I felt both power and relief after saying that, especially when I noticed that I was able to anger and provoke him as much as he had me, if not more. His face contorted and flushed as though I had stabbed him. He wiped his face with his palms and shook his head back and forth as he attempted to absorb the blow and regain control of his emotions. When he spoke, there was a change in his tone of voice that testified clearly to the difficulty he had maintaining his composure.
“I haven’t deceived anyone. Not your mother: I was up front with her about the entire thing, just as I’ve already told you. And not Rosa, whom I actually love. I also haven’t betrayed my moral and religious heritage, as you say. Indeed, the complete opposite! What I’m intending to do is a serious and sincere fulfillment of that heritage. The only reason I’m breaking my back here is to fulfill an oath I swore on the Qur’an in front of a person who is gone forever. If I were not fully committed to my moral heritage, there wouldn’t be anything else forcing me to fulfill an oath like this.”
I spoke in a still-belligerent tone: “What kind of backwardness is this? And what madness? We are now in a different era, a different country, a different culture! No one will understand an act like this. What you are intending to do will even be considered a serious crime, and the law will condemn you for it.”
Worked up, he rose from his seat, displaying his customary behavior when he’s angry. I would describe it as theatrical, not because he was acting, but because of his intensity. He paced around the room and gestured with his entire body. Every moveable part of him was shaking to the rhythm of words that seemed to be ripped forcibly from his bowels.
“Where is this era of yours? And its culture and laws, while it sees us massacred on a daily basis in our country, right before its eyes? Hell, even with their support sometimes! Huh? Where? Where?”
He was truly frightening as he circled around me like a raging bull, right around my chair, which made me stand up in front of him as though by instinct. Meanwhile, he kept on yelling and kicking the wall. I was certain that if we had been in his house, he would have started smashing everything in his path.
“Well? Where are the laws and the civilization of this pathetic, hypocritical, despicable, fucked-up world? It sees us driven like innocent sheep to the slaughter. Well? Yes, say it! Say clearly that you don’t want to help me. You can be sure that I’m not asking you to. I don’t need you for it. I wasn’t counting on you. You were right to let me know where you stand before I made myself believe in you any longer. Well, say it then! Speak up! You’re afraid, cowardly, a pussy. You’re chicken shit, a traitor. You’re all fucked up!”
That’s when I somehow brought my face right in front of his. We were standing like roosters in the fighting pit, all puffed up. I shouted, “I am not a coward! The truly cowardly thing is what you intend to do. So you are the cowa—.”
He slapped me on the face with his entire strength, knocking me to the ground. Then he left, slamming the door with a violence that made the whole building shake.
CHAPTER 15
When Fatima came that evening, she found me completely naked, submerged in the bathtub. After my father had slapped me and slammed the door behind him, I remained lying on the floor for a while, sobbing. His palm had paralyzed my face. I reached out to the lowest of the pictures and pulled it down. I began to rip the pictures off the wall and tear them up, bitterly running on at the mouth, “I don’t want a homeland. May God damn it and everything else! I’ve only known pain there, and I’ve only carried pain away with me. My homeland is Spain. No, not even Spain. I don’t want any homeland! I don’t need a homeland.”
I stared at the shredded pictures in front of me. Then I started sobbing with a dejected tenderness, “But Iraq … Iraq! Dad!”
I got up onto my knees and tried to put the torn pictures back in their places. My insides surged with tumultuous, conflicting emotions. An inner rage brought me to my feet in a madness, and I began tearing down the hanging pictures and scattering them like chaff. I felt my right cheek with my hand: the stinging had started to burn even more. I staggered into the bedroom and ripped up everything there. Then I threw myself on the bed and wrapped myself up completely in the blanket. I rolled myself as tightly as I could into a fetal position, as though embracing myself. I cried there and shook, like a child who has received an entirely unexpected punishment from parents who had been caressing him. My delirium came in waves that crashed over me in the darkness under the covers. I was tossed back and forth between cursing everything and repeating my father’s phrase: “This world is all fucked up. This world is all fucked up.”
I decided I would never see my father after that day, that I would cut him off and remove him from my life completely. It would be as though he had never existed — he, my family, Grandfather. “Ah, Grandfather! How much I need now the extreme tenderness of your fingers caressing us in the sick bed! I am now in my bed, Grandfather, alone and hurting. But you might side with my father because he wants to carry out your every wish. Or else just because he is my father, and you would always say that it’s not permitted to criticize one’s parents or talk back to them for ‘he whose parents are displeased will not obtain God’s favor.’
“I’m sorry, Father. I’ve sinned against you. I was insolent toward you and raised my voice inappropriately. I deserved more than a single slap from you for that. Forgive me, Father. But I’m not comfortable with what you want to do. I tried to divert you because I love you and I’m afraid for you. Yes, I’m afraid. Not because I’m a coward, as you believe, since this fear of mine is of another sort. Do you understand? Do you understand me?
“Throughout my exile I would see you sit me down, a child, on your knee, with your feet in the shallows of the Tigris, as you read Goethe’s poems to me. Why can’t you be the person whose back I longed to clasp when riding our donkey on the way to the highway? Tender moments, during which I would feel that my small heart was embracing your heart through my ribs and yours. As far as I was concerned, even the odor of your armpits was the most fragrant thing I ever smelled. We would wave to each other, and I would keep watching as you got further away. I would wave and wave until the car would disappear with you, a black dot on the black line of the road. Your slap today — was it a wave in our final parting?”
In the darkness under the blanket, internal billows shook me. I felt as though my sweat formed waves that met the surge of my violent tears and the flood of pain rising up behind my face. I don’t know how long I remained like this. Then I got up, heading toward the bathroom. My right cheek was less red than I had expected, given that I imagined it would be stained with blood. I washed my cheek with cold water and said, “I need water. Water, Aliya, water.”
I filled the bathtub, throwing all my clothes on the floor. I stretched out in the water and leaned my head against the edge, sinking in up to my neck, to my ears. I needed to not hear anything. I needed to not hear myself, or my father’s slapping me, or his slamming my apartment door. I sank to my ears, to my chin, until I was suffocating … until Fatima came and fell upon me with a broken heart: “Saleem, baby! What’s wrong? What happened?”