by Jennifer Roy
“Think we should dig a well?” I say.
“Or an outhouse,” Shirzad responds.
“A well is easier,” I point out. “It’s just digging.” I know neither of us has the skills or materials to build a structure.
At home, Shirzad and I recruit Ahmed to help. We find two good shovels in the back shed—one for Shirzad, one for me.
“What about me?” Ahmed whines.
“Here.” Shirzad gives him a metal rake that we use sometimes to knock down ripe fruit from high branches.
“Cool!” says my little brother.
The three of us survey the backyard.
“Where do we start?” Ahmed asks.
“Near the old well,” I say, sounding more sure of myself than I am. We find a circular iron cap that looks like it covers a well. We start digging a small distance away from it.
Three boys, two shovels, and a rake add up to nothing much.
Digging down less than a meter.
“We’re almost to America!” Ahmed cheers, sticking the pole end of the rake in.
“Really, Ahmed?” Shirzad says. “What are you, four years old?”
“I was trying to stay positive.” Ahmed makes a face at him, then throws his rake down and stomps off.
“This is an exercise in futility,” I declare. “Even if we go farther who knows if we’ll find water? We’re in the desert.”
“You’re right. I know.” My older brother wipes his brow. “I just feel like we need to do . . . something.”
I nod. We put the tools back in the shed.
“Shirzad!” I say. “Remember what we did during the last war? The windows?”
“Right!” We race into the house. We look through cupboards and the pantry until—
“Jackpot!” Shirzad says. He holds up two rolls of heavy-duty tape. “And there’s more back here. You know Mama and her stockpiling.”
I grab a roll of tape from my brother. The two of us go to work taping the sides of the windows. The tape, hopefully, will hold the glass in the window frame, making it stronger and less likely to shatter.
“It looks safer,” I say, admiring our finished work.
“I saw a couple bottles of Coke hidden in the back of the pantry,” Shirzad says. “I think we’ve earned them.”
I smile, probably for the first time today.
Ten
Tuesday, January 22—Day 7
MY FATHER IS HOME! I’M OUTSIDE KICKING THE FOOTBALL around when I see him coming up the street.
“Baba!” I shout, and I kick the ball up to my knees into my hands. My father reaches me and puts his hand on my head.
“Ali,” he says, with a small smile. I look up at him. He has dark, dark circles under his eyes. His usually carefully trimmed mustache is sprouting hairs all which ways.
He tousles my hair and heads for the front door of the house. I realize I can’t remember the last time my father touched me. We are not a family that readily shows affection most of the time. My head still feels warm from my father’s hand.
I hear excited shrieks from inside. I go in the open front door and see Shireen in my father’s arms. Ahmed is jumping up and down.
Mama comes out of the kitchen.
“Just in time for dinner,” she says.
Shirzad bounds down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He and Baba high-five.
Our family is all together. Between the wars, this would have been normal and unappreciated. Now it seems like a holiday. I hope we have something special to eat.
Walking into the kitchen I see . . . bread and a bowl of date spread. Oh, well. Then my mother brings out some bottles of Coca-Cola.
That’s more like it.
After washing up, Baba joins us at the table. We don’t talk as we eat. The room feels peaceful.
Until Shirzad decides to open his mouth.
“How is the war going, Baba?” he asks.
My father puts his fork down. When he finishes chewing he says, “What?”
“I just wanted to know how things are going,” Shirzad says. “You know, what you’ve seen, what you’ve heard.”
Silence. Uh-oh. Shirzad has broken the unspoken rule. Don’t ask about war.
“What I have seen and what I have heard are not conversation for the table,” Baba says. “What I have seen and heard . . . you should be so blessed to never see or hear. In a few years you will be old enough to fight. Then you will know. Instead of Shirzad Fadhil you will be just another lamb sent out to the slaughter.”
My father’s voice has risen so he is almost yelling. During the last sentence he pounds the table with his fist, making the dishes jump.
