“I’d like to, but I can’t. I’m not a detective.”
Nidal stares at his brother-in-law as if he’s never seen him before. “So what are you?”
“You know as well as anybody.”
“You work for the police and they call you Inspector – what else am I supposed to think?”
“Worked. Past tense. And it wasn’t like that. I sat at a desk. I did paperwork and filing. I read reports about investigations. Then I read the informers’ reports they were based on. Then I wrote my own reports and filed them alongside all the other reports.”
“Do I have to draft a report for you?”
“Look, sorry. Let me think about it.”
Nidal looks down into his teacup, then across the room at the place on the wall where the picture of the Great Leader used to hang. Muhsin Khadr al-Khafaji waves the chaichi over and orders another tea. Around them, pairs of men sit at low wooden tables, sipping tea, smoking, and staying up late like they’d do on any other Ramadan night. Some roll dice and slap backgammon pieces back and forth. In one corner, old men play cards. Their faces show no emotion, just intensity. Small piles of bills sit in the middle of one table.
Nidal watches the men playing their game. Khafaji watches Nidal’s stiff profile until the man begins to sob and heave. Khafaji claps a hand on his massive shoulder. After a while, Nidal leans back in his chair and wipes his eyes with a thick peasant hand. Only now does Khafaji notice that Nidal isn’t wearing his gold cross. They used to tease him about it all the time. Now it was gone. Khafaji was going to cry too if they didn’t change the subject.
“OK. I’ll help you. But tell me again from the beginning.”
“One night last week Sawsan didn’t come back from work, and now Maha sits at home and cries all the time. She’s going out of her mind. You hear stories and you imagine the worst. After everything that’s happened, we were thinking we would leave. But now we can’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?”
“Because we don’t know what happened and we still don’t. She just hasn’t come home is all we know.”
“When was this?”
“Thursday.”
“Anyone call?”
“…?”
“Anyone call asking for money? Telling you to meet them somewhere? Did you contact anyone else?”
Nidal grabs Khafaji’s arm and raises his voice. “Brother, who the hell are we going to call? You’re the only police we know.”
“I quit. And anyway, there’s no police now.”
“You’re the one with all the connections in the Party.”
“That was years ago. And there’s no Party now.”
“So all we’re left with is you, I guess.”
Khafaji struggles to look optimistic. He mumbles, “I can try to help.” He clears his throat and starts over. “Tell me the rest again.”
The third time he tells it, Nidal’s story is still threadbare. A few broken strands tied in a knot. Sawsan graduated in August from Mustansiriyya University. Institute of Management and Administration. Wanted to study programing but ended up studying finance. The family had met a few of her friends from the university but didn’t know much about who they were, or how to contact them. After graduation, Sawsan started working. As a consultant, she said. Helped out with the household expenses, especially since Nidal’s job vanished. She worked for a professor at the university.
“It is a good job. Sawsan even had a driver to pick her up every morning and drop her every evening.”
“Write down any of the names you know. Classmates. Teachers. Anything. I’ll see what I can find.”
Nidal pulls out a piece of paper and starts to write.
An argument erupts at the card table in the back. The entire café goes silent. Cups are spilled. Glass splinters on the ground. Hands and fists lunge out at piles of bills. A scrappy old man with a week’s beard grabs the edge of his dishdasha and hobbles off toward the door, yelling something about mothers and cunts. The rest of the men call after him, taunting him and laughing at the mess. A waiter arrives with a broom and wet rag. Nidal and Khafaji look at one another again.
“How are things in the new apartment?” Khafaji asks. Like so many Palestinians, they’d been driven from their homes during the first weeks of the invasion.
“Baladiyat was our home. Our friends were there. Our life was there. Thank God we had Mikhail and the rest of the family. But Saadun will never be home.”
“You’re managing?”
“You’ll see how we’re managing Tuesday when you and Mrouj come over. We’re crammed – nine of us in two rooms. It’s bad enough when there’s water and electricity. But when there isn’t…” Nidal’s voice trails off. “But that’s not the issue any more,” he says. “It’s the attacks. They’re not random. They know who to go after and when. We’re lucky we left when we did. Remember the Jabrawis? They tried to stay on. The rest of us got the message.”
For a moment, Nidal tries to smile. Then his face collapses.
“Look, Muhsin. We lost everything and thought we could adapt. But this is different. As soon as Sawsan comes back, we’re leaving. Have you heard about what’s happening at the stadium? There are thousands of people living in tents there. Most of our building is there, I think. And then there are tens of thousands of others stuck on the border now. We’re getting out before that happens to us.”
He pauses and sips his tea. His eyes remain locked on Khafaji’s. “We’re eligible for a Canadian visa, but we have to apply in Jordan. We’re going to stay with cousins in Amman while we wait.”
“Amman? Really?”
Nidal knocks Khafaji’s shoulder playfully. “Lighten up, Muhsin. We’re Palestinians. We’re good at getting expelled.” Khafaji sees his wife’s emerald eyes again in the eyes of her brother. And also Suheir’s kindness and beauty.
Nidal is a man whose entire life has been spent here in this city. Suddenly a foreign army invades and he becomes a foreigner. This city belongs to him more than it does to me, Khafaji thinks. Suheir and Nidal’s parents were driven out of Jaffa. When they arrived in Baghdad in 1949, they decided to raise their children as if they had always lived here. Typical cosmopolitans, making a good life out of catastrophes. And as the years went by, Baghdad really was home. Over time they came to realize it mostly belonged to the clans from Tikrit. But still, those Tikritis were kind enough to leave scraps for everyone else. And they could never fence in all of the river. Maybe that’s why people never left.
When Suheir died, Khafaji told Nidal to get out while they could. The sanctions were just beginning to hurt, but most people figured out how to adapt and survive. It didn’t occur to Khafaji to leave until it was too late. He would have left with Suheir if he had known how sick she was. Like everyone else, he thought that things couldn’t get any worse. “Patience and strength,” everyone said. “Steadfastness and resistance.” Like most slogans, they taste bitter when you put them back in your mouth later.
Ten years ago they could have gone. Khafaji could have left with Suheir and Mrouj and started over, maybe in Sweden. But somehow they believed that oranges and carrot juice could cure cancer. They needed real medicine, but there was no chance of getting that.
Khafaji looks up and tries to sound strong. “Nidal, we all should have left long ago.”
They order another round and sit in silence. The men in the room continue drinking tea, talking to one another, reading papers, and rolling dice.
When Khafaji looks up, he sees Nidal pulling out crisp 1,000-dinar notes to pay the chaichi. Khafaji starts to argue about paying the bill, but it’s too late.
Khafaji continues to protest until Nidal hugs him. “Next one’s on you, brother. We’ll see you Tuesday for lunch? Maha’s already started cooking. Come as early as you can and spend the whole day with us. Thanks for agreeing to help.”
“It might just be me for Eid.”
“Still the same. No better, no worse.”
“God protect her.”
“What’s God got to do with it?”
“It’s just how we speak, Muhsin. You know that.”
Khafaji scowls as he looks at the scrap of paper in his hand. He sees only one name.
“Zubeida Rashid? Who’s this?”
Nidal shrugs. “Sawsan’s professor. The one she works for.”
“A picture of Sawsan might help jog people’s memory.”
Nidal reaches into his wallet. “I’ve got one from graduation.”
He hands Khafaji a photograph of Sawsan in black robes, holding roses and a diploma. Khafaji stares at it. A beautiful girl of twenty-two. Olive-skinned, with a long, straight nose, raven-black hair and stone-green eyes. A conspicuous beauty mark to the right of her mouth.
The spitting image of her aunt Suheir when she was that age.