Kauthar Read online

  ‘Kauthar, whatever is spoken about in there, you have to trust me, I have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say.

  ‘All I know is that Ahmed, Fatimah’s brother-in-law, hangs out with Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Officially they provide security against looters, but lately they have also launched attacks.’

  Inside Fatimah is sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding the head of the wounded man. A young man with a beard is sitting against the wall. The others have gone. Rafiq rips open the blood-drenched shirt of the injured man. A gaping chest wound like the mouth of a fish out of water appears. Bile travels up my throat and into my mouth.

  ‘Cut his trousers. I need to see his leg.’

  The young man with the beard rushes to the kitchen. I swallow the bile. He returns with a knife. In the meantime Rafiq has pulled a pack of medical equipment out from underneath his shirt. He grabs a morphine ampoule and injects it into the leg that isn’t bleeding.

  They shift the wounded man on to one side. Rafiq’s motionless face does not reveal what he sees at the back. They roll the body to its initial position. Rafiq applies gauze pads to the chest wound, then inserts a tube. The man starts coughing. Blood bubbles up out of his mouth. Fatimah bends further over his head, trying to soothe him. For a moment the image freezes. Suddenly I hear Fatimah’s wailing. And Rafiq pulls the tube out and throws it on to the floor, jumps up, walks to the wall and smashes his fist against it.

  ‘That idiot!’ he shouts.

  I take a step towards him. He turns around.

  ‘Don’t.’

  He raises his hands and shakes his head at me. I hesitate but something in his face tells me not to approach. I step back towards the wall. Rafiq closes his eyes and breathes deeply.

  ‘Why?’ he asks as he opens his eyes again.

  ‘Because we have to do something,’ the man replies, staring at Rafiq.

  ‘Like getting yourselves killed? How is that going to help?’ Rafiq starts pacing the room.

  ‘We are fighting against al-Dajjal, the Deceiver, who has invaded our country. This is our chance to ensure that a just Shia caliphate will be established in our country.’

  ‘To establish a just Shia caliphate?’

  ‘If we don’t fight now we will lose everything to the invaders and Sunni traitors. We owe it to our people to fight. We owe it to Allah. It is our duty to strive towards an Islamic ummah here on earth. We will be rewarded in Paradise.’

  ‘Rewarded? In Paradise? For blowing up Americans?’

  ‘Listen to you, brother! Shame on you. Remember your father. Remember all the Shiites who betrayed Allah by hiding their belief. Who refused to obey Allah’s command. No one can help the ones who have turned their backs on Allah.’

  For a few moments Rafiq and the young man stare at each other silently. Then Rafiq slowly lifts both his arms and removes the other’s hands from his shoulders. He steps aside and turns towards Fatimah, who has now started to hit her face with her blood-stained hands, rocking back and forth, her face contorted into a soundless scream of pain. I see Rafiq walking towards her and helping her to her feet. He is leading her to one of the big cushions lying on the floor against the wall. She sits down and he kneels next to her. He wipes the hair out of her face and then, with a piece of cloth, wipes the blood from her face and hands. I suddenly remember Hassan. I find him crouching behind the door and want to pick him up. But he moves away from me, jumps up and runs to his mother. The other young men reappear and take the corpse away. I am standing pressed against the wall; no one takes any notice of me. Fatimah and her son lie down on the bed next door. And only when Rafiq has gone back to the hospital do I realize that my body is still able to move in this world.

  I scrub the floor.

  Afterwards I go to the kitchen and search for something to eat for Fatimah, Hassan and myself. I find two eggs in the fridge and a few tomatoes and an onion in a basket. I open the cupboards looking for a frying pan and when I open the door underneath the sink there is the ammunition belt. Or at least at first glance I think it is an ammunition belt, because it looks just like the toy ammunition belt my brother used to own as a boy. Only three times wider. I hesitate, staring at it, and think about closing the door again and pretending I’ve not seen it. But it’s lying on the pan. I have to lift it if I want the frying pan. Carefully, I pick it up. I am scared it will explode. Then I see the blood. It is the belt with the explosives that Fatimah’s brother-in-law wore. She must have hidden it here. Or did she? Did she know, did He know, that I would pass by here on my way to Him? I did not search for the belt or the explosives. I came across them on my path.

