The Corpse Washer (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (2 page)

The narrow walkway led to a wide room with a high ceiling.

Three or four men were standing at its entrance with their backs blocking the scene. Were they watching my father as he worked? The street was quiet and although the walkway was long, I could hear the sound of water being spilled, with my father’s voice muttering phrases I couldn’t understand, except for the word “God.”

My mother knocked at the open door with more force and determination this time and then called out “Hammoudy.” None of the men turned around. Then the one standing to the far left moved aside and Hammoudy’s face appeared. He limped to the door. Hammoudy, my father’s assistant, looked older than his actual age. He had black hair and eyelashes as thick as a paint brush. He wore blue shorts and a white T-shirt which was wet in many spots. After exchanging a quick hello, my mother gave him the
sufurtas
and the bread saying: “Here, Hammoudy, this is Abu Ammoury’s lunch. He forgot to take it.”

He thanked her and rushed back inside after shutting the door. She held my hand again and we started to make our way back home. I turned back to look at the squatting man. His head was still in his hands. My mother shook me and said, “Mind where you’re going. You’re going to trip and fall.”

At that age I didn’t know much about my father’s work. All I knew was that he was a
mghassilchi,
a body-washer, but this word was obscure to me. I was afraid that day and asked my mother: “Does Father hurt people?”

“No son, not at all. It’s quite the opposite. Why do you ask?”

“But wasn’t that man there crying?”

“Yes, but not because of your father. He’s just sad.”

“Why is he sad? What are they doing inside?”

“Your dad washes the bodies of the dead. It’s a very honorable profession and those who do it are rewarded by God.”

“Why does he wash them? Are they dirty?”

“No, but they must be purified.”

“And where do the dead go after they die?”

“To God. Your father tends to them before they are buried.”

“How can they go to God if they are buried?”

“The soul rises to the sky, but the body remains in the earth it came from. It is said that we are come from Adam and Adam is of dust.”

I looked up to the sky. There were five clouds huddled together and I wondered:
Which one will carry the dead man’s soul? Where will it take it?

The only time I ever saw my father cry was many years later when he heard that my brother Ameer, whom we called Ammoury, had died. Ameer, who was five years my senior, was transformed from “Doctor” into “Martyr.” His framed black-and-white photograph occupied the heart of the main wall in our living room and even a bigger part of my father’s heart, which Ammoury had already monopolized. Ameer, you see, was the ideal son who had always made my father proud. He always excelled and was the top of his class. At the national baccalaureate exams, his score was 95 percent, which enabled him to go to medical school to study to become a surgeon. Ameer wanted to fulfill his dream of opening a clinic so he could allow Father to retire. Father insisted that he would keep working until he died. Ameer insisted on helping Father at work even on his short leaves from the army during the years of war with Iran. This was before he was killed in the al-Faw battles.

I was reading in my room on the second floor when I heard a car stop in front of the house and doors being slammed shut. Seconds later, I heard the new doorbell ringing—the doorbell Ameer had bought and installed after the old one had stopped working and I had procrastinated about fixing it. I drew the curtain open and saw a taxi with a flag-draped coffin on top of it. My heart sunk into an abyss.

Whenever I saw a taxi driving down the street with a flag-draped coffin on it, the thought would cross my mind that Ammoury might one day return like this, but I would quickly cast the vision aside. I rushed down the stairs barefoot. When I reached the front door my
mother was already out in the street in her nightgown without her
abaya.
She stood next to the taxi, beating her head, staring at the coffin and screaming “Oh my … Ammoury … Ammoury … Ammoury’s gone … My son is gone.”

A uniformed man stood there observing the scene. He asked me to sign the papers confirming receipt of the body. Without so much as a glance at the papers, I signed two copies with the ballpoint pen he gave me. I handed back the papers and the pen. He returned the pen to his pocket and said, “May God have mercy on him. My condolences.” He gave me a sheet of paper which I folded and put in my shirt pocket.

