It turned out the old principal was right. One by one, Shafiq heard the Jewish students at school talking about leaving Iraq. Europe was devastated and dangerous but Beirut was safe and modern. Even the Soviet Union would be better than competing with the top three Jewish candidates in Basra for maybe two slots at a college.
Shafiq told Salim he planned to take the civil service exam, hoping for some of his brother-in-law’s famously contrarian optimism. “Maybe I can, you know, follow in the footsteps of Senator Heskel,” Shafiq said. He was in Salim’s study, where the Holy Koran sat on a shelf right next to the Old Testament.
Salim didn’t look up from the papers he was shuffling. “Heskel was the finance minister. The senator was Daniel.”
“Well, you know what I mean,” Shafiq said, trying to sound cheerful even if his future was melting like the frozen water his mother bought each afternoon at the local ice factory.
“You’ll need to get your history straight if you want to go into government,” Salim added, still mulling over the documents.
“You taught me a lot already…”
At this, Salim looked up. “I don’t only mean past history, Shafiq. You’ll need to anticipate the future. And Iraq—” he shook his head, looking down again. “Iraq—”
“Okay, I get it.” Shafiq stopped Salim, whose patriotism had already been ruined; no point in making him admit it out loud.
“Shafiq,” Salim was undeterred, “they didn’t beat me in my cell.”
“Thanks Allah,” Shafiq breathed.
“They took me to the latrines so I could smell the urine while they hit my back with straps.” Salim turned in his chair and hitched up his shirt to show the welts cutting like tangled branches on his skin, so startlingly crimson, they looked painted on.
If only. “Allah protect us,” Shafiq whispered.
“I told myself it was good, because at least on the way to the beatings, marching with my head pushed down, I would look at the light on the floor near my stinking feet to see whether it was day or night,” Salim continued. “The guards scared me, I admit I even thought about confessing to make the beatings stop—I might have but I was innocent, completely innocent of all charges!—but what really terrified me was not knowing whether the sun was out. There was no way to measure time. There was no way to tell how long the nightmare had been going on. And that just seemed to mean that it would never end.”
“Allah have mercy.” It was all Shafiq could manage.
“I know what the floor of a prison bathroom smells like, what it is like to retreat from the blows by ramming my face even closer to the stench, to feel like I will never be clean again. I wish I could forget but I never, never will.”
After escaping Salim’s study, Shafiq looked for Kathmiya. She was basting top sheets onto blankets in the living room, surrounded by soft fabric on the yielding couch.
“Hello,” he said.
“Yes?” she muttered.
“Is everything okay?”
“The same,” she said, fingers flying through the wide stitches. “Which is not good.”
“I know,” he began. Seeing those blindingly beautiful eyes, he blurted out, “Everything is wrong.”
“Right,” she replied quietly. He stood tall. When she looked up at him he didn’t look away, just abandoned himself in her shining gaze.
“If only we could escape.” His thoughts spilled out of his mouth. Terrifying.
“I wish,” she said. Even more scary.
Shafiq was overwhelmed. But he knew she understood. “If we could just fly away, like my pigeons…” he said.
Njum, njum. He thought of the birds soaring skyward as he urged them to reach for the stars.
Walking through the dusty streets to Al-Wattan, Shafiq reviewed in his mind the articles he’d been reading about the Communists. Naji’s name was never mentioned but the movement was growing. Strikes. Protests. Demands. And imprisonment. He tried to assure himself that Naji was probably instigating trouble instead of being punished for it. But he knew he had to find out.
The place was as crowded as ever, but two black teas later, Shafiq still didn’t find Sayed Mustafa.
Same the next day.
And the next.
“I’m always here,” he remembered his old principal promising. Finally, Shafiq asked the waiter.
“Sayed Mustapha—skinny guy, wore a suit, used to sit over there?” Shafiq gestured to the bench where the principal had made a second home.
The waiter’s eyes narrowed. “Never heard of him!”
Another man leaned in and Shafiq could almost taste the smoke on his breath. “Gone,” he said. “Don’t ask.”
But before Shafiq could follow the advice, a man in a cream-colored suit started asking questions. “How did you meet Sayed Mustapha?”
Shafiq’s mind raced but came up with only one answer. “He was my school principal.”
“That was years ago,” the man said, wielding the details of Sayed Mustapha’s life like a threat. From an inner pocket of his smooth jacket, he drew out a notebook and a pen, which he pointed at Shafiq’s chest. “And are you now his associate?”
Shafiq wanted to run out but that would only make him look guilty. “No,” he said, trying to relax. Years of theatrics with Omar were worth something. “I haven’t seen him for ages,” he said lightly and yawned.
The interrogator jotted down a note. “So,” he demanded. “What’s your name?”
A certain muscular fear that had been instilled in Shafiq from a young age prompted him to answer right away. “Khaled Hamadi.” He made the name up on the spot.
Self-consciously sauntering out through the café’s open archway, he tried not to think about what had happened to Sayed Mustapha. Shafiq’s nightmares were already crowded with fates for Naji: Moscow, prison, worse. Wherever they are, Shafiq prayed to himself, let them find their way out soon. And let them know enough never to return to Al-Wattan.
