3 minute read
Mosul: May, 1980
by Tim Fairbairn
Editor’s note: This is an abridged version of Mousul: May, 1980. Go to CVCAS. ca>The Arts>Literature>Valley Voices for the complete version and video reading.
Abdel wakes me on his way to the bathroom, the hiss of his slippers against the sandy floor. There is always sand; it seeps in under the door, gets carried in on our feet and clothes.
He fumbles with the knob on the bathroom door. Then his Arabic curses that hang like pronouncements in the cool morning air. “I hate you cockroaches,” he shouts at them as though if they only knew how much they are not wanted they would not just scatter when he flicks on the overhead light but choose never to return.
Behind this one-bedroom apartment and buried in millennia of sand is the ancient wall of Nineveh, the world’s first empire. From the kitchen window, I can see it roll away into the infinite desert.
~~~
The orange trees have recently borne fruit. Our neighbor, Mr. Majid is amused that I pluck an orange from his tree on my way to the university. He apologized. “No good kind. No sweet.” As sour as grapefruit, the warm globe fits in my palm like a tiny sun and bleeds its syrup onto my fingers as I struggle with the peel.
This morning, I prepare myself for the exit visa interrogator, to present a respectable self and conceal my irreverence for the officer with his mustache and ribbons. I will not look at my watch. I will not ask questions. Like the sand, Saddam is everywhere and we carry him with us, his omnipotence occupying our thoughts.
~~~
The table is the only important thing in this room. I could sleep on the floor if I had to. Except for the orange trees, there is nothing worth seeing through the window. The table is where Abdel instructs me on how to survive. Each of us is the foreigner the other supports, justifiably paranoid in this nation with its would-be emperor, armed with his Baath Party and vast security web, a nation of spies.
Last night, Abdel instructed me on what not to say to the security officer who may grant the exit visa so I may purchase the Air France ticket to get from Baghdad to Paris then Air Canada to Montreal. Once I have learned what not to say, what to say will become clear.
“Saddam wants war with the ayatollahs. Tomorrow, show no sign of wondering what has become of your Iranian students. Now they are disappeared so assume they never existed. Say nothing of Saddam’s dream to become one of Nineveh’s cruel Babylonian kings. Also, you know nothing of the Kurds, whose villages are occupied by Iraqi soldiers and enclosed by barbed wire. Pretend they too do not exist. You understand?”
~~~
Then he wrote his letter to Hannah who is waiting in Berlin and I wrote mine to Nadine waiting in Ottawa. He wept as he folded the sheet and inserted it into the envelope. His tears no longer upset me. “Soon, you will see Hannah” I said. “She waits for you.”
That is really all he needs from me in exchange for guiding me on my long journey home, the one that begins at the table.
Now, it is morning. He has made the strong Turkish coffee. The copper pot with its long spout curved like the neck of a swan sits in its position of prominence at the center of the table. To its left is bread from the local bakery; to the right, a jar of apricot jam. They and last night’s letters belong on the table, the only important thing in this room.
