Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  ’Am Saleh waited in his house for you to return with the bike. You handed it over to him, your head swimming with questions about the footprints you had just seen. ’Am Saleh took off on your bike in search of ’Am Abbas at the Surra police station, where the occupying forces were camped out, and was yet to return. The last image you had of him was of his head down, avoiding his mother’s looks, with the edges of his dishdasha wrapped around his waist as he rode off, teetering like a child. The last sound from him had been the words “Where’s your bike?”

  Everyone in the house questions, talks, invokes God’s name, and prays except for the old woman who is silent, unlike herself. Ghostly pale. Khala Aisha sent you to ’Am Abbas’s house.

  There is nothing new about the women wailing, except for Bibi Zaynab beating her thighs as she cries out, “We don’t know any Ibrahim, wallah; we don’t know any Ibrahim!”

  She echoed this refrain to any soldiers who stormed her house, asking for the owner of that name. She would beg them to leave her alone. “My boy, may God be pleased with you. Don’t you have any mercy in your heart? Our fate is in your hands. Please help us.” She thought that her accent would suffice as her intercessor, softening their hearts, but her Iraqi tongue didn’t do the trick. Her beloved dialect was now only fit for barking military orders.

  One day passed, then a second. No news of ’Am Saleh or ’Am Abbas. Their relatives rushed to search for them. In vain. You called Khal Hassan to let him know what had happened. He promised to do something. He knocked on the house door after having been to the police station and a number of schools that had been converted by the Iraqi leadership into internment camps. “No news; they don’t know anything,” Khal Hassan shared.

  You and Tina discover the old lady is on a hunger strike. Only a few sips of tea dribble down her throat each day. You lie beside her brass bed at night. The room is lit up until a late hour. The old lady recites what she has memorized of Quranic verses in an audible voice, twice as humble. After exhausting the storehouse of her memory, she orders you to go do your ablutions before asking you to grab the Quran to read more verses. “I don’t know where I put my glasses,” she claims. You know she can’t read. She doesn’t even own glasses. She came out of the literacy classes only knowing her numbers, which helped her use the phone and know the price of goods at the central market. You know very well that she doesn’t like to come across to you as needy.

  Understanding her situation, you stride to her wooden cupboard, where the Quran is. “I’ll read for you whatever you want, Mama Hissa.” The smell of naphthalene assaults your nostrils upon opening the cupboard. You squat on your mattress on the ground.

  The old lady mumbles, “Yunus who returned from the whale’s stomach—read that one, recite it well.”

  You open the Quran in your hands and begin to read.

  Fawzia’s knock on the door interrupts you. “Mama, don’t forget your meds.”

  Mama Hissa follows your reading for some more minutes before you stop to remind her, “The meds.” You resume reading and keep an eye on her. She clutches a blister pack of medicine. In her left hand, she gathers five pills. In the same hand she grasps a glass of water. She clasps her right hand over her mouth, swallowing nothing but air before transferring the glass to her right hand and bringing it to her lips. Your eyes stay on her left hand, your face betraying your incredulity. The old woman sets her glass down after sipping a little bit of water. She stealthily gathers up her unconsumed pills with a tissue and tosses them into the garbage basket under her medicine table. You spend the whole night wondering without daring to ask the question. You are half-asleep when a voice that seems like a dream comes to you.

  “You, fire starter!” She warns you not to divulge what you had seen. And because you hate the name she brands you with, you give in.

  It is the third day since the disappearance of both ’Am Abbas and ’Am Saleh. Khala Aisha is as composed as you have always known her to be, or maybe she is just pretending to be calm. She makes one phone call after another. She cracks her knuckles. She gnaws at her fingernails. She disappears into her room. When she comes out, her eyes are swollen and her nose red. She raises her voice, yelling at Fahd while his grandmother listens, “Your father is gone!” She clenches her jaws, cursing no one in particular. She glances at Mama Hissa out of the corner of her eye and says, “May God hold accountable the person who caused this.”

  The old lady doesn’t make a sound in Khala Aisha’s presence, her color drained. Her face is a pale yellow. You alone know why she is wilting, whereas everyone else attributes it to her missing son. You’re caught between the rock of being the fire starter and the hard place of being her secret keeper.

