Dates on My Fingers: An Iraqi Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (7 page)

But what had happened brought me back to Aliya. I was always coming back to her, my first and only love story since we were kids in Subh Village. Memories of her fed my deepest desires. She was a cousin on my father’s side, and her house was next to ours. We were separated from them by only a low mud wall, which we used to cross by sitting on it and swinging our legs over. Their bread oven was close to ours, so we would gather near our mothers when they baked bread at dawn or sunset. They would talk about the female neighbors, the cows, the chickens, the fields, and the babies while we played around them and took the burnt bread crusts they gave us.

Aliya was my most beloved playmate: I would take her side in all the fights, and I would give her the best of the clay creations I made. Among these was a horse because she loved horses. I painted it white except for its tail, which was black, just like their horse. Her father was the only one in the village who owned a horse—the rest of us only had donkeys—and he called it “Lion” even though it was a horse.

When Aliya got bigger, she began riding her father’s Lion. She would shoot off toward the riverbank to let it drink, or she would take it to the field and return with saddlebags full of watermelons and eggplant from her mother. Whenever I saw her passing close by and heading off into the distance, I would remain fixed in place, reliving the scene of her on the white horse, with her long hair, black as its tail, dancing in the wind behind her head like the wings of a happy bird.

My sister Istabraq was our go-between since, as we got older, it became harder to play together or to get away from everyone else for a rendezvous. Subh Village was an open
book, filled with prying eyes: everyone knew everything and nothing was hidden from anyone.

When I first told Istabraq that I loved Aliya, she was overjoyed and set off at a run toward our uncle’s house. From the window I watched her, the ever skinny and sickly one, as she crossed the mud wall with a single leap and disappeared. Meanwhile, I stayed in my room, trembling. I covered my face with a pillow and squeezed tight. I didn’t know what to do, and my heart was beating in a way that I had never known before, except when I was afraid of Grandfather. Istabraq seemed to take forever, but she returned after half an hour, panting, and closed the door behind her. I wasn’t able to read anything on her face, but I felt that she carried an answer which would bring me joy or sorrow for the days to come.

She walked around in the room with a deliberate, wicked leisure, interlacing her fingers and cracking her knuckles, one after another. My head followed as she came and went like the pendulum of a wall clock. I grabbed her by the arm when she passed by. I was still sitting on the edge of the bed, too weak to stand because of my trembling.

I was unable to speak, so I asked the question with a choked sigh, “Ahh?”

She gave me a look that held multiple meanings. Then she looked toward the small clay jar that I had made, all on my own, which I had painted with decorative flowers, butterflies, and circles inside circles, like eyes. I considered it the best of my artistic creations, my favorite. For that reason, I had put my pens inside and set it on top of the bookcase near the head of my bed.

“What?” I asked.

Istabraq smiled and pointed her finger at the jar without uttering a word. I understood that she wanted this jar in
exchange for speaking. I tried to play dumb to divert her from it, asking, “So? Did you find her?”

Her finger kept pointing insistently at the jar. Without getting up, I reached out my arm and turned the jar over, dumping out the pens onto the top of the bookcase. I held the jar out to Istabraq. She glowed and hugged it to her chest.

“Well? So?” I said, “Tell me, Istabraq! Istabraq, O apple of my eye, God bless you and keep you! You’re killing me!”

But she maintained her wicked silence and her insinuating smile. Next, she stretched her hand out to me. I didn’t understand. She brought it closer to my mouth, and I knew that she wanted me to kiss it. So I kissed it, but she shook her head and pointed at the ground. Then I remembered that she had been with us for Grandfather’s nighttime stories about knights of old coming back victorious from battle, who would kneel down on the ground and kiss the fingers of their beloved.

So that’s what I did, looking up from below at her face, which seemed really high up. Then she collapsed onto my face and hugged my head without letting go of the jar. She rained her happiness and her kisses down upon me and cried out, “She loves you too, Saleem! She loves you!”

Thus began my first attempts at writing letters and poetry. I decorated the margins of my letters with butterflies and hearts that had our initials on them and were pierced with arrows. I would sneak into my mother’s room when she was away to dab my letters with drops of the perfume my father would bring for her as gifts from his German friends.

