Kathmiya went into labor slowly, contractions coming randomly and infrequently but often enough to summon the midwives. As the hours passed, they took turns leaving the room for air and refreshments while she endured the waves of pain that never gathered in pace or intensity, just wore away at her like water against sand.
Kathmiya’s life did not pass before her eyes in an instant, but through the agonizing day that turned to night and back to day again. She wished her father hadn’t died so that he could meet her child, but knew that even if Ali were alive, he would not receive them. And she wished her mother could be by her side but knew that forever forward she would have to sneak visits to Jamila, whom the baby would never know as his grandmother. And she longed, above all, for the warm look that Shafiq used to give her so freely and unselfconsciously, but as another stab of pain sent her abdomen throbbing, she knew that only their separation had kept them and their child alive this long.
Kathmiya was slipping into an unconsciousness mired in defeat. She was not pushing, not even moving, so the midwives stood her up to let gravity do the work. But the sudden change in position sapped her spent reserves of strength, and she fell into a final, cold sweat.
Still, life persisted. The child crowned, but Kathmiya could barely hear the bustle that trembled through the room, the midwives screaming “Push!” or even the hearts that beat inside of her. Even if she lived, what was left?
Ali: dead.
Jamila: all but erased.
Shafiq: gone forever.
It was the end, the very end, until a rough hand rubbed a towel across her brow. Then she heard, like a song, the gentle voice of the maid Latifa encouraging her, “Your beautiful baby is almost here. Come on, just a little more. Just stay with us. Stay with us please. Your baby is coming.”
Suddenly, Kathmiya was energized by an overpowering love for her child. For nine months, facing tribulations she had never thought she could survive, Kathmiya had silently communicated with the life in her body, wrenching her thoughts from depression for him and thanks to him and their life together. And she could not leave now.
Reviving from a near state of shock, she could feel again as the baby twisted out of her. She collapsed back on the bed and they placed the crying, wet infant boy on her chest. The pain was now unbearable, the contractions still pounding through her body, the gash he had left stinging like the cut from a serrated knife. But when Kathmiya looked at her son, her eyes filled with tears.
“Ali,” she breathed, naming him.
Later, when they were alone at the end of the most interminable day of her life, Kathmiya was able to look into his eyes. The resemblance was faint but unmistakable: that familiar warmth and love. Yes, the separation from Shafiq had kept them all alive so far, but now she was strong enough to see him. And he deserved to know. Everything.
“Listen to this,” Ezra told Shafiq, reading from a newspaper. “They’re gathering in New York. Countries. Meeting at the United Nations to vote on the partition of Palestine.”
For years, it seemed, Ezra had been able to invest just about every pronouncement with an ominous tone, and Shafiq had learned to stay calm. But this time, his own plans were at stake and he worried.
“Oh,” Ezra added as an afterthought. “This came for you.”
When Shafiq saw the envelope, his fears and dreams flared like an oil fire.
Dear Shafiq,
When I left you, I was pregnant. I got married and now I have a son named Ali. He is ours. He is beautiful.
My mother knows but she will never let me see you, and I will never disobey her. But if you receive this note, leave a small paper in the wall where you used to write to Omar and I will get it. Do not write anything about love, though. And do not try to find me or approach me. If you do, it will endanger both me and our son.
I am trusting you because Ali has your kind eyes. Destroy this letter now.
Kathmiya
Stunned, confused and euphoric, Shafiq ran up to the roof. He had a son, a beautiful son, with Kathmiya. All the sadness he had felt on first learning she was married evaporated. Even the stain of dishonor was washed away by a flood of shining pride. “Ali has your kind eyes.” Kathmiya loved their son and she loved Shafiq, who loved her too, but she would not see him and he was leaving for America and—
Could he still leave for America? The letter foreclosed the possibility that they would ever be together again, but she had invited Shafiq to write. Without being able to tell her that he loved her, he could never win her back.
And yet. There was an implicit challenge in her message. If he could find a way through this very narrow opening, he might still be able to see her. And he knew he had to try—to see Kathmiya and his son.
Shafiq stayed on the roof through the night, unable to sleep. It was cold in the evening, but he covered himself with a scratchy rug and stared up at the night sky that had offered him so much comfort as a child, the coda to his magical days. Now, as then, he let his thoughts unravel as he watched the stars sparkling above.
He tried to imagine Kathmiya in a new household, and the life his child was having. What a contrast to how she had grown up; when they’d met, she had never seen a sink, or worn shoes, or eaten at a table.
But that had seemed so odd then. With her outstanding beauty and natural sophistication, Kathmiya had always appeared destined for a life beyond the marshes.
Thinking back on his trip there, Shafiq remembered the faces in the reed hut—the woman who had Kathmiya’s same unruly hair, her ugly daughter and the father, bloated from drink. As though back there in the marshes, he returned to the scene and watched their sleeping faces again: the mother, her daughter, the father. This time he did not flinch.
This time, he saw.
Kathmiya was of their world, but also she was not. The same was true of baby Ali. Kismet was suddenly more awesome and mysterious than ever, but the pieces of this story now fit.
