The White Zone (5 page)

NO SUNNIS ALLOWED

On the way to school, Talib walked ahead of his cousins, who were throwing rocks at pigeons again. The dusty sidewalk was littered with soda can tabs, shards of glass, and the rubber soles of someone's sandals.

“The Buratha Mosque was bombed,” one of his cousins called to him.

Talib looked back to see Jalal, jutting his chin into the air. “I know,” he called back, transferring his backpack from one shoulder to the other.

“Sunnis bombed it,” said Nouri.

“
Your
people,” added Anwar. His hands were full of small stones.

“Not mine,” Talib argued. “No relatives of Mama's would have done that.”

Buratha had been his mosque too.

“How do you know they didn't?”

“Maybe your Sunni, Saddam Hussein, did it!” Jalal called out.

Talib tossed a stone over his shoulder at Jalal and walked on, moving as fast as he could without running.

Standing beside the doorkeeper, framed in the gateway, stood al-Khaldoun. Perhaps the mathematics teacher would greet the students with some special news.

As Talib approached, al-Khaldoun locked eyes with his. With a gesture, he drew him in.

“I'm sorry to tell you this, Talib,” he said. “No Sunnis are allowed in this school anymore. Not since the Buratha bombing.”

Behind al-Khaldoun, Talib glimpsed the empty basketball court. “But I'm only half Sunni. . . .” he protested.

Al-Khaldoun shook his head slightly. “It's a security issue.”

Talib's backpack slid off his shoulder. It hit the ground with a thud. What would he tell Mama?

“Don't leave your books here, Talib,” al-Khaldoun said softly. “Keep up your studies.”

Talib picked up the backpack. As he walked away, he looked back to see Nouri, Anwar, and Jalal walking along, arms linked, big smiles on their faces.

Talib wanted to hurl himself at his smiling cousins, to pound them with his fists. But as he clenched his hands together, he saw that Al-Khaldoun was also turning away Kazem al-Maleki and Kazem's little sister, Noor.

Around the corner, Talib found Salaam sitting by the brick wall. “He kicked you out too?”

Salaam nodded.

Looking closer, Talib saw that Salaam's eyes were red and swollen behind his thick glasses.

“I'm going home,” said Salaam. “This stupid school doesn't matter anyway. Our family is leaving for Anbar.”

“You're moving?” Talib asked. He'd known Salaam ever since their first day of school.

“Tomorrow. I should help pack. Last night someone threw a rock through our window.”

The words hit Talib like the rock itself, knocking out his breath. A faraway bombing was one thing— an attack on one's home was another.

“I'm sorry,” he finally managed.

The street vendor who sold sandwiches during their lunch hour was walking up the street to set up his stand.

With the events of the day, Talib already felt famished. “Let's split one,” he said to Salaam, holding out his lunch money.

Salaam nodded and took out a handkerchief to clean his glasses.

“
A'nba
only,” Talib told the vendor. He didn't have enough money for falafel or eggs or for one of the shiny cans of Pepsi sitting temptingly in a bucket of ice.

The man split open the thick bread, making a pocket. With a wooden spoon, he scooped in the pickled mango syrup.

“Better hurry to school,” the vendor said, handing over the sandwich.

“Not us,” said Talib.

“Sunnis aren't allowed there anymore,” Salaam added.

The vendor made a face, then slapped at his cart with a damp rag, muttering a bad word.

. . .

At dinner, Baba said, “On the way to Mutanabbi Street, I went to Buratha. The bodies had been taken away. But there was blood everywhere.”

Talib had noticed the dark brown splatters on Baba's pant legs. He gripped the edges of his chair, feeling as though another distant rumble was passing through the earth.

Mama passed a basket filled with large round sheets of bread.

Watching her ladle soup into the bowls, he hardly cared that she'd made his favorite dish—
pacha
, soup made of lamb's head. The fragrant smell did nothing to lift his spirits. “What's left of the mosque?” he asked Baba.

