Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  Not much longer now, cousin! The sun has nearly gone down. I look at my watch, five minutes past five: just a couple of minutes to go. I know you’re waiting for the sunset call to prayer so you can break your fast, but you won’t hear it when you expect it, as you’re now in a Shia-dominated Jabriya. There’s no harm if it comes late by ten minutes, according to “your” time. “God is great,” as the call to prayer says, which is no longer only a call, but an exclamation that precedes every slit of a knife, gunshot wound, and explosion. I yearn to arrive, to relieve you of this burden. I’ll reach the HQ soon, just in time for the six o’clock bulletin based on the brief that Ayub emailed. I myself will take charge of Sadiq’s show, I’m History in Its Entirety. Maybe Sadiq has finally turned on his phone and Fahd will now answer my call instead of Abdulkareem. At nine o’clock I’ll devote myself to my show, Nostalgia. In such moments I try to flee from the present to the past to forget scenes like from earlier today.

  Cars suddenly stop in front of me at the red light, and I notice that our station has gone silent. I turn up the volume as loud as it will go. To my right, people are gesticulating frantically at what’s behind the huge building. Others just continue to look straight ahead. My ears prick up at the radio, at the sound of what seems like repeated knocks. Or calls for help. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a weak transmitter. Maybe it’s interference from another radio station. The sound gets closer, only to grow distant again. It’s still not clear, but I pick up a few words: “Oh God, oh God.” I feel sick. I look up at the sunroof, seeking some relief in the spaciousness of the sky. “And rain comes from God”—the song echoes in my head. Why does the earth reject me? Why does it spit me out? I remember what Dhari says whenever things get tough: “God will bring the rain.” Mama Hissa’s voice stirs from its sleep and swallows Dhari’s voice, yelling, “The sky’s going to fall on us!” I need a magic button like Sadiq’s. I’d press it and everything would disappear, or at least I would.

  The beeping of the cars behind me alerts me to the green light. “Oh God, oh God.” Something is happening to Dhari. My heart is aching, cousin. I speed through the lights. Our building comes into view. The station’s windows are spitting out thick smoke. The sunset call to prayer rises up, “Allahu akbar . . .” God is great. Dhari’s voice suddenly explodes on the radio. He gets closer. He moves away. “Almighty God, please make the darkness of the grave easy on us. O God, make my grave spacious and illuminate it. Almighty God, make the darkness of the grave easy on us . . .”

  The tragedy of what’s probably going to happen to you, Dhari, doesn’t prey on my mind, but rather your clear voice ringing in my ears, neither stuttering nor stammering.

  “God will bring the rain, Dhari . . . God will bring the rain.”

  THE THIRD MOUSE: EMBERS THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 3

  One afternoon in the spring of 1994, Fahd grabbed a tin panel near the sidra. It was part of Mama Hissa’s chicken coop. He raised it to reveal the moist sand left behind by the rains of the departed winter. The perfect breeding ground for mealworms. Sadiq and I started digging our fingernails into the sand, searching for a lively worm plump enough to attract the spring birds that appeared in the al habal season, one juicy worm that would mature into a dung beetle, unlike the small worms that at best would grow into insignificant beetles. No other hobby made us feel as exhilarated as al habal, bird catching, other than al qumbar. I hated al qumbar, though, ever since that last time I went six years ago, because of Abbas and his toxic words. I kept this hobby of mine, the unique pleasure that it was, far and safe from our neighbors’ toxic conflict. A dead starling lying next to the tin panel distracted me. Its belly was full of small, wriggling, nausea-inducing worms. “What’s with you?” Sadiq’s words jolted me. Mama Hissa’s words were still fresh in my memory.

  “Just like how maggots crawl out of a man’s stomach . . . ,” I said aloud. He didn’t mind me. I stretched out my hand to the moist sand. There were a lot of worms in the spot that had been hidden by the panel. Sadiq started to pick them up with his fingertips to squeeze each in the middle, assessing its condition.

