“Moon Over Miami is coming to Ashar—finally!” Shafiq boomed as he crossed the threshold into Omar’s home. “Do you realize it’s been out for five years…”
They were all in the living room, or at least the shell of the family that was left: Salwa, Anwar and Omar. The soft maroon couches were in their usual corners, the framed Koranic verses kept their places on the walls, but there was an unfamiliar grim mood hovering over it all. Not the grief of death but the fear of something less clear but more disturbing, like slow torture.
Salwa’s hospitality was as Iraqi as Roobain’s, so she invited Shafiq in.
“That’s okay,” he said.
“Please,” she pressed.
Leaving would only make it worse, so he nodded toward Omar and said quietly, “I was just wondering, do you want—?”
“Go ahead,” Salwa said, and Omar left with Shafiq through the arched entrance, the familiar blast of sun-heated air hitting their skin when they got outside.
“What happened?” Shafiq asked.
“My uncle, remember from the funeral?”
Shafiq couldn’t recall and didn’t pretend to.
“Right,” Omar continued. “Why should you know him? He disappeared the next day. It looks like he’s not going to marry my mother. No respect for tradition. And so we’re in this kind of situation. Anwar may have to come back from Baghdad.”
“But law school…” Shafiq began.
And then he stopped himself. There were plenty of intractable problems—getting Naji back, undoing Marcelle’s marriage, the paradox of an unwanted Kathmiya whom he wanted so much—but then there were difficulties that could be conquered through the human solidarity Shafiq had been raised to revere. “My father can take care of it.”
“We know,” Omar said. Shafiq’s feelings had been so injured by loss he had almost forgotten what it felt like to be clear and happy. But now he remembered. They were all in this together, at least that much was understood.
“So let’s go,” Shafiq insisted.
“Not yet,” Omar said. “My mother has one more person to ask first.”
“I’m going with her,” Shafiq decided. “That way I can make sure it works. Any problems, I’m taking her straight to my father.”
“I can come too,” Omar offered.
“It’s okay,” Shafiq said. “I’ll be there.”
If he had learned anything from Roobain, it was that in Iraq, neighbor leans on neighbor and friend on friend; these ties of intimacy were all that was meaningful. Without them, society’s fabric would be completely torn.
Salwa allowed Shafiq to accompany her to the mortgagor on one condition: “Don’t be friendly to me. That will make him less sympathetic.”
The office was located in a choice spot on the second floor near the front of Roobain’s warehouse. Shafiq stood in the doorway and watched Salwa enter.
Salih Al-Zubairi, the man who held the secured interest in the house, sat behind a small desk that had a large log book, an ink bottle and—a sure sign of status—a black telephone with the earpiece hanging on its stand. A small table fan whirred rhythmically. There were two chairs, but when Salwa entered, he invited her to sit with him on one of the pillows arranged neatly on a Persian carpet reserved for receiving clients and visitors.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said. When they were settled on the floor, he sent a servant to bring them tea from the merchant’s café.
Salwa began by asking about the Al-Zubairi family, and he replied in kind. She seemed to be trying to control the pace of the conversation by dwelling on the subject of his relatives. “Your mother is in good health, In-sha Allah.”
He nodded, then asked about her family again, but before telling her story, she repeated, “I am glad that your mother is well, Al Hamdulilah.”
Shafiq was getting restless. Help the woman, he wanted to demand. What is it to you?
After the gentle back-and-forth wore out, Salwa mentioned Hajji Abdullah. “You know that my husband, Allah yi-ruhmah, has passed away,” she began.
Just then, the servant returned carrying tea in small clear glasses. Salih Al-Zubairi passed one to Salwa with a sympathetic nod.
“Shukran, shukran,” she thanked him, before continuing: “He worked hard all his life, but it was never easy. First, we lost the store in a fire—”
“There is no strength except in Allah,” said Al-Zubairi, repeating a well-worn phrase commonly used in response to a calamity. But Shafiq knew Salwa was hoping for the solidarity of man.
“Anwar is finishing his studies in Baghdad. He is a fine son but he’s not yet established,” Salwa said, cupping her hands around the warm glass.