“Baba, I’m sorry,” Shirzad says. He looks like he is about to cry. “I just— I didn’t know . . .”
“Good meal,” Father says, and pushes back his chair. “I am going to rest.”
We spend the afternoon quietly so as not to disturb Baba. At night we gather in the safe room. It feels safer with my father there. We fall asleep for a while.
“Mama! Papa!” Shireen cries out in the dark.
After what seems like forever, the outside goes quiet again. I don’t hear the all clear siren, so it must be just a temporary lull.
Shireen whimpers in the dark.
“Shiri,” Baba says. “Have I ever told you how I got your mama to marry me?’
Shireen shuts her whining. I can’t help but smile. My little sister is obsessed with weddings. Her Barbies are always getting married.
“The story begins when I was finishing up dental school in Baghdad,” Baba says.
Shireen isn’t the only one listening. Baba is an excellent storyteller.
“It was selection day,” continues Baba. “Where all the students learned where they would begin their practice.”
“And you selected Basra!” Ahmed says.
“No, we were not allowed to choose what we wanted,” Papa says. “Remember, all medical professionals, including dentists, work for the government. So the government had a system for assignments. We picked them out of a hat!”
We all laugh.
“I am serious.” Baba’s voice has a smile in it. “The names of towns and cities were written on slips of paper. I reached in and pulled out—”
He waits a moment as we lean in to hear more.
“Mosul!”
Mosul. That’s all the way at the top of Iraq. Basra is at the bottom.
“Yes,” Baba continues. “I thought, All right, so it’s Mosul for me. But then my friend told me that his family lived in Mosul, and he was hoping to start his practice there. So I said, ‘Let’s switch.’ We traded right there and then.”
BOOM! Crack! Smash!
“Stay calm!” Baba shouts. “It’s not our house! We’re fine!”
Really, we’re not fine. We are in a war, and we’re being bombed. But no one argues the point.
After a few moments, the world outside resumes its quiet.
“Baba?” Shireen says, sounding very young and afraid. “Would you please finish the story?”
“Well,” Baba says, “as you may have guessed, the new slip of paper in my palm said, ‘Basra.’”
“It was your destiny!” Shireen gasps.
“It certainly wasn’t the worst of the assignments,” replies my father.
“And then you met Mama and lived happily ever . . .” My sister yawns and her voice trails off.
“Not exactly.” My mother laughs. “But I think we’ll save that part for another time.”
Shireen fusses. I don’t say anything, though I want to hear the rest of the story also. But my parents tell us to go to sleep.
As I’m drifting off, my mother’s laugh echoes in my mind. I don’t often hear her laugh. I replay that happy sound over and over in my head until I fall asleep.
Eleven
Wednesday, January 23, 1991—Day 8
ANOTHER AFTERNOON OF FOOTBALL IN THE STREET. I used to live for the moments when the traffic was light enough to kic
k the ball around uninterrupted for a few minutes.
Now, thanks to the gas shortage, we have hours on our hands.
Kick! Pass! Stop! Goal!
“Go-o-o-o-al!” I shout, running around with my hands victoriously in the air.
“Plane!” Shirzad interrupts my celebration. He grabs my arm and drags me toward our house. We rush through the door in our privacy wall.
I stumble into my brother and we land hard on the dirt.
“Oof!” I roll onto my back and look up at the sky. The plane is flying high and is soon well past our neighborhood.
“Wadaeann,” I say, and breathe a sigh of relief. Goodbye.
Shirzad nudges me in the side with his foot as he gets up off the ground.
“What, are you talking to your friends in the United States?” Shirzad teases. “Hey, Americans! Land here and pick up your buddy Ali Fadhil!”
“Oh, shut up,” I tell him, but I’m smiling a little. It’s no secret how I feel about the West.
Shirzad is standing, brushing himself off. He looks down at me with one eyebrow raised.
“Get real,” he says. “We’re Iraqi. You think they’d want you? That Saddam would ever let any of us out? Ha, ha, and ha.”
