The Girl from Baghdad (22 page)

The grey square building that was Nučice's only school seemed even more menacing and grim under the leaden October sky. Mum said goodbye to us in front of the entrance. We were all put in classes with kids younger than us.

‘I'm sorry, but your Czech isn't good enough. Until you have caught up, we can't put you with children your own age,' explained the headmistress. She looked at Klara and me with a concerned expression. ‘Come with me, you two. The secondary school classrooms are upstairs.'

Although Klara and I were in different classrooms, they were right next to each other. Walking in, I saw several pale, curious faces turn to stare at me. I went to take a seat at one of the empty desks at the back of the room. Passing by a little blonde boy, I realised he was pointing at my clothes. I was wearing an outfit that I liked a lot – a pair of turquoise leggings with a long, matching sweater that came mid-thigh. It was fashionable to dress this way in Baghdad.

‘What are you wearing? Your pyjamas?' the boy whispered under his breath. ‘You must have just woken up.' He laughed as he elbowed his neighbour.

I snapped my head towards him, regarding him disdainfully before I took my seat.

‘She's a gypsy, can't you see how dark she is?' mumbled another boy sitting behind me, to my left.

‘I'm not a gypsy, stupid!' I yelled back.

‘Did you hear that? She speaks our language!' the blonde boy hissed again.

Humiliated, I crossed my arms and stared out the window, fantasising about running away, while the teacher started to read a poem about Czechoslovakia.

When it was recess time, we all went out to the courtyard. I immediately searched for my sisters. Klara was standing alone in a corner. As soon as she saw me, she ran to meet me with sad eyes. She had received the same treatment in her class.

‘Where's Linda?' she asked.

At that moment, in another corner of the courtyard near a swing, a small group of nine-year-olds started screaming and making a lot of commotion. There was a little girl bowing down, almost on her knees, in the middle of their circle. She was shaking her head, squeezing her hands against her ears. We rushed to our sister.

‘Leave her alone! Stop!' I slapped their hands away and kicked wildly at those nearest. Linda's tormentors sped off, frightened. Klara and I hugged our sister, attempting to calm her. She was trembling, loud sobs escaping from her body.

‘What did they do to you?' I asked.

‘They said I'm a gypsy …'

I shouted furiously at her bullies at the other end of the playground, ‘Try that again and I'll give you all a black eye. Do you understand?'

School continued this way for the first month. We kept on meeting up in the courtyard during break time, where I often came to blows with Linda's classmates, just like the first day. They picked on her until she broke down. When we found her she would be curled up in a ball in a corner of the yard, her eyes swollen from crying. Klara let herself be insulted without retaliating. I lost so much weight during those weeks that I looked malnourished.

Bàsil's letters were my only consolation, although at times they also made me sink further into a state of melancholy.

Baghdad was so far away from me, it seemed lost forever. Yet Bàsil maintained his contact with me. He was so unchanged in his letters that I almost felt I could touch him; go out the door, cross the street and run into his arms. He wrote again:

He remembered! The letter had arrived a week late, but had warmed my heart nonetheless. Bàsil was the only one able to find the right words to cheer me up. In that instant, I knew I was in love with him. That intense feeling (one I had never felt with Uday) was remarkable. I realised I loved him, but it was too late. The thought that my loyal, distant and true prince awaited my return to Baghdad was the only thing that uplifted my spirits.

I didn't know if I would ever see him again. My mother was in a very bad way by now. She was shipwrecked, lost inside undeserved pain.

Babička, seeing she was despondent, began needling her. She repeated relentlessly, like a broken record, that she always knew the marriage to ‘that foreigner' would end badly. ‘If it wasn't for me, you'd be out on the street right
now. You should thank me. Four more people to look after, and with such little money. You don't realise the sacrifices I have to make for you all.' When she acted like this, I hated her. I prayed my mother would hurry up and get better. I couldn't last much longer in that oppressive house.

One Sunday morning, at the end of October, I woke later than usual. My mother's bed was empty. Linda and Klara were still sleeping. I went to the kitchen, where Grandpa was seated at the table, dunking his black bread into a bowl of milk.

‘Where's Mum? Have you seen her?' I enquired.

‘No, she left early this morning before dawn,' he answered, without lifting his eyes from his bowl.

‘Where'd she go?'

‘I don't know. Ask your grandmother. She's outside in the vegetable garden.'

