Beyond Love (Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Hadiyya Hussein

  I waited until he lit another cigarette to say, "Don't you think that exile brings people closer to each other, causing them not to know their feelings, but that when things return to normal, they reconsider their hearts?"

  "No," he said. "Sometimes exile increases dissension. I already told you that some of the Iraqis here in Amman came to spy and report on each other. Imagine. I have a friend; I fled with him after the failed uprising. We suffered together during the journey's hardships, drank putrid water, and ate the forest grass while fleeing. We entered refugee camps in Iran, got sick, suffered beyond what men can bear, and then suddenly his values collapsed, and he weakened. I found out that he was spying on others who were in our same situation. He would have died at the hands of the refugees if it hadn't been for the guards' intervention; they saved him while he was drowning in his blood."

  As he was telling me about these atrocities, I scanned his face as though seeing him for the first time. I looked at his brown face and the scar over his left eyebrow. I plunged into his glowing eyes and his lips, which cigarettes had stained a dark color. I observed the words taking form and coming out hot and fresh from his mouth. I was drawn into him, looking for the other man in him.

  "Forget about all this," I said to him. "Let's return to our original subject. I don't deny that I need you, too, and a huge emptiness fills my soul when I don't see you for a long time. But I can't deceive myself; I'm afraid my loneliness is making me grasp at straws."

  This time I was the one who had expressed herself poorly. A thread of sadness spun in his eyes, and he fell silent, as if collecting his thoughts.

  "I don t wish to be a straw. Believe me, I would rather be a lifeboat or a captain leading you to firm land. Give me a chance to prove my sincerity."

  "Then open up to me. You lock so much away."

  He extinguished his cigarette and said, smiling, "I don't know what you're looking for. I don't think I'm hiding anything. Here I am, in your hands, an open book ready for you to read slowly."

  With coquetry, I said, "What about the woman you loved? Over time, won't true love dig deep into your heart and not leave any place for me?"

  "No one can deny his past. We can't erase our memories, but this doesn't mean that once our first love is over, we can't fall in love again. When life denies us one thing, it gives us other choices; the past becomes merely a pleasant echo that settles in the soul."

  He seemed convincing, and I felt he had crept closer to my feelings, although I was still looking for his hidden face. I looked at him carefully, hoping to find his secret, but it remained hidden. Then he cornered me with a question I had been afraid to ask myself. "What is the truth of your feelings toward me?"

  Confused, I shifted a little bit on the bench. He was making me face my heart, which I had been dodging and deceiving. I bowed my head silently, then lifted it, but before I could say anything, a boy's cries arose as he fell among the rocks. His mother hurriedly stood up, saying, "God save you!"

  She had spoken without knowing that she planted thorns in my heart. The father rushed over, horrified, and hugged the child. Then the mother grabbed her son, hugging him to her chest.

  I said to Moosa, "Did you hear what the mother said?"

  He looked at me inquiringly without responding, so I said, "'God save you.' It's an expression only Iraqis say. Do you think we would hear it in Australia or in Canada or in the Netherlands or ... ?"

  Laughing, he interrupted me. "If you want, I'll say it to you ten times a day."

  He repeated himself firmly. "You didn't answer my question. I'd like to know your true feelings; otherwise, we will not meet again."

  He wasp t giving me the opportunity to hold the stick in its middle. I said, as I felt myself give in, "I don't want you to only narrowly enter my heart. I feel an inclination toward you, but I don't understand the nature of this inclination. I'm afraid."

  "Are you afraid of me? Or am I outside the requirements of your heart?"

  "We can no longer look at requirements and criteria as we used to do. I'm not afraid of you exactly, but I'm afraid of everything around me. I'm not adjusted to the time and place, and this is making it more difficult to adjust to my feelings. I am living a life that was imposed on me, and so it regulates my feelings. Why don't you give us some time to better know our feelings toward each other? Let's meet and talk. You know, you are sparring with words, and this diminishes our chances."

