The White Zone Read online

  “And?”

  “They said it was better that way.”

  “Better?” Mama’s voice was high. “Better to be cast out into the city?”

  “I think they meant they couldn’t protect you and Talib if trouble comes.”

  Now the taxi was full. Baba closed the big padlock on the front door with the black X across it.

  “We’ll come back someday, won’t we?” Talib asked Baba.

  Baba stared at him for a moment, then patted his shoulder. “Of course we will.”

  Talib took a last look at the two-story tan building with the blue trim, the narrow gate.

  Walking to the taxi, Mama kept her eyes on the ground.

  The taxi driver threw the remains of his cigarette into the gutter and everyone climbed in.

  As the taxi drove down the familiar streets, Talib pressed his face to the window glass.

  Questions filled his head like the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire: was he passing though Karada for the last time? Would he see the peddler again with his load of persimmons? Would he ever again take the path through the vacant lot littered with broken glass and bullet casings, his shortcut to school?

  They drove past another door with an X painted on it. Like the one on his own door. It was the home of Zaid al-Najeeb, the Sunni auto mechanic.

  Just then, by the side of the road, Talib saw Nouri. His cousin lifted his hand in a small wave.

  Talib turned his face away.

  . . .

  “Welcome, my family,” al-Shatri said in greeting. He shook the broom he was holding. “I just finished sweeping your new home.” He opened the door to the empty room.

  With five large footsteps, Talib crossed to the window overlooking Mutanabbi Street. Mama made beds on the floor while Baba stacked the dishes in neat piles. Talib laid his wooden gun next to his books. The room was so cold that with each exhale, a puff of steam bloomed from his lips. Who knew how long this would be home?

  SWEET WHITE BERRIES

  Nouri ran after the taxi until it rounded the corner, a small cloud of dust trailing behind. Maybe Talib and his family were taking the taxi to the transit station where buses left for Syria.

  Would Baba learn why?

  As Nouri walked home past a wall of graffiti, uninvited memories flowed through him. He recalled the days of eating dolma and Turkish delight with Talib. In summer, when the nabog tree was loaded with berries, he’d climbed the ladder to the roof with Talib. Perched precariously, they had feasted on the creamy white sweetness of the nabog fruit.

  Would he ever do that with anyone again?

  Just a few months ago A’mma Fatima had given Talib a birthday party, inviting many relatives, including Jalal and Anwar. She’d gotten a cake from the bakery, his name written in blue frosting. With the candles glowing, they’d all sung Sana Helwa Ya Jameal, Happy Birthday, Handsome!

  It had not been that long ago. But now they’d never gather like that again.

  JABIR

  “As times grow hard, this place is turning into a flea market,” Baba complained as he led the way down Mutanabbi Street. “Just look at the Winnie-the-Pooh stickers, those postcards of the London Bridge, those cheap pencils! Aren’t books enough?”

  Talib smiled, secretly liking those things.

  Baba continued on to the bookstall, threading his way in and out of the crowd of people, commenting as he went: “And look at my friend Suheil. Now that his rare books are gone, he’s having to peddle packs of chewing gum.”

  Besides the items that Baba complained about, Iraqis were selling prized collections of antique books, lamps, jewelry, and even furniture. As Talib and his father walked between the stalls with everything laid out on the street—looking a little shabby—he kicked at stones, skittering them down the street.

  When his family went home again, would all their things be just as they’d left them? Was someone right now selling their household goods on a street somewhere?

  Talib peeked into the famous old Shabandar Café where shadows spun around and around as the ceiling fans turned. Shadows passed over the black-andwhite photographs on the brick walls. One showed Iraq’s first king as a young man, while others boasted ancient buildings constructed during the Ottoman Empire. At a nearby table, a group of men in worn jackets sipped tiny glasses of sweet tea and debated the war.

  Baba unlocked the storage shed and together they laid the books on the red carpet. After Baba was settled on a small stool, Talib wandered over to alNakash’s stall to flip through the magazines.

  “So you’ve become a resident, Talib,” al-Nakash remarked.

