Naphtalene. Alia Mamdouh
him while he was training—this was in Ali al-Gharbi—with your grandfather. The weather was fine, and it was a new horse.
“He used to take him out every day, before sunrise, and have him lead the horse and ride him. The first day he went, and then the second, and the third. For two weeks he trained and came back. He had changed, I do not know how, but he was different. His flesh had become firm, his voice had changed—he was like a beast of prey. His father sent him out at night and he wasn’t afraid.”
I interrupted: “Granny, you mean if a boy trains on a horse he becomes nice looking?”
“Not just nice looking! He becomes a man!”
“And if a girl trains on a horse will she become more beautiful?”
“No, a girl’s beauty is in her silence and modesty. Do you want to ride horses as well?”
“Where are the horses now? I get nothing every day but beating, and having my hair pulled.”
“What happened then?” Adil interrupted.
I looked into his eyes. He was smiling, and I pushed him with my hand. The water basin spilled on his clothes and the floor. He did not get angry, but replied, “Stop asking so many questions.”
“Fine. Where were we?”
“My father was like a lion,” was Adil’s prompt response.
She sighed a little and went on.
“He was not afraid. He was a little man. When he came back at night his eyes were still watching the sky. When the moon rose and the sun went down. He said the sky had many gates, all of which were open to him, and that only he could count them. He predicted so many strange things.”
Adil interrupted: “What does ‘predict’ mean?”
“Imagine! You don’t know?” I said. “Predicting means telling the future.”
“Fine, my little Adouli, the sky was open, and he could read everything written there. He said your grandfather would die of drowning, and believe it or not—two years later the ship sank with six employees on board, in Basra. He said he would marry several times—he said that when I was running after him—I wanted to beat him. Oh, those days are gone. Only misery is left.” Her voice changed and trailed off, to the Shatt al-Arab, and her first nights of watching over her son. She took the ribbon from Adil’s hand and continued: “He was fifteen, and the things he said frightened even me. I began to be afraid of him, but the third week they brought him carried on their shoulders. He was unconscious. He was sallow, stricken, like someone shocked by electricity, neither sleeping nor dead. There was a little wound on the top of his head—the skin was broken and the flesh had opened, but there was not a single drop of blood coming out of it. He was different from that day onward. He entered a new phase. He was even scared of his own shadow. You know your father married before your mother; his first wife was with him a year and then died in childbirth, she and her son.”
I asked her: “How did that happen? I don’t understand you. You mean he went mad?”
She yanked my hair sharply.
“Oh, if only someone would cut off that gabby tongue of yours. No, he changed when his wife died, he changed completely. He used to stand around and lecture people, and curse the Regent and the English.
“And he got used to drinking alcohol. At first he drank secretly—he was afraid I’d find out and get cross with him. When I found out, he began to drink in his room or in the bar nearby. At night, the local men brought him home to the house.”
Adil moved off a little, leaning against the wall in front of us. My grandmother took the second ribbon and grasped my hair, and in a tone of voice I had not heard before, Adil asked: “Who gave him the pistol?”
“I asked him to enroll in the police academy. It only takes a few years, and they graduate you a police commissioner, then they promote you to assistant police director. It took him a while to finish middle school. He was failing only the easy classes. Adouli, dear, everyone who goes to the police academy must have a pistol. Huda, sweetheart—”
She took my head and turned it toward her. She held my face in her palms and looked into my eyes.
“He is ill, and your mother is ill. We are all ill. You hear the way your mother coughs at night and spits blood. God forbid if—God forgive my tongue!—I’m not afraid of death, God created us and he takes us back. But there is no longer any patience. Your mother will travel to Syria for a little rest and breathe some good air. Your father’s sister is still young. We are all waiting for Munir Effendi. Munir’s father died and left him the farms and shops, and he’s starting to fritter away the money. He has no brothers or sisters. He is lazy and idle, and the girl cannot marry a stranger. You and Adil are the apple of my eye—you’re the children of that dear sweet woman who has never said an unkind word. Poor thing, Iqbal!”
She hugged me, her arms tight around me. I kissed her and hugged her, burying my head beneath her ribs. I felt her belly, her soft breasts, and her long, narrow neck. I raised my face to her calm, sorrowful, inspired one, which never scolded when I was bad, but which was always responsive when I was sorry.
She tamed us one after the other, without our shedding a single drop of blood. She shared her thoughts with everyone, trained us without threats and took us to her bosom without menace. She prayed over us when we were ill, and fetched us from the end of the road if we ran away. She stood guard at the gates to our souls when we erred. She changed us with every passing hour. She did not interrogate or cross-examine us, or get defeated by our youthful misdeeds. She always said: “If you do a good deed for someone, don’t talk about it. No matter what happens here at home, tell people, ‘We don’t know.’ If someone tells you his secret, don’t ever repeat it. A secret is like a treasure, and has to be hidden in a well.”
And so on and on. When she went to the market, all the shopowners opened up their secret rooms and new sacks of merchandise. They gave her the finest grains and the freshest vegetables, the whitest sugar, the purest rice and shelled lentils. They put all her groceries in clean bags and sent them after her. She did not have to pay the price of all she bought, nor did they put her name on their list.
She paid on the first of every month. She was never late, and never haggled or procrastinated. She hated debt: “God does not want any of us in debt to another. Debt shortens your life and blinds you.” Nestling up to her I mixed her good with my evil.
I gave voice to all my sorrows and dreams, and never feared any punishment from her.
I might disguise myself in other clothes, but to her my bones did not lie; my soul could not deceive, and my head would not bow.
“Dear Huda, she just kisses you, and has never once told us ‘I love you.’”
“No one knows my Huda as I do. God keep you and keep evil far away from you. Now come iron my clothes—tomorrow I’m going to the General Retirement Directorate.”
I did not know what this end of the month would bring. But my grandmother, my father’s sister, and my father knew very well. My grandmother dressed up in her best clothes and combed her hair carefully. We brought her a large basin of hot water and the wide wooden comb that she pulled through her fine, flowing locks.
“Every day a hair falls out of my head. That’s all because of sorrow.” She switched her eyeglasses with the old black round frames for her gold-rimmed ones. We knew all these rituals from previous days. Everything was familiar; the new cloak came out of the bundle and was ironed, along with the only silk dress, with its design of graceful trees. It was ironed last. The high-heeled slippers were taken out of their box hidden in the bottom of the closet. That night my grandmother was transformed into a princess. Everyone was waiting for her blessings, her gifts, and money. The General Retirement Directorate in the crowded Baghdad neighborhood of Bab al-Mu’azzam was waiting for her.
When we set out for school in the morning, we knew that the retirement pension had been distributed. There was a chicken in golden gravy and red rice,