The Old Woman and the River Read online

  Getting things ready, then setting out. She was gratified by the solidarity the donkeys showed her. They didn’t start braying when she entered their pen at two in the morning, making do with only a few muffled snorts. She strapped her few supplies onto Good Omen’s back, pulled her cloak tight around herself, and cast a final glance at the other donkeys. “I’ll be seeing you,” she whispered.

  She thought it best not to mount Good Omen at the start. “I think you know the way,” she said to him. She let him walk along in front of her. In a few minutes they had left behind the alleys that ran through the shanties of the evacuees, and they confronted an empty land that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Um Qasem noticed the palm tree groves standing a few minutes’ walk to her left. If she happened to need drinking water, she could head over to them. All of a sudden she realized that Good Omen had come to a halt and was nodding toward her with his head. “I can still walk,” she said to him. “The moment I feel tired I’ll get on your back,” she added. He refused to budge. She drew up to him and ran her hand over his neck.

  “If you insist.” She climbed onto his back and he instantly broke into a brisk trot. Had Um Qasem thought it over, she would have realized that with her small frame she was hardly a burden for Good Omen, compared with the stack of bricks weighing almost a quarter of a ton that crushed him as he wobbled his way from the kiln to the construction site several miles away through the crowded streets of Najaf.

  After her husband died, she hadn’t felt like touching food for days on end, provoking her children’s and grandchildren’s anxiety and pleas.

  “If you go on with this hunger strike—”

  “It’s not a hunger strike.”

  They begged, they scolded her. “You look like someone who’s decided to starve to death.”

  She relented and went back to taking her meals as usual. She knew how much they worried about her health. She remembers what Bu Qasem used to say to her.

  “You have the figure of a gazelle.”

  She used to laugh. “A bag of bones.”

  The day of Nowruz. She remembers what her mother used to tell her. “I gave birth to you on the morning of Nowruz.” Some people like to celebrate when their birthday comes around. For her part, the only thing that concerned her was her husband, then her sons and daughters.

  She wasn’t yet twenty when she gave birth to her firstborn, Qasem. She saw his face before her and felt a stab of pain in her breast. Even though he had not yet turned thirty-five, he had gone bald before his time, and in the last three years his face had been taken over by wrinkles making him look twenty years older. Her second son, Hameed, was three years younger than his brother. Unlike his brother, he had stuck to his studies and managed to finish secondary school before he was taken away for military service. He had spent two and a half years away from home. The same thing had happened with her youngest son, Saleh. It was a solace to her that all three of them were fortunate to marry women of the right sort, and grandchildren had sprung up all around her. The same went for her daughters Zahra and Hasna, whose husbands had joined the family.

  Good Omen trots along at a lively pace. “Whenever you feel hungry or thirsty we can head to the fields,” she tells him. Perhaps the swing of his head indicates he’s understood. She takes some time to listen to the silence within herself. Her husband had died before he was yet sixty. Some men live to see eighty, others ninety. Her sorrow spreads inside her chest. She wishes she could make him hear her. “Why did you abandon me?” It occurs to her to alert Good Omen. “Don’t forget...” She stays still for a few seconds, as if to make sure he was listening closely. “We go to Bu Qasem’s resting place between the two palm trees, before continuing on to Sabiliyat.”

  They follow their route alongside the palm tree groves while giving them some berth. In the early morning of the first day, she walked for four hours without a break before pausing to rest for an hour next to a grassy patch, which afforded Good Omen a delicious meal. She continued her progress for another four hours, and then she decided to rest for two hours and took a little nap. She divided up the evening of her first day into two shifts, three hours each. After the darkness had enveloped everything, she settled down for the night on a grassy hill overlooking the Euphrates.

  - 2 -

  “What do you think, Good Omen?” Good Omen was busy chewing at some of the juicy grasses in the vicinity. He raised his head a little. Had he heard her?

