Act of Grace Page 11

  As the notes unfurled, it was not like people said, that time stopped: rather, it felt to Nasim as if time unravelled. With each swelling sound, she could see time as it was, ribboning into the future and into the past, less like dying and living than an infinite dive into the sea.

  So enthralled was Nasim that she did not see the man walk slowly down the aisle, flicking his lighter, a tiny flame jumping in and out of the darkness. She only noticed when he paused at the row in which she and her father were seated. He turned sideways so he could make his way across, everyone shuffling to let him pass. He held up his lighter, flicking it on and off, while onstage Ohanessian fumbled, sensing the disturbance.

  Then he stopped in front of Nasim, his legs crushing hers, and peered up at the dress circle. He held up his lighter, flicked it on. The flame, she realised, was a question. Nasim and her father turned to look, seeing only the faint outlines of people sitting high up in the dark. But then there was a solitary flame, a lighter held aloft in the darkness. The man looked back down at Nasim, his eyes coolly sweeping over her. He put his lighter in his pocket, nodded at her, then returned to the aisle, brushing everyone’s knees the other way as he passed. As he reached the exit, the audience resettled, turning their attention again to the stage, and Ohanessian regained composure. But Nasim sat gasping. The famous pianist’s tone was tinny now, as if coming from a transistor.

  She clutched her chest and remembered one of her mother’s most famous poems. It had extolled the Bedouin method of slaughter: how the desert herders would make a small slit in a goat’s chest before reaching inside with their hands, feeling for the creature’s heart. As they squeezed it, the goat would writhe in their arms, before sliding into death. A true Arab does his own murder, had been her mother’s point; a true Arab knows the importance of another creature’s heart. Nasim felt a draft on her chest, even checked to see the front of her dress had not been cut open. She began to shake, and her father’s two-fingered hand sprang out to hold hers. Above them, the eagles had opened their eyes.

  When the curtains fell and the lights came up, Nasim and her father did not move. No one looked at them as the audience stood and stretched, gathering handbags and coats, pushing towards the exit. Then the theatre was empty, except for Nasim and her father and the entourage waiting at the door.

  *

  Two men led her out of the theatre to a black car with tinted windows and a golden eagle on the bonnet. One put his hand on the back of her head, tightening his grip when she tried to turn around to see her father. Her last memory of him was face down on the marble floor, arms twisted behind his back, and his muffled, ‘Please, I beg you, please.’

  They drove through the streets of the city, the driver on the horn, traffic quickly pulling over to let them pass. Nasim asked what was going to happen to her father, and when the men said nothing, her voice rose: could they take her home so she could tell her mother? ‘Please? We could just stop there, I can run in and come back out.’ One of the men looked at her in the rear-view mirror and smirked. ‘Please?’ she said again, but they said nothing. ‘Please!’ Nasim felt herself unhinge, and started to punch the backs of their seats. ‘Say something!’ she screamed, her face wet with tears. The man who’d smirked turned then, thrusting a gun at her forehead. Nasim scrambled back, pressing against the door, her arms over her head.

  ‘That’s better, darling,’ he said.

  They turned into the royal drive, with its statue of Saddam, and passed the Swords of Qādisīyah, the arch made from the melted weapons of the Iraqi war dead. The two massive fists coming out of the ground holding the swords were said to be sculpted in the image of Saddam’s own hands. At the huge roundabout, the driver turned right and crossed the long bridge with undulating arches. Across the water, she could see Saddam’s palace; it was lit up for the evening, green lights reflecting on the lake. Nasim pressed her face against the glass, willing the car to turn back, to go there instead. But they kept driving over the bridge, towards the island palace of Uday Hussein.

  ‘Out,’ the man with the gun said, before reaching into the back and pulling her from the car. He led her into the palace, past a formation of guards, across the huge foyer with two sweeping marble staircases that met in the centre and a tiered golden chandelier. Except for the sound of their shoes, it was eerily quiet. Nasim followed as the foyer opened onto a ballroom, the tiled ceiling billowing like silk. They cut across to another archway and into a bar clad entirely in mirrors. A disco ball spun over the empty dance floor, sending diamonds of light cascading over Nasim’s naked arms.

  The man walked behind the bar and returned with a glass, a long stick in his other hand. ‘Drink,’ he said, then there was a whoosh as he whipped the stick through the air.

