When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad

by Mona Yahia

  —No love letters either, and no clambering up walls to the balcony, Shuli merrily adds.

  —Until when?

  —Till the coming of the Messiah, Shuli answers.

  —Shut up Shuli, nobody asked you anything! Baba, please tell me, how long do you want me to stay away from Laurence?

  —Until further notice.

  The coming of the Messiah was no exaggeration after all. I sigh as noisily as possible to demonstrate my distress, but it is drowned by the news bulletin.

  We have won the war, we have routed them, the great day has arrived, the Voice of the Arabs is gasping. Our troops have penetrated the Negev desert and are spreading despair amongst the armed forces of the Zionist bandits. Radio Baghdad claims the enemy has lost a hundred and sixty-five planes, half of its air force within one day, and that the brave Arab infantry is marching towards Tel Aviv. Radio Damascus says the Syrian tanks have taken control of the Hula Valley and are advancing towards Safed. Radio Amman proclaims that Jordanian warplanes are strafing the suburbs of Tel Aviv and that, seized by panic, the Jews are rushing out of their houses into the streets.

  Mother and father exchange dismayed glances. The Tel Aviv branch of the family must be on their minds. Father breaks his soft-boiled egg with nervous taps of his spoon. Only now do I notice that mother has taken nothing but tea for breakfast. She looks like a bundle of nerves. Did she spend a sleepless night? My belly is seized with cramp, as if my umbilical cord – which has been coming loose lately – tightens once more and binds me not only to mother but to all our relatives in Tel Aviv.

  Blood-relations or not, I was unable to attribute personal feelings to them in the past. How often would I stare at their portraits, looking in vain for some likeness and waiting for a familial chord to strike! When nothing of the sort happened, I told them that as first cousins we could donate organs to each other, that our mothers or fathers were siblings, that we shared the same grandparents and the same family stories. But their faces remained frozen, unreal like paper dolls, as remote as Tel Aviv or America.

  —I don’t believe a word they say, Shuli growls. They never report facts, just wishful thinking.

  He turns on the second transistor radio, which emits a deep and delicate female voice, melancholy and yet detached. It’s Feirouz, my favourite singer. Before he switches to another station, I snatch the radio and dart behind father’s chair, challenging Shuli with my nervous giggles.

  —It’s not your radio! Baba, tell him the radio belongs to the family. It’s not fair…

  Father says nothing. Shuli gets up, advances toward me. I jump behind mother’s chair, screaming and giggling.

  —Lina, Shuli, stop this nonsense. Let us have our breakfast in peace.

  “Let them eat it up … let the fires eat up Israel”, Feirouz is singing.

  Shuli grabs the radio from my hand.

  —My beloved singer has deserted me, I mumble, back at the table.

  —Don’t be so pathetic, she has never sung for you! Shuli replies as he shifts the station to Kol Israel, and lowers the volume.

  The Israelis claim to have destroyed four hundred Arab warplanes on all fronts.

  —Four hundred in one day, wow! Israelis don’t lack imagination either!

  —Sh … can’t hear a word.

  While Shuli is thrilled by the news, father in no way looks happy about the four hundred destroyed warplanes. I doubt though that it is the fate of the Arab armies he is concerned about.

  —I’m totally confused, mother falters. I don’t know what to feel, who and what to believe.

  Father acknowledges radio reports as facts only after they have been broadcast by the BBC, preferably in English. Shuli swears by Kol Israel. But while the two men judge with their hearts, mother’s own heart keeps drifting between radio waves, homeless and confused.

  The telephone rings. A Jewish friend warns us of a mass demonstration in the centre of the city, and advises us to stay at home. Furious crowds are heading for the US Embassy and the British Council, he says, to denounce the so-called Zionist-British-American conspiracy.

  —All the more reason, father concludes as he lays down the receiver. I must do some shopping today. Who knows what the next days will bring?