  “Will we make it to Bu Qasem’s grave tomorrow?” At that moment, Good Omen felt a powerful urge to lift his head high, stretch out his neck, and deliver an unchecked bray. But remembering her warning, he let out a controlled snort, which Um Qasem interpreted her own way. “That’s what I thought,” she said with satisfaction.

  Bu Qasem had visited her dreams that night. “I’m happy you’ve decided to visit my grave,” he told her. She rejoiced in her heart. “This won’t be a short visit.” Bu Qasem considered her words. “I don’t follow.” The decision came to her. “I will do anything not to leave you out there on your own.” Without pausing he complained, “You returning to Sabiliyat worries me.” “You have no reason to worry,” she insisted. “The place isn’t safe.” “What place is?” she found herself asking antagonistically. “It’s an area of military operations and civilians are not allowed to enter—” “This is the first time I hear you taking the government line,” she interrupted him. His mouth opened as if he were about to speak, but nothing came out. A strange sound filtered inside her that seemed to be coming from behind her somewhere. She turned around to look. The rest of her dream faded away as she woke up to the sound of braying coming from far off.

  The lights of dawn were beginning to spread in the east. She turned around in every direction, trying to spot Good Omen. He was nowhere in sight. Her heart began to thump. Had she made the biggest mistake of all when she neglected to tie him up by her side? A heavy wave of sadness washed over her, accompanied by a sudden sense of having fallen short. She slumped down helplessly. What should she do now? For a moment she was at a loss. The next moment she heard his snorting, as if he was telling her, “I’m here.” Joy flooded over her. “So it was you braying,” she answered, putting two and two together. Good Omen made no reply. Instead, he bent over the grass to sniff around, perhaps he’d find something tasty. A sense of vitality coursed through her, and she sprang to her feet. “We must keep going.”

  As they made their way briskly toward the South, she confided apologetically, “Sometimes suspicion is a sin.” Had he understood her? “I woke up and didn’t see you there and got it in my head you’d run away.” A little while later she told him, “Bu Qasem visited me in my dreams.” Hearing the name of his absent caretaker, Good Omen gave a snort and tossed his head. “He said he wasn’t happy being where he was, in that grave in the middle of nowhere, and I promised not to leave him there.” She was silent for a brief moment, and then she mused out loud, “What can be done about that, I wonder?”

  A little before sunset on the second day, she noticed a dirt track slicing through the fields. Following it, she came across a young farmer weeding his field. She climbed off the donkey and called out a greeting. The young man lifted his head, gazing up at the stranger.

  “How much longer is it to Nasiriya?”

  The farmer reflected for a moment.

  “If you keep going another ten minutes, you’ll reach the edge of the international highway.”

  She listened attentively.

  “If you were to take a taxi you’d be in Nasiriya in an hour.” She didn’t say, What if I didn’t take a taxi?—figuring he’d noticed the donkey.

  “In your situation now...” his voice trailed off, “you’ll need a whole day.”

  She was thinking she might make her way alongside the international highway, but she worried what would happen if she ran into a military patrol or reconnaissance unit who might question her: “Where are you heading?...”

  “Where will you be spending the night?” the young man asked sympathetically.

  A deep sigh escaped her, and her husband’s words came back to her—“God’s land is big enough for everyone, my son.”

  “You can spend the night in my house.”

  She was startled by the young man’s offer.

  He pointed in the distance. “Our village is only a few minutes away. My wife would be pleased to have you as her guest.” Um Qasem was at a loss how to respond. Her entire life she had never been in this kind of situation before. Did she have a right to decline his invitation? Her body went numb all over. She remembered she was in need of a wash, having slept on the ground the night before. It flashed through her mind that she should reply with a heartfelt I don’t wish to be a burden. But instead, she accepted his offer.

  “May God reward your kindness.”

  They walked along side by side followed by Good Omen, who didn’t waste the opportunity to nibble away at the tips of the grasses along the path. The young man couldn’t disguise his astonishment.

