Absent: A Novel Read online

  I’ve decided to keep these old photographs of me when I was ten. My aunt’s husband took me with him to Denmark for three days, where he photographed me outside the Tivoli Gardens. In another shot I stand beside the statue of the Little Mermaid. The lyrics “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, nice little town by the sea” resonate in my head when I look at it. I peer closely at the photograph. I was more beautiful than Copenhagen. My perfect mouth gobbled an ice cream as I stood by the seaside.

  Two years later Abu Ghayeb took me with him to see his friend, a professor of plastic surgery in Turkey. He examined me, and then told him, “Bring her back in a few years time. She has a facial palsy, probably due to a small stroke. This isn’t the right time to operate. She’s still growing and her features will continue to change. If we operate now, she’ll still have facial asymmetry as the muscles on the healthy side of her face will continue to grow.”

  In Istanbul I learned to avoid ice cream…and cameras.

  I walk out onto the balcony. I look down at the people below me. In the distance are queues of men and women, all carrying their ration cards, waiting for rice, sugar, and tea at the food distribution points. The intensity of the heat raises a gray mirage that trembles between us. They eventually appear to me as masses that gradually melt away in vertical shapes. Their outlines coalesce into forms that look like crowds of Bedouins attempting to cross a road, but their bodies are dissolving into each other. They stay rooted to the spot and can’t get across.

  A pigeon, the color of cement, is sheltering in the shade of the balcony’s parapet, oblivious to my presence. The schoolchildren are preparing for their exams. Some of them will study on the rooftops tonight; others will settle down in the central median between the two lanes of traffic, making use of the powerful streetlights. The boys dream of falafel sandwiches and a bottle of Pepsi. The girls dream of chocolate bars. They will pass their exams in exchange for a top quality pair of English nylon stockings, which must be offered as a gift to their teacher. The boys pass in exchange for a stolen Parker pen.

  I go back inside. My aunt is praying on a straw mat imprinted with the image of a peacock. She inherited it from her mother. It used to hang on the wall. My aunt has been praying more frequently since she made the acquaintance of Umm Mazin, who told her to make use of my grandmother’s blessed prayer mat. Every time she lays her forehead on the mat to recite “Glory to God high above us, glory to God high above us,” she kisses the peacock’s blue beak.

  I watch her as she prostrates herself. In the Days of Plenty, she used to wash her blond hair, and then drown it in Wellazid conditioner imported from Germany. She would then comb it out, making it shinier and blonder. Now I can’t help noticing the state of her hair, streaked with white and drooping like an overripe mango. When our water supply is cut off for several days the streaks become greasy and cloudy.

  There’s an oily stain on the back of her veil.

  In the Days of Plenty, my aunt was enraptured by the color red, and a magical creation: ruby-red lipstick. The walls of her bedroom are red, as are the curtains, the bedspread, and the small rug. Her favorite shade of red is the hue of the spongy center of the watermelon as the season approaches its end. Her problem was that she was allergic to lipstick. Every time she applied it to her lips, she’d sneeze violently a minute or two later. That would make it smudge, and she’d be forced to wipe it off and start all over again.

  But eventually she came up with a way of getting around this. Before it was time to go out, she would uncap her lipstick and hold it close to her nose. She sniffed it vigorously. Two minutes later she’d sneeze, wait a while, and then apply the lipstick with no further hesitation. She’d congratulate herself in the mirror with a slight nod.

  My aunt would walk past me, her face like that of a tortoise who’s imbibed a glass of thick pomegranate juice from Jabbar’s Juice Bar. She would lick her lips as she waved goodbye to me. One night, she was going to Abu Ghayeb’s lecture at the Artists’ Association Hall. He showed slides from the latest excavations undertaken by the Directorate General of Archaeology. They’d uncovered priceless treasures, hidden architectural features, and historic finds from the ancient civilizations of Nimrud, Nineveh, Hatra, and Ctesiphon. She left me in her bedroom, alone, and went out with her husband, happy.

  Nowadays, she pretends that lipstick no longer has any significance in her life. She’s trying to be considerate of my feelings, yet I know that she goes out to get dayram, the traditional Arabic lip color based on walnut extract, since imported makeup has become an extinct species in our markets. But she never found out what I used to do with her lipstick when she went out.

  When I was struck down by my illness, my mouth became crooked. My lips were drawn across to the right side of my face as though someone were pulling them with an invisible string. It may be that I’m attached to my guardian angel, who mocks me, by means of this invisible link. I tried to be like other children; I tried to convince myself that I was normal. My sad attempts to whistle always failed. I’d cry in front of the mirror that echoed back the sound phht, phht instead of a long elegant whistle.

  I would draw myself in the mirror, using the lipstick as a crayon. It crushes as I press it onto the smooth surface and follow my perimeter. I start at my head, then mark out my body until the circle is complete. Suddenly the electricity is cut off. The red oily frame goes out. I abandon my pose, leaving behind me a map tracing out my figure hanging in the middle of a mirror in a darkened room.