I went out the back. Babička stopped, put down the rake and wiped her forehead with her hand. ‘Your mother left when it was still dark.'

‘Where to?' I asked, alarmed.

‘She said she had to take care of some things. Get dressed and give me a hand here.' She grabbed the rake and went back to work.

‘Where did she go? She could hardly even stand …'

‘To Baghdad,' she answered without even raising her head. ‘Make it snappy, now. Go and get changed.'

I was horrified. ‘Did she tell you when she's coming back?'

‘She said that she'd write as soon as possible.' She stopped and stared at me. ‘What are you still doing here? Go, I said.'

I went back into the house, astonished. I didn't know what to think. Why had Mum left without telling us? How could she have left without us? I watched Linda and Klara as they slept. Suddenly – and without warning – we had been left alone in the world. What if she had gone away forever?

November and December were freezing. The Dobříč landscape had lost all its colours. The trees were stripped of the reds and yellows that had cheered us up during the few clear days in October. The fields were bare and grey. I wasn't used to the cold. It penetrated my bones like a sickness.

During the first couple of months in Czechoslovakia, I had held on to the joyful memories in Iraq before my father abandoned us. Now, whenever I heard someone mention Baghdad, I felt panic rise inside me. Did Mum really go back? Was she safe? We hadn't heard any news
from her: no letters, no phone calls. It seemed as if she had vanished into thin air. I wanted to leave Dobříč and search for her. But with what money? Babička counted every penny of change that remained from the groceries, and I didn't have any savings. There was no-one I could turn to for help. I wrote to Bàsil asking him to find out something – anything – about my mother's whereabouts in Baghdad.

He never wrote back. Waking up each morning meant a painful return to reality. I ran to Mrs Radka every time she brought the mail, but there was no letter, from Mum or Bàsil. Had Bàsil, whom I trusted so much, abandoned me too?

I sat at the breakfast table, where Babička had prepared a long loaf of black bread, stuffed with butter and thick pieces of ham. Eating that heavy food first thing in the morning made my stomach turn. The soup for lunch was already boiling on the stove; the pungent odour of cabbage filled the room. Sometimes the bus for Nučice didn't arrive. When that happened, we had to walk along the cold, muddy road, often arriving at school late and dirty.

The situation at school wasn't getting any better, at least not for me. Linda and Klara had slowly started to integrate, but I found it a lot more difficult. I didn't feel in the least bit connected to any of my classmates. I didn't belong in their world.

I hated studying German and Russian. We had to sing Communist songs in one class. We didn't wear uniforms like in Baghdad, but we were still forced to participate in activities that were no less militaristic. Communism was a tough regime. We were severely punished by our teachers for the smallest mistakes, the back of our hands lashed with rods. Once a week, they made us strip down to our underwear for a hygiene inspection. They wanted to make sure we were clean and did it without giving any warning. They forced us – boys and girls – to stand half-naked, crowded together. It was demoralising and profoundly humiliating.

Babička managed to buy Linda's affection. Making an exception just for her, she would unlock the pantry and give her chocolate bars. Dolls were printed on the wrappers and my sister spent her afternoons cutting them out and changing the clothes on their little bodies.

My grandmother only ever showed animosity towards me. A young man who lived near us had developed a crush on me and would drop off romantic notes. Babička intercepted one. She waved it in front of my eyes, taunting me and smiling spitefully.

‘You'd like to read it, wouldn't you?'

‘Please, Babička, give it to me,' I pleaded, trying to remain calm.

‘Not even in your wildest dreams!' she replied cruelly.

I threw myself at her, trying to rip the paper from her hands. She kept me at arm's length, tossing the note into the fireplace. She watched it burn, smug satisfaction on her face.

‘That is where your little notes wind up. And if he writes you any more, they will also burn,' she sneered.

At that moment, I was certain Bàsil's letters had suffered the same fate. Perhaps even Dad had written to us and she had done the same.

‘They're all nonsense,' she continued bitterly. ‘You have to stop thinking about boys. What do you hope to do? Who do you think deserves you? Radka's son at best.'

The mailwoman had two sons, Michal and Petr, who both looked after the family's pig farm. The boys, more used to beasts than people, were big, untamed and scruffy. Their clothes reeked of pigs and they didn't have many friends. My grandmother thought it was funny and didn't care to think how much her words had hurt me. I hated her intensely when she acted like this. I was trapped with no way of escape. To make matters worse, after two months there was still no word from Mum.