  “What if your donkey ran away?”

  “He has no reason to,” she answered calmly.

  Her confidence made him smile. “My name is Saleh,” he said.

  Her face lit up. “That’s the name of my youngest son. He’s around your age.” Her presence of mind returning, she introduced herself. “I’m Um Qasem.”

  After a few moments’ silence Saleh asked, “How did you get here?”

  Finding it difficult to answer his question directly, she said, “I’ve come from Najaf.”

  The young man returned earnestly, “God preserve those who call on the Prophet’s family.”

  “I’m going to visit my husband’s grave,” she explained.

  He seemed interested in hearing more, and she felt no uneasiness relating the story to him. The unexpected timing of her husband’s death... it had been more than two years ago, yet that searing sense of loss still ate away at her. Then one day the conviction had dawned—her house in Sabiliyat would be able to hold her.

  “What’s ‘Sabiliyat’?” Saleh asked her curiously.

  That was the name of the village where Um Qasem had been born and where she’d lived all her life...

  Saleh’s wife was surprised for a moment to see her husband returning in the company of a woman, but it didn’t take long for her to grasp the situation.

  “God preserve those who visit our home.”

  She noticed with interest how quickly her child, who wasn’t yet a year old, took to the newcomer, wrapping its arms around Um Qasem’s neck as if they had known each other a long time. At that instant, her husband leaned in and whispered into his wife’s ear, “A god-fearing woman coming from the holy shrines.”

  Wishing to forestall any anxiety the young couple might have that she would take advantage of their generosity, Um Qasem said, “I won’t impose on you for long.” Then to be clear, she added, “I’ll be leaving at dawn.”

  When Saleh led him to the pen where the animals were kept, Good Omen became unbearably distressed at the sight of a gigantic cow with bulging horns, which met him with dark looks. He’d been in frays with his own kind before, and a donkey would use its hind legs to land a kick on its opponent, leaving time to prepare or flee. But cows attack by thrusting at you with their head, horns and all. Good Omen waited until Saleh had left the pen, and then he followed him out and posted himself in the dusty courtyard not far from the door of the house. He was surprised to hear Saleh addressing him. “If you insist...” With a wave of his hand, he disappeared inside the pen and returned carrying a bale of grass and a bucket of water.

  When the sun rose the next morning, Um Qasem and Good Omen were speeding along toward the South alongside the international highway. Um Qasem kept glancing at the rows of date palms on her left. With luck on her side, she’d be able to find the spot with the two date palms standing aloof where her husband was buried. While he was still alive, she used to claim she knew a lot of things about him. On the other hand, now that he’d left her for all eternity, she was less sure... But since he’d gone away, he’d made a practice of visiting her in her dreams. To be able to see him despite their separation was a partial compensation.

  Her thoughts flew back to the days of her youth. She’d been her parents’ only child. The house she’d grown up in stood in the middle of a sprawling date palm plantation belonging to the Naqeeb family, located on the western end of the village of Sabiliyat. In the middle of the plantation was a cemetery that had been abandoned many decades since. People called it the Ezz Al-Deen Cemetery, a reference to the shrine of a pious man by that name whose four walls still stood there. Her father worked as a foreman of the farmhands for the Naqeebs. She remembers their house, made up of a spacious hut with a thatched roof for receiving guests, a smaller one where her parents slept, and a hut with adobe walls for her.

  She was seventeen when she first set eyes on her husband. He had come around with his donkeys to transport some dates from the area behind the house where they used to store them to the spot where the wooden skiffs docked on Chouma River. Maybe they exchanged glances at first without meaning, maybe she started looking for pretexts to come out of the house whenever he was around. Soon after the date harvest was over, he turned up to ask for her hand. Her father’s words at the time crowd her mind all over again. “He’s a fine young man, and we have a family connection through his father, who comes from Al-Ahsa.” Even though it made her jump for joy inside, she wouldn’t have had the power to say no in any case. Marriage was a matter for her father and her mother to decide.

