Act of Grace Read online

  Saddam had taken to writing poems, and when Nasim’s mother returned from these sessions, she would not speak, retreating instead to the piano, her playing frustrated and violent. The first few times her father went in, to try to comfort her, but Nhour was not one to be soothed. She’d slap his hands, pushing him away. ‘Leave!’ she’d demand, as the piano raged.

  Nhour stopped writing. Instead she spent her days playing the piano. Nasim and her father began to move through the house to the music of her mother’s moods; they emerged from their rooms, Nasim her bedroom, her father his study, like soldier crabs, with a scuttle, trying to avoid the other’s gaze. At times the piano-playing was so raw, so sad, that Nasim felt they might all crack open. She could not understand why her mother did not love Uncle, and there were times when Nasim loathed her. How could she be so mean? She hoped Uncle was not hurt by her mother’s cruelty.

  Their house continued to fill with guests, but Nasim knew now that they had not been invited. Her mother let them hold her hand, eyes glazing as they quoted her poetry, or asked her to sign one of her chapbooks. Only Nasim and her father could detect the contemptuous flourish of her pen as Nhour inscribed her name. When the guests asked her to recite a poem, she would defer to Saddam; when they asked if she would play the piano, she said she could not play, that she just picked at the keys as if at a plate of leftovers. She instructed Nasim, often dressed in the satin Chinese pyjamas Uncle had sent her, to play instead, and soon guests were clamouring, calling out requests, framing her still childish face with their hands, kissing her cheeks.

  In the early hours of the morning, when the guests left, floor and tiger skin covered in party debris, Nasim and her father would go to bed, but the house would fill with their mother’s mournful, restless playing and they would not sleep. Once, Nasim looked through her window and saw people had gathered in the street to listen. Not the guests – they’d been satiated by Nasim’s playing – but others: street cleaners, early-rising chai sellers, those who were too scared to sleep. They swayed to her mother’s sad song, their eyes filled with something Nhour no longer believed in, a true love of country.

  Then, a few years later, when it became clear that Nasim was well on her way to becoming a successful pianist, her mother stopped playing. Uncle did not call on them as often, poetry no longer a priority. His attention was elsewhere, but a car would still arrive every now and then for Nasim, to come ride his horses.

  *

  ‘You like this one, don’t you?’

  Nasim froze. She’d been brushing Husam, and the horse nudged her hand with his muzzle, snorting at her to keep brushing. She did not move, staring at the man who had spoken, his frame filling the archway of the stable. At the palace parties where she’d played her part in his sisters’ fashion parades, he had never spoken to her, not even when he stood beside his father and shook her parents’ hands. He had been gangly then, with thick brown hair and a toothy grin, slouching over to greet dignitaries, most of whom stood on their toes to bestow kisses on him. His eyes were dark, intense, and Nasim had the feeling he’d been watching her all along.

  He stepped into the stable, brushing against her as he put his hand on the horse’s neck. Husam showed his teeth. Uday laughed. ‘Seems he only wants you,’ he said, and Nasim blushed.

  ‘It is Nasim, yes?’ She nodded. ‘The pianist, yes?’ She nodded again. ‘As well as horse rider, daughter of the wind?’ Uday grinned, his eyes dancing, and Nasim blushed again, not sure if he was making fun of her. He put his hand out and cupped her chin in his palm. She jumped, his touch electric. He laughed again and put his face close to hers, his dark eyes turning serious. ‘Will you play for me one day?’ Aware that she had not yet said a word, Nasim tried to think of a response, but failed and simply nodded again. Uday smiled, letting his hand drop, his fingers floating downwards against her skin. Nasim had a glimpse of a future then, of being a princess, a princess with a silver horse.

  Many years later, people whispered that Uday Hussein could read your thoughts. It seemed to Nasim at this moment that he could read them because he made you think them. His fingers kept moving until they were on her dress and inching up her hem.

  Then, outside, there was a commotion as several cars pulled up. The empty stable filled with grooms, smoothing their uniforms. Nasim could hear their solemn greetings. It was Saddam.

