The Book of Collateral Damage

by Sinan Antoon

  I dragged myself into the bathroom, washed my face and brushed my teeth. I opened the closet to look for a clean T-shirt to wear. “The answer’s no,” I told her.

  “Why?” she said, disappointed. “We could have a beautiful day.”

  “No, I mean we don’t have a sea in Iraq. We have lakes and the south of the country has limited access to the Gulf.”

  “Ah, okay, you scared me a little,” she said with a smile.

  She had poured me some coffee and prepared a plate with toast, butter, and the strawberry jam that I like. I sat down across from her. Sipping the coffee, I added, “We had a sea thousands of years ago and the whole country was flooded. But the water receded and what we have left is the two rivers.”

  She laughed. “‘Here we go again. I can’t take you to seas that no longer exist. Do you want to go to a real sea? Have you been to Sandy Hook?”

  “I don’t know Sandy Hook. I once went to Rockaway Beach.”

  “No, no. Sandy Hook is a really beautiful peninsula. We can take the ferry and be there in an hour.”

  “Which ferry?”

  “There’s a ferry every hour and a quarter from Pier 11, close to Wall Street. We can catch the next one if you take a shower and get dressed quickly. I’ll get butter and jam sandwiches ready for us to eat on the way.”

  I drank the coffee and took a quick shower. When I came out she was putting the towels in the backpack. I got dressed and put an extra towel in the backpack, along with the New York Times that was on the table.

  When we reached the pier the ferry was almost full and some of the passengers had gone up to the open upper deck. We stood in line and bought tickets from a man who was standing at the door. We couldn’t find a seat on the upper deck, but we found a corner that would do. I liked the view of Manhattan receding into the distance. When you’re in it you can’t see it clearly. The ferry passed by Ellis Island, the main entrance point for immigrants to America for the first half of the twentieth century. Immigrants underwent medical tests before they were allowed to go into New York. But immigrants today come by plane, and the customs and immigration buildings on the island have been turned into a museum. I told Mariah that we should visit it. I reminded myself that I hadn’t really explored the city and that I kept putting off plans on the pretext that I had to finish my book to get tenure. She agreed, then added, “Yes, of course. There’s no harm in knowing more about the history of our immigrant forefathers.” She said the last two words in a different, sarcastic tone, and made quote marks in the air with her index and middle fingers.

  “If your ancestors hadn’t been slaves, you wouldn’t be here now,” I teased.

  “Whatever! If my ancestors hadn’t been slaves, America wouldn’t be America anyway,” she replied. Then she pointed to the west, saying, “Look at the Statue of Liberty and how small it looks from here.”

  It did indeed look much smaller than one imagines it to be. That’s what my brother Naseer said when he visited us in New York and I took him on a tour to the southern tip of Manhattan island and we looked at the Statue of Liberty in the distance. After that the ferry headed across the strait that separates Brooklyn from Staten Island to the west, far from New York and the Upper Bay.

  After reaching the peninsula we waited a quarter of an hour to take the bus to the beaches. Mariah said the best and quietest ones were at the northern end because they were more remote. We bought two bottles of cold water.

  We reached the northern beaches in ten minutes. The blue that stretched to the far horizon stirred something deep inside me. The water hidden within me rejoiced when it heard the crashing of the waves. I stopped and took a deep breath and I apparently smiled unconsciously, because Mariah laughed and said, “What a smile! If the ocean makes you so happy, we’ll come every week. Maybe you were a fish in a previous life.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’ve told you several times that in your sleep you thrash about like a fish.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s the nightmares. Maybe I was a river.”

  “Ha ha, that’s nice.”

  We walked along the sand and found a spot where she spread the towel she had brought. Then we took off the clothes we had on top of our swimsuits. Mariah was wearing a white bikini that contrasted with her brown skin. I was about to head into the water when she said, “Wait. We have to put some sunscreen on.” She took a tube from the backpack, opened it, put a little on her hands, and passed the tube to me. She started to put it on her face, her chest, and her stomach. I did the same. Then she asked me to turn around so that she could put some on my back. When she’d finished it was my turn. I kissed her on the back of her neck and smelled the fragrance of her body before the smell of the sunscreen overpowered it.

