A Brighter Fear

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I opened a new sketchbook, pressing down the white pages, smoothing my fingers along the inside of the spine. I picked up a pencil and held it over the paper, the tip trembling in my fingers. I wanted to make a record of this war, if it arrived. I wanted to remember how things were, what things looked like, draw the buildings in my city that had inspired my dream to be an architect.

Yet I wished I could put my thoughts on paper too, take my worries out of my head, stop them spinning and bouncing around and making me feel sick. Maybe then, I thought, I could sleep at night and my chest wouldn’t burn during the day, and I wouldn’t feel dizzy at the prospect of bombs and troops, and my head wouldn’t hurt with the worry of what might happen.

And I knew the door behind me was locked, but I felt the danger still, faceless, invisible, knowing every secret I held in my head. A lifetime, seventeen years, of being allowed no opinion but the right one, had left me with a fear of expression and a caution to my own thoughts. Could I really write them down? What if it was found? What would happen to me? To Papa? Nobody would know and nobody would ever find out, because we would disappear and nobody would dare to ask where, why or how.

I picked up the sketchbook and stepped from the house. The sun was bright on my eyes and the wind blew around my clothes. I’ll sketch the buildings while they stand, I thought, the people while they breathe, and the city while it lives.

And I wandered around alone, stopping here and there, sketching things that caught my eye, things I wanted to capture while they still existed. I stopped at a market, breathing in the different smells; the fruit, the spices, the tobacco the men smoked, and I sketched the face of a young boy helping his mama, catching a look of cheekiness behind his tight-lipped grin.

I paused to watch a coppersmith, a skinny man with glasses, wipe sweat from his balding head before continuing to beat away at a huge copper pot.

At a row of shops my pencil dashed across the paper; the shapes of the bold signs, the darkened windows, the arches above.

But everywhere I went I saw him. Posters of him, paintings; holding guns, smiling at his people, surrounded by tanks, waving to crowds. Saddam. His presence loomed over us; his mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes, yet reflecting ours, and our fear. Everywhere I went, I felt him watching.

I found myself at Al-Mustansiriya University, sketching the straight lines of the roof, the patterns on its beige walls, the blackness inside its massive arches. I remembered Papa talking about it, how old it was.

How many people have walked through its doors, I wondered, in all these hundreds of years it’s been standing? How many more will in the future? Will I? Could I? And I thought of all the people who were students here, or lecturers, or staff, and all the other people in this city; every one a husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, colleague, teacher, pupil, of someone, somewhere.

Every one, loved by some one.

And I realised that every person in the city would be thinking the same thing, would be wishing, hoping, praying that they wouldn’t lose anyone they loved, or they cared for, or even just knew.

But how many would? How many people would be crying in the morning? How much grief would it take, to fill this place of five million people?

I strolled towards home, but there were too many thoughts and worries in my head. I didn’t want to be inside. I didn’t want to be alone.

I headed towards the river, a place where I knew some friends would be, and together we lounged on the bank, hiding in the shade; everyone solemn. Some had left the country already; those whose families could afford it, or those with relatives abroad, and already it felt like there were holes in our group. Friends missing who would probably never return, yet alive at least. I hoped.

These were friends I’d known for years; friends, it seemed, I’d never not known, and for a moment I watched their faces and a fear hit me that we might never be together again.

With a sigh I turned towards the river and took out my sketchbook. On a clean page the river took shape, flowing away in the distance; grey, concrete bridges spanning it; hotels and high rises reaching up into the pale sky; clumped grasses sprouting near its banks; palm trees, walkways, streets bustling with traffic. Flat and dusty. Sun bleached and muted.

I stopped drawing and stared into the distance, imagining the palace, just visible, watching us. I glanced away from it, in case it caught me staring, in case it read the thoughts that shouldn’t have been in my head. I daren’t draw it, daren’t even look at it. Could only just dare to think about it.

I’d heard whispers about its swimming pools. I closed my eyes and felt the heat envelop me.

If that palace is ever empty, I dared to think, I will walk along its marble floors in heeled shoes, the noise bouncing off the walls and announcing my presence. I will stroll outside to the swimming pool, slip off my shoes and dive into the cool water. I will swim to the centre and float on my back staring up at the sky, the bluest sky in the world. And I will listen to the silence.

I opened my eyes and my mouth to share this thought, but couldn’t say the words. Not even to my best friend Layla.

The words weren’t even stuck in my throat. They daren’t get that far. They daren’t even form.

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It was February and the minutes and hours and days and weeks forced us ever closer to the inevitability of which no one spoke.

I was scared. I thought we all were, silently, and I buried myself in my studies, determined to do well, filling my head with facts and figures, hoping to leave no space for worries, hoping to tire my thoughts enough for sleep at night.

I clung to normality and routine, points of reference that held my life together; going to school, seeing friends, strolling around the markets, peering in shop windows.

And as I walked home from school with Layla one day, we talked of our plans for the future; which university to apply to, which course, without admitting to ourselves that these dreams of ours may come to nothing, may turn to dust in front of our eyes.