  You stare at her face while she shakes her head in what resembles a prayer. Mama Zaynab, Khala Fadhila, and Hawraa all take turns visiting the Al Bin Ya’qub household, exhaustion etched deep in their faces, each asking, “Any news?” No news. Mama Hissa shrivels up, the dryness of her lips worrying you, her fingers trembling.

  Fawzia approaches and hugs her. She strokes her back and says, “You’re as dear to me as my eyesight.” She asks her mother, “Have you taken your medicine?”

  The old lady bobs her head yes. You run toward her room. The mountain of pills in her garbage basket takes your breath away. You wish you could just tell everyone, but you aren’t a fire starter. It would probably be better if you were dead . . . Oh, if only you really were a fire starter . . . if only!

  Khala Aisha called your uncle to accompany her to the Surra police station. You and Fahd went along. Khal Hassan’s license plate caught your attention when he arrived: IRAQ-KUWAIT, it said. One point for ’Am Saleh. Khal Hassan’s obedience irked you. You had barely made it down the street, passing by the zalamat house, when your uncle stopped his car to see why the women of the house were banshee wailing. Abu Taha was spread out like a blanket, carried by his brothers and his sons to the car. A heart attack. You learned later on that the man had collapsed on the spot after the Iraqi authorities issued a decree making the Kuwaiti dinar equal to the Iraqi one, giving a deadline of twelve days after which anyone still dealing in Kuwaiti dinars would be held responsible. The man couldn’t fathom let alone stomach the idea that his 100,000 dinars, the fruits of his life’s toil, converted in one day into a mere 6,000.

  Khal Hassan and Khala Aisha got out of the car while you and Fahd stayed inside. You were parked in front of the police station that you had for so long imagined to be the psychiatric ward from your favorite TV show. There was a stark difference between the humorous scenes of the batty women and the sad ones of the soldiers inside the red building. You imagined the leading actors of your beloved show—Mahzouza, Mabrouka, Dr. Sharqan, and Abu Aqeel, the director of the hospital—all in handcuffs and blindfolded, with Fuada specifically muzzled, unable to yell, “Protect yourselves from the plague!” Barely a few minutes had passed when Khala Aisha came out accompanied by Khal Hassan, stroking his beard, frustration evident on his face. You didn’t ask him anything. You had barely pulled out of the parking lot when Fahd yelled, “Mom, look there . . . the bike!” Your bike was chained to one of the posts.

  Aisha raised her voice. “God damn that bike and whoever owns it!” You sank into the car seat, Fahd squeezing your knee to comfort you.

  For nine days, Khal Hassan searched for the two missing neighbors in every possible place: the former garden nurseries, now torture chambers, the interrogation centers spread out in the districts, and the hospital morgues.

  Nothing.

  Mama Hissa kept quiet. Not a peep from her except for some faint chanting; you couldn’t tell whether it was a song or a recitation from the Quran. She sat down on the short-legged wooden chair beneath her sidra. She plucked morsels of bread and scattered them on the ground, calling out, “Ta’! Ta’!”

  Fawzia, with her hijab clinging to the skin of her scalp, could not conceal her worry about the unknown malady that had befallen her mother.

  You were in th
e living room. It was the tenth day since ’Am Saleh had left with your bike. Mama Hissa was crouched in her corner, seemingly focused on sewing Tina’s sari. Aisha erupted suddenly, yelling, “May God judge you, I’ve never seen a woman with a heart as hard as yours!” Your bones trembled at the volume of her voice in the old lady’s presence. Mama Hissa was operating her machine, staring at the position of the needle without any reaction to her daughter-in-law’s revolt. Aisha went on, “The man left because of your stubbornness. No one else in this house gets you the way I do. I’ve put up with you for years for Saleh’s sake, and I won’t do it anymore now that he’s not here!” The old lady sped up the spinning of her sewing machine, distracting herself from her daughter-in-law’s verbal stabs. Aisha advanced toward her. She leaned over the machine and grabbed its wheel, stopping its humming. She put her face close to Mama Hissa’s and hissed, “I’m not going to end up like you.” The sudden rise in her voice jolted you as she screamed, “Look at me!” The old woman wasn’t strong enough to meet Aisha’s eyes. She kept her head down and withdrew further into herself, her loose brown robe slack like a neglected sack of rice. Aisha went on, her jaws clenched. “Do you want me to end up like you? A martyr’s widow?” Mama Hissa’s eyes didn’t falter from the needle. Aisha’s eyes remained on the old lady’s face. “You long to see Fahd like your daughter, sickly and fatherless, so that your heart will be at ease.” She snapped again, “Look at me!”

