The White Zone Page 6

  Just before Rashid Street, the driver stopped. Everyone flooded out the doors, some of them pushing.

  “Go on! Hurry it up!” one man kept exclaiming.

  Nouri ran down the street with those at the front of the crowd. Helicopters crisscrossed the sky and the afternoon was alive with the screams of sirens.

  He slowed at the sight of people being stopped by Iraqi soldiers. No one was being allowed in! He scanned the street and, noticing a small alley, he ran down it, and climbed through a ruined building.

  Finally he found himself on Mutanabbi Street.

  Or on what was left of it.

  Instead of the red two-story buses, American tanks idled at the curbs. American soldiers in green camouflage talked with Iraqi police, both sides writing in tiny notebooks, both sides speaking into walkie-talkies.

  Nouri passed a blackened body covered with cardboard and pink stationery. The paper read: “The remains of Rahim. Hummus Seller.”

  “Keep digging!” a man shouted at two others, holding a black shoe. “This is my son’s!”

  When Nouri went by another shouting, “Answer me, Sanaa! Answer me!,” he called out, “Answer me, Talib! Where are you? T-a-l-i-b!”

  His heart pounded. It was all his fault that his cousin was here and not home in the first place! If Talib lay injured, or even dead, it was because of him.

  As he tore through the wreckage, Nouri hardly recognized anything, much less the second-story apartment Talib had once pointed out. He tried one stairway after another, knocking on the doors. Sometimes there was no answer; sometimes a stranger appeared.

  Finally, he found a pale blue door that seemed familiar. He knocked but no one came. He knocked again and was turning to leave when someone drew back the bolt.

  The door opened to reveal A’mma Fatima. She was pale, her cheeks smudged with ash. “Why, Nouri . . .”

  “Marhaba, A’mma. You’re okay! I came to see Talib. To see if he’s all right. . . .”

  “Come in, then.” She led him through a room where an old man sat on a stool sipping tea, and then into a smaller one where A’mmo Nazar lay on a bed on the floor, his head bandaged.

  “Marhaba, A’mmo. I’m sorry for your injury.” Nouri bowed slightly.

  Talib rested on another bed nearby, his stick gun beside him.

  Nouri sat down beside him, saying, “How are you?”

  Talib shrugged. Like A’mma Fatima, he looked as white as a piece of samoon bread. His curly hair was stuck to his forehead and he didn’t look Nouri in the eye.

  Without thinking, Nouri pulled the Game Whiz from his pocket. The dark screen still lit up with flashing lights, pings, and tiny blasts. He thrust it at Talib, saying, “Here. It’s yours now.”

  But Talib just stared.

  Nouri sighed. Talib had been through a real bombing, and here he was handing him a miniature war. But he had nothing else to give. “Please take it,” he urged.

  When Talib continued to stare, Nouri set the Game Whiz down next to his feet, saying, “I’ll come back soon. We’ll play a game together.”

  CHARRED

  When the muezzin called the next morning, Talib heard al-Shatri’s radio playing, the announcers telling and retelling the awful news.

  Baba beckoned to Talib. “My books,” he said softly. “Go. Get them.” And he closed his eyes.

  Talib glanced toward the window. “Of course, Baba.”

  “I’ll go with you, Talib,” said Mama, reaching for her head scarf.

  Talib thought of taking his stick gun, of holding it across his chest as a real soldier would. But he knew the gun was just a child’s toy and today he had a man’s work.

  Warm, smoky air filled the stairway, and Mama pulled her scarf across her face.

  At the bottom of the stairs, no one tended the tea maker’s stall or the stand of silver bracelets. Fires still smoldered in boxes of books and in the innards of wrecked buildings. Talib covered his nose with a handkerchief against the dirty curtain of ash. Mutanabbi Street had become the Gray Zone.

  Talib looked up at al-Shatri’s building. Two of the columns supporting the upper story had been blown away. Much of the ornate facade lay in a heap.

  A man passed, muttering, “Allah is great!”

  But how could Allah have let such a thing happen?

  Two men were unreeling a wheel of barbed wire. Two others stretched the wire across the front of a building that tilted precariously.