We spoke of careers we aspired to, and achievements we dreamed of – mine to become an architect, hers to be a teacher – and when we reached our homes, we waved and smiled to each other and went our separate ways. And as I dropped my bag in the doorway and strolled through to the kitchen for food, I found Uncle Aziz and our neighbour Ali, Layla’s father, standing in the kitchen with Papa, serious looks on their faces and spades in their hands, an old map spread across the table, held down at its edges by cups or glasses.

I looked to Aziz and he winked at me. I still see it now, that look, frozen in time in my memory, and I feel that warmth it gave me. He could always make me smile; a rotund man with a laugh to match and a bald head that reflected the sun so much I’m sure he must’ve polished it. He was younger than Papa, although he looked older, with the fuzz around his face making up for the lack of hair on his head. And when he smiled his face would split in two and his eyes would dance with the mischief you would see in boys daring each other to steal fruit from the market place.

He beamed at me, his piano-key teeth still stained with the tobacco he gave up two years ago. ‘Lina!’ He grabbed me and hugged me, the air squeezing from my lungs. ‘Look at you. You’ve grown so tall and thin.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Uncle Aziz, I saw you two days ago.’

‘Yes, my dear, yes. But you’re looking thinner. You must be working too hard, studying too hard. You need exercise, fresh air, to build your muscles up. Come.’

What I should’ve done at the sight of those spades was retreat to my room, with stories of homework and exams, but I’d been caught now, and escape was unlikely. And I liked playing along with Aziz. He made me feel younger, feel a child again. He led me to the back garden, Papa a few paces behind, an unaccustomed smile tickling his face.

‘We start here.’ Uncle Aziz stuck the spade into the ground and stood firm with his hands on his over-sized hips. ‘Dig.’

I picked up the spade and jabbed it at the ground, barely a dent made. ‘What are we looking for, Uncle?’

‘Water.’ He smiled.

I glanced to Papa leaning against the wall, his smile disappearing, Ali standing next to him. My spade hit the ground again, and as I teetered on the blade, I looked to Aziz. ‘Somebody bigger would be better at this,’ I dared to joke.

His face parted at the mouth, his eyes creasing. He boomed a laugh, and flicked me off the spade like a troublesome fly.

‘Yes, your old Uncle has more muscles.’ He winked at me again as I picked myself up off the ground.

For the next hour, I watched and fetched and carried. Bringing water and food, or towels to mop brows, as they dug holes across the garden. Though they’d failed to find water, they’d succeeded in making an anti-burglar device – should anyone try to sneak in to the house through the back garden at night, they’d have broken an ankle before making it to the door. Papa, Aziz and Ali dropped the spades to the ground; defeat finally admitted. I inspected the holes. At first I was surprised by the black treacle reaching up and choking the ground, then I understood.

In how many places on this earth would you be disappointed to find oil in your garden?

This dig for water, it turned out, was one of Papa’s preparations for war. A colleague of his at the university had a map of old water wells in the city, one of which, it appeared, was directly below our garden. Only it didn’t appear. Next, they told me, they’d try Ali’s garden, in case the map was inaccurate. I thought to warn Layla of the work that lay ahead of her.

Papa and I did many preparations for war together in the weeks that followed. While taping up windows we didn’t say a word to each other, but I was fuming at being kept off school to do something so tiresome. By the time we’d finished there was so much tape on them you could barely see out, and the inside of the house was nearly as dark as the basement beneath us.

He said nothing about why we were doing these things, just “you’re staying at home today to help me”. But I wanted to go to school. I wanted to see Layla, and Raneen, and Zenab and my other friends. I wanted to chat with them, gossip, have fun, go for a walk after school. I wanted to see if Aliya had managed to talk her mother into getting her the shoes she wanted, if Anita had failed the maths test, if our teacher had had her baby yet.

And I wanted to study.

I didn’t want to dig holes, tape windows or cart food supplies into the basement. I didn’t want to stand for hours at the gas station filling cans with fuel for when we ran out. I didn’t want to go round market stalls with Papa, tripping over sandbags piled next to shop doorways, selling old things to raise enough money to buy a generator.

Always Papa would stop at second-hand shops, though, or at market stalls selling jewellery, and I saw his eyes scan over the necklaces for sale. Someone’s once cherished possessions sold for cash to survive the war. I wondered, at first, what he was looking for, but soon I realised.

And I knew what it meant to him that it wasn’t there – that it must still be with her, somewhere, that green necklace with the filigreed gold.

I could do nothing to help him, and, selfishly, I wanted to get on with my life.

Why so much food? I wanted to ask. Why do we need bottles of water? Why a generator? But my papa was not one for conversation or for answers.

I was desperate to know what would happen when the war began. There was no ‘if’ any more, every sunrise bringing more inevitability. I didn’t follow the news as I suppose I should’ve, and people didn’t say much, but I watched the streets and the people and I felt the mood. Fear on people’s faces was the easiest emotion to read, and the news gave no answers, even if you dared to think the questions. I wanted to know, was desperate to know, what would happen and how long for. What about school? My hopes for university? What about my friends? What about Mama? What would it be like after?

What would be left?

Who would be left?

Would I?