  A ball rolled between our feet. Moosa grabbed it and gave it to the child who stood there, staring at us with shy eyes as though apologizing; then he looked at me and spoke.

  "When it comes to feelings, chitchat is deadly. If I were to tell you everything, the conversation would end before it even began. Sometimes I feel I'm too old to do that, despite the burning feelings inside me. I've been through tumultuous times, and I've put up with wounds during the war and the difficult work in the refugee camps. The wars I experienced also made me forget love's language, which we used to master. I experienced ferocious battles in which I would have rather died than kill another soldier like me, who had a father, a mother, and dreams awaiting him. I walked all the way back from Kuwait in humiliation and shame. I experienced the uprising and then the flight to Iran through al-Ahwaz. There we lived as though we were prisoners of war."

  I expressed my surprise and asked him how that was possible.

  He explained, "In Iran, political asylum for Iraqis is not recognized and is therefore illegal. Iraqis have no right to travel or to marry an Iranian woman or to work, even though the Iranian Constitution guarantees a foreign resident of ten years the right to work. Even the Iraqi children who grow up there cannot pursue their studies. They call us 'uninvited guests who have outstayed their welcome,' and they see us as a burden on Iran; there is no way for us to stay. We were refugees, but in barbed-wire prisons. I and a few others who were closer to the border were employed illegally, doing humiliating jobs for very little money. My earnings of three years were given to one of the smugglers so I could come here, hoping to join my brother, who migrated to Australia as soon as I arrived."

  "Did you participate in the uprising?"

  "Yes. I had returned from Kuwait disappointed and humiliated, and my other brother had been killed on the uprising's third day, although he'd been unarmed. He was a student and was put to death along with twenty other students in the university square. Because I was wanted by the authorities, I assumed his name when I fled. I kept my brother's name in order to preserve his memory, never retaking my real name. I live now with my brother's life, the life that could have continued if they hadn't killed him. From a young age, I had always wanted to be him because he had been an extraordinary person. Sometimes I feel guilty for having wished that-I wonder if God preserved my life so that I could live out my brother's life. But now my soul has become peaceful, and I feel that every time I bury my own name, I reenact that faithfulness to his memory. I loved him very much."

  It didn't occur to me to ask him what his previous name was. It wasn't important; I knew him by the name "Moosa," and that was it. We carry names for identification, and when the name becomes a death threat, we have to write it off.

  I looked at Moosa; he was pale and looked profoundly sad. He was rubbing his palms anxiously as his gaze became harsh; I felt as if I had scraped the scab from his wounds. He started to smoke nervously. I was thinking of excusing myself when he stood up, saying, "Let's sit in a quiet place."

  We walked silently. I felt his sadness creeping into my chest and pressing it. Every time I met him, the conversation would stir up sadness and sorrow, and I waspt sure why. I thought about retreating to my room to punish myself. I heard him say, "Are you with me?"

  While I was withdrawn from him, he had wanted to say something. We reached the cafe, and he signaled the waiter, who came quickly.

  "What do you want to drink?"

  "Tea."

  "Two teas, please."

  He continued smoking, scanning every corner as if looking fo
r something. Then, as if postponing the conversation about his suffering, he said, "Listen. I don't want to drown myself or you with the weight of the past. What do you think?"

  He opened the leather satchel and took out a bundle of papers. "Read these at home, and let's enjoy our meeting now. I am excusing you from answering my question. We are friends now, just friends, if it's okay with you. We'll meet here tomorrow morning and speak more freely. Is ten o'clock good for you?"

  He had eliminated the pressure on me, and I smiled at him; his face looked calm. The harshness in his gaze was disappearing, and he had stopped twisting his palms. At this very moment, I wished I could be in love with him and could feverishly cry on his shoulder. I felt my feelings flaring up again, but I controlled my heart's unruliness. I feared myself and my mood changes-I was pushing him away whenever he approached and then trying to draw him closer whenever he stopped discussing our relationship. As we parted, my palm was between his; I could feel something inside me moving and wanting to catch him, but we separated, going our own separate ways.