“Part of the dome crumbled. The minaret fell too. But most is intact.”

When Baba handed him the basket of bread, Talib tore off a big piece. He held it for comfort, the warmth entering him. “What about the writing? What about the verses from the Koran?” he asked.

“The writing wasn't damaged.”

“Praise be to Allah,” said Talib and Mama in unison.

As Talib put a bit of bread in his mouth, he had a tiny doubt, a wondering so small it merely tickled: whose God
was
Allah? Whose side was he on? On the side of the Sunnis—the side of his relatives?

A Sunni, like his mother, had bombed Buratha. A Sunni like half of him.

Talib wondered if the Sunni martyr had gone straight to Paradise, as Allah promised. But that implied that Allah was happy that the mosque had been attacked. How could this be? Was Allah the God of only the Sunnis?

If so, where did that leave his Shiite cousins? Where did it leave Baba?

Talib swallowed the bite of bread. The tickle was expanding into a mass of questions.

If Allah loved the Sunnis, then why did he allow Sunni mosques to be destroyed? Why did he let Shiite martyrs kill Sunnis?

Was Allah on neither side? Did Allah just stand back and watch the destruction?

Talib didn't understand.

“I stopped to help clean up some of the rubble,” Baba said. “Just for a short time. I'll go again tomorrow.”

“Can I help too?” asked Talib.

Baba shook his head. “That's not work for a boy your age.”

“I'm strong enough!” Talib protested.

Baba shook his head again. “It's not physical strength I'm talking about. There are things you're too young to see.”

Talib dipped his bread in the soup. Baba was wrong. He could handle it. So far he'd kept the secret of being kicked out of school, and of the Abdullah family's departure.

Mama turned on the radio and the announcer's voice filled the kitchen: “A mob of gunmen went on a rampage through a Sunni district, pulling people from their cars and homes and killing them. It seems this violence was to avenge the bombing of the Buratha Mosque on Friday. . . .”

Mama sighed. “We're lucky such things aren't happening here.”

“Fatima,” Baba glanced at Talib, then lowered his voice, “I'm afraid it
is
.” He looked toward the kitchen window and dropped his voice still more. “The other day when I was walking home from the bus stop, I saw a group of Shiites at the door of the Abdullah home. My brother Murtadha was the one knocking on the door.”

“The Abdullah family has left town,” Talib said. “Gone to Anbar.”

Mama sucked in her breath.

“A rock was thrown through their window.”

Mama cried out, while Baba stared into his bowl of soup.

“And I can't go to school anymore,” Talib added.

“Why not?” Mama asked in a small voice.

“Sunnis aren't allowed anymore.”

Baba pounded the table with his fist, but lightly, so that Mama's dishes didn't rattle too much. “I'll go talk to them.”

“It won't do any good. It's a security issue, my teacher said.”

Mama laid a hand on Baba's arm. “Should
we
move to Anbar?” she asked.

“We can't. I need to be close to Mutanabbi Street,” Baba replied. “Otherwise, I have no work.”

Talib studied his fingertips through the hem of the white lace tablecloth. Things were changing too fast.

Even life under a dictator had been better than this.

Talib lifted his soup bowl and drank from it, choking down small pieces of lamb. If his cousins caught him thinking like that about Saddam Hussein, they'd call him a Sunni traitor.

If only things could be normal again. He felt an urge to run outside and summon his cousins for a game of war. He wanted to shout and jump with them, as if only the playing mattered. But nothing felt like just a game anymore.

ONE, TWO, THREE!

By the light of the half moon, Nouri spotted the figures of Jalal and Anwar. They were waiting for him by the abandoned candy store, as planned.

Ever since the bombing of Buratha, Nouri's heart had burned like a hot coal. He had never felt so on fire as now, as he thought about what he was about to do.