In Grandfather’s stories about knights, he used to say that they were all passionate lovers and poets. The one he liked most was Antara bin Shaddad, whom he hoped to see in the hereafter because Prophet Muhammad had wanted that too.
Like me, Antara also loved a cousin on his father’s side, and he would write poetry for her.

In the same way, I wrote my first poems for Aliya. I described myself in them as a brave knight who didn’t fear death. I would cut off the heads of a thousand of the enemy’s knights with a single blow of my sword. I would wrestle savage lions and crush their heads like eggs in my fist. I would gather stars from the heavens for her and make them into a necklace with the moon in the middle. I would hang this necklace around her neck and force the people to confess that she was the most beautiful woman in all of creation. Likewise, I would expound upon her eyes, even though her eyes were small like the buttonhole slits on shirts, such that her mother used to call her, either playfully or when she was angry, “my little China girl.” Nevertheless, I would compare them to two wide, pearly seas, eyes with the majesty of a lion and the delicacy of a gazelle. Her hair was so silky that silk would be jealous. She was the one who taught the branches of trees to sway coquettishly when the wind blew, just like how she walked. Aliya was queen of the world. No one but me saw her crown, yet I would make them see it by the power of my sword!

Istabraq would read our letters when she delivered them. She read my poems, astonished, wishing that Sirat could write poetry like me. As for Aliya, she never mentioned my poems in her letters. I wasn’t able to get to be alone with her through all our years in Subh Village, even though I would watch for her day and night from my window. I would intentionally create “chance” encounters in order to exchange a greeting. I would hide myself on the overhanging bank in order to see her when she came to the shore of the river on their horse to let it drink, with her hair flying behind her like the wings of a happy bird. I
would see the gleaming of her legs when she waded in the water, the clenching of each buttock when she bent over, scooping up water to drink or to wash her hair. And I was sadder than everyone else when Istabraq’s illness got worse and confined her to bed because the letters to and from Aliya were cut off.

I would sit near Istabraq’s head, taking her skinny, hot hand between mine, kissing her fingers and crying. I had learned this practice from Grandfather, whose heart would break whenever he saw one of us bedridden. He would sit near our head, caressing our hands and foreheads with extreme tenderness, reciting Qur’anic verses and prayers for healing, interceding with God “as though he saw Him.” For that reason, the days when we were sick were the days when we were closest to Grandfather. Whenever we were healthy, we regarded him as extremely aweinspiring and severe, even though we never saw him hit anyone. But he was more tender toward us than our mothers were when we were sick. So much so, that it sometimes made me long to be sick in order to win the tender caress of his fingers.

Istabraq was my favorite sibling and the closest to me in spirit. She played with me, she organized my room for me, we clipped each other’s fingernails, and when Mother was too busy for her, I would help her comb her hair. She would save pieces of dessert for me when I was away, and I would do the same for her. We would share secrets that we wouldn’t reveal to the rest of our siblings. I would deliver her love letters to Sirat, and she would take mine to Aliya. Everyone in our family knew of our partiality for each other and the warmth of our love. That was why Grandfather and my father chose me, and only me, to go with them when they decided to take Istabraq to the Kurdish sheikh for treatment. And that was why my heart fell with her as she dropped out of my arms when we first got out
of the car in that sheikh’s courtyard and we heard the sound of the shot and Grandfather’s cry, “God is great!”

Terrified, I fell to my knees beside her head. After looking her over and not seeing any blood, I shook her shoulders and called to her, hoping that she would open her eyes. “Istabraq! My dear Istabraq!”

The Kurdish sheikh came running toward us from the direction of the shot, that is, from the house. He was carrying an old hunting rifle, its muzzle still smoking. He yelled at me, “Leave her, boy! Leave her alone!”

Grandfather repeated the same cry, “Leave her, Saleem!”

