by Mona Yahia
Father assures me that we will not turn poor overnight, that our savings will last a long time. How long, I dare not ask. The maid is already reduced to twice a week, and I overhear my parents discussing selling the car. Father spends most of his time in the living-room, with postage stamps heaped in front of him and a catalogue at his side. Through a magnifying glass, he studies each stamp and compares it to the illustration in the catalogue. The days when neither Zeki nor any other former colleague pays him a visit, he engages in his solitary activity for hours. But sometimes I catch him staring into space with a blank gaze which I am unable to bear, and into which I intrude with a finjan of Turkish coffee and our mother-of-perl tawli board.
It is Shuli who scornfully points out to me that neither coffee nor a tawli game could ever make up for what father has lost.
At least mother is spared the daily ordeal of waiting for his safe homecoming, so she tells her friends. Otherwise, I dare say, she is not that happy to have him hanging around. In fact, they seem to be doing their best to keep out of each other’s way. While he pores over his stamps in the morning, she locks herself in the kitchen – except for a cigarette break which she takes in the living-room while waiting for the pressure-cooker to whistle. Just then he steals out and hoses the grass to cool the garden for the evening. On his return, he finds the shopping list smoothed under his magnifying glass. At breakfast and at lunch, it is the radio which does the talking. At tea-time, they hide behind the daily papers. Only after sunset, relieved perhaps of the feared clashes through the day, do they start relating to each other in a natural way again.
As we all have time to while away this summer, Jewish friends drop by almost every evening, and quietly exchange the latest news in our garden. The Jewish pharmacists were forced to close last week. Our school graduates will not be admitted to universities this term. The three country clubs in Baghdad have barred their Jewish members from entering their grounds. Yesterday, our President praised the new translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Arabic. The telephone department will soon be collecting our telephones. Curry wanders from one leg to the next, rubbing his striped body and meowing for attention. Somebody’s neighbour, who works in the French embassy, passed her a clipping from a French newspaper. It reports that the Jews of Libya and Aden are being allowed to emigrate to Italy and England.
A military jeep draws up in front of our house. A fly swat halts mid-swat. A sentence forgets its end. An unpeeled pumpkin seed remains poised between two canine teeth. Two soldiers jump down from the jeep. Father is petrified in his chair. Mother appeals to God. I lift Curry on to my lap. The soldiers head to the front of their jeep, lift the bonnet and examine the engine.
After they have driven off, mother fetches another round of sherbet from the kitchen.
—Wallah I’d leave on the spot with nothing but the clothes I am wearing, if only they’d let us.
“If only they’d let us …”, everybody keeps saying. But nobody will take the risk of travelling to Basra to check out the possibility of an illegal trip through Shat al-Arab to Iran.
Tired of their kinah, I go inside and listen to pop music from Radio Monte-Carlo. “The Young Ones”. “Help”. “You Are My Destiny”. “Diana”. “Tell Laura I Love Her”. But the thought of departure recurs in my mind. What if we were indeed to set out this very evening and leave everything behind? What about my comics? The stamp and key-holder collections? My new coat? And all the knick-knacks and board games? Before going to bed, I inspect my closet and sort out, for the first time, my most important belongings.
The fat albums are stacked on the upper shelf. How many stamps they must contain! I wince at the hours invested in soaking and detaching them from paper, drying, smoothing, and arranging them in the album. Four albums. Hundreds of sets which have taken years to build up, and still more waiting to be completed. I would never be able to drag them along. Father was sensible enough not to purchase a house, as if he were preparing for this day. Why didn’t he warn me against collections? Migrants cannot afford to be collectors, he should have put it fair and square. For even a miniature such as a postage stamp turns bulky when multiplied by thousands.
I pull out the drawer. Colouring pencils roll about. A paintbox slides towards the front racing against a larger drawing pad underneath. I thumb through the pad and review my attempts to sketch human faces. Clumsy pencil lines build up flat and disproportionate features. Shuli’s eyes are smudged like smog. Mother’s hair falls stiffly, like a steel helmet. Father looks as old as his grandfather, Laurence as delicate as a girl, and Dudi, a rascal, a wanted criminal. I tear out the portraits and pitch them into the waste-paper basket.