  In the afternoon, the demonstrators run out of Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes to burn, and after hours of raucous cursing, they begin to lose their voices too. As the crowds dissipate, father and I venture out to the market. We buy a dozen cans of Kraft cheese and luncheon-meat, tea and sugar, radio batteries, washing powder, toilet paper, tranquillisers and laxatives to last for months. And a supply of rice bags and watermelons to erect a barricade.

  On the third day, the BBC reports that the Israeli forces have gained ground and penetrated deep into the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank of Jordan, causing Arab armies heavy casualties on both fronts.

  Father turns down the radio as the broadcaster announces the name of the station. Shuli cries from under the staircase,

  —Come here, they’ve conquered Jerusalem! The Wailing Wall … Israeli soldiers have occupied Old Jerusalem, come, quick …

  The four of us huddle under the staircase and listen to a direct broadcast from Kol Israel in Arabic. The Israeli Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan, the one-eyed war god, arrives at the Wailing Wall. The Israeli national anthem is played while the broadcaster describes each move the General makes. Dayan is standing to attention. Reviewing the guard of honour. Scribbling a wish on a piece of paper. The General is folding the paper and inserting it into a crevice between two ashlars of the Wailing Wall.

  Father’s eyes are wet. The massacre conceived and untimely celebrated by the Arab world has proved abortive. Israel, will continue to be. And so will my assumed relatives, whose reality has been further reduced to vacant patches in our family album.

  —Father, have we got some wine? Shuli cheerfully says. What are we doing in this mouse-hole? It’s an historic day. Let’s get out of here. Let’s celebrate the conquest of Jerusalem. Let’s celebrate the defeat of our native land!

  In the evening, the BBC reports the burning and looting of Jewish houses, cars, and shops in Tunis. The same is said to have taken place in Tripoli. In Aden, a number of Jews have been murdered by rioters. In Egypt, four hundred Jewish men, between the ages of twenty and fifty, have been arrested.

  Father is in his late fifties and Shuli is barely nineteen, I tell myself, hardly reassured, now that the variations of the word persecution are unfolding themselves. While Egypt is openly punishing its Jewish citizens for Israel’s victory, other Arab governments are setting the man in the street against them, instigating a sort of improvised, do-it-yourself revenge. Taking both possibilities into account, my parents revert to the standard measures of precaution. Mother conceals her jewels under a wobbly tile in the bedroom while, at father’s request, Shuli installs a new padlock on our gate – without sparing us his doubts about its effectiveness.

  At his wits’ end, father does more burning – more letters, more pictures, including the last portrait of his mother, who died in Tel Aviv alias New York, two years ago.

  —Look at us, he says as he dumps the ashes into the toilet. We’re achieving what the Arab armies have failed to do: we’re erasing the traces of the enemy …

  The water flushes and sweeps father’s personal documents down the drain, along with the security with which he once provided me. It does not seem such a long time ago that I used to hide behind him as if he were a mound of sandbags, hold on to his knees, and watch the world from between his legs. Later, I would ride him piggyback and, my arms clasped around his neck, order him about the garden, hunting clouds and butterflies, detecting woodworm in trees, listening to the buzz of bees, and chasing swallows as far as India and China …

  The next morning, a shrill meowing issues from our garden. A red tiger-striped kitten! He must be starving. I sneak to the kitchen and pour milk into a bowl, quietly, hoping to escape mother’s sharp ears.

  S
he catches me in the corridor, bowl in hand.

  —For God’s sake, how many times must I tell you not to walk barefoot outdoors? An insect will bite you one day and only then will you learn a lesson … Wait, you can’t have this bowl, take the green one instead, we’re no longer using it. And be sure to keep it outside, as well as this loudmouth of a cat. Heavens, did it swallow a microphone or what!

  Not even a speech about filthy street animals being carriers of all sorts of disease and epidemics? Mother’s strictest rule has been toned down overnight. Should her abrupt leniency upset or please me? I cannot decide. I cross the damp grass barefoot, apprehensive of a sting shooting up from the dubious earth. The red kitten approaches, his tail upright. His colour ranges from orange to ginger and from carrot to curry.

