On the banks of the Euphrates, in the district of al-Rumaitha, in the city of Samawah in southern Iraq, Neshouq was born to a Sunni father and a Shia mother, the lone daughter among six brothers, a middle child. Her father was a tribal judge who owned a herd of livestock; her mother was a homemaker.
Each morning, Neshouq set out with her brothers, driving the sheep to graze near the river. There they fell in with the village boys, left the flocks to roam, cast off their clothes, and hurled themselves into the river, swimming until sunset.
When they returned home, her mother would scold Neshouq for going out with the boys, but her father would greet her with a laugh, arms wide: “Here comes Cocola — my little Coca — Coca.” He had named her after the Coca-Cola bottles that had flooded the Iraqi markets seven years before her birth in 1957. She was tall, slender, and dark-skinned, her light-coloured curls springing and bouncing about her face like the fizz bursting up from a freshly opened bottle.
Disagreements soon arose between Coca’s parents over the upbringing of their eldest son, Ajil. The father wished to spare him the burden of more responsibility than his younger brothers, while the mother insisted that he had crossed the threshold into manhood, that it no longer suited him to run about with the boys, and that he ought to accompany his father to the tribal gatherings. What began as a quiet dispute grew into a storm that shook their household until the father walked out, abandoning his wife and eldest son, leaving them to raise the five younger children.
Not wanting to remain stubborn, Hulwa softened her stance and asked him to return. She sent her husband intermediaries and respected figures to plead on her behalf, but he refused. When he offered to contribute to the family’s expenses, she, in turn, rejected his offer and chose instead to work in the fields herself during harvest season. So she sent her two eldest sons to find work in Tikrit.
Coca was only twelve when she lost the three men who had supported her most—her father, who spoiled her, and the two brothers who had always let her have her way. But she also lost her defiance towards her mother when she saw her return each evening, hands dripping with blood from the sickle she had not yet learned to wield, yet stubbornly denying the pain. She saw in her mother, Hulwa, a refusal to succumb to despair and a determination to maintain dignity in the face of hardship, so she learned to bake bread on the tannour, to milk the cows, and to prepare soup and feed her younger brothers.
Hulwa memorized colloquial poetry and popular proverbs, and her quick wit allowed her to summon them effortlessly in various situations. She became known among her relatives for her sharp temper and her readiness to lampoon anyone in rhyme or hurl biting remarks for no clear cause.
Despite her traditional convictions about a woman’s role in life and society, Hulwa never applied them to herself, even though she mocked women who didn’t conform. Coca inherited her mother’s traits—eloquent speech, a sharp memory, stubbornness, and a fierce temper. Coca, however, was inherently fair and disciplined; she would later say that this was simply how she had been created, one of God’s blessings upon her.
At fourteen, two years after she had been playing the role of mother at home, her mother decided to send her to live in Tikrit with her two elder brothers to care for them.
She wept throughout the entire journey, a half-day trip from southern Iraq to its northern edge, until she reached her aunt’s house, where she would live near her brothers. Her aunt welcomed her warmly, gave her a place to sleep, and began teaching her how to cook the dishes of the townspeople. She even bought her dresses like those worn by the city girls, but Coca refused to wear dresses as short as theirs, not because she was a village girl, but because she felt such clothes did not suit her nature, even though her surroundings and the tasks now required of her had changed.
In the city, her relationship with her brothers radically changed. They became obsessed with the fear that she might be drawn to a boy and fall in love. Despite her persistent pleas to attend school, they forbade her from going. They even forbade her from visiting friends, attending weddings, or even funerals. Her only permitted outing was to the market for household supplies, but even those trips were governed by strict rules: specific times to leave, how long to stay, and an interrogation each time she returned late
Coca did not understand their obsessive concern and resented their newfound authority over her. She insisted she needed no one to protect her, safeguard her reputation, or shield her from tribal disputes, and her brothers should have known that. They should have acknowledged her deep understanding of customs and traditions, and that she knew full well that loving a young man could result in his death and spark a tribal conflict, tarnishing her clan’s honour. Moreover, her brothers surely needed no proof of her restraint, because each time she returned from the market, the family of some boy would arrive complaining that Coca had beaten their son, caused his head to bleed, or cracked one of his bones for simply daring to harass her on the way.
