by Roy Scranton
He felt for the ribbon between the pages and opened to where he’d left off, his fingers skimming the lines, tracing the scant indentations of yesterday’s pen. In a day it’d be flat like the others and return to blankness, but for the moment it held the impression. He read yesterday’s verses and then again, remembering, reciting, then took the cap from his pen and began on the left his verse for today. He wrote slowly and with great care words he would never see and only briefly know, the same words or different, the one song in many verses.
Sometimes he’d pause and stick his pen in his mouth. He’d jab at the pen with the jerking stub that was all that remained of his tongue, remembering how many years ago, in a dark and stinking hole he could only barely now envision, a cold blade had been forced between his teeth and his mouth had filled with blood.
Qasim took the phone up onto his uncle Mohammed’s roof, where he sat in a plastic chair and turned east to face the prayer call from the loudspeakers of Um Al-Tobool. The sun sank behind him, a red burn against darkening violet, the last light flaming on the mosque’s dual minarets, their paired domes, the delicate twinned crescents.
What would come of it all?
God’s will, as the call closed with the Fatiha: “Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those who have incurred Thy wrath, nor of those who have gone astray.”
Silence opened across the city. A dog barked below. Qasim dialed his uncle Jibril. His cousin Bahira answered, and Qasim asked to speak with his mother.
“Qasim?”
“Peace be upon you, Mother.”
“Upon you be peace, little fox.”
“How are you?”
“Allah carries us in his palms. The children are putting tape on the windows. Izdihar is such a precious lamb, she drags a chair in from the kitchen to stand on. She can’t reach all the way up, so she puts little designs in the corner. She wrote her name on the one in my room. Little Izdihar. Written in tape. Did I tell you Afifah and the children are coming? Your brother Darud, his division is near Basra, they say. Jibril says we will crush the Americans even more quickly than we did last time, God willing. Are you praying, little fox?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Are you coming home for Ashura? Jibril has put his foot down like every year, but Rahimah and I are going to celebrate and it’s for the children, anyway. It’s important. You always tell the story of Ali Husayn so well, little fox. Won’t you be coming home for Ashura?”
“I don’t know, Mother.”
“You’ll be home before the infidel comes, I’m sure.”
“Mother, I need to talk to you about that.”
“What do you need to talk about? Your father, God preserve his soul, would want you home. If not for me, for Lateefah.”
“How is she?”
“Her heart is like fire on you. What do you expect? What’s she supposed to do while you waste your days in Baghdad? She can’t make a child. She can’t make a home.”
“Did she quit her job at the school?”
“No, not yet. But it blackens her face to work like a girl with no husband.”
“Mother, you know I’m working.”
“You left a fine job your father would have been proud of to live like a beggar.”
“Father would want me to finish my degree.”
“Your father knew what needed to be done and did it. He would not have run away from his family. He would never have left me alone as you have done with Lateefah.”
Father would have found a way.
Long ago, Faruq had planned that after Qasim completed his bachelor of science at Baghdad University, he’d be sent abroad for a doctorate. Money was put aside, crucial favors were done for certain well-placed officials. Then came the war with Kuwait. Faruq got Qasim a draft deferment and Qasim finished near the top of his class; few of his peers were so lucky. The peace, though, turned out to be almost as bad as the war: continued bombing and crippling sanctions ruined the already weak economy. Business stopped, trade stopped, the dinar plummeted against the dollar, inflation surged—it was as if Faruq’s savings were being eaten by rats. At the worst of it, they spent their cash in stacks and wads; a month’s salary might buy a chicken or a few dozen eggs. Then, in the purges and paranoia following the Shi’a uprising, Faruq’s delicately nurtured connections died on the vine. Those few friends still hanging on to power wouldn’t stick their necks out. Nevertheless Faruq found a way, somehow, scraping together enough hard cash and finessing enough shady deals to send Qasim to Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. With some help from the school, there was just enough money to get him started; Faruq impressed upon his son the necessity of finding funding.
Qasim had been north only a few gloomy months—cold, humiliating months full of unnerving lessons in the limits of his talent; dismal months of constipation, headaches, and a constantly running nose; lonesome months where the English he so struggled to master always seemed to bend back on his tongue into gibberish; nightmare months where he wandered the streets in a muddle, baffled and awed by the strange stone city around him and the cruel, doughy faces of the Scots who lived there; despairing months where each night, curled under his duvet with the door shut against his roommates, he struggled desperately to keep from weeping, to keep them from hearing him weep, despondent for home and exhausted from working so hard and falling behind and the unending gray skies pissing rain—when at last the phone rang and his mother told him in a stern, quiet voice that his father was ill and the doctors did not expect him to survive the winter.
Qasim flew back to Baqubah, elated to be home until he saw his mother’s haggard face, his father’s withered body. Over the next year, Faruq slowly shrank, crumpling and shriveling in the grip of the cancer. There was no going back to Edinburgh, even if Qasim had wanted to, there was no money left for anything, yet on his deathbed Faruq demanded his son’s promise: finish your schooling. The machines beeped and hissed. Faruq’s dry, fleshless fingers burned in Qasim’s palm. I promise, Father. I promise.