  Nasim peered into the glass. ‘What is it?’ she said, and he whipped the cane across her legs, the pain searing.

  ‘Drink, you silly bitch.’

  Nasim drank. It was overly sweet, and less like swallowing a liquid than a gas, the feeling of it rolling down her throat, leaving a burning sensation in its wake. ‘Faster,’ he said. Whoosh. When she had drained the glass, Nasim gave it back to him and stood very still, watching her hands, as if waiting for her body to do something. ‘Stay,’ the man ordered. He left her on the edge of the dance floor.

  Music started to play. She recognised it immediately: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. When she was thirteen, she had practised every day for a month so as to play it perfectly. Proudly, she had asked her mother to come listen, finishing the piece with a flourish, bringing her hands up before setting them down on the keys again, like she’d seen famous pianists do. She looked to her mother for praise, but Nhour was making a face as if Nasim had done something disgusting.

  ‘Don’t do that, Nasim,’ she scolded, mimicking the flourish. Then she sat beside her on the stool and told her to play it again. Nasim felt a flare of anger but set her jaw and played while her mother adjusted with her hands and her shoulders and her legs. She flicked at Nasim’s calf and said, ‘Don’t press the pedal so hard,’ and lifted Nasim’s palms: ‘Don’t flatten them. Make them curved, fingers like spiders’ legs.’ She was right – it was the same thing her teacher had told her – but Nasim flattened them again.

  ‘Be delicate, humble,’ her mother urged, and Nasim suddenly slammed her hands flat on the notes, making a loud, ugly sound.

  ‘What would you know?’ she said, tapping on the sheet music. ‘How would you know how this is meant to be played?’

  Her mother’s face hardened. ‘I know music that is felt, Nasim Amin,’ she said, her copper eyes remote. ‘Your playing is soulless.’

  Her mother was cruel, Nasim realised now, standing in this garish bar. Her truth was unyielding.

  But the sonata tinkled over Nasim and there was a loosening in her bones, as if the drink had somehow gotten between each joint, and when Uday came into the room she did a strange thing. She smiled. He was wearing a white silk shirt, flowing black pants and jewel-encrusted slippers. He grinned as though they’d been planning to meet here and held out his hands. Nasim pretended to hesitate before putting hers in his. He leaned in and kissed her cheek, then the other, running his hands down the length of her yellow dress. Then he pulled a barstool out, gesturing to her to sit, watching as her dress gathered around her thighs as she drew herself up. He walked around to the other side of the bar and poured out two glasses of scotch, a can of Coke shared between them.

  ‘I trust my men were kind to you,’ he said, and it was then that Nasim made a leap, felt herself in the air, imagining a gulf beneath her. She looked down at her hands and put them around her glass as a child would.

  Uday looked at her, alert. ‘No?’ he said. She kept her eyes downcast and he leaned over the counter to put his hand under her chin. ‘You can trust me,’ he said, lifting her face so that she gazed back at him. Nasim gave a small frown as if grappling with a dilemma. He nodded at her and she took a deep breath.

  ‘The man, the one who bro
ught me in here.’ She stopped.

  ‘Tell me,’ Uday encouraged, and she looked at her hands again.

  ‘He touched me.’

  She listened as Uday sucked in his breath, a startlingly vicious sound. ‘Where?’ he demanded. His face twisted with fury.

  Nasim pointed slowly to her breasts. ‘Here,’ she whispered.

  Uday’s eyes flashed. ‘Drink,’ he said, tapping her glass. ‘I’ll be back.’

  She watched as he left, his body alert with anger. Then she lifted the glass to her lips, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She could hear him now, yelling; there was the sound of a stick, a familiar whoosh, and a voice pleading. More voices now, loud and excited, the pleading not involving words anymore, just a series of screams, and Nasim smiled, her image smiling back at her, slightly in awe. This was a wisdom all her own.

  When Uday returned, his greeting was cooler, but still he smiled. He mixed another drink and Nasim accepted it, then another and another. He took her hand and led her to the dance floor, where he taught her how to dance sexily, how to lower herself practically to the floor without curving her back, writhing back up and catching the crook of her crotch on his knee as he ground into her. He showed her the cowboy-style gun in his waistband and said he’d used it to kill the man who touched her.