When we go, I will leave all my failures behind.
I wipe the dust off my photo album and browse through the black and white family pictures, and snaps taken on excursions. The album preserves my thirteen years. Even memories end up as a collection that one cannot help assembling. Each picture is affixed with four golden corners. Each celebrates a moment in life. I am posing in front of the Arch of Ctesiphon, the ruins of Hatra, the spiral minaret of Samarra, the Palace of Assur, the lake of Habbanyah. The carefree smile worn during the first years contracts into a self-conscious streak as the pages progress. The gaze, though still alert, is now rather more anxious to please than to explore.
The last pages are blank. We have taken no pictures this summer. No moment has merited safekeeping. And blank they will remain, the last pages of my Baghdad album, marking a period which, in spite of my farewell, has only now begun.
They practised the use of sirens last week. This evening we have a blackout, even though the war is over. From our roof, Baghdad looks entirely black, as if stormed by soot. Even the Dora, the oil refinery, is put out. The sky, on the other hand, is spilling over with light.
Shuli unfurls his star chart.
As he has scarcely slept lately, Shuli has been spending the small hours of the night locating and identifying heavenly bodies. What appears to be an arbitrary scattering overhead is grouped in clusters and constellations on the chart. Besides, the stars are numbered and connected to each other with lines, forming geometrical shapes and bearing fancy names: al-kaid, the leader, al-markab, the boat, al-dubhe, the bear, al-tair, the bird, al-gol, the demon.
Stars are a collection one can never lose, I conclude, because no matter where one goes, one will always recover them overhead.
—Wrong! Shuli says. The sky isn’t identical all over the globe. The one above Buenos Aires for instance is entirely different from the one above Baghdad. But even the sky above your bed is variable, and not only throughout the year, but during one single night.
I have never noticed it.
—And, in addition, suns and stars aren’t eternal. They either explode one day, or are extinguished. Some of the stars you see up there no longer exist. While their light has travelled for years to reach our earth, they have in the meantime been obliterated. This is why looking at the stars is, in many cases, like looking back at the past. That’s why starry nights can make you feel so nostalgic.
Nostalgic about what? His last sentence sounds remote, as if spoken to the stars. I nod all the same, without really understanding how a light we can see no longer exists.
—One day, our earth will complete its cycle and burn itself out. Oh, don’t worry, this will happen when you and I and our descendants and perhaps the entire human race, are long dead. It could take millions of years. Not that time really matters, for a life-cycle is a whole, whether it lasts 30 days or 30 billion years, be it the life-span of a flower, a bird, a man, or a planet.
I wish he would stop speaking of death and go to sleep.
My eyes return to the earth, across the street, to Laurence’s house, dark like an extinguished star.
Once Upon a Time
In the late afternoon, when the heat relents and the sky recovers its blue, I climb up to the roof and open our beds, mine and Shuli’s. Father and mother stopped sleeping ou
tdoors years ago, giving up the stars in favour of air-conditioning as father likes to say. I pull away the sunshade, unfold the mattresses, spread the sheets and spray them with water, which will evaporate by night and cool the beds. Before going downstairs again, I steal a glance at Laurence’s house across the street.
Dozens of coloured underpants are hanging out on the washing-line on their roof.
Crimson red, navy-blue, dark green, yellow, black. What festivity! White underwear must be out in England. They are painting them bright, like Easter eggs. I lean over the parapet to examine the underpants from a closer range. Their size leaves no doubt. They belong to the son of the house.
Blue would certainly match his eyes. Yellow should go with his hair, although it could also make him look pale. In red he would acquire sex appeal. I giggle, embarrassed myself by the intimacy I have lately cultivated in respect to Laurence’s clothing and underclothing. Black would accord him an older, grave appearance. As to green … The door on to their roof is pushed open. The Kurdish washerwoman trudges out with a mound of washing, screening her down to the waist.
