Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  After an outlandish rivalry between the fathers over where the couple should live, Hawraa moved to the new wing in the household of her husband’s family. Each father thrust himself into the married couple’s life, offending the other. At first it was funny, and fodder for joking in the Rawda diwaniya. There were superficial fights, or what seemed as such, for example when the couple’s living quarters were being furnished.

  “Her dad says Al Baghli mattresses are better, and mine says Al Jraiwy is better!”

  “Long live the American mattress!” Ayub cheered.

  Fahd didn’t laugh along with us. “My dad says LG appliances, and hers says Panasonic,” he went on. I noticed the seriousness on his face.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “To keep it in the family!” he responded, with the conviction of both men involved. I recalled the names of the companies he had just mentioned. I linked one of them to a sect, understanding how far this age-old rift had reached. Fahd started talking about his father and his father-in-law choosing their preferred names for the baby yet to be born. He ended up making light of the whole thing. “Thank your lucky stars that your father and mother don’t have these issues!”

  He finished furnishing their new living quarters. He made sure to appease both sides, knowing neither one would ever be completely pleased.

  Seven months after Fahd’s marriage, Hassan’s wife phoned me as I sat in the diwaniya. Between her panting and yelling, I couldn’t make head or tail of what she was saying. And I couldn’t absorb what was being broadcast on TV: breaking news about Kuwaiti youth attacking infantry soldiers on an American base on Failaka Island. Two of the perpetrators were killed. A number of suspects were arrested, their names not made public. My aunt confirmed that Dhari was among them. We were on tenterhooks in the diwaniya. The public prosecutor, after two weeks, released twelve of the accused, including Dhari, who remained silent. He didn’t share anything with us, except his sadness at having missed the chance to be among the scores of mourners who saw the two fighters off to their final resting place. He had known one of them. He spoke of him with reverence, a man of his word who had been loyal. We would listen to him as he agonized: “God rest his soul, he committed himself to taking revenge when Kuwait TV showed scenes of those massacred by Israelis in Khan Yunis in Gaza. He kept his word and took revenge.”

  “Who said that Khan Yunis is in Failaka?” Sadiq asked incredulously. Dhari got up, his eyes red and his face stern. Sadiq faced him, his chest puffed out. Their noses were a hair’s breadth apart.

  “Jew!” Dhari said.

  “More honorable than your guys!” Sadiq responded.

  Fahd, Ayub, and I diffused the tension before they came to blows.

  The competition between the sworn enemy fathers-in-law was revived in Hawraa’s final month of pregnancy, February 2003, after they both found out it was going to be a boy. Both fathers then started confirming the names they each had chosen for the coming grandson. Each warned Fahd and Hawraa against choosing certain names at a time when Mama Zaynab was away in the cardiac surgery wing at Mubarak Hospital. She squinted her eyes in the hope of reading the ticker at the bottom of the small TV, worry eating her alive over the news of American forces preparing to invade Iraq. “If they open the borders, take me there dead or alive,” she advised her son.

  Fadhila shuddered, then said, “After a long life, God willing.”

  Mama Zaynab turned to Hawraa. She signaled for her to come closer and then cupped her granddaughter’s bump. “And you! When are you due?” Hawraa smiled. “Don’t be late,” her grandmother added.

  Fahd kept me abreast of everything happening there, far away from me. He described Hawraa’s anxiety. When I reassured him that they were natural feelings for any woman rushing into her first birth, he shook his head. “Hawraa’s worried about Mama Zaynab. Me too.” Me too, I said to myself.

  Fahd smiled as he stretched out his arms to me in the hospital hallway, his baby boy in his hands. “Hassan . . . named after your khal Hassan.” As I held the baby, I remembered my uncle’s face on the day his mask had been removed. I looked at the baby sleeping in my arms and mirrored Fahd’s smile. “And after the optician Hassan,” I reminded him. He pretended to be baffled. “Shhh! We were just kids!” I looked at his face and our lives flashed before me in mere seconds. The kitchen cat now had a kitten who looked just like him. After standing in the hallway for a while, I asked him about Hawraa. “The family’s well,” he answered. I nodded my head in understanding before proceeding out of the hospital. We were no longer children, so I wouldn’t be allowed to go in and congratulate her.

