I turn my body around as much as it can go without seeming too awkward. “Elm tree. In Latin?”
“Yes, well, Latin for my mother. I told you, she was raised Catholic.”
I must not have given the appropriate expression of getting it.
“Latin, you know, that’s the language of the Catholic mass. It was, well, I guess you can say it still is, the Catholic religious language.”
“Oh, right.”
“Samara was really my Dad’s choice. And my Mom went for it because it meant something nice in Latin, and she liked the way it sounded.”
I try to combine this in my mind: a meaning so steeped in God it seems Islamic, and on the other hand, a tree I’ve never seen. “What does an elm tree look like?”
“An elm?” She shrugs. “I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s just a regular green, leafy tree you have on nearly every street in America. Or in Pennsylvania, anyway. In fact, a famous peace treaty between William Penn and the local Native Americans was signed under a huge, old elm tree.
“Samara, is that a popular name?”
“No,” she says. “In fact, not at all. I think I’ve only met one other Samara in my whole life, though I know there are others out there. It’s not just a place in Iraq, you know. It’s also a city in Russia, and there’s a river there called Samara, too. My father’s family came from there.”
“From Russia? I thought you said Germany.”
“I did,” she says. “His father’s side was from there. But his mother’s side was from Russia. That’s where I got this.” Sam puts her hand to her head with open fingers, as if she expected to run them through her hair. She pats the headscarf instead, fiddling with the edge of it. “My bubbe had the same hair. And of course, my mother’s Irish Catholic, so I probably get it from both sides.”
“Bobby? Isn’t it a boy’s name?”
“No, not Bobby.
Bubbe.
Grandma.”
“Oh. In Russian or in German?”
She smiles and looks away. “Neither. Yiddish.”
“I see.” She’ll think I won’t know what that is, but I do. I’ve read references to it in books.
“All those funny words you’ve heard me use, like
schmuck
and
schlepp
? It’s not really slang, it’s Yiddish. It is, or it was, the Jewish European language. It’s almost dead now.”
“Why dead?”
“I don’t know. I guess people learn Hebrew now instead.”
“Did you?”
“No. I never went to religious school or anything like that. It was the deal my parents made with each other. No conversions, no Sunday schools, no rites of passage. Yes to presents on all holidays, and yes to family meals that involve eating or drinking a lot. All in all, not such a bad way to grow up.”
A deal. I thought that in the West, marriage was all about love. Deals exist only in the East, where families discuss marriage prospects in very concrete terms, down to who’s paying for the furniture and the apartment. I have so many more questions for Sam, but I’m starting to feel nervous, thinking that we should prepare for going to see Mustapha. We’re already at the edge of Sadr City.
“Did you bring those photocopies of the documents?”
Sam pats her bag. “Yep. They’re right here.”
“What about money?”
Sam’s mouth flinches, more of a tick than a frown. “I always have some money with me but, I don’t know, Nabil,” she says, pushing her hand down on her bag. “I’m still not comfortable with paying this guy.”
I reach into my pocket to find a handkerchief and wipe my forehead. It feels like the weather is slipping into summer early this year. Maybe God is disappointed by how we have responded to violence with even more violence, and is turning up the heat on us, harsh and ahead of schedule. I heard on the radio that it may get up to 44 degrees today, or about 111 Fahrenheit, which is pretty high for May.
“Sometimes,” I say, “it’s good to make a deal.”
Sam grins with closed lips that say, don’t go throwing that back at me.
“Did their parents oppose it, your parents getting married?”
“That? Oh, probably,” she says. “But they never really talked much about it. Neither of them is particularly religious and they just didn’t think anything should stand in their way.”
“But your father chose Samara in part because it means ‘protected by God’. So he is a religious man.”
“Not exactly. I mean, he probably fancies the idea of God. But he was never really into religion.” Sam looks out of the window. ‘“You can have faith without thinking any one religion has a direct line to the man upstairs.’ That’s the kind of thing my father used to say.”
The man upstairs, as a term for God! If you said that in front of some imams, you could probably be accused of blasphemy. Comparing God to a man!
“And your mother? When you were a little girl, did she take you to church or to the...Jewish shrine—”
“A temple. Or synagogue. Neither. Honestly, they met in the late sixties, free love and all that. They thought you could raise kids on good morals. Just be nice to each other, stop making war, that kind of thing. A whole generation was raised like that. And we turned out okay, didn’t we?”
“Except for the making war part,” I say, just to make her laugh again.
A memory of Mum taking me to the Imam Ali Shrine flashes through my mind. Where would I be today if at least one parent didn’t believe in taking us to pray, in nourishing our souls as well as our bodies and our minds?
Guarded by God. I wonder if a name creates a reality, a sort of personality that is outlined for us before we even begin to be.
“Why do you use ‘Sam’, then? Samara is very beautiful.”
“I like it, Samara. Sam is just, I don’t know, easier, catchier. I remind people that it’s Samara when they assume it’s Samantha and I have to correct them. And after all, it’s in my byline.”
The housing has become dense, the road bumpier from neglect, the architecture grim and crumbling. I begin to direct Ibrahim towards the address for Mustapha.
“What does Nabil mean?”
I hold up my hand to her, asking her to wait, describing the rest of the way to Ibrahim. “I’ll tell you later.”
~ * ~
“Here,” I say, when we get to the building where Mustapha’s office is. “This is it.”
I turn back to Sam. “You’re ready?’
She snaps shut her bag and looks at me, indicating that she is.
“You know what Samara actually means in Arabic? I mean, the city name?”
