The living room was twice as big as the one in my apartment. In the wall opposite the door was a window that looked over a narrow courtyard between the neighboring buildings. There were four other doors. One was closed. Of the three that were open, there was the kitchen, the bathroom, and the snoring of my father, which must have been the bedroom.
I approached and saw him lying in bed, on his stomach, in his socks and his clothes from the previous night’s concert. I had never before seen my father or anyone in our village sleeping on his stomach that way. I remembered the time Grandfather angrily scolded me when he saw me stretched out like that on a rug in his large sitting room. He had yelled, “Get up! Get out of that position! Don’t ever stretch out on the ground like this again. It’s a wicked way to lie down.”
I don’t remember who it was that explained the matter to me afterward. Whoever it was had said, “That’s because the earth is our mother. It isn’t right for us to stretch out upon her in this way, like a man having sex with his wife.”
I advanced with steps so slow and quiet that I almost got cramps in my legs. I sat on the couch that presided over the living room, under the window looking out on the center courtyard. I started looking the place over in the sunlight pouring through the window.
Lying there on the coffee table in front of me, beside an ashtray and some German newspapers, were my father’s keys. I knew them from the familiar key ring holding them together: a short chain ending in a bullet with a hollow shell. Its copper red had become yellow on account of being handled so much. It was the very one that he had carried with him constantly since the first days after we charged the provincial government building in Tikrit. It had appeared when the name Qashmars first appeared. It was the same bullet that remained in my father’s hand, the one he hadn’t inserted into the anus of the young man harassing Istabraq, the youth whom the market’s beasts of burden had saved that day. I don’t know how my father had hidden it during the torture sessions and kept the very same one with him over the years. And then, how had he brought a bullet here through the airports?
There were posters of nature scenes on the rest of the walls. The accompanying text indicated that they were German landscapes. There were other large posters of half-naked women in seductive poses, feigning ecstasy. The lips, as usual, were in that form I had started to hate for its vulgar repetition: the half-open and slack-jawed mouth forming a circle, pretending to be ready for a kiss. I don’t know who it was that put into the minds of women that this primitive pose was seductive. I had started casting my first glance at women’s lips whenever I would see them in newspaper photos, advertisements, and calendars. As soon as I saw them adopting this commercialized expression, I sensed their extremely naïve phoniness, and all sense of attraction would evaporate. I would turn the page as a way of refusing to include myself in the herd of consumers who fell for that sort of thing.
My father’s snoring got louder.
On the opposite side of the room stood a wooden entertainment center. A television was in the middle, and the rest of its shelves were crowded with books, videotapes, cassette tapes, and several vases made of clay and glass, together with dozens of identical glasses. There was another familiar motif that appeared in many houses, namely, the family photos that stood in the corners of the shelves. In this case, of course, it was my father with Rosa in various places and different cities. Of these, I recognized the Barcelona seashore and Baghdad, in front of the Freedom Monument. The photos were leaning on their stands atop the books, which were all lined up together, spines facing out, with the exception of the Qur’an. It stood on the top shelf, leaning against a multivolume Qur’anic commentary, its cover facing out, decorated with the word “noble” written in gold.
I continued looking around in this way for about half an hour, during which I got up and walked around with still constrained steps. I checked out the inside of the kitchen and the bathroom, looked over some of the book and movie titles, and took one look from the window into the courtyard and another from the middle of the living room into the room where my father was snoring. The rhythm was variable and some of the snores startled me, as though he were about to choke.
During this time, I got my breathing under control, my pulse returned to its normal rate, and I became more comfortable with the place. So all that remained was for me to begin the encounter with my father. I approached him softly and put my hand gently on his shoulder. His snoring stopped. I paused, too, before repeating a call that I hadn’t practiced for many long years. I was like someone whose voice was catching on the words, like someone feeling them out and recalling their rhythm, drawn from the secret, unknown places of the spirit. In such a situation, a person feels the words like a physical touch that makes the choking tears flow:
“Dad. Dad. Dad!”
He twitched, rolling onto his back and mumbling heavily, “Eh? What?” He opened his eyes with difficulty, and then the surprise widened them. “Oh! Saleem!”
He sat up right away, rubbing his eyes like a lazy child and trying to hide the effect of the surprise upon him by saying, “Good morning! What time is it?” Then he got out of bed and added, “It must be Fatima who sent you.” He followed that up while looking for each of his shoes beside the bed by saying, “She’s a good kid, a respectable girl.”
We went out to the living room. His hair was messed up, and traces of gray could be seen at the roots of the dyed locks. He looked around for something: he was looking for cigarettes. He shook the pack that was near the television, opened it, then crushed it with his fist and threw it on the floor: “Damn! Empty.”
“I have some cigarettes,” I said.
“What kind are they?”
I took my pack out of my pocket and showed them to him.
He said, “No, these are lights. They don’t do anything for me. Have you eaten breakfast?”
He had turned toward the refrigerator, opened it, and stuck his head inside, saying, “We need milk.” He followed that up with a joke: “But the cows are out to pasture!”
He laughed and gave my shoulder a pat that hinted at our connection. I felt then that he was closer to the father I had known in the past. It was as though the phrase about cows, spoken as a clear allusion, was a sign of all that we had shared in our distant village.
I said, “I’ll go down and get some milk and cigarettes. Which kind do you want?”
He pointed to the crumpled pack on the floor. “Those. Or just tell the Chinese people in the store across from the club — do you know it? — tell them, ‘I want cigarettes, milk, and German cheese for Mr. Noah.’ They’ll know what you want. In the meantime, I’ll get the coffee ready and take a shower. Okay? Here, take some money.”
“No. There’s no need. It’s not much at all.” I took a chance with his amiability and added, “And I cordially invite you to breakfast in your own house.”
We laughed with an affection that brought us closer. I went out with a trace of a smile on my face that lasted until I reached the entrance of the Chinese store. It was true: as soon as I let the Chinese shopkeeper know what Mr. Noah wanted, she brought it to me immediately. I returned, carrying everything back up to the kitchen while my father sang German songs in the shower. I smiled and began preparing breakfast, arranging it on the coffee table after clearing off the pile of newspapers and ashtrays, leaving his bunch of keys, connected to the bullet, in its place on the edge.