  ‘Feel,’ he said, placing her hand on the barrel. ‘It’s still warm.’

  Uday put his hand over Nasim’s so she could not pull away. It had an effect then, the gun, the drinks, the shards of light from the spinning disco ball. Nasim felt woozy, her eyes hot with tears, and it was in an almost fatherly manner that Uday picked her up and carried her to a bedroom. The gold and white bedframe, grandiose and gaudy, rippled like an enormous meringue, draped in pink silk sheets and dotted with red satin heart-shaped pillows. From the ceiling a salmon-coloured velvet curtain hung down behind the bedhead, drapes tied open with tasselled sashes, revealing a length of cream silk behind it. It was here, with Nasim almost smothered against a satin heart, that Uday fucked her.

  *

  As with the piano and the horses, Nasim learned quickly. She learned to deflect his violence and learned when she could not, turning over sections of her body to him. She was lucky (yes, she was) in that Uday had not yet fully realised his sadism, was still in the experimental phase, satisfied with using Cuban cigars to burn circles on the inside of her thigh and penetrating her with one of the hundreds of trophies his teachers had been forced to give him. He had a dressing room filled with women’s clothes and shoes, and, like his sisters, he dressed and undressed her. He fucked her on top of a cage filled with screeching golden tamarin monkeys. In another room she fell asleep on a different bed, and when she woke he was sprawled on top of her, snoring. She gasped when he kicked her, his eyes still closed, in the stomach, and kicked her again until he’d pushed her off the bed.

  When he woke, he was hard again. He found her on the carpet and pulled her over to the window, pushing her hands to the glass, fucking her from behind, and then it was more drinks. At one point Nasim tried to work out how long it had been since she’d left the concert hall, for it seemed that it was always night when she surfaced, as if Uday had even that under his control. But then it was daylight. Nasim came to in the ballroom. The marble floor was cold and she was shivering, her hair matted with lumps of her vomit. The palace was quiet.

  She stood unsteadily, tugging down on the tiny black skirt and red corset Uday had put on her, and pressed herself against the walls, feeling her way to a bathroom. There she stood under a jet of hot water, patches of red rising up on her skin. In the dressing room afterwards, she chose a simple cream dress with gold embroidery and sat at the mirror framed with lightbulbs to comb her hair before braiding and coiling it into a bun. It was still quiet when she finished. She waited.

  He returned at night, accompanied by a group, the women in tight dresses, the men in suits. He called her down and in front of them gave her 400,000 dinars. Counted it out into her hand while the others snickered. Uday waited. Finally, Nasim looked up. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  *

  Later, she would see Uday at parties, walking around as people sang and danced, clapping their hands in time as he held a bottle in one hand, pouring bourbon into a cup before handing it to someone, smiling, always smiling. The women drank from the very beginning, without protest, because women are quick to learn. But there was always a man, a silly goofy man, who’d peer into the cup and shake his head, smiling too widely. No, no, he’d mime and try to give the cup back, and Uday would nod Yes, pushing the cup back, and the man would touch his chest, as if to say I am weak, and there’d be another man on hand, gliding through the party like a shadow to give Uday his gun, and he’d shoot it above the man’s head, smiling, and the man would drink.

  Later still, after the assassination attempt, Uday would sit brooding on his own as people milled around him. He’d signal and a bodyguard would step forward, handing him his shotgun and a magazine clip. Uday would load it, take a pair of earplugs out of his pocket and put them in. Then fire off a round. There’d be a scream, and everyone’s hands would shield their ears, but the Iraqis were well trained by then, the band barely missing a beat as the party-goers quickly recovered, their dancing becoming frenzied, faking enthusiasm as Uday remained seated, grinning.

  ‘We are at the mercy of a child,’ Salima once confided to Nasim, a sign of their increasing closeness. Salima had been among the group at Uday’s palace who had watched in amusement when he paid Nasim 400,000 dinars and sent her on her way. That evening Salima had approached Uday and he’d generously told her the girl’s name. A good sign. There’d been times when he’d snapped ferociously, ‘Let her rot,’ ensuring that the girl would meet a grislier fate than Salima, a sheikha of some standing, could provide.

