Mister mister, p.25
Mister, Mister, page 25
– It is shit, Zeinab, sir. There is shit inside with the concrete. It is to get rid of the smell.
Rustum explained it to me, Mister, and said the building they were clearing had actually been a place of ancient worship. It had been a Christian church. Them daeshi had used it as a latrine when they took control of the area.
This business of buckets and ropes and pulleys, Mister, was about removing the shit left inside, and restoring the church for prayer. It is the only thing the daeshi left for the people here…said Rustum, handing the last bucket over to me.
In the heat, Mister, under that burning sun, some of the men had started singing. They sang, I remember, in a dialect and rhythm I couldn’t figure. I went inside and wandered around the desecrated church. I found broken pillars at its entrance, bits of painted ceiling strewn across the floor. There were red dots marked on some of them. Rustum had told me the markings indicated which should be discarded and which preserved. Some of the relics were loaded into Rustum’s truck. Much of it was completely destroyed. Ancient frescoes and tiled art had been scratched with what looked like axes or knives. There was graffiti all over, red and black, and spray-painted in symbols I didn’t recognise. The floor had been deliberately dug out, smashed with shovels to prevent prayer. I glanced back at the men lying exhausted outside. I realised they were clearing the church so that them Christians in the City could worship again.
And it lifted me, Mister. Rustum had often said that the Free City was a place for people like me to find a new way to live. To remake themselves even – begin again. He didn’t explain what he meant by like me. But I could see for myself the way people reinvented themselves here. They reassembled in relation to one another.
147. FREE CITY (3) Over time I came to feel as if my ending up at the Free City had been a proper blessing. I’d been settling, Mister, making my way around on my own. As the months passed, I began to feel less constricted in my movements. I was able to walk with a straighter step. I felt looser. All them months spent in isolation had also allowed for a gradual change in my appearance – my hair had grown long again, and my beard, Mister, had returned with softer curls now, and they were thicker and darker.
I must describe to you the part of the Free City they called the Worshippers’ Port, Mister. It was here, while them ancient ruins were being rebuilt, that people from both sides of the sound came to pray. It was called Worshippers’ Port because of all the shelters erected on this side of the jetties. There were several shelters, Mister. Each designated for a particular faith. I visited the first time with Rustum and noticed two collared priests leading a group in ceremony. There was a Chalabi rabbi inside another. And among a more mingled crowd, Mister, there was an imam reading the Qur’an alongside an armed guard who seemed to be following along with the reading.
Most of them guards were female, Mister. They were part of some local militia who were ranging the mountains. I’d asked about it once, and Rustum had said, And why not women guards? – They protect us from mostly men!
Rustum had also told me that the Worshippers’ Port needed protecting because it was where aid packages arrived from across the water. Rustum was in charge of all that. Sorting, distribution and salvage across the Free City.
When I looked, Mister, I saw jetties stretching far out into the water, and black dots emerging from where the boats were in the distance. These were helicopters coming and going from the bases. Over the next few months, I’d watch Rustum cross the sound on boats filled with large crates of collected material. Some special permit was required to cross. I stayed behind and waited. Usually, I walked along them jetties myself, Mister, and watched worshippers from afar. Seeing how they prayed, washed their hands, bent down, elbow to elbow, together.
Rustum asked me: You don’t join, Zeinab, sir? – Or does it still hurt to bend so far…But it wasn’t my injuries, Mister. I told Rustum I preferred to pray alone.
Truth was, I hadn’t really prayed since them first few months of recovery. I remember lying in bed replaying memories of my Mothers’ old house, my own mangy childhood, Mister, whispering invented verses into the cracks in the floorboards. My Allah felt very close to me then. He was silent for me now, Mister. I hadn’t received a single vision in all my time in the Free City. Although, I could still feel the tremors of my Other inside. I’d started to mutter again. Mostly while I sat on them jetties waiting for Rustum to return. These weren’t proper poems, Mister. And yet every time it happened, I felt the need to lift a bottle to my mouth, letting mouthfuls of water wash away whatever I’d been muttering into the sea.
