by Alia Mamdouh
The public bath too provides “a source of play and activity” for a lively child like Huda. In an all-female environment she runs about without any inhibitions, annoying the women around her. “She has been impossible from the day she was born,” complains one of Huda’s aunts. (28)
“I slipped away from them all, glided between their legs, and the cakes of soap pushed me far, and I landed in the lap of one woman, her face covered with soap lather. She shrieked: ‘God Almighty, God damn you and damn the bloody day you were born!”’ (24)
For the women, the bath was a place where they eyed each other up and down and exchanged secrets. Mamdouh says that the public bath in Baghdad was like the caverns of hell (Personal communication, October 4, 2004). With its stifling heat and naked bodies, it is in a way reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, as is the Charon-like woman in charge, ushering everyone in. She was “a tall woman in her fifties, slender and ugly . . . Her chest was bare, and her breasts were like two withered pears . . . Her hair was long and hung in her face. She was shouting at everyone.” (22) According to Mamdouh, the bath was also a center where intelligence was shared and collected (Personal communication, October 4, 2004). No doubt various governments used their own spies to infiltrate the throng of women gathered there, to see whether they could learn anything untoward about their men. Once outside, the women would cover themselves, and their confidences would remain dormant until the next visit to the bath when they would be unleashed again.
In spite of the restrictions imposed on her as she gets older, Huda is a free spirit. She cannot be contained in small, restricted places that oppress her, such as school. “I did not like school,” she confesses. (53) She often skips classes, sometimes plays truant, and consequently fails or passes “miserably” at the end of the year. She is dismissive of her school with its high walls and small, dim classrooms, “their dark paint peeling. The benches were narrow, the blackboards were smudged. The boys and girls were crammed together in them, four by four.”(98) Huda is portrayed as a tomboy, full of mischief and according to some people “suckled by Satan”, while Adil is gentle and docile. Even her father admits, admiring her strength of character, that “Huda is a boy. She’s not afraid of me or anyone else.” (188) She herself says: “I am a boy as well. No, I’m not a boy, but I can be like a boy.” She loves “rebellion and the friendship of boys” (60), and is assertive and defiant, making her own decisions. When she decides that she wants to move into her mother’s empty room and to take the radio with her, she knows that she will get her own way. And all her aunt can sarcastically say is: “Does her Highness have any other orders?” (100)
All the main and secondary characters in the novel are Muslim. There are also references to Rachel, the Jewish dressmaker, who plays a minor role in the plot. The fact that Rachel appears as a peripheral character shows that contact between the Muslim and Jewish communities was minimal in the 1950s. Interaction occurs between Rachel and her Muslim neighbors when her services as a dressmaker are required, or when Rachel herself needs the nursing skills of Rasmiya. Iraqi Jewish women did not work outside the home, unless they were poor, like Rachel, who had to earn a living dressmaking. There were also wealthy Jews who lived in fashionable neighborhoods, along with Muslims and Christians, occupying modern mansions, like the ones described in Chapter 14, standing in “tree-lined” avenues with “spacious gardens” where their children played “table tennis, badminton or volley ball” and went to “schools run by nuns, or the Frank Ayni Jewish school.” Frank Ayni was an Iraqi Jewish philanthropist who opened a private educational establishment, combining an elementary and a high school that accepted children from all religious denominations. Apart from Arabic, and Hebrew for Jewish children, English and French were compulsory throughout the school. There were also several fee-paying Catholic convent schools in urban centers, providing elementary and high school education.
Huda may be portrayed as a child playing innocently with the neighborhood boys, but her awareness of men can be seen throughout the novel. Huda and Firdous often talk about the boys they are attracted to. Huda is in love with Mahmoud, Firdous’ brother with whom she spends much of her time. He patiently teaches her math, a subject he excels in, and when they play in the courtyard of the mosque, Mahmoud climbs up the lotus tree and shakes its branches. Firdous, who shouts at her brother to be careful, turns to Huda and says accusingly: “It’s all just for your sake, so you can eat some ripe berries!” (103) Mahmoud even admits, when she tells him that she can be like a boy, “But I want you to keep on being a girl.” (60) Like girls everywhere, Huda and Firdous discuss male singers of the time period. They talk about the singer Farid al-Atrash who was very popular in the 1950s. Firdous retorts: “He looks like he is going to puke. I don’t know how the girls in school can love him.” (97) Huda notices how the men sitting in sidewalk coffeehouses or standing at the doors of their shops ogle her aunt, and the remarks they make when she passes by.
