by Sinan Antoon
THE COLLOQUY OF THE CALIPH
Harun al-Rashid’s features were distinctive, and anyone who saw him could not easily forget his face. His eyes were black, often staring into the void. When he was angry, and he often was, they glared. His eyebrows, mustache, and beard were gray. They were bushy and longer than necessary. He didn’t have much hair left on his head, except around the temples. He had a dark complexion, wore a gray dishdasha over a pair of pants and walked barefoot most of the time.
No one knew where the caliph lived. From his appearance, he didn’t look as if he even had a home or that he owned many things other than what he wore. The street was his home, his palace in fact, as he used to shout emphatically at the top of his voice. He would scold the passersby for daring to walk on his sidewalks without obtaining his permission or paying taxes. “This is al-Rashid Street, my street, the caliph’s street, you motherfuckers, not your mothers’ street,” he would say. This shocked many people and they kept their distance out of fear. But those who knew the street grew used to him and knew that he wouldn’t attack anyone physically, but would only shout and argue. The shopkeepers humored him and paid him a pittance in tax—some dinars or a cigarette for temporary relief from his shouting. He would go up and down the street shouting at the cars too. Sometimes he ventured farther afield, went to the al-Shuhada’ Bridge, where he stood in the middle, looked at the Tigris, and shouted at the fish. Or he would look at the sky and shout, “Your god is full of shit.” This latter expression upset many people, and they would ask for God’s forgiveness. Some of them would rebuke him. But he would respond with another such expression in a loud voice.
There were several stories about the history of the caliph, and it isn’t possible to verify any of them. One version was that he was a rich merchant who had lost all his money after several bad deals and unwise decisions that had forced him to sell all his possessions within one year. He had gone mad after that. The other version said he had been driving his car at breakneck speed on the road to Mosul and had collided with a truck. The truck’s load killed his wife and three children, and he was the only survivor. The third version said quite simply that depression and madness had run in his family for generations. He had been placed in the al-Rashad Hospital for many years. It wasn’t known how he had ended up in al-Rashid Street. But his real name probably was Haroun.
Haroun was inspecting the street corners, looking for one of his subjects or his ministers who, whenever they saw him, pretended that he wasn’t the caliph. He wanted to rebuke them. He couldn’t understand why his kingdom was uninhabited this morning.
When I got back to Cambridge I had to meet my adviser before moving my stuff and going to Hanover in New Hampshire to prepare for the coming semester at Dartmouth College. I had told him by email that I had got the job and thanked him for the letter of recommendation he had written for me two months earlier, but I hadn’t told him about my trip to Iraq. I liked him very much and was in awe of his encyclopedic knowledge of Semitic languages and everything related to classical Arabic literature, especially poetry. Apart from writing dozens of articles and papers, he had been one of the editors of the vast Encyclopaedia of Islam. But my one-on-one sessions with him were strange. He was painfully shy, and in conversation with him one had to work hard to overcome the moments of silence, whereas in his emails he seemed more easygoing and relaxed. Maybe he felt most free to interact with others when he was handling their research papers and dissertations. He would write astute comments, incredibly useful suggestions and references, and sometimes sarcastic comments.
When I reached his office on the third floor of the department building the door was open and I saw him trying to arrange some books and academic journals on the shelves. I knocked and went in. We shook hands.
“How was your summer?” he asked as I sat down. “Fruitful, I hope?”
“I don’t know if you’ll like the kind of fruit it produced,” I said with a smile.
He laughed.
“I wanted to thank you again for your letter of recommendation,” I said.
“Ah, yes. Congratulations on getting the job.”
“Thank you. I know I wrote you to say that getting the job would give me an incentive to finish the dissertation quickly.”
“I hope so,” he said.
“I was supposed to submit the fourth chapter, but for the last month I’ve been busy with a project I hadn’t planned for … I went to Baghdad as a translator with a team filming a documentary.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really?” he asked. “How was the trip?”
“To be honest, it was disturbing and psychologically draining.”
“I’m sure,” he said, looking through the window at the sky. “You know,” he continued, “I was four years old when the Second World War ended, but I grew up with its ghosts and with the memories that adults in Cologne had of it.”
This was the first time he had spoken to me of anything personal.
“Sometimes you have to do what you have to do,” he added. “The important thing is to get back in the saddle and grab the reins again, as they say.”
I was surprised at what he said and relieved that he was so understanding. I had thought he would express some disappointment.
“As you know, I lived in Beirut for more than a year when I was young,” he continued. “I was helping Fuat Sezgin with his encyclopedia. I visited Cairo too, but I’ve never been to Baghdad, unfortunately. And how are your relatives? Most of them are here, aren’t they?”
“Yes, my family’s here in Virginia, but I do have relatives there. They’re well.”
“I read that the libraries have been damaged and many manuscripts have been destroyed.”
“Alas, yes. We didn’t go to the National Library or the museum, but I went to the Faculty of Arts, where I studied, and the library there had been burned down.”
“It’s a crime. People are more important of course, but …”
“But.”
