Fatima and her bosom aroused in me the urge to write and drove me to my first paper theft. Because of her, I stole paper from my father. Not that he was a writer! No, he just sold dates at the bazaar. If he bought paper, it was only to wrap his customers’ dates in. From the staff at the city administration, who stole old official documents and sold them to traders like my father. I should actually say I stole the paper from my mother — for, in truth, it was her job to sell the dates. All my father did was procure the goods. My mother then sat for hours at the bazaar with the funny name — Souk al-Aora, or the One-Eyed Bazaar — only a few metres away from where we lived. She worked all day, came home exhausted. Her clothes sticky and dirty. Whereas my father hung around the bazaar cafe all day long in his nice, clean clothes and then came home in the evening only to take the day’s earnings from my mother. And because he was the man, the shop was Hamid’s—and not Selwa’s.
So I’d steal paper from the shop as soon as that trembling hit me. Which was any time I spotted Fatima on the roof. Throughout this time, I wrote the first lines of my life on the blank side of stolen state supplies.
Fatima, however, knew none of this and remained completely unattainable. I felt exactly as the venerable Rilke: ‘I want a blonde girl, with whom to play. Wild games.’ Poetry without a patina. Oh, how I’d have liked to play wild games with her but I hadn’t the slightest hope. In Baghdad, especially in our part of town, al-Thawra, where most of the people were from southern Iraq, everyone was brownor black-haired. So a blonde was a queen, a one-eyed woman in the kingdom of the blind. At sixteen, Fatima married a thirty-year-old businessman with a stomach that matched his bank balance.
After Fatima, my life was like a desert. Nothing seemed to happen. In Baghdad, in the ‘ordinary’—or, to be precise, poor people’s — part of town, where the houses stand very close and traditional ways and customs are very much alive, it isn’t easy to arrange to meet a girl. You can’t just go for a walk with a woman. For that, you have to visit certain places in the town centre, and that only works with women who are public officials or students. They can, at least in part, move freely. With young women who are neither studying nor working in some form or other, it is completely impossible. They have to stay at home. And in al-Thawra, that sort of girl is as common as bread in a bakery. And that’s why a unique form of language developed between adolescent boys and girls — the wink-of-the-eye and nod-of-the-head language.
It works like this. The boy goes out for a walk. The girl sits outside her front door or stands at the window. The boy looks at the girl. If she returns his look, gently and somewhat embarrassed, often also smiling imperceptibly, the boy winks at her. This means ‘I like you.’ If the girl is still smiling, the boy knows it has worked. He walks on, relaxed, along other streets, before returning to the girl. If she’s still there, he turns his face to the right or the left. This means, ‘Follow me!’ Now, one of three things can happen. Either she follows him until they’ve left the neighbourhood and can speak to each other and agree, if possible, to meet for longer. Or she throws a piece of paper at him on which she’s noted the time and place of a possible rendezvous. Or she nods at her bosom. This means, ‘Come closer!’ If so, the boy goes for another stroll so that no one can see what he’s planning. When he then goes past the girl for the third time, he keeps his ears pricked for she’s about to whisper the time and place of their rendezvous.
This third happened to me one summer afternoon with a girl whose name I never learnt. She had wonderful black eyes and gorgeous, big breasts. She lived in another part of town, about thirty minutes’ walk from ours. She whispered to me, ‘Tonight, at midnight, on the roof.’ I spent that whole afternoon and evening nervous and excited and waiting for my writing urge to kick in. I even sneaked out to the bazaar for a few sheets of paper from the shop. That night, I walked round her neighbourhood, strolling past her house every half hour or so, looking up at the roof. I couldn’t wait for her to appear up there and nod to me. Shortly after midnight, she finally turned up and signalled at me to climb up and join her. The house was only a few metres high and had enough windows to make the climb easier. It took me a while, though, for I had to keep making sure that no one spotted me.
Finally, standing on the railing, I spotted her — smiling — next to a pigeon cage. She had an incredibly attractive dress on. Or was it a nightdress? — she was half naked. The wall round the roof was about six feet high. When I jumped off, there was a loud thump. And almost immediately, from below, an angry voice screeched, ‘What’s that? Who’s there?’ Suddenly, the girl began to run in circles like a madwoman, and shout, ‘Help! Help! A thief! He’s stealing the pigeons!’ Completely thunder-struck, I stared at her, unsure of what to do. ‘Run, stupid!’ she hissed at me finally, ‘Get out of here!’
In one leap I landed onto the neighbour’s roof which was a little lower. And from there down to the street. And then, swift as an arrow, off towards my part of town. Behind me, I could hear furious voices. I glanced back once and saw a crowd of men and boys running after me. Some even waving knives and sticks. I galloped through the streets like a horse gone wild but couldn’t shake off the mob. Only once I’d reached my neighbourhood did I dare turn round again. Nothing! Thank God! Sweaty and exhausted, I made my way home. Never again did I return to that district.
Despite that adventure, new attractions sprang up to tempt me and to make me surrender to my mad urge to write. The women in the streets grew more and more seductive with each passing day and my temple dream refused to go away. I continued to steal paper from the shop and to write, until the day came when I had to leave behind the women of Baghdad, Baghdad itself and the date paper.
I reached Amman. Not as a holidaymaker but as a refugee. It was a difficult place for a refugee but one always finds a way. Amman was a small town though its gentle hills and mountains made it seem bigger. You were always going uphill or downhill. Going up, you felt that someone was clinging to your arse and pulling it back, so you had to stick your neck out. Going downhill, though, you felt the complete opposite; as if, with all their might, someone was pushing your arse forward. In this uphill-downhill town, I finally succeeded in finding a job. In a cosmetics factory, a little outside town. Removing the wet soap curds from the machines, laying them out in the sun to dry, then gathering them up and taking them back to the machines.
The factory was co-owned by a few businessmen. British, they were. One of Iraqi descent. It was also full of beautiful women. The most beautiful of all, Suad, had a breathtaking arse and an almost divine bosom. She worked at one of the machines to which I took the dry curds. My very first day at work, and the urge to write came upon me again, especially when I watched Suad secretly undo the top button of her blouse and then strut up and down before the manager, showing off her cleavage. At such moments, I felt as if I’d returned to a distant past, to the temple, to the priest’s daughter, to her bosom. The same tremor, the same quiver, all over my body. The desire to write grew boundless but had not the tiniest bit of paper. On a table I noticed a small parcel — falafel wrapped in paper. It belonged to Suad. On the spur of the moment I took the paper. It was my favourite writing paper in Amman.