The Corpse Washer (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (7 page)

She laughed out loud: “No way. That’s an old trick. A tree could grow on your head and I would still not allow you.”

“Alas, had you said ‘When a tree grows on your head, then I will allow you,’ I would have at least tried to plant one there.”

She laughed, “Anyway, if your style is abstract as you claim, why do you need a model?”

“Inspiration, my dear colleague.”

“Oh, how collegial of you!”

Suddenly, three months later, she invited me to have lunch at her house. I asked her who would be there.

“Why? Are you afraid?”

I laughed. “No, but am I not allowed to ask?”

“My father is at work and his wife is on a trip to Mosul. Do you want to invite anyone else?”

“No, the two of us will do.”

It wasn’t the first time we’d been alone in her car. We had occasionally gone to plays together, and she would drive me home afterward. But this was the first time I was going to her house or anywhere knowing that we would be by ourselves.

The house was in al-Jadiriyya, huge and elegant. She let me in through the kitchen door and I followed her along a corridor to the guest room. She asked me to make myself at home while she heated the food. I asked whether she needed any help. “No, you are my guest,” she said. She offered me a drink, but I declined. She smiled and left me contemplating the extravagant furniture and precious Persian carpets.

She returned ten minutes later carrying a tablecloth and plates with silverware. She spread the white tablecloth and then set plates down in front of two of the eight chairs. One was at the head of the table and the other right next to it so that we would occupy a corner. I wasn’t used to all these elaborate preparations for a meal. I followed her into the kitchen. She laughed: “Where are you going?”

“It’s not right. I have to help you.”

She scooped the yellow rice she’d warmed into a big dish and asked me to carry it. It was mixed with almonds, raisins, and pieces of chicken. The smell of saffron filled the air. I took the dish and put it on the table. When I went back to the kitchen she pointed to a big salad bowl she’d taken out of the fridge. “That one, too, please.” She followed me carrying a tray that had two bottles of Pepsi, two glasses, and some bread. We sat down to eat.

I loved to watch her do anything, no matter how mundane or casual. I loved to watch her eat. The food was good, and I asked who should be praised. She said the maid, an experienced cook, came three times a week. I asked about her battles with her stepmother. She said that peace now prevailed, because her father had remodeled the house after she had moved back in. He had built an additional room on the second floor. A living room next to her bedroom
served as an office and a TV room. She had her own bathroom, so she came downstairs only to eat, and she rarely had to deal with her stepmother. She said, as she smiled shyly, that she would show me what she called her private wing after lunch. I interpreted this as an encouraging sign.

After we finished eating I thanked her and we took the dishes back to the kitchen. She said I could wash my hands in the bathroom upstairs. We went up the stairs, which were made of marble tiles and led to a wooden door. She opened it and I closed it behind us. The first door on the left was the bathroom. She opened the door and showed me in, saying she was going to fetch a towel. Her bathroom was bigger than my bedroom. The walls and floor were tiled in light blue. The floor was covered with tiny dark blue rugs. There was a tub behind a see-through curtain. The oval basin was sky-blue.

I turned the faucet knobs, trying to find the right combination of cold and hot water. I took the yellow bar of soap and lathered my hands and mouth. I gargled and rinsed my mouth and hands and then shut the faucet.

She came in and handed me a white towel.

I took the towel with my left hand and put my right hand on her left. She didn’t pull away. I told her: “I want to wash your hands.”

She laughed: “What? Why?”

I pulled her gently to the basin and turned the faucet on again. I put the new towel over the old one, which was on the bar to the right of the basin. I held both of her hands and put them under the water. She didn’t say a word. I took the soap and lathered her right hand carefully, first the knuckles, then the palm, and then I placed each one of her fingers between my thumb and index finger and rubbed them. I did the same with her left hand and then rinsed them both with water before shutting the faucet. She was looking at me the whole time, smiling. I took the towel and dried both of her hands. After I put the towel back on the bar, I held her hands and looked into her eyes. She smiled and said “Thank you” in a hushed voice.