The Nation.
Shafiq’s lanky legs carried him away as fast as possible, but he was too disturbed to go home.
Determined to shake the fear from his bones, he continued walking. He crossed the small bridge that ran over the main estuary between Basra and Ashar, trying to calm his restless mind. Each foot on a different slat of wood in a pattern, trying to unrattle his nerves as he stepped.
He breathed in the breeze from the river as he moved along the Corniche toward the business district in Ashar. On the Shat al-Arab river, passengers rode in the long, narrow canoes pushed by men with tall bamboo rods. Larger ships transported everything from apples to donkeys. Fishermen cast their twine-colored nets while boys rowed around them in tin boats, the sounds of the waves magnified by the metal surface.
Wandering up to the noisy markets, where the coppersmith’s banging competed with the squawking chickens, he saw the Kurdish porters wrapped in headscarves, promising to carry shoppers’ groceries for just twenty fils.
A chain of men passed crates in a line; Shafiq noticed the boxes were stamped with the official government seal. Spices went upriver to Baghdad, and documents came back down to Basra.
There was no more sparkling city imaginable. Shafiq thought about Iraq, the Garden of Eden, home to the greatest civilizations since recorded history began. He felt this geography and culture to be part of his very being, the soil from which he sprang. Second to Kathmiya, Basra was his true love. Her many waters, majestic palm trees, homing birds, sweet dates and warmhearted, generous people were his hearth and home. Under the brilliant stars that sparkled over Basra’s unpolluted skies at night slept all members of his family, immediate and extended, together forming the only protective network Shafiq had ever known.
But the inexorable tug of his own ambition told Shafiq there was little point in staying in Iraq only to hope for one of the few places available in the pharmaceutical school. Beyond the country’s borders, he could get a better education, maybe return as a professional, set up a life, and then rejoin his family.
Sayed Mustapha believed in his students, whatever their religion—believed in a pluralistic Iraq. Salim put this doctrine into practice, mingling freely with anyone interesting—to him that meant everyone. Both loved Iraq, and both had encouraged Shafiq’s future there.
One way or another, each had been silenced. He couldn’t adopt their models of promoting Communism or opposing Zionism. He could share their nationalism, but only in his heart.
It was time to leave.
Once he accepted that, Shafiq continued his walk with a bounce in his step. He was too young to give up all hope. Maybe Naji would come back soon. Maybe they could even meet overseas.
Shafiq headed to Ashar. As he passed the American consulate, he saw a young man with hair shaved so close he looked bald. Buoyant with a newfound sense of purpose, Shafiq smiled when their eyes met.
“American?” Shafiq asked in his best movies-and-magazines English.
The man, who looked like he was Ezra’s age, stopped to face Shafiq. “That’s right,” he said, bright as a floodlight. “Hi.”
“America is so great country,” Shafiq responded, hoping to keep the conversation going.
The stranger laughed. “I sure miss it.”
“You miss it?” As soon as Shafiq repeated the phrase, he understood what it meant. “Where is home?” His cousin Fouad used to have a pen pal from Akron, Ohio, and Shafiq hoped the American lived there so he could mention this.
“Ever hear of Fitchburg, Wisconsin? Just outside Madison.”
“Oh, yes!” Shafiq pretended to know. “Your home is here?”
“Not just my home—my girl’s there, too.”
Shafiq understood this to mean “daughter,” and sweetly replied, “Oh, small girl,” as though he were fussing over his niece.
“No, no,” the man laughed, clearing up the confusion with a raunchy emphasis, “my girl.”
Now Shafiq understood. “Yes, your girl.”
“You won’t believe how pretty she is.” The American, casually dressed and rugged, seemed completely different from the porcelain Brits who had chased Shafiq from their pool so many years before.
“She is your girl, she is beautiful,” Shafiq complimented the American, who had opened his wallet to show off a photo.
“Sure is.”
The slim girl with brown hair in the cracked photo was remarkable and unremarkable, beautiful and common. Not Rita Hayworth, not so remote, but a breathtaking woman who was ordinary and available.
“Beautiful,” Shafiq said. “America is so many beautiful girls.”
The young man chuckled roundly. “You would love it,” he said.
I’m sure I will, Shafiq thought, no longer wondering where he would go.
His mind filled with images from American movies—the modern buildings, cars everywhere, and especially the array of pretty girls—Shafiq approached his English teacher, who had learned the language at a college in the United States.
“Can you help me to apply?”
“To Hope?”
Shafiq had never heard this short English word. “Hope College is where I went,” the teacher explained.
“Yes, Hope,” Shafiq affirmed.
The teacher promised to help, and then he explained what that word meant. “When you wish for something, you want it, you know it might happen.”
Hope. Shafiq felt nearly there.
It took three weeks to receive the application, but Shafiq filled it out immediately. Writing from left to right felt strangely promising, as though this backward movement could undo all the madness of the East. He pressed three red twenty-five-fils stamps featuring the Kirkuk Oil Field onto the envelope, hoping he could follow the images of the petroleum installations all the way to America.