Huda becomes curious about men as she approaches her twelfth birthday. One day while shopping she notices a man urinating against a wall, and surprises everyone by stopping to look at him. When her father comes out of the bathroom with a towel tied around his middle she keeps looking, thinking that perhaps “the towel might fall” and she would see what her father “always kept covered.” (74) As far as Adil is concerned, she does “not succeed in seeing anything” either, since he wears his trousers tightly pulled up to his waist. At night he sleeps well covered, and it is his mother and grandmother who wash him and dress him after he wakes up. Huda is conscious of the sexuality of the adults around her. In the first two chapters she witnesses the lesbian relationship between her aunts—a relationship that is frowned upon, but not totally censored in the day-to-day existence of sexually frustrated women whose contact with men, other than their husbands, fathers and brothers, is non-existent. Huda’s grandmother is aware of it, but seems to feel that there is nothing she can do other than reproach her sister. Huda wonders to herself: “Were these the corrupt women you had heard about?” (8) She witnesses a relationship developing between the nurse, Rasmiya, and the cheese vendor, Abu Mahmoud. He is standing in his stall while she is finishing washing the steps outside her house:
“They looked at one another: the crevice of her breasts was in front of him . . . She laughed sweetly and easily, and poured the water out, drop by drop. She bent over, the bucket in her hands. Half her height was before him, and his whole face was before her. He smiled and nibbled the cheese . . . He wiped his mouth with his hand. He went over to her; she stood before him. The water was gone. The steps were clean, and the radio was still on. And her chest . . . my schoolbooks fell to the ground.” (96)
Beginning with “They looked at one another,” Mamdouh, through Huda, builds up the scene to the last sentence which she begins with “And her chest . . .” before trailing off and coming back immediately with “. . . my schoolbooks fell to the ground,” surprised, no doubt, at the unexpected scene before her.
Gender Roles and Relationships
For the majority of Iraqi women from a traditional background, living in the era described in Naphtalene, submission to the dictates of men and societal customs was the order of the day. This is shown in the way some of the women characters are treated by men. Huda’s own mother, after years of leading a life of selfless devotion to her family, is repudiated by her husband, simply because she is too sick to bear him more sons. He leaves her and their children for another woman to begin a new family. Rasmiya is someone who works outside the home and earns a living. On top of her nursing duties, she is expected to carry out domestic chores and to care for her family. Her husband invariably takes what she earns and gambles it away. He also beats her regularly. Munir abandons Farida soon after the marriage ceremony, after she agrees to marry him because he is her first cousin. In an endogamous society cousins are expected to marry; the fact that he is unsuitable, because he is a selfish womanizer who is too old for her, does not change matters. Far
ida has to obey what her family and society decrees. Mamdouh, however, does not allow her women characters to remain submissive for long. Farida becomes aggressive towards Munir who does not consummate the marriage and abandons her indefinitely. When he finally returns “uglier than before,” she attacks him ferociously:
“She got up and put the pillow over his face, sat on his chest, opened his legs, seized his leather belt, and began to undo his trouser buttons, then pulled down his trousers, worked up like a lunatic. In a flash she stripped him naked in front of you.” (164)
This is a far cry from the young woman who, on her wedding day, “was stretched out on the carpet . . . nearly naked, her legs open” (79), allowing the women to pluck out any unwanted hair from her body and to put makeup on her face, without her uttering a word or actively participating in the preparations for her own wedding. In a matter of a few months, the docile woman had been transformed into the assertive attacker of the man she had passively agreed to marry. After a lifetime of obedience, Farida can no longer allow herself to be at the mercy of a man. The roles reversed as she undressed him; she becomes the one who is in control. Similarly, Rasmiya, after years of humiliation and slavish devotion to an abusive husband, decides to stand up to him and refuses to support him:
