by Sinan Antoon
The tape itself carries a recording mostly of two voices, with a third that joins them at the end. The first is a man who was in his early thirties when the tape was recorded, and the second is a child who was still finding his feet on the rungs of the ladder of language. When the jaws of a little (or big) recorder open and it is fed a rectangle and the right button is pressed, a little tooth moves at the bottom of the jaw, covered in a piece of sponge. It presses on the thin copper-colored piece under the mouth of the rectangle and this reads the sound on the tape that is forced to pass under it. When the tape goes through it repeats those voices from the past as it heard them the first time—the time that the tape still remembers.
The man set up the red recorder he had bought that afternoon from the central market on a small wooden table that he placed in front of the only sofa in the sitting room. He drew the yellow curtain aside to let the rays of the afternoon sun filter through from the window. The boy was sitting close to his father, swinging his bare feet. His legs were so short that they hung in the air over the edge of the sofa, and the boy hit the sofa leg with the heel of his right foot. The child asked his father about the new device: “What’s that, father?”
“A tape recorder.”
He asks him what he is doing and why he has asked him to sit next to him. The father asks him to be patient and promises him something that will make him happy.
There’s a rattling noise and the sound of someone breathing close to the microphone. In the background the laughs of the child and his voice saying, “Come on, dad.”
The man: “Be patient a little, my son. Look, it’s recording now. See this red light? Come on, come a little closer … See this here … Come on, speak.”
The boy: “Speak.”
The man: “Well, speak, so that your voice comes out later.”
The boy: “Where?”
The man: “Here. See this microphone here? It’ll hear your voice and record it on the tape.”
The boy: “Really?”
The man: “Yes, really.”
The boy: “What shall I say?”
The man: “As you like. Say who you are. What’s your name?”
The boy: “I’m Somy.”
The man: “Somy. Bravo. But what’s your full name?”
The boy: “Ah okay, Husam.”
The man: “Husam, bravo to the hero. And what’s dad’s name? Who am I?”
The boy: “Dad. You’re Nazim.”
The man: “Bravo, clever boy. And mom?”
The boy: “Aysar.”
The man: “Clever boy. Okay, you know the song kukukhti?”
The boy: “Kukukhti
Where’s my sister?
In Hilla.”
Silence.
The man: “And what does she eat?”
The boy: “And what does she eat?
Beans.
And what does she drink?
God’s water.
And where does she sleep?
On God’s earth.”
The man: “Excellent, bravo (he claps). Come on, give Husam a clap (they clap together). Hey, come here, where are you going? What else do you know?”
The boy: “I know …”
The man: “Hajanjali. Go on, say it.”
The boy: “Hajanjali, bajanjali,
I went up the mountain.
And found a dome or two.
‘Oh uncle, oh Hussein,’ I cried.
‘This is the sultan’s tomb.’
‘Move your foot, ‘Umran.’”
The man: “Bravo. And then?”
The boy: “Then what?”
The man: “Balboul.”
The boy: “Balee ya balboul, you haven’t seen a bird
Pecking at the bowl.
Milk and myrtle
On Titi’s grave.
You haven’t seen my love.
Titi.
You haven’t seen my love.
Dad, I want to hear my voice.”
The man: “Just a moment, hang on a while. Sing Ghazala Ghazziluki.”
The boy: “Gazelle, they spun you,
In the water they rolled you.
Sitting on the bank, sitting combing your hair.
She fell asleep.”
The man: “What did he say to her? Get up, wasn’t it?”
The boy: “‘Get up,’ he told her,
‘This is your horse,
I pull it and mount,
The skiff, the skiff of the desert,
For you to cry over me,
Cry over your anklets,
Your anklets worth four hundred,
And your neighbors are thieves.’”
The boy, encouraged by his father, continued to recite:
“My bird flew out of my hand,
My bird’s above the trees.
Come down, come down, birdie, eat the seeds without husks.
My bird was tinsy winsy, I reared it by hand,
When it grew up and fledged, it started pecking my cheek.
I fed it with seeds of love and gave it a tear to drink.
Everyone envied me and they took my bird from me.”
After the series of rhymes, the father pressed the STOP button and the boy insisted they listen to what the father had recorded, so he pressed REWIND and when the tape was back at the start he pressed PLAY, and they sat and listened. The boy laughed when he put his ear close to the little speaker in the red recorder to listen to his own voice with a mixture of delight and amazement. When the tape reached the last section, the father stopped it. “Dad,” the boy asked, “When Mom comes, can she sing too please?”
“Yes, son.”
“Let me do it.”
“No, son.”
“Why not, dad?”
“This isn’t a toy, son. Come and I’ll turn the television on for you and you can watch some cartoons.”
The father turned the television on and gestured to the boy to sit on his small green plastic chair in front of the television, which he did. Then he picked up the tape recorder and put it on a higher table next to the telephone. The father went to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, where he opened the fridge looking for something to eat. The boy took advantage of the opportunity, left his chair and climbed up on the sofa to reach the tape recorder. He played with the buttons and managed to press the PLAY and RECORD buttons. Then he started whispering:
“The sun came out on Aisha’s grave,
Aisha the pasha’s daughter.