  “Give me your hand!” he said. I had already removed my hands from the soil and dusted them off, having seen burrows that no worm would be able to dig, and some dark-brown pellets. I sniffed the air, a foul smell that I knew only too well. I thought the mice had disappeared. Mama Hissa’s words buzzed in my ears—you didn’t have to see them to know they were there. Sadiq and Fahd thought I was exaggerating when I started to describe the stench. No one believed me. “Delusional,” they said.

  Our worm harvest was plentiful. At the bottom of the empty cola bottle, they wriggled animatedly. We folded the edges of our dark winter dishdashas around our waists. Carrying the green net traps and bottle of worms, we hastened to Mishref, the deserted area at the end of Damascus Street, an area that less than ten years later would be solely residential.

  After half an hour spent walking, carrying our traps and bottle of worms, we were on the deserted tract of land. A safe haven before it splintered off into five residential areas: Salam, Hiteen, Al Shuhada, Al Siddeeq, and Al Zahra’a. Sunny yet chilly weather, beneath a clear blue sky. The nuwair spread out as far as the eye could see, an endless yellow carpet of wildflowers. We kept walking, moving away from the hustle and bustle of the streets. I was happily soaking up the spring atmosphere until I spotted a stray dog nearby. “Hsh! Hsh!” Sadiq chased him away by throwing a stone. “Stray dogs are cowards, you know,” he said.

  “There, there . . . a hamami arabi!” Fahd whispered excitedly, pointing to a gray shrike not so far away. We stopped at a distance from the songbird. It appeared to be hovering around a dried-out sidra tree. Landing atop it, the bird slipped its beak into its white chest, ruffling its feathers before flying off once more. Beneath the branches, a few steps away, lay a small mound of neglected stones. We didn’t pay attention to how far away the bird was, confident it would swoop down and return to its familiar surroundings. Fahd scooped up a handful of sand, letting it strain through his fingers in midair to determine the direction of the wind. Grains of sand drifted with the wind to their destination. Moving the stones from their place, I made a mound in the direction of the wind blowing toward the sidra. I propped the trap against the stones, showing it off so it would attract the shrike when it returned to its perch among the branches. We knew it would face the wind with its white chest. I covered part of the trap with soil. Sadiq shook out a mealworm from the soda bottle. He held it between his fingers, removing the grains of sand plastered to its sticky, sallow body. He fastened it to the middle of the trap with a rubber band, wrapping it around the worm’s body. The worm started to wriggle and stretch out. We distanced ourselves by a hundred feet, observing the dry sidra, far away from the nuwair flowers.

  The shrike approached, flying low, majestically hovering around the sidra. It landed on a dry branch, its white chest facing the wind. It looked around. The black line around its eyes made the bird seem like a robber from a black-and-white movie. It grew aware of the worm’s movement above the pile of stones. A stray dog caught my eye through the nuwair flowers, its head poking out, tongue lolling, watching the bird as intently as we were. The shrike descended onto the pile of stones and carefully took in its surroundings, head moving to and fro in what could have been one of our traditional dances. It approached the trap. The dog steeled itself. The bird cautiously brought its head closer to the worm, investigating. The dog withdrew momentarily. The shrike shifted even closer, attempting to maneuver the worm free. My eyes darted between the dog and the bird. My heart beat wildly. The dog set off, running toward the bird, whipping up a long trail of dust in its wake. It wasn’t like Abu Sami’s saluki, even if they shared a resemblance. It was covered in filth. Menacing. Stray dogs forget their cowardice when they’re starving.

  The bird opened its black beak. We didn’t move. We held our breaths. We watched the dog in what seemed like a
scene from one of those wildlife documentaries. Something fell from my memory when the blast of a violent explosion left a whistling in my ears as a cloud of dust fell from the sky. It took us a while to realize that the dog had stepped on a mine. Fragments of his body were strewn everywhere. Though we were still sitting down, we gasped as we tried to catch our breath. We shuddered. We feared any movement from us would result in a similar fate. We started to study the ground under each of our steps. At first, we didn’t make a run for it. We were on autopilot. Fahd turned around, looking for the shrike. “Seems like it got away.” Sadiq freed the worms from beneath the pile of stones. He released the juicy worm from its rubber band in the trap.

