|
My father insisted that I go fishing with him in the river, and I agreed.
In the orchards, we jumped from one stream to another in search of worms
for bait. At the edge of one stream, we found a black typewriter with
an Arabic keyboard. I knew the English alphabet, and I was able to make
out the spelling of its make: C A R P E N T E R – Carpenter. I was
very pleased with this find, and so was my father.
Using gestures, he indicated there was no need to take the CARPENTER home
immediately – he knew a safe place where we could hide our “treasure”
until we returned from the river. I agreed reluctantly. My father took
the typewriter and crossing two or three streams, disappeared behind a
large thorn bush for a few seconds, and then returned smiling.
The fishing hook was immersed in the water, and we sat waiting for the
bait to be taken. We waited for a long time until all I could see was
the CARPENTER very slowly floating across the river towards the opposite
bank. I gestured to my father to indicate that we should return.
When we returned, we found the CARPENTER was no longer where we had hidden
it. Tears welled up in my eyes. With the speed of lightning, my father
squeezed a branch of a nearby thorn bush (we knew the power of that squeeze),
and blood spurted out between his fingers. I felt something was pricking
at my heart, or something was falling from it. I took off my blue shirt
and bandaged his hand.
My pain and misery were compounded because I remembered Kiryakos saying
to me: “I once read – long ago – that a typewriter has
a special kind of magic that brings out the innermost feelings of anyone
tapping its keys. It is best for an artist to type his works himself,
and only then will he discover how treacherous handwriting can be.”
Now he added prophetically: “I don’t think the typewriter
which appeared before you at the edge of that stream will disappear that
easily. The beginnings of the tale have already been sketched. It is bound
to show up sooner or later.”
The day came when Youshiya the shopkeeper decided to close down his shop
and emigrate to Detroit to join his daughter, Victoria. It was noon time
when he called me and said: “Come here, you damn cowboy, I have
set aside a box of Mission for you, and ten more bottles for your friend,
Nisreen.”
(Mission was a favorite soft drink, like Fanta.)
I took Nisreen’s share, and knocked at the door of Aunt Zahra’s
house.
Nisreen opened the door with a smile. She accepted Youshiya’s gift,
making way for me to go to the kitchen. As I was putting the bottles on
the table, I suddenly caught sight of the CARPENTER. There it was, on
the floor on the left side of the kitchen.
“Oh,” I exclaimed.
“What is it?” asked Nisreen.
“Nothing, nothing,” I said.
I was infatuated with Nisreen (she was seventeen and I was eleven) and
I was willing to do anything to please her. She used to send me to the
market (how much I loved that) and I would add my pocket money and whatever
sums I had pinched from my work with Nasrat Shah to the money she had
given me, and I would then boast to her: “See how I buy things at
low prices?”
She would say, “You’re nice,” and plant a kiss on my
cheek, and I would feel a prick in my heart, or something falling from
it.
I said to myself: “If you are willing to do anything to please her,
consider the CARPENTER as a pledge of your love for her.” But for
days after, I puzzled over how the CARPENTER had got into Aunt Zahra’s
house.
One day my friends and I went swimming in the streams.
Suddenly Ghalloubi yelled: “Here, under this thorn bush, Samson
and I found an Arabic typewriter.”
“And where is it?” I asked him, calmly.
“Samson took it, he gave me five pennies.”
Ghalloubi did not stop at that. Unintentionally aiming darts at my little
heart, he added: “Samson and Nisreen often spend the afternoon here
amongst the trees in the orchard.”
Everyone left and I remained alone until the trees were lost in darkness.
I thought of revenge, but how could I avenge myself against Samson, my
older brother, when everyone in the city had been talking about the war
for the past two months (it was August 1967), and my mother never stopped
staring at him, as he would be conscripted in a few days and sent to the
front in Syria or Jordan?