  Uday smiled as he stepped away from her and put his finger to his lips. Then he reached for Husam, pulling hard on the bridle so the stallion had to lower his head and splay his front legs to steady. The horse whinnied. ‘I would like to give you this horse,’ Uday said quietly. Nasim looked at him, confused. ‘He is yours.’ He was watching her, waiting for her to say something, when Saddam appeared in the doorway, stopping as he saw the two of them together. Uday loosened his grip on Husam, not taking his eyes off Nasim.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said finally, and he nodded, going to greet his father. Nasim watched as Uday kissed his father’s cheeks, her dress pinched in her fingers as always, ready to curtsey, before Saddam dismissed the gesture with a wave and instead put his arms out for an embrace. But this time Uncle didn’t look at her, not once. From then on, palace cars no longer arrived to take Nasim to the stables.

  When her father noticed, he looked at her carefully at breakfast one morning and asked if something had happened. She shook her head, not looking up from her baked eggs. Alone, playing the piano, she cried, the felt-tipped hammers echoing the ache in her chest. Sometimes she imagined she was on Husam, riding the silver horse so fast her breath caught, her fingers tangled in his mane. Sometimes she imagined she was playing for Uday, as he had requested.

  Three months later, Nasim’s father was arrested. The men who took him from his bed, not letting him change out of his pyjamas, said he was to be charged for speaking against the regime in his faculty. He was gone for six months, and when he returned he was missing three fingers. He never played his oud again. After that they lived in a kind of muted fear, their house still decorated with Saddam’s gifts.

  *

  It was a fellow poet that sped Nasim’s mother to her inevitable end. He was a friend of hers, Jacob Bekhor, a Baghdadi Jew who had refused to join his family in the vast exodus to Israel in the 1950s. Zionism, he had claimed at the time, was for European Jews, not Iraqi Jews. He declared publicly that his loyalty to his nation took precedence over his faith, though in more private moments with Nasim’s parents he admitted it was his poetic sensibilities, his connection to place, that kept him there.

  The poets’ friendship ran deep – and Nasim, who was born long after Jacob was eventually forced to leave, often wondered, hearing the way her mother spoke of him, if they had once been lovers. Nhour told Nasim that Jacob had held on in Baghdad, his love of country far exceeding that of ‘many Arabs’. He had lost his teaching post, and was forced to carry a yellow card marking him out as Jewish, but still he would not leave. When she begged him to flee, he would reply, ‘But without Iraq, who am I?’

  Then the Republican Guard turned its gaze on Jacob, accusing him of spying for Israel and encoding secret messages in his poetry. At last he had to concede defeat. By then Radio Baghdad was regularly broadcasting calls to celebrate the execution of Israeli spies, most infamously the bodies of nine Jews left hanging in Liberation Square. Carrying a bag of his notebooks, Jacob left Iraq. But, Nhour always added, he refused to seek sanctuary in Israel, blaming it for turning his country against him. Instead he found refuge in New York, marrying a German Jewish widow who had a faded blue tattoo on her arm. ‘He is not stupid, though,’ Nhour said firmly to Nasim. ‘He knows he is living in the cradle of the enemy.’

  Nhour often spoke to Nasim like this. Nasim’s own life – her days at the conservatorium, visiting the ice-cream parlour with her friends, listening to pop music – was of no interest to her. ‘Come to me when you have lived,’ Nhour once said, when Nasim complained of not being selected to represent the academy in a special ‘Arab unity’ tour. Nasim figu
red Nhour would give her a sign when she had lived enough to be taken seriously. That her mother would not live long enough herself – this had not occurred to her.

  The two poets, Nhour and Jacob, wrote letters and exchanged poems. In 1976, Nhour sent news of Nasim’s birth and Jacob managed to send a fancy American-made stroller, which drew much attention, even in increasingly modern Baghdad. When Nhour stopped writing poetry, many years later, he continued to send his work to her, and she edited it for him, annotating the margins with notes and scrawls. These edits, Jacob said, were invaluable. Now he wanted to thank her in person on his way home from a book tour through Europe.

  It was a bad idea. Nasim’s father knew it, as did Nasim, who was old enough to know such things by now. But her mother’s eyes lit up at the poet’s suggestion, and it was like seeing daylight after the longest night.

