Just days after Marcelle’s warning, the year 1947 began with a crack.
When the policeman’s baton landed on Salim’s radio, it shattered the beveled shell to splinters. Leah and Kathmiya stared at the copper wires inside: beautiful, twisted and torn. Little Aziza started wailing. Leah was trembling. Kathmiya just held her breath. She didn’t know why the police had arrived, but she knew they would either decide she was not to blame because she was an ignorant, impoverished maid—or they would use that to hold everything against her.
She scooped up Aziza and pressed the child’s crying mouth into her own shoulder, trying to muffle the sobs. Then she turned so that Aziza wouldn’t see her father being led out by the two officers, whose black holsters cut a sharp diagonal line across their backs.
But Leah saw. Urine pooled under her feet.
“Well, you won’t be using this to communicate with the Zionists anymore,” the policeman who had smashed the radio said with satisfaction as his partner pushed Salim to the door.
Zionists. The people who were against the Jews of Iraq, or so Kathmiya had gathered living with Salim. Why would he communicate with them?
He was swaggering out, totally confident, practically exulting in his innocence.
But Leah was just begging, “No…No! NO!”
One of the policemen turned around, his gun heavy at his side, and Leah choked on her words. Kathmiya wanted to rush forward and protect Leah, but she was holding Aziza and thought they might all get beaten if she did.
The man picked up a few twisted wires from the floor. “Evidence.” He smirked.
Leah fell to her knees. “Please, no, please, where are you taking him?” Her voice was hoarse, as though she had already sobbed it all out. “He’s completely innocent,” she croaked. Finally, she drew herself up. Kathmiya moved close to Leah, supporting her clammy body and Aziza’s warm one while trying to be invisible. “We never did anything; please, in the name of Allah,” Leah said, her hands clutched together in a fisted prayer.
The policeman looked down at the tear-streaked and terrified woman at his feet. “It’s okay, calm down,” he said. “It’s only for a little while. Then we’ll bring him back.”
These words, or some version of them, had been spoken throughout centuries and across continents by lying thugs trying to placate noisy would-be widows. And like the myriad other innocents left behind, Leah, no matter how much she wanted to believe them, still looked terrified.
“I’m an attorney, and I’m innocent,” Salim thundered as they pushed him forward. “The law is supreme.”
Kathmiya put Aziza down gently and supported Leah, who was starting to collapse. “You see?” she whispered. “He’ll be fine.”
But in the time it took for her to say that, he was gone.
Leah’s eyes rolled back in her head. “Please, dear Allah have mercy!”
Kathmiya knew there was nothing that could get Salim back now, but she couldn’t tell Leah that. And suddenly she realized there were people in the world with graver problems than her own.
“I’ll bring his things,” she said. Grabbing a straw mat, she put on her best I’m-just-the-nothing-maid pose and shrank into her loose abaya. Rich people had servants follow them everywhere. And so she headed to prison.
When Leah ran into Shafiq’s house, he knew from the terror in her eyes that something unthinkable had happened. She was carrying Aziza too tight, like she was the last drop of water in a vast desert.
Naji had escaped on his own—courageous, proud, obstinate. Salim shared those qualities, but he never wanted to fight the state. His lapel pin—he wore it every day—showed a picture of the founding ruler, King Feisal. The handsome, proud, stern profile of the king, Salim’s hero, right there on his chest.
That should help him get out, Shafiq thought with irrational hope.
But Leah’s sobs, fractured by hyperventilating breaths, drowned out Shafiq’s optimism.
Someone has to go save him, Shafiq knew.
Naji. He was the only one who was fearless and charming and magic enough to spring a man from jail.
Shafiq felt like every nerve in his body were pulled as taught as a slingshot, and the rock inside was aimed at Naji’s head.
Not anywhere near as fast, not hardly as brave, but at least Shafiq was there.
“I’ll go to the prison,” he offered. Leah looked up.
“I’ll go!” Ezra insisted.
Their father stared at one and then the other. Obviously, Ezra was older and readier. “You,” he said quietly.
“Of course me,” Ezra said, moving to the door. “This is an outrage against the Jews. We’ll organize a rally if we have to. I can have dozens of people there in a matter of hours—”
“Stop,” Roobain said.
Shafiq saw an opening. “I’ll reason with them, quietly,” he said. “I’ll pay them. No trouble. Just get Salim out.”
“That won’t—” Ezra began, but Roobain had already changed his mind. “Allah be with you,” he told Shafiq, who wished he could take the tremendous weight of responsibility and pile it on Naji as punishment for having left them like this.
