The White Zone Read online

  When he’d finished with the icy water, Talib pulled his coat cuffs down over his wrists. He stepped aside, giving Nouri his turn.

  Inside the mosque, the walls were decorated with patterns made from verses of the Koran. Talib remembered how during his first trip to the mosque, Baba had lifted him close, pointing out the way the lines and swirls were made up of words, a language that danced.

  Talib and the others joined the huge crowd of men and boys as they stood on the tiles patterned to resemble prayer mats. Facing the mihrab, the archway showing the direction of holy Mecca, he quieted his heart.

  The prayers began.

  Talib loved the way the huge group moved in unison. Everyone was approaching Allah together. And to each of them, Allah would come. Talib placed his hands behind his ears: Allah is great. . . .

  Even Nouri and his father were joining in. In those holy moments, it felt as though Nouri had never said mean things nor tried to exclude him.

  Talib touched his forehead to the cold ground: Glory to Allah. . . .

  Along with Nouri and the others, he rose and bowed again.

  Even though the stone mat was cold and his body was chilled from the washing, Talib felt the tenderness of Allah fill his belly like a warm, sweet drink. He was one with the great throng that bowed and prayed together. His spirit, buoyed up on the rhythm of chanted prayers, swelled into the high-ceilinged room. It ascended to the round dome where it circled and danced. The outlines of his body melted and he disappeared.

  . . .

  “We’ll be going back home,” said A’mmo Mohammed outside the mosque. “Someone has to show up there today.”

  “Plenty of people will show up,” said Baba. “Why don’t you let Nouri come along with us? He and Talib can have fun together on Mutanabbi Street.”

  Talib watched as Nouri ignored them and took out his Game Whiz, bringing the tiny screen close to his face. Of course his cousin didn’t want to go to Mutanabbi Street. He wanted to go home, to eat and play war with the others.

  But A’mmo Mohammed nodded in assent. “That’s a good idea, Nazar.”

  A frown crossed Nouri’s face.

  As they waited for the bus to Mutanabbi Street, Nouri kept focused on his Game Whiz. Talib wished Nouri would let him play.

  With a great squeal of brakes, the bus arrived. As they boarded, Talib noticed the driver run his eyes up and down each of them.

  “He thinks we’re martyrs,” he whispered. “He thinks we have explosives underneath our coats.”

  Nouri unbuttoned his coat and held out his hands, showing the Game Whiz.

  The driver’s eyes lingered on the game. Then he nodded slightly and Nouri stepped past the Iraqi soldier who stood behind the driver, his big gun slung across his chest.

  Baba used his handkerchief to clean the red seat before he sat down.

  Talib sat in the seat behind him, Nouri next to him.

  Nouri played the Game Whiz without looking up, without saying a word.

  The bus stopped on Rashid Street by the stand selling grape juice. Baba, along with several others, pulled the wire that signaled the driver.

  They followed Baba past the cafés, past the chai khana selling steaming glasses of hot sweet tea.

  Baba turned onto Mutanabbi Street and led the way in and out of the crowds. Whenever he stopped to browse through other vendors’ books, Talib peered over Nouri’s shoulder. But when his shadow fell across the tiny screen, Nouri twisted away.

  Someone played slow, sad music on a violin outside, hitting a wrong note at the height of the melody.

  On Mutanabbi Street it hardly seemed as though a war was going on. Everyone got along here. People sat at outdoor cafés, chatting in the shade of bright umbrellas. And yet, Talib thought, he and Nouri weren’t getting along. Being with Nouri felt like the screechy note of the violin.

  On the sidewalks, vendors sold used books ranging from the ancient text of Gilgamesh to Webster’s dictionaries. They pushed carts of books, hawking them to passersby. Men in turbans and women with their hair hidden under headscarves stood alongside college students with their backpacks, fingering the books, flipping through the pages and reading passages.

  Neon lights flashed. Double-decker buses cruised. Talib jumped up to tap the fringes of the bright banners above his head that announced all sorts of things for sale.

  “Marhaba, A’mmo,” said Talib as a man whom he knew passed, pushing a cart loaded with books. Hamid wasn’t really his uncle, but he addressed him with respect.