  “Just until the war is over. Then I’ll go home.”

  “So you think the Sunnis and Shiites will be able to live together peacefully again one day?”

  At first, Talib didn’t answer. That was the big, hard question. Would his cousins every really accept him again? Could he forgive them? Would he ever feel safe in Karada again?

  Then he had a new thought. He lifted his head. “But of course, A’mmo. Baba and Mama live together every day.”

  Al-Nakash chuckled and moved on to help a customer.

  Sensing someone at his elbow, Talib looked to see al-Nakash’s son, Jabir.

  Casting his shadow across Talib, Jabir said in a low voice, “I heard you had to leave your home. That your own relatives made you go.”

  “Yes,” Talib admitted. The news had spread quickly.

  “Things like that shouldn’t happen,” Jabir murmured.

  Talib shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it.”

  “Allah takes care of those who help themselves,” said Jabir.

  . . .

  While many stopped to look through the books spread on the red carpet of Baba’s bookstall, few bought. When they did, they dropped the coins hesitantly into Baba’s palm.

  Fridays could be busy, but during the other days of the week, time passed slowly. Talib’s mind turned to memories of home: the spicy smells of Mama’s cooking, her kitchen floor strewn with onion peels and coriander stems, the persimmon tree brushing against the windows.

  Someday all that would be his again.

  To distract himself from such memories, Talib looked through Baba’s books. He carried armfuls of books upstairs to read by the kerosene lamp. He read about golden fish that were really young women, about pomegranate trees and beautiful moons. He read about Rejab, the baby boy who lived with no food after his mother died. He found himself interested, and then captivated. Baba was right—through books he lived many lives. And right then, he preferred any life but his own.

  While Baba focused on selling books, Mama wrote long letters to her relatives in Anbar Province, the paper rustling, her pen marching across the page.

  Whenever the muezzin summoned the faithful to prayer, Talib bowed down. Yet Allah’s sweetness began getting harder to find. He’d once daydreamed about the light that was Allah—the stars, the galaxies, the white body of the moon. But now when he tried to focus on Allah, only blackness greeted him.

  In order to repay al-Shatri’s hospitality, Talib ran errands for him on Mutanabbi Street and around the corner on Rashid Street, buying ink, onions, bags of lentils, and packets of tea.

  In the late afternoons, Talib helped al-Shatri in the press. He sorted metal letters and boxed up books.

  As they worked, al-Shatri played the radio. The announcers talked of little but war—conflict in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. The numbers of American troops were increasing. Bombs continued to fall in the Red Zone, and even around the edges of the Green Zone. Violence flared in the neighborhoods where Shiites and Sunnis lived together.

  “Everyone is desperate,” said al-Shatri as Talib set the kettle on the little kerosene stove, “and we Iraqis are beginning to lose our humanity.”

  Talib stared at the tiny stove flame. By hating his cousins, he himself was losing his humanity. He wished he could talk about his feelings with al-Shatri as he had before the rock had come crashing through his window. But his anger had g
rown so much stronger since then, he didn’t dare speak.

  . . .

  Every time Talib went to the stall of al-Nakash, he looked for Jabir. Lately it felt like only Jabir understood him.

  He and Jabir flipped through magazines together. In a voice like dried leaves blown along the pavement, Jabir commented on the photographs. On the assassination of the American president, JFK, he said, “Here in Iraq leaders get assassinated all the time and no one makes them saints.” He dismissed the Beatles as tools of American imperialism. When Talib pointed out that they were English, Jabir swatted at the air, declaring, “Same thing.”

  Talib recognized Jabir’s undercurrent of anger as his own. Hearing the teen’s rough talk both exhilarated and scared him.

  One day when the wintry wind blew, when Talib was idly scanning pictures of the Beatles’ famous trip to the United States, he heard Jabir’s voice at his shoulder. “It’s time to get back at whoever made you leave your home.”

  Talib stared at a picture of girl fans screaming at the Beatles as though they were in the presence of Allah himself. A shiver ran through him.

  “If you don’t stand up for yourself, it will happen again.”