  Talib and Mama stepped through the wreckage, some pieces taller than they were. An unwound black turban, now a long cotton ribbon, lay over a twisted metal book cart. There was a smashed violin, children’s stickers, a pair of shoes, and honeyed baklava ground into the sidewalk. Here and there something dark stained the sidewalk.

  A charred cell phone lay beside a bit of burned flesh. A note attached to the phone read: “This is the only remains from this person. Everyone is going back to Allah.”

  Mama let out a sob.

  Scavengers with black garbage bags picked through the rubble.

  At the corner, two Iraqi soldiers blocked the way.

  “No sightseeing,” one said roughly.

  Talib stepped in front of Mama, shielding her. “We’re not sightseers. We have a bookstall here. We need to get our books.”

  The soldiers glanced at each other, then stood aside.

  “I wish we could go back home,” Mama said, wiping at her cheek.

  “We will, Mama,” said Talib.

  “I mean to Karada.”

  He took her hand, repeating, “We will.”

  Talib hardly recognized the spot where the bookstall had once been. He could barely make out Baba’s red carpet, black now, littered with debris and with large holes burned in the wool.

  Mama knelt down and began to cry, covering her face with both hands.

  Talib offered her his handkerchief. “Don’t, Mama. It will be all right.”

  The shelves of books, once protected behind the plywood, were now a heap of charcoal. Some of the books which had been displayed on the carpet still looked readable. Others still smoldered, plumes of smoke spiraling slowly upward.

  “Let’s put the ones that can be mended in one pile, like this.” Talib set a book on the edge of the carpet. “And the ones that are too damaged in another. Over here.”

  In silence, Talib and Mama sorted, sometimes hesitating over which pile a book belonged in, sometimes quenching a pocket of burning embers. They coughed and their hands grew black. When Mama wiped her cheek, she left a black smudge.

  Talib lifted a book and put it here. Lifted another and put it there. Each book seemed impossibly heavy. He wondered who had done this terrible thing to Mutanabbi Street? How could anyone, Shiite or Sunni, have done this?

  At last the books were laid in two piles: those thoroughly charred and those less so. Talib looked up at the street, blanketed in smoke.

  “Let me look around a little, Mama,” he said. “Afterward, I’ll carry the good books upstairs.”

  “Not today, Talib. Don’t look around today.”

  “I need to see what’s happened,” Talib protested.

  “Then be careful.” Mama stood up, straightening her skirt, her head scarf. She touched his cheek with the back of her hand.

  He watched as she walked down Mutanabbi Street, avoiding the rubble. He made sure the two soldiers let her pass.

  When Mama had slipped out of sight, Talib began his old route. Everything was completely unfamiliar now. Many buildings had shattered glass and holes blown in the walls.

  At the spot where the Shabandar Café had once risen against the blue sky, the blades of a ceiling fan poked through a pile of bricks. Talib thought he spotted a black-and-white photograph lying next to a broken teapot. He walked closer, peering into the wreckage.

  An Iraqi policeman shouted: “Stay back!”

  At al-Nakash’s stall, Jabir paced the sidewalk, stepping over scraps of Martin Luther King, and bits of pretty Marilyn Monroe mixed with the torn-up
face of Ali Bin Abi Talib, cousin of the prophet.

  An ambulance sat parked on the street nearby, the lights flashing. Talib watched two men loading a stretcher. He looked closer. Was that al-Nakash on the stretcher? The man had al-Nakash’s round face and pursed lips.

  “Al-Nakash!” Talib cried.

  “No use calling him,” said Jabir.

  “Is he . . . ?” A shudder ran through Talib. His hands froze around the edges of the canvas.

  Jabir nodded.

  Talib watched as al-Nakash disappeared inside the ambulance. The men slammed the doors shut. How could Allah . . . ? How?

  Jabir, his jaw working, tears streaking his ash-covered face, said, “See! Something has to be done.”

  “But what?” Talib asked.

  “We need to get back!”

  “Get back at whom?” Talib asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. Get back at anyone.”

  As the ambulance pulled away, Jabir ran after it. He banged on the back door until the driver stopped and let him in.