  “This place has lost its dignity,” remarked Baba, pointing out a stack of children’s Japanese trading cards for sale. “Foolish stuff.”

  Talib caught Nouri’s eye and mouthed the word “later.”

  But instead of smiling in agreement, Nouri turned his gaze to the sky.

  “Look!” Baba exclaimed. He picked up an ancient-looking book. “You’re not selling this are you, Suheil?” he asked the bookseller.

  Suheil al-Hassan made a face. “I have to. For my family’s sake.”

  “I wish I had the money to buy it,” Baba said, his fingers caressing the old leather cover.

  “Marhaba, Talib!” cried al-Nakash from his bookstall across the street, waving his fat little fingers at them.

  Old issues of Life, Newsweek, and Time sat in neat stacks on the card tables in front of his stall, their pages brittle with age. They were magazines Talib loved to page through.

  “Marhaba, A’mmo!” Talib responded. “I’ll come back after I help Baba set up.”

  The small storeroom for Baba’s books was located in the gap between two buildings. He unlocked the padlock and swung the plywood door open. Sunshine bathed the shelves.

  Talib and Nouri helped Baba pull out the red carpet. Together they rolled the carpet onto the sidewalk, then unpacked the secondhand books from their boxes.

  “This pile is for Arabic translations,” Talib instructed Nouri. “Poetry goes here. Religion there. Books for kids in the front.”

  “Here’s a good book,” Baba said when the books were stacked in place. “Why don’t you sit down for a while and read? I’ll find another book for you, Nouri.”

  The cover of the book Baba handed him pictured a tall snowcapped mountain. In the foreground a boy Talib’s age was beginning the climb, a backpack on his shoulders. Martyrs wore backpacks like that.

  “It’s an adventure story,” said Baba.

  Nouri reached for the book, but Talib shook his head at his cousin. He unwrapped his plaid scarf and laid it on an empty crate. “We’re going to go see what’s happening.”

  “Through books you can live many lives,” Baba said, still holding out the book.

  “One life is enough.”

  “Go on then,” said Baba, sighing.

  Talib stood up as an American fighter jet sped up, trailing a thin white cloud.

  “They think they own our sky,” said a woman in a checkered head scarf standing near their bookstall.

  A man looked up from nearby, adding, “They do own our sky. Our streets. Even our homes.”

  “Without the Americans we’d be stuck with Saddam Hussein,” the bookseller next door said.

  “Ha!” the woman retorted. “At least we had peace under Saddam. Now look! Sunnis and Shiites are at each other’s throats every day.”

  “The Americans are only after our oil,” said the first man, putting the repair manual back on the stack.

  This kind of talk confused Talib. He was anxious to be on his way. “I need to visit a friend,” he said to Nouri, as they turned the corner.

  “Where?”

  “Upstairs over there.” Talib pointed.

  “I’ll wait down here.”

  Talib narrowed his eyes. “Why? Is it because you think my friend is a Sunni?”

  Nouri shrugged.

  “Well, I’m not even sure if he is or not. But if you want to wait out here, go ahead.”

  Talib located the doorway between the teamaker’s stove and the stand tha
t sold silver bracelets. He climbed the dark stairs and rapped on the door three times with the heavy knocker. Sometimes al-Shatri didn’t hear well.

  “Come in!” a voice called out.

  Talib opened the door to the familiar, dizzying smell of printer’s ink.

  “Ah, Talib,” said Sayed al-Shatri from behind his worktable. “It’s good to see you.”

  Talib stepped into the dusty room to greet his friend. Al-Shatri had untidy gray hair and wore gloves with the fingers cut off so his hands would stay warm, but his fingers could stay nimble. Al-Shatri printed the Arabic translations of works like Shakespeare’s plays, the Bible, and, lately, computer manuals. The shop was filled with piles of paper, heaps of books, and the small wooden boxes that held the blocks of metal letters.

  In one corner, Al-Shatri had a narrow bed. Once Talib had asked his friend why he didn’t sleep in the small, mostly empty room that fronted on Mutanabbi Street.

  Al-Shatri had laughed and said he liked to stay close to his work.

