“So you are Adil.”
He did not reply.
“And you are Huda.”
“And you?”
“Jasim. Sergeant Jasim.”
“Is my father here?”
“He’s here, but he’s doing inspection.”
“So he’s here?”
“Yes.”
I calmed down a little when I heard what he said. I thought of cross-eyed Hashim. When he grew up he would look like him. He wanted to help me; he tried to take the tray, but I refused, moving it from one hand to the other. The abaya was in my way – I stumbled in it; it twisted round and opened up, revealing my thin body. Before it fell down, Adil helped me lift it and took the tray. When I wore it, I looked like Firdous’s ugly and comical rag doll. Pulling the abaya from the ground I wrapped it round and looked down at my shoes.
Adil walked. I could not tell whether his feet were pulling him or he was dragging them. My knees knocked together and my fingers trembled as I clutched the cloak; I tried to swallow but could not. If only I had tried my cloak on before. Oh, we had done that before, Firdous and I, we laughed for a long time, calling out in voices like the voices of my aunt and her mother, and we quietened down before anyone came in.
The sergeant walked quickly, then stopped to let us catch up, then resumed walking ahead of us.
It was a long, open path, paved only with old footprints, and shiny pebbles both small and large. The soil was red and rippled, covering and uncovering itself as the wind opened up hollows and then filled them, forming mounds and throwing them up into our faces. The edge of the cloak flopped over my face and I nearly fell, but Jasim grabbed me from one side and Adil grabbed me on the other and we stopped. I closed my mouth, pursed my lips and smelled the sand that had got into my hair and between my toes.
“He will be delighted to see you two.”
Calcite air, yellowish, white, red. The wall was behind us, and rooms I could not count before us, distant and small like sand in a swollen eye.
I did not distinguish the colour; I thought I would ask Jasim about it but I kept quiet. I said to myself that it was perhaps the colour of cooked olives. Sweat had begun to trickle down the top of my neck to the top of my spine, and I felt it moving down my back. It ran and I did not know how to stop it. Now my scalp began to itch as well. I reached up to scratch it and then I did not want to stop. Yesterday I had washed in the bathtub at home; it had been months since we had gone to the market bath. When I came out of the bath Firdous stood in front of me and said, “When you grow up you’re going to be tall, and you’ll look beautiful in a cloak.” I was still short, and this cover made me smother and stumble constantly. My skirt was black, as was my blouse; I had borrowed it from Firdous the night after the death. My waist was wet with water. I touched my middle and let go of one side of the cloak; it dropped down, and grains of sand and sweat wiped off my hand.
There was not a single tree in this whole expanse. I did not know what time it was; my watch had not worked for months. My father had brought it for me when I entered the third grade in elementary school. I did not mind all this walking, but my thirst, and the tribulation of my bladder! How was it that Adil had not yet asked to urinate? How could I ask? He was so patient and reserved, and could piss on himself if he saw my father in front of him.
Now the inner gate of the prison was in front of us. It was wide, and high as well. We entered the way cats enter the gate of a mosque; first voices emerged, then the men appeared, their moustaches, their big black boots notched with nails, the smell of their armpits stirred me up as I stared at them. They turned their heads. One of them was clean shaven, and his skin was discoloured, as if the sun had never shone on him for a single second.
We walked down a long, dark corridor. Men walked in and out, turning around and looking. The floor was of old yellow broken brick scrubbed very clean, and reeking of disinfectants, yet flies buzzed all round us, heedless of cleanliness and unintimidated by the police. They buzzed round the men’s noses and bare heads. No one shooed them away or killed them as we did in our house.
“Please come in. This is his room.”
We stood in the middle. Adil walked round a little and placed the tray in the middle of the room and sat at our father’s table. I looked all round me, turning and glancing about. I went to the mirror but saw only the top part of my head. I stood on tiptoe, stumbled, and fell, me and the cloak. I looked at the floor, stained with this piece of diaphanous silken cloth. I gathered it up in my hands and threw it on the only bed in the room.
