Between Two Worlds (10 page)

Our schools were free—we were given notebooks, books, coloring pens, and anything else we needed for studying—but we were expected to “give back” to patriotic causes, contributing to buy the president a cake for his birthday on April 28. I remember students scrambling to come up with enough coins, but never questioning why. Yet they must have wondered, as I did, why our little brothers and sisters were also donating money for birthday cakes. How many cakes could he eat? How would they be delivered? One day after school, I saw the teachers eating his cake at a meeting, like a Baath Party meeting, and I felt stung by the hypocrisy. My mother and I happened to visit a former teacher friend of hers that night, and as we walked up to her house, we saw a picture of Saddam Hussein taped to her front window and two candles burning on her front porch. I remember taking in the look that Mama and this teacher gave each other. I don’t believe any words passed between them, but this was the conversation I remember they managed to exchange through their eyes and their gestures—it would have been too dangerous to say these things out loud:

Mama: “Gee, you’ve really gone all out with this Baath Party stuff, Kawbob. Don’t you think you’re going a little overboard with the candles?”

Aunt Kawbob: “Ah, Alia, it’s getting worse every day. It’s degrading, but one does what one has to. Baath Party members have been stopping by the house lately. If you’re not excited about celebrating Saddam’s birthday, they’ll think you don’t like the president.”

Mama: “I’m sorry. I’m lucky I got out of teaching when I did, I guess. But then, none of us can be too careful these days. Do you have any birthday cake?”

And, we went inside to eat cake with her. Mama already knew what I was coming to understand. Lighting those candles, chanting for Amo Saddam, and even eating that cake were shields we used to ward off danger, and those who were the most vulnerable needed them most. Everyone had to prove their loyalty, just in case. When we got home that night, Mama told me, “Zainab honey, go bring some candles. I think we should also put them in front of our house. Aunt Kawbob has a point.”

 

I was just falling asleep one night when I heard the unfamiliar sound of my parents arguing downstairs. I had heard them argue before, mostly when I was little, mostly over small things, and mostly in English because they figured we didn’t understand it yet. This was very different. My parents were fighting, and I could hear my father’s voice raised. He was very upset. I got out of bed and sat down on the terrazzo tile step. Baba was angry, and Mama was trying to sound reasonable.

“What are you
thinking
of, Alia?”

“You wouldn’t be the only one. Lots of men are volunteering; maybe you should do the same.”

“Don’t you love me anymore? Do you want to get me killed?”

“Of course I love you. Of course I don’t want you to get killed.”

“I can’t believe my own wife is telling me this! Other women are trying to help their husbands escape the draft, and you’re telling me I should go to the front lines?”

“You saw him the other night. He was looking straight at you when he said city men were spoiled. All that talk about how you don’t know what hardship is, what it means to grow up without shoes, that men from Baghdad need to toughen up and this war will teach them how. You know Amo expects you to go, Basil.”

“So what? What if I get shot? Is that how I’m supposed to prove I’m tough? By getting myself killed?”

And I heard Baba get up, open the front door, and stalk out into the night. I just sat there in my pajamas in the silence that followed. I was scared. Was I now at risk of losing Baba? Why would Mama even think of such a thing? Was she trying to be one of those “glorious Iraqi women” they were always talking about on television who sent their husbands and sons off to war? I hesitated for a minute, then went downstairs to find her. There had to be an explanation.

“Did you hear us arguing?” she asked, looking up when she saw me come in. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Mama, does Baba really have to go to the front? What if something happens to him?”

“Nothing will happen to him, honey. They won’t send him anywhere dangerous. He’ll just go away for a while to fulfill his national duty, then come home. It’ll just feel as though he’s away on a long trip.”

She made it sound almost routine. She seemed to think that my father would go off to a safe area, prove his loyalty, and be back in a matter of months—which is exactly what happened. I later learned that Saddam Hussein was the one who had called him home and that he had complimented Baba in private for his courage. But for the first time I saw a crack in my parents’ marriage. Except to say that he thought Iraq would win because our army was stronger than Iran’s, I don’t remember Baba saying much at all when he came home. I just remember that when he returned, his boots left mud on the terrazzo tile, and he wouldn’t look at Mama, though she went out of her way to be nice to him. My father loved my mother. I am certain of that, but I don’t think he ever got over her imprecations to risk his life for show.

While men were under pressure to donate their time and even their lives for the war effort, women were asked to donate gold. Baath Party members began going door-to-door in suburban neighborhoods asking women to donate jewelry, and some felt pressured to give away even their wedding rings in the name of supporting our troops. In the Arab world, a woman’s wealth is often displayed in public by her gold. Under Sharia, Islamic law, men inherit twice as much from their parents as women, because they are responsible for paying for household expenses. A woman’s portion of her inheritance, however, is hers alone. As far as I know, my father never asked my mother about her inheritance; that was hers. Along with properties and other assets, when a woman marries, her women relatives and friends slip twenty-four-karat necklaces over her head and rings onto her fingers until, by the end of the evening, she is often adorned with jewels, and these are hers to keep even if the marriage ends in divorce.

