Naphtalene. Alia Mamdouh
of fresh laban. The delicious smell of the cooking made me raise my voice. In school I told Firdous, “We have chicken and red rice at our house. You love it—come and eat with us.”
We did not have one time for dinner and another for lunch. We ate when we were hungry. We knew that money was scarce. Our father gave a share, and our grandmother had to provide the rest. With this and that, we had curdled cream for breakfast every day. We had eggs once a week. My father’s sister arranged all the vegetables on the platter, saying, “These vegetables purify the blood. Look at your face, how sallow it is.”
We wanted more blood, whether pure or foul. It was not important, knowing that my mother’s blood was infected.
I was not afraid of my grandmother’s stories about her. Despite her absences and coughing, to me she still seemed young and strong, and a little older than my father’s sister.
Whenever I asked my grandmother how old my mother was, she laughed and answered, “By God, I don’t know. When she married your father she was in her twenties. She came from Aleppo with her brothers and her mother. Her father died when she was a girl. Her brother Shafiq was a doctor at the clinic in Karbala. He was affectionate and gentle. Your grandmother did not let him enjoy life. She was strong and had a sour disposition, God rest her soul. She always said, ‘My son is a doctor and I must marry him off to a woman with money.’ God rest his soul, he listened to her and worried that she’d get upset with him. Shafiq died a sudden death, before he turned forty.”
“And my Uncle Sami?”
“The day we had the betrothal to your mother, he shouted and cursed. He said the girl’s marriage was a shame, but Shafiq, God rest his soul, he said, ‘Jamil is a nice boy from a good family.’ Your grandmother died three years after he did. She suffered a lot—she thrashed about like a fish. She didn’t die until God took her two months later. That left Sami, Widad, and Inam, and they stayed in the house as if they were his servants. He beat them and cursed. Your mother was the sweetest of all, like a rose. She spoke little. She was gentle and calm and never harmed an ant. Be merciful to her, dear God, most Merciful of all the merciful.”
My mother followed my father to her room. They were face to face. The air in the room boiled with his shouts. She was standing, worn and weary; if she approached a sensitive point she would get burnt, and if she retreated she would be choked. His words came in a torrent, like a tumultuous wave: “You’ve all turned my hair gray. That daughter of yours is going to drive me mad. Everything is against me. I’m alone in Karbala. In the morning my boss shouts at me, and in the afternoon there are the screams of the prisoners. At night I do the screaming alone. Listen. I am going to get married. I have no more patience for this situation. I want more children. You stopped having children after Adouli. I want a real woman. I’ve given you my best years and my heart’s blood, but all in vain. Go back to your family. Go back where you came from.”
She said, between her tears, “Is this the truth, Jamouli? Are you really going to marry again? You are my family. Your mother is my mother, and you are the father of my children. How can you? How can you let your children live with a stepmother?”
She knelt before him and trembled so that her teeth chattered. She sobbed. She reached for his legs and grasped his boots. She removed them and placed them side by side. “A woman may fall ill, be treated and cured, but she should never be abandoned. Good God, Jamouli, is this my reward for all I’ve been through?”
She began to massage his toes and leg in order to rise up. She removed his socks and smelled them. “You always smell clean. Darling, really, are you going to marry again, Jamouli? Do you swear by your father’s soul?”
He pushed her against her chest, and she fell backward.
“Why do you want me to ask you for permission? You’ve been ill for years. All that medicine and all the expense, and you’re still the same.”
He stood up and began to undo his leather belt. He held his pistol and pulled out the cartridge clip, and placed it at a distance in the middle of the table.
My mother was afraid of every sort of weapon. She did not look at him, but he bent over her and raised her head to him. They looked at each other. His face was calm. At that moment my mother was able to get close to him, and before he removed his trousers he knocked her to the floor and threw himself on top of her. Her tears flowed wordlessly. He checked to make sure she was not dead. She knew he could not wait.
Amidst her tears and his murmurs, she sobbed, “Don’t marry, Jamouli, please, God bless you, for the sake of the children, and your dear mother who has been better than my mother.” He stifled his shout in her quiet breast, then stood up, preparing to leave.
“Now listen carefully, Iqbal. A few months ago I married a nurse from Karbala. She came with me to Baghdad, and she is pregnant. I don’t like doing things illicitly. There are as many women as we have prisoners after me. They’re young and pretty, and my boss had his fill of them. I swear to you, he even slept with the animals. Listen—don’t shout and don’t cry. You are going back to Syria, and I am going to stay at the prison by myself. You know the prison. Come there and see how it would drive you mad. Don’t worry about the children. They will stay with my mother and my sister. Now get up and draw my bath.”
“But Jamil, what about later on? What if I get well? Jamouli, what will you do later on?”
“We’ll see. There’s time from now until you come back safely. Now get moving—I want to wash and eat.”
She burst into a fit of coughing such as we had never heard before. The sound of the wardrobe with the three doors erupted in its own fit of creaky coughing also. When we opened its warped doors we could not shut them again, unless someone pushed them up.
My father left it open, having taken out his large white towels and gone out.
This room was at the end of the hallway, far from us. It was the cleanest and warmest room, its walls painted a light blue. An iron bed stood in the middle, and the wardrobe took up most of the middle wall.
Also in the middle stood a mirror which had lost its quicksilver backing, and its wooden frame was worn at the edges. In one corner was an old chair and earth-colored table where my father’s shaving things were set out with a bottle of aftershave and one of rosewater. A Qur’an rested on a small shelf covered with a cloth embroidered in white thread. In the other corner stood old shelves upon which books were arranged: Dar al-Hilal editions, the Reader’s Digest in Arabic, and the novels of Jurji Zaidan, Taha Hussein, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and al-Manfaluti, and issues of Egyptian magazines such as al-Musawwar, Akher Sa’a, and al-Kawakib. The only window, which looked out on the courtyard, was usually closed. When my father was in Karbala, its yellow curtains were drawn back. The glass panes were always clean. In the summer, my mother wiped them with old newspapers, and in the winter she wiped the traces of rain away with a dry cloth. The floor was covered with a long old carpet folded in more than one place to make it fit the small room.
My mother wandered about, giving off a scent of defeat. She stood in the midst of that heritage. The boot, the pistol, the madness of this rupture. Her first unawareness came to an end. These changes had taken place behind her back. It was not important now that she change her name or blood type; nothing could bring back the past, the magic or her beauty or her serenity.
She paced the room, and I paced with her behind the window. She was agitated, facing all the objects and things, looking at everything around her as if seeing them for the first time. She walked unhurriedly, touching the Qur’an, fondling it with her hand and saying, “They left me in your care. You beat me and cursed me and made me have tuberculosis.”
She staggered, looked at the carpet and the open wardrobe. She fingered the bookshelves and her muscles contracted. She snatched the books and threw them to the ground, shivered, and sweated; her face grew paler and the familiar