The court was pungent with people. There were obviously criminal elements among the crowds waiting for a hearing. One man had a scruffy beard and holes in his clothes. Another had a visible scar across his chest and scabs on his arms. A prostitute with red-painted cheeks leaned against a greasy-looking pimp, who took the seat nearest to the fan and splayed his legs wide.
Now that Shafiq knew he might find Kathmiya, a harsh sentence would be all the more ruinous.
“Look at this mess.” Iskender tried to be disgusted but he was really just terrified.
“We’re here to meet justice,” Yunis replied in the authoritative voice that matched his natural stature.
“The guy started it,” Iskender said. That was their entire defense.
Three sweaty hours later, when the friends finally stood before the judge, the sputtering attacker railed about the injury to his honor and his right to defend it.
The judge cast his eyes across the boys. “Look around you,” he instructed. “Petty thieves, violent criminals—I’ve even had murderers. Now,” continued the judge, “here I have four clean-cut young men.” He read their names out loud and it was obvious that each came from a different background. “What do you have in common?” he asked.
Yunis answered. “We are all basically good, and one stupid bar fight should not destroy our futures.”
“Is that so?” asked the judge from his lofty bench.
“I hope to go into politics,” Yunis said with the even tone of a future leader.
“I’m planning to be a doctor,” Omar chirped.
“Electrical engineering,” Iskender put in.
All eyes were now on Shafiq.
He knew he was supposed to pretend to have a future, to hide the fact that he was torn between leaving the country and staying to find the girl he loved. His friends needed him to rescue them. And he needed to keep them all out of that long brick building with a cave for an entrance and a special latrine for beating prisoners.
I plan…I intend…
But Shafiq couldn’t lie. He would never be a doctor or a lawyer.
“He’s a very serious young man,” said Omar, prompting him.
“And I want, with all my heart, to serve the great nation of Iraq,” Shafiq declared. It had the virtue of being true, if impossible.
“Decent young men, as I suspected,” said the judge. “Dismissed.”
Salwa refused to say who Kathmiya had married, but she gave Omar enough clues to investigate, and now it was time.
Every detail was in place. The plan. The house. The widow.
When Omar and Shafiq got there, they caught sight of the old lady leaving, as if Allah were guiding them, as if kismet were on their side, as though Kathmiya herself might answer the door and run off with Shafiq to some future that was as black as night and just as dream-filled.
A girl answered, too young to be Kathmiya’s mother.
“Is Jamila there?” Omar asked, flashing his winning smile. The girl looked so genuinely confused it was clear she had no idea who he meant.
“She works for Nafisa?”
“I’m the only one working here,” the girl said, and closed the door.
“Wait!” Shafiq tried, but it was no use. Jamila must have left, fading back into the deep pool of nameless Midaan, and no doubt her employer had never bothered to learn where she lived, let alone where she worked now.
The two teens walked away quietly under the shade of second-floor balconies hanging over the attached houses that lined the streets.
“We’ll keep looking,” Omar said comfortingly. Then he added, in a voice that barely rose above the sounds of city, “Shafiq? I always knew.”
“You what?”
“The few times I saw you together, the way your eyes lit up—both of you—I saw it right away. I didn’t know you…” he stopped himself rather than describe what Shafiq had done. “But I always knew it was her.”
Kismet was beautiful and magnificent and crushing.
Shafiq had only one plan left, but it was already summer and unless the government sent his passport soon, he’d miss school in America. The looming partition of Palestine provoked so much anger against the Jews it was not only ruining his chances of leaving Iraq, it was also complicating his efforts to stay.
The interviewers at Baghdad University did their part.
“So is your father’s name Abraham or what?” one taunted.
And then, in rapid, impossible succession, “What are the ingredients in nylon?”
“Using English words, name all of the bones in the foot.”
“On what fundamental principle is atomic explosion based?”
Shafiq didn’t know any of the answers, which was perfect, because the panel was trying to fail him.