“May Allah help you,” replied Salih Al-Zubairi.
But will you help her? Shafiq wondered.
“I have still my youngest at home,” she continued. Shafiq’s ears burned at the mention of Omar, who should not have to be trotted out for sympathy from this businessman.
“Omar is studying hard and hopes to complete high school, but now that his father has died, Allah yi-ruhmah, it is not so easy.” Hearing this hurt. Shafiq had not wanted to admit that Omar might really leave school. Not when he was so close to graduation. And without the hope of even becoming a railway clerk.
“Life is hard nowadays.”
At least help until Omar graduates, thought Shafiq.
Salwa, too, pressed on. “Just one woman, I cannot imagine how to take care of them under the circumstances.” She put the teacup down so gently it didn’t make a sound.
“Yes, we are all struggling.”
Al-Zubairi was ignoring her special circumstances, Shafiq knew. He wanted to step into the room and tell the man that his father owned the whole warehouse, but he respected Salwa’s request.
She began appealing to the mortgagor’s religious obligation for charity. “Tamam, Ammi,” she said. True, my uncle. “That’s why we need to help each other in this world. In the eyes of Allah we are all one family.”
Salih Al-Zubairi looked like he knew exactly what the desperate widow was hinting at. Clearly, she could not keep up with the payments.
“There are many suffering people in the family of man,” he said.
“Allah rewards sadaka,” she replied, referring to acts of giving to the poor, “and compassion.”
“You are very wise,” Al-Zubairi agreed in a sweet voice. “But if you can’t pay the mortgage then I will have to foreclose on the house and buy it back.”
At a huge, dirty profit, Shafiq thought, deciding it was time to leave. He was moving toward Salwa when she started crying. “I’m a poor widow,” she whimpered as Shafiq put his arm around her gently. Then, as though his kindness gave her a last burst of courage, she added plaintively, “but my sons are good and will someday earn enough to satisfy the loan.”
“I am sure they will,” the mortgagor agreed in his friendly, patronizing voice. “They will probably earn enough to buy you a brand-new house if you ever need it,” he added in a warm tone that made his cold words all the more chilling.
“Let’s go, auntie,” Shafiq said. “My father is probably in his office,” he added. “You know, keeping track of the rents on our warehouse here.” He shot the mortgagor a look but the man just smiled in return. Salwa left with her head against the young chest of her “nephew.”
Shafiq walked toward his father’s office, but Salwa was pulling him in a different direction.
“Please,” he implored. “We’re telling my father now.”
“Just one more place—one more,” she asked meekly. “Please, come with me.”
She had already been so harshly rejected, Shafiq could only agree. They walked together to one of the better neighborhoods in Basra, stopping at a large home with arched windows and ornate wooden balconies. “Madame Sadiqi, my mother-in-law’s sister,” she explained.
The elegant façade did not inspire hope in Shafiq, who had learned early that most of life’s serendipitous rewards came from unexpected places, not those blinking with ostentatious displays of wealth.
Before Salwa knocked, she took a turquoise seven-eye bead out of her pocket and started rubbing it. Blue, salt, beads…everyone had a different way to fight the jinn. And none of them worked.
In the distance, Shafiq could see Al-Wattan café. He was not tempted to go in, partly because he promised his father he wouldn’t, but mostly because as long as he held the trip in reserve, he might still hope that he’d find Naji there, brown skin glowing and muscles flexing and wide grin flashing. Al-Wattan café empty of his brother would be worse than nothing.
“Years ago,” Salwa told Shafiq, “we went to the country with these relatives, and their servant rinsed our hands with rosewater.” Shafiq hoped it would be the same person who greeted her now, a familiar face to soothe Salwa’s anxiety.
He was two steps down from the front door, but he could see easily enough that even after introducing herself as a relative, Salwa was not welcome.
“I will let the madame know you are here,” was all she got.
Salwa turned around and gave Shafiq a smile, ever the mother, concerned that he was uncomfortable when she was the one being treated like a suspect instead of a sister.
When the servant returned, Shafiq immediately felt the atmosphere relax. Instead of being indifferent, the servant looked warm and solicitous. He expected the door to swing wide open, but it closed a bit and he heard the servant whisper, “Umm Hamad said she cannot see you now.”