  Yesterday, my aunt’s husband spent most of the afternoon scratching himself. He has spent months looking up articles about his condition. He’s become obsessed with seeking out the cause of his illness. He used to think that his pillow might be a factor. He was convinced that the chicken feathers were a breeding ground for a type of mite that bit his face while he slept, thus infecting his skin. He would then awake the next morning complaining of a new inflammation and a terrifying itch.

  He calls me to have dinner with him. He is chewing on a tender potato as he speaks. He brushes away a few scales from his clothes to stop them from falling onto the dinner table. He says, “Psoriasis is a disease that can’t be predicted. It can affect the skin of men or women at any age.”

  He removes a scale from his plate with the tip of a fork. “Would you believe that I actually sought out the oldest surviving member of our extended family to ask him if we’re of Circassian origin? They say this race is most susceptible to this condition.”

  I ask him, hoping his conversation won’t drift into scientific jargon, the way it usually does, “And are you of Circassian origin?”

  “No. Anyway, this inflammation of the skin leads to periods of redness and itching, and the appearance of these thick, dry, silver-colored scales on the surface of the skin. Am I annoying you with these boring details, Dalal?”

  I think to myself, “Where’s my aunt? Why does she delegate the task of listening to her husband’s woes to me? Or doesn’t she want to join us because she’s no longer prepared to dine on potatoes alone!”

  I say to him, “Then, we could all be struck down by it.”

  He echoes my words, “Yes, all of us, certainly. Even though it’s not contagious.”

  He passes me a plate of potatoes. A sprinkle of salt tumbles from his fingertips onto a crust of dark bread. He bites into it. He says, “Briefly, our skin renews itself more rapidly than it does in others, and even more rapidly in the affected areas.”

  At that moment, his wife appears in the doorway. As she passes the table, she comments, “At least there’s something about you that renews itself!”

  I swallow. The potato takes the shape of my gullet, chokes me. My aunt pats me on the back on her way out of the kitchen as though nothing has happened.

  Her husband says in a pitying tone, “Your poor aunt thinks that the blockade is our only problem.”

  Without saying a word, I agree with him. My problem precedes his by several years. He is still trying to deal with the shoc
k of having contracted this illness, whereas I see in him an echo of my affliction. He says, “How am I going to get hold of another course of the medication I need? All the pharmacies are restricted to selling standard medication and nothing else.”

  “What is it you’re looking for?”

  “They’re tablets of shark cartilage extract. What I have will only last me for another few months.”

  His primitive fears remind me of my torment. I waited many long years for him to take me back to Turkey. I was due to have plastic surgery there, but no one made a move. Everyone was too busy with his or her daily routine. What about my mouth?

  My aunt paid no attention to my predicament; she was too busy with the embroidery classes she taught in the summer. Abu Ghayeb used to go out on expeditions to the north and the south accompanying foreign delegations and archaeological teams, in winter and summer. That provided him with an additional income, and enabled him to acquire more works of art. He’d recently gone out on visits to the plain of Shahrazur. That was where they’d found the site of Arbat. Excavations there had revealed a seven-story building from the Islamic era, and the remains of a palace that had been the administrative center of the city. I imagine Abu Ghayeb announcing how this indicated that these structures were from the period between the fourth and fifth century of the Hijra.

  His mind registers all these places and dates, but when it comes to me, he’s oblivious to the passage of time! When he was unable to contact his doctor friend in Turkey, he assumed that the phone must have been disconnected. He decided that we’d have to go to his address directly. Each year he deferred my operation. He wanted to combine traveling for my surgery with a family holiday for the three of us. Then the war started. And then we found out that the best time to operate is when the patient is in their younger years. After that, it’s too late.

  It has now been too late for twenty years. One war followed another, punctuated by a watertight blockade of twenty-two million people. That included everyone who lived in our block of flats. The north and the south are no-fly zones, and no one can travel abroad. The hyperinflation is terrifying, the poverty is degrading, and the economy has collapsed. Social structures have crumbled and unemployment exceeds all logical limits. Is this all happening because we have the world’s second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia?

  That’s what the media tells us.

  Did either one of them feel any less guilty when they would accompany me to the Alwiya Club? They would leave me alone to spend endless days by the swimming pool, not returning until the evening. They sacrificed a part of their salaries and took out a lifetime membership at the club that they paid for in installments. I considered it a form of compensation; a substitute for the second trip to Turkey that never happened. This club was one of the city’s bourgeois features. In its big halls the members played billiards, bingo, and darts. In the corners, women played bridge. People gathered for afternoon teas, barbeques, and held shipwreck parties, where people pushed each other by surprise into the water in full clothing, around the pool. They read books and newspapers in its library and once a month couples would enter the ballroom dancing competition. My aunt liked her friends to know that we were members there. Her husband always reminded everyone that it had been built by the British in the 1920s, and that Agatha Christie used to write in its gardens, underneath a leafy tree.