  The old woman raised her head and looked into Aisha’s eyes. You stared at Mama Hissa’s face. Her red eyes were glistening, on the verge of tears. Her lower lip trembled. The doorbell rang. The old lady emerged from her silence, gasping as she did, as if she’d been electrocuted. Rivulets of tears streamed down her smiling face, her mouth as wide as it could go. “Saleh . . . my boy?” she exclaimed expectantly.

  THE SECOND MOUSE: BLAZE THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 10

  Abbas was arrested because of the empty bullet cartridges that the occupying soldiers had found in the yard in front of his residence. This happened during the raid carried out after an unknown young man was shot as a military convoy crossed the Ali Bin Abi Talib Street, on its way to the bridge connecting Surra and Jabriya. We wouldn’t have known these details if Abu Sameh hadn’t informed us when he rang the doorbell that day. He came without his ice-cream cart. He held out his hand, passed a piece of paper to Aisha, and said that both Abbas and Saleh were there. Fahd’s mother read what was scribbled on the paper: Basra security station. She beat her chest with her hands. “Basra?” You looked at Fahd. You remembered his mother’s song, “Where has my daddy gone? To Basra he’s gone . . . In Basra he was gone!” Abu Sameh turned to leave, but Aisha stopped him when she belted out his usual refrain: “Ice cream!”

  A laugh that didn’t resemble a laugh slipped out. Abu Sameh responded, “We’re out of business.”

  “Now hold on, don’t go . . . for God’s sake,” she urged him. She invited him to enter the diwaniya that overlooked the courtyard.

  He looked around before he said, “Okay, but quickly.” Khal Hassan had arrived as well, responding to Aisha’s phone call. He spoke with Abu Sameh to glean more details. There was not much else to tell except that the charge against Saleh was that he had asked about Abbas’s whereabouts. Abu Sameh said Abbas had nothing to do with the cartridges; they most likely had come from Ibrahim Mansour or Al Munir.

  “Abdellatif Al Munir?” your uncle Hassan asked. Abu Sameh assented, but said he could not remember the person’s first name. He said that he’d seen him in the Surra co-op market, and he’d often pass by Al Munir’s house with his ice-cream cart, and that he had recently started seeing him roaming around the Surra streets in a garbage truck before disappearing from sight altogether. It was said that both Ibrahim Mansour and Al Munir were working with Jasim Al Mutawwa’s armed group. Both of them were wanted by the Iraqi security agencies after Jasim had been arrested. You and Fahd exchanged looks. You both remembered the name well. The bread, cheese, and pamphlet-supplying Jasim. You stopped at the phrase “had been arrested.” Abu Sameh said that a man had ratted out Jasim. After Jasim had been arrested and tortured, he was released but put under surveillance with the aim of discovering the remaining members of the group, and was then arrested once more.

  Khal Hassan’s face blanched. “How do you know all of this? Who told you these names?”

  Abu Sameh’s voice got louder. He responded as if he had just been insulted. “I’ve buried three of my brothers in this country . . . I’m more Kuwaiti than you!” He got ahold of himself and went on. “I’ve been roaming the streets of Surra for more than sixteen years, Abu Dhari. I know Jasim well, and I know Abdellatif by face; only Ibrahim Mansour doesn’t seem like he’s from around here, from Surra.” Khal Hassan undid the button of his dishdasha. He looked intently into Abu Sameh’s eyes and then asked, his eyes harboring an accusation, “So, who told on Al Mutawwa, then?”

  “A man in the army got close to him and discovered his secret.”

  Khal Hassan stroked his beard. “The Iraqi army?”

  Abu Sameh shook his head and said, “The Kuwaiti army.”

  Khal Hassan got agitated. “That can’t be right.”

  “Well, it’s the truth,” Abu Sameh insisted. Aisha fidgeted in her seat. She let out a half sigh that Khal Hassan picked up on. “Who told you about Saleh’s and Abbas’s whereabouts?”