I pulled her toward me and moved my face closer to hers, but she pulled away. I was disappointed, but then she said, “Let me wash my mouth first.” She laughed and added, “You forgot to wash it! Go and wait for me. I’ll be there right away.”

I stood outside the bathroom watching her wash her mouth. She saw me looking at her in the mirror and smiled. She dried her mouth with the towel. She opened the cupboard and took out some lipstick and put a touch of her favorite pink on her lips. She came out of the bathroom, shut the door behind her, and leaned on the wall next to it, just a few steps from me. I approached and stood close to her. Looking at her lips, I leaned over. She closed her eyes and I lightly grazed her lips with mine. Then again. I kissed the right edge of her lips. My mouth slipped toward her right cheek. I moved to her neck. I put my arms around her waist. She sighed and leaned her head back. I felt her hands on my shoulders. I kissed her neck and inhaled that jasmine perfume which had so dizzied me for months.

I encircled her neck with my kisses, then my mouth climbed, kiss by kiss, to her chin. I trapped her upper lip between my lips. She parted her lips and our tongues met. Her thighs had moved closer to my body, and she must have felt my erection. I put my right hand on her breast and tried to unbutton her shirt, but she held my hand and lowered it. She pushed me away gently without saying anything and then walked toward a door at the end of the corridor. I followed her.

Her bedroom was huge. The walls were white and the floor was covered with Persian carpets. There was a medium-size bed with white sheets. The wall above it had a huge black-and-white photo of a table in a café with a closed book and an empty cup of coffee on it—it looked European. The left side of the room had a huge mirror behind a table and a chair. Next to them was a chest made of Indian oak.

She stood by the bed and then turned toward me. She was wearing a white shirt and a gray skirt which barely covered her knees. I approached her and kissed her with more confidence this time. She put her arms around me. I started to unbutton her white shirt and saw her white bra hiding her full breasts. I moved the shirt away to
kiss her left shoulder and then kissed her upper arm. She started kissing my neck and I felt fire in my bones.

I went back to her shoulder and moved her bra strap aside to kiss her shoulder again. Then I moved down to the slopes of her left breast. I could smell her perfume again. I removed her shirt and tossed it on the bed. I took her in my arms, kissed her neck again and fumbled with her bra. She laughed and undid it herself and tossed it on the floor. She started to unbutton my shirt as I kissed her pear-shaped breasts and erect nipples. She took off my shirt and let it fall to the floor. She took off her shoes and kicked them aside. I did the same and bent down to quickly remove my socks. I found my mouth right in front of her navel so I kissed it, and found that she was ticklish. We peeled each other piece by piece until all she wore were her black panties. These she grasped with both hands and lowered to her feet. Her pubic hair was shaved. I I took off my white underpants. I was very hard. Naked now except for the gold chain around her neck with her name engraved on it, she lay on the bed sideways.

I knelt and started kissing her knees and then made my way up her left thigh with my lips all the way to her hip, her tummy, and her navel again to tickle her. She giggled and put her fingers through my hair. I climbed on top of her and took her left nipple between my lips. My tongue circled around it a few times before moving to the right. She was sighing and moving under me like a wave. My tongue climbed to her neck and mouth. She kissed me, open-mouthed. I bit her lower lip and my tongue wandered inside her mouth. I went down again to her breasts and nipples and then her navel and kissed her right below it. She had parted her thighs a bit. I surrounded them with my arms and gently kissed her soft inner thighs. Her sighs intensified. I kissed in between. She tasted like the sea. I kept plowing with my tongue and she kept rising in waves until her body overflowed.

Everything quieted down afterward for a minute and my head rested on her thigh. She pulled me up by the hand and I was on top again. She hugged and kissed me and then clasped her legs around
me. I entered her looking deep into her large eyes. I kept reentering her body in a rising tempo until I felt I was about to flood. A sweet silence reigned afterward.

I loved her self-confidence and the way she stood there and put her hand on her hip saying: “So, you want to sculpt me now?”

I’m sitting alone, watching TV and flipping the channels, but they are all blank. No sound or image. Whiteness, silent whiteness, covers everything. I punch the TV with my fist a few times to no avail. I keep flipping through the channels in search of something that might relieve my insomnia and entertain me a bit. I find only one channel working.