It seemed the only fact left in his head was one Salim had taught him years before: Iraq’s national currency was established thanks in part to the efforts of a patriotic Jew named Abraham al-Kabir.
Back in Basra, the light September air, usually so welcome after the incessant heat of summer, was just a reminder that Hope College had started without Shafiq, that Omar had left for Baghdad to study, and that Kathmiya would never be found.
But then it came.
When he entered the government office in Ashar, Shafiq still could not believe any plan in his life would ever come to fruition. But when he walked out, he was holding a small red book with his photo inside and the Iraqi national emblem on its hard cover. Thick ticket to a glorious future.
Walking home near the same path he had followed after discovering Sayed Mustapha’s disappearance, Shafiq felt none of the sweet fondness for his country that had clung to him then. Instead, he was buoyantly comparing the mediocre life he led in this quiet corner of the Middle East with the star-spangled future that awaited in the capital of the world. America! Land of the free, winner of all wars, maker of stars, she could anoint the weak and slay the powerful.
Passing a hunched old woman wrapped in black, Shafiq imagined his future surrounded on every street corner by skyscrapers and starlets dressed in sleeveless shirts and cute culottes. As he walked by the sleepy cafés in Basra where men smoked long-stemmed water pipes, he pictured the bustling restaurants of Chicago crowded with mobsters more powerful than kings. Shafiq tried to conceive of Broadway, the great road he heard ran across the entire United States and was so wide you needed a bus just to cross it. Imagine that, compared to the short paths of this little town! Schools in Michigan were so large they had their own highways. Shafiq’s had nothing but a dusty soccer field.
When a driver honked at Shafiq as he bounded toward the Corniche, he thought: In America people are civilized, they don’t honk, lose their tempers, get angry, feel pain or otherwise suffer any malady. How could they? They are in the U-S-A.
America. Not caring whether anyone was looking he peeked at his passport, which was tucked in the inside pocket of his jacket, and then kissed the little official booklet.
What were “for spacious skies”? Shafiq had read the lyric in a magazine once. He imagined heavens broader and grander than any over Iraq. Whatever they were, he would soon find out.
November of 1947 was half over. Classes at Hope had begun, but Shafiq planned to catch up as soon as he got there. All that remained, besides the airline ticket, were his visa and his exit permit.
“This letter offers you admission in September,” said the Iraqi staff member working at the U.S. consulate in Basra when Shafiq asked for a visa. “You’re two months late.”
Staring at the wooden counter, scratched from years of paperwork, Shafiq knew his plan was doomed. What a terrible bureaucratic hell to be damned in; he was delayed because of the massive red tape involved in securing his documents, and now that they were in hand, it was too late. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
“If you receive another letter offering admission for the next semester, well, I suppose you could go then.”
The clerk might as well have suggested that Shafiq row to America in a homemade tin canoe. The time it had taken just to apply to Hope, the slowness of the mail across continents, the transcripts and letters to be gathered—how could he do it all over again?
When Shafiq returned home, he collapsed on the couch face-down, refusing to even look at his parents.
It was over. The dream, the future, the “for spacious skies.” The only reason to stay in Iraq was Kathmiya, but she was like the candlelit kite: spectacular but fleeting.
Roobain shook Shafiq from his stupor with this suggestion: “We have to go see Yusef.” His cousin, the one with savvy.
“Could we send a telegram?” Shafiq asked when they arrived at Yusef’s office, where he worked as the chief secretary to one of the most prominent members of the community, a successful businessman who did not only imports and exports but also had the only car dealership in all of Basra.
“Don’t just send it,” Yusef counseled. “Prepay the return postage for them.”
“But will they care enough to answer quickly?” Shafiq worried. “And what if the telegram isn’t delivered?”
“You think this is Iraq we are dealing with, but don’t forget, the college is in America.”
America the beautiful.
URGENTLY NEEDED SPRING TERM ADMISSION FOR VISA. SEND BY PREPAID TELEGRAM.
Eleven words to a new future.
The yellow envelope arrived two days later. And Shafiq understood the meaning of “for spacious skies.”