I vanish inside.
Mlle Capdevielle once told us the story of a French artist who had painted the same cathedral over and over again. It was the light at different hours of the day which he had studied, she explained. But now I am convinced that the pursuit of light and colour had been a pretext, and the cathedral on the canvases only half the story. The other half was that the artist had been secretly watching for someone, a woman needless to say, at whose glimpse his heart leapt, no matter at what hour or colour of the day.
At night, the light behind Laurence’s translucent window is yellow-orange. As the street quietens down, the small silhouette of the night-watchman scuffs about the dimly lit neighbourhood. His rifle, slung over his shoulder, pulls down the right side of his body. He greets father, who is locking our gate. Father returns the greeting and, as usual, hands him a coin. A dirhem, I suppose. May Allah protect you, the old watchman replies in a humble tone. A shadow sweeps past Laurence’s window. The light in his room drops to pale green. He must have switched on his table-lamp. How long is he going to read? I recline in bed, stretch out my arms and legs to savour the first touch of the cool bedsheet.
“Que sera sera … whatever will be will be.” The band’s vocalist has started singing in the Embassy nightclub nearby. They often play Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, and Elvis Presley till the small hours of the morning. Shuli complains that they disturb his sleep, whereas I enjoy listening to them, while lying under the stars. “Strangers in the night … exchanging glances …” Did a window just squeak? I lift my head and check Laurence’s light again. Out at last. Now he must be all ears, listening to Sinatra with me, as if music has contracted the straight line between us to one point which we simultaneously inhabit.
Sinatra pauses. The barks of stray dogs answering each other from different spots in the neighbourhood shift into the foreground. Our doorbell rings. Laurence is asking for me. Go away, father says, the last thing we need is to be accused of espionage. Laurence is heartbroken. My father does not relent. My eyelids get heavier. The green grass of home is getting fainter. The air feels cooler. The dogs have joined Tom Jones in one chorus. My breath plunges deeper, attuned to doze.
Tomorrow, perhaps tomorrow, Laurence will ring our doorbell and inquire after me.
One tomorrow afternoon, standing by my window, I catch a glimpse of my English friend crossing the street and walking to our house. I sprint downstairs, my heart beating fast. I, and only I have the right to turn him out. The bell rings. Wait, father warns. My hand is immobilised on the door handle. I didn’t call him over, I’ve no idea what brings him here, I shrug, feigning indifference. Mother shows up with curlers in her hair. How did she hear the bell from the bathroom! Don’t let him inside the house, you hear me? Father asks me to make it brief. Mother stresses it is the last time. Father reminds me to tell him that it is not personal.
—Are you letting him wait till tomorrow morning? mother cries out at last. Go before somebody sees him at our door.
I stroll to the gate, as if I possessed the world and not only the exclusive right to send Laurence away. My guest smiles his way in and follows me to the garden, to a corner which the nabug tree and the climbing plants have screened from the street. His hair has grown longer still. It is now gathered with a red rubber band into a ponytail. Is he wearing red underpants too? I am dying to ask. His cool gaze tempers the emotions about to run loose inside me. Our eyes meet. His freeze into an opaque, artificial blue, like that of a Barbie doll. I stare into his irises and capture the distorted reflection of my own features.
I should be saying something. The speech I have prepared. The War … the six days … Jerusalem … petrol … damn it, what does all this have to do with us? Make it brief. Tell him about the watch, surely they must have noticed the Smoker. About Dudi’s father … about our telephone, has he tried to ring me up by the way? Well, yes, I have become inaccessible! Why? Because … I should watch my words. A hint will do. Israel and Iraq? No, that’s no concern of his. It’s rather Iraq and Britain … Right, Britain and Iraq – so what about them? A verb is missing. Have I forgotten? A verb is indispensable in the English sentence, whereas the Arabic needs no action for its right to be.
—I’ve come to say goodbye, he announces.