  I take the pan and return the belt to its place. I cook an omelette and wake Fatimah. She sits up and shakes her head at the plate. She doesn’t want to eat. I bring the plate closer to her nose.

  ‘Eat! Otherwise your next husband won’t like you.’

  She takes the plate, leans back against the headrest of the bed, pulls her legs up and obediently lifts a fork to her mouth. Hassan is still asleep. I sit down on the bed.

  ‘The belt,’ I say. ‘I found the belt.’

  She shakes her head without looking me in the eyes.

  ‘What will happen to the belt?’

  She doesn’t answer. Instead she moves away from me, closer to her son. She is scared of me. She was scared of me from the beginning. Like all of them are scared of me.

  ‘I’m asking you what will happen to the belt?’

  She shrugs her shoulders, mumbles, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Does Rafiq know?’

  ‘No, no.’ For the first time she is looking me straight in the eyes. Frightened. ‘Please, don’t say anything.’

  ‘I won’t tell him. But in exchange you must tell me what you are going to do with the belt. Will the guys who were here this morning fetch it later?’

  ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.’

  She is crying now. ‘Rafiq is such a good man. He shouldn’t know.’

  ‘Eat,’ I order, and with a movement of my head I point to the plate. ‘He won’t ever know.’

  Then I get up, leave the room and pull the door shut behind me.

  I wash myself and say the afternoon prayer. All birth-giving is painful. Nothing new is born without pain. Once upon a time Paradise was situated between the Tigris and the Euphrates; today war rages here. But what does this war symbolize if not birth pangs, so that once again a Garden of Eden will flourish and grow? War rages, but this war is not terrible. It can’t be terrible, because Allah willed it since it exists. Only that which Allah wills exists. In reality, in the true reality that is Allah’s reality, this war is an expression of the desire for true life, which can only be a yearning towards Him, towards His Paradise.

  I grasp this knowledge and I cup my hands and extend my arms towards Him. And I offer myself to Him gratefully, with devotion and with humility.

  In the days that follow I refuse any intimate relationship with Rafiq, even though I know it could be considered a sin. But as far as I am concerned he is no longer my husband.

  I tell him I want a divorce.

  He replies, ‘Kauthar, habibi, in ten days we will fly back to Amman and then hopefully as soon as possible on to London. Everything will be all right.’

  He tries to put his arm round me, but I don’t want to be touched by him.

  ‘Snap!’

  Rafiq and Hassan sit on the floor. Rafiq brought the cards back from the hospital.

  ‘Snap!’

  Hassan falls back, laughing. Rafiq sits cross-legged. He smiles and waits patiently until Hassan has straightened up again.

  ‘Ready?’ He looks at the boy with a wicked sparkle in his eye.

  Hassan gleams back at him, giggling in anticipation. He nods. Holds his breath. Then screams ‘Ready!’ and throws his
card down and straight away his hand on top. ‘Snap! Snap! Snap!’

  Rafiq points his finger at the boy. ‘Show me!’

  Hassan shakes his head.

  ‘I will tickle you.’ Rafiq laughs.

  ‘Tickle me! Tickle me!’ screams the boy.

  And Rafiq leaps forward, grabs the boy and pulls him on to his lap, tickling him while making roaring noises. ‘I will tickle you and eat you alive.’

  I turn my head and see Fatimah standing in the doorway to the bedroom. She stares at Rafiq and the boy, motionless. Suddenly the giggling and roaring stop. I turn my head back to Rafiq and Hassan. The boy now lies in Rafiq’s arm like a baby. He has put a hand on Rafiq’s cheek.

  ‘Can we come with you to London?’ he then asks.

  For a moment I feel the silence as thick as mud around us. Rafiq looks at the boy in his arms.