“War is nothing but what you know it to be and have experienced, / What is said of it is not conjecture,” he said. “Didn’t we read Zuhair’s Muallaqa together in the pre-Islamic poetry seminar three or four years ago?”
“Yes, four years ago.”
“But politicians don’t read pre-Islamic poetry.”
I laughed derisively and said, “They don’t read any poetry.”
“Some of them read poetry, but they might not understand it.” He always insisted on academic precision and avoided generalizations, even in casual remarks.
He stopped talking. This was the first time we had spoken with such familiarity, and I wanted the conversation to go on longer. But more than a minute passed without him saying anything and I decided it was time to leave. I stood up, thanked him for his patience and promised to send him the overdue chapter as soon as possible. He stood up, shook me by the hand and said, “I look forward to reading it.”
I called to mind the first lines of Zuhair’s Muallaqa as I went down the stairs:
Are there still black traces in the stone-waste of al-Darraj
and al-Mutathallam, mute witness to where Umm Awfa once lived?
Her abode in al-Rakmatayn appears
like tattoos on the sinews of a wrist
Herds of wild cows and white antelopes wander there
Their young ones spring up everywhere
There I stood after twenty years
At pains to recognize the abode
Blackened stones marking where the cauldron was slung
and a trench like the debris of a cistern
When I recognized the abode, I said to it:
A good and very merry morning to you!
I couldn’t remember any more. I repeated “A good and very merry morning to you” twice as I went into the department office. Jenny the secretary wasn’t behind her desk, and there was nothing important in my mailbox, just ads about student grants and new courses in the fall, and an invitation to a party welcoming new students
. I threw the papers in the recycling bin. I wanted to tell the secretary that I was moving and give her my new address so that she could forward all important papers there. I waited five minutes but she didn’t come back, so I decided to write her an email later.
On my way back to the apartment I was approaching Divinity Avenue and Kirkland Street and suddenly felt like going to the Adolphus Busch Courtyard. It was the most beautiful spot on the Harvard campus for me. It’s a secluded garden hidden behind the museum of Germanic art. Although it was on the way to the department and the library, I discovered it only in my last year there. Thanks to Rebecca, who pointed it out to me when I complained there were no quiet spots on campus. I started going there to read when the weather was mild. Sometimes we would meet to have a brown bag lunch there.
The garden was deserted, as usual. The semester hadn’t started yet, and anyway it was half-deserted even when school was in session. I sat down on one of the benches and looked at the statue of the Brunswick lion, which now has a light green coat because the bronze has oxidized over the years. Although leaning forward and about to jump, it was peaceful enough to allow birds to nest in its open jaws, which the sculptor had frozen in a roar. The nest looked empty and still. The red ivy was climbing up the walls of the gray building as though it wanted to reach the roof. The glass in the enormous windows reflected the walls of the building opposite, the statue and a piece of sky. There were four gargoyle faces at the top of the columns, like the ones placed on churches and other old buildings to ward off evil spirits. I realized I hadn’t spent enough time in this enchanting spot. It was normal to feel that, as I was about to leave the city and knew I would miss it when I was two and a half hours away. I could visit, of course, but it isn’t the same as living there. I should call Rebecca. Our last conversation had been very short. I hadn’t missed her much when I was in Baghdad. I had thought about her only once since my return. My heart was uneasy, preoccupied with conjugating the volatile emotions that swirled inside: the present and the past continuous. More like commotions than emotions! But at the end of the emails I sent from the Sheraton, the only place where we found an Internet connection in Baghdad, I exaggerated and wrote “I miss you too” in reply to her “I miss you.” I didn’t know how long our relationship could last when it was sustained only by phone calls, Yahoo Messenger, and a short visit every six months. I wanted to sit on the bench and doze off for a while. But I had to return dozens of books I had borrowed from the university library and finish packing my books and other stuff into boxes before the movers came in the morning to take them to Dartmouth.
When I went back to the apartment I looked for the commentary on the Muallaqat to read the rest of that section on war:
War is nothing but what you know it to be and have experienced,
What is said of it is not conjecture
When you stir it up, you stir up something ugly
When you provoke it, it will roar and rage
Then it will grind you like a millstone
It gives birth unexpectedly and produces twins
And yields you a harvest very different from the bushels or silver
That villages in Iraq produce for their people
It took me four hours to finish putting all the books, papers, and other things in the brown boxes I had bought from the moving company. After sealing each box firmly with tape, I wrote a few words about the contents and the place where it should go, such as office, apartment/books, and so on. Luckily Dartmouth was going to pay the moving expenses. I took two boxes to the kitchen because I was sure they would be enough to hold all the plates, kitchen utensils, and odds and ends. I didn’t cook much, but I had accumulated a considerable quantity of spices to make dishes that I was trying to perfect; there was no point in leaving the spices behind. I realized this was the seventh time I had moved in the United States and the third time I had moved from one state to another. It was also the first time I would live in a whole apartment to myself. I had lived alone in California but in a room with a bathroom that was part of a complex housing the workers on an almond farm. I wondered what all this meant. Was I taking stock of the transformations and migrations I had gone through? The telephone rang before I could find a convincing answer. I didn’t go to the bedroom. I just left it ringing till I heard the beep on the answering machine, and then Ali Hadi’s voice. “Nameer. This is Ali Hadi. They say you’ve been away.” I put down the plate I had in my hand and hurried to the bedroom, as I heard him say, “Are you back yet? When you get back give me a call.” I picked up the receiver before he had finished leaving his message. I greeted him as usual: “Hi boss.” “Good to hear your voice for a change. I have to talk to strangers to find out what you’re up to,” he replied. “No,” I said, “I swear I was going to call you today.” We agreed that I’d drop by that evening.
