“Swarms of predators . . . the ant
Drink your spilled b-blood
The butcher has an intense d-desire to slaughter
The knife, a s-starving blade roaring.”
The broadcast shifts to a religious hymn. I get a text message from Beirut. “My friend, forget the novel, the hell with the novel . . . Answer me, let me know how you are!”
THE THIRD MOUSE: EMBERS THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE
THE NOVEL
(Chapter 1 removed by the publisher)
Chapter 2
Seven dark months, and then a new state of being. It wasn’t necessarily bright. It seemed better than what we had been before the occupation, but it wasn’t really—something that took me many years to realize. If only I had a faulty memory like those around me! We were getting ready to attend the satire Sword of the Arabs near the end of summer in 1992. This was to be the first adult play we would attend. Adults were always a different matter. That year I had turned fourteen; thankfully, Saleh didn’t get wound up by me being at their house most of the time.
I was in Fawzia’s room. It didn’t look like a blind person’s room. Her walls were still crammed with flags, photos, pamphlets, and scholastic medals—hung between them was her pink dress, the one that she had worn at National Day celebrations years before. Whenever she sent me to the Al Budur Bookstore to buy her a novel, I would read it aloud to her; this had become our routine ever since the light in her eyes had gone out. We would sit facing each other. She would direct her expressionless eyes to the ceiling, listening to me. Whenever I finished a chapter, I’d get ready to leave with Sadiq and Fahd for the Al Anbaiie Mall, but she’d call out to me, “Hang on a minute!” She stretched out her arms in front of her, wiggling her fingers in the air. I brought my face close to her palms. She felt my face, lightly tracing her fingers between my nose and lips, confirming the smoothness of my mustache. “Katkout! Don’t grow up,” she’d plead, scared that her brother would ban me from entering their house; meanwhile, all I’d be thinking about was the softness of her palms and her fragrance on my face.
When Fawzia said she preferred to stay at home and listen to my reading instead of going to the play, Saleh offered that I go with them and make use of Fawzia’s ticket. I was eager to go to the play only because of Hayat Al Fahad, who had played Mahzouza. I thought of leaving Fawzia behind. She didn’t make me feel guilty about it. I asked Fahd about Suad Abdullah. “Is Mabrouka going to be in the play, too?” He shook his head, listing off the actors’ names.
A momentary spat erupted between Sadiq and Fahd when Sadiq protested, “His name is Abdulhussain Abdulredha!” Fahd insisted on the actor’s more common name: Hussain Abdul Redha, the star of the show and its playwright. Their back-and-forth went on, each desperately trying to convince the other. “Hussain.” “No. Abdulhussain, meaning servant of Hussain.” Fahd insisted that we worship God alone and that tagging on the word Abdul, or worshiper, to someone other than God was haram and the height of being a nonbeliever. Agitated, Sadiq shot back, “No, Abdul means servant . . . and Abdulhussain means his servant . . . you ass!”
“Don’t you swear at me . . . You’re the ass!”
“No . . . you!”
Accusations flew back and forth. “You’re a kafir.” “You’re Iraqi.” They both fell silent, then looked at me, waiting for me to jump in, but I hated this tug-of-war, despite the issue of names no longer worrying me as it used to four years ago: Omariya versus Umairiya. I looked at Sadiq. “Call him Abdulhussain, and you”—I gestured to Fahd—“just call him Hussain.”
They retorted in unison, “It doesn’t work like that!”
We went to the play. Neither spoke to the other.
I went in Saleh’s car to the Dasma Theater, while Abbas followed us in his car. I remember Fahd’s father seemingly content with the election campaign billboards filling the streets, for the reinstatement of parliament in 1992 after what had been a hiatus of six years. His good mood didn’t last long. When we passed the Second Ring Road between Dasma and Da’iya, one of the billboards came into view with the picture of a candidate clad in a black turban, a Shia cleric. “Over my dead body!” He shook his head before adding, “If only the emir would dissolve the parliament again.”
We watched the play from the second row. If only they had chosen a different name, I said to myself as I recollected the words sung during the opening ceremony of the Tenth Gulf Cup more than two years ago, “Hail the Arab sword . . . in my right hand I hold you!”