  The engagement period lasted two months. She remembers how much the wedding preparations had engrossed her mother and her. Two weeks after they were married, her husband took her parents and her on a trip to the holy shrines. That was at the beginning of 1946. At the beginning of 1948, she gave birth to her first son, Qasem. Sons and daughters followed in quick succession. After the birth of her youngest daughter Hasna, Um Qasem prayed to the Lord to seal her womb so she wouldn’t get pregnant again, as a mercy to her husband and to ease the struggle for their worldly needs. God answered her prayers.

  At the beginning of 1958, her father came down with a fever from which he did not recover. Her father’s death did not surprise Um Qasem. Human life is in God’s hands. What bewilders her to this day was what happened to her mother after her father died. She was plunged into something like a state of constant distraction, which she would occasionally break out of to exclaim “Here I am!” as if responding to someone’s call. An anguished feeling would then come over her, wrestling with a sense of disorientation. “What is it, Mother?” “I heard your father’s voice summoning me,” she would answer with distress.

  Her mother died a year after her father, after contracting a similar kind of fever.

  The blow Um Qasem had suffered by losing her husband was also an event of a monumental order, regardless of whether it happened when it did or whether it had waited a couple more years. But fundamentally, it was different from what her mother had experienced. Should she put it down to the sense of connection between two beings who had grown so used to being together that when one left, the other was unable to go on living?

  Good Omen’s steps grew heavier after two hours of brisk exertion. The thought flashed through her mind that it must be the hardness of the ground along the highway and the din of cars going by. “You have a point,” she said to him with understanding, mixed with remorse. She dismounted and looked around. To the right of the road, she spotted a thicket of reeds where the ground made a light dip, only a couple of minutes’ walk away. “What do you say we head over?” In a flash he had bolted, and she was forced to raise her voice. “I’m not a young girl anymore, able to keep up with you.” Reaching the thicket, she saw a mass of reeds and grasses rising out of a sunken bit of ground. It was covered with water that drained out of a neighboring pond. Good Omen was standing amid the stalks of reed, chewing at the tips of some grasses. She approached with caution. She bent over the water, scooped some up in her palm, and brought it to her mouth. She gargled it in her mouth a few times to determine whether it was good to drink or brackish, and it felt right to let it go down. “It’s safe for you to drink,” she said. She knew him well. When he wished to express his approval, he gave an obedient toss of the head.

  After sunset she was able make out the yellow lights of the city of Nasiriya on the edge of the horizon to the South. Her heart began to race. Would she soon get the chance to speak to her husband up close? She would sit facing his grave and address her words to him. She would chide him for his cruelty in going away so soon. She might also tell him—why not—about how his extended family, his sons and daughters and grandchildren, were now living close to the holy shrines.

  She heaved out a sorrowful sigh and addressed herself to Good Omen. “We must find the two date palms where...” She didn’t finish her sentence. She had the sense that Good Omen had understood her. He picked up pace. She remembered distinctly that the two date palms where her husband had been buried stood right next to one another and were nearly the same height, so that their leaves intermeshed.

  Grey clouds gathered in the sky, cloaking the stars and making the darkness deepen. The fact that she could see the lights of the city of Nasiriya in the distance didn’t mean that there was light where she was standing. Her vision blurred as she looked at the date palms. All of them seemed to be nearly the same height, with intermeshing leaves. Her aching head grew heavy. “You must be tired, too.” Good Omen made a low snort. “I’m tired,” she went on plaintively. He turned his steps toward a nearby hill. “Since you chose this spot...” There was gratitude in her voice. She picked a clean bit of ground, spread out her blanket, and nestled her head on her arm. Maybe her headache would stop if she could get some rest, away from the din of the passing cars. Good Omen drifted about nearby grazing. Sleep eluded her. She kept tossing and turning on her blanket.