Outside, Shafiq ran through a Basra that was completely changed. Not like during the riots, when the city was physically ravaged. Instead, the very order of the sights seemed to laugh at Shafiq’s pounding anxiety. Old brick buildings still sat placidly side by side, as solid as ever, even though Shafiq felt so shattered. Markets bursting with food that once might have tempted him—fat oranges and vats of salty feta cheese and barrels of black olives—all of it now no more appealing than dirt. Stone-tossing fortune-tellers who used to pique Shafiq’s interest, back when he might wish for a future, now portending nothing but doom.
It was too outrageous, Salim being arrested for Zionism. He was the one who took every chance he could to preach against it. Shafiq ran on. Trying to chase his thoughts away, he stared at the sun-flecked river until spots filled his eyes.
Soon, his mind was as blurred as his vision. What was he supposed to say when he got to the prison?
Beneath his feet, the ground looked like it was cracking apart.
He stopped by the river to refocus. If I can just convince them, he thought, if I am absolutely solid and soaring in my testimony, like an American airplane, they might let him go.
The passing seconds were breathing down his neck, but Shafiq was trying to mine his memories for the key that would open the iron gates. He concentrated until he was back at Leah’s house listening to Salim lecture about Iraq’s recent history.
“The Young Turks came to Baghdad calling for a tolerant and brotherly society and we supported them.”
“The Jews, you mean.” Shafiq had heard this “we” all his life.
Salim got annoyed. “No,” he said, rising from his chair as though he were arguing in court. “The people of Iraq. The Jews, yes, but also the Muslims, Christians and Kurds.”
“Okay, yes, that’s what I meant.” Shafiq was just a kid. What did he care?
“Do you know who selected Sassoon Heskel for Parliament?” Salim challenged.
Only Jews would choose a senator named Heskel, Shafiq figured, but to be on the safe side he said, “The people.”
“Wrong!” Salim pounced as though this small mistake, the misunderstanding of a disinterested teenaged boy, was the most fundamental fault endangering the country and the region, if not the world.
“The Jews, I mean.” Shafiq backtracked.
“More Muslims selected him,” Salim shouted in exasperation. “Muslims also appointed Abraham al-Kabir to a prominent finance position, and he helped establish Iraq’s national currency. They sent his brother Yusef to represent Iraq at the League of Nations!”
Shafiq didn’t know all these details, but he understood that they came together to form a picture of Muslim support for loyal Jews.
Salim continued. “You know what King Feisal said at the reception held by the chief rabbi?”
Shafiq had read the words, posted at synagogue near a picture of the king and local Jewish leaders, during so many long prayer services that he had them memorized. “‘There is no meaning in the words ‘Jews,’ ‘Muslims’ and ‘Christians’ in the terminology of patriotism,’” he recited. “‘There is simply a country called Iraq, and all are Iraqis.’”
Salim completed the quote, adding more that Shafiq had never heard. “‘I ask my countrymen to be only Iraqis because we all belong to one stock, the stock of our ancestor Shem. We all belong to that one race and there is no distinction between Muslim, Christian and Jew.’”
Shafiq looked up, not at the blinding river but at the road to the prison. There was no time to waste. It was not much fuel, but it was enough to keep going. There is simply a country called Iraq, and all are Iraqis. No one knew this better than Salim.
The prison was enormous—not tall but longer than five train cars lined up, surrounded by a huge fence with an open entrance at the front that led to a cave-like hole in the center. The walls were all bricked shut. It must be cold inside. Like nowhere else in Basra, it must be cold. The iron bars, the darkness, the dank center.
Shafiq knew that everything good and right had rotted into vile and wrong when he saw, in this place not fit for the most diseased street dog, Basra’s most beautiful pair of eyes peeking out from a heavy black abaya.
“He’s gone,” Kathmiya said quietly. “They wouldn’t even let me give him this,” she added, holding out a crisp, rolled-up mat.
“Why are you here?”
“Shh…what are we going to do?”
Shafiq’s confidence was all but gone. Would it help to have a maid there? A friend? Would it put her in danger?
Kathmiya resolved all of these questions by standing close to Shafiq. Her body said it all. She wouldn’t leave even if he pushed her. They’d probably both end up in a cold, dark room if he even tried.
Through a silent exchange, they agreed to fight for Salim’s release.
Shafiq walked up to the official at the front of the room, experiencing a fleeting hope that if he freed Salim, Kathmiya might jump into his arms. It was no incentive, just another source of nerve-rattling anxiety.