Two verbs, so simple, so easy. And I don’t even have to drive him away. He is flying to England in a couple of days. For good. Boarding-school. His parents will visit him in the holidays. He will never return to Baghdad. The country is no longer safe for us foreigners, he says, like a man of the world. Our parting does not seem to upset him in the least. Laurence has the world at his feet, why should he linger before our closed gate? Soon he will be flying across the sea, far above the clouds. What made me think that in the abyss of my despair he would seek an adventure?
His arm is rising. He is about to hold out his hand to me. My hands grab each other behind my back. He checks his hand halfway and slips it down into his pocket.
Your ticket is ready, your passport is in your pocket, what are you hesitating for, you lucky foreigner? Life has already separated our paths, so why don’t you stop dithering, say goodbye and go?
But Laurence shows no hurry. He ambles by the myrtle hedge, stoops over the sweet peas, jumps into the hammock, and clambers up the nabug tree until nobody in the neighbourhood has failed to notice him. I remain stiff and still behind the climbing plants. Hasn’t he got the faintest idea of what fear is? He folds his legs and, clutching at a branch, throws his body upside down. His two arms are dangling, his golden ponytail in between. If he falls and breaks his neck, I will pinch his passport and fly British Airways.
His rubber band loosens. His hair falls free. Effortlessly he shoves himself and sits up, then jumps down to the ground. The two lines of sweat streaming down his temples remind me of his former acrobatic performances. I am longing for him already. Should I brush aside my pride and admit how much I have missed him? Would it be proper to ask for his address in England, or had I better wait for him to make the offer?
—Gosh! Your orange trees are growing fast … he remarks, as he collects his hair into a ponytail again.
—To hell with our trees! I don’t care a pin for anything growing around me anymore.
Laurence gapes at me, as if my indifference to the orange trees has offended him personally, and advances slowly towards our gate. I accompany him, resolved not to hold him back. Let him be shaken by the violence inside me. Let him perceive the rift between us. Let him at last play Orpheus and flee hell. Go off, hero, save your skin and don’t you ever dare to look back. Go, I am far more at home in my own hell than in your innocent sensitivity to orange trees.
Laurence opens our gate.
A DDT lorry enters our street. Each summer it rumbles through the city and sprays insecticide which relieves us from bugs, gnats, and all sorts of mosquitos for a few weeks. Windows open to let the vapour
in. Small children are chasing the truck, shouting with excitement, running in and out of the thick fog.
Laurence snatches my hand and hauls me inside the mist.
Two rubbery lips are dabbing my cheek. Is he kissing me? I cannot discern a thing in the whiteout. His mouth slides down my nose and lands on my lower lip. I close my eyes. I ought to open my mouth, I have often seen such kisses in the cinema, but the taste of DDT does not motivate me. Having somehow managed its way inside me, Laurence’s tongue bumps into mine, scrapes itself on my teeth, reluctant to come to rest. Isn’t it time for a declaration of love instead of this dancing and gurgling? I open my eyes again. The haze is dissipating. Laurence’s nebulous features are emerging. I push him away. His soggy tongue darts back. His eyes open. Two lapis lazuli discs are glistening in the evanescing cloud. Like a jinni, he would have said, had he seen himself in the mirror at that moment.
Like a jinni going back into the bottle, I murmur, aching farewell, as I wipe my mouth and run home.
Laurence and I will never see each other again.
The story, however, does not end there. While he was kissing me inside the DDT cloud, Laurence slipped a folded strip of paper between my fingers. His address in London, I presumed.
We were invisible inside the DDT. Nobody, not even the children who were playing around, could have taken notice of the gesture. No sooner have I quelled one worry than I think up a new one. What if our house is ransacked by the security police? To be on the safe side, I ought to learn the address by heart and – following father’s example – burn the paper and dump its ashes into the toilet. But could I rely on my memory, months, perhaps years from now? With two security officers at the back of my mind, I go over every nook and cranny in our house. Would they check inside every reel of thread in mother’s sewing box? Would they dig up our garden, dismantle our transistor radios, unroll the bandages in our first-aid kit, search between the slices of our bread, peep behind the pictures in my photo album?
