The streets were quiet, but inside the house where Kathmiya worked Salim was raging against the British while Odette blamed the Muslims for the madness that kept them all trapped.
“The Union Jack is a symbol of hate!” Salim sounded unhinged.
She was clever enough to outsmart Odette, to snap back at her sister Fatimah, even to strike up a friendship with Shafiq, but this new turmoil was beyond Kathmiya’s capacity to manage.
Disparate bits of information hovered like mosquitoes around her and she could only hope she was immune to whatever malaria they carried.
Better yet, she wanted to take her red book, her strange dinar from the Western world, and the small vase where she had been stashing money for her father’s funeral, and disappear in the placid world of the marshes.
At least she hoped they were still placid…
We Midaan are tough. We can move in ways the British would never understand. We will always survive.
Kathmiya told herself this but she didn’t feel too sure because so much had changed—in her life and in the world.
Odette was insisting they leave but Salim refused. “This is my house, in my country!” he shouted. The pitch in his voice seemed to match the urgency of the pounding in the streets. “This is my homeland.”
“Salim!” breathed Odette in exasperation. “You can’t just send your old parents into the streets to get killed.”
The accusation muted her son’s nationalistic fervor.
“Of course you are not going alone,” Salim conceded. “I’ll help you flee to the Soufayrs’ because they have a big place in a Muslim neighborhood. But don’t expect me to stay there too, hiding like a coward.”
Kathmiya wouldn’t be sorry to see Odette leave, but at the same time she wished the ground would stop shifting.
“You’re coming,” the matron ordered Kathmiya. “Gather all of the food from the kitchen and pack a full set of linens and towels.”
Kathmiya pressed against the wry smile trying to curl around her lips. Good old Odette, always there with a command.
Salim unplugged his most prized possession: the elegant wooden radio he listened to obsessively. “They’ll need it more than me,” he said. “I’m not the one living in ignorance, blaming the Iraqis when the imperialists staged these riots.”
As soon as they went outside, Kathmiya noticed the absence of any other women on the narrow streets. She drew her shawl tighter.
Next to stores that had been looted sat cafés in perfect condition, bustling with festive customers garlanded with spoils taken from the ransacked businesses: bundles of light fixtures, stacks of carpets, bags of coffee beans and the necks of silver decanters in tight, sweaty grips.
“Hey there, Hamad,” Salim called to a café worker. “I’m going to beat you at backgammon when you get off this afternoon!”
“You weight the dice, that’s why!” Hamad replied with a teasing smile.
“I have to ’cause you’re such a lucky fella,” Salim said with a quick wave.
His mother was scowling, but for Salim it was another chance to teach his brand of solidarity. “See,” he told her pointedly. “We are all Iraqis: Jews, Christians, Muslims—even the Midaan.”
Even? Kathmiya stared at the patchwork of shattered store-fronts, suddenly overcome with a longing for the marshes, where there were no businesses to ransack, just waters and animals and home.
Fatimah was safely married in her tribe, and all Kathmiya could shelter under was the phantom shadow of a book whose heroine had unlucky blue eyes.
She resolved to throw away the false little amulet as soon as possible.
They arrived at a large brick house with elegant balconies looking out on the street. It appeared ordinary on the outside, but when the door opened briefly and they were sucked in, Kathmiya was startled to see scores of disheveled and desperate people: old men mumbling prayers, young mothers trying to soothe sobbing children, women everywhere hoping to restore order by manically folding, dusting, sweeping and scolding.
Salim cut through the din. “I refuse to run and hide!” he announced.
The folding, scolding and even praying stopped so that only the crying children could be heard hiccupping their little wails out while he went on. “We should invite all of our Muslim neighbors in for tea,” he suggested.
“Are you crazy?” scoffed an old man.
“How many of you are Iraqis?” Salim asked.
I am, Kathmiya thought, but this is not my home. Not my problem.
“All of you—that’s who!” Salim charged ahead. “You’re Iraqis, and your best friends are Muslims.”
Kathmiya looked down, wishing she could escape but knowing that would be impossible. The streets were forbidding: no women, no children, no fun. Hope was just incongruous, even unseemly.
Shafiq was a few feet away. Only she didn’t see him.
“It’s the imperialists who have you all terrified and pathetic,” Salim was saying.
“Hey,” protested the old man, “the British aren’t looting and rioting. That would be your Muslim friends.”
Salim steamed. “How narrow is your mind? You don’t wonder why the colonialists unlocked all the Jewish stores? And then went to the most uneducated people and invited them in?”
“Oh, please!” shouted an outspoken great-grandmother. Kathmiya stared. She had never known a woman to contradict a man. It was something. She’d like to see her mother stand up to her father for once…
“Oh, yes!” Salim boomed. “The British have it all figured out—they’ve been doing this for centuries. Find a scapegoat; here it’s the Jews.”
“He has a point…” someone murmured.
“The Jews—you!” Salim continued. “Then these fancy, special Europeans rile the mobs. ‘Take whatever you like and get drunk on a massive looting spree. Just ignore us while we re-occupy your country.’ Iraq should know by now how imperialists work. If they want to stop the violence they can. They brought enough bombs and bullets. But they chose hate instead.”
“The British are our only hope.” A bearded man dressed in somber browns bristled.
Kathmiya’s legs felt weak. She looked around to see whether anyone would notice if she slipped into a squat. Her eyes traveled the crowd.
There he was. Shafiq. Staring right at her. The only bright face in a room of dark expressions. Like a planet alone in a cloudy night sky. She smiled.
He did too.
But the show wasn’t over.
“The British are selling you to the highest bidder,” Salim thundered. “They want you to see the Muslims as your enemy. They want the country to be fractured. So much easier to exploit us that way.”
A hush gripped the room, nods here and there. The argument was holding the audience. Shafiq was holding Kathmiya with his gaze.
“But if we unite—Jews, Christians, Shi’a and Sunni—we can take back our country.” Salim stomped his foot.
Now he had gone too far. Nods turned to quiet “tsks” of disapproval.
Kathmiya looked down, too shy to keep her eyes on Shafiq.
But she thought, Maybe it is okay to hope. Or at least, it is not so wrong to want friendship, even if the world falls apart around us.
“Then Iraqis must unite with the Lebanese, the Egyptians, the Persians and rescue the whole region from the yoke of the imperialists,” Salim concluded, setting down the radio and hugging his mother before turning to leave.
“Allah be with you,” a few voices muttered.
Kathmiya followed him out, but not before stealing a last glance at Shafiq, who curled his hand softly in a wave good-bye.
The small gesture gave Kathmiya strength while she walked behind Salim through the ravaged streets. By the time they got back to the empty house, she was prepared to act.
Teeth clenched in resolution, she went to her room and retrieved her small treasure. Approaching the garbage can in the backyard, she was ready to get rid of the book and its friendly, curly drawings. “Good-bye, little girl,” she said, flipping through the pages. The character was inert, but when she saw its blue eyes, she felt as though it had feelings that she wasn’t entitled to hurt. Closing the book and holding it to her chest, she thought: What did you ever do to me? Just because you’re different…
Kathmiya was out of place too, but she didn’t know why. All she understood, with images of broken glass and scattered debris swirling in her mind, was how dangerous that was.