by Arnold Zable
‘I was not alone. There were other people in the ocean. The light was sweeping over them, and they were holding pieces of wood and they were swimming to the lights. And they were crying, “Help, help, please save us!” I came close to the lights and I saw it was not an island. It was a boat. The young men were swimming and they were saying, “Follow us. We are going to the boats. They are going to save us,” and I tried to paddle with my hand, to swim faster.
‘There were three boats, two bigger and one smaller. I thought they were going to save us. The light was shining in my eyes and we were shouting and screaming. “Help. Help. Please, help us!” I heard the voices of the people in the water, and I heard the horn of the ships. I got closer, closer to the boats and I shouted, “Help! Help! Please, help us.” I thought they were coming to save me. One man had a whistle, but no one on the ship wanted to hear him.
‘I tried for two hours, but they did not save us. They did not save anyone. Some people let go of the wood. They felt hopeless. The boats disappeared and I was alone on the ocean. It was cold and dark and raining, and there was only sky and water. I looked to the sky. I wanted to see the angel of death. I wanted him to take my soul. I wanted the angel of death to end this, and take me from the ocean to the sky, to lift me from the water.’
Amal breaks off and glances around her, disoriented. The strain of the telling has tired her. She wants to talk for a while of other things, her love for her son Amjed, and for her older son, Ahmed, who is waiting in Iran, and the married daughter, who left Iraq years ago and lives in Jordan. She wants to tell me about her daughter’s four children. Her tension eases as she speaks, her voice softens. She is relieved to be away from the ocean.
We meet again weeks later, in the flat she has recently moved to. Amal walks from the lounge room to the kitchen to tend to her cooking, and returns to tell me that in Iraq, every Friday, it was her habit to make dolma, the dish she is now serving: chopped tomato and minced lamb stuffed in vine leaves, seasoned with paprika, cumin powder, lemon juice and pepper. She is a restless woman, eager to express her passions. She delivers baklava and cardamom tea, and puts on a CD of Umm Khultum in live performance.
The music evokes Alf layla wa-layla, the One Thousand Nights and One Night, and tales of her beloved Baghdad, which stands on the Tigris four hundred and fifty kilometres north of where it meets the Euphrates on a plain once known as the Fertile Crescent, a region that archaeologists contend was the cradle of civilisation. And it takes Amal to that once-upon-a-time when life was good and her family content. This is how she recalls it decades later in a city far distant, coloured by time and nostalgia, and the gloss of childhood.
She lived in a suburb of the old city in a house with six rooms, a garage and garden. The house was full of banter. Her brothers grew their hair long, inspired by the Beatles, and put on false moustaches in imitation of Charlie Chaplin, whose old movies were in fashion, and became avid fans of Some Like It Hot, Saturday Night Fever. It was that treasured era when her father took her out on the day of rest to the banks of the Tigris.
‘I walked with my father every Friday,’ Amal tells me, ‘and sometimes the people gave us fresh fish from the river. We walked every Thursday night too. There were many people near the water. There was a big garden and a long beach. You could eat anything. You could sit there with your family. We had a good life. We did not need anything. My father was an engineer and he liked to take us driving in his Morris. We drove to many places. I had eight brothers and one sister, and I had many dreams. Maybe I would become a doctor, an actress, a singer, maybe a lawyer.
‘I finished high school and I studied in a business school. Then I worked in the Central Bank of Iraq, eight good years when I loved my job. Every morning when I signed my name I was alive. I was working. It was a good life for me. My husband, Abbas, had three shops. He was building a good business. He sold pictures of famous artists, singers and film stars. He had Iraqi artists who were making for him paintings of Baghdad, old mosques and palaces, the famous places of my city.
‘But the bad times came and there was war between Iraq and Iran. We were fighting against our brothers and sisters. It was not safe. There was no food and no medicine. There was no school. We did not use oil. We did not have meat. We used to say our food is “air food”, like nothing.