  Talib shrugged, hiding the way Jabir’s words made every bit of him wake up and listen.

  “Don’t be a mouse.”

  BAKLAVA

  Nouri carried baklava down Mutanabbi Street. Wrapped in newspaper, the flaky dessert that Mama had made that morning leaked honey onto the black words.

  In Karada, bands of men and boys from all over the city roved, accosting any Sunnis who had the guts to show themselves in public. And when there were none, they knocked on doors, looking for the ones hiding inside. They dragged people from their houses and beat them up. Sometimes they forced them to board buses that would dump them at the outskirts of Baghdad.

  Nouri often came upon a lingering smell of spray paint after someone had sprayed a black X on the door of a Sunni house or painted graffiti on a wall. The one by his house shouted: OUT ALL SUNNI DOGS! alongside crudely drawn pictures of Saddam Hussein.

  The only Sunni left in the neighborhood was Zaid al-Najeeb. In his garage he fixed cars, never asking his customers to which sect they belonged. Every morning al-Najeeb came out to the street, placed his hands on his hips, and declared: “My father built this house. I will never leave it, even if I have to die!”

  Mama forbade Nouri to go out at night now. “Because A’mmo Nazar is married to a Sunni, our family might become a target. That man in Man-sour was executed because of his Sunni wife. Even though A’mmo Nazar’s family is gone, people still remember. . . .”

  But sometimes Nouri snuck out to meet Jalal and Anwar anyway, slipping into the night that was lit up by tracer fire. Instead of playing war now, they pretended to kick the Sunnis out of their neighborhood. They carried rifles made of branches, and took turns being the hated Sunnis. Whenever a mortar shell exploded, they pretended it was their guns that had fired.

  Nouri half hated the game. Anwar and Jalal suddenly seemed so young, so unaware.

  “Remember the night at Talib’s?” Anwar asked every now and then.

  Nouri wanted to forget that night. He wondered where Talib was, how he was doing. The little thing they had done had turned into a tidal wave of violence.

  That morning, carrying his packet of baklava, Nouri wanted to find Talib. He wanted to make up with his cousin. He hoped that this little square of sweetness would help.

  Nouri searched the stalls. Being Friday, the street was busy with men wheeling carts of books, idle shoppers, and vendors hawking their wares.

  He found Talib standing behind a book display. He was smiling at a customer.

  “Talib!” Nouri called.

  Talib looked his way, and his smile faded.

  “I brought you some of Mama’s baklava.”

  Talib thrust his hands in the pockets of his too-short pants, saying, “I don’t need sweets.”

  It wasn’t like Talib to turn down baklava. Nouri wondered if he suspected him of throwing the rock that night. But if he did, he wouldn’t be speaking to him at all. “You live here?” He looked around, clutching the packet.

  Without a word, Talib indicated the second story of a nearby building.

  “Isn’t that the same building where you visited your friend?”

  Talib nodded. He leaned down to straighten the fringe of the red carpet, saying, “What’s going on at home . . . I mean, in Karada?”

  Nouri hardly wanted to tell. Instead he wished he could bite into the baklava himself. “Someone broke into your house. They took your refrigerator.” He didn’t mention the destruction—the spray-painted walls, the way the furniture had been hacked to pieces, including Talib’s bed with the galloping horse.

  “How do you know?”

  “I went in to look. . . .” He’d been accompanied by Anwar and Jalal, and they’d entered the house laughing.

  “You went inside our house?” Talib’s voice grew louder.

  “Why not? I’ve been in there plenty of times.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “All the windows are shattered.”

  Talib fisted his hands inside his pockets.

  “Other Sunni homes,” continued Nouri, “—those of the Ibrahims, the Zaydans, the Bassems—have also been vandalized.” He wanted Talib to understand that his family hadn’t been the only one. And he, Nouri, had had nothing to do with the leaving of those families, had not thrown any rocks through their windows.

  “The new vandals are terrible,” he went on. “They’re Shiites who don’t even live in Karada. Most carry guns, but some have rocks and even,” he swallowed hard, “grenades.”

