the tumult and different ways. You stood in front of the vendors, shooing the flies away from the white cheese wrapped in fresh palm leaves. You greeted the cheese seller, Abu Mahmoud: “Hello, dear Abu Mahmoud,” and stole a fresh cucumber and a date whose sweetness burned your mouth. You did not look up. The alleys of your neighborhood were filthy, littered with onion and aubergine peels, okra tops and fragments of rotten bread, remnants of black tea—all of it took you by surprise. You slapped cross-eyed Hashim, the son of Razzuqi the carpenter, called him a name, and ran away.
“Hey, still cross-eyed?”
He ran after you, the edge of his dishdasha, his ankle-length shirt, in his teeth, his feet trampling through the mud and garbage, and then he slipped and fell, and everyone laughed.
You ran and jumped over the gutters and the children. You passed by the house of Mrs. Rasmiyya, the neighborhood nurse. Her door was always open; a stained white curtain with holes in it hung in the doorway. You heard the voice of her husband as he beat her and snatched the proceeds from the injections she had administered, and he laughed as he bumped into you: “Hello, Huda. Give my regards to your father.”
The houses of Baghdad had stone steps on the outside. You loved standing on these steps, getting to know the herd that waited and knew how to stand. You stood on one of them one day and said to Mahmoud, the son of the cheese seller: “Look, I am as tall as you are.”
There the Baghdadi women sat or lay on cushions, old carpets, and worn-out straw mats. They all held fans, and their veils covered only their heads. Their nightgowns gave off the smell of onions and parsley, eggs and sweat. They opened them a little, as if opening their souls. When a stranger walked by, they exchanged glances among themselves and covered up until he had passed.
The doors to the courtyard were made of old blotchy wood whose coats of paint were peeling in every corner. When winter attacked, everyone waited for Abu Masoud, the painter. In the middle of the doors were shiny or rusty hand-shaped iron knockers. We stood before them, banged the knockers, and ran away into other streets, far away. We raced and gradually became familiar with this district of houses where no one complained of hunger, which were tidy, tall, spacious, surrounded by towering trees and unfamiliar flowers, and built of gorgeously colored or painted bricks. The girls here wore wide pleated skirts and short-sleeved blouses, with colored ribbons around their neck and in their hair. Their hair was always combed, and their faces freshly scrubbed. Their skin was clear and radiant; their blood sang with health. Their food was fresh meat from Mr Hubi the butcher. Hubi was about forty, fat and red-faced, with a big belly and a broad, slow voice. He butchered lambs, singing, as if he were watering his garden.
This was the only man whose orders were obeyed. Everyone in our street wanted to find room in his shop. Even the dogs and cats bathed in the smell of his tender, freshly killed meats.
Cows, calves, and lambs hung there, washed of their blood and blessed with verses from the Qur’an.
Anyone who stopped in front of his shop would be greeted with every compliment and blessing that came into his head.
Hubi knew everyone: the family trees of the people who lived in the palaces far away, overlooking the Tigris and the old wooden bridge, the pedigrees of the houses that ate their meat in silence, the histories of those who ate bones and broth, and those who threw meat to their dogs or into the garbage.
To us, Hubi and the King seemed inseparable. The King of Iraq was young. A portrait of him with his uncle hung in Hubi’s shop, surrounded by spattered blood and animal remains. Hubi sold meat only in the afternoon. The morning was for slaughtering and skinning. He sold the hides and heads to Abu Mahmoud, and the sheep’s livers and testicles to restaurants. Everything emanated from his shop: problems, quarrels and even secret leaflets.
In the afternoon, our neighborhood in al-A‘dhamiyya came to a stop. The noon, afternoon, and sundown prayers were called from the ancient Abu Hanifa mosque. Faces came, figures passed by, and arms strained. Hubi sliced away the shanks and legs, intestines and shoulders as if he had been created a butcher at birth.
The day your grandmother sent you to him, you raised your head to hers.
“Huda my girl, don’t lose the money, or we won’t have meat for a week.”