  “Sit down,” al-Shatri now said, waving a gloved hand at the tall stools. “I’ll make tea.”

  As al-Shatri put a kettle on the small kerosene stove, Talib talked about how his cousins were treating him, how his aunts were treating Mama.

  Al-Shatri nodded sympathetically throughout. When Talib had finished, the printer set down his glass and said, “My advice is to act as if nothing has happened.”

  Talib sipped from his glass of tea. He wasn’t sure he could keep taking insults without fighting back.

  “One of my cousins is down in the street waiting,” he said. “He thinks you’re a Sunni.”

  Al-Shatri smiled and reached for Talib’s empty glass. “Don’t keep him waiting any longer.”

  BURATHA

  Nouri took the cellophane off a new pack of trading cards. He shuffled through the pictures of robotic creatures, when the bookseller said from behind him, “If you’re not going to buy those, then move along.”

  “Well, I’m not going to by them now,” said Nouri, tossing the cards down in a disorderly pile.

  He strode away from the stall. Baba shouldn’t have made him come to Mutanabbi Street. But what could he have said? If he’d defied Baba, his father might not have struck him right then, in front of A’mmo Nazar, but back in the cold courtyard, Baba would have yanked off his wide belt.

  Even being here with Talib was better than another lashing.

  Suddenly the ground rocked underfoot. Nouri looked back at the bookseller’s table to see that the Japanese trading cards had all slipped to the ground.

  Another bomb was shaking up someone’s life. A few passersby stared at the sky. Most acted as if nothing had happened.

  “That was a big explosion,” Talib said from behind him.

  “Well, yeah,” Nouri answered. It didn’t take a genius to know that. But in his mind, he was calculating where the bomb had fallen. It seemed to be quite close by, which meant everyone in faraway Karada would be safe as they enjoyed the Friday feast he was missing.

  They wandered past the bookstalls, finally arriving at the stall of American magazines they had passed as they’d come in that morning.

  Nouri made a face. “These are all old.”

  “But they’re interesting. Look.” Talib picked up one with pictures of the Vietnam War. “Baba says the Americans compare our war here with the Vietnam War. But look at the jungles! And these people don’t look like us at all. How can it be the same?”

  “It’s because the war goes on and on without purpose,” put in a teenager standing nearby counting money into a box. A faint mustache darkened his upper lip and a few straggly hairs sprouted on his cheeks. Nouri guessed he must be the owner’s son.

  “Cool tanks. Cool guns,” said Nouri, interested in the magazines in spite of himself. He turned to a magazine with a photo of pretty, laughing Marilyn Monroe. “Look at her. She’s pretty.”

  “The Americans love their wars,” continued the teen.

  Nouri looked at the boy more carefully, and noticed the outline of a pocketknife in his back pocket.

  Just then a man ran along the street, crying out: “A mosque has been bombed!”

  “Which mosque?” Nouri asked, worried despite himself.

  In a matter of moments, a crowd had gathered in the street. Nouri worked his way to the center, pushing himself very close to the man who’d brought the news. The man’s coat smelled of mothballs. In the distance, he heard sirens.

  “The mosque in Etafiea.”

  Nouri’s mind spun wildly.

  “The Shiite mosque?” a woman asked.

  “Buratha,” the man nodded.

  Nouri sucked in a breath. That was his mosque. His Shiite mosque. And now it was gone. The rumble of the earth had been the bomb striking the mosque. “A damned Sunni did it,” he muttered, pushing back against Talib.

  “Retaliation for yesterday’s bombing,” someone said.

  Al-Nakash turned on a handheld radio and everyone hushed.

  Nouri cupped his hands around his ears to hear better.

  Coming from the radio, the sirens that had wailed in the distance now sounded even closer. The announcer’s voice was hurried, as though the information was coming to him as fast as machine gun fire. “The martyr appears to have been a young boy. Evidently, he aroused no suspicion. He walked right in without anyone stopping him.”

  A young boy. Like Talib. Like his Sunni cousin who stood in his shadow.

  “Numerous persons are injured,” the announcer went on. “Two are dead.”