THE COLLOQUY OF THE AL-ZAWRA’
Al-Zawra’ City is on the eastern bank in Baghdad. It is called zawra’, “crooked,” because the qibla in one of its mosques is misaligned. Al-Jawhari wrote, “And the Tigris in Baghdad is called al-Zawra’. Al-Zawra’ is also a house built in al-Hirah by al-Nu’man ibn al-Mundhir.” The poet al-Nabigha mentioned zawra’ in this line: “With a zawra’ in the folds of which musk is drunk aplenty,” and Abu Amr said: “A zawra’ here is a drinking cup made of silver, rather like a taltala.”
I don’t know much about my origins. I might be from China, India, or Persia. I don’t remember how I came or was brought here. Naked I was, as the Lord created me and as His worshipers made me. But what I do remember is his face and eyes that guarded me for many a night.
I didn’t move for months, until he untied me gently and wiped the dust and the rigors of travel off my faces. He ran his fingers gently over every spot as if he were relieving me from the ordeal of traveling and reassuring me that I was safe with him. He dressed me in gazelle skin that he had procured especially for me. He had me sleep next to his head after wrapping me in the skin. He would disappear for hours, but he didn’t let a day pass without spending some time devoted to me. He gazed at my body lovingly and spoke to me as if there were no one but me in this world.
At first I didn’t realize what he wanted from me. He took the gazelle skin off me, sat down, and looked at me without doing anything. A few days later I felt a pricking sensation and a little pain. He did it for the first time while he was scrutinizing me and repeating “In the Name of God the Merciful the Compassionate.” Then he said, “You are going to preserve the most beautiful poetry that has ever been written about this city, and you will live long after me and after what comes after me.” I felt a cold liquid running across me. Beads of sweat formed on his brow, but he did his best to make sure not a single drop fell on me. But even so one or two drops did drop from his forehead. When that happened, he reproached himself, quickly dried the sweat, and blew on the spot where the drop had fallen.
Every day he repeated what he had muttered the previous time and traced with his index finger the marks on my body before resuming his act. Sometimes he would wake up in the depths of the night, rush to see me, and pull the gazelle skin off me as if he wanted to add something he had forgotten or to retrieve something he had left in my body.
Many humans after him stared at me with eyes full of admiration and touched me gently. Of course that made me happy, but with none of them did I feel that shiver that ran through my body when his fingers caressed me and his eyes were pinned to my body. His eyes were wells full of night. His eyebrows almost met at the bridge of his massive nose, and he had a mustache like a sultan sitting upright on a throne. Although his mustache and beard were bushy, his head had only a few hairs that had survived his baldness, alone and lost like the remains of an oasis in the desert.
When there was no longer any spot on my body that his fingers hadn’t passed over, he kept staring. Then he cried and said, “Death is harder for me to bear than what I am about to do.” The last words he branded me with were:
“Finished, prais
e be to the Almighty, on the sixth of the month of Rajab.”
He folded me up, then kissed me and hugged me in his bed and went to sleep crying. The next morning he covered me with a piece of cloth, put me under his arm, and took me out into the city. He walked and walked till he came to a palace and handed me over to a man with rough hands who carried me to a man he called “my master.” His master, who became my master for some minutes, looked me over, praised my good qualities with a laugh, then threw me to a slave girl, saying, “Read to us, Mayya.” Then my new master asked, “Is it the only one?”
“Yes, master.”
“And if we sent troops to your house, they wouldn’t find another copy?”
“No, master.”
He threw him a bag of coins and told him to leave. His descendants passed me on and then the descendants of those who killed them. I was passed from hand to hand. I was placed with others like me in dark vaults. Most of them were taken captive and burned or thrown in the river. That’s what I heard. But I survived, though I wish I had died. Years went by and I was still asleep in the dark. When someone’s eyes fall on my body or their lips move as they read me, I remember only his eyes and I long for him. Years passed when no one touched me. Then along came one of those foreigners carrying a device that took pictures of my neighbors but not of me. Is that because I’m a gray-haired old lady or because I have a wrinkled face? I thought I had been completely forgotten. The years passed without any sound or disturbance until the day came when the earth trembled as though it were about to bring forth its burdens. It was wintertime but I felt my skin drying out from the heat. Was it the sun? They had long worried about the effect the sun might have on me. From afar my ears picked up the crackle of fire as it consumed my neighbors and rushed toward me. Tongues of fire lapped my edges and I cringed in fear. Before shedding a tear I gasped a one thousand–year gasp and saw myself rising up as a cloud of smoke in the sky over Baghdad.