When I was twelve, we got an invitation to donate gold at a televised ceremony as I was finishing seventh grade. Mama didn’t like the idea of appearing on television and, in her own way, was shy about such publicity. I suspect the whole concept seemed gauche to her, but participation was not optional, so my parents asked me to go instead. When I arrived, I found women lining up in front of the camera to make their donations. I believe I was the only child. I said my name clearly, as they had, so my family would be given proper credit, and handed over the bag of jewelry my mother had given me so they could weigh it and announce the exact weight on television. I don’t remember how much it was, but the point was that everyone in the country knew exactly how much everyone else gave, so that, even as everyone quietly complained, they wound up competing to see who could donate most. A few months later the president held a private ceremony in which he pinned a silver pin on my lapel as a donor. He talked for a long time, praising or criticizing specific families by name. He knew exactly how much each family had donated. One family had been “stingy,” he said, naming them and adding that they loved their dogs more than their country. Later, I found out that their assets had been confiscated and the couple, childless, was imprisoned.

 

 

The summer before I started eighth grade, a huge convoy of black Mercedes and police vehicles roared into the Airlines Neighborhood and parked under the basketball hoop in our cul-de-sac on an otherwise quiet Friday, the Muslim day of rest.

In Baghdad, people often drop by to visit in late afternoons—not between the hours of one and four, because that is a time for meals and naps—but later on, for tea or coffee. It was apparently in that tradition that the president decided to drop in on us for a surprise visit. My parents were playing backgammon at the time, and they jumped up as soon as they heard all the noise outside. It was Radya’s day off, so Mama nervously sent me into the kitchen to make coffee while she and my father answered the door and invited the president into the parlor. I peeked outside as the water was boiling and was overwhelmed at the sheer military power I saw through the grill on the kitchen window. The cul-de-sac was filled with automobiles and men in uniforms and guns and black mustaches.

I got out our special pot for Turkish coffee and set three little gold-embossed cups and saucers on my grandmother’s engraved silver tray from Iran—a political faux pas I would have known better than to commit even a year or two later. I prided myself on knowing how to make Turkish coffee even though I was too young to drink it. I carefully measured every ingredient and made certain to take the coffee off the heat at exactly the right moment so there would be froth on top. No froth meant mediocre coffee and a neglectful hostess.

Then I nervously carried my tray into the parlor. My parents were seated together on the small sofa. Saddam Hussein was seated alone on the big sofa, with one arm draped casually over the back and the other resting near the gun at his waist. I immediately knew by the way they spoke that they were more than just acquaintances; they knew one another well. He looked very much at home in our house—more so at the moment than my father did. Baba was smiling and trying to look relaxed, but I could see he was nervous as well. I set the tray down very carefully, focusing on the cups to make sure nothing spilled.

“And here is our Zainab,” Baba said, his face lighting up when I walked in. My father’s love for me could feel like sunshine. I remember feeling it in particular that day. I could see how proud he was to present his daughter to the president of Iraq.

“Ah, so this is Zanooba!” the president said, as if he’d been hearing about me for years.

I was instructed to call him Amo, just Amo, as my parents did. Later, Mama told me this was a kind of a code name he had asked his friends to call him.

“Good afternoon, Amo,” I said politely. I smiled and leaned down to kiss him three times, as Iraqis do in greeting, once on one cheek, then on the other, then back to the first cheek again. He had surprisingly soft cheeks, as if he had recently shaved, and he smelled of cologne. He gave me a beautiful smile, a wide smile with very white, even teeth. When he picked up the cup, I noticed a small tribal tattoo on his hand.

After serving the coffee, I smiled and politely left the room as was expected of me. Then I went back to the kitchen to look through the window to count how many more people were outside that I was supposed to make coffee for, and counted tens of guards standing in the cul-de-sac. I recognized one of them. It was Uncle Arshad, Aunt Nawal’s husband, and Aunt Nawal was Amo’s sister. I knew them. I had even been to their house a few times. How had my parents gotten to know Amo, and why hadn’t they ever talked about him before? I carried the biggest tray of coffee cups outside I could manage, only to learn guards couldn’t drink anything while on duty. At the far end of the street, I noticed the entry to our neighborhood had been blocked off; and there was some sort of disturbance. It turned out that the entire neighborhood had been cordoned off as a security measure for this visit, but a teenaged neighbor was unaware of the blockade and had been arrested for trying to get to his house after curfew. Mama told me later what had happened when the security guard came in to tell the president about him.

“What would you like us to do with him, sir?” the guard had asked.

“He’s just a kid, he lives down the street,” Baba said. “Don’t worry about him.”

“Should we put him in jail just to scare him?” the guard persisted. “He was arguing with us.”

Amo decided to take my father’s recommendation and let the boy go, which spared him and his family the terror of a prison stay. Because my father was a friend of Amo’s, he was allowed to intervene to help the boy. Of course, if he hadn’t been a friend of Amo’s, the boy wouldn’t have been in danger of arrest in the first place. Friendship and fear went hand in hand.

After Amo left, I went into the parlor to clear the dishes. I was all alone, and I saw Saddam Hussein’s cup—Amo’s cup—sitting there. I remembered Mama and her friend Shaima reading coffee grounds, and I went over and picked up his cup and swirled the last bit of liquid around in it as they did. Then I flipped it over onto the saucer to see if I could make out any shapes in the coffee grounds that could foretell the future. A bird meant someone would bring you news. A fish meant you were about to get money. But all I could see in Amo’s saucer was grounds.