“You’ll see,” I say. “I’ll get there someday. And when I make my first million, I’ll send for you in my private jet.”
My brother snorts and shakes his head.
“Well, you wait out here to be rescued,” he says. “I’m going in.”
I don’t say anything. I cross my arms behind my head and just lie there, staring at the sky.
Not a trace of the plane remains. Shirzad was joking, of course, but I can’t help but let my mind wander back in time.
When I was very young, I thought that the way I lived was how everybody lived. I lived in a big house surrounded by sand. I had a nanny to take care of me and a housekeeper to clean up after me. I spoke Arabic, so everybody else must too, I thought. And then Baba brought home a TV for the family room. He and my mother had a small one in their bedroom, but this one, he said, was ours. Suddenly, we were allowed to watch shows—not only shows from Iraq but ones from America, too.
For the first time, I saw a world beyond my own. I saw forests and snow and the ocean. I saw people who looked different from people I had seen before. And I heard English. I don’t remember why, but the English language—it, well, it spoke to me. My father and I learned to read the Arabic subtitles on the American shows and match them to some of the words. After watching cowboy Westerns, I’d yell, “Hands up!” and “Howdy, partner!” while playing with water pistols. I picked up TV catch phrases like “Pity the fool!” and “Book ’em, Danno,” and repeated them endlessly without fully understanding what they meant.
When English classes began in fifth grade, I started getting my first A pluses. Translating Arabic, with its poetic, ancient words, to modern English was difficult for most of my classmates. But it came naturally to me. Now I could read, write, and speak English. I just didn’t have anyone to speak it to.
“Hey, Americans!” I whisper to the sky. “I’m down here! It’s me, Ali Fadhil!”
The sky is silent.
I close my eyes. If only I could trade places with an American kid. I’d fit in, I know I would. I wear a T-shirt and jeans. I like sports and comic books. I speak English!
In the United States, I would see snow and forests and the ocean in reality, not just on TV, for the first time. I would say what I wanted to say without fear.
I would be safe. I would be free.
“Ali!” Shireen’s voice pierces my fantasy. “Are you dead?”
I open my eyes. Shireen starts jumping over me. Back and forth.
“Okay, okay!” My little sister stops jumping. I hold out my hand as if I need help to get up.
Instead, I pull Shireen down with me and tickle her.
Twelve
Thursday, January 24, 1991—Day 9
SADDAM’S TROOPS ARE BURNING THE KUWAITI OIL WELLS.
We heard it on the news. Typical Saddam Hussein. We invade Kuwait to take over their oil, and now we’re wrecking it.
“Do you think this means we’re losing already?” I ask Shirzad, dribbling the football a bit before kicking it to him.
“What?” Shirzad says, trapping the ball under his foot.
“Like he’s saying, if I can’t have this oil, then you can’t either,” I explain.
“Maybe.” Shirzad kicks. “Or could be the fires will make the sky all smoky so the American pilots can’t see.”
“Oh yeah.” I have to run left to stop the ball. Kick! “Do you think Baba is down there?” Baba told us that he and his medical team might move around from place to place, depending on where soldiers need medical treatment.
“Who knows?” my brother says. “Guess we’ll have to wait until he comes off work to find out.”
“Shirzad! Ali!” Mustafa jogs up the street toward us, followed by Omar and Umar and a few other boys from our neighborhood. “Let’s play!”
I’m tired of trying to kick a ball past the cheating twins.
“Hide and seek!” I shout out.
“No, that’s a baby game,” sneers Umar.
“Then you don’t have to play,” I retort. I cover my eyes and start to count loudly. “Wahid, ethnean, tlaatheh . . .”
I hear no more complaints, just the sound of running. I count to twenty and then yell, “Ready or not, here I come!”
I look around, then head off toward the stone wall between our street and our house. As is my habit, I run my hands along the holes in the wall caused by bullets in the war with Iran before going through the entrance.