  Talib squatted to straighten a pile of books.

  Guilt like a curtain of gray smoke passed over Nouri. He knew he was no better than those men. He, too, had been a vandal. “I’m sorry I got angry about Buratha that day.”

  Talib shrugged.

  Nouri unwrapped the baklava, honey sticky on his fingers, and held it out.

  Talib shook his head. But only slightly.

  Nouri continued to hold it out to his cousin.

  At last, to his relief, Talib reached for the sticky packet.

  GET DOWN!

  That March morning Talib came to the bookstall wearing his winter jacket. By mid-morning, he took it off as a spring breeze blew in. Talib daydreamed of riding a camel, ambling over the sand dunes, rocking from side to side with the camel’s heavy footsteps.

  Just before noon prayers, a red two-story bus loaded with people edged through the traffic. A man wheeled a cart of books from one stall to another. A holy man wearing a turban strolled by.

  A woman Mama’s age, smelling of spicy perfume, requested a book of poetry by Hafiz. Talib knelt to look through a box, setting books on the carpet. He was giving the small red volume book to the woman when he was rocked off balance and the book fell out of his hand.

  His whole world shifted. And then: rocking.

  Falling.

  Everything crashing.

  Burning.

  Screams.

  Falling.

  Collapsing.

  “Talib!” Baba cried. “Talib!”

  “Baba!” His voice was barely a whisper.

  The woman ran, perfume trailing after her.

  The world flashed red.

  Glass exploded.

  Fires leapt up.

  “A car bomb!” someone shouted.

  Car bomb. Here? On Mutanabbi Street?

  Boom! Boom! Bang. Clatter, clatter, clatter.

  Cries here and there.

  Sirens coming closer.

  Heart slamming.

  Smoke.

  Talib coughed.

  “Run!”

  The red book of Hafiz lay on the ground, black now. Crumbled.

  “Baba!”

  A groan. Baba on his side. Head in his hands red with blood.

  “Get down!”

  “Get up!”

&n
bsp; “Nazar! Talib!”

  “Here, Mama!”

  “Praise be to Allah!”

  “Baba’s hurt!” said Talib, but Mama was there. Wiping blood with her dress.

  Talib stood.

  Baba’s storeroom had been blown apart. Everything was black. The smell burned Talib’s nostrils. The books were on fire all around him.

  Down the street, Talib saw a huge empty space. The Shabandar Café was gone. In its place was the blue sky.

  Everywhere Talib looked he saw ambulances, stretchers, and bodies. Groans and shrieks rose from all directions.

  Fire trucks screamed down the street, spraying streams of water onto the smoldering mounds.

  Over everything, Talib heard the muezzin calling— Allah is great! Allah is great! There is no God but Allah!

  ANSWER ME!

  After school, Nouri and Jalal dribbled and shot baskets with a ball they’d found. It was slightly deflated but they still managed to play.

  Jalal had just passed the ball, and Nouri had caught it, when a girl named Farrah, her head scarf flying, came running. “Mutanabbi Street has been bombed! Many people are dead!”

  “Mutanabbi Street?” Nouri called back. “Are you sure?” Such a thing couldn’t happen on Mutanabbi Street. Mutanabbi was a safe place. Everyone got along there. People didn’t care about which sect you belonged to. Why would anyone bomb Mutanabbi Street? His mind raced.

  “Yes! It was a car bomb!”

  Nouri held the basketball tight against his chest. What had happened to Talib? Was he safe? Nouri hadn’t seen his cousin since he’d taken him the baklava a couple of months ago.

  . . .

  After school, Nouri boarded the bus. He’d told Jalal and Anwar that he had to help Mama clean their courtyard. And he’d told Mama that he was going to Anwar’s to study for a geography test.

  The bus was filled with others anxious to learn the fates of their loved ones.

  “She went to buy a manual for her new computer. . . .”

  “My son’s stall is a landmark on Mutanabbi Street. . . .”

  A young woman sobbed.

  As the bus approached the street, smoky air leaked into the bus. Women drew their head scarves over their faces.