‘My brother, I want people to know why we escaped from Iraq, and why we came on the boat. I want people to know why the people took their children, why I took my son and went on the ocean. Why we wanted our freedom.’
Amal is emphatic, her voice urgent. She returns to the rise of Saddam Hussein and the dark times, which she says began with the outbreak of the war against Iran in 1980. ‘Baghdad started to become a dangerous place and my husband had to go into the army. They told him, “You must go to war,” and they told me, “You must leave your job and stay home with your children.”
‘I looked after my daughter, my baby sons and my husband. I looked after my mother and father, and my brothers. We did not need to make war with anybody. Before the war we had everything: we had jobs, we had children. I was upset when I left the bank, because I had to fight to get that job.
‘The war with Iran lasted ten years, then for one year we rested. I told my husband, “Maybe we are lucky. Maybe we can do something. Maybe we can have a new life now.” But Saddam made another war, with Kuwait, and after this war there was no food, no medicine. There was nothing, nothing in my country. I had lost my job, and now I started to lose my family.
‘Saddam killed my brother, Sa’ad, because Sa’ad did not want to fight with Kuwait. My brother said, “The people in Kuwait are my brothers.” After they killed him, the police called my father and said, “Come and take your son’s body.” We had to get his body and clean it for the burial. When we looked at him we saw that his clothes were filled with blood, and they were torn and dirty.
‘My father took me away. He did not want me to see this, but one of my brothers stayed and he found a letter in Sa’ad’s jacket. It said: “Please take care of my children. I say goodbye to the earth, and say welcome to my God.” My mother told me “Come and say goodbye to your brother.” I went inside and I saw they had put some white clothes on his body.
‘Another brother, Bahir, was killed when Iraq was fighting against America. He was twenty years old. He worked in Basra, in the Iraqi security, and an American bomb killed him. I lost two of my brothers, and I lost my uncle and cousin. It looked like we were losing all the young men in our family, and then, in 1991, the police killed my husband’s brother, Saleh. He was fighting in the uprising against Saddam in Karbala, and the military caught him and killed him. We never saw his body.
‘In 1995, another brother of my husband disappeared. He wanted to rise up against Saddam, and when they caught him they killed him and the police came looking for my husband. They arrested him and put him in jail and they asked him, “Do you know something about your brother?” They asked him why his brother did this bad thing. They asked them why he didn’t like this regime. My husband said he did not know anything about this. He did not know his brother had joined these people.
‘They kept Abbas in prison for fifty-five days and Saddam’s police tortured him with electricity. They asked many questions and after he was sent home, they told him they wanted to talk to him again. My husband told me, “They are going to kill me. We must be ready to escape.”
‘One day he called me, and he said, “I can’t come home.” I asked him, “Why can’t you come home?” And he said, “I can’t tell you now.” He told me he was hiding with a friend, and he was calling me from his friend’s phone. Saddam’s police knew his number. They knew everything. Abbas told me, “Be careful.” Everyone was scared. No one knew who was a friend, who was the enemy.
‘I slept with my children and at midnight I heard people knocking on the door. We were scared, my children they were scared so much. When we opened the door the police asked me, “Where is your husband?” I told them I don’t
know. They searched the house. They looked everywhere. The police were angry because they did not find him. They broke furniture, they threw things on the ground, and they were calling me bad names and shouting, and my children were crying.
‘And the men told me, “You must come to the police station.” I told them, “I don’t know where my husband is.” I told them, “I argued with him, and he did not return home.” They took me to the police station and they asked me more questions. They kept me there until morning.
‘The next day, I left home. I took my children and some clothes and we escaped. I was frightened. I went to my family’s house and I stayed with them. When we saw police we were afraid. My son Amjed told me, “I have bad dreams about policemen.”
‘My husband and my son Ahmed had escaped to Iran. They paid some smugglers and they escaped over the mountains. Abbas rang me from Iran and told me we must be ready. He told me I must take Amjed and escape. The smuggler came and said, “Don’t bring furniture. Don’t bring your clothes. Don’t bring photos. Don’t bring anything.” I went outside with Amjed, where the smuggler was waiting, and I said goodbye to my family.