  When the time came, her father insisted the visit be kept secret, as if such a thing were possible, and bundled them into the car, driving to a lakeside town. A stern-looking woman gave them a key to a cottage, and they carried in their things, including a basket with cheese, dates, coffee and bread, and waited in tense silence.

  Two hours later, there was a knock on the door. Nhour opened it. It was Jacob and his wife, Anke, relieved they had found the right cottage. After they waved their taxi away, there was much hugging and crying as Nasim’s mother pressed her face to Jacob and then Anke, closing her eyes. Somewhat dramatically, Jacob presented Nhour with his book. It was a thin object, dark green, with a photo of a burning pyre on the front. He nodded, as if to say ‘Read on,’ and she opened it, Nasim’s father peering over her shoulder, his eyes widening. Jacob had dedicated the collection to her: For Nhour Amin, the true Iraqi poet. Nhour started to cry. Nasim’s father was also crying. He kissed his wife and kissed Jacob too. He disappeared to the kitchen and returned with wine and glasses.

  Their spirits lifted as Jacob read aloud from his book, Nasim’s mother clapping at turns of phrase, while Anke cuddled up with Nasim, asking her about boyfriends and admirers. They had less than twenty-four hours together, and it became clear that Nhour and Jacob intended to waste none of them on sleep. Nasim curled up on the couch next to her mother, who was threading her fingers in and out of her hair, basking in her mother’s happy voice, her touch, resisting her father’s attempts to shoo her to bed.

  At one point in the night, as Jacob read aloud, Nasim’s father, who had been lounging in a cane chair, eyes shut as if snoozing, sat up straight. His face was alert. ‘Read that again,’ he ordered. Jacob and Nhour exchanged a look. Nasim sat up sleepily, pawing at her mother’s lap like a kitten, trying to soften it again, but her mother had turned to stone.

  ‘If you won’t read it, pass it to me,’ Nasim’s father ordered. To Jacob, he held out his two-fingered hand.

  Nhour nodded at Jacob. ‘You read it,’ she said.

  Jacob cleared his throat. Nasim listened as well. At first it was just words. Poetry, she sometimes thought, is mere rope. Something you tugged at until finally, if you were lucky, a pail of water was hauled to the surface.

  Tonight the dark well seemed unending. But then, the words slipped into her veins and her heart started to race.

  ‘In Tikrit,’ Jacob read, ‘the watermelons are fat with blood.’

  Nasim looked at her father. He was staring at Nhour, his eyebrow twitching as it did when he was angry. Jacob continued:

  ‘The boats

  they send down the Tigris

  are made of skin.

  In the hulls

  are the innards

  of foolish slights.

  Tongues still twitching.

  The river is black with ink

  A common carp surfaces

  gills muddy with massacre,

  round silver eye on you.

  He is a taxi driver,

  a cigarette tout

  He is glass in your shoe,

  the man who twisted

  your mother’s nipple

  until her milk soured.

  Iraq’s true son.’

  Jacob paused.

  ‘But if he is a poet, then poetry is dead.’

  The cottage was silent. Jacob looked over at Nhour. Finally he said, ‘You didn’t tell him?’

  Nhour did not look at him, her eyes locked with her husband’s. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly but resolutely, sparking her husband into rage. He leapt up, knocking the book of poems out of Jacob’s hands and onto the floor.

  ‘You have killed us,’ he yelled, kicking the book. He kept yelling, kept kicking it, until Nasim started to cry, begging her father to stop. At last he lowered his voice. ‘You,’ he said to Nhour, ‘have killed our daughter for a poem.’

  It was the only time Nasim ever saw her mother waver. A tremor crossed her face. Then her mettle returned. ‘We were already dead,’ Nhour said.

  *

  The next morning, they walked around the lake. The town had the acrid scent of orange peel and spiced fish. The group was silent and withdrawn. Nhour walked in front, with Jacob behind her; then came Nasim with Anke, their worrying hands entangled; and her father, carrying a long stick he’d found, smooth, white as bone, holding it like a staff.

  They returned to the cottage, saying little as they prepared the table for lunch. Once the food had been laid out and they had sat down, there was a knock. Everyone stiffened, staring at the wooden door as if trying to see through it.

  When the knock came again, Nasim’s father answered it. The man standing on the doorstep nodded at him, and then, as if he was expected, stepped inside. He was dressed casually in jeans, a white shirt and leather slippers.

