The raids went on all night. Every time the all clear sounded, they sat astonished at the reprieve, then blinked and, like old men stirring from long sleep, came slowly awake. Some returned to what they’d been doing, others tried the satellite. Thurayya made more chai. Othman usually went up on the roof to survey the damage, to see which part of the city lay smashed and burning. Columns of smoke strung the sky.
They’d chat or make phone calls, discussing this or that, what it would be like after, what it was like in the last war, what it was like during the war with Iran, what it was like before the war with Iran, what was good or bad about this CIA guy Chalabi they had on the news, or was America good or bad, or were the Americans better or worse than the British. Then the air-raid sirens would grind up or the AA would cough or something would explode and they’d all jump and run into the living room and it would all start all over. It went on and off like that, off and on, all night. They scrounged bits of sleep, on the couch, on the floor. Nobody wanted to go upstairs. There was an argument about whether they should leave Qasim in his room; they decided he’d be okay, but Mohammed and Ratib quickly boarded up his window. It was a long, awful night, restless and terrifying, spent at the edge of anxious exhaustion. Little Nazahah prayed and prayed, knowing somehow it was all in God’s plan.
Mohammed decided they should keep all their papers and money with them downstairs, in case they had to evacuate.
“Evacuate where?” Thurayya asked.
“We’ll go to my brother’s in Baqubah.”
“How?”
“We’ll take the van and the Toyota. If we need to, we can go to the warehouse and get a pickup.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Thurayya said.
“Just in case.”
“Mohammed.”
“Just in case. Everybody needs to pack a bag, too, and a bag for the children, and we’ll bring them all down here to the living room.”
The bombing let up at dawn. Everything but the satellite TV still worked, so after breakfast and packing, they got busy calling friends and family across the city and farther away, collecting and spreading news. Othman slept. After lunch they switched, most of the family dozing while Othman fiddled with the TV, which was how he discovered that the satellite was back on and Al Jazeera had timed the bombers.
Six hours.
Great silver jets against the sky and the hundreds of bombs they carried, each one death for someone. He remembered the last war, the ground leaping beneath his feet, the dead. A child’s arm poking from the rubble, smooth, purple-gray skin sticky with half-dried blood. The man with the shrapnel in his belly, howling all night—how could he have so much life left in him to keep screaming so loud for so long?
And the tanks—the tanks will come too. They’ll rumble through Baghdad like… He remembers a tank clanking down a city street, its malevolent cannon swinging side to side, pointing now at a bakery, now at a bookshop, so huge it takes up almost the whole road. Its tracks chew blacktop and sidewalks. A gang of children tumble from around the corner and launch rocks at it. The rocks clatter off the tank’s hull and it jerks to a halt. The gun swings around, its gaping death-eye searching for something to annihilate. Then the tank lurches into reverse, crunching up the road at them. Run, kids, Othman thinks, and they do, dashing around the corner. Was it in black and white, this memory, or color? Was it even a memory, something he saw on Al Jazeera or in Saving Private Ryan, or was it something he just made up?
Six hours.
And will it be worth it?
It had to be. We have to get rid of Saddam and his goatcunt sons. Donald Rumsfeld says it’ll be short. Just a few weeks of insanity, just a few weeks of war, then the Americans will give us peace and democracy. We’ll be a great nation again, like Germany or Japan. We have the oil, we have the drive, we have the brains and dedication, all we need is freedom and we’ll be as great as Baghdad ever was. We’ll be greater than Cairo, Damascus, greater than Beirut or Tehran. We’ll rival Berlin, Tokyo, New York, London… The name Baghdad will sing on the tongues of wealthy men and their fabulous women, the name Iraq will jingle like gold coins. We’ll fix all the damage from the last war, from the last ten years, and we can socialize the oil profits to do it. Then we’ll clean up the ghettos, fix the streets, finish the highways left half built. We’ll raze Saddam’s palaces and monuments and hire Iraqi architects to build real monuments to the Iraqi people, monuments to rival the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building. We’ll build Iraqi skyscrapers, better than in Dubai, and we’ll become the new economic center of the Arab world.
And our literature! It’ll flourish like flowers after the rain. No longer will we have to mutter our lines into our hands, hunched in the dingy corners of the Writers Union. They used to say Egypt writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads, but soon they’ll say Baghdad does it all! We’ll shout our poetry in the streets. We’ll have publishers and book fairs. I’ll finally finish my epic. Adonis will come, and Darwish, and Mahfouz, and Munif, they’ll all come and speak, and they’ll stay because we’ll have what no other Arabs have, not even the Jordanians and not even the Egyptians—we’ll have freedom. Freedom in a free Arab state, self-determination, national solidarity. It’ll be like the Republic, only better. Think of it! To write whatever you want, to shout “Down with Saddam!” and not have to worry about having your arms broken or your manhood burnt off. And all we have to do is go through a little war, a little trouble.
Five and a half hours.
He had to put on a movie. He couldn’t keep watching the news. He lit another Miami and flipped through the DVDs. Five and a half hours would be two, maybe three movies. Something the kids would like, maybe Shrek? We could watch Shrek again. Or, what’s this, Air Force One? Han Solo. Very good. Han Solo and his big silver jet.
Mohammed came in, wiping his hands on his dishdasha. “I just finished changing his bandage,” he said. “It’s still bad.”
“It’s only been two days,” said Othman.
“He should be better.”
“Or what? What can we do? Take him to the hospital again?”
“We should do something,” said Mohammed.
“Give it another day.”
“Where are Ratib and his boys?”
“Ratib’s on the roof. The boys are sleeping upstairs.”
“Good.”
“They said…” Othman started. He couldn’t carry this knowledge alone. Someone else had to help him. “They said we have a little more than five hours.”
“Until what?”
“Nine B-52s left Britain three-quarters of an hour ago. It takes them six hours to fly to Baghdad.”
“It’s no more than we expected.”
“I just thought you should know.”
“God protects all.”
Othman thrust Air Force One at Mohammed. “Is this any good?”
“It’s okay. You know. Action movie… Are you well, my brother?”
“No,” Othman said. “No, I’m not. I’m furious. All we do is sit and wait. Wait for more bombs and tanks and… Whether it’s good or bad, or both… We should do something.”
Mohammed smiled. “What can we do? Shout into the wind? Would you wrestle the Leviathan? You know how it is. Life’s like a cucumber.”
Othman grinned in spite of himself.
“That’s right. One day in it’s in your hand, the next day it’s up your ass. As for today… Well. Shitty days are only good for sleeping. Maybe you should get some rest. I’m going to take a nap now myself, then let’s go see if Uglah has opened his bakery.”
“Yes. You’re right. That’s good. I’ll, uh, I’ll watch Han Solo here. Come get me when you’re going.”
Othman turned back to the TV. He eyed the blue void of the screen while he fumbled with the DVD. He’d remembered where the image came from: the kids were Palestinian, and the tank was Israeli. It had been on the news. He thought of other pictures, pictures of Israeli soldiers storming Palestinian neighborhoods with M16s, Israeli-owned American attack helicopters launching rockets at Palestinian cars, Israeli-owned American fighter jets bombing Palestinian houses.