This situation remained unchanged, and she remained unswervingly steadfast in her stance. What made matters a bit easier was that when her brothers accompanied her, they never forbade her from doing anything. Then, when she turned seventeen, things changed for the better because their mother and the rest of their siblings joined them in Tikrit, and they all moved into a new house together. She began going on hunting trips with her brothers, and whenever they attended a relative’s wedding or a family gathering, they let her dance between them in the men’s dabka.
After three years of endless arguments, they finally allowed her to attend literacy classes, but that didn’t satisfy her. Her struggles were never about what she wanted to do, but rather about the fact that others controlled what she was allowed or forbidden to do. Ever since moving to Tikrit, what she truly longed for was independence, to be the one who granted or denied permission to herself.
Amid these struggles for her independence, Coca was coming of age, and suitors began to come forward. Yet the battle over her freedom was not fought on two fronts, but three. Her brothers constantly quarrelled over matters concerning her marriage; one would approve while the other disapproved. If she dared to accept, they accused her of knowing the suitor beforehand; if she refused, they claimed her heart belonged to another, thus sparking yet another quarrel.
When her father returned to them frail and ill, Coca welcomed him warmly and invited him to stay so she could care for him. He agreed, and so did her mother on the condition that he would live in a separate room of the house and that she would never see his face, not even by accident.
Coca’s warm reception of her father, despite his unjustified absence and the suffering he had caused her mother, was not merely out of filial duty because he was her father; rather, it stemmed from a temperament that refused to dwell on blame, and an innate ability to forgive those who had wronged her when they returned weak or repentant.
The struggle over her marriage ended two years after her father’s return when a young Jordanian man came to ask for her hand. His nationality quelled the disputes, as her acceptance could not imply any prior acquaintance with him.
She asked to see him, and they brought him to the courtyard, bathed in afternoon light. Ibrahim was a year younger than she, slender and short, dark-skinned, with sharp brown eyes, a pointed nose, and a delicate mouth framed by thin lips. He pleased her.
Her mother, however, saw in him the threat of her only daughter’s departure. She spared no effort to obstruct the marriage, from outright refusal to threats of suicide. She even walked to the banks of the Tigris, intending to throw herself in, only to turn back in fear that people might say she had done something shameful.
When all her protests failed, the mother resorted to bargaining. She went to Ibrahim’s father with an offer that if he wanted her daughter as a wife for his son, she would take one of his daughters as a wife for her own son. If her daughter was going to move away, his daughter must move away too.
Ibrahim’s father agreed, and one of his daughters consented. Then his other daughter took matters into her own hands and approached one of Coca’s brothers, proposing marriage herself. Thus, Coca’s mother found solace in the arithmetic of fate—two daughters gained for one given away. And she stopped.
When it was decided the weddings would be held together, Coca was called seba’iya and hibet reeh for the first time — words for someone who handles the urgent and the large without help, swift as the wind, sure as a lion. It was her mother and the women who said it, as they asked her to prepare the wedding feasts: slaughter the animals, ready them for cooking, cook them, and bake the bread for the guests. “You’re seba’iya, hibet reeh. The other girls can’t slaughter, skin, knead, or bake. There’s no one but you.”
Coca never looked at others with jealousy or envy, nor had she ever measured herself against anyone. Since childhood, she had carried herself with quiet pride. She was self-assured and confident, never imitating others. If she wanted something, she wanted it for its own sake, not because someone else had it. “Why me and not them?” was never something she asked; instead, she endured what others could not, sometimes out of pride, sometimes out of pity for those weaker than she.
“Even if their hands could do the same, they all come here as my guests, and I’m the keeper of this house.”
