for such a purpose. She had shown she had the adequate skills to recover from tragedy and move on to raise our boy. At least I will leave with a sense of peace knowing they will make a strong life. That he will have all he needs to learn and grow. The child in no way resembles me. He is the image of his mother, and that will make it even easier for me to fade entirely from his life.
My memories are like tidal waves. They rise, fall, and leave me breathless with renewed energy, or soundly defeated with sadness. They mostly come at night and take me right back to the blackened city as it exploded into chaos. The day it all changed plays out behind my closed eyes. In my mind, I can see the red sky so vividly I feel like I am still there. I can smell the fire in the air; I can hear explosions so loud they rattle my brain. I let the present go. I allow myself to go back in time, to feel her again. Her hand was shockingly strong as it grabbed me with an urgency I had never felt before. It had always been so soft, gentle as it stroked my cheek or brushed back my hair. She had hands that were trained to save lives, just not her own.
She was beautiful and kind, and taken from me in the blink of an eye. My mother had become a doctor when few women had the courage to try. She left her home at eighteen, disappearing into the night sky never to return to her family. Her father was a traditional Iraqi man, with a heavy hand. Her mother and sisters were much like the other females in the village, largely illiterate and expected to serve their men and keep the home. After the invasion, many of these women were left to raise their families all by themselves. The men simply vanished into the dust of the desert. From what I have heard, I doubt many of them were missed.
I knew of my mother’s family only from stories. She was aware that by leaving her home, she would never be welcomed back. At the heart of the role of an Iraqi woman is a belief that her family’s honor is tied to her modesty and faithfulness. She had violated both.
My mother told me the public shame my grandfather felt by her sudden departure must have burned inside him for years. She knew even her mother would struggle to accept her daughter’s choices. It was not as she was raised, and not as they had planned. There was much repair work to do following my mother’s exit. Her second cousin had already selected her for marriage, and the family had been building her dowry and the alimony they would provide against the chance her future husband abandoned the union. He would go on to receive the money, of course, as a means of payment for his suffering by her abandonment.
It had been an excruciatingly difficult decision for her to leave, and extremely dangerous. She had explained to me the risks involved with being a woman alone on the streets of Iraq. Often times, they vanished, only to suffer horrible, inhumane fates. She told me of one friend she had known from the early days at her neighborhood village school. She had defied her father, going to the town square by herself without the protection of her brothers. In the days following her disappearance, news began to trickle back to her family that she was dead. One night, my mother told me she had awoken to hear her father speaking to her friend’s father outside the front door. He told him his daughter had been found, her body stuffed under the bleachers at a nearby sporting field, bloodied, battered, and riddled with bullets. They began to talk of vengeance and retribution but the conversation was tempered by the realization that she had violated her family’s code of honor. There would be no need to seek the perpetrators of such horrific violence. The girl had brought it upon herself by leaving without permission and not allowing a male family member to accompany her into town.
The next day my mother and her sisters were brought before their red-faced father. Invigorated by his neighbor’s disgrace, he came at them with a fury they had never seen. Their mother cowered in the corner of the room, not even welcome to sit at the table with the rest of her family. He addressed them as fiercely as he would a battalion of soldiers.
“From this day forward,” he started. “If any of you dishonor me I will bring forth my own justice. I will remove the tongues that you speak with, I will take the hands you wish to work with, and I will cut out your disloyal hearts.” That was the day my mother began to plan her escape.
Very late one night when the skies were particularly dark, she quietly pulled out the small bag she had stashed beneath her mattress, kissed her sisters lightly on the foreheads, and crept downstairs. The house was silent, and she told me her footsteps had felt leaden. Every muscle was tensed, every sound felt like an explosion inside her own head. Opening the door was like Russian roulette, at any moment the chamber would fire and she would be hauled back inside. The door only mustered a lame creak before swinging wide enough for her to slip right out.
As the darkness closed in around her, my mother ran. Her heart pounded in her ears, her breath came in short, sharp spurts that burned her lungs. She ran until her house faded into the black of night. She ran down the deserted city streets, counting off buildings and alleys, until she thought she had reached the right one. She turned into the small space that fell between a store with iron bars on the windows, and another that had once housed a butcher shop her father took her to on weekends. She flew down a flight of steep stairs, rolling her ankles, tripping on the impossibly narrow steps, and losing stray fibers of her hastily packed bag to the shards of concrete sticking out from the water-stained walls.
Finally, she stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Turning toward a gray door with rust eating away at the knob, she told me she had knocked upon it three times. She closed her eyes tightly and whispered a prayer that what she had been told was true. She prayed she had chosen the right alley, and salvation was waiting as a reward for her bravery. She opened her eyes as she heard heavy footsteps approaching on the other side. As she exhaled the air she hadn’t realized she had been holding, the door opened and dim light spilled out into the alley. My mother was whisked inside. As she looked around, she saw faces just like hers. Females of all ages swathed in black, standing together and looking back at her from inside a small, windowless apartment.
One by one they opened their arms and moved in together to welcome her into their solemn sisterhood. My mother noticed many of them were visibly scarred. One young girl had a vicious red slash under her right eye. My mother later learned she had been gang raped and beaten by her brother’s schoolmates then left to die by the side of the road. Another woman was missing her left hand. She explained how her father had forced her into prostitution at sixteen. One day, a client had paid extra for the pleasure of tying her to the bedpost. As she lay there, he burned her with his cigarette, backhanded her when she cried out in pain, and left her there helpless to free her arms and doctors had no choice but to remove it from the elbow down.
The stories were horrific, and vivid, and full of disgusting abuses that permeated their culture like putrid air. In some way or another, they had all been given a second chance. By trusting in rumor and a secret network of survivors known only through word of mouth, each woman had put enough faith and hope into the possibility of freedom that they risked certain death in search of the dark door at the bottom of the concrete steps. This modern-day Underground Railroad had existed for generations to lead women brave enough to trust in it down a new road.
In this coven, there was no rape, no fists of rage or dishonor in denouncing evil tradition. Each woman buried her past and re-emerged as a strong, purposeful, and proud human being. From the moment my mother stepped into that room lit by nothing more than candles and the spirit of love and generosity, she never looked back.
Right up until the day she died, she held a permanent place in the circle of women who opened the door as often as a knock came upon it, seeking to rescue new souls that otherwise would have been left to wither away and die.
She was saved that night, but another wicked presence would find her soon enough.
My mother’s time on earth would still be brief.
Chapter 4: Ella
I began to hate my computer. Against my doctor’s advice I Googled my diagnosis, read blogs, and soon