“We have all day,” Shafiq prompted Salwa.
“Please,” she implored, “may I wait until she’s ready?”
Seeing Salwa looking small and desperate in the grand, arched doorway, Shafiq felt uncomfortably adult; Salwa, his protector, needed protection. She was alone in a society where security depended on the kindness of relatives. “She must have heard that my husband died. His name,” she said plaintively, “was Hajji Abdullah.”
Shafiq could tell this wasn’t working. The servant didn’t seem comfortable either, barely coughing out the words, “Umm Hamad says to tell you there are babies in this house.”
Everyone knew a recent widow could not enter a home with infants because of the jinn, but Shafiq chafed, this time not against the superstition, but because he could tell from the servant’s shifty tone that she was lying.
“Come on,” he said putting an arm around Salwa. “I’m taking you home.”
The heavy door closed.
But Salwa wasn’t ready to leave. “I brought this,” she said. It was an old picture of a young couple. “I don’t want it anymore.”
“Belongs in the garbage,” Shafiq agreed.
Salwa shook her head. “I’m giving it to them.”
Shafiq knew that door would only slam again, but how could he stop her? “I’ll be right at the corner,” he said, leaving enough distance so that he wouldn’t have to watch her fail again, and more important, so she wouldn’t be seen.
Watching her mother send away the poor woman with a weak lie on the instructions of the callous old widow, Kathmiya felt disgusted.
“How could you?” she hissed at Jamila, who had just closed the door on Salwa.
“You heard! Nafisa forced me…”
“You have to help her!”
“I want to, but how?” Jamila asked.
And then, as though Kathmiya had commanded it through sheer willfulness, there was another knock at the door.
Jamila looked first amazed and then contrite. “I am so sorry, my sister,” she said after welcoming Salwa in. “I lied.”
Kathmiya watched from the side, cheering the spark of bravery. Her mother might never influence a matchmaker, but at least she had some fire left.
“There are no babies in this house,” Jamila continued, struggling to bring her voice above a whisper. “Please, forgive me.”
Salwa just shook her head in confusion. “Don’t worry, my sister,” she said after a pause. “It’s not your fault.”
“If it is money you need—” began Jamila. And then, jolted by a sudden decision, she thrust the small purse containing her life savings into Salwa’s hands.
Salwa looked even more baffled. “Why are you giving me this?”
Kathmiya knew her mother looked crazy, but at the same time, she had never been so proud of Jamila. They were poor but not completely impoverished. Emerging from the background, she said, “God rewards sadaka.”
The woman looked stunned. “But how did you know?” she asked. Sadaka. The same charity she had just sought from the mortgagor.
“To be honest,” Jamila said, “we have many problems of our own, but none that can be solved with this.” Kathmiya experienced a little death as her mother pressed the purse firmly into Salwa’s hands. It wasn’t the money she wanted, but the illusion of believing that her problems could be solved.
“Your health?” Salwa asked. “Maybe you can use this for a doctor.” She tried to return the gift.
“Please, take it,” Jamila said, opening the door again.
After she closed it behind Salwa, Kathmiya hugged her mother. There was nothing left to say. There wasn’t even any money. All they had was the knowledge that not every stranger in the world was turned away for being desperate. And in that moment, it was almost enough.
When Shafiq saw Salwa again, he found her completely changed. “God rewards sadaka,” she said in a transcendent voice, as though she had experienced some kind of religious revelation.
He noticed she held a small pouch of dinars, but they were barely enough to cover two months’ rent.
“Allah is great,” she said with conviction.
“But—” he began gently, “let’s go to my father all the same.”
Salwa nodded, aglow with new hope. “With Allah’s protection, we will survive.”
At the warehouse, Shafiq found his father walking around the main floor with a set of wooden prayer beads in his hand. “Our neighbor needs help,” he said. Roobain brought them all up to a small office where Shafiq used to fan his father while he calculated accounts.
“What can I give you?” Roobain asked directly.