  At that moment three American helicopters thwack-thwacked their way across the sky. Nouri’s brain churned with the loud noise.

  He faced Talib and grabbed the collar of his cousin’s coat. The anger that had started out as a simmer was beginning to boil over. “You Sunni! You scum!”

  Talib tried to step back, but Nouri held him fast.

  “I loved the mosque as much as you!” Talib protested, his face screwed up. “My baba took me there!”

  “You didn’t really love it! You wished you were praying at one of your mama’s stinking mosques!” Nouri pushed himself out of the crowd and walked quickly down a side street, away from Mutanabbi Street, toward the bus that would carry him home.

  NO SUNNIS ALLOWED

  On the way to school, Talib walked ahead of his cousins, who were throwing rocks at pigeons again. The dusty sidewalk was littered with soda can tabs, shards of glass, and the rubber soles of someone’s sandals.

  “The Buratha Mosque was bombed,” one of his cousins called to him.

  Talib looked back to see Jalal, jutting his chin into the air. “I know,” he called back, transferring his backpack from one shoulder to the other.

  “Sunnis bombed it,” said Nouri.

  “Your people,” added Anwar. His hands were full of small stones.

  “Not mine,” Talib argued. “No relatives of Mama’s would have done that.”

  Buratha had been his mosque too.

  “How do you know they didn’t?”

  “Maybe your Sunni, Saddam Hussein, did it!” Jalal called out.

  Talib tossed a stone over his shoulder at Jalal and walked on, moving as fast as he could without running.

  Standing beside the doorkeeper, framed in the gateway, stood al-Khaldoun. Perhaps the mathematics teacher would greet the students with some special news.

  As Talib approached, al-Khaldoun locked eyes with his. With a gesture, he drew him in.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Talib,” he said. “No Sunnis are allowed in this school anymore. Not since the Buratha bombing.”

  Behind al-Khaldoun, Talib glimpsed the empty basketball court. “But I’m only half Sunni. . . .” he protested.

  Al-Khaldoun shook his head slightly. “It’s a security issue.”

  Talib’s backpack slid off his shoulder. It hit the ground with a thud. What would he tell Mama?

  “Don’t leave your books here, Talib,” al-Khaldoun said softly. “Keep up
your studies.”

  Talib picked up the backpack. As he walked away, he looked back to see Nouri, Anwar, and Jalal walking along, arms linked, big smiles on their faces.

  Talib wanted to hurl himself at his smiling cousins, to pound them with his fists. But as he clenched his hands together, he saw that Al-Khaldoun was also turning away Kazem al-Maleki and Kazem’s little sister, Noor.

  Around the corner, Talib found Salaam sitting by the brick wall. “He kicked you out too?”

  Salaam nodded.

  Looking closer, Talib saw that Salaam’s eyes were red and swollen behind his thick glasses.

  “I’m going home,” said Salaam. “This stupid school doesn’t matter anyway. Our family is leaving for Anbar.”

  “You’re moving?” Talib asked. He’d known Salaam ever since their first day of school.

  “Tomorrow. I should help pack. Last night someone threw a rock through our window.”

  The words hit Talib like the rock itself, knocking out his breath. A faraway bombing was one thing— an attack on one’s home was another.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally managed.

  The street vendor who sold sandwiches during their lunch hour was walking up the street to set up his stand.

  With the events of the day, Talib already felt famished. “Let’s split one,” he said to Salaam, holding out his lunch money.

  Salaam nodded and took out a handkerchief to clean his glasses.

  “A’nba only,” Talib told the vendor. He didn’t have enough money for falafel or eggs or for one of the shiny cans of Pepsi sitting temptingly in a bucket of ice.

  The man split open the thick bread, making a pocket. With a wooden spoon, he scooped in the pickled mango syrup.

  “Better hurry to school,” the vendor said, handing over the sandwich.

  “Not us,” said Talib.

  “Sunnis aren’t allowed there anymore,” Salaam added.

  The vendor made a face, then slapped at his cart with a damp rag, muttering a bad word.

  . . .

  At dinner, Baba said, “On the way to Mutanabbi Street, I went to Buratha. The bodies had been taken away. But there was blood everywhere.”