me. One day Mahmoud said to me, with a street light separating us, at the top of our street, “Your mother has tuberculosis.”
I chased him, a stone in my hand. He did not run away from me like the other boys. He stood there. I held the stone in my hand, my face a fountain of flame: “Son of a bitch!”
He did not disappear from my path. We stood together, face to face. I was smaller than he. I was a female and he was a male. It was I who chased him—something he was unable to do. No, but he was able to do many things: run, play, escape from my father’s face when he saw him in the street. He taught me arithmetic with his sister, Firdous. The first time, I stood and dropped the stone and asked him, “What is consumption?”
“I don’t know. My mother says her chest is pierced with holes like a sieve.”
I bowed my head, then raised it. “Maybe everybody’s chest has holes.”
“No, just your mother’s. My mother says, ‘Don’t play with Huda—she’ll infect you.’”
Infection, tuberculosis, isolation! I wanted to raise my head again in front of Mahmoud, but was unable to. He was the bravest child in the neighborhood. I chose him for myself. This would be my first man. That is how free I was throughout all those years. We spat on the ground and looked at our spittle—was there any line of blood? And when we saw nothing, we shouted and screamed and ran through the streets, we hit some people and made jokes with others, we pulled off women’s cloaks and knocked men’s hats off, and knocked on the front doors of houses and ran away.
He was always saying, “My mother says, ‘All the girls in the neighborhood are like your sisters,’ but you’re nothing like Firdous. She’s sensible and you’re like the Devil!”
“Are you afraid of the Devil?”
“No.”
“Listen. Do you like hell or not?”
Since that time Mahmoud kept his nose clean. He changed his long dishdasha once a week. He wore sandals, and the fair skin of his face grew red and sweaty from playing, jumping, and running. We played from three o’clock until five in the afternoon. We went into our houses, drank water, peed, and then went back out to the street.
The girls played “hide the beads.” We made piles of dirt and sprayed them with water to make little houses in which we hid the colored beads we had stolen from our grandmothers and fathers, red and yellow, blue, and black beads. A few meters away, our voices split the air: “Huda, you’re cheating!”
My success in the street was a form of cheating. I usually guessed the number of beads buried in the mud so I took all the girls’ beads. I put them in the bag I had tied around my waist. Winning put me in front. Mahmoud on the other side played with a top and won—his top turned, and turned, and turned, as if it would never stop. It never tipped, it never shook, and he pulled the string tightly before whipping it out on level ground. We all stood to watch, while others did as he had done: Suturi, Nizar, Hashim, and Adil too. We watched and shouted to one another. We sang to Mahmoud’s top, chanting for it not to stop, and mocked the other boys’ tops. Our blood was up—our shouts nearly broke the neighbors’ windows. We acted like lunatics. Adil and Firdous were with me.
“Oh, God, don’t let his top stop. Oh, God!”
Mahmoud’s top stopped when my father appeared.
Every two weeks my father left for Karbala on the dawn train and arrived home in the afternoon. His shadow, his name, and his voice went right through us. We huddled together like terrified puppies. It was no use burying our heads under a pillow or wriggling up against our grandmother—he could hear our pulse as soon as he entered our street, and we could hear him muttering between his teeth—we were about to drop to the ground. He carried a small, old valise the color of stale beets. Everyone greeted him, 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,