I lifted my hands off her without getting up or moving away, watching the two men as they embraced like kids whose team had won a tournament. Both gaunt and with white beards, they were of the same age and the same height. Grandfather was wearing his favorite suit for special occasions, the one we called a zabun, together with the traditional kuffiya headdress. The Kurd was wearing a suit with wide pants. He had wrapped around his waist a sash that matched the cloth of his turban. They couldn’t be more elegantly dressed, nor could they be hugging each other any harder.

They patted each other’s shoulders and repeated the same phrase: “Oh! My brother and my beloved in God, Mullah Mutlaq!”

“Oh! My brother and my beloved in God, Kaka Hammah.”

The Kurd corrected Grandfather, “Actually, I’m no longer Hammah. I’ve changed my name to Abd al-Shafi, the ‘Servant of the Healer,’ ever since God poured his blessings upon me.”

My father shook his hand, and Grandfather said, “This is my eldest son, Noah.” Then Grandfather stroked my head and said, “This is my grandson, Saleem, and his sister, Istabraq.”

The sheikh murmured the customary response, “Ah, for God’s good will upon you!”

Then the sheikh turned around and called to a girl standing in the door, “Bring me some water!”

She came running toward us in a multicolored dress, like a butterfly, with a gleaming shawl on the top of her head. The sheikh took the small bowl of water from her and asked, “The salt?”

She extended her other fist over his open palm and let the salt stream out of her hand. The sheikh began scattering the salt on the water in the bowl, muttering words we didn’t understand, reciting by heart with his eyes closed. Then he spat in the water and continued his enigmatic recitation. Using his index finger as a spoon, he plunged it into the water and stirred like someone stirring the sugar in his glass of tea. He sank his whole hand in the water and began walking around Istabraq’s corpse-like body, shaking the moisture off his fingers onto it and reciting, moving around, splashing her with droplets and reciting, until only a little remained in the bottom of the bowl. Then he stopped at her head, opposite me. He bent over and poured it all over her face and cried out with a voice that made me jump, “The all-living God!”

I saw Istabraq open her eyes and look at him. He smiled at her and said, “Welcome, my sweet child!” He straightened up, saying, “Bring her inside.”

He went toward Grandfather and put his arm around his shoulders to lead him toward the entrance of the house. My father, the butterfly girl, and I worked together to lift Istabraq up. She took her first steps leaning on me. Then I felt her walk on her own until we made it through the front door, which was a beautiful weave of wood, twisted copper, and colored glass.

The main room was spacious and resembled a mosque, with carpets and comfortable rugs covering the floor. Pillows
were piled up on all sides. There were two columns the color of tree trunks in the middle, as well as a coal stove sunk into the wall under a square chimney. Through the chimney came the sound of cooing pigeons that had settled down on top of it in the nest of storks that had migrated. There were many doors in the far walls.

Grandfather and the sheikh sat down next to each other without releasing their intertwined fingers. In the back of the room, there was a bed made with a high pillow and a white sheet, decorated on the edges with flower blossoms. We laid Istabraq out on it, and the girl covered her. I sat at her feet, and my father sat a few feet away.

The sheikh said something to the girl in Kurdish, which we didn’t understand, but Grandfather, whose knowledge of that language surprised me, protested, “No, there’s no need to prepare food, sheikh! Our road is long, and we want to return before sunset.”

The girl paused, seeking further instructions. The sheikh spoke to her in Kurdish again, and off she went, whereupon Grandfather said, “Fine. As you wish.”

The sheikh commented, “We have an excellent turkey whose meat is worthy of our distinguished guests.”

They let go of each other’s hands, and the sheikh patted Grandfather’s thigh as he took the conversation in a different direction. “You’ve lost so much weight! But for my ever-present memory of you and the days we spent fighting alongside our cousin Rashid Ali, I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

“Diabetes,” Grandfather explained, “and the passing years.”

The sheikh commented happily, “Ah, too bad! But it’s only fair: you’ve been sucking on sugar your whole life, and now it’s time for it to suck on you!”

We all laughed while the sheikh stretched out his hand to Istabraq’s forehead. She was looking at us silently, with clear, beautiful eyes. Despite the faint yellow color that tinged their whites, they were gleaming. Their magic surprised me, as though I had never seen them before.