  There was a beat, and then everyone swung into action, making a fuss over him, asking his name, if he had travelled far, setting an extra place at the table. They resisted glancing at one another, instead focusing on the uninvited guest, asking him questions. Anke praised the Baghdad airport, the condition of the roads. ‘American roads,’ she said with a practised grimace, ‘are in terrible condition.’

  But the uninvited guest was an expert. As Nhour served the fish and the rice, he asked her, ‘Have you written much lately?’ She reddened, saying she had not, at which he expressed dismay. He proceeded to steer the conversation to Nhour and Jacob. What was their relationship? Why had he returned? What did he think of the changes in Iraq? He had lived here for a time, yes? He reeled off the address where Jacob had lived, the faculty in which he’d lectured, even the number of his office. And the poetry of their leader, had he read it? Had Nhour provided him with the president’s poems? Was it true he had just published a book? Did he have a copy here?

  Jacob’s replies were sound, and for a time each man batted the other’s words back across the table. The lunch drew to a close and Nasim’s father announced that their visitors had a plane to catch. But then the uninvited guest began to talk about the Holocaust, what a great fiction it was. Was Jacob familiar with the hoax? Jacob sat forward in his chair, ignoring Anke’s hand on his arm. ‘Such a success, this fiction,’ the guest continued, ‘but it is not finished, no?’ He looked at Nhour, then at Jacob. ‘You are not yet satisfied, no?’ He gave a sweet, open-faced smile to Anke, who had largely avoided his gaze until now. ‘You Jews are never satisfied.’

  Jacob bit. Blood rushed to his face as he rolled up Anke’s sleeve and thrust her arm over the plates and into the uninvited guest’s face. Anke cried out, trying to pull it back. For a moment they struggled, she wincing in pain as Jacob gripped her arm. Nasim put her hand over her mouth. She’d seen tattoos before – most memorably the three dark blue dots on Saddam’s wrist – but something about the crudely etched numbers on her new friend’s arm startled her.

  Jacob was a deep shade of plum now, spit forming at the corners of his mouth. He jabbed at the tattoo with his finger. It was a frozen tableau around the table as Anke hung her head, Nhour stared at the wall and Nasim’s father hovered over his chair. The uninvited guest gazed down at Anke’s arm, as
if committing the numbers to memory. ‘This,’ Jacob said, still jabbing at the tattoo with his finger, ‘this is your fiction.’ He pointed at the numbers. ‘This,’ he added, ‘is your great Uncle’s poetry.’

  The guest glanced sharply at Jacob. Then, as if dealing with a child, he wagged his finger at him sternly. He pushed his chair back, looking at his watch. ‘I believe you two have a plane to catch.’ Anke nodded feebly, not looking up. The guest picked up the volume of Jacob’s poetry on the coffee table. He looked at the cover before slipping it in his pocket. Then he turned to Nhour and thanked her for lunch, gathering his coat from beside the door.

  When he left, the stillness collapsed. Anke started to hit her husband with her fists. ‘You idiot, you idiot,’ she said, pummelling him until Nhour put a hand on her arm. ‘Stop, Anke, stop. We must go now, or you will be late.’

  In the car Jacob begged for them to come into the airport with him, to fly to Beirut, told them that he would organise the rest – promised it as if his little book of poems could achieve this. But Nasim’s parents shook their heads, knowing they would not be allowed to fly. They returned home and waited.

  It took a long time. None of them knew why it took so long.

  *

  There was champagne and ice-cream in the foyer beforehand, and Nasim wore a pretty yellow dress. She and her father were sitting in a row close to the front, next to the other music students. The ceiling of the theatre was a swirl of painted pink roses, an enormous golden eagle perched in each corner. Nhour had stayed home, unable to let go of her vigil of dread. Above the stage was a portrait of Saddam, his expression benevolent yet stern.

  There was an excited hush as the lights dimmed and the velvet curtains parted to reveal a black grand piano. Beatrice Ohanessian strode onto the stage, stately and elegant, with a flowing pale blue veil over her hair. She silenced the applause by sitting and playing a single shimmering note. Nasim leaned forward, along with everyone else. Her face shone, her heart pressing against her dress.