On the night before the wedding, Coca did not sleep. She stayed up preparing the food: slaughtered the sheep, hung, skinned, cut, and seasoned them for cooking. When she finished before dawn, she began kneading the dough. The rhythm of her hands against the clay basin echoed softly through the courtyard. Then Ibrahim came, offering to help. She taught him how to bake—the way the dough must rise, the turn of the wrist as it meets the fire. They worked together in companionship that would set the tone for their future relationship.
By noon, he had left with the other grooms, while she stayed behind until the wedding procession drew near. Then she went to bathe, and the neighbours’ daughters came to help her dress and put on makeup for the first time in her life.
At that moment, shyness overcame her, and tears welled up, leaving kohl-traced black trails down her cheeks. When the grooms arrived to escort their brides to the wedding courtyard, she suddenly remembered she hadn’t combed her curls yet, so she pulled the towel off and let them fly loose in the wind.
Coca often laughed when she told this story later on:
“Even my wedding was a farce, goddamn parents’-curse of a mess.”
“We got into the car, and ya Allah how beautiful that road was!”
Coca describes the overland route between Iraq and Jordan as the path of freedom and victory. However, upon arrival, she was dismayed to find herself in a mud house in Al-Ghuwayriyah, Zarqa, shapeless and unfamiliar, unlike any home she had known in Iraq, neither the clay houses of her village nor the stone houses of Tikrit.
“They’d just slapped the mud on it, never really built the thing,” she said.
Inside, the house held nothing but a few worn rugs scattered across the floor and a ramshackle, makeshift kitchen with a handful of utensils piled in a corner. A single faucet dripped above bare earth, with no basin or drain. In the farthest corner stood a single-burner stove.
When Ibrahim asked if she liked the house, she replied, “Of course,” thinking, “Poverty, poverty, so what? I’ll bear it rather than go back and be mocked and told I made the wrong decision.”
From 1975 to 1978, Coca lived in that house with her husband’s family, setting aside what she could from the modest salary Ibrahim earned in the military. Over those years, she never entrusted Ibrahim with buying the furniture, nor did she ever call on him to accompany her; she took matters into her own hands. She asked her father-in-law to introduce her to the merchants in the market, and soon she was managing all the household errands in his stead.
She rejoiced in her newfound freedom to do as she wished, to wear what she pleased, to go out and return whenever she chose, and even to befriend whomever she wished. From the day she arrived, Coca befriended the neighbours. She grew fond of the community and felt surrounded by their affection.
Her only wish, beyond a simple life, was to learn to read and write. She had already spent four months studying before her marriage, yet there was no literacy school nearby, so she decided to teach herself. She began by writing the letters of the alphabet one by one. She then searched for any printed text—labels, signs, newspapers—so she could learn to join the letters into words. She bought notebooks, pens, and greeting cards, which she sent to her family on every occasion.
Coca suffered from the ache of separation from her family and homeland. She yearned to express her longing, but conveying it through the poems and songs she already knew felt insufficient. Instead, she tried writing poetry herself. She wanted her words to be sincere, born of her heart and springing from within her, so her family could sense the depth of her love for them.
However, she later described her early attempts at poetry as merely putting words together.
“I used to string one word after another that sounded alike. I’d sit, think, then write ‘Oh exile, you’ve killed me.’ Then I’d ponder a bit, trying to find a word that matched it. I’d write those down, learning as I went. I’d write the poems I recited, one letter after the next, in detached letters, then look through books to see how the words were connected, and write them neatly. Then I’d rewrite them into a letter to send to my family. I continued to put words together, however they came, as long as they sounded alike, nothing grand.”
She kept practising, writing and erasing, writing and tearing up the pages, time and again, trying to match words to the melodies of the traditional songs she knew. Little by little, her verses became well measured, and she began to improvise poetry, singing it to the tune of an Iraqi maqam. She would recite it when welcoming someone she loved, during evening gatherings with family and friends, or at farewells.
Whenever she faced separation or spoke of it, her verses expressed what she felt, shielded her from saying it directly, softened the ache that rose in her chest, and spared her the embarrassment of tears. Yet her ability to improvise and memorize led her to view her poetry as a means of expression, so she never felt the need to write it down.
