Fatimah was already in her new home, leaving Kathmiya one night alone before she would have to go back to Basra.
One night to plan an escape. “When can I stop working?” she asked her mother.
“In good time.”
“Is that what Abuyah says?” Kathmiya felt her anger growing and wanted to hone its sharp edge.
“He does care for you, he really does,” Jamila said with sweet affection.
But she was answering a question that hadn’t been asked. “Maybe Uncle Haider can speak to him,” Kathmiya blurted. Somehow she knew this would provoke her mother.
It did. Jamila went from tender to annoyed. “Leave him out of this,” she hissed. “And leave it alone, will you?”
Kathmiya’s only possible rebellion—and it was pitifully slim—was to take over Fatimah’s comfortable bed that night.
But as though her sister had planted spite there, Kathmiya couldn’t sleep. The bed, constructed from wood and mud, seemed to accommodate more than the fat reed mattress she slept on. As Kathmiya tossed and turned she wondered whether she had been in the city too long and had lost the knack of falling asleep in the marshes; suddenly the melodies that used to lull her into unconsciousness were grating: the sounds of the wind in the reeds, the flap of a bird’s wings, the buzz of life all chafed at her ears.
Listening to the rhythm of her parents’ breathing, she thought of moving back to her own bed, but it seemed like a retreat. Instead, she lifted the mattress to rearrange it.
And found underneath three very strange objects.
Kathmiya could barely see them in the blackness of the night. One was a book, flat and smooth. The other was paper money, like a dinar. And the last was some kind of glass bottle. She was curious but suddenly sleepy, as though a spell had been broken.
When she woke the next morning as the sun streamed through the worn patches in their walls, Kathmiya had rested so thoroughly she almost didn’t remember the discovery.
She studied the book, which had a bright red barn on the cover and strange letters that even she could tell were not Arabic. And she examined the glass bottle, which had a rubber tip that looked obscene, as though it were trying to imitate a part of the body.
She tucked the dinar in her pocket and then confronted her mother.
“Where did you get those?” Jamila was obviously startled by the cache and not at all ready to answer for it.
“Just found them. Yours?” Kathmiya studied her mother’s face.
Jamila was staring at the book, nodding thoughtfully. After a pause, she said, “It was for you. You can have it now if you want.”
“Mine?” An irrational sense of hope washed over Kathmiya, as though this little worn children’s book might unlock her whole future.
“Some people I worked for ages ago gave it to you.”
Kathmiya gripped the book tightly, forgetting the bottle in her other hand. “Not Fatimah?”
“They never met her, my sweet. But they used to read this to you,” Jamila said. “You were too young to leave at home, and they were kind enough to let me bring you to work.”
That terrible feeling of being different: Kathmiya had always thought it was her fault; somehow she must have hurt her father, that’s how it seemed. But now this obscure little gift held out the promise of a different story. A glamorous one, involving foreign strangers who doted on her as a little girl.
“Where are they now?” Kathmiya looked over her shoulder. Fatimah would likely show up any second to ruin the moment.
“Well, I don’t work for them anymore, do I?” Jamila’s tone was curt. Kathmiya could feel her mother purposely trying to dampen any hope.
“So…why…did you leave?”
Jamila was looking in the distance. Kathmiya ground her teeth trying to calm her normally trip-wire temper, knowing she shouldn’t ruin this moment with an outburst.
But when Jamila emerged from her thoughts, she had reconsidered. “Give me that.” Kathmiya instinctively protected the book but it was the bottle her mother lunged for. Jamila unscrewed the rubber top and threw it off to the side. Then, as if deciding that the smooth bottle was not worth keeping, she crashed it against a rock, sending shards of glass into the river. The river! Where they drank, fished, lived.
Kathmiya was incensed, feeling as though she had lost a piece of the puzzle she’d only begun to realize was hers to assemble. “That was mine too, wasn’t it? From the people you worked for? The ones who liked me?” she demanded.
“You ask too many questions,” Jamila scolded.
Instead of sparking the usual anger, this just made Kathmiya sad. She stared with her round eyes.
Maybe that’s what touched Jamila, opened her up for one more brief second, just long enough to say, “No. The people who liked you left only the book.”
Kathmiya had been planning to show her mother the dinar. But after she saw what happened to the bottle, she kept it hidden inside her loose-fitting dress.
And anyway, it wasn’t a dinar at all.
Something close, but very different.
She could make out the letters. And although she couldn’t hope to read them, she tried:
ACIREMA FO SETATS DETINU EHT
They were just shapes on a page, but Kathmiya tucked the mysterious note in her new book. It was a portent of something, she just didn’t know what.
By the time she returned to Basra, Kathmiya felt aglow with a new sense of possibility. It was as though a colorful past brightened her future.
Even work that day had its benefits. She started paying attention to the living room chatter, trying to locate herself in the world, determined to eventually figure out the meaning of those little foreign gifts.
Either life had always been dramatic while she hadn’t been paying attention, or her decision to sit up and listen came at a time of special turmoil, but the house was buzzing with talk of the end of the monarchy.
