There were no seats inside but it was warm so I went outside and found an empty bench near the theater department. A group of theater students wearing black were sitting around a palm tree. I sat down and began to devour my sandwich while reading the sports page as usual. My favorite soccer team, al-Zawra’, had lost two of its stars because they were called to the national team, which was preparing for the Asia Tournament. Al-Zawra’s performance had started to decline, and it had lost the previous day’s away match against Najaf, even though Najaf’s team was in last place.
I turned to the culture pages. There was a feeble poem about the war and under it an interview with an arts critic. I saw a long article about the Arabian Nights and the Arabic literary tradition and how both had influenced Latin American writers. I heard someone clap. It was one of the theater professors who was a famous experimental director. He had a cloud of white hair and was wearing jeans, a white shirt, and sunglasses. He asked the students around the palm tree to pay attention.
I went back to the article. It was discussing Borges’s fascination with the East and a story he’d written about Averroes, but I couldn’t concentrate. I heard the professor again explaining the exercise they were about to begin. He asked three of the students to sit on the ground and imagine themselves on a sinking boat and to act out their predicament without words. He asked the others to watch. One of the students asked what kind of boat it should be and the professor answered: “Whatever you like, as long as it sinks.” Most of them laughed.
I was intrigued, so I got up and sat on a closer bench to watch, but kept a reasonable distance so as not to be annoying. The professor called out three names and asked them to be the first to perform. Reem was one of them. She squatted on the ground and held her knees with her arms and looked to the professor awaiting his signal. She was wearing baggy black pants and a black cotton shirt with an open neck and long sleeves she’d folded back a few times so that her arms were showing. Her jet-black hair was tied back. The professor signaled for the sinking to begin.
Later I saw her standing in line at the cafeteria. She’d changed and was wearing a gray skirt with a white shirt. I approached her and said, “I wanted to save you from drowning, but I can’t swim.”
She turned toward me with a scowl and asked very seriously: “Excuse me. Come again?”
“The exercise. This morning? Drowning … I was sitting there and saw you drowning.”
She laughed and said: “Oh, yes. Thank you for your gallantry, but it’s useless if you can’t swim.”
“Intentions don’t matter?”
“Yes, of course. Intentions are crucial.”
Then she introduced herself: “Reem, theater.”
I said: “Delighted. Jawad. Arts.”
Her eyes were pitch-black and gleamed with confidence as she spoke somewhat slowly. Her eyelashes were thick, her eyebrows carefully plucked. She was wearing light makeup. She bought crackers and a cup of tea with milk and offered to buy me something in appreciation of my noble intentions. I thanked her but I had to leave for a class. I noticed the gold ring on her left hand as she paid and felt a pang in my heart. Damn! She’s married. All this beauty for another man who waits for her at the end of the day.
“Some other time then,” she said.
We said goodbye and I headed to the door. We exchanged smiles. I could train myself, I determined, to be just friends with a woman.
I saw her again a week later on the sidewalk outside the academy. She was getting into a beautiful blue car with tinted windows. The driver was a man, probably her husband, wearing sunglasses. I caught only his black moustache. Then she disappeared and I didn’t see her again that year. One day I saw a friend I’d seen her with and asked about Reem’s disappearance. She said that Reem had dropped out for personal reasons, but she refused to say more. I wondered whether Reem was ill. I asked other students in the theater department and heard a rumor that her husband had forced her to drop out.
TEN
I remembered how my father shook his head when he was certain that I wanted to make the Academy of Fine Arts my first choice. My average score in the countrywide baccalaureate exam was 87.7 percent. That would probably guarantee acceptance in the engineering departments at al-Mustansiriyya University and other universities in the provinces, or in fields such as literature or the sciences if I made these my top choices.
He asked me sarcastically: “So what will you be after you finish? An arts teacher?”
I answered: “Maybe. What’s wrong with that, anyway? Is teaching shameful? There are other types of work as well.”
He handed back the list and repeated a favorite sentence: “One has to look out for one’s livelihood, son!” And after a heavy silence: “Even if you don’t want to work with me, at least study something useful for yourself and others. Something good!”
I wasn’t surprised, but the episode saddened me. He never forgave me for straying from the path and favoring art over the useful profession he had inherited from his ancestors. I folded the sheet of paper without saying anything. Mother, who was sitting at the other end of the couch, tried, as usual, to lighten the mood: “Great things are awaiting Jawad and he deserves the best. Good luck, son.”
Father gave her a silent look and then went back to nursing his cup of tea.
ELEVEN
“Pythagoras says that there is music in stone.”
So began Professor Isam al-Janabi’s first lecture on the history of sculpture. I still remember the details clearly. He added that Goethe appropriated this idea and used it in a remark about architecture as frozen music. Professor Isam al-Janabi’s style in his lectures about art and life seemed like poetry to me. He was adept at using quotations to crystallize the subjects of his lectures or illustrate the ideas he was explaining to us. He once quoted Picasso: “Art is the lie that represents truth.” The images and slides he used gave his lectures an additional dimension and set them apart from the dry and boring styles of the other professors.
He was almost fifty. He’d been to Italy a few years before, after completing his graduate studies. He was a famous artist, well known throughout the Arab world, and had had numerous exhibitions. He also published occasional critical essays in newspapers and journals about art history. His style of dress was stereotypically bohemian. His long curly hair was the longest among students and professors. He had a bushy moustache and long beard whose white fringes he used to stroke a lot.
He asked for help closing the shades for the slide show. I was sitting in the back of the darkened lecture hall, one of thirty-some students. I took out my notebook and prepared to jot down notes. Speaking without notes, he took us on a panoramic journey through the history of sculpture.
He was collecting his papers and putting them in his bag after class when I approached him to ask about Giacometti. He had showed us images of some of Giacometti’s works which fascinated me, especially one entitled Man Walking. He smiled as he put his bag over his shoulder and asked, “What in particular do you like about him?”