One September day, as I returned from school, I recalled, but had to reject
Kiryakos’s words that “a true cinema-lover must forget memories
that reek of revenge”. As I walked carrying my books under my arm,
in the distance I caught sight of black headbands and dancers moving in
circles stamping their feet to the music of drums and pipes, making the
dust rise from the ground like steam. “It’s a wedding,”
I muttered, and headed towards the man distributing plates of rice and
beans. I had two helpings as I watched the bridegroom’s mother exhibiting
a blood-stained rag to the guests.
“Don’t eat too much, Aunt Zahra has brought us a large amount
of kubbeh and keftah on the occasion of Nisreen’s wedding,”
said my mother as she sat herself down next to Kiryakos.
“Whose wedding?” I asked.
“Your friend Nisreen’s wedding. Have you forgotten her?”
My head spun and I felt a faintness creeping down towards my feet. I returned
home tearfully.
I wiped my tears away, and as soon as I saw my father returning from the
bakery I decided to avenge myself.
I drew an imaginary box in the air, then struck at it with my index fingers.
My father understood I was referring to the CARPENTER.
He shook his left hand right and left to ask, “Where is it?”
I placed my left index finger beneath my left eye and pointed at Aunt
Zahra’s house.
I brought a wooden ladder from Nasrat Shah’s house and lent it against
the wall behind Aunt Zahra’s. I went up first, then my father, and
we got into her house. The CARPENTER was still in its place, on the floor
on the left side of the kitchen. I picked it up and handed it to my father
who caressed it the way he used to caress all his children.
That summer was the last we were to spend in our town of al-Habbaniyah.
We were evicted – and our homes destroyed before our very eyes.
We were so poor, we were at a loss to know what to do, so to lighten our
parents' burden, my brothers and I split up. We ended up scattered in
different cities. My lot was to go with the family of Nasrat Shah to Al-Ramadi.
There the pupils in class were surprised to find a boy with a very strange
name in their midst. The teacher nobly introduced me: “Your new
classmate. He is an Assyrian, and a son of our ancient and great country.”
I remember the teacher spoke of the greatness of Iraq, the varied character
of our people, their religious and ethnic differences, and the indestructible
unity of Iraq. The teacher was extremely kind to me, and I later learned
he was, like myself, a stranger to those parts. We were in the west of
the country, and the teacher was from the south.
No sooner had he finished introducing me than the first blow from a ruler
hit the back of my head. Despite the pain I did not turn round. The teacher
was busy writing on the blackboard, and the pain had still not diminished
when the second blow came.
“Sir, someone has hit me on the head,” I said, standing up.
“Liar, liar and son of a liar,” piped up a voice from behind
me. I turned round and looked at him. He was a fourteen-year-old boy with
a dark complexion and vicious looks. He was lolling on the bench behind
me, holding a metal ruler.
“Mohammad, leave the classroom at once,” said the teacher.
Mohammad left the classroom carrying his ruler and his books. He stood
at the door, looking at me with angry eyes, clenching his fists and biting
his lip. Two other pupils followed him out without asking the teacher’s
permission.
On my way home, I was filled with fear and – as I sought protection
in the shadows created by the cemetery fence – I heard a voice calling:
“Wait, I want to speak to you.”
Mohammad and other two pupils approached me. Before saying anything more,
he head-butted me powerfully in the face. His two friends aimed regular
kicks at my abdomen. I bent down to protect my face (Kiryakos had told
me that anyone wanting to a career in films had to be handsome). Blood
was flowing from my mouth and nose. As their blows hit me, I whispered
to myself: “O God, I have never seen such violence except in films.”
“This is your first lesson, you despicable wretch, to show you that
the teacher won’t be any good to you,” said Mohammad as he
moved off with his companions.
Going to school became like going to a disciplinary session, for Mohammad
and his gang would not leave me alone. They used to look for any excuse
to rough me up. Once, Mohammad ordered me to play table tennis with him.
I played with him and lost the game.