“Sir,” Shafiq addressed the man, who had uncommonly bad skin, blotched and reddish. “Thank you for serving the great state of Iraq.”
When the official spoke, his mouth moved but his eyes were dead of any flicker of feeling. “That’s a new one.”
“I’m here about my brother-in-law, Salim Dellal, who is also a servant of Iraq. I’m sure there has been a mistake.”
The laughter that rang from the blotchy guard was like a dust storm darkening the sky. Each scornful, mirthless peal nourished the dormant scarlet flower in Shafiq’s chest. It bloomed again, scattering its poisonous pollen into his blood.
“A servant of the state?” The guard laughed. “Not anymore. He’s a prisoner of the state now.”
Shafiq felt the weight of his failure; of course he shouldn’t have tried invoking patriotism! What a stupid, liberal-minded approach to take with this shallow prison guard. But there was one plan left. “If it’s money you need…” he stammered.
“Now you are making a little sense,” the man replied with a hand out to grab the ten dinars Shafiq emptied from his pockets.
Shafiq and Kathmiya waited.
“Now leave,” the guard said with quiet menace, the bumps on his cheeks quivering. “Before I have you arrested too.”
Shafiq felt like he had been knocked to the ground. The blow was so vivid Kathmiya had to pull him. “Let’s go,” she said sharply.
They walked out in helpless silence. Which only got louder when they reached Leah’s empty house. So much there they had taken for granted. Salim. The happy sounds of a child playing. Boring, old, wonderful, irreplaceable, vanished life.
“She must have taken Aziza to my place,” Shafiq said.
“Don’t leave me,” begged Kathmiya.
Shafiq brought her up to her room and put his arms around her. “I never want to leave you,” he breathed into her thick hair. He couldn’t figure anything out. Trying only made matters worse. Nothing to do but act.
“I never want to be alone,” she breathed back.
Shafiq felt a mix of fear and excitement, a pounding adrenaline that urged him to live for this moment. Kathmiya was not moving toward him, but just by not pulling away she was closer than ever before.
“Salim will be fine.” He tried to focus on the reality around them, but it was so, so hard.
“How can you be sure?”
“He’s an attorney. He lives by the laws of this land. They have to repay him now.” But Shafiq didn’t believe this as much as he had only an hour before.
“The law is what they used to arrest him,” she pointed out, and he couldn’t help but wish for just one moment that Kathmiya were not so smart.
The law. The rules. The ways of the world. Shafiq felt a throbbing in his head.
A world where devotion to tribe was put above pure love.
Where Marcelle was lost to a petty thief because she had to be married off to someone Jewish before she turned fifteen. Where Salim, the most vocal anti-Zionist Shafiq had ever known, was in jail on charges of Zionism.
Where Kathmiya, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, could not marry. And where he, deeply infatuated with her, no—in love with her—could not do anything but leave. The pounding struck his heart. He stared at her exquisite heart-shaped face, her pomegranate-red lips, her mysterious eyes. Enormous black eyes, staring back at him as though—he could almost feel it—she wanted the comfort of his company.
For years, it seemed, Shafiq had thought of nothing besides this moment. And now it was here. He squeezed his eyes shut. Whatever happened, his life would never be the same.
And then he opened them again. “The law is what we live by,” he announced. It was not his own voice speaking, but he had to obey. Still, he felt terrible abandoning Kathmiya in that empty house, echoing with absent souls. “I have to go now, but I promise to come back.”
Kathmiya’s black eyes were magnified by a coating of tears.
When Shafiq returned home, he had to rush to his mother to stop her from raining a new wave of blows down on her own head.
“The paper didn’t work, our traditions are failing…”
If Leah knew what paper their mother was talking about, she didn’t let it show, just sat listlessly, offering no words of comfort.
“They took the money, then sent me away,” Shafiq said, struggling against the invisible wall of Naji’s absence.
“We’re going to save our traditions,” Ezra said gently to their mother. Shafiq did not let his mind go to how “we” would do this. Only more trouble there.
“Marcelle has no baby,” Reema gasped incoherently. “The spirits are angry. This proves that old remedies have lost their power.” She let out a mournful wail.
“What it proves,” said Ezra darkly, “is that Iraq is not safe for any Jew, even one as stubbornly anti-Zionist as Salim.”
The spirit of Naji in Shafiq’s head answered Ezra: It is Zionism that makes Iraq unsafe for us. Shafiq was not interested in either argument, just frustrated that Naji was not there to make it, that both his brothers had gone from banter about philosophy to fanatical attachment to ideology.