The memories of he who remembers everything will always be dark; how I’m cursed with my memory. If only I could forget like everyone else! I remember them hooting with laughter, widemouthed from the beginning of the first scene. Like them, I was laughing. Except Mama Zaynab wasn’t. By the glow of the stage lighting, I could make out her face: silent, unsmiling. She brought her watch to her face in the dark. She groaned. I remember Fahd at the intermission, curling his two fingers under his tongue. He let out a whistle before applauding warmly, not for the touching scene where the protagonist was martyred by an Iraqi soldier’s shot, but because an Abdulkareem soundtrack surprised us all, a ballad in which his voice was crying out in a manner that didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the sarcastic play. “O brother . . . don’t cry over who died and was martyred,” he warbled. I hated to come across as vulnerable in front of others, but the darkness of the theater granted me the freedom to be myself in that moment of sudden, profound sadness. “Whoever died for the sake of this country must be the happiest!” I remembered Abdellatif Al Munir and Jasim Al Mutawwa and their marble monument. I remembered Hassan the day the mask was removed from his face. What I wanted for him was the happiness that Abdulkareem Abdulqader was singing about in his melancholy ballad: whoever died was the happiest. Did I see him dead? Happy? I wished he would just return to his house and correct his son’s stammer, stop his involuntary peeing, and put an end to his chronic phobia of dark places. Come back home just as he used to. The happiest.
The laughter that rang out from the audience in the second part of the play struck me as absurd compared to Mama Zaynab’s frowning. Saleh was doubled up laughing and even started coughing after Abdulhussain Abdulredha appeared in military garb, pretending to be the Iraqi president, strutting around barefoot farmers dressed in shabby clothing, making fun of Iraqis to the hilt. Mama Zaynab got up and declared, “This is ridiculous!” The darkness didn’t allow me to see Sadiq’s and Hawraa’s faces very well. I knew their grandma’s accent embarrassed them. She was angry. Livid, really. She pushed Abbas’s shoulder, urging him to leave. “Iraqis aren’t like this; they’re not wild animals.” I had just about recovered from the appalling death scene in the first part. Mama Zaynab’s words hit me square in the face. I regretted not staying back with Fawzia, reading to her the novels penned by her saint Quddous. Adult plays weren’t for me.
I held on to Mama Zaynab’s abaya and said, “I’m coming with you!” We left, the audience’s twittering bidding us farewell; I made out among them the loudest: Saleh’s laughter. I left the Dasma Theater in Abbas’s car.
I remember myself at the end of summer vacation in 1993, in the living room of Sadiq’s father’s house. His house became our meeting spot instead of the Al Bin Ya’qub house. The room had gone back to what it was like when I had first set eyes on it, its walls covered with pictures of imams, horses, and swords, as well as tableaus that Sadiq had drawn, whose symbols I was unable to decipher. Hawraa led us to where her brother was sitting. Taking a seat next to Fahd and Sadiq on the ground in front of the TV, I folded my legs one over the other. Fahd and I had just walked back from the Al Hashash video store in Jabriya. Our heads were hot to the touch, our bodies dripping sweat. Fahd could no longer keep quiet about the announcement he had read in the paper. He had called me at home that noon. “Hey! Are you still pissed off at my dad?” He knew that I was carrying a bitter grudge. What he didn’t know was that my grudge wasn’t against Saleh, but rather against my buddi
ng manhood, which had precluded me from entering his house. Saleh struck a compromise, telling his sister that if my reading to her was so necessary, let it be over the phone. Fawzia refused. Our reading sessions were no more.
Because I still hadn’t responded to him, he asked me, “Will you come with me to Jabriya?”
There was no need to guess. “Abdulkareem’s new cassette?”
He sidestepped my question. “Get changed now!” My mood brightened, almost instantaneously. I forgot the grudge that I carried against the Al Bin Ya’qub household. Who else except for Abdulkareem could push Fahd to walk from Surra, crossing over the bridge, to Jabriya at noon in the middle of summer? And who else but Abdulkareem could convince my friend to force me to accompany him to the Al Hashash video store on foot, to celebrate the yearly occasion that Fahd anticipated more than Eid itself? He quickened his pace as soon as he saw the poster of the new cassette plastered on the glass front of the store. Two cassettes of the same album and he insisted that the Indian salesman give him a promotional poster of the new album, just as big as the one that was hung on the storefront. The salesman said, “More, you pay half a dinar more.” Fahd gave him a dinar. He unrolled the poster on the shop counter, on top of the cassettes and movie catalogs, admiring Abdulkareem in his gray dishdasha and sloping egal, gawking like someone beholding something remarkable.
