Naphtalene. Alia Mamdouh
standing up as he passed by, utterly quiet. The police officer’s emblem entered the street in silence and anticipation. A pistol hung in a holster at his belt, between his waist and thigh, a tool that did its work in the house and in the neighborhood; with it he killed our repose; through it he became complete, generating terror and respect, thus disposing of his anxiety and sense of struggle.
When he passed, women opened their cloaks so he could see their bodies undulating and their winking eyes, and their teeth poised on their lips. Men tightened their belts over their blue, white, or striped dishdashas. They adjusted their headgear, determined to stand up and greet him. He passed, looking only straight ahead.
He wore the high woolen sidara, which was similar to a garrison cap, on his head and a single star on his shoulder. His khaki uniform showed off his slimness and height, and his high black boots were always shiny—he avoided the rubbish and puddles of filth. He walked like a peacock. He was graceful and good-looking and brown-skinned, and his brown eyes were wide, piercing, and reckless. His nose was long and high like the noses of the fathers in the other streets. His lips were narrow and prim and always red. He had high cheekbones, and his hair was the color of old silver: fine, smooth, and combed back.
Before he arrived, my grandmother covered us with blankets and a recitation of the Sura of Ya Sin. When he asked about us, she answered him, “Let the little dears sleep.”
The top was thrown in a ditch. My father trampled the mud houses. The beads were scattered from my waist and strewn in the ditches and corners. He trampled the rest underfoot. The girls stumbled confusedly as far as their houses. The boys took shelter behind the telegraph poles. Adil and I crouched between his arms, poisoned by the fury he exhaled from his pores. His voice rang out, reaching the farthest houses. He threw us in the middle of the house: “The little bitch dances and sings in the street and the boys hug her! I don’t know what’s going on behind my back!”
My mother stood in the doorway of her room, terrified. She coughed and pounded her chest, noiselessly. My grandmother and my father’s sister came out of the room and stood in front of him. Like a sick bird, Adil clung to my mother’s clothing, and I got up and stood up, between his kicks. I grabbed my father by his shiny boot and used it to crouch between his legs as he moved me around, grabbing me on one side and pushing me in the other. The floor of the house received me. I was trapped by his voice, which came at me like bullets.
Whenever we saw him coming or leaving he would change from being the image of a father to a mighty god. We found the only way he relaxed completely was when someone was in front of him. It was always me. I provided an outlet for his talents, from his uniform to his lethal weapon, to his boots, which abolished all dreams: “No, Daddy, no, please God, just this once.”
He did not frighten me the way he frightened Adil and my mother. At moments like these my brother went mute, not even breathing. He peed himself, and when my father heard the sound of his peeing he roared with laughter. He left me for good, as if there was nothing wrong after all. He went to Adil, lifted him up high like a doll, and threw him up in the air and caught him, the drops of urine flying on to his hair and the tiles. My grandmother prayed and breathed on everyone.
When your father saw her, he changed; he calmed down. He loved and honored her, and weakened in her presence. His sister too was scared of him. She went into her room, muttering, “If he knew how to raise children, he’d have raised himself first.”
My mother was still standing there. I do not know who supplied my grandmother with all her authority, God alone, perhaps, or else she had assembled it all in her own special way. Adil was still flying up and down like one of his paper kites. My father’s voice changed: “Look, the little devil is the only one who’s not afraid. That’s my little Adouli, his father’s son!”
I was thrown on the floor, moaning but not crying. My hair was disheveled, the ribbons falling out, my braids undone. I looked at my leg and rubbed it with my hand, and gazed at the squares of cheap tile. This one was a dirty blue; that one, a lusterless white. I calculated the number of tiles. I saw the anthills and the salty soil surrounding those little caverns. The floor surface was cold and damp. The shining boots stopped. Now Adil was in front of me and came to me and, burying his chest against me, he burst into tears. I tousled his hair and looked at his locks. I hugged him and he trembled, then broke into a new burst of crying. We cried together, giving it our whole voices, and my father pulled at me again.
“Be quiet. I’ll get the belt and break your ribs.”
He pulled Adil away and lifted him up, kissed him, and gave him five fils. He approached me, tugged at my hair, and lifted my head to face him. He took my hand and gave me five coins as well.
“Sweetheart, go and comb your hair.”
Whenever his voice softened, the sound of my crying got louder. He pinched my cheek.
“God, if you don’t be quiet—”
He kicked and slapped me. “This girl is a strange one. Does she want me to plead with her?”
Adil pulled me and got between us. My grandmother had not said a word. That was her; it was her way of pacifying him. My mother, in the back, took my father’s attack in silence, a mythological creature stripped of all her roles.
Adil and I went into the bathroom. My father went into his room, his voice still ringing with every form of vituperation.
Adil shook my arm. “Huda, take this money as well, just be quiet.”
I pushed him and he fell before me, got up quickly and stood in my face, pleading: “Huda, Daddy will be asleep soon, and we’ll go to the blind woman, Umm Aziz, and we’ll buy hot chickpeas and sweets.”
I gasped and blew my nose. My grandmother was behind us. She stroked my hair and tilted my head to face her. I looked into her eyes, then buried my head in her concave stomach and hugged her round the waist. “Granny, what have I done? Why didn’t Firdaw’s father hit her for playing in the street? Why my daddy, why?”
This grandmother was the center of the circle. I do not know where she concealed her strength. When she walked her footsteps were light and hardly audible. When she spoke, her voice was clothed in caution and patience, and when she was silent everyone was bewildered by her unannounced plans. She was strong without showing signs of it, mighty without raising her voice, beautiful without finery. She was beautiful from her modest hem to her silver braids. She was slim, of medium height, a narrow black band round her head, whose ends dangled by her thin braids. She was light-skinned. I never saw anyone with a white complexion like hers. It was a white between bubbly milk and thick cream. Her eyes were gray with dark blue, wild green, and pure honey-colored rays.
When we saw her in the morning as we got ready for school, they were honey-colored, and by the time we came home in the afternoon they were blue. But at night they were gray.
She was a well-organized woman; she loved justice and set great store by it. She rebuked my father and scolded him behind our backs, suddenly setting upon him, taking all her time, scattering him and tearing him apart, exposing him anew to us. She dazzled us every time she told us, in a clear, distant voice, as if coming from an abandoned cellar, a story of my father which she had never told before. She wiped the dust from the photo album and opened it. At the beginning was a picture of our venerable, terrifying, handsome, harsh, skeptical grandfather, who was in love with her, was jealous, and who never once in his life told her “I love you.” He wore a tasseled fez and went to work in an office in Ali al-Gharbi, a village on the Tigris River. He walked around with a superior air, like an Ottoman pasha. When he went to work everyone scuttled out of his way.
Her fingers rebraided my hair. I was sitting on the carpet in our room. I turned my back to her, and she enclosed me between her skinny thighs: “Relax a little. You keep moving. Are you sitting on a fire or something?”
Adil was