  ‘You can’t. I am so sorry.’ Rafiq strokes Hassan’s head.

  ‘Hassan!’ Fatimah calls, and has stepped inside the room. She takes hold of her son’s free arm and pulls him out of Rafiq’s lap. ‘You need to sleep.’ She tries to drag the boy with her towards the bedroom, but Hassan tears himself away and flies back into Rafiq’s lap.

  ‘I want to play snap,’ he cries, and presses his face against Rafiq’s cheek.

  Rafiq puts his arm around Hassan and for a moment holds the boy tight. Then he lifts him up and sets him on his feet in front of him.

  ‘Hassan, you are a big boy. You need to go to sleep now and tomorrow you will move in with Uncle Haydar.’

  The boy starts shaking his head wildly from side to side.

  ‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I want to stay with you.’

  Before Rafiq can say anything else, Fatimah lifts her son off his feet and carries him, screaming and kicking, into the bedroom.

  Rafiq talks about our children, the house we will eventually own with a little back garden. And I think, How about a car, two cars, one garage, two garages, three garages? One for table tennis. And perhaps our children might receive some medals, too? As I once did.

  I open my eyes and my gaze falls on a beautiful little box on my bedside table. It’s dark blue with white stars and a silver ribbon. I pull my hand from underneath the blanket and touch the box with my fingertips. I had so hoped that my father would bring me a present. It was my birthday yesterday. I am seven years old now. My father missed my birthday because he was away on an assignment. He returned late last night.

  ‘Why don’t you open it?’

  My father sits down on the end of my bed. For a moment I lie still. Then I sit up, take the little box and shift back on the bed so that I can lean against the wall. My father moves to sit next to me.

  ‘Open it,’ he encourages me. ‘I can’t wait to see what’s inside.’

  ‘You know what’s inside,’ I reply. ‘It’s from you.’

  ‘Well,’ he says with a smile, ‘you need to open it to see if it’s from me.’

  I push the bow back, lift the lid. Whatever is inside is covered with a yellow cotton pad. I don’t remove it immediately. As I bend over it, I feel my father’s head very close; his chin touches my temple. I feel his breath. Together we are staring at the cotton pad, waiting to see what is underneath it. Then I take it between the thumb and middle finger of my right hand. We lower our heads even closer to the box. My face is now leaning against my father’s cheek.

  Lydia has never been this close to her father before. She usually worries that he doesn’t like it when she sits on his lap. She presses her forehead against his forehead. She adapts her breathing to his. She hasn’t yet lifted the little yellow pad, although she is holding it between her fingers. She feels her father’s breathing, the beating of his temple. She doesn’t move. And she no longer feels the little pad between her fingers. And she is no longer interested in what’s in the box. All that counts right now is that her father isn’t moving. She knows that he, too, wants to stay like this, to feel her close, to feel her breath, her face next to his. And she opens her fingers and the cotton pad falls to the bed. The little box slips out of her hands. She gets up on to her knees and raises her arms and turns towards her father. He still doesn’t move. His head is now at the height of her face. And she throws both arms around his neck. His face turns towards her and she presses her body against his. Her fingers dig into his shaven neck and she closes her eyes and she kisses him on the lips. And she feels his lips and his stubble itch, and from television she knows that true lovers when they kiss turn their heads right to left and left to right while they continue pressing their lips tightly together. And so she turns her head a little bit to the right and a little bit to the left, without taking her lips from her father’s lips. She stops kissing him and removes her lips from his and opens her eyes and looks into his face, so close, so big, so beautiful.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispers. ‘I know the present is from you.’

  She wants to press herself against him once more. Very firmly, very tight. For ever.

  But then she hears her mother’s voice. ‘What’s going on here?’ Her mother is standing in the doorway.

  ‘Look!’ Her father picks up the little jewellery box and pulls out a necklace. It’s a beautiful, thick purple ribbon with a silver medal at the end. Her father’s silver medal, his very first medal, which he won when he was only a few years older than Lydia during the Commonwealth Youth Championships.