  After the baby made it through his second day, Fahd carried him to the ICU at Mubarak Hospital. Mama Zaynab, connected to feeding tubes and cords to measure her pulse and blood pressure, was strong enough to hold the baby in her arms. She couldn’t speak. Her eyes scarcely smiled at the sight of little Hassan before she slowly closed them in peace.

  The next day I read her obituary in the newspaper. Abdul Nabi Abbas Mohammed’s widow. They didn’t tag on her family name, though it was a noble one, because by mentioning her name openly, her true origins would be revealed. She died without a name. Her final leaf fell at a time when her dear Iraq fell completely.

  9:42 p.m.

  Present Day

  “Uncle . . . can you see?”

  Hissa gets her voice back after her shrieking at the explosion of the Jabriya station. I slowly drive my car without headlights. Deliberately, as if the car has arms, groping its way down the road. I answer the young girl’s question, certain. Except that I . . . am not. The darkness here is thicker than elsewhere. As if I left the full moon behind me in Jabriya. Something resembling clouds or dust floats in the sky, making the night even darker. I remember Mama Hissa warning Fahd: “I can see in the dark.” She was able to do many things, things that only she could do. I am afraid that if I turn on the headlights the bullets will find us. With the road ascending, I turn right toward Damascus Street. In the darkness, I avoid a familiar ugliness: gray hills opposite the sidewalk, and stones, blockades, and dirt on both sides of the street. I don’t see anything here. The smell itself makes it seem like I’m close to the bridge. I listen to the sound of my tires plunging into the water that swamps Damascus Street. Such feelings take me back to the road under the bridge, at the time when it started to overflow with sewage a few years ago. Are we seeing the beginnings of a new Bayn River?

  “Can I ask something?” Hissa whispers. She hasn’t stopped asking questions since Ayub freed her from the elevator. Oh, Ayub. This girl mistakes my silence for approval. “Uncle . . . can humans breathe underwater?” The motivation behind her question forces me to stay silent. She knows the answer. She is thinking of her father. I’m thinking of Ayub. The sound of the water dies out under the tires. It disappears when we reach Tariq Bin Ziyad Road. The name of the street usually pulls me back to my memories of growing up. This time, I wouldn’t be thinking of anything had Hissa not shown off her knowledge of Rest in Peace, World, a series that aired many years before her birth. Mahzouza and Mabrouka’s street. The psychiatric ward. Fuada and the mice closing in. Because of our radio station, Hissa learned about the show. She watched episodes on YouTube and she likes it, as she says, except for the ending. She asks me why in the final episode Mahzouza and Mabrouka flee to the hospital for crazy people. Why didn’t they confront the mice? The series ended with a scene I will never forget, the two of them running scared witless on this street. I don’t tell her that years later their fleeing was a motivation for Fuada’s Kids.

  My silence prompts another question. “Uncle, is the house far?”

  I point out in front of me in some direction I don’t see. “Ali Bin Abi Talib Street.”

  The name pushes her to ask, “May God be pleased with him, or peace be upon him?”

  Who are you trying to play, Hissa? Me? I was just like you, always wondering, Sunni or Shia? It’s taken me a long time to get here, the point that Mam
a Hissa had reached, faced with a question that irritated her about whether the zoo was in Omariya or Umairiya. In this darkness I can’t find any refuge from her question. No pigeon landing on the nearby wall to distract her. No coop on my right to turn to and preoccupy her with a “Look over there!” I could then point to the chickens looking up at the sky, confiding in God. And no fabric seller spreading out his goods on the ground and yelling at full throttle, “Khaaam! Khaaam!” Instead, I’m now facing this girl’s questions. She is trying to figure out who I am, and I myself don’t even know. I go past the Surra roundabout. I proceed straight ahead, driving between Humoud Barghash Al Sa’adoun School and Jaber Al Mubarak High School. Some houses on the street are lit up. The rumble of generators behind their high walls injects a sense of life in a silence that resembles death. The girl asks me about the house we’re headed to. If I were someone else, I’d reprimand her for the endless questions.

