‘What do you think, Saddiq – buttercups around the door?’
‘In Bashiqa: all right. But not here in Mosul, Qoteh. Time’s not right.’
Disappointed but accepting, Qoteh gathered the flowers off the kitchen table and patted them into a wicker basket. She looked around their little shop, at the piles of Turkish and British beer cans, bottles of Greek wine and cases of American cigarettes. Her husband was right. Mosul was a war zone, a powder keg, a city of hope and a den of despair.
‘If we cannot have the flowers, Saddiq, it can’t be safe for Rozeh to stay here any longer.’
‘She likes the school, Qoteh. She’s doing well. The Americans have been kind – with books and tapes. It’s a blessing.’
Qoteh took off her green silk scarf and wiped her hands and brow. She looked at herself in the little mirror below the battery-powered clock: a Marlboro promotion. The lines were pronounced about her bright blue eyes: trenches of experience. Her hardened lips were not as full as they had once been, but her daughter made her proud. She was twice as beautiful.
It had been a blessed marriage, even though they hadn’t been able to have children of their own. Saddiq was a hard worker, a good learner and a pious man – despite his gambling. At least he won more than he lost, and would never bet more than he could afford. Rozeh never wanted for anything. Except, of course, what they all wanted: peace.
‘I couldn’t sleep last night, Saddiq.’
Saddiq had gone upstairs and was trying to shave. ‘What was that?’
‘I need some sleep.’
‘We all do.’ He cut himself.
Saddiq thought of the previous night’s bloodshed. American planes attacked the south of the city after a suicide bomber exploded a petrol truck near a new US base, close to the airport. Saddiq hoped the bombs had hit their targets. He hoped that Khuda, the Almighty, had saved the good and brought the bad men to their end.
Over the past week, the city seemed to have been falling apart. Insurgents from the south had joined up with the radical Sunni militia Ansar al-Sunna, looting police stations of weapons and equipment. Both the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan seemed powerless to halt the mayhem. Without the Americans, things would probably be worse – but they never seemed to be there when the danger came.
It was a bad time, but Saddiq knew in his heart that the wicked would not prosper forever. Things had to improve some day; they just had to, so long as the Alliance did not turn their backs on the northern zone. But there was no denying it: the safe area had been safer before the invasion.
Saddiq put on his spotless white shirt and pulled up his brown cotton trousers. The question was whether to open the shop. The family needed the money; they hoped to get out – perhaps to relatives in Germany, or even to Britain, where life was good.
He looked out of the upstairs bedroom window across the bridge to the suburb of Faisaliya on the other side of the River Tigris. The state school there had both Christian and Muslim teachers, so Rozeh might get to see different sides of the truth – or she might just end up being confused. He would have preferred that she’d stayed in the country with her own people, but there was no future there. She wanted to be a doctor – something his mother could have hardly even dreamt of. Imagine, his only daughter a doctor! The world was changing. Rozeh knew English and could make a living in the world.
He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. She should be crossing the bridge soon, with her friend Fatima, whose father ran the old officers’ club next door. And the boys whose parents worked at the law courts a couple of blocks away would protect them.
Qoteh entered the bedroom. ‘Can you see her?’
‘She will be home soon.’
‘I know. But can you see her?’
‘Please, Qoteh, we must trust in God.’
‘Are there troops on the bridge?’
‘Yes. They are there.’
‘I never went to school, Saddiq. It was forbidden. Why did we let Rozeh go to school with the outsiders?’
‘We listened to the Kochek.’
‘Tell me again what he said.’
Saddiq put his warm arms around his wife. ‘He said he had a vision of Rozeh. She was helping the sick. Many were dying. The world was black, but Rozeh was light. People did as she told them, men and women. She was smiling; happy in her work.’
‘Are you sure your brother wasn’t just trying to be nice to her?’
‘Ask him.’
‘He’s not here. I’m asking you.’
‘My old brother has never told a lie. If he says he saw Rozeh; then that is what he saw. He says she came from a special place.’
‘But maybe that was in a different life; maybe her next life.’
‘Maybe. Who knows these things? We must trust in God.’
‘Your brother, he is a Kochek; he’s supposed to know.’
Saddiq laughed. ‘If he knew all that, we could take him to the airbase in the south and get the Americans to pay him 100 dollars for every piece of information. God reveals to him what we need to know; not what we want to know.’
‘He’s a good man. I believe him, Saddiq. He is good.’
Saddiq kissed his wife. ‘God is good. Let’s go downstairs. Let’s open the shop for a few hours. Somebody out there needs drink and cigarettes.’
No sooner had Saddiq unbolted the front door and pulled up the shutters than a small crowd of Kurds and Assyrians gathered at the door, clutching orders from the battered clubs and bars that lined the street between the bridge and the pumping station in the west. Those who did not drink craved cigarettes – Turkish, American, British, anything.
Saddiq smiled at Qoteh through his thick black moustache and opened the cash register. Below the register was a 9 mm Browning pistol. It had cost him a lot, but that was two years ago. Now he could pick one up in the suq for next to nothing.
By 5.45, there was still no sign of Rozeh. Qoteh was anxious, finding it hard to concentrate on the currency transactions presented to her by eager buyers: dollars, dinars, Turkish lira.
She kept looking over to Saddiq, who was busy piling up cans of beer, cases of wine and cartons of cigarettes. Saddiq smiled and nodded gracefully. Qoteh put the radio on. They liked to listen to the US Forces network, even though they understood little of the language. But they knew their daughter would understand it, and, somehow, they were listening for her too.
Qoteh kept thinking of the joy that would be Rozeh’s, so soon, at the Sarsaleh, on Wednesday in Bashiqa. Bashiqa: the best Spring Festival of them all! Qoteh would pull out her mother’s old trunk so that Rozeh could appear on Thursday in the debka, the dance that brought souls alive in the eyes of all who danced and all who watched. The musicians would beat the huge tambourines that shook the earth and ruffled the feathers of the highest birds, and the hills would ring to the melodious cries of the flute.
Just thinking about the debka and her beautiful, sweet daughter, Qoteh could feel in her fingers, not the dry dullness of hard currency, but the soft, purple cotton of Rozeh’s long chemise; she could picture the rainbow colours of her red baggy trousers, yellow waistcoat and orange jacket, with the woollen meyzar knotted over her right shoulder.
Qoteh would open her box of gold filigree earrings with their precious stones, the bracelets that her great-great-great-great-grandmother had worn when the English archaeologist Layard had come to excavate Nineveh across the river. Then, to set it off, the great wide belt with its huge silver buckle and silver pin – the belt she had worn on her wedding day.
A shot. An American M16. Qoteh looked to Saddiq. It came from the bridge. An explosion. Machine-gun fire.