Naphtalene. Alia Mamdouh

      The big house was one kilometer away from our house. Our grandmother’s sisters lived there, as well as the widow who had suddenly grown senile after the death of her wealthy husband, leaving behind Bahija and Zubaida and Nahida. Nahida had two daughters younger than me, and two sons older. Zubaida was barren, and Bahija loved women. When she entered, everyone looked at her from above and turned their heads the other way when she passed. We called this the house of dreams. We wore our finest clothes when we went there. My aunt combed my hair and pinched me on the arm, saying:

      “I swear to God, if you break anything over there, I’ll kill you.”

      We tasted all sorts of fruit there, fresh meat and exotic types of sweets and sugary pastries made by Aunt Bahija herself.

      When you saw yourself in the street, your fire was stoked. There you flung yourself into the tumult and different ways. You stood in front of the vendors, shooing the flies away from the white cheese wrapped in fresh palm leaves. You greeted the cheese seller, Abu Mahmoud: “Hello, dear Abu Mahmoud,” and stole a fresh cucumber and a date whose sweetness burned your mouth. You did not look up. The alleys of your neighborhood were filthy, littered with onion and aubergine peels, okra tops and fragments of rotten bread, remnants of black tea—all of it took you by surprise. You slapped cross-eyed Hashim, the son of Razzuqi the carpenter, called him a name, and ran away.

      “Hey, still cross-eyed?”

      He ran after you, the edge of his dishdasha, his ankle-length shirt, in his teeth, his feet trampling through the mud and garbage, and then he slipped and fell, and everyone laughed.

      You ran and jumped over the gutters and the children. You passed by the house of Mrs. Rasmiyya, the neighborhood nurse. Her door was always open; a stained white curtain with holes in it hung in the doorway. You heard the voice of her husband as he beat her and snatched the proceeds from the injections she had administered, and he laughed as he bumped into you: “Hello, Huda. Give my regards to your father.”

      The houses of Baghdad had stone steps on the outside. You loved standing on these steps, getting to know the herd that waited and knew how to stand. You stood on one of them one day and said to Mahmoud, the son of the cheese seller: “Look, I am as tall as you are.”

      There the Baghdadi women sat or lay on cushions, old carpets, and worn-out straw mats. They all held fans, and their veils covered only their heads. Their nightgowns gave off the smell of onions and parsley, eggs and sweat. They opened them a little, as if opening their souls. When a stranger walked by, they exchanged glances among themselves and covered up until he had passed.

      The doors to the courtyard were made of old blotchy wood whose coats of paint were peeling in every corner. When winter attacked, everyone waited for Abu Masoud, the painter. In the middle of the doors were shiny or rusty hand-shaped iron knockers. We stood before them, banged the knockers, and ran away into other streets, far away. We raced and gradually became familiar with this district of houses where no one complained of hunger, which were tidy, tall, spacious, surrounded by towering trees and unfamiliar flowers, and built of gorgeously colored or painted bricks. The girls here wore wide pleated skirts and short-sleeved blouses, with colored ribbons around their neck and in their hair. Their hair was always combed, and their faces freshly scrubbed. Their skin was clear and radiant; their blood sang with health. Their food was fresh meat from Mr Hubi the butcher. Hubi was about forty, fat and red-faced, with a big belly and a broad, slow voice. He butchered lambs, singing, as if he were watering his garden.

      This was the only man whose orders were obeyed. Everyone in our street wanted to find room in his shop. Even the dogs and cats bathed in the smell of his tender, freshly killed meats.

      Cows, calves, and lambs hung there, washed of their blood and blessed with verses from the Qur’an.

      Anyone who stopped in front of his shop would be greeted with every compliment and blessing that came into his head.

      Hubi knew everyone: the family trees of the people who lived in the palaces far away, overlooking the Tigris and the old wooden bridge, the pedigrees of the houses that ate their meat in silence, the histories of those who ate bones and broth, and those who threw meat to their dogs or into the garbage.

      To us, Hubi and the King seemed inseparable. The King of Iraq was young. A portrait of him with his uncle hung in Hubi’s shop, surrounded by spattered blood and animal remains. Hubi sold meat only in the afternoon. The morning was for slaughtering and skinning. He sold the hides and heads to Abu Mahmoud, and the sheep’s livers and testicles to restaurants. Everything emanated from his shop: problems, quarrels and even secret leaflets.

      In the afternoon, our neighborhood in al-A‘dhamiyya came to a stop. The noon, afternoon, and sundown prayers were called from the ancient Abu Hanifa mosque. Faces came, figures passed by, and arms strained. Hubi sliced away the shanks and legs, intestines and shoulders as if he had been created a butcher at birth.

      The day your grandmother sent you to him, you raised your head to hers.

      “Huda my girl, don’t lose the money, or we won’t have meat for a week.”

      She said no more and you were on your way down the street, absorbed by the jingling of the twenty fils coins. At that very moment you could have flown to the next street. Buy candy floss, colorful lollipops, and currants. Fill your hands and your empty pockets, your reckless head, and your tongue dry with all the forbidden things you had seen only in the hands of the children in these other streets.

      Steal and lie. Argue and make up excuses, for in Baghdad people take opposite paths: if you steal, your corpse will not be laid open, and if you lie, God is forgiving and merciful.

      That is what your grandmother taught you, who stood before her prayer carpet all the time, and between times, in heat, cold, and rain. Her only passion was for God. She whispered to herself prayers that never ended and drowned everyone in supplications, and divulged no secret. She contrived no tricks, she stirred up no scandals or played with anyone’s nerves. She stood in the courtyard or on the roof, saying: “Lord, bind me unto you, and never let me close an eyelid without a thought of you, O most merciful God.”

      She used her imagination, wit, and wisdom and the stories of the prophets shone as she put us—Adil and I—on her lap. She came to the tale of the prophet Joseph. She spent a long time on this prophet, describing him in a reverent voice: “My dear, it was he who was the death of Potipher’s wife.”

      You asked her: “Who was Potipher’s wife?”

      “He stood alone against that treacherous woman and his accursed brothers. She was like Lucifer himself, but Joseph pushed her away. Later on he got an inspiration from Almighty God.”

      Adil’s voice: “Who did our lord Joseph look like?”

      “No one looks like him. I don’t know anyone he looks like.”

      She