She said no more and you were on your way down the street, absorbed by the jingling of the twenty fils coins. At that very moment you could have flown to the next street. Buy candy floss, colorful lollipops, and currants. Fill you
r hands and your empty pockets, your reckless head, and your tongue dry with all the forbidden things you had seen only in the hands of the children in these other streets.
Steal and lie. Argue and make up excuses, for in Baghdad people take opposite paths: if you steal, your corpse will not be laid open, and if you lie, God is forgiving and merciful.
That is what your grandmother taught you, who stood before her prayer carpet all the time, and between times, in heat, cold, and rain. Her only passion was for God. She whispered to herself prayers that never ended and drowned everyone in supplications, and divulged no secret. She contrived no tricks, she stirred up no scandals or played with anyone’s nerves. She stood in the courtyard or on the roof, saying: “Lord, bind me unto you, and never let me close an eyelid without a thought of you, O most merciful God.”
She used her imagination, wit, and wisdom and the stories of the prophets shone as she put us—Adil and I—on her lap. She came to the tale of the prophet Joseph. She spent a long time on this prophet, describing him in a reverent voice: “My dear, it was he who was the death of Potipher’s wife.”
You asked her: “Who was Potipher’s wife?”
“He stood alone against that treacherous woman and his accursed brothers. She was like Lucifer himself, but Joseph pushed her away. Later on he got an inspiration from Almighty God.”
Adil’s voice: “Who did our lord Joseph look like?”
“No one looks like him. I don’t know anyone he looks like.”
She wasted no words. She freed herself from all her difficulties by referring them up to the Omnipotent Deity. You learned about the first of the devils—Potipher’s wife—from her. That wanderer, seduced and exposed, became my premonition. There my gaze fell on her for the first time. I saw her, named her, and compared her with the other women, dividing up what she had among all: your aunt Farida, your mother’s and father’s sisters. But what remained was still abundant.
The day I read the Qur’an, I read the Sura of Joseph. It opened before me new territories for questions and battles.
With one blow I tore up all the tombstones, as if going into darkness with everyone.
You continued seeking lazy mornings when you did not have to go to school, for vast distances in which you exhaust your anger and love of questions. You did what you were asked in a different way. You wished you had Mahmoud’s muscles, Hubi’s fingers, and your father’s legs. Your head was dizzy from being hit. They had stuffed it with slaps and commandments. You took the remains of sins and stayed that way, peeping through the cracks in the doors and windowpanes at Potipher’s first wife—Aunt Farida—and your mother’s two sisters. They were in one another’s arms, their flesh trembling, liquids and lapses coming from their lips, new truths from their heads.
When your grandmother went up to the high roof, she took her prayer carpet in one hand and the Qur’an in the other. She murmured prayers to protect us all. She did not look down or turn around. At that time the two beloved aunts came in and went down. They left arm in arm, their cloaks slipping and revealing their yearning. The whole of the small room seemed in a trance. They whispered, sighed, made promises and talked of streets and people. Drops flew off them: “Kill me, dear Bahija, kill me, my dear.”
Some went this way, as if it were fate. If your grandmother stayed away, it was because this match was between her and another entity: her soul. And if your mother was absent, it was because she accepted her only destiny: your father.
But these women were descending into Paradise, not waiting to be lifted or wait for a sura to be recited. They were arm in arm, legs entwined. The flowing channels of the body freed things that were pent-up. Aunt Farida stood behind these boundaries, waiting, ready, trained to be ready. Her training was done from the onset of first awareness; when the hour came she did not delay a second. Women, women were all around you, recorded in the maps of cities, desired until the Last Judgment; they rose, they proceeded slowly, marching, listening to rumors, walking carefully around the forbidden area: men.
Whenever you crossed a step, the soul went out of the circle and swept away with it this sedate, divided universe, the man and the woman, the boys and the girls, into thousands of pieces and thousands of sighs.
When you confronted your aunt, face to face, she took you with her to the street for visits. Your hand was in hers, and her black cloak defined her new and mysterious figure as she passed by the shops and the coffeehouses. Her swinging walk in her high-heeled slippers filled their heads with fantasies. She slowed down and paused, walking as if dancing. The children moved aside slightly so that we could pass. The young men let out low whistles and the men sighed with admiration, but she looked at no one. When we were well beyond them, they called out: “You’re killing me!”