“Forget your politics,” their father scolded. “I don’t care about the religious or the political or what have you. Salim is in prison. Leah is here with her little one.” He had their attention. The entire family was depending on Roobain to pull Salim back from the precipice.
“Salim is innocent,” Shafiq seethed through gritted teeth. “I can prove it! Everyone who knows him knows he hates the Zionists! It was only a radio…”
But his voice trailed off at the memory of the broadcasts, which they’d all listened to closely during the war. Everyone shifted nervously, feeling complicit in a crime that didn’t exist.
“We need a lawyer,” said Ezra after a pause.
Shafiq watched his mother twisting her fingers together. He wished he were as distracted, thinking about mythical papers and babies instead of the cold, enormous prison.
“My husband loves all people,” said Leah through a daze. Everyone knew that any time you visited Salim you were as likely to find a Jew as a Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, Turk, Persian, Armenian, whatever friend trafficking through the home.
“They could speak for his character,” Shafiq urged.
“As soon as a man defensively protests his innocence, he is known for the shadow of guilt,” Roobain warned gravely. “The more people who hear, the more disgrace will attach to Salim.”
“But…he’s innocent!” It was a rare burst of clarity from Reema.
Shafiq shuddered to realize this likely made no difference.
“Everyone who knows him knows he’s not a Zionist—can’t we gather testimony?” he asked, thinking of the sadistic, joyless laughter of the blotchy official.
“There’s no logical response if you’ve been framed,” Ezra said flatly.
Shafiq said, “We need wassttah.” Literally, it meant a connection, but everyone knew he was referring to someone with influence.
Roobain silenced them all. “Business associates and even colleagues can change their tune when the authorities are involved.”
“Baba,” Leah started to cry. “Baba, are you saying there’s nothing we can do?”
“Binti, I am saying that we are alone but for the people we trust most.”
And with that, he sent for Salwa.
Shafiq felt a spark of hope as he rushed to his neighbor’s house. Omar wasn’t home, but there was Salwa. He didn’t have to say a word; she asked, “What happened?” as soon as she saw his face. Then added, “Allah yistir.”
God forbid.
Quickly wrapping an abaya around her loose dress, Salwa held Shafiq’s hand as they left her home. He was startled to realize how small her fingers felt, how much he’d grown.
When they arrived in the living room, which now had the air of a bunker, Shafiq watched as his family stared at the poor widow who represented their only hope. Salwa instinctively put an arm around Leah, who just sobbed harder.
Roobain explained what had happened. No one needed to apologize for disturbing Salwa. No one needed to tell her not to tell another soul. Nor did they need to ask for her help.
“Two seven one,” she said.
It was Anwar’s phone number in Baghdad.
Shafiq insisted on biking to the post office to make the call. He had failed to free Salim but he could definitely reach Anwar. Still, as he pedaled, it seemed that everywhere he turned, there were cars or horse-drawn carriages or children in his path, and the slowness of this most important ride of his life only increased the pressure in his head.
Finally, he arrived at the post office, a two-story building on the main street, which ran along an estuary near the center of Ashar. The clerk was in no hurry to help, but Shafiq could hardly shake him and say, “This is an emergency—my brother-in-law is in prison!” Instead he fought to look casual. Watch the walls. Wait like you are bored. Don’t lean in with desperation.
A mother in front of Shafiq scolded her child. The clerk did not look up from the counter. The sun shone brightly. Everything was off.
Delay, delay, delay, delay, de-lay, d-e-l-a-y. Shafiq swallowed hard and stood stiffly. When his turn came, he forced a smile and handed the indifferent clerk ten fils and Anwar’s number.
Two. Seven. One.
The clerk nodded to Shafiq, who picked up the black earpiece. He didn’t bother to rehearse a speech. Anwar would understand.
But the phone just rang, maybe twenty times before Shafiq gave up.
The ride back felt even slower than the ride over, not for all the donkeys blocking the streets but the brakes that had been put on their plans.
When Shafiq shared the news—or lack of it—he saw the family’s anemic optimism starting to fail. Every moment that Salim remained in jail seemed to increase the chances he would stay there.
An overnight train to Baghdad would leave the Margeel station in less than two hours. “Omar will go,” Salwa said.
“I’m going with him,” Shafiq insisted.
“No,” Roobain was firm. “We have to stay together now.”
All Shafiq could do was scribble a note.
My brother,
May Allah be with you.
Shafiq
When he stuck it in the hole in the wall, he felt like it was a wire that would connect the current of power between them.