The floor was of tile that had lost its colour, and become mudcoloured. A thick-sided rectangular metal table with three lockable drawers on the right hand side, and an orderly stack of papers on top. My father loved order. Envelopes and folders were piled neatly. There was an empty waterglass with a sandy residue at the bottom. An old ashtray with a recently stubbed out cigarette, which I emptied in the rusty wastebasket and returned to the table. A black telephone whose surface was smudged and cracked where the numbers were; it was antique, and bore the royal emblem. A wooden chair with a wide back and square pillow with some of the dirty brown cotton stuffing spilling out of it. Adil rested his head on it. On the high wall above the chair hung a picture of the King of Iraq and the Regent on the throne, both in brilliant white clothing. The picture frame was old and silver, and slightly dusty, even as I viewed it from a distance. I approached and wiped it with my arm to see: the King of Iraq was still, and the Regent was showing his even teeth.
Adil tossed his head back. I walked over to the only window, which was also painted in a dark colour, and had a cheap wrinkled curtain. I stood there with the smell of wild thorns passing over me – they were massed like a second, outer window. There were iron bars over the window. A narrow black water hose passed its voice over the tops of the thorns and through their branches, moistening the hot air, soaking up the dust and dirt. It gave off a light, secretive smell of cold that entered my ribs, dried my sweat, and rose to my head. There was a ceiling fan whose sound, as it turned, was like Firdous’s voice when she talked. On the other side was a very low iron bed covered with an earth-coloured sheet, and to the side my father’s blue dishdasha and cloak, and below them his big leather shoes.
A dark-coloured but clean sink was in front of us, with shaving implements on the cheap metal shelf over it. On the wall, a faded towel hung from a big nail.
I lifted the tray and put it in a corner, and sat on the bed.
At once I felt sleepy. The shade was lovely and the air was heavy, and there was no sound from outside. I removed my shoes and placed my bare feet on the floor, and saw my footprint there.
Adil and I did not speak or watch the door. If we had been left there we would immediately have fallen asleep. Would our father be angry with us if he saw us here? If he did get angry, would he hit us in front of the police? No one had hit me for long months. They said I had grown, and it was wrong to hit a girl who had come of age.
Puberty: the unknown door had opened before me, and I saw drops of blood on wide, unbleached clothing. I was not frightened. I had seen your blood flowing from your nose, legs, and mouth. That was my first blood, the exclusive possession of Officer Jamil. This blood would be yours alone. I took off the clothes and looked at it for a long time. My grandmother and Aunt Widad had trained me, and it was concluded in secret. They said: “When you become of age, you should fear men, all men. You can be a mother or a goddess.” I was terrified: my mother was dead and I did not know anything about goddesses. It was not the blood that frightened me, but masters’ complexions: Jamil, Munir, Abu Iman, and … they all came out of the secret suffocating rooms and began to spray you with hoses of fire. You inscribed your clothes with your slender, delicate fingers, locked the door on yourself, and left the blood before you. You looked at it as if he were a new brother of yours. This was your blood, and the first time it came out you did not strike or scream.
Sergeant Jasim came in carrying a round tray with two glasses of laban. He placed it on the table, and I went to him. “Sergeant Jasim, Adil wants to wash his face, and – ”
“The washrooms are at the end of the corridor, on the right.”
Adil paid no attention and did not move. His head was hanging back, as if he were dead.
There were droplets of cold water on the sides of the glasses. The thick rich froth got on my lips as I drank. Adil drank but said nothing. My father’s voice sounded behind me; the glass trembled between my mouth and my hand, dripping on my clothes as I set it down on the table and turned to him. He went first to Adil, and round the table he took us in his arms and hugged us tightly. Had my father grown shorter? Or had I grown taller?
Adil began to cry and I did not know what to do. Not one tear would fall, not one word would come, and he was more perplexed than we were.
Adil’s voice was the first to crack: “Papa, my mother is dead.”