Dear Kathmiya,
Thank you for your letter. You are right to trust me; I will never go against your wishes. I am planning to go to America but I want to keep in contact. I understand why your mother will not let you see me but I also know this is not just. If you ask her why she kept that strange dinar for so many years, you will learn why.
Shafiq
After curling up the message and placing it in the special channel where his family had first bored a hole to share their water with Omar’s, he departed for Baghdad, still trying to secure his exit permit.
Walking through Baghdad’s bustling Jewish neighborhood on the way to his cousin’s home, Shafiq registered a tense excitement in the air.
“That’s it!” Someone ran out of the small Hebrew school.
“That’s it!” Another person emerged from the corner butcher shop.
“It’s done!” A passing man in a wrinkled suit shouted.
Shafiq had been so absorbed by his own inner tumult, it took him several moments to understand: the United Nations had approved a plan for the partition of Palestine. Jews around the world were rejoicing, but Shafiq had a bleak sense of foreboding.
The next day, he walked to the government office surrounded by protestors marching down the main street, called Shaara Al-Rasheed.
“LONG LIVE PALESTINE!”
“DOWN WITH THE JEWS!”
“NO TO ZIONISM!”
The crowds were orderly. There was no mob menace. There was no immediate threat to Shafiq. There was only the seismic shift in the dynamics of the Middle East that would forever alter the region, and the world.
Shafiq was dressed in his best clothes, but he did not stand tall. He slouched from one government building to another, trying to secure his exit permit, the chanting of the masses echoing in the air.
“DOWN WITH THE JEWS!”
“LONG LIVE PALESTINE!”
“NO TO ZIONISM!”
He remembered being among the demonstrators when King Ghazi had been killed. I’m just like you, he’d felt then and wanted to explain now. I’m going to America, not illegally emigrating to the new Jewish state in Palestine. But of course saying this out loud would only make the situation worse.
Shafiq returned to his cousin’s house that evening empty-handed. At night he wondered whether it was not all part of a grand plan to keep him in Iraq with Kathmiya and their son. At the same time, he knew that while the outcry against Zionism might prevent him from leaving the country, it would make it even more impossible for them to have a life together if he stayed.
Stuck in Baghdad, trying to extract help from a government that had suddenly turned more hostile than ever, Shafiq had nowhere left to turn.
“We are alone but for the people we trust most,” his father had said.
Two. Seven. One.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming to Baghdad?” Anwar asked when Shafiq arrived at the brother’s apartment after calling in search of his best friend. “We always have room for you.”
“Thanks…I just…Omar!”
Ten minutes later, the two old friends were at the Baghdad Equestrian Club, which was filled with men in fedoras lighting individual cigarettes instead of sucking their tobacco smoke through communal pipes. Omar was trying to fit in with his own second-hand version of the jaunty hat. It covered his head but nothing could cast a shadow on that wide smile. “So which do you like?” he asked.
Shafiq looked at the thoroughbreds being led to the starting line at the far end of the chalked-up open field. “It’s fixed, don’t you know?”
“Sure!” Omar laughed. “The trick is not to look for the fastest horse, but the best-connected owner.”
Then he threw an arm around Shafiq and their bodies were close.
Nothing could overpower their solidarity, which had even freed Salim from jail.
Shafiq hadn’t said a word about the exit visa, but thanks to Omar, his head cleared enough to realize what to do.
The old fire was detectable again in Salim’s voice. “Partition will be the ruin of us all,” he said through the staticky post-office phone. “But what about you? The papers for America?”
Shafiq explained the problem.
“I have a friend,” Salim said. “Hussein al-Nakeeb.”
The attorney’s name was written on a sign adorning the door of his second-floor office on the Shaara Al-Rasheed. Inside, a crimson-and-vermillion carpet added grandeur to the already large space, which overlooked the busy street. Shafiq sat down in one of two polished wooden chairs surrounding a matching coffee table.
Hussein was as casual as Salim and obviously so fond of Shafiq’s brother-in-law that he immediately conversed openly.
“America, huh? Lots of ideals but a long way to go before they’re realized.”
“I plan to study very, very hard,” Shafiq said, trying to be worthy of support. On the wide avenue below, hundreds of men, young and old, continued their march.
“Will you go to the library a lot then?” Hussein asked.
Shafiq had heard of libraries but there was none in all of Ashar or Basra, much less at any of the schools he’d attended. “Yes, I’ll keep my head in my books.” After a moment, he added, “So far, Khalil Gibran is my favorite writer.”
Hussein nodded, then placed a call to the Ministry of External Affairs. “My nephew needs some help,” he told the person on the other end.
Before long, the two were walking down the Shaara Al-Rasheed. Around them, the orderly but passionate chants of the demonstrators rang out in opposition to Zionism and the Jews.
Hussein guided him through the crowded, two-story ministry building. It seemed so formal and formidable, but Shafiq left there with an exit permit.
On the street, still surrounded by protestors denouncing the Jews, Shafiq embraced Hussein, thinking, he really did treat me like his nephew.
“Study hard in America.”
“I will,” Shafiq said. “And if you ever want to visit,” he promised, “I’ll make sure you get your visa.”
Shafiq was determined to keep his word, but he doubted he’d ever have the chance. A successful man like Hussein al-Nakeeb was safe and sound in Iraq.