She plays with the rattle.
The cock crowed in the orchard.
God help the sultan, our people and …”
Then he heard his father’s footsteps approaching so he got off the sofa and went back to his chair to watch the cartoons without stopping the recording.
The voices of the characters in the cartoons continue in the background. Then we hear the sound of a plate of watermelon and cheese touching the surface of the table when the father puts it there and sits down to eat. The boy laughs from time to time and follows the cartoon. Ten minutes later, the father says, “That’ll be your mother come back.” They hear the door opening and closing and footsteps. “Go and give mom a kiss.” “Mom, mom.” “Hello, my dear, how are you?” “Ha, welcome home. How was your day?” “Lots of cases to deal with. My head hurts. I’m going to brew some tea.” “That would be great.” “And you?” “I’m fine. I left work early.”
They chatted at length that day about work and about the trip he had promised her to Lake Habbaniya and the need to visit her relatives, who had told them off for not visiting. Usual conversation of no importance. The boy’s mother didn’t notice the tape recorder till the tape came to the end of the first side and made a click when it stopped. The tape did not of course record what the father then said: “Hey, you naughty boy, how did you manage that? Has that been recording all this time? That’s really terrible, you little devil.”
The boy’s father didn’t record anything on the second side, and he wrote “Husam” on the
label of the tape. The idea was that after a few years they, and especially Husam, would listen to his voice as a child. Husam grew up and every two or three years he would listen, not to his own voice but to their voices, which were far away after they were killed by war in his childhood. And now it was the tape’s turn to join them: the firestorm of another war would turn it into ashes and leave Husam alone with memories that no longer had a soundtrack.
“Can you tell me about your background. Your name is unfamiliar. Where did you grow up?”
“I was born in Iraq. But I came here in 1993.”
“Ah, that’s interesting. How old were you when you left Iraq?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Did you take part in the war?”
“No, the war was over when I began my military service.”
“And why did you leave Iraq?”
“The situation was very bad, especially after the 1991 war. My father sold our house and we went to Jordan and we stayed there several months. One of his friends there got him a work contract and we came with him.”
“Do you visit your relatives there?”
“Most of them left many years ago. I don’t have many relatives left.”
“When did you last visit Iraq?”
“Three years ago.”
“Tell me about the visit.”
“I went as a translator to make a documentary film.”
“Were you happy with the visit?”
“No. After that my depression grew worse.”
“Why?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. Where should I begin?”
“Wherever you want.”
“There’s a friend I know who says there are no real beginnings or endings.”
“Is that philosophy or are you trying to avoid the subject?”
“You don’t seem to understand.”
“Help me understand. Talk!”
I bend down by the wall of the cave and draw a picture of a window on it. I recite silently the poetry I remember, so that I don’t forget it. My hands are tied with a cord, and the people with me are laughing but their laughs are in a different language. You’ll laugh, Nameer. Aren’t all laughs much the same? Do peoples and nations matter when it comes to laughing? Yes, this is what I see in the nightmare. I beg them to untie me and I promise to show them the sun outside the cave.
I hadn’t seen him since 1987, when he disappeared from class in the second or third month of the school year and never came back. We were in the same class in the Markaziyya secondary school. We later heard that his father, who was a director general in the Ministry of Planning, had obtained special permission for him to travel to the United States to finish his education there. Years later I heard from a mutual friend that he had started studying medicine at a prestigious American university. We weren’t close friends but we often played soccer together, and I remember that we hung out with the same group several times after school. After I left Iraq I didn’t hear any news of him until I received an email, written in English. “Dear Nameer, I hope you are well after all these years,” it said. “I heard from Ali Abdilkhaliq, who I met by chance in Abu Dhabi, that you were living in New York. I’ve been in Dubai for years but I’ll be visiting New York (which I miss very much) for business next week and it would be a wonderful opportunity to meet after all these years (how many? seventeen or eighteen?). I’d like to invite you to dinner. My secretary will make a reservation and send you the details if you agree. I look forward to meeting. Adnan.” Under his name I read the sign-off added automatically to his emails: Vice President, Middle East office, Goldman Sachs International, Dubai International Financial Center, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai. I searched for his name on the Internet and found he’d been working for Goldman Sachs for many years and had moved to Dubai four years ago to run their office in Dubai. I usually viewed people who worked in investments and capital with suspicion, and I told myself I was lucky I didn’t have to deal with them. But I was pleased to receive his message and I didn’t hesitate to accept his invitation. I told myself it would be a chance to go over memories of our time in secondary school in Baghdad and to catch up on news of colleagues with whom I had lost contact. I immediately sent him a short reply saying I was delighted and looked forward to meeting him after all these years. That same evening a message arrived from his secretary, and I told her I would prefer the Thursday evening. Then she sent another message naming the restaurant, Fig and Olive.