“You’re a coward. You could have won, but you’re a sissy,”
he said as he threw his bat onto the table.
Nasrat Shah’s house faced the long side of the rectangular-shaped
cemetery. I used to walk down a dirt track for twenty-five minutes, all
round the cemetery, to reach the main road, from where I would need five
more minutes to be in the centre of town.
One day, Sakina asked me: “Why don’t you take the short cut
through the cemetery? It would get you to the centre in five minutes.”
“Through the cemetery?” I asked.
“Why not?” answered Sakina.
“I’m scared of walking amongst the graves.”
Sakina smiled, fetched down a green bag from a shelf and took out the
Qur’an from it. She said to me: “Come over here. You know
how to read. Copy out this verse of Al-Kursi (The Throne), and when you
set foot in the cemetery, read it over and over until you have crossed
to the other side, and no harm will come to you.”
I stood before the opening in the cemetery fence and placed my left foot
inside; I began reading the verse of al-Kursi and in five minutes I found
myself on the main road. I was so pleased with this and repeated the experience
every day until I had learned the verse by heart.
One day I was walking through the graves when I caught sight of a small
headstone which had the following inscribed on it:
“O reader of these words,
mourn for my youth.
Yesterday I was alive
but am beneath the earth today.”
I liked this headstone, and was saddened that the dead person had been
a young man. I sat down sadly, and read the inscription again. At that
moment, I saw Mohammad and his gang coming towards me. I felt frightened
and remained seated.
“What are you doing here?” shouted Mohammad, as he aimed repeated
but gentle kicks at my back.
Standing up and brushing away the earth from my trousers, I answered:
“What harm does it do you if I like this grave?” As my eyes
darted between Mohammad’s fists and his two friends, expecting a
kick from one or a punch from the other, I added: “May God have
mercy on him, he was young.”
Mohammad loosened his fists, and with lightning speed aimed two punches
at the chests of his companions, angrily shouting: “Get lost, you
bastards.” Then he sat down, leaning his back against the headstone,
and burst into tears. “This is my brother’s grave,”
he said after a few moments of silence.
“May God have mercy on him. How old was he?” I asked him in
a sad tone.
“Fifteen years old,” answered Mohammad. He kissed the grave
and rose, patting my right shoulder as though he were an old man (he was
two years older than me) and saying with a sad smile: “His blood
shall not have been spilt in vain. That is a promise and a pledge which
I shall fulfil, my friend.”
“A thousand mercies on his grave,” I said.
He patted my shoulder again and said: “Please excuse me –
and forgive what I have done to you. I regret it. I swear upon the deceased’s
grave that I regret it.”
Mohammad moved off, and I continued to watch the earth that had stuck
to his dishdasha. I felt a prick in my heart, or that something was falling
from it.
The next day, the teacher was surprised when he saw Mohammad sitting next
to me on the same bench, and he approached us with a smile. Pointing at
me, Mohammad said: “He is one of the best friends of the deceased.”
The pupils knew well that when Mohammad mentioned the deceased, he was
referring to the person buried in the grave, that sacred person who had
been the victim of tribal feuds.
From then on, no one dared come near me. Even Mohammad became shy of me,
and could not look me straight in the eye. I remember, when he asked me
to play table tennis and lost the game to me he said: “You see,
I know you are an excellent player.”
And we laughed, heading hand in hand towards the classroom.
After spending two years with Nasrat Shah’s family, I asked to be
allowed to rejoin my family.
Before I left, I stepped into the cemetery and began reciting the verse
of al-Kursi until I arrived at “my grave” and sat down. I
read the headstone time after time until the sun began to set.
I looked at the CARPENTER, my most prized possession, and I pulled out
the piece of paper with the verse of al-Kursi written in my own hand.
I slipped the paper into the slot behind the typewriter carriage, then
placed the machine on top of the grave and ran out of the cemetery.
BACK
|