  To this day, I don’t know why our legs didn’t take off like the wind, leaving the scene right after the explosion. Or why we started looking for the shrike, as if it had some hidden power to protect us. We knew it had been close to the ground, but in spite of that, it had vanished. Cars had crowded together at the end of Damascus Street, at the beginning of the sandy path, where the asphalt met the sand. A car took us home. I vaguely remember the driver yelling at us, giving us a mouthful about how stupid we were. I forgot details as easily as one does a dream. However, I remember what Sadiq said about the entire episode. I’ll never forget it: “One dies . . . so that the other can survive!”

  The month of Muharram coincided with the beginning of summer vacation in 1994. I was in my room, planning to go out, when the doorbell rang on the evening of the tenth of the month, according to the Islamic calendar. I slipped a bottle of cologne into my dishdasha pocket, heading off to the Al Anbaiie Mall, where Fahd was waiting for me. I found Sadiq standing behind the courtyard door, carrying two pots of food that Mama Zaynab prepared every year on the anniversary of the murder of Hussein, son of Imam ‘Ali. Sadiq handed me the food. “Here, take it quick.”

  “This is too much,” I responded. He looked in the direction of the Al Bin Ya’qub household, explaining that Mama Zaynab had sent him with this food: one pot for us and another for Saleh’s household. But Abbas told him before setting off that it was enough to get the food to our house, skipping his neighbor’s house altogether. I asked him what Mama Zaynab wanted.

  He cut me off. “You’re questioning my dad?” He then went on to suggest that Fahd’s dad wouldn’t eat their food anyway. The relationship between my two neighbors had gone from bad to worse. I placed the two pots of food on the table in the living room. Sadiq left me to go with Abbas to the hussainiya. I set off for the Al Anbaiie Mall.

  “Tafaddal! Come on in!” yelled Jaber as he turned the shawarma spit when I passed by his restaurant. “Want a shawarma? Or a ketchup macaroni sandwich?” I waved at him and shook my head. “Jaber’s place is no longer cool, and McDonald’s is now the place to be, eh?” he quipped. The famous American chain had just opened up its first branch a few weeks earlier. They said it was the biggest branch in the world. That cars formed long lines in front of it. That it used part of its profits to support Israel. Many things were said, but don’t look for truth on the lips of liars.

  I went past Jaber, passing in front of Al Budur Bookstore, where Abu Fawaz was perched on a chair by the door. “It’s been a while!” I smiled in response. “Who’s reading to the Al Bin Ya’qub girl now?” he asked. I pulled at my lips and shrugged, shaking my head. As I went past him, he grumbled, “Cat got your tongue?” I ignored his cat comment and turned to face another cat, sitting on a stack of empty Coke crates in front of Haydar’s store, the edges of his dishdasha up to his knees, and sucking a cigarette. The owner of the store wasn’t there. Both he and his son were missing from his store, as they were every Ashura, the anniversary of Imam Hussein’s death.

  “How are you, Fahd?” I asked him before entering the grocer’s store. I found Ibn Shakir Al Buhri standing in for Haydar and his son. He sat behind the gum and sunflower seed counter. I gave him half a dinar for a pack of cigarettes before joining Fahd and sitting on a Coke crate next to him.

  I had barely taken a drag, staring at its glowing embers, intoxicated, when he warned me, “Cover it! Cover it!”

  I hid my cigarette, holding its butt between my index finger and thumb, keeping the embers out of sight behind my palm. I held the smoke in my chest. Fahd did the same while Abbas’s car passed by on the road in front of the mall and then disappeared at the end of the street. On the back windshield was one of those small stickers that had started appearing on some cars, openly indicating the sect of the driver in a way we were unaccustomed to before the occupation: a sword, like that of Ali Bin Abi Talib’s, and a ship with the names of the imams on the sails.

  I released the stale air from my chest. I asked Fahd since when had he started caring if Sadiq’s dad saw him smoking. He didn’t answer. I ground out my unfinished cigarette with my foot. I splashed some cologne on my palms, cheeks, and clothes. I gestured with my chin toward the letters H and F on the wall of the generator building in front of us. Above them were the lyrics of a song, “Between you and me a whole world, long and dark as the night,” stamped with Abdulkareem Abdulqader’s nickname, “the wounded voice.” I told him he could be offending Sadiq by doing that. He looked out into space, issuing thick smoke from his nostrils before saying, “Sadiq’s my brother.”

