Dr. Ammoury, the handsome, shy one but who nonetheless succeeded in charming Wasan, our neighbor, and made her fall in love with him. My mother rushed to ask for her hand so they would be engaged before his graduation. He was drafted into the army after graduation, but died before they got married. Wasan, with her long black hair and lovely legs, a student of architecture at the University of Baghdad. I felt guilty when I couldn’t drive her away from my sexual fantasies. Ammoury, of whom I was greatly jealous, because he was the favorite, pampered — an ideal I could never approach. I felt guilty because I couldn’t stop myself, even in this moment, from wondering so selfishly: Would the news of my own death in this seemingly endless war leave a quarter of the pain and sorrow that Ammoury’s departure will have left behind? I wiped my tears and scolded myself for this utter narcissism.
I got to the mghaysil, the washhouse. The door was ajar. I crossed the walkway and saw the Qur’anic verse “Every soul shall taste death” in beautiful Diwani script hanging over the door. The yellowish paint on the wall was peeling away because of the humidity from the washing. Father was sitting in the left corner of the side room on a wooden chair listening to the radio. Death’s traces — its scents and memories — were present in every inch of that place. As if death were the real owner and Father merely an employee working for it and not for God, as he liked to think.
Death, ever present in Father’s place of work and his days, was about to declare its presence once again, but with a cruelty and force that would tattoo itself on Father’s heart and on what was left of his years. The washing bench was empty and dry. Father’s yellow amber worry beads were clicking in his right hand. Hammoudy must have gone out to buy something and left him alone. Father’s eyes greeted me. He must’ve heard my footsteps. “Hello, Father.”
I had not set foot there for more than a year. I had tried to steer away from death, and my relationship with Father had soured. He must have sensed something in my voice and seen the sadness on my face. There was anxiety in his voice:
“What? Is something wrong with your mother?”
“No, Father.”
“What then?”
I approached him and leaned to embrace him as he sat in his chair. He asked me: “What then? Did something happen to Ammoury?”
The news in the past two days had been all about the bloody battles in al-Faw and the heavy casualties inflicted there. Two months earlier, Ammoury’s unit had been transferred from the northern sector to al-Faw. I hesitated for a few long seconds trying to postpone the grave news. Then I told him, as I hugged him and kissed his left cheek without being able to stop my tears: “May you have a long life, Father. They just brought him home.”
He put his arms around me and repeated in a trembling voice: “Oh, God. Oh, God. There is no power save in God. There is no power save in God. There is no God but God. Only he is immortal.” Then he wept like a child. I hugged him tightly and felt that for a few minutes we’d exchanged the roles of father and son. I sensed he wanted to stand up, so I loosened my arm. He stood up and wiped his tears with the back of his right hand, without letting go of his worry beads. He turned off the radio and put on his jacket. We locked the door and went back home together without exchanging a word.
We didn’t wash Ammoury. According to tradition, martyrs are not washed. He was buried in his military uniform. I never saw Father cry after that time, but the grief I saw piercing his eyes and voice that day would resurface every now and then on his face, especially when he gazed at Ammoury’s photograph which hung on the wall, as if he were silently conversing with him. It was the same look I saw on Father’s face when Ammoury’s coffin was being covered with dirt and the gravedigger recited:
We come from God and to him we return. O God, take his soul up to you and show him your approval. Fill his grave with mercy so that he may never need any other mercy but yours, for he believes in you and your resurrection. This is what God and his messenger promised us. Verily they have told the truth. O God, grant us more faith and peace.
After the funeral was over the black banner hung for months on the wall at the entrance of our street:
“Think not of those who die for God as dead,
but rather alive with their God.”
The martyr Doctor Ameer Kazim Hasan, died in the battles to
liberate al-Faw on the 17th of April, 1988.
Father had never been very talkative and laughed rarely, but Ammoury’s death intensified his silence and dejection and made him more moody and volatile. My mother was the one who had to withstand the waves of his anger with a mumble or a complaint she would whisper to herself when he yelled: “Enough already” or “Turn the TV down.” The TV had become her only solace. I hadn’t spent much time at home even before Ammoury’s death, but my clashes with Father became more frequent, and I tried to avoid him so as to avoid them. When I came back late at night, he would tell me that I treated our house like a hotel.
In August of 1990, almost three and a half years after Ammoury’s death, Saddam invaded Kuwait. To secure the eastern front with Iran and withdraw troops from there to Kuwait, he agreed to all the Iranian conditions and relinquished all the demands for which he’d waged the war in the first place. Father punched the table and shouted: “Why the hell did we fight for eight years then and what in hell did Ammoury die for?”
FOUR
Like all children I was very curious and would pester Father with questions about his work, but he said he’d tell me all about it later when the time was right. I would accompany him when I was old enough. “It’s too early, focus on school.” Ammoury had started helping Father when he was fifteen and started to wash at eighteen, but my father never allowed me to go inside his workplace. He wanted to keep work and home separate. When I used to ask Ammoury about work, he never gave me satisfying answers; these were matters for grown-ups and I was still a child.
During the summer break after ninth grade Father told me that I could start accompanying him to work to watch and learn the basics of the trade. On the first day, I was ecstatic. I felt a sense of awe as I stood in front of the door. Father moved the sufurtas he was carrying from his right hand to his left and put his right hand in his pocket looking for the key. The sky was clear and cloudless that day. I noticed that there was no sign indicating what the place was, and when I asked him he said there was no need for a sign, because it was not a shop or a store. He added, as he turned the key in the lock to open the door, that everyone knew where the mghaysil was. It was the only such place for Shiites in Baghdad, and the vast majority of others were off in Najaf. He said that with great pride, adding that everyone in Kazimiyya knew the place.