“Why do you like Abdulkareem so much?” I asked him.
“Because he sings to my soul.” His gaze remained locked on the poster.
“But . . . ,” I said hesitantly. He left Abdulkareem’s face on the desk. He looked at me to finish. “His voice is so . . . mature!” I said. He knitted his brows and pulled at his lips. I started to explain to him what I couldn’t describe. I opened my mouth as wide as it would go and exhaled an “Aaaaaaaaaaah!”
“You animal!” came his peeved response.
I overlooked his insult and asked, “Is the second copy for me?”
“One for me and one for Aunt Fawzia,” he responded, his mind elsewhere.
“How is she?”
His features softened as he replied, “Asking about you.”
“Why did Saleh ban me?”
While staring at the photo of Abdulkareem, he said that I had become a man.
“I know, but Fawzia’s blind!”
“Yes, but you can see.”
We were crossing the bridge on our way back to Surra. On both sides of the road, at the beginning of the bridge, stood signboards: terrifying, dust-covered images of the occupation, each labeled SO WE NEVER FORGET. I asked Fahd what he wouldn’t forget from that seven-month period. The evil Iraqis; the opposing countries; the martyrs and the prisoners; the fires and the destroyed buildings; the minefields; the oil wells and their smoke that shielded the sun for several months following the day of liberation. He remembered everything in numbers: seven months of occupation; five countries that supported Iraq; 605 prisoners; 570 martyrs; 727 oil wells spitting out fire, burning day in, day out for nine months; and more than one million land and sea mines planted. I remember him doing the math, adding it all up while I kept on walking in silence.
“What’s wrong?” he asked me.
I told him that my mom wanted me to forget all that had happened. He asked me what did Ms. Principal want me to remember. It was the first time he referred to my mom the way Mama Hissa used to. It was the first time the moniker didn’t get under my skin. Whenever my mom saw a photo or a report on TV with the slogan So we never forget, she turned it off. She’d stroke my head as she enumerated all the things that she didn’t want me to forget. “Don’t forget that Kuwaitis worked as trash collectors after having been kings in their own country.” “Don’t forget that we became refugees overnight and the next morning were scattered all over the globe.” “Don’t forget that some of us, despite the government aid we received in exile, survived on donations during the months of occupation.” “Don’t forget that some sacrificed their lives for the sake of the country.” “Don’t forget that we brushed aside all our internal conflicts and differences for our country’s sake.” “Don’t forget that you are worthless without your country.” Then finally, and most important, “Don’t forget that the world keeps on turning.”
“What about the torture, the oil wells, the mines, and . . . ,” Fahd asked.
“My mom said, ‘Forget about it, all of it.’”
He stared at my face. “And have you?” I stayed quiet, turned around, and looked at the board: SO WE NEVER FORGET. “And your father?” he asked, interrupting my reflection. I don’t remember my father saying anything about what happened to us except for two phrases he kept on repeating. The first: “Isn’t it a shame that all this oil was wasted?” And the second: “God bless the emir who dropped all the debts and loans of his citizens.”
We finished crossing the bridge, continuing onto Tariq Bin Ziyad Road in Surra. Fahd insisted on visiting Abbas’s house as soon as we approached our own street. I asked him when he’d listen to the new cassette. “Later,” he responded. He’d never said that before. Usually, whenever a new album by Abdulkareem was released, he’d disappear into his room for the entire day, only to come out the next, having memorized all the songs.
We sat down on the floor in Abbas’s house. Sadiq sat between us, absorbed in the Desert Storm video game. He deftly controlled a Sega game pad, piloting an American helicopter to strafe a detachment of Iraqi soldiers. Blazing through rounds of ammo, his chortling grew louder as he took electronic revenge, louder than the explosions on the TV in front of him. Abbas was sitting on the couch behind us, observing our enthusiasm while tallying the dead bodies. “There! Behind the shed,” Hawraa directed her brother. Sadiq blew up the shed and whatever was behind it. The counter at the top of the screen kept on changing, tracking the number of dead.