  He laps up the milk, licks his whiskers, then his paw, with which he scrubs his face clean. After that he rubs his humid snout against my legs. I kneel down. He shuts his eyes and leans his warm purring body against my thighs. I chuck him under the chin, and run my hand down the nape of his neck. His fur is so sleek, he cannot possibly be ill. Curry opens his sleepy honey eyes and licks my toes with his prickly tongue.

  Khaled has been watching us from their balcony for some time. I lift my head and acknowledge him at last, after which we both hasten to look away. I do not call him over to see my new kitten, he does not spray me with his water pistol. At this moment, it flashes through my mind that Zeki and Dunia have not rung us up or dropped by, as they usually do whenever a local upheaval breaks out.

  During the following days, while the map of the Middle East is changing, I divert my attention to my French romances and forget myself in the embraces of lovers who long for and betray each other. Quite often, I am tempted to peek at the reassuring kiss or wedding cake on the last page. Now and then I hear Radio Baghdad asking its citizens for blood donations, Kol Israel inviting Um Kalthoum to give her promised concert to the thousands of Egyptian prisoners of war in Tel Aviv, Nasser admitting defeat and resigning. Between one romance and the other, I grab a bite in the kitchen and overhear that Iraq is severing its diplomatic ties with Britain and the United States, that masses of demonstrators throughout the Arab world are calling on Nasser to retract his resignation.

  —Sacham wichew, Nasser has sooted his face. They’ve all sooted their faces, mother says.

  The streets in Baghdad are packed with more people than they can hold. Demonstrators are neither dancing today nor running riot, only marching. Students, workers, bedouins, intellectuals, effendis, and fellaheen are walking side by side, hand in hand. Their faces are gloomy. They are weeping over their defeat, aching with wounded pride.

  Dangerous are the tears of proud men, mother murmurs.

  They gather in Sahat al-Tahrir, Liberation Square, stamping a thousand times, and more. The Square sags under their trampling – the pulse of people in fury.

  They will call it al-naksa, the Dejection. In the rest of the world it will be known as the Six Day War. It will take me longer than six days to put it on paper, thirty years later, when I will speak of it as my first war.

  On the sixth day, Dudi’s father is arrested.

  Summer ’67

  —Wake up children, quickly! Hurry up. Collect your bedclothes and come inside …

  Slowly, I open my eyes.

  —Watch out! Don’t open your eyes …

  What’s the point of waking up just to keep my eyes shut? I sway in and out of sleep, while mother’s paradoxical instructions reiterate in my ears. Between her words, windows are rattling, trees rustling. She is shaking my shoulder.

  —Hurry up, Lina, the sandstorm is about to break.

  Mother rushes back inside. Shuli is rising to his feet. I stretch out my arms and release a lengthy yawn. Hot dust blows into my mouth. Shuli is removing his sheet, hastily folding his mattress. Coughing in the yellow haze I leave my bed and do the same. A gust twitches the sheet from my fingers. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I chase the white sheet, snatch it, and lose it again to the storm. It pierces the yellow night, swirling along in the howling wind like a ghost, flapping and twisting with stomach-ache. I grope towards the door, dragging the rest of my bedclothes inside.

  Sand grains will patter against my window pane for the rest of the night.

  The next morning, the pale sky has come into view again while the floor of my room has been covered with a carpet of dust. In spite of the closed windows and doors, the storm has left its traces all over the house. Before breakfast, mother assigns us our duties. Father is to shake off the dust sheets, wipe the door handles, the window sills, the picture frames. Shuli is to clean his room. Mother and I are in charge of the floor. After brushing away the sand, we rinse and mop the tiles, again and again, until the fresh water in the bucket is no longer muddy.

  Only hours later will mother discover the sand strewn like curry over the chicken in the freezer.

  Distracted by the cleaning operation, I lift the telephone receiver with the intention of calling Selma. The absence of the dialling tone reminds me that our line is dead. I press and release the two black pegs, but nothing doing. What’s dead is dead. The black set is as useful as a toy telephone.

  Last month, shortly after the war, when the first lines were cut off, a rumour circulated that the government was depriving its Jewish citizens of the luxury of communicating with the outside world. It took us a few days to discuss the plausibility of such a far-fetched idea until, one after the other, our telephones were silenced.

