When the donkey went up the mountain, my father would put me in front of him so that his enormous body wouldn’t lean on my small one. And during the descent, he would set me behind him so that I would lean against his back. The moments when I would wrap my arms around his chest and embrace him were my favorite of all since I felt so close to my father, as though I were at one with him. I felt a wonderful tenderness, trust, and warmth because these were the times of my closest contact with him. I felt a great love for him, and I felt his love for me. As though he were the one embracing me and not the other way around.
When we got to the highway, he would get down and take his bag out of the saddlebag and then say, “As you well know, God’s satisfaction comes from the satisfaction of parents. I am satisfied with you, Saleem, no matter what you do. But you must try hard to please Grandfather and your mother too, okay?”
I would nod my head in agreement and murmur, “Dad, don’t forget—”
Smiling, he would cut me off, “Yes, I know. I’ll bring you the glossy German magazines. Don’t worry.”
Without taking me down from the donkey, he would wrap his arms around me and kiss me. These were the only times that he would kiss me, for he would absolutely never do that in the presence of anyone because Grandfather rejected an indulgent upbringing for boys.
“Go, now. Goodbye, Saleem.”
I’d pull on the donkey’s rope to turn it around. “Goodbye, Dad.”
As I got further away, I would keep turning back toward him until he had gotten into one of the cars. If we were still close enough to see each other, he would wave to me from the car window, and I would wave back. I would keep watching the car as it got further away until it became a small dot moving along the black line of the road and disappeared. Afterward, heading back home along the same path, I would think about him and the glossy German magazines he’d bring for me. I would cut out the pictures and glue them in my notebook to show to Aliya, promising her a dream similar to those pictures.
My relationship with my father was one of emotion and spirit while my relationship with Grandfather was one of intellect and rules. I wasn’t different from any of the other children in Qashmars Village with regard to my feelings and my total adherence to the system that Grandfather created for us and bound us to. Especially since that system was comfortable and successful in the first two years. At that time, contentment and harmony prevailed in the lives of everyone. Our most joyous moment was the Friday prayers, when we would all gather together, young and old, the males forming the front rows with the women in rows behind them. We would wear our best clothes and put on perfume. In the spring, we would spread our prayer mats on the pebbles and sand outside the mosque, and Grandfather would stand in front of us, using the external stairs as an elevated platform to preach to us. We felt our complete unity, our brotherhood, the purity of our spirits, and our closeness both to the sky and to God. When our “Allahu akbar!” pealed out during the prayer and we uttered “Amen!” in unison, our voices resounded together with the lapping of the river’s waves and the rustling of the trees, producing a distant echo from the foot of the mountain. Such moments filled us with a mythical awe, similar to what we imagined for the day of resurrection.
Those were the moments when we were most unified, most at peace, and most spiritually pure. We truly felt that we shared one spirit. On the intellectual and conceptual level, we felt complete concord. It was as though we had one shared mind, with which we thought, or which would think for us. Was this not Grandfather himself?
He would undoubtedly have realized his dream of an ideal village, had not the roar of bulldozers surprised us one morning on the top of the mountain. They were plowing a wide road toward our village, following the course of my father’s small footpath. The government came along this road with their officials and their power lines. They gave us televisions and built a school for us out of concrete. All Grandfather’s efforts to prevent these things met with failure, and he became all the more sad, angry, and emaciated.
The war on the Iranian front intensified, so the government sought additional young men and adults from all corners of Iraq for the draft. Grandfather’s health collapsed even more as he saw the further failure of his dream. He vomited blood when he learned that the government had recorded our village in its official papers under the name of Faris Village, meaning ‘knight’ and referring to the dictator. For that reason, Grandfather resumed his emphasis in subsequent Friday sermons on our holding on to the name of Qashmars until the day we avenged our dignity, the day when we would exchange that name for the awaited name, such as Freedmen.
The front against Grandfather grew wider. Nevertheless, he didn’t stop fighting what he was up against, and his strongest means was his sermon after the Friday prayers: “Television is the devil in your homes. It will corrupt your women against you! It is the one-eyed Antichrist spoken of in the Qur’an. That’s why it has only one eye! The government school teaches your sons unbelief and godlessness. The police are the dogs of the tyrant. The war against the Muslim nation of Iran is an aggression that God does not accept. This is a hard time, when holding fast to your religion is like grasping a live coal. Be patient! Hold fast to your religion however much the burning coal of your times sears you. For that is easier to bear than entering the tormenting fire in the hereafter and remaining in hell for all eternity!”
But the people feared the government’s violence more than they feared Grandfather’s threats, which were postponed until the world to come. Thus, even though the people in the village still showed him deference and obedience, the threads of control began to slip from Grandfather’s fingers.
The government was able to conduct a new census of us after they came with a police force that outnumbered us and was better armed. They issued us new identity cards, omitting the nickname Qashmar as well as our old surname, leaving us in their records with just our first names and our fathers’ names. After they established the number of young men and adults fit for military service, they ordered them to join the army. The men refrained, however, after a vengeful sermon from Grandfather. Therefore, the government decided upon a sudden nighttime raid to seize them one by one. So Sheikh Mullah Mutlaq prepared them to resist and distributed the men — armed with rifles, pistols, multi-pronged fishing spears, axes, clubs, and knives — out on the roofs of the houses, in the ditches between them, in the middle of the thickets, and behind the boulders at the foot of the mountain.
On that night, which would have led to ruin and a real massacre, my father got credit for saving the village when he managed to cut the electricity at the main converter in the center of the village. This made the government give up on their night assault on the village. They came by day to the houses, one by one. The men were then forced to go willingly with the police in order to avoid being shamed in front of their women and children.
Grandfather had no remaining stratagem. He could only promise imminent relief and insist that the people be patient. As a response to what had happened, he increased the frequency of his lessons with the children at the mosque, competing with and correcting what the government school was attempting to teach them. He kept on in this way until the decisive blow came and utterly crushed his spirit.