“We don’t have money for the mortgage,” Salwa began. “My brother-in-law refused to help us, and my only other relative with means, Nafisa el Saddiqi,” she looked down as she said the name and finished the rest of the sentence staring at the dusty Persian carpet under her feet, “refused to see me.”
This was a surprise to Shafiq. Salwa had met him at the corner with those few extra dinars. If they didn’t come from the old widow, then who?
Roobain nodded. Shafiq knew his father remembered all Salwa had done for them. And beyond that, Roobain was an Arab man of honor who would not refuse the request of any guest. A Bedouin in the desert, he always taught Shafiq, would kill his only camel to feed a stranger.
“Umm Omar,” he said, “ala al-aynn wo-ala al-rass.” Consider it done—my pleasure.
Since Salih Al-Zubairi’s office was located in the warehouse, Roobain saw him regularly. “I will pay the mortgagor directly—you won’t ever have to trouble yourself.”
Moved by this kindness, Salwa repeated over and over, “B’issim Allah wi’bissim awladi—we will repay you.” Bless you in the name of God and my children.
She then leaned forward, attempting to kiss Roobain’s hand.
He was embarrassed by her genuflection, however authentic, and gently gripped the string of worn prayer beads as he pulled away. “We’re not strangers; we’re relatives,” he said with quiet feeling.
“Still, we will repay you—” Salwa insisted. “Shhh…” Shafiq stopped her.
There could be no debt between them, or rather, what they owed each other continued to grow through the years, not in the form of a balance due but as a credit to both.
Buoyed by this flash of light, Shafiq felt ready to celebrate even Kathmiya’s luck with a Basra matchmaker.
Instead, he found her disconsolate. When he asked what was wrong, she looked at him with tender surprise, as if to say, Oh, at least somebody cares.
“It didn’t work—my family, the matchmaker, nothing works for me,” she said in that sweet, low voice through tears that reminded him of the first time he ever saw her.
“I don’t get it.” Shafiq squinted at her.
Instead of answering, Kathmiya guided him to her small room, where she pulled out the last item he ever expected her to own. “A dollar?” he asked, having seen enough in American movies to recognize one.
“You know what it is?”
“Money,” he answered. “But where—?”
“My mother was hiding it.”
“Hiding this? Why?”
“I was hoping you would know.”
He turned the bill over in his hand. What a distance it had traveled. “This is from America.”
“America,” she considered. “Is that why she loves it?”
Shafiq knew the answer was important to Kathmiya, even if it seemed a bit remote from the reality of her situation. One lousy dollar would not alter her fate. Maybe it would be better to let her think she had found a magic genie. But then what?
“It’s not much money, not enough to change your life,” he said, braced for a wave of hysterics.
“I figured that,” she said, more annoyed than undone.
“Your mother couldn’t spend it; not in the marshes, not even here. It must have been some kind of gift, something that made her happy because of the person who gave it to her.”
Kathmiya looked at Shafiq intently. “I wish someone would give me a gift.” She blushed.
He wanted to give her anything, but the price was too high—not of the object, just the intimacy. After a pause, he said, “This dollar—if she hid it, there must have been a reason.”
“Yes.” Kathmiya sighed. “A rule against it.”
“Right,” he said. The same rule that forbids me from being with you.
“What’s the point of these rules?” Kathmiya’s wondering eyes, fringed by thick bangs, turned to Shafiq.
He wanted to sweep aside her coarse locks and kiss her, but a fierce determination yanked him back.
“I lost one brother already because he doesn’t believe in society’s rules,” he said, trying to navigate the journey from impetuous and imperiled to wise and safe. “I have to live by the rules.” He stood to leave. Kathmiya was there on the bed, a pulsing temptation that could ruin his future. She was all the more unstable for remaining unmarried, despite her outstanding beauty and the keen intelligence that only he seemed to appreciate.
“It would be great to break out and do what we want,” he said stoically, “but life doesn’t work that way.”
Walking out was easy; if Shafiq gave in to his desires, he would have committed a crime punishable by death. It would have been harder to act on his feelings. No one did that.
Except Naji. That stubborn courage.
Shafiq went outside and started wandering aimlessly up the quiet street.
But not really. He knew his destination, just couldn’t quite admit it to himself until he got there.