Sergeant Jasim’s voice, as he saluted my father. I heard the sound of his legs as they rubbed together and he raised his arm: “At your service, sir.”
We clung to him, both turned toward the sergeant. He looked at us and lifted Adil to his chest, and carried him over to the bed. I walked behind them.
“Have you eaten?”
No one answered.
“Go and bring twenty skewers of kebab from the town.”
He left Adil, took out half a dinar, and went to the table, took the glasses in his hands and came toward us: “Drink the laban now.”
He did not look into my face or Adil’s, but reached his hands out to the sink, turned on the tap, washed and dried his face, and took off his jacket. There were splotches of sweat under his armpits, and on his stomach and back.
He sat beside Adil and stretched out his legs. I slid down to the floor in front of him and looked at his feet. Instead of his boots he wore ordinary shoes, which I unlaced and pulled off, but when I began to pull his socks off, he pulled them back up and said, “Thank you, little Huda, we’re going out shortly.”
He ruffled Adil’s hair, stretched him out on his lap, and petted his face. They looked at one another. He lifted his face to him as I stood before them: “Have you taken your school certificates yet or not?”
“Papa, Adil passed, and I – ”
He took me by my hand and pulled me to his side, and put his arms round me. My tears streamed down, and my father cried as well. He took his hands away from us and raised them to his head, covered his face, and the sound of his sobbing grew louder and hung in the room’s hot air.
This was a face I had never seen before, and all the moments and old images came near me. His haggard face, the delicate strands of grey more plentiful in his hair, the despotic appearance that aroused our aversion and hatred. These were his tears; he had not borrowed them from someone else, and he was not covering them with a handkerchief. He did not display them, and we could only see them up close. If only Iqbal knew; if only Wafiqa knew; if only the whole neighbourhood knew, that Officer Jamil was covering us with his wailing and his charm. We were crowning him now as father over our small heads, and he was sealing them with white wax and accompanying us as we crossed the road. No pistol with which to humiliate, no whip scourged our skin. Jamil had stopped crying, and we stopped studying his head; we held him by his arms and took him by his sides, and turned to him. We squirmed into his embrace and he hugged and kissed us on the neck and hair, smelled our ears and mouths, and a tear fell from his eye on to our hands. We cried as if Iqbal were there with us all, released from prison and free with us. He stood us up in front of him and looked into our faces, never taking his eyes off us. He dared, he dared us, and got to know us; all that was before us was tears and sorrow and fright.
My father changed his clothes; he surprised us and we saw him change. He kept us waiting, and joined us halfway.
My father.
We grabbed him and shook him and stood together and pulled him to the sink. He blew his nose, washed and groaned. We were behind him. I grabbed Adil, wiped my face with my hand, put the cloak on my head, and we went to the washrooms.
We went back and found him stretched out on the bed, his face washed clean, his eyes bloody, his mouth about to speak. We stood at his head, Adil stayed near him and I wandered round alone. I picked up the tray and went to the table, took out the bread, peeled the eggs and potatoes: “Papa, will you eat with us?”
“I’ll wait for the kebab.”
“Grandmother and Auntie will eat kebab at the holy shrine.”
He spoke in a very soft voice: “How are they?”
Adil stood in front of him: “Papa, why don’t you visit us like before?” I quickly added, “They send you their greetings. Grandmother prays for you all the time when she says her prayers. She raises her head and says, ‘Soften Jamouli’s heart.’ She wants to see you. She said, ‘I’d accept him coming even if he got upset and beat you two,’ Papa. They are at the holy shrine.”
Sergeant Jasim came in. He did not see my father in front of him and did not know whom to salute. My father stirred on the bed and then stood up.