“Do you hear me, Qasim?” his mother shouted. “Are you even listening? Qasim, you must come home!”
“Mother, I’m staying in Baghdad.”
“What? Qasim, you can’t. You must come home.”
“If I want to keep my place here teaching, I have to stay.”
His mother snorted. “Ridiculous boy who thinks he can tell his mother about his great responsibilities. Little boy who can’t even take care of his wife, who isn’t even a father, who leaves his family to be murdered by the infidel.”
“Mother . . .”
“A fine man, a fine hero, devout, brave . . .”
“Mother, please.”
“A real Saladin.”
“I’m not coming back to Baqubah. That’s my decision. That’s the end of it.”
“Fine. Then I live with the shame of having given birth to a coward.”
“Mother!”
“At least your brothers are men.”
“Put Lateefah on the phone!”
“Remember, Qasim, that a man who cannot tend his wheat will eat his barley.”
“Mother, put Lateefah on!”
He heard the phone hit the table and his mother curse him as she walked away. A moment later, Lateefah’s voice: “Qasim?”
His knees went weak. His voice went weak. “Lateefah.”
“You’re not coming,” she said.
“Lateefah . . .”
She said nothing. He listened to her breath and thought he might die from it. Breath after breath. Sometime later—Qasim couldn’t say how long—he heard her set the phone down. His uncle Jibril picked up.
“Your mother says you’re staying.”
Qasim exhaled. “That’s right, Uncle.”
“Well, listen, Nephew, women don’t always understand the choices we have
to make. If it were up to them, we’d never leave home. I’m sure you have your reasons, and becoming a professor is a great service . . . How is your dissertation coming along, anyway?”
“I’m working through some difficult spots right now. It’s a bit of a maze, you know, but . . . I’ll find my way.”
“Good. Maintain discipline. That’s a great source of strength.”
“Have you heard from Darud?”
“He’s near Basra, that’s all I know. They can’t say any more. He’ll be one of the first to repel the invaders.”
“My brother’s very brave.”
“Not all of us are warriors, Nephew. The nation needs scholars, as well.”
“And accountants.”
“And engineers, like your father.”
“He fought. So did you.”
“And so did Aban and so did Bishr. Don’t forget about them, and don’t forget that heaven isn’t so pretty for a man’s widow and his fatherless children. God grant your sister-in-law doesn’t have to learn that lesson.”
“I pray for my brother’s victory.”
“Listen, Qasim. I want you to know your mother and wife are safe here, and they will be as long as I can lift a rifle. If you have to stay in Baghdad, I trust your reasons. But if there was any way you could come to Baqubah, I know your wife and mother would be relieved. They worry about you.” He paused. “I’m sure you have your reasons. Your family is my family. They are safe in my home, always.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
“Your father would be proud of you, Qasim. God your pardon and protection.”
The sun had set and lights had flickered on across the city. The weekend had begun. Qasim heard a grunt behind him and turned to see Mohammed coming onto the roof with something in his hands.
“Are you off the phone?” Mohammed asked.
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Good. Mother will have dinner ready soon. Here. She finished mending your trousers.” He handed Qasim a folded pair of slacks. “She says you should take a dance class.”
Qasim smiled. “She’s very patient with me.”
“Yes, she is. And what about you? Have you decided?”
“I told Mother I’m staying here.”
Mohammed looked out over the city. “It’s a beautiful night,” he said. “This is my favorite time of year. We leave the rains behind, but it’s not hot yet. It’s a pleasant time to be in Baghdad.”
“It is,” Qasim said.
“You know our family has always shown determination in the face of trouble.”
“I do.”
“I would hate to think that anyone could say our family couldn’t take care of itself . . . That anyone in our family would turn away from his obligations.”
Qasim felt heat rising in his cheeks. Mohammed scuffed his sandal on the roof.
“It’s difficult,” Mohammed said after much thought, “as a young man, to know how to balance your responsibilities. Your wife, your family, your tradition . . . the nation, Islam, your work . . . A man must see what follows from the recitation of his soul.” Mohammed shook out a cigarette and lit it. “It’s not always easy, especially in at time like this. A man must act with strength, but humbly. God does not love the proud.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Mohammed turned toward Qasim, his gaze full and measuring. “Go thank your auntie for sewing your trousers. Tell her I’ll be down soon. After dinner, I need you to come with me to the office to go over some accounts.”
Qasim stood and nodded, watching his reflection—a tiny speck in the dark of his uncle’s eye—dwindle and fade into nothing.
•••
“Thank you all for coming. I know things are difficult now, and that time spent here is time away from your family during these crucial last days.” Qasim considered his class, barely half full. With the deadline only two days away, many classes had already been “temporarily” suspended, and all across town offices and stores were closing up, sending everyone home except the last few needed to board up windows and lock doors. He had almost canceled class himself, but it was his favorite, and he wanted to see them all one last time.
“I don’t know when we’ll reconvene, or even if we’ll be able to finish this semester’s work. The uh . . . Well, I hope al-Sahhaf is right, and we destroy the Americans quickly.” He paused for a moment, thinking how best to phrase this, knowing at least one student in his class was a Ba’athist.