148. DEAD TREE Which brings me back, Mister, one way or another, to Ester. It was toward the end of that winter, just after it began to get a little warmer, and I was back on my feet feeling spry, that we began to spend more time together.
She kept me busy around the house. Had me fixing walls, and broken flooring. Ester seemed to know exactly what she wanted, preferring bright colours to the cement, and handed me a brush. With her habitual quickness, and knowing the walls had already been ruined, we went about decorating the falling-down house in a kind of relentless flurry.
Every crack in the broken plaster was sealed with lacquer paint. I splattered the beams with little blue dots, making O faces out of the bullet-holes there. Ester grinned when she saw them, showing them mouthful of ridged teeth, her fingers fluttering at the walls. She was so pleased with how we’d managed to transform the place that she stood right up close to the walls as if she could smell the colour.
We chose the colours by pointing at tins, Mister. Scribbled weird little lines on paper to show patterns. And there was a boldness to the choices we made. We made them in silence. Chose the gaudiest shades, Ester’s favourites, and covered them patched-up walls with it. We even headed out to them flapping tents, Mister, to the Big Market, to barter Ester’s soups for ornaments, statuettes and little knick-knacks for the house. Her soups were prized for their saltiness. A taste which she’d managed, Mister, by using the saline pouches retrieved from medical packs from across the sound.
And Mister, I recall noticing how Ester ran about them stalls. Everyone seemed to know her. They’d greet her, Mister, by first touching her elbow. Ester would touch their cheeks in return. Sometimes she’d throw kisses on faces, pressing hard on cheeks and onto the lips, onto all the men and women there. She seemed so free with it, Mister, at ease in her own skin. See how she’d tug at their sleeves, jutting her elbow to indicate some little detail, before the bargain.
She exchanged soup for two wooden carvings that day. Two little figurines, Mister, which we both watched being made in front of us. A woman carved them from a block of light wood, balanced across her lap. One little figure we got was a roughly carved elephant, the other was either a goat or a gazelle – I forget. A few stalls down, I wanted to exchange a bowl for a set of photographs. I wanted to hang them around the house, Mister – writing to Ester on a paper I asked: for the walls? These were portraits of people I assumed had fled the City. I offered ten portraits for one bowl. I remember the man at the market saying he preferred dollars, but said he adored Ester, and let me have eight pictures for two small cups.
We covered one entire wall of the house with them faces. Didn’t matter we didn’t know who they were. They became familiar over time, and we gave them little nicknames like faces of family and friends. There was Uncle Vanya, a gruff-looking sort with his arm around a woman. Mary Magdalene we called her. Both in bathing suits and shorts, pictured stepping off a boat. Had our own Oliver Twist too, in a Kurdish kurta. And there, in another, some shaggier Mr Bean with a mole on his cheek. Captain Hook and Napoleon and a Kevin Costner, hiding their hands in each other’s pockets. And a handsome-looking Gulliver, Mister, sitting on the bonnet of a silver car, an Audi, streets in the background recalling the former city.
When we stepped back we recognised how the streaks we’d made to cover the cracks had formed a kind of web behind each picture. Coloured lines, Mister, reached all around and under, like a tangle of wandering roots. On the pad and pencil then, I wrote to Ester saying the lines looked like roots to me.
Ester frowned, shook her head resolutely, and wrote instead: no, dead tree. She took a smaller brush and painted over the darker streaks, making little green leaves alongside them. It made them look like branches.
Then she wrote: family tree.
149. H–L–Q She loved that sprawling tree, Mister. I’d catch her every morning, standing on her tiptoes, wearing nothing under her nightie, looking at them portraits just after dawn. She’d bring a stool sometimes for the ones higher up. I liked them little half-smiles she made as she peered at the faces, scenes of family holidays, birthdays or other celebrations.
