The United Kingdom: tight, disciplined, orderly. Civilized.
Shafiq would have thought the civilized British with all of their sophisticated machinations and superiority to the backward colonies could at the very least take over a country and siphon off its oil without too much fuss.
But no sooner had the hack news announcers on Baghdad Radio relearned the script that put the Allies on top than the looting began.
The family was in the living room—chatting about the news, Shafiq rolling his eyes and working up comfortable scorn against the occupiers—when a commotion drew them all to the window.
“That’s from the silversmith, Ben Yaqob,” said Reema, watching a gang of men carrying ornate plates and cups.
Leah added nervously, “Yossef Menashe’s fabric store.” It was another group, arms heavy with bolts of fabric.
And Ezra announced what everyone had just realized: “Belboul’s electrical supplies. All the Jewish shops are being looted. And only them.”
Shafiq was hypnotized by the spectacle for a terrible moment, which unfolded in a painful slowing of seconds into minutes. The image was imprinted on his mind: the fine silk stuffed under men’s arms, the stacks of beveled silver platters piled on their heads, the brand new wires and sockets bulging from their pockets.
Roobain broke the nightmarish reverie with a hand tugging at Shafiq’s shirt. “Move. NOW!”
Everyone in the family rushed away from the window as though the British warplanes were aiming bombs right at it.
If only, Shafiq thought. If only it were the hated colonialists, instead of beloved fellow Iraqis, on the attack.
“Hurry! Double-bolt the front door, but quietly!” Roobain shouted in a raspy whisper.
The house darkened, but the scene was still too bright for Shafiq, burning itself into his unwilling memory.
“What is going on?” Marcelle asked plaintively. “Are they coming here next?”
“No, my dearest,” Roobain said, struggling to sound gentle, commanding and certain at once.
Shafiq wasn’t fooled. His father was scared. Suddenly, Roobain looked very old, with his untucked shirt and sagging collar.
Not fit for a fight.
“They were taking carpets,” Leah murmured. “Some houses are full of carpets—”
Involuntarily everyone looked down at the wine red and river black woven pattern swirling beneath their feet.
Shafiq felt an empty sickness, all stomachache with no nausea to expel it.
Marcelle backed away, like she couldn’t stand to be on that tempting carpet, and knocked a ceramic vase that shattered on the floor, its white artificial roses flat as bodies on a battlefield.
Everyone jumped, and when Shafiq looked again he saw Naji protecting their mother, his broad arms wrapped over her slumped shoulders.
Outside, the looters stole and ran with no chanting or fanfare. Inside, the quiet beating of hearts rang like a ticking bomb, with each lost second stripping away their protection from encroaching danger.
Naji asked what everyone was wondering. “What should we do?”
“We have to leave!” Ezra said, his eyes narrowed. Shafiq was grateful that his brothers were both strong. “Crawl over the roof maybe, to the Abd El Hamid’s.”
To Omar’s place—of course! Shafiq felt a rush of relief. The safe haven where he had been nursed to survival at six months and could return again for a second miracle at twelve years.
But Ezra wasn’t finished with his plan. “And then we run.”
No, Shafiq thought. Bad idea.
“I say we hide at the Abd El Hamids,” Naji said. “Stay there, among friends.”
“It’s better than sitting here like chickens at the butcher shop,” Shafiq said.
When everyone agreed, Shafiq felt just a bit safer. It was, after all, a short distance between his rooftop and Omar’s. He had crossed that path more than any other.
Marcelle was the last one to step out onto the hot, tarred surface of the roof.
“Look!” Ezra leaned over the small wall shielding them from the street below.
“Let’s go!” Shafiq urged. With the action in the streets, now was the time to climb over to Omar’s home unnoticed.
But they were all inexorably drawn by the scene: mixed among the looters like raisins in a bunch of grapes were the shrinking figures of refugees trying to find shelter from the mobs.
“It’s Abraham Zabyloon and his children,” said Ezra.
“Plus the whole Mehlab family,” Naji observed.
“They’re running here!” Reema said with rising panic. “It makes no sense!”
“Safety in numbers,” Ezra pointed out. “We have a big house. Jews from the neighborhood are coming together here.”
“They need our help,” Naji said.
“Yes,” declared Roobain. “So we stay.”
Shafiq should have been even more terrified, but his well-honed fear was drowned out by an irrepressible pride. The whole world could go to pieces and his father would still keep faith with the Arab way. Roobain had always shown them how hospitality coursed through Iraqi blood. Now he proved that emergencies only increased its flow.
Shafiq felt pumped…
“Look, there are at least six men among them,” Ezra pointed out. “In case we have to fight.”
…and jolted by adrenaline.
The first two bedraggled families were followed by a steady stream of shell-shocked cousins, distant relatives and friends. Roobain treated them all like kin, throwing open the door to his home long enough to take them in and then shutting it tight against the unknown dangers beyond.
Shafiq felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle.
“They can’t sell a dead body,” somebody said.
I’m safe because my corpse isn’t worth anything, he thought.
That first night Shafiq still had a bed, but within twenty-four hours every spot in the house was taken, and he slept with a rolled-up towel for a pillow on the interior balcony. He could smell the fresh air from the inner courtyard it looked out on, that large, square, open space at the heart of the house, and hear voices from the rooms that bordered it.
Trying to relax his back on the brick floor, staring at the ceiling, wishing he could see the night sky and shut his ears to the buzz of people everywhere, Shafiq felt his mind cramp up.
The riots hadn’t stopped. Some families were talking about moving to India. Shafiq wanted to wrap his fears in the Iraqi flag, but he wasn’t sure what it stood for anymore. He tried humming one of the patriotic tunes sung every morning at school assembly:
Hey, Europe!
Don’t brag.
Don’t think your progress can last.
Prepare for nights of destruction,
You will drown in your tears.
Shafiq could almost feel how he used to exult to the rhythmical beat of the song as he pushed gales of sound from his lungs, imagining that the warning might reach the British Isles and strike fear in the hearts of colonizers there.
Never, never, never did he imagine the destruction would blow back.