Sam shakes her head.
“The name Samarra is derived from the Arabic phrase of
sarre men ra’a
which translates to A joy for all who see’. And, this is also very fitting for you.” I get out and hold the door open for her, my hand feeling the heat of the metal handle that might burn me were it any hotter, and as she leaves the car, I notice that for the first time, I believe I made Samara Katchens blush.
Brutus pulls open the door. Mustapha is at his desk.
“Ah! We’ve been waiting for you!” he rises to offer a hand towards Sam.
“This is the American journalist I told you about,” I say.
“Yes, Misses Samara, right?”
“Yes,” she says, putting her hand in his open one. Were Sam a marionette under my control, I might have pulled on the strings just before her hand went into his. The fact that he asked her to come in a
hejab
suggests that he is religious, or at least, the people he plans to arrange for us to meet are.
“I expected you earlier,” he says. “We’re running a little late.”
“Sorry,” I say. “We had another commitment. She’s a very busy lady. She was being interviewed on television.”
“Oh,” he says, looking at Sam transformed, wrapped up in her blue scarf, all the red hair tucked away, except for the hints in her eyebrows and around her temples. “Is she a famous correspondent?”
“Of course,” I say. “One of the most important in America.”
Respect, first and foremost. They must know to treat Sam with respect.
“Well then it’s definitely appropriate for her to meet the people to whom I’m going to introduce you.” Mustapha turns and switches to English: “It’s such a pleasure to meet you.”
“And you,” she answers, oblivious to everything that has just transpired.
“Please. Have a seat,” he says, pointing to the old sofa I sat on yesterday. “Would you drink the tea?”
“Well, if we’re running late,” I say.
“Nonsenseness,” he says, claiming his right to speak English, even if he seems to be creating the language as he goes along. “Always there is time for the tea.”
Mustapha seems different today. A change of clothes? A closer shave?
“You are very nice American lady,” he says, his eyes coursing over Sam as if she were wearing a skimpy dress rather than her loose trousers, a long-sleeved tunic and a headscarf.
Sam’s lack of reaction makes me proud; her expression is pleasant but not pleased.
“I think we can help you very much with your research, but you must trust on me. Can you trust on me?”
Sam glances at me for a moment, and then back to him. “Sure I can trust you.”
“Trust is very important to the Iraqi people. If I trust you, I am willing to give you the keys to my own house,” he says, picking his own pair from his pocket and dangling them in the air. “Nothing is more important than trust.”
Sam nods.
“You don’t agree?”
“I do. Trust is important.”
“In America, you have a lot of money and the big weapons, so you doesn’t need the other countries to trust you. But here, different. We think, important to trust each other.”
“Of course. Mr—”
“Call me Mustapha.”
“Mustapha, I do trust you. Excuse me for getting down to business, but can you explain something to me about these documents?”
He looks to me for a moment like he wants me to translate, and then turns back to her. “You understand everything when you getting there.”
“Where?” she asks. “I mean, where is this neighbourhood you want to go to?”
“You see. No need for worry about no thing.”
We follow Mustapha down the few steps from his office and out of the front door. Sam and I turn right to go back towards the place where Ibrahim is parked, but Mustapha goes left. Brutus stands beside him, twice his width and probably six inches taller.
“It’s this way,” Mustapha says, switching back into Arabic.
“Well, our car is this way,” I say, pointing up the narrow street. “We’ll follow you.”
“No, no. That’s no good. Leave your car and come in my car.”
“I thought that was the whole point of not coming in our own car. We came in a taxi.”
“Yes, of course. For your own safety. But it is also for your safety that you come in my car because the people we’re going to see will know it’s me, and you’ll be safer.”
“Sam, he wants us to go in his car.”
“Because?”
“Because he says it’s safer that way.”
There is a deepening in her eyes, like sand darkened by a rainshower. “Is that...okay with you?”
“Well, it’s up to you. It’s...whatever you want to do.”
“I told you,” he says, smiling at Sam with an almost flirtatious face. “Don’t worry. You’re with me! My goodness, American people, so careful! In Baghdad we trust people, especially our friends.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Do Nabil tell you that we went to university together?”
“Yes,” Sam says. “He did say that.”
“See,” he says, holding on to my collarbone and shaking it affectionately.
“Ahui,”
he says, calling me his brother. “If you study with someone, you’re like his brother, always.”
“Always,” I say, and look at Sam, who looks back at me with the most neutral face possible. “Well, then. Give us a minute to go back and tell the driver to wait here for us.”
“Ah. He’s still here? Well then, you can send him home. We’ll get you other taxi, later, or if I can, maybe I can drop you off.”
“Well, how long will we be?” I ask. “Maybe he should just wait here for us while we’re gone.”
“That the problem,” Mustapha says, shaking his head. “We don’t know. It no make sense you pay the taxi to wait here for you. Don’t worry,” he says.
Sam and I make our way past the stores and stalls selling the average sorts of things that people, particularly women, used to come to this part of the market for: frilly nightgowns, handbags, slippers, veils, makeup. Piles of fake blue jeans no woman in her right mind would be caught dead wearing on the street now, unless it were totally hidden under her long
jupeh
or an
abaya.
“See something you like? Maybe a new handbag?” Sam asks, smiling mischievously.
“I was looking for a present for you. I think maybe you need a nice gown like that,” I say, pointing to one of the long, embroidered houserobes usually worn by women my mother’s age.
“Beautiful!” she whispers. “Or one like that,” pointing to a mannequin dressed in one of those fancy, finely embroidered
abayas
that come from the Gulf countries.