  Coughing with smoke, and half tripping, Talib fled in the other direction.

  . . .

  He brought armload after armload of Baba’s books into their little room, his knees trembling with exhaustion, his mind trembling with Jabir’s words.

  “Thank you, my son,” Baba said as each load arrived.

  Talib brought with him the smell of burnt paper, the new smell of Mutanabbi Street.

  BIG GUNS

  Nouri woke to Baba’s voice: “Nouri! Stay away from the windows!”

  He sat up sleepily, but then his eyes opened wide at the sound of gunfire. He rushed into the front room to see Baba standing to one side of a window, pulling the curtain back, peering out. Mama had barricaded herself behind a table turned on its side. The tablecloth lay puddled on the floor. A vase had shattered. Mama clutched a wailing Shatha.

  “Come here,” Mama ordered, moving to make a spot.

  “But—” Nouri gestured toward Baba.

  “Come right here,” she commanded, her silver bracelets clattering.

  At a volley of gunfire, Shatha screamed and Nouri joined Mama behind the table. But he insisted on looking around the edge of the table toward Baba.

  “There’s men out there I’ve never seen before,” Baba was saying. “They’re shooting at each other, throwing rocks, bottles.”

  “I wish you’d get down here with us, Mohammed,” pleaded Mama.

  But Baba stayed by the window.

  Baba wore his security guard gun in a holster at his waist. Every now and then he rested his hand on it. Baba said he’d never shot the gun. Not once.

  Would Baba go out to join the fight?

  Nouri wished Mama would let him stand with Baba, checking out the action.

  “These men aren’t anyone we know,” said Baba. “They’re making Karada a battlefield. All for their own purposes.”

  When gunfire hit the house, even Baba crouched. Nouri covered his ears. Would the bullets strike the windows and come right inside? This felt nothing like playing war with his cousins.

  During lulls in the fighting, Shatha slept and even Nouri dozed, his head propped on the table leg. Over and over, he woke to renewed gunshots.

  As the light reddened with dawn, there came a new sound, like the purr of a giant cat. The gunfire slowed. There were a few pops, then silence.

  Baba took a longer look outside. “It’s the Americans,” he said. “They’ve brought their tanks.”

  Nouri rushed to the window before Mama could stop him. Outside the street was filled with green tanks, their big guns rotating this way and that. Helicopters beat the air.

  Right by the window, there came the sound of many feet running.

  When all was quiet except for the drone of the tanks, Baba opened the door.

  Nouri stood behind him on tiptoe, looking out into the dusty air.

  After a period of quiet, Baba led the way through the courtyard.

  Nouri followed, leaving Mama and Shatha peering from the doorway. He ran a quick eye over A’mmo Hakim’s car in the courtyard. To his relief, it stood undamaged, as if the night’s events had never happened.

  When Baba opened the gate, Nouri looked out. By the wall of the white bougainvillea, where he and his cousins had played war, two men lay sprawled.

  “Dead,” Baba whispered.

  There was no way to tell if the men had been Sunni or Shiite.

  At that moment Zaid al-Najeeb came out of his house. He lifted his arms to the sky, declaring, “They will have to kill me! I will never leave!”

  Baba groaned.

  . . .

  Nouri didn’t ask permission to go visit Talib on Mutanabbi Street. Surely, Mama would object. Instead he slipped out. As Nouri walked to the bus stop, past the tanks, he picked his way over shattered glass and splashed blood.

  . . .

  At al-Shatri’s, Nouri burst in: “There was a gun battle right on our street. Two guys got killed. Right where we used to play.”

  Talib’s eyes widened. “You’re joking.”

  “It’s not a joke.” Nouri kept his hands behind his back, not wanting Talib to see the way they still shook.

  On Talib’s tiny balcony, the boys surveyed the scene below. Barricades kept out all vehicles except American tanks, police cars, and dump trucks. Dark banners floated overhead, mourning the dead. The scrape of shovels filled the air as men loaded rubble onto wheelbarrows and trucks.

  “It isn’t right for people who don’t even live in Karada to come fight there,” Nouri said.

  “Are there any Sunnis left?”