One frame in particular caught her attention. It was a picture of a group of young men. They all looked so clean-cut and well dressed in what I presumed had been the fashion at the time, sort of dusted jeans and massive collars.
Ester made a motion at me to come look. She glanced at my face and then the picture. She touched her chin, held a finger over her mouth. I didn’t know what she meant. She rushed off to fetch a pad and pencil.
Ha-La-Qa.
Whenever Ester struggled to find the English, she wrote an approximation with the letters. Ester pointed at the pad and made the same gesture, once at my bearded chin, and another at the boys in the picture. I looked again at their clean-shaven faces.
Ester disappeared into the bathroom then, and came out with a circular glass and Rustum’s razor. Ester wanted me to shave, Mister. I smiled uneasily. She seemed insistent, nodding along, and pushing the razor at me. I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. The face that looked back was only vaguely recognisable to me. My long hair had become thinner, and somehow straighter and more relaxed. It wasn’t much shorter than Ester’s now, falling at the sides. My beard though, had remained unruly. Ester stepped very close to me then and looked. She stared hard. Ester was quite a bit shorter than me, Mister, but when she stood on her tiptoes, our noses nearly touched. I suddenly felt a familiar hotness in my throat, and my breath held as she leaned forward. She quickly made a swipe at my cheeks with the razor and pointed to the bathroom door.
Well, I came out splashed wet and clean-shaven. I stood in the middle of the hallway, and she walked around, inspecting me, I think. At first Ester almost seemed offended. I looked nothing like them boys in the picture. But after peering close, she came and stood in front of me. She leaned forward then. Tilted her head, and raised her neck. She swept her hair back, as if inviting me to come close.
I didn’t know what to do, really. I couldn’t say anything, or write to ask. I stood instead staring at her little moles and the scars, and noticed the scent on her skin.
I realised then, there was something inside her, Mister, that Ester wanted to offer me in that moment, and which I had no idea what to do with. She wilted as she waited. And turned, finally, looking at me confused and a little irritated. She stepped back and blew sharply into my face, her breath smelling of sweet tea. And then she walked away from me. I could hear her laughing again in the next room, sucking back her frustration, whipping the sheets as she made her bed.
150. BANGING SKIES I felt embarrassed, I think. And annoyed with myself after that. At the same time, I recognised the look in her eyes, Mister, and was attracted by that odd, sudden impulsiveness in Ester. Anytime we came close again, however, she seemed to slip away.
In fact, Mister, Ester would even outright disappear at times. By which I mean, she’d leave the house when I was sleeping. Wouldn’t tell me where or for what. I’d find myself alone again, and wondering. Sometimes she’d be gone for days, Mister. And when she returned, she’d simply pick up where we left off, brushing my hair, jutting her chin and asking my help with a bit of painting.
I came to expect these prolonged absences over time. I’d notice how she’d get irritated with me and become restless. I’d wonder what I’d done to offend her. But it was as if there were hot coals in her belly, Mister, and she needed to shift them. Like clockwork then, she’d vanish, gone with her bare feet, only to return again, suddenly settled.
Other times, I’d be blindsided by Ester’s outbursts. Like the day I woke to her scampering feet. I went to see what the noise was, Mister, with the blanket wrapped around me for the cold, wondering what it was she was doing. I found the girl in her nightie, on her hands and knees, searching them empty drawers.
I waved when she noticed me there. She looked at the window, and then back at me. I went to close the window, but then Ester reached for my arm, and I saw that she had a steel pot and ladle with her.
I watched Ester bring out a pad, searching for a page to show me. She’d written in hurried lettering:
DRONE.
Ester suddenly pointed at the sky, jabbing her finger out the window. There was that restlessness again, Mister, which I didn’t think I’d seen so expressed until that moment. Her whole body seemed to be shaking. She threw the pad and went past me still clutching the pot and ladle. She climbed the window ledge, sat down, and began suddenly banging the metal in a constant rhythm:
…Passh…ta-ta-ta…boun…
And there, Mister, others outside at each open canopy, faces peering upward, holding pots, plates, spoons, rattling the same sound outside.
