All I had were the clothes I was wearing — namely, an undershirt that had seen better days and a pair of old pajama pants. No shoes. I asked, “Can you do me a favor, Kadem?”
“That depends.”
“I need to get some stuff from home.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is, I can’t go back to my house.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I can’t, that’s all. Will you get my things for me? Bahia will know what to put in my bag. Tell her I’m going to Baghdad to stay with our sister Farah.”
“I don’t understand. What happened? Why can’t you go back home?”
“Kadem, please. Just do what I’m asking you to do.”
Kadem guessed that something very serious had taken place. I’m sure he was thinking in terms of rape.
“Do you really want to know what happened, cousin?” I cried. “Do you really insist on hearing about it?”
“That’s all right, I get it,” he grumbled.
“You don’t get a thing. Nothing at all.”
His cheekbones quivered as he pointed a finger at me. “Watch it,” he said. “I’m older than you. I won’t permit you to talk to me like that.”
“I’m afraid I no longer need anyone’s permission for anything, cousin.” I looked him straight in the eye. “And what’s more, I don’t care a rotten fig about what happens to me from this moment on. From this second. Are you going to pick up my fucking stuff for me, or do I have to leave like this? I swear, I’ll jump on the first bus I see in just this undershirt and these pajama pants. Nothing matters anymore, not ridicule, not even lies….”
“Come on, get a hold of yourself.”
Kadem tried to grab my wrists. I pushed him away. “Listen,” he said, breathing slowly so he could keep calm. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll go to my house—”
“I want to leave from here.”
“Please. Listen to me, just listen. I know you’re completely—”
“Completely what, Kadem? You don’t know a damn thing. It’s something you can’t even imagine.”
“All right, but let’s go to my house first. You can take some time and think about this calmly, and then, if you’re still sure you want to leave, I’ll personally accompany you to the nearest town.”
“Please, cousin,” I said in a toneless voice. “Go get me my bag and my walking stick. I’ve got to say a few words to the good Lord.”
Kadem saw that I was in no condition to listen to anyone at all. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go and get your things.”
“I’ll wait for you behind the cemetery.”
“Why not here?”
“Kadem, you ask too many questions, and I’ve got a headache.”
He gestured with both hands, beseeching me to take it easy, and then he went away without looking back.
I wandered around the cemetery for a bit. Everywhere I looked, I saw the abominable thing I’d glimpsed in the hall the previous night. Twice I had to crouch down and puke. My body swayed unsteadily on my heels as the spasms overwhelmed me. I opened my mouth, but all that came out was something that sounded like a wild beast’s death rattle. After a while, I sat down on a little mound and started digging rocks out of the ground around me and throwing them at a scrawny tree whose dusty branches were hung with plastic packets. Every time I snapped my arm, I let out a grunt of rage. I was chasing away the cloud of ill omen that was gathering over my thoughts; I was plunging my hand into my memory of the previous evening in order to tear out its heart.
The whole place stank in the morning heat. A decomposing corpse, no doubt. That didn’t bother me. I kept on excavating rocks and hurling them at the little tree, so many rocks that my fingers were bleeding.
Behind me, the village was getting out of the wrong side of the bed. The voices of the fed up could be heard here and there — a father speaking roughly to his kid, a younger brother rising up against an older one. I didn’t recognize myself in that anger. I wanted something greater than my misery, vaster than my shame.
I’d just finished stoning the little tree when Kadem came back, slipping among the graves. From a distance, he showed me my bag. Bahia was following him, her head wrapped in a muslin scarf. She was wearing the black dress of farewells. “We thought the soldiers had taken you away,” she said, her face waxen.
Apparently, she hadn’t come to dissuade me from leaving. That wasn’t her style. She understood my motives and obviously approved them all, without reservations and without regrets. Bahia was a daughter of her tribe. In the ancestral tradition, honor was supposed to be the domain of men, but even so, she knew how to recognize it and require it.
I snatched the bag out of Kadem’s hand and started digging around inside it. Although my sister clearly noticed the violence of my movements, she didn’t reproach me in any way. She merely said, “I’ve put in two undershirts, two shirts, two pairs of trousers, some socks, your toilet bag—”
“How about my money?”
She reached into her bosom, drew out a little packet, carefully folded and tied with string, and handed it to Kadem, who immediately turned it over to me. “I don’t want any money but mine,” I said to my sister. “Not a penny more.”
She said, “There’s nothing in there but your savings, I promise you. I packed a cap for you, too,” she added, repressing a sob. “Because of the sun.”
“Very good. Now turn around so I can change.”
I put on a pair of pinstriped trousers, my checked shirt, and the shoes my cousin had given me. “You forgot my belt,” I said.
“It’s in the outside pocket of the bag,” Bahia said. “Along with your pocket light.”
“Very good.”
I finished getting dressed, and then, without a glance at my sister or my cousin, I grabbed my bag and started down the steep path in the direction of the main trail. Don’t turn around, an interior voice admonished me. You’re already gone. There’s nothing for you here. Don’t turn around. I turned around — and saw my sister, standing on the mound, looking ghostly in her windblown dress, and my cousin, with his hands on his hips and his chin against his chest. I retraced my steps. My sister pressed herself against me. Her tears wet my cheeks. I felt her frail body shudder in my embrace. “Please,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”
Kadem opened his arms to me. We flung ourselves against each other. We hugged for what seemed like a very long time.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you to the next town?” he asked in a strangled voice.
“It’s not worth the trouble, cousin,” I said. “I know the way.”
I waved at them and hurried off toward the trail without turning around.
BAGHDAD
8
I walked to the crossroads about ten kilometers from the village. From time to time, I looked back in hopes of seeing a vehicle coming my way, but no cloud of dust rose from the trail. I was in the middle of the desert, alone and infinitesimally small. The sun rolled up its sleeves. The day would be a scorcher.
The junction featured a makeshift bus shelter. Formerly, the bus that served Kafr Karam used to stop at that shelter. Now the place seemed to have been abandoned. Pieces of torn metal dangled down over the bench from a hole in the corrugated-tin roof. I sat in the shade and waited two hours. There was no sign of movement anywhere on the horizon.
I continued on my way, heading for an access road normally used by the refrigerated trucks that furnished the isolated communities of the region with fruits and vegetables. Since the embargo, such vehicles made far fewer trips, but it sometimes happened that an itinerant grocer went down that road. It was a hell of a hike, and I was crushed by the ever-increasing heat.