The smell of kebab, onion, and chopped celery. I opened the bag, and a light vapour emerged through my fingers. A layer of fat was stuck to the bottom of the bread. Red sumac was sprinkled on the skewers of kebab and wilted sprigs of mint. There were sharp Karbalastyle pickled vegetables, cooked in vinegar with hot peppers, cucumbers, rose-hued boiled turnips, and tomatoes. Sergeant Jasim returned with a container of laban and clean glasses. We three ate. It was the first time we had eaten together. My father broke up the bread and put the kebab in the middle and pushed it toward us. Adil’s voice: “I’ve had enough, praise God.”
Sergeant Jasim went to the middle of the room. Whenever he saluted I wanted to laugh. His moustache was luxuriant, his complexion was yellowish, his cheeks clean-shaven, the hair of his head was frizzy and he had one green stripe on the shoulder of his jacket. He was short and stocky, and his teeth were white: “Sir, we’ll open the gate at three-thirty.”
“Leave solitary until I come.”
He went and sat on the bed, took his shoes and put on his jacket, put the sidara on his head, and straightened it as he stood in front of the mirror. He washed and dried his hands.
“Papa, we’ll go with you.”
Adil said, “To the shrine?”
“No, not now.”
The voices of men outside, the tramping of their feet, their military gait; the gate opened with the movement of large keys and the rattle of iron chains. Adil went to the window and pulled the curtain aside, and looked out. “Papa,” he said sadly, “Do you remember when you told me ‘Come and see how I live in Karbala, the dirt and black death’? Papa, I still haven’t forgotten that.”
Adil turned to us and ran to our father, buried his head in his chest, and we left the room.
I had disappeared inside the cloak, with only my ugly, plaguestricken face showing. Whenever we passed people, they stood up and saluted us.
The police came through the doors and stood in the large courtyard, their rifles on their shoulders and their faces expressionless, their lips thrust out, their uniforms sweaty, the sun beating down directly on to their weapons. There was a sudden flash in front of us as we passed them. They watched us, their eyelashes trembling and eyelids twitching. Their arms were not steady, and the vast courtyard rose as one human wave as they moved and turned. The women shouted. They opened their arms and uttered moans and incoherent words. Their tears flowed down their cheeks. Minutes tumbled by these women, things, and faces.
Friends, relatives, fathers, brothers, uncles, neighbours, spreading their cloaks on the floor, looking into bags, handing out food and cigarettes, sharing water and a little money, weeping and kissing, falling silent, watching, as we plunged into their midst. They touched Adil’s head and looked me closely in the face.
The faces of the prisoners, slender figures tall and short, their eyes wandering, cheeks sunken, thick moustaches and slack jaws. Their dishdashas were dirty and their sandals cracked. They all became one colourful, wandering, mad planet.
The men looked like the men of our neighbourhood: Abu Mahmoud, Abu Iman, Abu Hashim, and Haj Aziz. We approached, and the gates which had been olive green were colourless. Here they were before me, I felt them with my hand and looked inside: stone steps, thick brown paper, dug up earth, the high wall. Flies flew out into the heat and solitude outside. The smell spread outside, like the heat of the baker’s oven in our street, like the mud of the Euphrates in the first months of flood.
My father left me, I leave him. Not one stone over another; not one neighbour near another neighbour.
How could that man laugh? When would he urinate?
I counted: one, two, twenty, one hundred. I did not know how to count the prisoners. Mahmoud knew that I did not like arithmetic, but I was able to count them. They sat on the ground near the children. The women sprawled out on the ground though the sun was no good at this time of day. Some laughed, and diverted me, laughing. Was it lawful to laugh in prison?
My mouth had a bitter taste, my lips were parched, and my tongue was dry. It was tea-time. I turned round: my father and Adil were standing before the locked gate. A group of police officers stood round my father. On the other side was the solitary.
When my father was alone with me on the roof, I was alone with the ants, flies, and fear. The iron bars before me were as silent as our iron roof with glass. There I looked down from high up. I saw everything all at once. My mother, as well, had been freed from prison and wooden talk. Here there was no white or grey glass. The gates were high with small round windows admitting fine dust and flies. No steps took me to the high roof, and no staircase brought me down to the doors that opened one after another. A few visitors waited to the rear. Rifles, police, my father’s height and his face, also freed from his prison, coming out one after the other. My father turned round before them, Adil raised his head and looked, holding him by the arm.