Our yard has great hiding places. It’s a huge yard to match our huge house. I spot my first victim hiding behind the big eucalyptus tree. He takes off running to “safety,” our front door, but I tag him easily. The twins are hiding around the right side of the house, inside the two-car garage.
“Do you two do everything the same?” I taunt, as I run around the garden tools and tag Omar. Umar manages to race out from behind my father’s car and make a break for it.
“Tag, you’re it!” I say to Omar. He ignores me and runs after his brother. “Cheater,” I grumble.
I flush more guys out from behind orange trees and the tool shed next to the small garden. But they get away. That leaves Shirzad. I creep around the rest of the house without spotting him.
And then I see him. Walking up the pathway . . . with my father! I run up to give Baba a hug. But first I punch Shirzad in the arm.
“You’re it!” I say.
After my father came home, he dusted himself off with dry towels and took a nap. Now, a couple of hours later, he has joined us for a lunch of tandoori bread and date spread.
“Okay, boys,” he says, pushing away his empty plate. “Let’s get to work.”
Shirzad, Ahmed, and I follow Baba outside. Shireen brings up the rear until Mama grabs her and marches her back inside.
“Nice try,” I hear Mama say over Shireen’s protests.
My father takes out tools from the shed and a few things from the garage, and then he tells us what to do. An hour later, we’ve dug a well that spurts a small amount of water when you use a hand pump.
“Hurray!” Ahmed exclaims triumphantly.
“And now, we have one more project to do,” Baba says. “Ali, you go get some empty bottles from the bottom bin in the pantry. Shirzad, I need the petrol cans from the garage—even the one that’s almost emptied out. Ahmed, go grab a few rags from the kitchen.”
Finally! I feel like finally I am doing something to help my family.
But what exactly are we doing?
It turns out we are making a modified Molotov cocktail. But instead of using it as a flaming bomb, it will be used as a lamp.
“Very careful, boys,” Baba warns. “This is not a toy.” He shows us how to make the first one. Then we each make one, slowly pouring the gas into a bottle, wiping off the outside to
make sure nothing spills . . . then a few more tweaks, and it’s done.
Later that night, we black out our windows with dark sheets and light a Molotov lamp, its flame reaching no higher than the neck of the bottle—but still giving off light.
“Family game time!” Shireen cheers.
Baba taught us to play Monopoly. He knows English very well, so he translates the directions, even though we already know the colors of the properties and how to move our pieces around with the dice.
Place four Fadhil kids around a Monopoly game board and suddenly the mood gets Very. Serious. Shireen gets very competitive. Or I should say, Shireen with Baba backing her up.
We are immersed in the world of American paper dollar bills and tiny green houses when—
BOOM!!!
The nearby blast shakes our pieces all over the board and onto the floor.
“My houses!” Ahmed cries. “I almost had a hotel!”
It’s true. My little brother is winning. Was winning.
“I lost the best blue property,” Shirzad whines. “And I think my dog died.”
I look behind me. The blast threw his little dog piece upside down on the floor. Other pieces and cards lay scattered around.
“Game. Over,” I say in my best robotic video game voice.
Thirteen
“SORRY, KIDS,” BABA SAYS. “WE NEED TO SAVE THIS.” He puts out the Molotov lamp.
Now it’s pitch-black. I hear rumbling sounds from outside, but mostly it’s quiet.
“And then what?” Shireen’s voice pierces the night.
“What?” Baba and Mama say together.
“And then what happened after you moved to Basra, Baba?” Shireen asks. “How did you meet Mama?”
“I can tell you the rest of our story,” Mama says. “As you know, I grew up here in Basra. I went to university in Baghdad for mathematics, then returned home to begin my teaching. One day, my father—your grandfather—had a bad toothache, and he asked me to take him to the new dentist nearby.”
“Baba!” Shireen interjects.
“That’s right. It was your father. He introduced himself to me before fixing my father’s tooth. I thought, what a polite dentist.”