  “Mama Hissa’s house,” I reply. She gasps. She asks me if it’s the house of the old lady who narrates the stories in my books. I nod.

  “Swear!” she yells. I don’t.

  Here’s Surra’s third residential block and Ali Bin Abi Talib Street. The area seems in a better state than Jabriya, but who knows for how long? The windows of some of the houses on the street, including the Al Bin Ya’qub house, reveal light inside. I park next to the sidewalk. The Al Bin Ya’qub household’s cars, along with Hawraa’s car, all have punctured tires. I get out, clutching Hissa’s hand, approaching the door. She pulls her hand away and goes right for the three palm trees to examine them, her features frustrated. I press the doorbell. A minute passes. No answer. I crouch down and reach below the metal door. The girl joins me and whispers in my ear, “Is this Mama Hissa’s house?” I look at the long-standing dryness that has struck Barhiya and Sa’marana, and at the timid greenness in Ikhlasa’s fronds, and I don’t answer. I stuff my hand into the gap under the door. There isn’t enough space. I can barely pass my fingers through. The feel of the rusty latch doesn’t resemble the old touch that I know. I try to get the bolt out of the hole in the tile, but it’s no use. Hissa kneels down. She squeezes her two small palms under to deal with the bolt. She succeeds in lifting it. She straightens up and pushes open the door, striding before me into the courtyard.

  THE THIRD MOUSE: EMBERS THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 10

  The sequelae of war were evident: left-behind weapons weren’t the worst of it. Panic would cripple Mother whenever the sirens went off, warning of missiles slipping through from the bombed Iraqi side, screeching over school buildings. A corner of the house had been transformed into a shelter from any possible danger. She never tired of phoning my dad and her brothers, imploring them to stay safe. Sleep evaded my father because once more his heart was in his mouth: there was a chance that the stock market would collapse. While Baghdad was getting bombed, “instability” permeated Kuwait. My mother called me every hour to confirm my whereabouts. “Wallah, by God, if you leave the diwaniya when the sirens are going . . .” If only she knew how dangerous the goings-on in the diwaniya were! I distanced myself from the others, phone in hand, and reproached her. With this mania of hers, she was making me look like a mama’s boy in front of my friends. She had her usual answer at the ready. “The cowards stay safe.”

  On TV were live scenes of the Baghdad bombings. Fires, smoke, bombs, and the roar of fighter jets. We watched in silence. I don’t know what was running through each of our minds during this bout of muteness. I focused my eyes on the screen, but I couldn’t maintain my attention. I remembered Fahd and me as children, throwing ourselves into the roles of Iraqi soldiers, yelling, dancing the hosa, promising the nation imminent victory from God. I remembered collecting stones in a pile in the Al Bin Ya’qub courtyard, hoping to be like the Palestinian kids, the stone-throwers. I remembered Fawzia and “Our country demands glory.” I remembered Saleh and the Iraqi president’s photo. I remembered Abbas and Khomeini’s photo. I remembered Mama Hissa venerating Fahad Al Ahmad, the martyred prince, the man who had fought the Jews. I remembered her night chatter about her husband listening to speeches of the leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. With my eyes fixed on the screen, I remembered everything. I remembered and realized how we were mere lab mice in someone else’s real-life experiment. But whose?