I hid inside my old clothes and my excessive thinness. My rage mounted and fell on me, making my head hurt, so I pinched my aunt’s hand. I slipped away from her, and walked far in front of her, not looking back.
Look and stop there: for after your two aunts left the room, Aunt Farida was sure a frenzy would overcome her. She went in and turned on the light, smelled the odors, looked at the ground, and handled everything slowly. She approached the cushions slowly. Everything was tidy and orderly. She leaned over and inspected it carefully. She opened the chest of her body and spread it on the floor, and a feeling of ecstasy began within her.
Your aunt left school after elementary level. She sat in the house waiting for Mr. Munir. Your father gave her a monthly allowance, and your grandmother too.
From there she rotated between the public bath and the neighbors’ houses and your grandfather’s house. At these places her physical vitality bulged, and any disruption in this meant slow death or a huge scandal.
The long-awaited Mr. Munir—patient, blessed, a cousin, old, rich, unemployed, ugly—hesitated to propose to her, but if he came he would find her worthy, an existing oasis, and attractive as well.
Your aunt was the most beautiful woman in the house and the whole neighborhood. She wanted to break some hearts. The fear of her was compounded when she applied kohl to her eyelids. Her body was in excellent health; her round thighs swelled and floated in the tight clothes selected by Rachel, the Jewish seamstress. Her hips were high, her legs full and her bosom taut. Heavy and erect, her neck was long, and she had high cheekbones like your father.
On her lower lip, a small mole, which we call a “Baghdad mark,” made her even more alluring. A beauty spot on her left cheek convinced all men and women of the power of the desire within her. Her eyes, sculpted with a sharp chisel, were black and almond-shaped, and her eyebrows were thick and rarely trimmed.
Her face changed, from the haughtiness of a princess to the remorse of an adulteress. Her hair, coal-black, was now invaded by white wisps. When she laughed, you could see her dimples. When she was silent, the air she gave off had a hoarse hiss. Your aunt sang, too. Her voice, singing folk songs or mad love songs, climbed and flashed with everlasting Iraqi pain. She lowered herself to the ground, sniffing the delightful smell of grilling meat. She loved the smell of other people’s bodies, their sweat and pungency. Her tongue wanders before it moves; her mouth was dry. The bones of her chest tingled. The arteries in her thighs sang, and she was penetrated by thousands of passions; she trembled and her fingers reached down to her belly. She felt within herself, within the circle of her region—secret sex but tumultuous sex. She wet her lips with saliva, breathing one heavy sigh after another, looking down at her rosy nipples, her pores open, crushing the ribs of this frenzy. She undulated like a firehose, not covering herself. You were behind the window watching her. Her hair was loose like a gypsy’s. No one called you away; no one paid attention to you. Your two aunts were content, one of them sprawled on the mat, her face turned to the glass ceiling, the other rolling a fresh cigarette, sealing it with saliva and lighting two cigarettes. She offered one to the sleeping woman. They took the first puff, and Aunt Najia coughed. “I only like Ghazi cigarettes.” Coug
h. “I don’t know why I listen to you.”
Your grandmother came down from the roof on tiptoe. The voice of the muezzin called the evening prayer, and the two aunts roused themselves to go to the bath, and after washing they stood with my grandmother to pray. The whole neighborhood was transfixed in awe. Grandmother sought protection from Satan. Her breathing was quick with supplications, the holy names of God. For the first time, Adil’s voice rang out: “I’m going up to fly a kite.” Your mother sought refuge in her room, Aunt Farida pulled her clothing over her thighs, and grandmother stood before all: “Lord, forgive us in this world and the next.”
Adil was already on the roof. This was Wednesday, and your father comes on Thursday.
3
Thursday was the day of the public bath. Your mother prepared a bundle of clothes for you: a clean vest, an old dress, cotton panties with an elastic waist, dark ribbons for your hair, the comb with the wide, broken teeth, your open-toed sandals, a cotton-lined ribbed cardigan, a square scarf with a pattern of circles and squares, a loofah, and soap. You tied up the bundle and stood in front of it.