From the outside, Al-Wattan café looked like all of the other places where men went to smoke water pipes, play backgammon, and trade rumors about everything from commodities prices to scandalous women.
Shafiq had rehearsed so many conversations since Naji left that he would have expected to hear the imagined dialogue in his mind as he entered, but it was gone. He couldn’t remember a word of his planned greetings, could only remind himself to be careful not to say anything antagonistic. Who cared about Communism as long as they could be together?
Inside the smoky room, it took less than a second to feel Naji’s absence, but Shafiq had braced himself for the fact that his brother was probably not hanging around Basra so he wasn’t too disappointed. The dream had always been to have someone acknowledge Shafiq as the brother of such a selfless comrade. They would trust Shafiq for that. He could learn. He could know. And he could see Naji again, watch that grace and hear that laugh and smile like they were young.
And then, serendipitously, Shafiq saw a familiar face.
Complete with an invitation: “Well, hello!” Sayed Mustapha motioned for his former student to join him on a chipped, dark bench at the back.
This was perfect. Sayed Mustapha already trusted Shafiq. He must know Naji. And he could help put the two back together.
The old principal was still going on about politics. “Everywhere in the world talented workers are oppressed by those in power.” Sayed Mustapha wore the same glazed expression Naji had when he waxed on about Communism. They must issue rapturous looks to all people who join the movement, Shafiq thought, restless for information.
“The best baseball players in America are kept out of the major leagues because they were brought as slaves from Africa,” the principal continued. Shafiq felt like he was back in grade school sitting in a little desk-chair. “In Rhodesia, the natives are not even educated to read books, just taught to build furniture.”
This was interesting but not useful information. “Can I ask you something?” The moment had arrived.
The principal put down his cup. “Now or tomorrow. I’m always here, every day.”
“Do you know my brother Naji?” Saying his name felt equal parts subversive and empowering. “Do you know where he is?”
“I can’t answer that, sorry.”
“But—”
Sayed Mustapha leaned in close.
Shafiq strained to absorb whatever clue he was about to get. The name of a city? A mysterious stranger? A coded underground hiding place?
“Your brother is living for a cause greater than himself,” Sayed Mustapha said with self-satisfaction. “I hope you’ll understand someday, and do the same.”
Useless! “My mother is so worried, please!”
“It’s safer you don’t know.”
“Do you?”
The principal refused to answer, but finally, probably just to get Shafiq to stop clinging so hard, he promised that he would always be there to help. “In fact,” Sayed Mustapha said, “let me give you some advice now. Don’t expect good grades. You know about the quotas against Jews. Forget about college here.”
Shafiq wished he could end this lecture. Bad enough to leave without any information about Naji, that much worse to get this gloomy forecast about his own future. “I understand, I know,” he tried to brush off the warning.
But Sayed Mustapha was not used to being dismissed. “You’ll need to study abroad…” the principal began.
Shafiq imagined the co-ed school in Beirut Omar was always going on about.
“…in the Soviet Union, where they don’t discriminate against Jews.”
Shafiq pretended to consider the idea, but really, he was wondering whether Sayed Mustapha was hinting that Naji might be somewhere in Russia.
Shafiq was brooding back at home when Omar’s brother came over.
“Amoo Roobain,” Anwar said to Shafiq’s father, calling the older man “Uncle.” “With your help I’m doing well, advancing at the court, always aware of—”
Shafiq shuffled, not wanting to be reminded of the debt.
Roobain didn’t either. “Ala al-ain wu ala al-raas,” he said. At the eyes and at the head. He gently held Anwar’s shoulder to say it had been his pleasure to help.
“I want to repay you, if only with a little,” Anwar tried again, producing a thin envelope that no doubt contained a bit of carefully saved cash.
“Listen, my son: there is no need to pay me back,” Roobain said. “We need each other and we help each other. In fact, I need a favor right now.”
Anwar looked at pains to grant whatever it was. Shafiq held his breath.
“We are not strangers, we are relatives,” Roobain said. “Please take this envelope and give it to my sister Salwa,” he instructed, passing it back to Anwar.
Shafiq exhaled.