  “Only al-Najeeb. You remember him? The mechanic?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s acting crazy. Someone’s going to kill him.”

  “Mmm,” mused Talib.

  “We should do something.” Nouri gestured toward the blackened, smoldering scene below.

  “But what?”

  Nouri noticed a small cut over Talib’s eyebrow and suddenly couldn’t bring himself to speak. Really, Talib had been through much more than he had. He picked up the Game Whiz from a nearby table, saying, “I’ll hold it, but you can press the button on that side. I’ll do this one.”

  It felt good to have his hand so near Talib’s, and to do something together, working as a team.

  A SUNNI

  As Talib reached the broom high into the corner, searching out spider webs, the radio made an announcement. The man’s voice clearly stated that the noontime attack on Mutanabbi Street had been carried out by an irhabi Sunni. The irhabi Sunni had driven the car with the bomb inside. Like little soldiers, his words marched into the air.

  Talib beat at a mat of webs. So a Sunni had finally avenged those marauding Shiites. The ones who’d broken the neighbors’ windows and stolen refrigerators. The ones who’d shunned him and Mama.

  But then he set his broom against the wall and sat down on a stool. A Sunni like him had set off the car bomb. A Sunni had destroyed great beauty. A Sunni had injured and killed innocent people, including al-Nakash.

  Without a word, al-Shatri brought Talib a cup of tea.

  The radio announcer went on to talk about growing strife in the neighborhoods of Baladiyat, Saidiyah, Doura, Hurriyah, Ghazaliya. . . .

  Now even Mutanabbi Street was no longer a haven. In all of Baghdad, no safety remained.

  . . .

  “They say Mutanabbi Street will be closed for months,” said Baba that afternoon. “If I can’t sell books, what are we going to do here?”

  Talib looked up from his book. He was reading about the dancers, Nasirulla and Salma, who’d stolen their master’s gold and escaped. He put a marker in the page. “Can’t we just go home?”

  Mama began to cry.

  Baba laid his hand over Talib’s, saying, “Yes, someday. But not yet.”

  They had no home. They had nothing but damaged books. Still, the books were everything. Talib gestured toward the boxes. “Should we try to fix those?”
>
  Baba nodded. “Might as well.” He stood and gathered a roll of tape, a bottle of glue, and a small soft brush. He pulled up a chair at the worktable, saying, “With the war, we have no cookies or baklava. Books have to be our sweets.”

  When Talib brought over the first book, and Baba flipped it open, a small cloud of dust fanned into the room.

  Talib sneezed.

  As the two of them made their way through a short stack, cleaning some, fixing others, their fingers grew black. The soot, Talib thought, was the sorrow of Mutanabbi Street. How could something so broken be fixed? Why had he suggested such a thing?

  Al-Shatri came into the room, rubbing his hands together in their fingerless mittens. He took up a book and read: “When the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, the Tigris ran red one day, black the next. The red was the blood of the victims. The black the ink of the books.”

  “See, Talib,” said Baba, “it’s worth our time to repair these. Iraq has a great tradition of literacy.”

  Talib smiled. Books were the bread of Baba’s soul.

  “Let me help,” said al-Shatri, pulling up a stool.

  The three of them worked in silence, handing the books back and forth. In the end, none was perfect, but all could be read.

  When it came time to light the kerosene lamp, Mama set out their little blue bowls, and then brought out the lentil soup, steaming from the stove.

  After they’d washed the soot from their hands and pulled the clattering stools to the table, Talib realized he’d worked for hours without thinking of anything but books. Mama’s lentils tasted good and he ate up his bowlful quickly. The kerosene lamp threw a halo of light onto the small blue flowers of the tablecloth.

  Just as they finished eating, the muezzin’s evening call sounded—holy words floating into the sky. Mama went to the corner and unrolled her prayer mat.

  But Talib stayed seated, tapping his fingertips on the edge of the table.

  “You never pray anymore,” commented Baba.

  “I can’t,” Talib responded.

  “Allah can be a refuge in hard times,” said al-Shatri softly.

  Talib nodded, noticing that al-Shatri wasn’t praying either.