  Salima went to Nasim’s neighbourhood straight from the party in the early morning and found the girl pacing her street, listless and looking absurd in the same dress she’d left the palace wearing. A man stood on the step of what Salima assumed had been the girl’s home, his arms folded. Salima could see the neighbours in their windows watching the girl, not one of them coming to help. ‘Ya kalb,’ she spat at the man as she stepped onto the footpath. Her driver, Alby, a Sudanese, chuckled, his canines gold-capped. The man on the step said nothing, staring at Salima and her sleek black car. Salima turned to look at the girl, waving her hand at the house and the man and the faces pressed against glass, her wrist jangling with bracelets. ‘All of them, ya kalb,’ she said. ‘Dogs.’

  Nasim did not recognise her from the palace; she’d been too humiliated to look directly at anyone. Now she stared at Salima, who was wearing a head-to-toe skin-tight black chador with roses on it, decorated with sequins.

  ‘C’mon, honey,’ Salima said, nodding towards her car as Alby leaned out his window to grin at Nasim, tapping his fingers against the door to a beat.

  In reply Nasim wrapped her arms around herself, wanting to howl like a child.

  Salima came closer, a cherry-red lock of hair revealing itself from under her hood, and mimed shooing Nasim towards the car. ‘C’mon, sweetie,’ she said softly. ‘You’re not a rosebud anymore.’

  *

  ‘Is that even halal?’ This, Nasim learned, was what Salima said when she had a new girl to show the men, summoning her from behind the curtain, getting her to twirl – is that even halal? – and then leaning over and winking at the men before nodding at her to sit in a lap.

  When Nasim made her first appearance, wearing a ruby red gown, Salima drew her close, pretending to take a bite out of her. ‘Delicious,’ she said, the men roaring approval.

  Salima’s club was called Nostalgia. She only kept Iraqi girls – no gypsies or Filipinos – and dressed them traditionally, in delicately embroidered gowns, each specially tailored with revealing slits and plunging necklines. Curiously, Salima required her girls to wear veils at a time when most sheikhas were doing the opposite.

  It was the first time fo
r Nasim. ‘You take it off when you are alone with a client,’ said Lana, one of the older girls, as she showed Nasim how to put the veil on properly and how to take it off so that her hair uncoiled like a length of silk. ‘This,’ Lana said, mimicking Salima’s coarse voice and touching Nasim’s hair, ‘is more profitable than this,’ pointing between her own legs. They both laughed.

  It felt like years since Nasim had leaned breathlessly forward in the theatre, listening to Beatrice Ohanessian; since her father had been shoved to the floor, one of Uday’s men standing on his neck, as he yelled to Nasim that he loved her, and she’d been unable to reply, fear like ice in her throat. In fact, it had been how long – a week, maybe two?

  Yet oddly enough, Nasim felt a peculiar relief in this unassuming art-deco building just beyond the wealthy Al-A’amiriya district. She felt a sense of reprieve, her fate no longer unspooling out of her control. Unlike many of the other girls, she did not fear being found by a family who wished her dead to regain their honour; nor did she any longer feel the breath of the regime on the back of her neck. And so she let Lana and the other girls soften her fall, let them dress her for the big night ahead. Oh, will this being dressed by others ever stop? she thought with a wan smile, as Lana fitted an ornate headpiece over Nasim’s veil, its gold charms tinkling over her brow.

  When she had been introduced, twirling and bitten into like an apple by Salima, Nasim settled onto the lap the sheikha had pointed out to her earlier from behind the curtain, and made herself Omar’s firm favourite. He was a mid-level Ba’athist bureaucrat, Nasim learned, as well as the club’s guarantor. A tall man with a chink of silver in his hair, he’d fought in the Iran War as a special forces commander. For a time Nasim would discover a new scar each time she undressed him: a circle of disfigured flesh covering a plastic kneecap, a raw dip in his armpit where a bullet remained lodged, a spray of shrapnel in his calf. It became a ritual, hearing a story for each scar, satisfying his pride, although the former commander was not without humour. When she hovered over one nasty scar on his thigh, kissing it passionately, he sighed, closing his eyes as if returning to a disturbing memory. ‘Now this,’ he began, ‘was perhaps the fiercest battle I fought.’ He paused. ‘It was with a rake, in an orchard.’ Nasim laughed and kissed the man tenderly. She almost liked him.