The bombing had caused a storm of dust, some of which got into my eyes and mouth. Shards were scattered in the open space between the two buildings. I could smell gunpowder. Everyone was running toward the southern building, which was about a hundred meters from the main building. The entire building and its tin plank roof had been destroyed, leaving only one of its four columns intact. There was chaos. Some soldiers were trying to lift the tangle of metal and gray blocks to look for survivors under the debris.
I went around the rubble of the building to look for Basim. I used to ridicule those who claimed, before some terrible or painful event took place, “I felt it in my heart.” But as I ran toward the back of the building, I felt my heart as a deep well into which stones from every direction began to rain. The branches of the tree next to the missile battery had caught fire. The truck with missiles mounted on it was now a mass of rising flames. Some soldiers were trying to put the fire out with dirt and fire extinguishers. Pieces of metal were scattered about. I spotted a body twenty meters to my right and ran toward it.
He had been thrown onto his stomach, but I recognized his hair. His weapon was three or four meters away. I screamed his name as I ran, but he didn’t move. His left arm was twisted backward in a strange position and looked like it had snapped. I knelt next to him and held him by the shoulders as I turned him over on his side. He felt heavy, unresponsive. His coffee eyes were wide open, looking upward. Blood seeping out of his nose and the side of his mouth had covered his moustache. I called his name again and put my ear to his chest but could hear only my own breathing and the screams of others. I lifted my head and held his hand and felt his wrist for a pulse. Nothing. I closed his eyes, kissed his forehead, and took him in my arms. I don’t remember how long I stayed there sobbing by his side.
Basim was one of six soldiers who died that day. In the evening I accompanied his body in a military vehicle. The C.O. had asked me to inform his family of his death. I asked the C.O. for permission also to go to al-Samawa to attend the first day of the funeral and he agreed.
I had met Basim’s father twice before. His first words were “There is no power save in God.” Then he asked: “Did he suffer?”
I answered that he hadn’t, though I wasn’t sure. Six or seven minutes had passed between the time of the explosion and when I found him.
The southern building was never repaired or rebuilt. The rubble was shoveled into a mound and just left there.
I put a swab of cotton into the hole the bullet had bored in the man’s forehead and another swab into his nostrils. I had already put swabs between his buttocks and inside his anus. I prepared to shroud him.
SEVENTEEN
In the winter of 2003 it seemed that, once again, war was coming. My mother asked Father, ”What are we going to do? Are we staying in Baghdad?”
He said: “Where else would we go? If God wants to end our lives, he will do so here. This is not the first war, but I sure hope it will be the last one. Enough.”
She asked me more than once, as if I had the answer, “What are we going to do, Jawad?”
I would tell her: “We’ll just wait things out.”
But we got ready for wars as if we were welcoming a visitor we knew very well, hoping to make his stay a pleasant one. During the last few weeks before the war we bought plenty of candles and canned food just in case. My mother went to Najaf to visit my brother Ammoury’s grave one last time.
I remembered how we took precautions for the 1991 war and sealed the bathroom window with tape both outside and inside. They had instructed us on the TV to do so in order to protect ourselves in the event of an attack with chemical weapons. We kept plastic bottles of water in the bathroom. My mother was helping me tape the windows when I asked her what we would do if one of us needed to go to the bathroom and all three of us were already in it. She punched me on the shoulder and closed her eyes and said, “Stop it. What a disgusting thought!”
After weeks of bombing we woke up one morning to find the sky pitch black. The smoke from the torched oil wells in Kuwait had obliterated the sky. Black rain fell afterward, coloring everything with soot as if forecasting what would befall us later.
EIGHTEEN
My father used to pray in the small guest room next to the living room. The 2003 war was ten days old and I was in the throes of my perennial struggle with insomnia when I heard his footsteps going down the stairs to say his dawn prayer two minutes after the muezzin’s call. Then I heard water splashing in the bathroom and figured he was performing his ritual ablutions. Minutes later the bombing started and I heard a terrible explosion that shook the entire house, nearly uprooting it. Two minutes of quiet followed, then the roar of airplanes and the sound of bombing again, but in the distance. My mother woke up and called out to my father, but he didn’t answer.
“He went downstairs to pray,” I shouted. I thought he was still praying and that’s why he wasn’t answering. But I heard no sound for another fifteen minutes, except for the calls of “God is great” echoing from the minarets. It had become a tradition to issue these calls during air raids.
I got out of bed and went downstairs. The door to the guest room was ajar, letting a bit of the candlelight into the hallway. I stood outside the room and saw him kneeling, his forehead down on the turba.1 He liked to pray in the dark. When my mother once asked him why, he said that God’s light was everywhere. I was thirsty so I went to the kitchen and drank some water out of the faucet. I liked to use the palm of my hand instead of a glass. I went back to the hallway and stood at the door of the guest room.
He was still there, kneeling, but I couldn’t hear him whispering anything. He hated it when anyone interrupted his prayers. If my mother called him, he would raise his voice as he prayed to signal to her to go away and wait for him to finish. I called out his name in a hushed voice, but heard nothing. I went inside the room. I took two steps and said: “Mother is worried about you.” He remained motionless. Could he have fallen asleep in that position? I approached and gently put my hand on his back, asking him if he was all right — but he didn’t move.
I turned around to switch on the light near the door, but it didn’t come on. Then I remembered that there was no electricity. I went to the hallway and brought the candle that was sitting on a plate near the edge of the stairs. I put the candle on the table and knelt next to him. I put both hands on his shoulder and called out, “What’s wrong, Father?” I tried to lift him up, but he was stiff. Then his body leaned to the left and settled on its side. His eyes were shut. I rushed back to the kitchen and brought a bottle of cold water from the fridge. I sprinkled a few drops on his face to wake him up, but nothing happened. I placed my ear to his chest. His heart was still.
I heard my mother’s footsteps rushing down the stairs. She yelled: “Where is Hajji?” She had a candle in her hand. She stood frozen at the door when she saw me on my knees next to him. I was calling out to him, but he was in that eternal prostration, like a fetus crouched in his mother’s womb. The candle fell from her hand and she started to strike herself and scream “Oh God.” She realized that his weak heart had given out after such a long journey and that he would never wake up again. She fell on her knees next to him, wailing. She took his face in her hands calling out to him as if he could still hear her. Then she started to kiss his forehead and hands, repeating “Please don’t go, Hajji! Don’t leave me alone. Please don’t go, Hajji. Ohhh, God.”