Another Night

Another Night

The American soldiers were on the radio when I left with the baby. The last thing Hashim said to me before he left was for me to take the baby and walk between the rivers as far as I could, hopefully to safety, when I heard the American soldiers on the radio. If we make it to Syria, we will officially be refugees. The American soldiers play a song on the radio that says that someone must have kicked me around, that I don’t have to live like a refugee. They are right, but they forgot to say that I don’t have to stay.

The horizon behind me shimmers orange from the oil fields, and when the south wind blows, I can feel the fire breathing hot on my back. When my food is gone, I will eat snails from the river when I cannot catch fish. I am thankful to Allah that He has given me breasts to nourish Hashima. Hashima shall never see Baghdad, where our soldiers wear American uniforms and all men rape young girls in the name of liberty. Hashima has my husband’s name if not his blood.

I tried to leave on an airplane in Baghdad, but that was nearly a year ago, and they only took my money and led me to a back room and exhausted themselves on me. The last one, who had yellow hair and eyes like blue grapes wept silently all the while. He removed the veil from my face so that I could see the water fall from his face to my breasts, where the bruises were already rising to my skin, as if from my heart and not my flesh. If the other soldiers had not held a rifle to his neck I think he would not have touched me. I played the child’s trick of looking into his eyes so that I could believe the others could not see me.

President Hussein and the American president are cowards, hiding in their palaces while they make widows of young mothers and buy oil with blood. I told Hashim when he left, damn the orders, you must burn the oil fields. It is the only way. Our people will never be free until there is no more oil in our land. The fiery wind on my back is like the breath of Allah, telling me that I will not die, nor shall I have lived, in vain.

The sun looks like it is sinking into the Euphrates and the water glows orange to my left. I can hear the faint screaming of air raid sirens, but the fire and water distort it so that I cannot tell where it comes from. I must stop to nurse Hashima before the Americans attack again, else she will be frightened and have the colic again tonight. I fear that her screams of pain will be heard and we will be in greater danger. I will eat when she has emptied my breasts, and then my rest will be over. I will walk all night tonight, like last night and the night before, always away from the light of the oil fields and bombs. Always deeper and deeper into the darkness, where there are no shadows to threaten me.

When I have walked through to the other side of the night, I will kneel on my prayer mat and praise Allah, and then I will curl up with Hashima and we will sleep on it so that our slumber may be another prayer. I sleep only in the mornings, when the Americans are exhausted from attacking all night and have not yet begun to make their preparation noises for the next night of bombing my country. Always, I walk away from the noise, as if it were light.

The sun shines hot on my face as it disappears, and the noise comes from every direction. If Hashima and I can travel another day or two, through the broad strange invasive echoing of the noise that will not let me sleep until we are through it, I will rest again. It is only another night.