‘My mother was very sick. She had a stroke and she could not walk. She needed medicine and she needed special food, but in Baghdad there was no medicine, there was no food. I was very sorry I had to leave her. My mother told me, “Please don’t go. Please stay with me.” I told her, “I can’t. I must look for my children’s future. I must do this for them.”
‘It was dark when I left the house, and I looked at the homes when we were driving. The people inside were sleeping, and I asked, “Will I have a home again?” And I asked, “Will I see my family?” I asked, “Can I save my children’s future?”’
Limbo, the scriptures say, is a state worse than death. In mediaeval times limbo was defined as a netherworld suspended between hell and redemption, a realm for lost souls in search of a home. Limbo comes from the Latin, limin, pertaining to the threshold, or limbus, meaning ‘hem’ or ‘border’, as of a garment. In literary usage it means a state of restraint, of confinement and exclusion, in its extreme, as equivalent to prison. To be in limbo is to be consigned to live on the margins, in no-man’s-land, with the future tantalisingly close yet agonisingly out of reach.
When Amal left her parents’ home for the final time and was driven through the streets of Baghdad, she left the city she had lived in for fifty years. She took leave of her foundations. All she had known was slipping away beneath the wheels of the car that drove her from the city into limbo, north towards the mountains of Kurdistan, bypassing police checkpoints.
Settlements rose like ghostly apparitions, and dissolved back into darkness. Amal was plagued by the thought that Saddam’s shadow would overtake them before they reached their destination, the city of Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan, within reach of the Iranian border, and north of the ill-fated Halabja, the town that Saddam had bombarded with chemicals one decade earlier, killing many thousands, leaving the dead and dying scattered over the streets and squares, gutters and alleys. The victims lay where they fell, the dying retching and vomiting, the dead bleached of colour, contorted in agony.
For Amal and Amjed, Sulaimaniya was a sanctuary, even though they were confined to one small room, a sharp contrast to the spacious surrounds they had known in Baghdad. The room had no gas, no electricity, no running water, but it was a haven nevertheless in which they could take stock, and gather strength for the onward journey.
Years later, while under anaesthetic in a Melbourne hospital, as doctors operated to remove her cancer, Amal dreamed she was sitting in a cave in the northern Iraqi mountains. It was a beautiful cave and she was dressed in new white clothing. Everything appeared white. She wanted to remain there, to rest, to surrender. Her sons came to her and interrupted her peace.
They said, “You must leave now! Hurry! It’s time to go. We must run!” Amal resisted. She was reluctant to forsake the calm of the cave. Her sons grabbed hold of her hands and dragged her out. As she was pulled clear the dream ended, and Amal woke up and realised the operation was over.
The dream rekindled Amal’s memory. She tells me of her onward journey from Sulaimaniya when I visit her in hospital a few days later. Her husband and older son had returned from Iran to join them because they did not want Amal and her younger son to undertake the hazardous border crossing without them.
Days later the family joined a convoy of three other families, and left the city at the fall of darkness. They were driven north by smugglers and came to a stop short of the border. They moved on by foot, a party of twelve, climbing towards the higher slopes of the mountains. They were guided onto a narrow path as rain began falling. One smuggler led the way and two brought up the rear. They stumbled over rocks and exposed roots, and forded a river; the water rose to their upper bodies. They scrambled over mountain passes, descended and ascended, leaning on staffs they had cut from branches.
They walked fast to avoid the Iraqi police patrolling the borders. In the near distance could be heard the howling of wolves and the movements of bears and foxes. As the night sky thinned out to the first signs of dawn, the smugglers shouted, “Run! Run!”
‘I told them I cannot run,’ says Amal. ‘They said, “You must run.” I tried hard to run. Soon after we began to run the smugglers said, “You do not have to run. You are in Iran now.” I turned my face to Iraq. I said goodbye to Baghdad, and I said goodbye to my family, to my friends. My brother, you can’t imagine. In that moment I knew I would never again see my country.’
