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 wasted no words. She freed herself from all her difficulties by referring them up to the Omnipotent Deity. You learned about the first of the devils—Potipher’s wife—from her. That wanderer, seduced and exposed, became my premonition. There my gaze fell on her for the first time. I saw her, named her, and compared her with the other women, dividing up what she had among all: your aunt Farida, your mother’s and father’s sisters. But what remained was still abundant.
The day I read the Qur’an, I read the Sura of Joseph. It opened before me new territories for questions and battles.
With one blow I tore up all the tombstones, as if going into darkness with everyone.
You continued seeking lazy mornings when you did not have to go to school, for vast distances in which you exhaust your anger and love of questions. You did what you were asked in a different way. You wished you had Mahmoud’s muscles, Hubi’s fingers, and your father’s legs. Your head was dizzy from being hit. They had stuffed it with slaps and commandments. You took the remains of sins and stayed that way, peeping through the cracks in the doors and windowpanes at Potipher’s first wife—Aunt Farida—and your mother’s two sisters. They were in one another’s arms, their flesh trembling, liquids and lapses coming from their lips, new truths from their heads.
When your grandmother went up to the high roof, she took her prayer carpet in one hand and the Qur’an in the other. She murmured prayers to protect us all. She did not look down or turn around. At that time the two beloved aunts came in and went down. They left arm in arm, their cloaks slipping and revealing their yearning. The whole of the small room seemed in a trance. They whispered, sighed, made promises and talked of streets and people. Drops flew off them: “Kill me, dear Bahija, kill me, my dear.”
Some went this way, as if it were fate. If your grandmother stayed away, it was because this match was between her and another entity: her soul. And if your mother was absent, it was because she accepted her only destiny: your father.
But these women were descending into Paradise, not waiting to be lifted or wait for a sura to be recited. They were arm in arm, legs entwined. The flowing channels of the body freed things that were pent-up. Aunt Farida stood behind these boundaries, waiting, ready, trained to be ready. Her training was done from the onset of first awareness; when the hour came she did not delay a second. Women, women were all around you, recorded in the maps of cities, desired until the Last Judgment; they rose, they proceeded slowly, marching, listening to rumors, walking carefully around the forbidden area: men.
Whenever you crossed a step, the soul went out of the circle and swept away with it this sedate, divided universe, the man and the woman, the boys and the girls, into thousands of pieces and thousands of sighs.
When you confronted your aunt, face to face, she took you with her to the street for visits. Your hand was in hers, and her black cloak defined her new and mysterious figure as she passed by the shops and the coffeehouses. Her swinging walk in her high-heeled slippers filled their heads with fantasies. She slowed down and paused, walking as if dancing. The children moved aside slightly so that we could pass. The young men let out low whistles and the men sighed with admiration, but she looked at no one. When we were well beyond them, they called out: “You’re killing me!”
I hid inside my old clothes and my excessive thinness. My rage mounted and fell on me, making my head hurt, so I pinched my aunt’s hand. I slipped away from her, and walked far in front of her, not looking back.
Look and stop there: for after your two aunts left the room, Aunt Farida was sure a frenzy would overcome her. She went in and turned on the light, smelled the odors, looked at the ground, and handled everything slowly. She approached the cushions slowly. Everything was tidy and orderly. She leaned over and inspected it carefully. She opened the chest of her body and spread it on the floor, and a feeling of ecstasy began within her.
Your aunt left school after elementary level. She sat in the house waiting for Mr. Munir. Your father gave her a monthly allowance, and your grandmother too.
From there she rotated between the public bath and the neighbors’ houses and your grandfather’s house. At these places her physical vitality bulged, and any disruption in this meant slow death or a huge scandal.
The long-awaited Mr. Munir—patient, blessed, a cousin, old, rich, unemployed, ugly—hesitated to propose to her, but if he came he would find her worthy, an existing oasis, and attractive as well.
Your aunt was the most beautiful woman in the house and the whole neighborhood. She wanted to break some hearts. The fear of her was compounded when she applied kohl to her eyelids. Her body was in excellent health; her round thighs swelled and floated in the tight clothes selected by Rachel, the Jewish seamstress. Her hips were high, her legs full and her bosom taut. Heavy and erect, her neck was long, and she had high cheekbones like your father.
On her lower lip, a small mole, which we call a “Baghdad mark,” made her even more alluring. A beauty spot on her left cheek convinced all men and women of the power of the desire within her. Her eyes, sculpted with a sharp chisel, were black and almond-shaped, and her eyebrows were thick and rarely trimmed.
Her face changed, from the haughtiness of a princess to the remorse