The neighbors had come out of their houses after hearing my mother’s wailing. Some of them stood around the taxi and a number of women rushed to console my mother and join in her wailing. The bald taxi driver had untied the ropes which secured the coffin on top of the metal rack. He put them in his trunk and stood waiting. I went up to my mother to hug her, but she was hysterical and surrounded by women who had started beating their heads as well. I wondered how my father’s weak heart would take the news.

The driver started moving the coffin around, as if to hint that we were to help him. I heard a voice saying “Go to Abu Ammoury’s place and inform him.” I yelled out that I would tell him myself after we brought down the coffin. The driver and I and some of the young neighborhood men lifted the coffin and brought it inside the house, placing it in the living room.

A silent tear fell on my cheek as I rushed to deliver the news of Ammoury’s death to my father. Ammoury, who used to play soccer with me on the street. Ammoury, who one summer had taught me how to make a paper kite using twigs from palm trees and who had climbed the neighbor’s palm tree to retrieve my kite when it got stuck there. Ammoury, with whom I shared a room for twenty years and who used to snore sometimes. Ammoury, who had caught me masturbating in the bathroom once when I forgot to lock the door and who had apologized, smiled, and quickly closed the door. He
told me later that it was a natural desire, but said I shouldn’t overdo it. Ammoury, who gave me his blue twenty-four-inch bike when he became taller and bought a twenty-six. Ammoury, who used to race me and would always let me win at the end. Ammoury, who had kept my secret and agreed to go to the high school headmaster instead of my father to persuade him to allow me back to classes after I had been absent too many times. Ammoury, who had genuinely tried to understand my artistic tendencies and my decision to study sculpture and who truly respected art even though it was really not his thing. Ammoury, who had wanted me to be an engineer or a doctor like him and who couldn’t hide his disappointment when I scored 87.7 percent on the baccalaureate exams. It was enough to enter the Academy of Fine Arts, but that wasn’t his hope for his little brother. Ammoury, who used to stand by me at home, defending my point of view against my parents’ criticisms and who would tell them I was talented and had to choose my own path and take responsibility for my decisions. Ammoury, who had visited the exhibition we had during our second year at the academy to encourage me and who had asked me to explain the idea behind my piece and expressed his admiration, listening attentively. Ammoury, who used to joke with me thinking he was encouraging me, but who actually annoyed me, by saying that my statues would one day populate the squares of Baghdad.

Dr. Ammoury, the handsome, shy one but who nonetheless succeeded in charming Wasan, our neighbor, and made her fall in love with him. My mother rushed to ask for her hand so they would be engaged before his graduation. He was drafted into the army after graduation, but died before they got married. Wasan, with her long black hair and lovely legs, a student of architecture at the University of Baghdad. I felt guilty when I couldn’t drive her away from my sexual fantasies. Ammoury, of whom I was greatly jealous, because he was the favorite, pampered—an ideal I could never approach. I felt guilty because I couldn’t stop myself, even in this moment, from wondering so selfishly:
Would the news of my own death in this seemingly endless war leave a quarter of the pain and sorrow that
Ammoury’s departure will have left behind?
I wiped my tears and scolded myself for this utter narcissism.

I got to the
mghaysil,
the washhouse. The door was ajar. I crossed the walkway and saw the Qur’anic verse “Every soul shall taste death” in beautiful Diwani script hanging over the door. The yellowish paint on the wall was peeling away because of the humidity from the washing. Father was sitting in the left corner of the side room on a wooden chair listening to the radio. Death’s traces—its scents and memories—were present in every inch of that place. As if death were the real owner and Father merely an employee working for it and not for God, as he liked to think.

Death, ever present in Father’s place of work and his days, was about to declare its presence once again, but with a cruelty and force that would tattoo itself on Father’s heart and on what was left of his years. The washing bench was empty and dry. Father’s yellow amber worry beads were clicking in his right hand. Hammoudy must have gone out to buy something and left him alone. Father’s eyes greeted me. He must’ve heard my footsteps. “Hello, Father.”