There, five hooded men stand around a sixth, who kneels and wears an orange work suit. A black bag shrouds his head. Four men hold their weapons while their leader reads the execution verdict to the kneeling prisoner. The leader pauses and looks at me, warning:
You better change the channel, because what you will soon see will terrify you and you’re not a man
. He goes back to reading from the piece of paper. When he finishes, he folds the paper and puts it in his pocket. One of the hooded men standing behind him hands him a sword. The leader lifts the black bag from the head of the kneeling man, who starts to weep like a child. The leader holds the man’s blond hair and tilts his head to the left. He lifts the sword and beheads him with a single blow while intoning:
God is great. God is great
.

I feel nauseated and turn off the TV, but blood flows from the screen, covering everything around me in red.

I was startled as I uncovered the face of one of the men I washed yesterday. He looked exactly like a dear friend of mine who’d died years ago. The same rectangular features, high cheek bones, and long nose. The skin and eyes were coffee brown. His eyes were shut, of course. Their sockets were somewhat hollow. The thick eyebrows looked as if they were about to shake hands.
But,
I said to myself,
I’ve already seen him dead in my own arms once before.
The name on the paper was Muhsin. The distinguishing mark that this person, who looked so much like my friend, had acquired was a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. It looked like a period which had put an end to the sentence of his life. One of the men who brought him said that he was a shop owner and was killed in a robbery.
Thank God,
I thought.
It’s not a sectarian killing. But does it matter to the dead how and why they die? Theft, greed, hatred, or sectarianism? We, who are waiting in line for our turn, keep mulling over death, but the dead person just dies and is indifferent.

I asked them if they were from al-Samawa. Perhaps he was one of Basim’s relatives. One of them asked if something was wrong. “No, nothing. It’s just that the deceased looks exactly like a dear friend of mine from al-Samawa and I thought they might be related.” He answered with the usual cliché: “God creates forty identical faces.”

Basim and I had become close friends during my military service. Without contacts and favors that could get you a posting close to your family, a soldier’s fate was like a throw of the dice. After two months of grueling training, the hand of coincidence, or absurdity, landed me in southern Iraq. I was ordered to report to a small unit in
al-Samawa, away from Baghdad and everything I’d ever known. The unit was an antiaircraft missile unit temporarily stationed at the al-Samawa cement plant. It was 270 kilometers south of Baghdad, halfway to Basra. The trip took three hours by car.

I was far away from everything, but contrary to my expectations, the distance wasn’t a bad thing at all. I missed Reem, of course, and there was no way to contact her. Army life was not easy, but our commanding officer was a kind and easygoing man, and we didn’t have many duties. The cement factory had been looted after the 1991 war. After my first leave, I returned to the unit from Baghdad with lots of books to kill the time. I also brought sketchbooks and a tiny radio to listen to music and the news at night. There was a TV in our unit, and we could watch the Baghdad channels and sometimes Kuwaiti TV, but the transmission was weak and I preferred the radio. I didn’t miss Baghdad that much. I loved the serenity of the local landscape. I spent most of my time reading, drawing, and contemplating. That’s why Basim called me “the intellectual” and always addressed me as “Professor Jawad.”

I rediscovered the beauty of stars at night. I never realized that so many of them could crowd the sky. I used to love gazing at them as a child when we slept on the roof during the summer. This is what happens to city people when we are far from our false glitter. I found myself shepherding the stars every night.

It was there that I met Basim. I didn’t know it at first, but he would become the star that lit the place for me. He was from al-Samawa and would ask the C.O., Lieutenant Ahmad, for permission to go downtown Thursday evening and return on Friday night. The C.O. would approve, especially since Basim used to get us things we needed, cigarettes, tea, and sugar. The army’s supply system was irregular and less efficient than it had been in the 1980s. Basim’s father, Hajj Muhammad al-Sudani, was rich and owned a few shops at the al-Samawa suq. Basim had studied history at al-Basra University. He had a great sense of humor and was full of curiosity and joie de vivre. You heard his laughter everywhere he went.