The royal family was out, someone named Rashid Al-Gailani was in.
Kathmiya took longer than usual collecting the dishes full of olive pits and pistachio shells, always keeping an eye out for Salim’s mother, Odette, who never mixed with the men but seemed to have a sixth sense that told her when her maid stole a moment to think.
“So now Iraq has officially joined Hitler.”
The room, where conversation always decorated the atmosphere like wallpaper, was quiet.
Kathmiya concentrated intently, trying to make sense of the sudden shift. But she was rewarded only with a brisk, “Move it along now.”
It was Odette, ordering her back to the kitchen. Kathmiya was obedient enough to leave the room, but defiant enough to double back and sneak outside to steal a breath of fresh air.
Across town, Shafiq heard about the coup that same afternoon, as he watched his mother sauté freshly chopped lamb’s meat with onions, turmeric and coarse black pepper.
“Rashid Ali al-Gailani has deposed the monarchy,” Ezra announced darkly.
“Churchill won’t let Iraq fall,” Roobain said. Reema stirred the pan and the fat crackled.
“Only the British can get Iraq away from the Germans, but what do they care about this little country? The Luftwaffe is bombing the United Kingdom,” Ezra pointed out.
As Reema turned off the kerosene flame and started spooning the meat onto their plates, Shafiq tried to ignore all the talk.
“They care about the oil,” Naji said.
“In a way this is better. Now the British will have to return,” said Roobain as Shafiq tasted the steaming food.
“That,” said Ezra, “is our only hope.”
Lunch should have been good, but now it was ruined.
Hope for the British to return?
After a lifelong diet of hate-the-British-imperialists, Shafiq was stunned.
What hope could there be for Iraq if it had come to this?
He left the house too restless even for antics with Omar. Shafiq didn’t quite know what he needed.
But then again, he did.
Jumping on his bike, he headed over to Salim Dellal’s house.
He told himself he was going to ask questions about the political situation. Salim was always railing against the British. The only ones he mistrusted more than the British were the Zionists. Salim was Jewish all right, proud as any rabbi, but strictly as an Iraqi nationalist—not for any other cause. Constantly talked up the Jewish officials in Iraq’s government, like Senator Daniel, who said all Jews should be loyal only to Iraq, and Sassoon Heskel, the country’s first finance minister, who, Salim would always point out, refused to have anything to do with Zionism.
But the closer Shafiq got to the house, the more he started to dread the conversation he knew he would hear inside.
“Zionism.” “British.” “Hitler.” Sharp edges everywhere.
He reached through his mind for the memory of that march against the king’s death, when all of Iraq—Jews, Christians, Armenians, Turks, Muslims—united in anger against the British.
But before he could feel better, the heartening image mixed in his mind with the memory of another public march. During the holy period of Ashura, Shi’a worshippers took to the streets to reenact the Battle of Karbala, when their Blessed Prophet’s grandson, Husayn, was killed in fighting against the caliph’s military. Wailing, tearing at their bare chests and mortifying their own flesh, the mourners expressed their determination never to forget that tragic day.
It was a ceremony of remembrance. Shafiq’s family had its Passover seder, where they retold the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. But, frightened by the mournful cries that filled the air, he couldn’t appreciate the similarity. All he saw was a deep fissure between his home life and that of the majority of his neighbors, who were almost all Shi’a.
The anxiety disappeared when he caught sight of the maid outside of Salim’s home, sitting with her arms around her knees and weaving bits of palm leaves together. She looked happy, even a little rebellious, and all the more pretty.
If he could sneak into the Port of Basra Club, Shafiq told himself, he could think of something to say. “Hello,” he tried. It should have been easy, just a greeting, but even that was a challenge to pronounce.
“Hello!” She sounded happy.
“I’m Shafiq.”
“I know.”
Now he was out of words. But she continued. “Kathmiya,” she said.
“Hello, Kathmiya.” It was better than all the verses of the world’s greatest poets. “Do you want to ride my bike?” he asked.
“I think I’ll fall!” She laughed.
The specter of Hitler was fading. The British occupation of Iraq was so remote it felt like it dated from a century ago. And he had forgotten Zionism as completely as an amnesiac.
“I can catch you.” Shafiq blushed at his own words. But he blustered on. “Or I’ll give you a ride!”
Kathmiya was unsteady but unafraid as she sat on the seat of the boy’s bike, with its one gear, hand brakes and small kerosene lamp at the front. Shafiq stood in front pedaling. Both of them felt an unaccountable joy, relishing the warmth of the sun, the easy melody of the birds and the budding companionship, which was unfamiliar but serendipitous, like a horizon coming into view.
He pedaled forward, aware of the weight she added but full of the energy needed to pull it. They rode slowly in a loop, passing the nearby houses, singing birds, feathery tamarisk bushes and fruit trees over and over.
The world was at war, whole continents were being ravaged, and attack planes were flying directly toward the southern part of Iraq. But in that moment, tucked away in a quiet corner of Basra, these two felt nothing but peace.