I ignored what she had said. I turned up the volume on the television and started watching the first press conference with Tommy Franks, the leader of the operations. He was saying, ‘… this will be a campaign unlike any other in history, a campaign characterised by shock, by surprise, by flexibility, by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never before seen, and by the application of overwhelming force… Our troops are performing as we would expect — magnificently.’ A column of armoured vehicles crossing the desert. Huge balls of fire against a background of smoke and palm trees. American soldiers on the deck of an enormous battleship, cheering at the launch of the opening volley of tomahawk missiles. Tony Blair declaring that the Iraqis were an oppressed, humiliated people, and that Britain and her allies would bring them democracy and prosperity, and would protect their oil wells and refineries.
The following afternoon, we were unable to see Nadeem or any of his mates who had been brought in transport lorries to the national security courthouse, even though Hamdiya and I, along with other family members of the detainees, had gone early to the courthouse and spent two hours waiting on the pavement opposite the building. The blue lorries arrived, and queued so as to reverse in the direction of the door through which the boys would pass; thus they exited the vehicles and entered the building without anyone on the street seeing them.
It was then that I remembered, and knew that I had had a premonition of this moment when, months before, I had been following the transport lorries. My heart had told me. I would be following a lorry and staring through the opening and the heavy grillwork covering it, that I might catch sight of Nadeem’s face, or he might see my face smiling at him.
The families were permitted to enter the building and wait in the lawyers’ chamber. We saw the boys climbing to the upper floor to be interrogated, and then we saw them coming back down, toward the lorries. Then we were allowed to stand near the lorries, where we waved farewell to them, and they waved back at us, each one raising his two hands together to wave, for their wrists were shackled together by an iron cuff.
By the time Nadeem and his mates were released, Baghdad had fallen, and the Americans and the British had occupied Iraq. Two weeks later Nadeem left for the Emirates to work in Dubai and join his brother. He travelled on Tuesday afternoon. Hamdiya followed through on what she had said when she was shouting and crying like a madwoman, on that sad Mother’s Day: she collected her things and moved in with her sister. On Thursday evening I got dressed and went to the New Generation Centre in Ain al-Sira to attend a belated ceremony that had been organised for Siham.
The hall was jammed with her friends and acquaintances, most of whom had taken part in the student movement, some from the College of Engineering or from other colleges, as well as cohorts from the period when she had studied in the Soviet Union, and others whom she had met at one time or another, leaving an impression upon them that drew them — despite the passing of the years and her protracted seclusion — to come and bid her a final adieu. Life in general — in our part of the world, at any rate — combines the funny with the sad, mixing the momentous with contrasting humour and whimsy, and so it was that a bunch of middle-aged people entered the hall, bearing the unmistakable signs of lives lived in trying and difficult circumstances. They were not shy about introducing themselves: they were the students who worked for the government, in the nineteen seventies, against the student protesters. Some of them had partaken in that memorable event at the College of Engineering, the day they surrounded Siham with clubs, insulted her, and told her, ‘Get out, and don’t open your mouth in this college’; whereupon she sat down on the floor and said, ‘This is my college, and I’m not leaving. And I’ll speak up here whenever I like. You want to beat me, then beat me.’
They revisited this tale, saying, ‘May she rest in peace.’ They said she was courageous, and had earned respect. It was clear from the expressions on their faces that they were genuinely affected by her death.
Chapter twenty-four
Siham
Her picture is on the front page of the book. Most likely it is a picture of her when she was still in high school, her first year there. She is wearing a dress that looks more like a school uniform, with buttons in the front and a round collar, one of those types known as a ‘baby collar’, maybe because of its association with children’s clothing. Her hair is smooth, thick, and long, parted in the middle and falling to her shoulders, but not covering her forehead or her ears. Her complexion is white, her eyes light-coloured (the picture is black-and-white, and so doesn’t reveal the green of her eyes). A long face with a broad brow, a small nose, and somewhat full lips; her face has grace and a sweetness, or innocence, or gaiety hiding behind an apparent seriousness and visible placidity. There is perhaps also a touch of sadness in this face, betrayed by a slight cast to the right eye that you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t look closely. In her ears are earrings, circular in shape — are they gold or silver? In a black-and-white photograph you can’t tell for sure. A child, a girl, and a woman in the making converge in the picture.
Above the picture is her name, and next to it, ‘Flower of the student movement.’ A subtitle follows in the third line: ‘The seventies generation.’
Beneath the picture are words in a fine, brittle script. (The confused scrawl of those who, like me, were educated at French schools, and didn’t have handwriting teachers or get that strict training in the aesthetics of Arabic calligraphy.) The words read ‘Love cannot be blind, for it is love that causes us to see’ (a maxim she wrote in 1966, when she was in high school).
The book includes recollections offered by her brother and some of the leaders of the student movement, and women friends of hers who had shared life in a prison cell with her. It concludes with an appendix comprising fragments of her early writings, when she was fifteen years old, as well as some later texts, and Qur’anic verses she had transcribed with care. This included, under the heading, ‘God’, a list of twenty-two of His attributes as laid down in the Qur’an, beginning with ‘the Merciful’, and ending with ‘Verily God is your Lord and greatest protector’. Following this, as a conclusion to the section: ‘And God knows that which is within your very hearts.’ Then there is a snippet in which she sees the world as a mountain that all people climb, each kicking those who are below, to prevent their ascending, and she concludes this thought with, ‘Where is mercy, where is kindness?’ Following this is a quotation from the words of Jesus: ‘Blessed be the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ In another snippet she writes, ‘Give love instead of hate, and you are a point of light.’ And, ‘Smile upon him who strikes you, and give him a rose — thus you will be a soldier in the only true war, and you will be victorious because he was victorious. Jesus said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” And where did he say it!’
There are two selections in the appendix written in 2002, exactly a year before her death, the first of them dated 14 March. In this one she acknowledges the twentieth anniversary of her decision to give up her graduate study in the Soviet Union, saying, ‘The step I took so courageously was to reach for the sky, and nothing but the sky would have done,’ and ‘It’s a decision I would take again if I could go back in time: a triumph of the spirit over the body, a triumph of light over darkness.’ And, ‘From that day on, despite all the hardships, I am still climbing the spiritual ladder… twenty years of genuine struggle, struggle in the name of God.’ And, ‘O Lord, guide my craft to the shore that lies distant.’