My father extended his hand to them, took them by the forearm, and walked with them a little. One, two, seven; they became thirteen. They opened their eyelids a little in the light, moving along with a number of guards among them, though at a gesture of my father’s hand the police moved away. He produced a packet of cigarettes, walked, shared some and lit them with a match. His hand touched their fingers, and they took deep breaths, they sat and stretched their legs out on the ground. My father turned to us and stepped back a little. We stood at a distance. The families sat down to rest by one another. One of the sergeants approached us.
“Sir, we have thoroughly searched the trays.”
With a nod of his head, the food was distributed to them.
We walked behind him; we turned when he turned and stopped when he stopped. Now he was close to us, now far.
Suddenly he turned to us: “Adouli, go and bring the rest of the kebab.”
Adil ran in and returned with the kebab, eggs, potatoes, and bread. My father walked with the tray on his shoulder, the cigarette in his hand, talking with the guards and the circle of men who had been around him. We stood together before those men. They did not lift their heads or lower their arms. They were motionless and silent.
“This is Master Abba’s kebab, which my mother has prayed over and sent.”
He took the tray, placed it on the ground, and walked away quickly. They lifted their faces to face the sun. For the first time I saw their faces. Their eyes were beautiful, their eyelids were swollen, their eyelashes were dry, their hair was dusty, and their fingers trembled as they held their cigarettes. They coughed. At last their lips opened to show their yellow teeth and white tongues.
“Thank you.”
We walked behind my father, who was now far ahead of us and entered the crowd. I saw him, calm and contented but far off. I did not know when his fright ended, or who had buried him with titles. Icould remember his first slap and his dreadful lair. His face was moist with sweat, tobacco, and iodine. He was the handsome king on the throne of those who sat before me, my good-looking father who had begotten me and loathed no girl like me. One day Iqbal said, “One night your father came to you when you were in bed bloody and sweaty. You were fresh and new. He was afraid when he first saw you. I thought he would change you to mere bones, and you would make him a policeman constantly standing at your door. He hated it when you cried at night and wailed in daytime. He hated your slow shouting and your rapid breathing. When he slept, he imagined you were hitting him on the head, and he’d wake up wanting to hit you, but I woke up and stopped him. He cried, you cried, and we all cried together. I could never fool him, and neither could you. Every woman fooled him except us. I used to lie down beside you, and he’d lie down far from us. He’d mutter between his teeth as he slept: ‘I’ll only have boys, I’ll never get Huda married. I’ll have her dedicate herself only to me. I’ll have her never grow up.’”
He turned and we turned with him. He pointed to one of the guards, and looked at his watch. He approached him politely, greeted him, and looked ahead: “Split them up now. The visit is over.”
My father gave orders but did not have to listen to them. He dragged his feet sluggishly. Minutes of goodbyes and the sound of kisses. Heads drew away from the circles and stood apart from one another, they turned and walked away, stopped, picked up their children, put on their cloaks, sobbing and praying. Leave-taking clogged the space between their noses and mouths.
The last of the women visitors left the courtyard, a poor, bent-over and tearful old woman who walked and stopped, turning around and ceaselessly praying: “God is good, my son. Yes, you are not the only one in prison.”
She reached the main gate and spat on the ground, wiped her mouth on her arm and repeated, “God is good.”
We followed her out. My father asked for the driver and the car. Adil clung to me. We turned to look back.
The courtyard was empty. Blowing dust sent crumpled leaves flying round us. The pebbles were not shiny, and the ground was dry. The sun was sinking quickly as we got into the car. My father sat in the front seat, with Adil and I in the back. I wiped away my sweat with my arm, and the cloak slipped down a little. I coughed and sneezed. I raised my arm again to my head and looked ahead. Sergeant Jasim was driving us to the holy shrine.