“Professor al-Zabadi.”
“Yes, Amr.”
“Professor . . . If we don’t . . . I mean if we can’t . . . make it back to class . . . I’m from an-Nasiriyah, and I’m going back home . . . If we can’t come back to university this semester, will we be able to withdraw without a failing grade?”
“Yes. If we’re not able to reconvene this class, I’m going to recommend everyone be given the grade you’ve earned to this point, for an hour and a half of credit. But, no, Amr, I’m not going to fail anyone because—” He stopped, watching Amr’s face twitch, his shoulders shudder, and his chest explode, spewing bits of bone and gore all over his classmates. What? I’m not going to fail anyone because they’re crippled? Because they’re dead? He remembered the last war, the trucks and tanks full of smoking corpses. “I’m not going to fail anyone because they can’t make it back to class. The worst that will happen, the absolute worst case, is that you’ll take a withdrawal.” Pray God, the absolute worst. “But what I plan . . .”
There was a knock at the door. Professor Hureshi poked his head in.
“Professor al-Zabadi, a word.”
“Class, you’ll excuse me.” Qasim smoothed his mustache and followed Professor Hureshi out, closing the door behind him.
“I wanted to catch you before you left this afternoon. Have you reached your decision, Qasim?”
“Professor Hureshi . . .”
“Qasim, I need to know on whom I may depend. We must assume, God willing, that things—”
“I’m staying,” Qasim said. “I’m staying. I’ll be at my uncle Mohammed’s.”
Hureshi blinked and flashed his teeth. “I am pleased to hear it.”
Qasim thought of Lateefah—alone in the hole he’d dug her. The pain he caused. His mother’s shame. And when the war came? Could he stand it?
He hugged Hureshi and kissed his cheek.
“I’m glad to serve,” he said.
Salman sat smoking. He’d taught his elementary statistics class that morning and was now going through his students’ tests, but his mind kept wandering back over what he’d just seen. On the way down from Hureshi’s office, he’d noticed that weed al-Zabadi in the hall talking quietly—even intimately—with Anouf Hamadaya. Perhaps the way they were standing so close and whispering so ardently meant nothing. Perhaps it was merely class-related. She was one of his students, after all. But Salman had learned over the years to trust his suspicions: even if they weren’t always right, they almost always suggested opportunities.
Salman kept an eye open for opportunities. Unlike Adham, who came from a wealthy family in Fallujah, and Qasim, whose middle-class family stood solidly on their construction business and their date farms in Baqubah, Salman came from people little better than peasants. What was left of them, anyway, after the 1991 Shi’a uprising. Salman’s father, his two brothers, three of his uncles, and most of the rest of the men in his extended family had either died in the fighting or been butchered after Karbala fell. Salman himself, sixteen at the time, only barely escaped with his life. For nearly a week, while Republican Guard soldiers roamed the streets dragging men off to be executed and dumped in open graves, Salman lay hidden in a shattered groundwater pipe, drinking fetid water, dizzy with hunger, his heart thundering every time a jeep or tank rolled over the road above. When at last he crawled out, nearly dead from dehydration, he was the last living man in his immed
iate family.
He hated the men who’d murdered his brothers and uncles and father, it was true, but it was an abstract hatred locked so deep within himself that it was no more than a cold violet idea, having little to do with his day-to-day life. He’d recognized early that the strong and forceful climb to the top, and since he was neither, his only hope lay in cunning. Justice was for the mighty; Salman vowed to survive. So when his draft notice came up, he dutifully went away and served in the infantry, and when Lieutenant Azimaya approached him about serving the greater glory of Iraq, the only question in his mind was how far it would take him.
It got him all the way to Saddam University, and after he finished his BSc with a dual major in business and maths, it got him into the Economics Department at Al-Mustansiriya University to work on a master’s. While taking economics classes he worked as a TA in the maths department, but even what he got for teaching, added to what he got paid for informing, didn’t quite make ends meet. Not only was he supporting his mother and sisters back home, but he was trying to save up for a wife, so he drove a taxi three, sometimes four nights a week, and could be found for certain odd jobs if the price was right. He’d hoped when he finished his MA to get a cushy government position—maybe join the Party—then find himself a bride.
The upcoming invasion made a mockery of all that. He knew he’d survive, no matter what, maybe even thrive in the chaos, but nobody wants war except soldiers and fools, and Salman was neither. Salman was shrewd. Salman was observant.
Anouf, for example, he’d been watching for a long time, and not just because she had a face like an Egyptian movie star and a figure to match. The other students gossiped about her because of her modern clothes and her blue jeans, but also because of the men who picked her up from school, whispering that she supported herself as a prostitute for high-placed government officials and was an informer for the Mukhabarat besides. Salman had wondered himself, at first, but the truth, which he’d uncovered in time, was that her brother was of one of Baghdad’s biggest embargo cats—the loose gang of black marketeers and smugglers who made their money supplying people with everything prohibited by the UN and Saddam. The thuggish men who picked Anouf up from campus every day were her brother’s runners.