  Our part of the beach was relatively quiet. There were no children and no big families. Seagulls and other birds were circling, looking for something to grab. We stayed in the water for about half an hour. We splashed each other with water and laughed. Then we went back to our spot, dried ourselves off, and lay on the towel. She put on her sunglasses and took out Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. The passage in Wadood’s catalog had reminded me of the book, and I had given her a copy for her birthday two months earlier, along with a box of chocolates and a bottle of Dune perfume, which I liked. After reading about the perfume I realized why it attracted me, in both its men’s and women’s versions. It contained the smells that I love—sandalwood, musk, jasmine, and citron, all distilled into a single drop.

  I took out that day’s New York Times. I put the business section back in the bag because I didn’t usually read it. Then I began as usual with the opinion page. I was struck by an article headlined “Do the Lives of Iraqis Have Value?” written by a professor of history at a university in California. The occasion for publishing the article was the official indictment of some U.S. Marines for killing twenty-four Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in an outburst of anger and revenge, and also of some officers for failing to investigate the massacre. They were charged not with deliberate murder but rather with failing to identify targets or to act in accordance with the rules of engagement. “Shoot first and then ask questions” is what the principal defendant told his comrades. The writer looked back at the massacres that had been committed since the beginning of the war and the incident of rape and murder in al-Mahmoudiya. She quoted General Tommy Franks as saying, when asked about the number of civilians dead, “We don’t do body counts.” The writer wondered when, if ever, we would find out how many Iraqis had died in this war. She ended the article by saying that the insurance payout to the beneficiaries of an American soldier killed in the line of duty was $400,000, while in the eyes of the U.S. government, a dead Iraqi civilian was worth up to $2,500 in condolence payments to the family.

  The subject of the article took me back to Wadood, of course, and I decided to cut it out once we got back to the apartment and to add it to the folder. I tried to read more of the newspaper but I couldn’t concentrate, or what I read seemed trivial. I folded up the newspaper so carelessly that Mariah noticed. “Is everything okay?” she asked me.

  “Yes, sweetie. I’m going for a little walk.”

  THE COLLOQUY OF THE CLAY OVEN

  I’m from the river. From its clay was I fashioned, one summer long ago, like all my peers, and from red mud and straw. We are born in summer because we need the summer sun in order to come into being. This is what I remember: I was lying in the sun with my siblings, waiting for someone to buy us. They brought me to this house and put me in the back. They held me in place on both sides with bricks and plaster, as if I might run off.

  Then my mother came. She said, “In the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate,” uttered some ritual invocations, and put a mirror and seven amulets on my forehead to protect me from the evil eye. Yes, she is my mother even though she didn’t give birth to me and she’s not of my kind. But no one has touched me but her and I haven’t seen any face but hers for thirty years. She’
s the one who cleans my heart and wipes away the ash that sticks there. She’s the one who sings to me and gives me water every day. She’s the one who feeds me with firewood. She feeds me so I feed her.

  She’s the one who sits on the ground every morning, drinks her tea, and smokes her cigarette. Then she brings the baking tray and puts it on her lap as if it’s her daughter. She breaks the dough into balls that she puts on the plate that she always places on the ground to her right. Then she takes the balls and flattens them one by one. She says “Yallah” as she stands up and comes over to me. She takes each piece of dough and tosses it gently from hand to hand. Then she lays it on the cushion that she’s carrying, bends down and puts it close to the walls of my heart. And so on till it’s full. After a while she takes them out with tongs and arranges them on the tray. When the loaves have piled up into a little pyramid, she covers them with a cloth, puts the tray on her head, and goes away. She comes back in the afternoon, sits in front of me, and sieves her flour for tomorrow’s dough.