  But her mother is angry: ‘You can’t give your medal to a seven-year-old girl! She’ll lose it.’

  And the mother takes the medal and locks it away in a drawer inside her wardrobe.

  When Fatimah leaves I wonder if she’s taken the belt. But it is still in the cupboard underneath the sink.

  And Rafiq says, ‘In five days, habibi, we will leave.’

  But Kauthar senses that here in Baghdad she has come much closer to the truth than ever before. Allah makes it easy for her, for me. Still, to walk this path requires courage and strength in order to distinguish between the world of appearances and deception and the real world. In the world of appearances everyone believes that our individual lives matter and that death is a loss. The world of appearances deceives us. And so it is impossible to see that we are part of something much bigger. That we are part of God’s world, of God’s life. Only God’s infinite life exists and for us He created Paradise. The life of the individual doesn’t count, doesn’t actually exist. It’s an illusion. And therefore nothing is lost when the illusion disappears.

  I pass the checkpoint. I am waved through now. The infidels who hide their blind eyes behind sunglasses wave me through with a nod, with a smile of recognition on their lips. They no longer ask for my passport. They know me now. But not everyone who passes the checkpoint is waved through. Neither the old woman who lives in the flat beneath us nor Rafiq, who has given up trying to circumnavigate the checkpoint. They search him each time.

  And I pass the soldiers’ checkpoint with a smile on my lips and a nod of the head.

  In the hospital I look for Rafiq. I see him bending over a stret-cher that rests on the floor among a group of wailing women. I push through the group and stand straight opposite Rafiq on the other side. A man lies on the stretcher. Hundreds of little cuts have disfigured his face. Rafiq is preparing an injection.

  ‘Rafiq,’ I say.

  He puts the needle in the man’s arm.

  I don’t know what I want here. I don’t know what I want from Rafiq. Or rather, I didn’t know a moment ago. Now I know.

  ‘Rafiq,’ I repeat.

  I want him to answer, so that I can be sure that I actually said his name and that I can then reach out and touch him. Just briefly, a fleeting touch. He gestures towards the two men who stand at either end of the stretcher to lift it. They make their way through the crowd down the corridor. Rafiq is holding the drip. He didn’t hear or see me.

  I have
gone too far ahead on the path to Allah. Rafiq is no longer able to see me. He became tired. Deviated from the path. He is lost. He needs to find his way again. Then he will follow me, I am sure. I will wait for him in Allah’s Paradise. Rafiq has to complete the journey on his own and then we will be together again. Then he will be worthy of me once more and can once more be my husband in the name of God. I will give hope by setting an example, by providing a sign, a light that will shine through the fog and show the path more clearly for the ones who are following me. And even if they are blind they will still be able to feel the heat from the light on their cheeks.

  I leave the hospital. Two teenage boys step on to the road a few metres in front of me from a side entrance to the hospital. They are pushing a wooden cart piled high with boxes. Skinny, scarred legs stick out of cropped Adidas trackies. Plastic sandals are kicking up dust. The wheels squeak. They are heading straight for the checkpoint. The top box wobbles dangerously for a second or two. Then it falls. A scream escapes one of the boys. They stop the cart, jump forward to collect the spilt contents. Syringes. A hundred or more. I walk past the boys. The syringes have already nearly all disappeared back into the box. I look towards the soldiers. They see what I have seen. I hear the wheels behind me move. I hold out my passport. Johnson waves me through. I continue on my way. I expect the squeaking of the wheels to stop. It doesn’t. I turn my head, glancing over my shoulder. The boys follow close behind me. The soldiers are looking in the opposite direction. I keep on walking, go past the tank. Suddenly the squeaking turns off to the left. Once more I look over my shoulder and I see the boys with their spoils disappear into a house. The soldiers on this side appear like motionless wax figures.

  Once upon a time I ran the risk of misunderstanding, of interpreting cunning enemy plots for genuine friendliness. But now I won’t be deceived. I can see through their game. The game of life. Nothing but a game.