“Her voice rose in his face: ‘Listen, I’ve been patient with you. You’re the one who steals our money and loses it gambling. Your salary’s gone the first of the month. I pay all the debts. The whole neighborhood knows you’re a bully and a sinner.’” (95)
The men who mistreat their women are portrayed as weak, despite their bullying tactics and bravado. Huda’s father succumbs to alcoholism, which prevents him from being promoted to a higher rank in the police force, and leads to his eventual dismissal. Munir’s inability to give up liquor and women leads to his rejection and humiliation by Farida. Rasmiya’s husband, who is addicted to gambling and squanders his family’s income, is suddenly dealt a blow by his wife when she stands up for herself and tells him she can no longer tolerate him. Mamdouh succeeds in showing how these men do not have the same strength of character as the women from whom they expect utmost submission. The men act as tyrants because society overlooks their actions, and at times even condones it. Being male seems to give them a license to behave as they wish. In contrast to these men are Adil and Mahmoud, two gentle and considerate boys who interact with girls on an equal footing. One cannot help but wonder whether the older men were also gentle in their youth before society conditioned them to become domineering.
Huda’s father’s sudden and brief entry into the life of the family marks a turning point in Huda’s life, not only in restricting her freedom, but in ushering in a whole series of misfortunes, starting with the news he breaks to Huda’s mother that he wants to leave her because he has another wife who is expecting his child. This is followed by her mother’s deteriorating health, her journey back to Syria, and her subsequent death which leaves Huda devastated. The fiasco of her aunt’s unconsummated marriage, causing malicious tongues to spread gossip in the neighborhood, creates an unhappy atmosphere at home. The final calamity occurs in the last chapter when, added to the humility of her father being reduced to a mere shadow of his former self through drunkenness and despair, he is finally dismissed from his job. This coincides with the family being forced to leave the home they had lived in for years because the government has plans to redevelop the area, another cause of pain for Huda.
A Modern History of Iraq
Napthalene gives us a glimpse of postcolonial Iraq, a country with a long and eventful history. Iraq occupies the ancient land of Mesopotamia that lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and was the birthplace of the ancient civilizations of Sumeria, Assyria, and Babylon. The capital city of Baghdad was founded by the Arab Abbasid dynasty in the eighth century. The three provinces of Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the center and Basra in the south, which form present-day Iraq, were part of the Ottoman Empire from 1534 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. In November 1914, British forces occupied the northern and central provinces, and by 1915 they took control of the southern province as well. At the end of World War I in 1918, the Ottomans were defeated and Iraq became a mandated British territory.
In 1921, the British established a monarchy in the country that reigned until 1958. In October 1932, Iraq became independent and was admitted to membership of the League of Nations. The monarchy and government of independent Iraq continued to maintain ties with Britain, making the monarchy unpopular with many Iraqis. On July 14, 1958 the third and last king, Faisal II, was assassinated in a military coup and Iraq was declared a republic. Faisal had come to the throne in 1939 at the age of four, following the death of his father, and his maternal uncle was regent until Faisal came of age in 1952. In Naphtalene, set during the 1950s, Mamdouh refers to antiroyalist, anti-British demonstrations in Baghdad. She also points out that although Faisal’s uncle was unpopular, Faisal himself was well liked, especially by women. Mamdouh writes: “Girls dreamed of him, and women worried about him.”