  —Better no line than a tapped one, said the one.

  —It spares us anonymous calls in the middle of the night, added the other.

  —But what if an emergency … argued the third. What if one needed an ambulance in the middle of the night?

  I slam down the receiver. What’s the use of a telephone when all my friends’ lines are dead?

  Shuli vacates the bathroom at last. I hurry to occupy it and lock the door, resolved to take a bath, like the actress in the foreign film yesterday. She was the picture of pleasure and relaxation. I insert the plug and turn on the water. As I get undressed it occurs to me that the bath in the film was brimming with soap bubbles, which concealed the body of the actress – except for her head and arms. I add some shampoo to the water, but it does not foam.

  I plunge in all the same, eager to wash the grains of sand out of my pores. Scenes from the days when the bath used to be spacious enough for Shuli and me along with a few toy ducks and turtles return to my mind. What’s the point of growing up if the world only gets narrower? I stretch out my legs, and open Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Men at the page with the folded corner.

  The book fails to grip me. Before the chapter is over, my mind has wandered away from New England, my gaze landed on my toenails – red and glistening, poking out like beacons from the water. A dark thought closes on me. Of all the faraway shores I long to explore, I fear the remotest point my feet will ever reach is the opposite end of the bath.

  A knock at the door followed by Selma’s voice dissipates my melancholy. I put Little Men aside, get up, slip into my bathing-suit, and unlock the bathroom door. A dishevelled Selma bursts in, panting.

  —A plague on them, she grumbles, and unbuttons her shirt, revealing her dark green bikini underneath.

  How did she know I was in the bath, I wonder, and plunge back into the water, by now as turbid as the Tigris.

  —What happened?

  —Our Sports Centre … it’s gone … the bloody army has confiscated our Sports Centre!

  Without asking whether I minded, Selma plonks herself into the bath, opposite me – her long legs on either side of my body – throwing up waves and slopping water on the floor.

  —What army? Why? How come?

  Her curls are floating like paper boats.

  —Three officers went to the Jewish Community Council yesterday and asked for the keys of the Sports Centre. And do you think anybody stood up for our club? Our Hacham Bashi opens his big mouth only at press
conferences, and only to proclaim that we’re first Arabs and then Jews, and least of all Zionists, and all this obsolete stuff which impresses nobody. But when it comes to something important … Anyway, Abu Lias was in the office at the time, and he thought at first they’d come for him. Their uniform alone made him wet his pants. I swear by God, I’m not exaggerating. Baba knows him and he says the man’s scared of his own shadow. So it wouldn’t surprise me if this Abu Lias not only handed over the keys to our club without any objection but ended up thanking the three officers for their visit.

  —Pity he didn’t hand over the keys to our school.

  —Iraqi officers learning to read and write? You must be kidding! It would ruin their reputation!

  We roar with laughter. Selma’s wet curls are sinking one after the other into the water.

  —Anyway can you imagine this vacation lasting forever? First it was no swimming at dawn, and no open-air cinema in the evening, in case we drew the attention of some bullies. Then picnics were crossed off, in case we appeared to be having fun and celebrating the Arab defeat. And now it’s no basketball in the afternoon, ’cause our great army …

  And we are not even committed to devoirs de vacances this summer, since Mlle Capdevielle will no longer teach at our school. In fact, she has left the country for good, God knows why, because she definitely has no reason for fear – as France and the Arab countries seem to be getting along like dihn udibis, like butter and honey. But Mlle Capdevielle revealed her plans only at the end of the last lesson. She was distributing the devoirs de vacances – as if to confirm her return in the autumn – when she mumbled something about the new teacher who would be correcting them. As our jaws dropped and we waited for an explanation, her French turned fast, her sentences long, knotted in subjunctives and conditionals. Nevertheless, I understood what she was leading up to. She was not coming back from Paris, neither in the autumn nor any time later. Before anybody could raise a question let alone an objection, the school bell rang. This time Mlle Capdevielle was the first to dash outside.