  Abu Sameh stood up, his hands raised. “Please don’t get me involved. I beg you, they’ll destroy my house if . . .”

  Khal Hassan shook his head, disappointed, narrowing his eyes. “Are you working with them, Abu Sameh?”

  The man shook with fear. “God forbid! If I were, shame on me!” He drew a breath before he bent his head down and added, “If I gave you an answer, then you’d put all of us Palestinians in danger.”

  THE SECOND MOUSE: BLAZE THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 11

  It was your first time in Iraq. Khal Hassan crossed the Safwan Road on his way to Basra. He was behind the wheel. His son Dhari was stuck to the door; you were sharing the front seat with him. Aisha, Fadhila, Hawraa, and Fahd were all in the back seat. You all were piled up in the car just as Abu Sameh had instructed Khal Hassan: “Take the women and children with you to make it easier to see the prisoners.” You had left Mama Hissa at home in the care of Bibi Zaynab, Fawzia, and Tina. Her poor health after receiving Abu Sameh’s news had left her housebound. The road, though short, felt long. The beat-up AC spewed out air that barely cooled the temperature inside the car. Despite the moderate weather outside, the car was suffocating with nervous breathing. Agricultural reserves peppered either side of the road. You saw scattered tamarisk trees nearby. The unfamiliar sights enthralled you: farmers’ faces, their white ghutras speckled with black; pipes for artesian wells; small clay houses dotting the vast, empty spaces. Silence united all of you, listening to the radio—the small peephole through which world news came. You all were afraid the news bulletin would terminate without a single mention of Kuwait, that your situation would be forgotten. The female and male broadcasters took turns reading the news. The Yemeni tribesmen stood with Saudi Arabia, against their Yemeni president, who supported Iraq. You recalled the hawking calls of the fabric seller: “Khaaam! Khaaam!” Iran said it supported the GCC countries in their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. Haydar the grocer’s face, with his gold-toothed smile, came to mind. Just like that, faces and voices emerged in the wake of every country alluded to in the news. Tina. Mr. Desouky your teacher and Jaber the Egyptian. Shakir Al Buhri and Alameen the Punjabi. Mushtaq the Pakistani barber. Adnan the Syrian butcher and Mr. Murhif the teacher. Your Sudanese classmate Abdl Fadhil. Unintentionally, you were assembling them into a cast of characters. You sorted them into boxes based on their governments’ positions. During the sports bulletin, you felt like someone who had achieved a long-awaited victory, someone who wasn’t used to winni
ng: Beijing had thrown Iraq out of the Asian Games. The word expulsion came as a compensation for what you couldn’t achieve against the occupation forces in your own country.

  Khal Hassan knew the way well, having visited the telephone exchange in Basra from the initial days of the occupation to phone his relatives living abroad. As we made our way up a street leading to the Zubayr District, Fadhila motioned to Khal Hassan to take a left. She pointed to a mosque that seemed far away, which stood out, distinguished by its antique minaret. She asked to get off there. “Just five minutes, I won’t take long.” Khal Hassan understood what she was after. He stopped the car near the Imam ‘Ali Mosque in Zubayr. Fadhila got out of the car with Hawraa and Sadiq in tow.

  Fahd stretched out his arm from the seat behind you. He pinched your ear. You ignored him. He asked, “What are they doing?” No one answered him. Fadhila remained out there with the twins for about ten minutes, begging and praying to the imam to bring back her missing loved one. She came back, her face much calmer. Khal Hassan turned the car in the direction of downtown Basra.

  You remember well how pale your khal looked at the Basra telephone exchange. He stretched out his hand to the telephone exchange employee, in it a paper with different phone numbers. The man gestured toward one of the booths. Time flew by. You only remember your mother’s voice on the line, her sobs punctuated by fragmented sentences. The phone call finished quickly only to be followed by other hastily made calls. Khal Hassan closed his trembling hand around the phone receiver. You recall the sadness that engulfed his voice as if he were reciting poetry. “He’s gone. Two days ago, he and Fayez Kan’an in front of the last house in Al Faiha . . . I wasn’t home. My son, Dhari, saw everything.”