When Iraq gained its independence, it had a population that was mostly rural and tribal, with an educated urban elite. Despite the fact that the majority of Iraqis are Muslim and Arabic-speaking, the population has invariably included non-Muslim communities and speakers of other languages. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a sizeable Sephardic Jewish community in Baghdad. In the early days of independence, Jews outnumbered Christians and were prominent in many areas of Iraqi public life. The first finance minister in independent Iraq was Jewish. After the Arab-Israeli conflict and the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, most Jews left Iraq and moved to Israel, Europe and America. Jews continued to leave Iraq, so that now the once thriving community has less than a hundred people, most of whom are elderly. Christian Iraqis can be found throughout the country, and in northern Iraq, in the province of Mosul, there are villages that are entirely Christian. Other religious minorities include the Kurdish-speaking Yezidis in the north of the country, and Mandeans in southern and central Iraq. Yezidis are adherents of a little known Middle Eastern religion with ancient origins. The Mandeans are a Gnostic community that reveres John the Baptist. Apart from Arabic, varieties of neo-Aramaic, Kurdish, Persian, Turkish, and Armenian are also spoken by minority groups.
Naphtalene describes some major political issues in Iraq during the last years of the monarchy. References are made to “leaflets,” the Voice of the Arabs radio station, President Nasser and various members of the Iraqi monarchy and government. In the mid-fifties those who were against the regime in the country used to print leaflets and distribute them secretly in the popular quarters of Baghdad where anti-British sentiments were strongest. The term “leaflets” came to imply secret political activity. Among the neighborhood gossip that Huda overhears are occasional references to such “leaflets”:
“If the conversation turned to politics, they stuttered a little, and barely audible: ‘Yes, my sister’s son has leaflets. It’s driving her mad.’”(108)
Involvement in clandestine anti-government politics was the source of anxiety for many families. When Mahmoud begins to be politically active, he hands Huda a “leaflet”:
“The day he gave me a leaflet I was afraid, trembling and stammering. The first leaflet was like a first forbidden kiss. I could not move: my stomach was upside down and I nearly fainted. I knew that there was something like a bomb inside it, and if I touched it, it would blow my hand and head off.” (169)
Huda’s neighbors said that Mahmoud had become a communist, a term that young Huda was not yet familiar with. Her family and most of their neighbors listened to the Egyptian Voice of the Arabs radio station, promoting Arab nationalism and urging the people of Iraq to get rid of their monarchy and the pro-British regime. “We were all Nasserites,” she confesses. She goes on to say that her grandmother loved Nasser’s voice because it reminded her of her late husband’s voice. (170)
The Voice of the Arabs enjoyed g
reat popularity in the aftermath of what became known as the Suez Crisis of 1956, following the assault on Egypt by Britain, France, and Israel to stop the nationalization of the Suez Canal by President Nasser of Egypt. This was met by a furious response from the United States, and a condemnation from President Eisenhower that forced the Anglo-French alliance to withdraw their troops from Egypt. Mamdouh mentions Nuri al-Said, who was Prime Minister of Iraq during the 1958 coup in which he was killed. The majority of the events depicted in the book took part in the mid-1950s. There are references also to earlier times, like the political demonstrations against Salih Jabr who was Prime Minister of Iraq between 1947 and 1948. Mamdouh, through Huda, speaks of the death of Queen Aliyah, King Faisal’s mother, who died of cancer in December of 1950. Apart from political events, the book rounds out a picture of mid-century Baghdad, and Mamdouh provides eyewitness accounts of different scenes of life in Iraq, including a visit to a saint’s shrine in a mosque, a traditional market, a funeral procession, and the prison courtyard in Karbala where prisoners received visits from their relatives.
Mamdouh’s style is at times more that of a poet than a writer of fiction, particularly in the added connotations of some of the terminology and imagery she introduces. She does not always follow a linear style, so that events do not appear in chronological order, but are often relayed in flashbacks. Her innovative use of Arabic can be problematic for any translator, especially as she deals with an environment that is unknown to her translators and social concepts that are totally different from theirs. What makes her writing even more complex is her constant use of metaphor that is sometimes difficult to unravel, as she herself concedes. According to Richard Woffenden, Mamdouh’s “Arabic language often leaves the reader in confusion, and this of course is part of the appeal for many who love the ambiguities.” Ferial Ghazoul says that Alia Mamdouh’s style “is unique and does not belong to any school of feminist or non-feminist writing. It belongs to her and is hers alone.”
