I was sad and overwhelmed by the realization that I didn’t really know my father very well. I had always lied when asked about his profession, claiming that he ran a store. Was I ashamed or embarrassed? My mother kept repeating after his death that God loved him so much that he took him away while he was drawing close to him in prayer. He had undertaken the pilgrimage to Mecca three years earlier to make sure he would be with his son Ammoury in paradise. He wanted to be buried next to him in Najaf.
When I had informed him of my decision to go on studying art and that I did not want to follow him in his profession, he said, “Who will wash me then?” My mother insisted that I should be the one to wash his body. She thought it would provide the reconciliation that should have taken place when he was still alive.
“His soul will be in peace if you wash him,” she said. “Please do it. For God’s sake and mine.”
But I refused adamantly to do so. How could I tell her that I wasn’t totally convinced that there was such a thing as a soul? I had feelings of guilt because I had let him down by abandoning our ancestors’ profession and had failed in my own endeavors. His assistant Hammoudy washed him. Hammoudy was like his third son and cried like a child the next morning when I told him of Father’s death.
After obtaining the death certificate from the Office of Forensic Medicine, we took his body to the washhouse. Baghdad looked sad. Its streets were barren. Hammoudy had the keys to the place. We opened the door and put the body on the washing bench, but I told him I was going to wait outside. I asked him to call me should he need anything. He was surprised and asked me, “Don’t you want to stay?”
I shook my head: “I can’t.”
The washhouse was dark, like a huge grave, except for a faint ray of light filtering in from the tiny window. I went out to the garden and squatted in front of my father’s beloved pomegranate tree. It had drunk the water of death for decades, and now it was about to drink the water flowing off his body through the runnel around the washing bench. My father and I were strangers, but I had never realized it until now.
The deep red pomegranate blossoms were beginning to breathe. When I was young, I ate the fruit of this tree that my father would pluck and bring home. But I stopped eating it when I realized that it had drunk of the waters of death. I heard the sound of water being poured inside. Seconds later I saw it rush through the runnel and flow around the roots of the tree.
I had heard on the radio the night before that the Americans were close to Najaf. I thought about the difficulties and dangers that we would encounter on our way there to bury my father.
After about forty minutes, Hammoudy called to me and I went back inside. I smelled the camphor he was sprinkling all over the shroud that covered my father’s body, leaving only his face exposed. Hammoudy asked me to carry Father’s body to the coffin which he had prepared and placed on the floor three meters away. He went over to the cupboard and brought out one of those special shrouds which had supplications written on it and placed it over my father’s chest, tucking it right under his chin. Then he went out to the garden and I heard branches being broken. He came back with a branch of pomegranate, which he snapped in two, placing both pieces along the arms inside the coffin.
I remembered asking my father why branches of palm trees or pomegranates were placed next to the dead. He said that they lessen the pain of the grave and recited, “In both gardens are fruit, palm trees, and pomegranates.”
Father’s relatives were not able to accompany the coffin. Tradition dictated that the dead must be buried as soon as possible. The war and the bombing made it difficult to inform his relatives since all the phones were dead. Even if they had been informed, the car trip on the road to Najaf was very risky — and provided an acceptable excuse that would save them from reproach. Only a mad person would want to be inside a moving car while bombers and fighter jets were hovering overhead, ready to spit fire at any moving object. Thus it was that the only people to accompany Father on his final journey were Hammoudy, who drove his brother’s car, Abu Layth, our neighbor and a longstanding friend of my father’s who insisted on coming, and myself.
We carried the coffin to the car, put it on the rack on top, and secured it with ropes. The trip to Najaf usually took two hours. Baghdad’s streets were empty that morning except for a few cars rushing to escape the city. Columns of black smoke billowed through the sky. I sat in the back. Nothing was said. The radio was crackling with patriotic songs and the news reported incessant bombings and battles around al-Basra and al-Nasiriyya. The Americans had reached the outskirts of Najaf, but the military spokesman stressed that our valiant soldiers and the heroes of the Fida’iyyin Saddam militias were inflicting heavy losses on the enemy and that “victory was surely ours in this final battle.” And that “the enemy would be defeated at Baghdad’s walls.” Abu Layth made the sarcastic observation: “We keep racking up victories and keep falling behind.”
The road was deserted except for the odd speeding car on the opposite side on its way to Baghdad. We were stopped near Hilla by a group of armed men wearing civilian clothes who looked like they were Fida’iyyin Saddam. One of them approached Hammoudy and asked him where we were heading. When Hammoudy told him that we had a coffin we were taking to Najaf, he said, “You won’t be able to make it there. The road is very dangerous.”
Hammoudy said: “But we have to bury him in Najaf.”
The man replied: “Whatever. God be with you.” He tapped the roof of the car with his hand.
Half an hour outside of Najaf, we saw an American platoon heading our way. Hammoudy slowed down the car and moved to the shoulder of the highway. Abu Layth advised him to stop the car, so he turned off the engine, saying, “God help us.”
The platoon stopped — except for one Humvee which kept approaching. When it was about a hundred meters away it slowed down. The soldier standing on top of it pointed the gun toward us. Somewhat fearful, Hammoudy asked, “What are we going to do?”
“If we move, they will shoot us. Let’s just stay still and do nothing,” I told him.
The Humvee continued to approach, looking like a mythical animal intent on devouring us. Silence fell, but we could hear the whoosh of fighter jets in the distance. When the Humvee was about thirty or forty meters away, it stopped. The soldier on top shouted a number of times in English, “Get out of the car now!”
“What is he saying?” asked Hammoudy.
“He wants us to get out of the car,” I said.
We opened the doors and got out of the car slowly. We left the doors open. Abu Layth and I stood to the right of the car, and Hammoudy circled around and stood in front of us.
The soldier shouted, “Put your hands up! Now! Put your hands up, now!”
I put them up and told Hammoudy and Abu Layth to do so as well. The soldier shouted again, gesturing for us to move away from the car. “Step away from the vehicle!”
Abu Layth understood and said, “Away from the car.”
We moved farther away with our hands still up. Three soldiers got out of the Humvee and ran toward us screaming and pointing downward with their hands. “Down. Down. Get down on the ground.”
We got down on our knees. Two of them headed toward us, pointing their guns at our heads, and stopped about five meters away. The third one circled around the car to check it out. One of them pointed to the coffin and shouted: “What’s on the car?”
Hammoudy answered him, “Dead man, for Najaf.”