  The thunder of the explosion on the TV left behind ashes that colored the screen. Dhari was the most affected. His serious countenance didn’t hide his red eyes and his agitation. Shaking his head, he quoted one of the Prophet’s sayings: “Chase out the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula.” He was on edge. Ayub grabbed the remote control and muted the TV. Dhari and Sadiq started a war of words: the invasion of Iraq or its liberation. I don’t know how every discussion dragged us here in the end. The American military base on Failaka Island. The foreign fleets in the Gulf’s waters, sometimes called the Arabian Gulf, other times the Persian Gulf. It started as a joke that one would use to harass the other. The joke soon took a sinister turn. They argued. Their voices grew louder. Its name was. It then became. Before—after. In centuries-old maps. Truth. Allegation. Made-up history. I chipped in, trying to make light of the situation. I told each of them to call the Gulf according to what they thought it should be, and close the case. They said in unison, “It doesn’t work that way!”

  “Will you guys cut it out, or should I get my oud?” Fahd interjected.

  Dhari yelled when the patch of fire on the mute screen ballooned. His usual stuttering dissipated on his tongue. “Haram!”

  Fahd asked him what was so unlawful about his father’s killer being murdered. “I mean, you’re the son of a martyr!” My cousin’s face turned pale, his lips trembling. He, who had hoped for his father’s return, or if nothing else a document stating his fate. He had spent years not knowing the whereabouts of his missing father, in limbo between two labels, neither of which was realized: prisoner or martyr. The deceitful label slapped him, flinging fate’s doors of possibility wide open. Sadiq intervened, trying to convince Dhari of the necessity of what was going on. “One of them has to die for you to survive!” Scenes of the deserted Mishref plot came back to me, before it was divided up, at the time when the excavators had come in: terror-stricken jerboas, homeless lizards, and the dog that fell victim to the mines.

  I started thinking about what had happened to the gray shrike. I turned away from those old scenes, distracted, nothing about Iraq concerned me except that Bibi Zaynab had closed her eyes before she witnessed these fires and the legacy of ashes. Unexpectedly, worry washed over me at the thought of Hassan stuck in one of the prison camps, a target for the bombs. And the people there? I asked myself. I found my heartstrings being pulled only by those I knew were linked to the old woman who had died a few days ago. I recalled the faces of Abdellatif Al Munir, Jasim Al Mutawwa, my uncle Hassan, and those of the soldiers who had wreaked havoc on my country—burning oil wells, planting mines—and those huge billboards emblazoned with SO WE NEVER FORGET. But these were all excuses, and not a single one convinced me that we were watching the meting out of justice on TV. Silent images on the screen. The wailing of the sirens that the glass windows couldn’t block out, harmonious with Dhari’s sobbing, for he had begun crying like a child. Our tongues were paralyzed, each of us looking at the others. We all had questions for Dhari that none of us dared utter. What are you crying for? For what has been reduced to ash on the screen in front of you, or over the abrupt realization that your father is dead?

  With the doubts about Uncle Hassan’s fate came the sealed fate of Fahd and Hawraa’s son. Little Hassan died. But his great-aunt’s digital camera kept him from vanishing completely. Twenty-eight photos, one for each day he was alive before death stole him away in his mother’s embrace. She had bent over him, feeding him her breast. She had leaned farther still, dozing off. He had dozed off, too. She then woke up to find him in her arms, blue-faced. Her screams didn’t stir any sympathy from the angel of death that
had taken off with her son’s soul. The dispute of the two fathers-in-law started up again, despite each one’s grief: In which cemetery would the body be buried? Our cemetery. No, our cemetery. As if one of the graveyards led to hell and the other to heaven. Fahd disappeared with his son’s corpse. He came back, his face stony, answering whoever asked about where he’d buried his son: “In the ground.”

  There were two mourning ceremonies for little Hassan. One of them was in a hussainiya and the other in the Al Bin Ya’qub house. Fahd stood, receiving condolences in the morning at the house and in the afternoon in the hussainiya. He then disappeared from the diwaniya. He rarely visited. He stayed by Hawraa’s side, taking her from one psych clinic to the next. He was weak, but his wife’s fragility forced him to be somewhat strong. Hawraa’s condition grew worse. She no longer let her husband get close.