  I wanted to cry on the street; I fought to overcome this feeling as I looked at the shops and kiosks. These sidewalk stands were managed by Iraqi women who were spending the end of their lives in strange streets. Each time I encountered one of these women, a desire rose up in me to sit down and talk to her as if she were my mother or my grandmother; these women were part of the beautiful past that rekindled those sweet stories that spilled from the lips of our grandmothers.

  I stopped near a very old sad woman selling incense sticks, napkins, cigarettes, and Indian hair dye. She was arranging her merchandise on a black rug. I bought some incense that I didn't need and looked carefully at her features. Her face reminded me of my mother's, which I had almost forgotten.

  Trying to stretch out the conversation between us, I said to the woman, "This stuff is not worth going into exile for."

  Without looking at me, she replied, "What should I do? I'm entertaining myself while I wait for the end of my days."

  "You would do better to have fun there, in the Iraqi public markets."

  She looked at me harshly as she replied, "What do you want? Are you one of them?"

  Taken aback, I said, "God forbid. Do I look like them?"

  She replied in a softer tone, "I don't know. I'm unable to tell. All of us have worries. We came to Amman to display our sorrows, but no one buys sorrows."

  "I'm like you, Grandma."

  "No, you are not like me. You are young; life is before you; you can make up for what you missed. But for the likes of me, God alone knows what we suffer. Are you married? Do you have children?"

  "No, I'm uprooted."

  "What prompted you to talk with me? Everyone who buys goes on his way."

  I looked at the tattoos between her brows and on her cheeks and said, "You look like my mother."

  She answered carelessly, "Where is your mother?"

  "She died a long time ago; she didn't go through the wars that we went through."

  "That's better; at least in her old age she preserved her dignity. As for us, you can see we have become a spectacle, selling our sorrow in the streets. I'm a mother of four. Two of them died in the war with Iran; the third was lost in the war with Kuwait, and the fourth is here with me. He works with a shoemaker in Saqf al-Sayl."

  All of a sudden, though, she shook herself, gathered her goods, and disappeared up an alley, saying, "The police, the police."

  There was nothing left in her place except her shoes. She hadn t had time to put them on.

  WHEN I GOT HOME, I had a snack, eager to look at Moosa's papers. After I finished eating, I shut the curtain, propped the pillow up against the headboard, and leaned back comfortably. I reached for the papers and began.

  Dear Huda,

  I am sharing my wounds with you, although for many years I have tried to bury them in the hope of sparing myself their cruel assault. I didn't want to recount them as others do, always carrying their sadness and spreading it until it fades from repetition. I'm the kind of person who never gives up in the face of calamities. I have written down some of the events I have gone through, and it's the subject of a book that will have the title Diary of a Soldier Returning from the Defeat. Here, I have chosen for you part of that story, which is as painful as many other parts. Please, read slowly. It describes what we went through. The next generations have the right to know the catastrophe's impact before someone denies them this right to the truth.

  Best wishes.

  After this letter, which Moosa had clearly written yesterday, I began reading the pages he had given me.

  Back from death, balls of fire, shrapnel, burning vehicles, and cluster bombs, I was back from moving death, where the lines of retreating vehicles had become an excellent target for airplanes. The vehicles burned along with the bodies. The storm of explosions had thrown soldiers onto the roads, dead and mangled or wounded and helpless. They remained grim faced, looking toward the horizon and waiting for their deaths. Yet these men were actually luckier than those who were being crushed at night by the tanks and heavy-armored cars. The latter were frozen pieces of tissue and bone. I'm back from this horrible chaos, from all this doom. It was only by accident that I escaped the killing.