  I tried to use swimming as a means of forgetting my reconstructive surgery.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I CHANGE THE sheets on my aunt’s bed. My household duties are clear. Abu Ghayeb’s pillowcases must be changed every day. I suck on the sweet in my mouth, a square, strong mint tablet; white with small flecks of green on both sides. It feels as though I am licking the wall tiles that pave the entrance to the Haydari Hospital. They too are white with flecks of green. My aunt tells me that it was in Room 18 that I first emerged into this world.

  The local magazine Alif Ba that came out today has a cartoon about hospitals. Instead of having a patient in a bed in his hospital room, there’s a huge cat stretched out on the bed. It’s eyeing the patient disdainfully as he enters the ward, and is saying to him, “Shoo!”

  I’m attracted once again to the painting hanging above the bed. It’s the image of a human eye that has been painted by an ear, nose, and throat doctor. I never tire of contemplating it no matter how many times I have to change the bed sheets. It speaks to me as it hangs there surrounded by an area of harmonious colors. It is a collage in equilibrium, as though the eye had pierced the painting, so that it could look out through it.

  I remember that doctor well. Abu Ghayeb used to take me to see him whenever I developed an ear infection. His clinic was at Nasir Square. It sometimes took us more than half an hour to find a parking space there. I disliked the narrow alleyways leading off from Saadoun Street, where all the medical clinics are based. The street got its name from the statue that stands there of a former Iraqi prime minister from the days of the monarchy. My aunt’s husband explained to me that he opposed the British who ruled us for forty years and eventually committed suicide when he was accused of being a traitor. I jump across a puddle of stagnant water. The street sweeper approaches to displace the water with his large broom made of palm fronds. He pushes it toward the rectangular grille covering the drainage pipes. I wonder how many people have accidentally dropped their car keys through one of these metal grilles?

  The doctor sat me down in a leather chair that spun around. He probed my ear and my nose without asking permission; but my mouth was a different matter. Initially, his warm hands sought permission before lifting my upper lip. A few moments later he struck a metal instrument against the arm of the chair. The sound of metal striking metal startled me. He said, “Don’t be afraid, show me your teeth.” He drew the base of his tuning fork toward my teeth, and my head drowned in resonance. I looked up to my aunt’s husband for support, but all I saw was his back.

  This morning he smeared his face with Soulaf shaving cream. The phone rang and he went to answer it. The head of the archaeological team on the western sites called to tell him what the excavations had revealed. They’d found several structures at right angles to the wings of the Crusaders’ Dome; and they’d also located the boundary wall of the Friday mosque. My aunt’s husband thanked him for the information. As he walked past me, the froth on his face was drying and blowing away in all directions. White flakes dancing like tiny butterflies.

  The doctor asks me, “How do you feel?” I don’t answer. The ringing in my ears is competing with my prayer that my mouth will go back to the way it was. There’s a painting over his head with the word “Allah” printed on it. It’s surrounded by fluffy pink clouds shaped like a tuning fork.

  This week, there are no car tires available in the local markets. People are in a quandary about protecting their cars. Car wheels disappear from cars parked in private garages in spite of their owners’ vigilance. Last month, Oldsmobiles were targeted; now it’s mainly Japanese cars. People are selling their cars before they get stolen.

  They say that a car thief died yesterday while trying to steal a car. The owner was a clever electrician who was fed up with the gangs’ attempts to take his car. He extended a cable out to his car in the night and connected it to his electricity supply. The thief was electrocuted and died instantly; the car owner handed over his body to the police. They turned up on foot, as the ignition had been stolen from their patrol car. The ambulance arrived without its usual sirens. They had run out of spare parts.

  The people in our building tell the story of a thief who was removing the wheels of a car when he realized that another thief was undoing the wheels on the other side. He shouted to him, “You keep the ones on your side, and I’ll have the ones on my side. They’re not worth fighting over!” I tell myself, “Rumors, nothing but.”

  Disabled. The infrastructure and industries have been damaged. Electricity generators, water purification plants, and petrochemical refineries have been blown up. Communicatio
n networks have been blown away and bridges have fallen into the rivers. The roads and highways are full of craters. The rail tracks, along with the carriages on them, loaded with foodstuffs, have been destroyed. Aluminum and textile factories, and the centers for manufacturing electrical cables and drugs, have been wiped off the map.

  In the Days of Plenty, when my aunt heard the sound of the orange Volvo with its distinctive purr, she’d get ready to welcome her husband home. His return every afternoon had special clamorous sound effects. The brakes squealed, the garage door slammed shut, and his shoes clattered. His keys jangle constantly. He starts to read al-Thawra—the revolution newspaper—while she prepares his glass of cool fruit juice. She gently holds up the glass that she’s chilled, attempting not to disturb the layer of condensation that has formed on its outside. When Abu Ghayeb comes in and sits down, she quickly brings him his comfortable slippers and takes away his outdoor shoes, and withdraws with complacency, as if tucking away the noise of his elegant shoes in her pocket.