  “And Hawraa?”

  No response. Abu Fawaz yelled out to him, “Hey you, son of Mulawwah! Majnun Layla!” We turned to face him. He cautioned Fahd, “No good will come of it!” Both Fahd and I looked at each other in confusion. How did he know about Hawraa? “If your families knew . . . they’d die from grief!” the man went on. Fahd’s face went red; he didn’t know how to respond. Abu Fawaz’s voice grew soft. “Leave it, my son, leave it!” He got out of his seat, looked in our direction, extended his two fingers like a peace sign, and brought them close to his lips, saying, “It’s bigger than you!” He snatched the cigarette out of Fahd’s fingers. He threw it away. “Leave it, my son!”

  6:52 p.m.

  Present Day

  During scheduled power outages, the roar of house generators fills the night—at a time when darkness is sovereign. The pack of candles Dhari had brought that evening melted before he could even light them. He left before confronting the darkness that scared him. Pure darkness, if it hadn’t been for the flashing red from the fire engines, green from the ambulances, their colors alternating, revealing the soot on our building and the terrified faces of its residents on the tenth floor. Some of them are sitting on the sidewalk, getting first aid, breathing through masks. It’s only me who needs a mask to block out the stench that everyone, except for Ayub and me, has gotten used to.

  One of the residents claims the fire was caused by an electrical fault. Another blames it on the stove. A third cuts them off. “The forensics team found an empty canister and a lot of mice that had run out of the burnt-up apartment, in the hallway of the tenth floor. The apartment door was locked from the outside, and the key was in the hole on the outside.” “Murder,” one of the residents suggests, and asks his friend exactly where the key was. The wailing of the fire engines and ambulances drowns their voices. An old voice repeats in my head, unsuitable at a time like this, yo-yoing between the beginning and the end of a familiar song. “The key’s with the blacksmith . . . And rain comes from God.” The main door opens to reveal two rescue workers in white garb walking briskly toward the ambulance, its doors open, waiting for the arrival of a small piece on a stretcher. I don’t understand the rush. I drag my crippled leg toward them. They push the stretcher into the vehicle.

  “Hold on. Wait!” I grab the arm of one of the medics as he shuts the ambulance doors. He extends his arms, forbidding me to get any closer. His face is stern. “You can’t.”

  I beg him. “Please, brother . . . don’t turn me away.” He looks at me quizzically. “Your relative?”

  “My cousin” escapes from my lips.

  His features soften. He looks at his colleague. They both shake their heads as they reopen the doors. I approach what’s lef
t of Dhari under the white blanket inside the ambulance. The man grabs my shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”

  I nod my head in affirmation. His palm is still squeezing my shoulder.

  “You sure?”

  I pass my finger under my nose and wipe away snot mixed with tears. “Yes.”

  I kneel by the stretcher in the ambulance. I grab a corner of the blanket and slowly peel it back. The blanket had created a mask I thought looked like Hassan’s, and now I see someone who doesn’t look like his son. Something resembling a body was sweating the smell of roasted meat after having been doused in oud cologne. O you sheikh, you promised me rain. Dhari, is this how you’ll bow out, son of Fuada, without rain? You’re disappearing, my cousin, and if your father returns to ask about you, what do I say? Do I tell him about the remains of his son and how he’s nothing more than a charred body the length of an arm? By the time the firemen had handed you over to the medics, it was too late. You left as a charred piece. Ashes that an old fire had passed down. You left me behind. You left me with your stammering words in my ears, the interrupted words that I will now miss. A pot of food and handful of dates are waiting for you on your right. Your sun was blotted out before sunset; the sky embraced its darkness and . . . it didn’t rain. I put the blanket back over the charred body. I look at the protrusions of the body under it. What if it was someone else?

  “Stay strong.”

  I turn to the voice behind me. I find Ayub. Soot has consumed his clothes, his face, and his palms. I turn to him as if he has the power to change something that is inevitable. Or to come with news that makes what happened untrue. Maybe whatever that was on the stretcher is from someone else and not my cousin after all.