  I say “my mother” because I claim that she loved me as if I were her son. I remember how her son used to cry in her arms when she fed me. He and his three brothers. But he’s grown up now. But even so she told him off when he tried to persuade her to get rid of me and replace me. “But this oven is older than you. It has fed you and your brothers since your father died and it has helped pay your university fees. I won’t let it go till I die,” she said. She used to swear by me, saying, “By this oven!”

  She sat in front of me this morning. She drank her tea slowly, then put the teacup on the ground. She put the tray of dough on her lap. I shut my eyes and heard the sound of the bombs.

  …

  The house is no longer a house and my mother won’t feed me this morning.

  The first time I saw her she reminded me of Wadood and the scavenger that he had written about. I wondered once again whether my obsession with Wadood and his writings was setting my priorities for me and defining what aroused my interest here in New York. Had his catalog become the frame of reference that overdetermined the way I perceived things? Many of my moments were wrapped up in Wadood’s moments or very closely aligned with them, almost like pages of this notebook. This notebook of mine that still complains that many of its pages are blank. Can a life begin imitating another life, or at least some of its details?

  One night I left my office on the fifth floor, where I was working on finishing a chapter of the book, to buy a coffee to help me concentrate. I went to the Delion deli and coffee shop on the corner of Waverly Place and Broadway in front of the entrance to the subway. As I was coming out with my coffee I saw her rummaging in the trash bin outside the shop. I was struck by the fact that she was wearing a traditional Asian straw hat and white gloves and dragging a large sack behind her. After that I came across her several times on my nocturnal ramblings and I started to watch her working rituals. She would comb the streets, stopping at every trash bin or dumpster to look for aluminum cans and plastic bottles, which she then put in the large transparent sack that she pulled behind her. When it was full she put it on her shoulder and started to stuff another sack. Sometimes I saw her carrying three sacks. Maybe it was the hat she wore that made me think of rice paddies or other fields I had seen in pictures. I saw her as a peasant in exile in these concrete jungles, harvesting fruits that were empty and depleted.

  At the beginning of the spring I invited Mariah out to dinner to celebrate my having finished another chapter. I chose an Italian restaurant in the East Village. We sat down outside at a table on the pavement because the weather was favorable. She wore a white skirt that almost covered her knees and a red blouse, and she was surprised when I told her it was the first time she had worn a skirt since we had met. “Really? I hadn’t noticed. Anyway, it’s a special occasion that deserves a change,” she said. The waiter recommended a bottle of white wine from Sicily, and I ordered it because the variety of grapes was called Damascino and I told her that this was as close as we could get to Abu Nuwas. She proposed a toast to my finishing the whole book. The waiter brought the plate of caprese salad. As we gobbled it down with bread soaked in olive oil, I remembered a line by Abu Nuwas that mentions basil, and I tried to translate it for her:

  Stop and discover wine and basil,

  Since stopping to look at deserted encampments is not my thing.

  Choice wine in an earthenware jug, when mixed with water,

  Has an aroma like that of apples in Lebanon,

  Smooth, tart like musk.

  Spicy, it puts troubled minds at ease.

  “Ah, beautiful, but why don’t you follow his advice?”

  “What do you mean? Aren’t we drinking and having fun?”

  “Yes of course, but you often stop to look at the remains of the past, weighed down by worries.”

  I didn’t say anything, so she asked if I was upset with her.

  “No, not at all. I was just thinking about what you said.”

  Mariah noticed that I was looking at something behind her. She looked around and saw the Chinese scavenger, who had lifted the lid of the trash bin that belonged to the building next to the restaurant and had started to harvest the glass and aluminum containers.

  “That woman’s amazing. She works long hours and covers vast areas of the city. I usually see her at night.”

  “She’s not the only one. There are many like her in Brooklyn too. Most of them are old women. They’re widowed or their children don’t help them and their Social Security isn’t enough.”

  “How come you know so much about it?”