Fahd and I waited for the game pad to come our way so that we, too, could have a go at the remaining Iraqi soldiers entrenched behind a ramshackle wall. We aimed our rockets at the ditches in case some of them were hiding there. We broke the record-high scores that Sadiq had set.
“Hawraa! Look, look at this move!” Fahd called out. He exchanged one of his grenades for their gunshots and doubled the body count on the screen.
I turned to Abbas and asked him about the victims of our shots and rockets. “Are they considered martyrs?”
“Of course not!” he answered.
I went back to watching the screen, reassured. Fahd left with the rising sound of the sunset call to prayer. I caught sight of the Al Hashash bag on the floor next to me. I picked it up and headed for the door.
“Where to?” Hawraa asked me.
“Fahd forgot Abdulkareem,” I answered as I ran off. I caught up to him before he reached his house, which was now off-limits to me. “Fahd!” I called out from our gate as I waved the bag at him. He had just reached the door to their courtyard.
“Leave it there. I’ll get it tomorrow,” he shouted back.
I couldn’t understand how after our grueling trip he was willing to leave the cassette behind that easily. I looked inside the bag—inside was one of the Abdulkareem Abdulqader cassettes he’d bought. Its title? You’re My Thirst, 1993.
5:02 p.m.
Present Day
There are no police to break up the traffic that I see no end to. I feel bad for the cops, paramedics, and firemen, both the paid employees and the volunteers—all of them combined are still not enough to cover the disaster-stricken areas. They look aghast. What if a loved one happens to be among the victims? I look around me; maybe there is a way to pass between the cars and get to where I need to be. On the walls of some houses I notice the Fuada’s Kids’ tag crossed out: The mice are coming . . . protect yourselves from the plague!
I grab my phone and scroll through the Twitter feed. The picture of Dhari’s ID continues to make the rounds among users. Each retweets it with a comment directed at Dhari. “Knowing where the Fuada’s Kids radio station is based, it’s no surprise that you’re an atheis
t, Rafidi.” It seems that our headquarters is no longer a secret as Ayub said. Another comment responds to the first: “If you read his name before you spoke, you’d know that he’s a terrorist Nasibi.” I look at Dhari’s face in the ID photo making the rounds. He has Hassan’s features: his calm smile; shiny teeth; and tidy, dark beard. Nothing in the comments resembles my cousin. Nothing. The picture disappears behind the publisher’s name as my phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Hey, man, damn the novel . . . Just tell me you’re all right!”
At a time when I fear for others, his worry for me is a comfort. My voice contradicts my answer. “I’m fine.”
“Really?”
I don’t respond. He asks me how things are. He urges me to leave. There’s no point in . . . and things are going from bad to . . . “I know this isn’t the best time, but what do you say? Should we print the novel?” he asks without skipping a beat at the end of the call.
I gaze at the green flags and outsize images of turbaned men above the buildings. They resemble, in their content, black flags and pictures above some houses and schools in Surra. “Print all of it,” I tell him, provoked by what I see.
“What you have to say is important, no doubt. But please, for God’s sake, it would be a shame to see it banned just because of these four chapters!”
It runs through my mind as I survey the traffic around me. “Cutting it out won’t change anything! You don’t know. The censorship situation is the worst it has ever been. Haven’t you heard of the massacre of books we have over here?” I respond, angered by the traffic or maybe his words. Or both.
“Hey, calm down, calm down.”
My hesitation gives him a chance to put on more pressure.
“It isn’t me saying this . . . This is the editor’s view . . . We get rid of four chapters and I promise you, your novel will be . . .”
We end the call with what seems to be a bet. If we get rid of the four chapters, the censors will let it pass, or won’t they? I turn, come out of the traffic, go onto the sidewalk, and cross to the next street. Our building disappears behind a huge one. The hymn on our station is still playing when Dhari’s voice surfaces. “We resume broadcasting our program, dear listeners . . .”
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