I had not set foot there for more than a year. I had tried to steer away from death, and my relationship with Father had soured. He must have sensed something in my voice and seen the sadness on my face. There was anxiety in his voice:

“What? Is something wrong with your mother?”

“No, Father.”

“What then?”

I approached him and leaned to embrace him as he sat in his chair. He asked me: “What then? Did something happen to Ammoury?”

The news in the past two days had been all about the bloody battles in al-Faw and the heavy casualties inflicted there. Two months earlier, Ammoury’s unit had been transferred from the northern sector to al-Faw. I hesitated for a few long seconds trying to postpone the grave news. Then I told him, as I hugged him and kissed his left cheek without being able to stop my tears: “May you have a long life, Father. They just brought him home.”

He put his arms around me and repeated in a trembling voice:
“Oh, God. Oh, God. There is no power save in God. There is no power save in God. There is no God but God. Only he is immortal.” Then he wept like a child. I hugged him tightly and felt that for a few minutes we’d exchanged the roles of father and son. I sensed he wanted to stand up, so I loosened my arm. He stood up and wiped his tears with the back of his right hand, without letting go of his worry beads. He turned off the radio and put on his jacket. We locked the door and went back home together without exchanging a word.

We didn’t wash Ammoury. According to tradition, martyrs are not washed. He was buried in his military uniform. I never saw Father cry after that time, but the grief I saw piercing his eyes and voice that day would resurface every now and then on his face, especially when he gazed at Ammoury’s photograph which hung on the wall, as if he were silently conversing with him. It was the same look I saw on Father’s face when Ammoury’s coffin was being covered with dirt and the gravedigger recited:

We come from God and to him we return. O God, take his soul up to you and show him your approval. Fill his grave with mercy so that he may never need any other mercy but yours, for he believes in you and your resurrection. This is what God and his messenger promised us. Verily they have told the truth. O God, grant us more faith and peace.

After the funeral was over the black banner hung for months on the wall at the entrance of our street:

“Think not of those who die for God as dead,

but rather alive with their God.”

The martyr Doctor Ameer Kazim Hasan, died in the battles to

liberate al-Faw on the 17th of April, 1988.

Father had never been very talkative and laughed rarely, but Ammoury’s death intensified his silence and dejection and made him more moody and volatile. My mother was the one who had to withstand the waves of his anger with a mumble or a complaint she would whisper to herself when he yelled: “Enough already” or “Turn the
TV down.” The TV had become her only solace. I hadn’t spent much time at home even before Ammoury’s death, but my clashes with Father became more frequent, and I tried to avoid him so as to avoid them. When I came back late at night, he would tell me that I treated our house like a hotel.

In August of 1990, almost three and a half years after Ammoury’s death, Saddam invaded Kuwait. To secure the eastern front with Iran and withdraw troops from there to Kuwait, he agreed to all the Iranian conditions and relinquished all the demands for which he’d waged the war in the first place. Father punched the table and shouted: “Why the hell did we fight for eight years then and what in hell did Ammoury die for?”

Like all children I was very curious and would pester Father with questions about his work, but he said he’d tell me all about it later when the time was right. I would accompany him when I was old enough. “It’s too early, focus on school.” Ammoury had started helping Father when he was fifteen and started to wash at eighteen, but my father never allowed me to go inside his workplace. He wanted to keep work and home separate. When I used to ask Ammoury about work, he never gave me satisfying answers; these were matters for grown-ups and I was still a child.

During the summer break after ninth grade Father told me that I could start accompanying him to work to watch and learn the basics of the trade. On the first day, I was ecstatic. I felt a sense of awe as I stood in front of the door. Father moved the
sufurtas
he was carrying from his right hand to his left and put his right hand in his pocket looking for the key. The sky was clear and cloudless that day. I noticed that there was no sign indicating what the place was, and when I asked him he said there was no need for a sign, because it was not a shop or a store. He added, as he turned the key in the lock to open the door, that everyone knew where the
mghaysil
was. It was the only such place for Shiites in Baghdad, and the vast majority of others were off in Najaf. He said that with great pride, adding that everyone in Kazimiyya knew the place.