I didn’t take the subway because the restaurant was in the Meatpacking District, a twenty-five-minute walk from my apartment. I arrived a quarter of an hour early. The restaurant seemed to be new and recently opened. The lighting was soft in the interior, the details of which were dominated by gradations of two colors: white and blue—an allusion to the “Mediterranean restaurant” theme. I was met by an attractive hostess with a very short haircut and green eyes, wearing a short black dress.
The barman welcomed me and volunteered a simple smile as he put a white napkin and a glass of water in front of me and then handed me the drinks menu. I decided to have a glass of red wine, and I looked for a variety that I knew. I was surprised to find arak on the menu. Then I remembered that the restaurant was Mediterranean and that arak was common in Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon. They had Kefraya, the Lebanese arak. I hadn’t drunk arak for years, so I ordered a glass and insisted that the barman bring me cold water and ice separately so that I could mix the payk, as Iraqis call a shot of alcohol, myself. I wondered where the term payk came from. I would have to look it up. It must be from Turkish or Persian. The waiter brought my order, saying, “Here’s your araak,” with the stress on a lengthened second syllable. I reproached him in silence, in the voice that always popped up in my head to correct mispronounced words, especially important ones: “It’s árag, buddy, árag.” That’s the voice that’s grown hoarse after teaching Arabic to Americans for more than eight years and that I now have to silence because I will never have to teach it again. I put in twice as much water as arak, and the clear liquid turned milky, reminding me of the Iraqi term for it: lion’s milk. I sniffed the smell of anise and took a sip that blew a cold breeze onto my heart. The barman brought a small bowl of green and black olives of various sizes.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. I turned around and we embraced and kissed. He was wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, and a red tie, and was carrying a small leather bag. He hadn’t changed much, apart from the glasses he now wore and the fact that his brown hair was receding slightly on his temples. Each of us told the other that he hadn’t changed much.
“Half our gang are now bald, you know,” he said.
“Our turn will come,” I said.
“God forbid,” he replied.
Then he looked at the glass of arak and said, “What’s that? You’re in New York and you’re drinking arak?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“So didn’t you write a dissertation on Abu Nuwas?”
“How do you know that?”
“I went on the university website to check you out.”
“And what’s the problem? So if I write on Abu Nuwas then I can’t drink arak? I like all kinds of forbidden fruits, and besides, arak is our national drink.”
He laughed and said he had to go to the bathroom. When he came back the hostess with the intoxicating smile arrived and took us to a table in a corner. She gave us menus and put a drinks menu in the middle of the table. He picked it up and said, “But let’s drink wine rather than arak.”
“I like wine anyway,” I said.
“Red or white?”
“Red.”
He insisted on choosing himself, saying he had become an expert and loved to collect wines.
“I’m inviting you today,” he added.
“No, no way.”
“But yes. I want to celebrate. Today I signed a fantastic deal and made a pile of money, so don’t bother about the price. Order whatever you
like,” he said with a laugh.
The last remark irritated me a little but I decided to let it pass. “Congratulations. Let’s drink now and we’ll figure out who’ll pay later.”
He asked the waiter for a bottle of Gigondas and said I would like it. He said he had been to the Rhône valley on vacation the previous year and drunk the wine in the village where it is made. I asked him if he often traveled, and he said that ninety percent of his trips were for business, and that his wife complained that he didn’t spend enough time with her and the children. He was surprised that I wasn’t married yet. “Still holding out? I had lots of fun, but in the end you’ve had enough and you have to settle down.”
The waiter brought the bottle and showed it to Adnan, who looked at the label and nodded. The waiter pulled out the cork and put the bottle on the table in front of Adnan. Then he poured a little of the crimson wine into Adnan’s glass. Adnan picked it up and smelled the nose of the wine as he swirled it in the glass. He tasted the wine and closed his eyes. I felt he was showing off to some extent. Even the waiter raised his eyebrows when he saw it. Adnan had another taste. “Excellent,” he said, and the waiter filled our glasses. We drank a toast to “the old days,” as he put it. The wine had a silky texture and I praised his taste in wine and in choosing the restaurant. He took his wallet out of his pocket and showed me a picture of his wife with their two children, Sami and Nour. She was wide-eyed with long hair, an American of Iraqi origin whom he had met at Goldman Sachs here in New York and had married five years ago. He said he loved her and had never cheated on her. He raised his right index finger as he said the last phrase, as if he were preaching. The waiter apologized for interrupting to take our order. I chose a beetroot salad with arugula, walnut, and goat’s cheese, and then roast chicken with rosemary, while he ordered gazpacho and a Moroccan tagine. We gave the menus to the waiter. Adnan asked me about my girlfriend: “What’s she like? Where’s she from? Is she blond?”
“No, she’s black.”
“I’ve tried everything, but I’ve never gone out with a black woman,” he said.
“The loss is yours,” I said.
“So I thought you studied medicine?” I asked.