…Passh…ta-ta-ta…boun…
It was a citizens’ alarm, I realised.
A warning against an incoming threat – some drone.
The noise started getting louder, a hammering, becoming more frequent. It soon became unbearable to me and I had to back away from the window and pinned myself against the far wall.
It was a sight, Mister. Ester, in the middle of that cacophony.
…Passh…ta-ta-ta…boun…
See her open mouth, Mister, them bashing chords as if speaking aloud for her. She could hear nothing of that shattering noise, I knew. Them heavy crashing spoons, plates, and handles. And yet, it seemed as if she could hear, like she was leading them all in a kind of mad performance. And them terrified eyes, Mister. That mouth stretched wide in the air, completely silent, clutching them handles so bloodless and white.
…Passh…ta-ta-ta…boun…
It all ended just as abruptly. Everybody then, including Ester, quickly withdrew into their homes. The doors, windows closed. And above, the faintest of black moths appeared crossing the sky under the clouds. The drone, Mister, looked like nothing more than a low-trilling moth.
Then, down in the street below, another noise – a little girl. A little girl in a dress had broken free and had come rushing out, Mister. Her lone voice shattered the silence.
Ester and I clutched at the sill. The girl seemed as if she wanted to call to the flying drone, to summon its attention. We watched in horror as another woman came running out to drag her back inside. The little girl, screaming now, trying to explain the outburst, went on howling at the sky. She wanted to see it – the drone. Or for the drone to see her. The woman wrestled the girl back inside with her.
The door closed. The black moth disappeared into them darkening clouds.
The silence lingered a while longer. It took until evening for them carts, motorcycles and trucks to be heard again. Though Ester, who’d been so riveted by that civil alarm, Mister, that sudden eruption of excitement, as well as the vision of that little girl in the streets below, was still and silent for the rest of the day.
As for me, I could think of nothing else – that little girl and Ester. Had it all just been a game to the both of them? Maybe something else. Even now, sitting here, I think of it.
How would it have gone, her story?
Maybe the little girl had been made an orphan by some previous apparition. Maybe she, by some childlike logic, wanted to show everybody else that they were also just playing along, Mister, as if this war was bad weather.
Maybe that was also what Ester had allowed herself the freedom to express. Maybe the little girl – who couldn’t have been much older than four or five – had also reflected the same impulse. I don’t know. Maybe she wanted nothing more than for that black moth to come for her, like it had for her mother.
Anyway, Ester returned to her quick self the next day. She went back to them walls, Mister. Began painting leaves on them branches again. And then, much later, Rustum told me the drones were only ever heading home to their bases. Most after mission completion, he’d said. But then, knowing that didn’t make me feel any better.
151. SUSPENSION I think it’s true to say that moments like that seemed to shatter the eerie suspension of the Free City. Most other days the constant drum of distant war seemed forgotten. Just as long as everybody kept busy, Mister, pushing broken bodies around, building something up, constructing, fashioning some trinket to barter, or something else to fill time. It was the only thing keeping it going, I think – that belief. The Free City existed because people here truly believed they were the ones holding it together.
Even Ester – see how she spent nights mending clothes by the light of a candle. One of her roles at the Free City was to sift through donations, Mister, deciding which garments were worth saving, and which to scrap. There was a kind of devotion in how she went about it. She was like a proper devout in her own way. Every time a new load of clothes came in, she’d spend hours matching patterns and organising piles. I couldn’t help but admire the way she went about it. She was so careful with each item. And for instance, when sewing patches into children’s clothes, she’d search for the same patterns for the patches. Just so every child at the City would believe they were receiving something new.
If you think about it, Mister – it’s much the same with me and you. It’s the same considerations I make as I write. Deciding what to take down, which threads to continue with, what to leave behind. Never quite sure how it’ll all turn out, or whether it will all hold together in the end…