  We had set forth in a vehicle that was taking us from al-Zubayr in Basra to release and reenlist us in Baghdad. This happened at the same time as the withdrawal from Kuwait. The long convoy had left the large al-Zubayr Square, and the soldiers walked dazedly in the mud of defeat. Indeed, there was a lot of mud, for it hadn't stopped raining for three days. The soldiers plunged into the mud, away from the main road, which was always targeted by airplanes. The continuous chain of hundreds of soldiers hurried with sinking steps to Basra, while fire devoured some of the vehicles and bodies fell dead from them. It was absurdly surreal when a dog rushed to a body and began to devour it just before a passerby hurried to shoot him dead next to the body!

  We quickly crossed to al-Zubayr Bridge, which had been blown up in the first days by the air raids. A sandy dam along the bridge was the only way to cross Shatt al-Basra, which collects the waters of central and southern Iraq and discharges them into the sea. The mud stretched to that sandy barricade, and burning vehicles and armored cars blocked the way. A soldier's body was hanging from a vehicle similar to ours, left on the side of the road; the tank was wet with rain, and red drops were falling from it, forming rosy lines on the mud. The dead man was facing the ground, so I could make out only a hanging trunk and swollen limbs.

  Our driver skillfully crossed the road around the steel carcasses, stopping at the end of the line of vehicles crossing the sandy dam. One of our vehicles sank into the mud in the middle of the road, making it impossible for the rest of us to reach the other bank. We became an ideal target for an air strike.

  I jumped from the vehicle; my feet plunged into the mud as I passed under a low, black cloud that was rising from a burning oil well. The roar of an approaching plane meant another fire and explosion that would obliterate many of the bodies packed here. A tractor-I don't know where it suddenly came from or how its driver kept his calm-hooked a chain to our sunken vehicle and pulled it back to the other bank. I and the other soldiers who had abandoned our vehicle jumped back into it.

  The line of refugees grew longer as we approached Basra. As we stopped for a wounded person who was piteously asking for a ride, many other tired soldiers hurried to the vehicle. When we reached Sa'd's Square, Basra's landmark for Iraqi soldiers, the extent of the chaos became clear to us: in the middle of town there were tanks everywhere, heavy artillery was on the sidewalks, and soldiers were chewing bread on the street. I shifted my gaze to the features of the city itself. Young girls were looking down from an apartment balcony, witnessing what was going on in the street. The roof of the Basra television and media headquarters had been blown up by a huge missile, and the damage to the building seemed extensive. Just ahead of us, a clamoring tank suddenly stopped and turned to the right, dischargi
ng a heavy shower of bullets at a huge portrait of the president. I was floored by this act. "Something is going to happen here," I said to myself.

  We arrived at al-Ishar. It was noisy, not because of its usual daily activity as the lively center of Basra, but because of the crowd of soldiers moving from sidewalk to sidewalk, square to square, and bridge to bridge. The corniche was choked with soldiers who were trying to cross Shatt el-Arab on their way to Tannuma. We left, heading to the small bridge that leads to the shrine of Imam Ali. The chaos rose to a fury as soldiers on the sidewalks and between cars crowded into parallel lines, trying to cross a temporary bridge set up over Shatt el-Arab. The hundreds of vehicles were barely moving. What a massacre there would be if an air strike were made against us right then! No sooner did I think this than the thunder of an approaching plane incited a panic.

  Like terrified worms on the ground, we jumped from the vehicles to the streets nearby or under the small bridge; some soldiers threw themselves on the riverbank. Piled with stones from Basra's Reconstruction Campaign, the bank was paradoxically witnessing the Destruction Campaign against the Iraqi people. Our fear drove us aimlessly into a bottleneck. A young woman on one of the balconies, unfolding her laundry, gazed at our featureless faces.

  From three until seven that night, we waited for the huge line of vehicles to move. I was struck by the scene. Crowds of soldiers were crossing the bridge, walking to Shatt el-Arab's other bank. I asked the pedestrians, "Where to?"

  "To my house"... "To Baghdad"..."To al-Hilla" To Kirkuk" ... "To Ramadi" ... "To Karbala"... The sunset trailed dark threads, adding more gloom to the desolation of the cold and the thick mud.