  “The woman who was my roommate in Brooklyn for two years worked in an old people’s shelter, and every evening she would go on forever about all the things she had heard or seen in the shelter. It’s depressing, so let’s go back to your friend.”

  I thought and then said with confidence, “Every age has its deserted encampments. If Abu Nuwas were alive today he would weep often and drink even more. Besides, your army is occupying many of the cities where the poet went to late-night drinking parties and whose names appear unchanged in his poems.”

  “It’s not my army, darling. I’m not part of that we or else it would be your army too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  A month later, after wrestling with insomnia, I went out at half past four and walked south. After an hour, when I reached the riverbank, I saw from afar a truck parked under the Manhattan Bridge. There was a long line in front of it, with men and women pushing shopping carts piled up with bulging sacks. At the back of the truck a man was taking the sacks and then giving each person an amount of money. I watched the scene for five minutes, then headed back.

  I’m sitting on the grass in the garden, which is crowded with all the pieces of furniture they have taken out of the house. My sister is sitting beside me, trying to help me put on my shoes. Or maybe I’m helping her. I don’t remember that detail precisely. It doesn’t matter. It was my mother who threw us out quickly and told us to sit. “Stay here and don’t move,” she said. I remember that the grown-ups left us alone because they were busy with what had happened. Our neighbor, Abu Zuhair, came running and told the grown-ups that he had called the “fire brigade.” “They’re on their way,” he said, and went into the house. We didn’t have a telephone yet and I didn’t understand what the “brigade” might turn out to be. Eventually I heard the siren of the vast red truck and saw the firemen in their heavy uniforms dragging hoses into the house. Then I thought about the unusual term for the fire department. The neighbors heard the fire truck’s siren and came out on their roofs to watch the scene. Tongues of flame were coming out of the windows of the room where my uncle had been sleeping on the second floor when he came back from Baqouba, where he was given a job as a doctor after graduating. He wasn’t in the room at the time, but he had put in it some of the furniture he had bought in readiness to move to his new house after marrying his fiancée.

  Umm Zuhair came to take my sister and me to their ho
use. She said we would stay with them that night. I told her I wanted to stay in the garden. “That won’t do, my boy,” she said. “You have to come.”

  A few hours later, as we were getting ready for bed in the sitting room in Abu Zuhair’s house, Mother said she had to go back to the house to fetch something. I don’t remember what it was. But I remember that I jumped up and begged her to let me go with her. “No, stay here with your sister,” she said. “What would you come to do?” But I clung on to her and started to cry, and she gave way as usual.

  The house had been plunged into pitch darkness because they had cut off the electricity after the fire broke out. I can see it now. It was like a dead house. (It would often be plunged into darkness at night years later, during the war with Iran.) The garden was full of furniture and other stuff and there was the smell of smoke. Mother turned on the flashlight she was holding so that we could see our way. We reached the door to the kitchen. She held my hand tight and said nervously, “Be careful and don’t trip.” (Did she regret letting me come along?) The smell of burning grew stronger. We waded into the water that covered the floor. We turned right along the corridor that led to my parents’ room. Did I go into the room with her? I’m not sure. No, I didn’t go in. She put one foot across the threshold and I heard the sound of water. She aimed the flashlight at the floor and said, “Stay standing here. If you come in, your feet will get wet and your pajamas will get dirty. Don’t move. I’ll just go into our room to get something and then I’ll be back.” I stood in the darkness on the threshold of the open door. Mother lifted the hem of her gown and went on ahead. The rays of light from the flashlight went with her. I could hear her footsteps on the floor, which was flooded with water. I stood there in the dark in the doorway. I was afraid and regretted coming back to the house with her. I waited, then I caught a glimpse of light from the flashlight and heard her footsteps approaching. The fear subsided but I could still smell the burning. When we got back to Abu Zuhair’s house I found it hard to sleep. Their sheets smelled strange. They were clean but they didn’t smell like our sheets. In the morning I went to school and told my friends, “Our house caught fire.” They looked at me in amazement.