The bombing of Buratha brought him closer to the bombing that had killed A'mmo Hakim. It made him feel closer to A'mmo himself. Had he been reaching for his favorite fruit—shiny tangerines—when the bicycle loaded with explosives went off? Had he died instantly, or had he suffered? Had A'mmo been carried on a stretcher like those Nouri had seen on television?

Carefully, he'd selected the rock—big enough to do the job, but not too big to throw. He'd written the note and wrapped it around the rock. The paper was damp from his sweaty hands.

When he reached his cousins, Jalal was whispering to Anwar, “Just think of it like throwing a stone at a pigeon. It's no different.”

“But what if we get caught?” Anwar whispered back at him.

“We won't,” Nouri said, without bothering to lower his voice. Maybe these two were too young after all. Maybe he shouldn't have invited them along.

He led his cousins through the shadows, avoiding the glare of the moonlight. Once they were startled by a cat jumping down from a wall, scattering loose stones.

At last they arrived at Talib's low wall. Anwar made a foothold with his clasped hands and Nouri stepped up.

Jalal danced back and forth.

“Stop that!” Nouri ordered, his voice a hiss.

No light was on in the house. Nouri found Talib's bedroom window glittering in the moonlight.

Anwar groaned and shifted his hands.

One, Two, Three!
Nouri chanted to himself. Then he hurled the rock.

It traveled in slow motion, the white paper catching the moonlight. The rock traveled in a slight arc—traveling in memory of A'mmo Hakim—before smashing into its target.

At the sound of the shattering, Anwar released his grip and Nouri fell to the ground.

THE FIRST WARNING

CRASH!

The noise split the night. As Talib sat up, he heard a tinkling sound. When he touched his blanket, his hand met cold shards of glass. His heart pounded like a basketball.

He heard the sound of running footsteps.

Mama, then Baba, ran to the doorway. Baba flipped the light switch out of habit, but there was no electricity at night anymore.

“Don't move, Talib!” Mama shouted. “There's glass everywhere!”

Cold air drifted through the hole, along with a flood of moonlight. Talib stared into the white-lit room until he spotted the rock.

“Don't step on the glass,” warned Baba. “I'll put on shoes and sweep it up.”

Waiting, Talib looked closer at the rock. He noticed that it had a piece of paper wrapped around it. He jerked back the covers, and in spite of Mama's wails and the glass cutting his feet, marched over to the rock. He reached for it, removed the sheet of paper, and, by moonlight, read,

[This is the first warning]
.

Baba returned in his shoes, and the three of them stood in the white light of the moon, reading and rereading the words.

Mama began to cry softly. Baba said a bad word.

Talib threw the note down. He meant to cast it far away. But instead, the paper just lazily floated to his feet.

Baba swept the room, chasing the glass into a corner, muttering more bad words.

Mama led Talib to the bathroom, the only room without windows.

She lit an oil lamp and as the flame sputtered, she tweezed the glass from Talib's feet.

While she bandaged his cuts, Talib, guts twisting, tried to remember what his cousins' handwriting looked like.

. . .

A fierce sandstorm blew in from the desert and for days, everyone stayed locked inside. The sky grew as brown as a glass of tea. Sand seeped into the cracks, covering everything with grit. The wind howled like a battle cry.

Sand blasted through Talib's broken window even though Baba covered it with a piece of cardboard and taped it tight. Talib started sleeping on the floor of his parents' room.

He felt as though the sand was hitting his heart, chafing it.

. . .

In their isolation, Talib read Baba's book about the boy climbing a mountain. The boy was seeking treasure. Reading by the light of the kerosene lamp, Talib took turns imagining himself at the dark mouth of a mountain cave and looking hopelessly out at the relentless blast of sand. The entire desert was hurtling itself against their windows.

Mama set down a glass of tea for Baba. Wiping her hands on her apron, she joined him at the kitchen table. She rested her chin in her hands and said, “We can't keep living in this neighborhood, Nazar. Talib can't even go to school anymore.”