And years later, after Amal’s death, as I write the story, her voice takes hold and works its way back into my consciousness. It is with me as I go about my daily business, and returns with greater force when I resume writing. Something is niggling me, something about her voice, its intonations and cadences, the repetitions, its musicality.
I make my way to Sydney Road, the main thoroughfare in the northern suburbs, to the ‘Platinum Desert’, a shop that specialises in Arabic music. I ask if they stock Umm Khultum. ‘She is still loved many years after her passing,’ says Omar, the Lebanese musician who runs the business. ‘She is still our bestselling artist. We have CDs that were recorded in the 1940s through to the last ones before her death in the 1970s.’
He sorts through the shelves and returns with a selection. Over four million people attended her funeral in Cairo, he tells me. It was the largest single gathering of people ever recorded in history. She was mourned throughout the Middle East and the people still revere her.
Omar grew up in Beirut listening to Umm Khultum. When he was young he idolised her, and as a musician he still turns to her for inspiration. He chooses a CD and plays it for me. The sense of melodrama is apparent from the opening bars of the prelude. The instrumentation is a synthesis of western and eastern: violins and cellos, double bass, violas, the oud and zither, with tambourine rhythms. The prelude paves the way for Umm Khultum’s entrance. She is greeted by a roar from the audience.
People loved her for her unrestrained emotion and the epic stories she told in her songs, tales of loss and longing and the fortunes of ill-fated lovers. She improvised, paraphrased, dramatised and adapted, while remaining true to the tradition. Each performance was an act of renewal, building from quiet beginnings, increasing in intensity, and culminating, for the performer and audience, in an exalted state known as tarab.
In Umm Khultum’s voice I hear Amal’s. In the rhythms, I discern the tempo of Amal’s telling. In its repetitions, I come to understand Amal’s recounting as an incantation, which the ancients saw as a way of raising the dead, and of restoring them to the living. In the rising tension, the build-up of emotion, I hear Amal willing her tales to their limits, conveying her truth through gesture and emotion, inducing in her listeners a state of enchantment.
I hear her voice intensifying, ebbing and flowing to and from the state of tarab, rising in a succession of waves before receding back to an interlude, while she regained her resolve and ne
rve before proceeding with the next ascent in the telling.
‘My brother, I want the people to know why I left Iraq, and why I wanted to come to Australia. I want to tell them that when I escaped over the mountains and came to Iran, I began to hear about Australia. Many Iraqi people who escaped were talking about Australia. They said there is a way to go there, they said the smugglers can take us. They said that Australia is a democratic country.
‘I started to have a dream about Australia. I dreamed my children could go to school there. When they lost their school, they were still young and I worried for them. Now we had a new dream and I must fight to go to Australia. I thought that when I arrived in Australia all my problems would be over.
‘But the money was not enough for us, only enough for my husband. Abbas went alone. He flew by plane to Kuala Lumpur, and went by boat to Sumatra, and then he flew to Jakarta. When he arrived in Jakarta he called me and told me he was upset because he had left me alone with our sons. He said we must believe that one day he is going to save us.
‘He called again and told me that he had seen the ocean, and he was very scared. He told me that many people had disappeared in the ocean, and I told him, “Don’t go on the ocean. Come back to Iran.” He said, “I can’t go back now. I must do something for my children.”
‘I talked to him again in December, and then for a long time I didn’t hear from him. I was scared that the boat had sunk and I had lost my husband, but after two months he called again and he said he is in Woomera Detention Centre. He is in the desert, and he does not know what is going to happen to him.
‘I was scared because I lived with my two boys and we had nothing. We lived in a small room. I cooked in that room. Our clothes smelled like that room. We felt hopeless in that room. After eight months my husband called again and he told me that they had given him a visa, a temporary visa. He was not allowed to come back to see us, and he was not allowed to bring us.