Coca loved Ibrahim, and he loved her. Together, they learned to smoke cigarettes. He was proud of her and took her everywhere he went. Despite his young age, he cared for her when she fell ill. He knew how to be gentle and to speak to her tenderly. When they quarrelled, she never yielded; if he insulted her, she insulted him back. But unlike her brothers, he never took offence. He never said: “How can a woman insult a man?”
Usually, their fights ended in playful banter, except once, when a quarrel flared between her and her father-in-law. He struck her, and she hurled insults back at him. She then left their house and headed alone to Amman.
Coca never forgets a road she has walked. She went straight to the home of her father-in-law’s elderly Iraqi friend, who welcomed her. When Ibrahim and his father came asking about her, her father-in-law’s elderly Iraqi friend told them he had sent her back to her family in Iraq. Ibrahim grew angry and ashamed and wanted to follow her there. But the elderly man stopped him, warning that her family would kill him if he did, for he would be deemed unworthy and lacking in chivalry for failing to protect a woman.
In the custom of Iraqi tribes, insulting a married woman in her husband’s house is considered an offence against her entire clan. If she returns to her family’s house after being insulted or struck, she may never return to her husband’s house again and must be divorced. Even if he longs for reconciliation, the husband may not go to her family himself. To stand before them after dishonouring their daughter would be considered shameless and audacious, a direct challenge to the family he had dishonoured.
A few days later, her father-in-law’s elderly Iraqi friend summoned Ibrahim and his father to a tribal gathering. Before the elders, he told them plainly that Coca was under his protection. Ibrahim and his father apologized and swore never to harm her again. The elders offered her the choice of returning to her husband or to her family, and she chose her husband.
Once, during a visit to her family in Iraq, Ibrahim, still serving in the army, could not bear the separation and followed her across the border to Iraq. They stayed longer than his authorized leave, which led to his dismissal upon his return, all because he could not bear to be apart from her.
As for Coca, she had often thought of leaving him during the first three years of their marriage because of their poverty and her mother-in-law’s ill-treatment. Her not having children made it easier. Each time she visited Iraq, she was determined to ask for a divorce, but her longing and concern for him would overcome her, and she would change her mind. This continued until Coca gave birth to their first son in 1978, the same year they left the family home and moved into their own house.
A letter from Coca to her family in Iraq, dated 22/4/1976
After being discharged from the army, Ibrahim worked in construction for a year and a half. Their financial situation deteriorated during this time, so they decided to move to Iraq in 1980. They returned to Tikrit, where Ibrahim continued working in construction, and they rented a house near her family’s home. Every evening, they gathered in the courtyard of one of the houses, where Coca’s brother Adel would play the ma’soul, and Coca would sing and lead the dabka dance.
Coca describes these days as the happiest of her life, even though the proximity to her family sometimes made her wary, as she did not want her heart to harden against them if they wronged her. They lived in stability for five years, during which she gave birth to two daughters. While she was pregnant with her fourth child, on 17th December 1984, Ibrahim got a job with a government company as a driver, transporting official documents between Mosul and Baghdad.
Ten days later, on the morning of 27th December 1984, Coca asked Ibrahim if she could accompany him to Baghdad to visit relatives. Ibrahim, uncharacteristically, refused. During their argument, her brother arrived, saying he was also heading to Baghdad. Ibrahim then turned to her and said, “Go with your brother; I’ll come for you at six in the evening.”
Coca recalls that day vividly: she struggled to swallow her food, felt a bitter taste in her throat, and fed her three children very little.
When evening came, and it was past six o’clock, she began to grow uneasy. She asked the landlady, who was also her friend, a plump, fair-skinned woman in her thirties, if she knew why Ibrahim was late and whether he had called. The woman became flustered, her face reddening, and said “No,” avoiding Coca’s eyes.
There was a knock at the door, and Coca hurried to answer it, with her friend close behind. The company accountant stood there.
“Where’s Ibrahim? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” the accountant said.
Coca turned to look at the landlady and saw that her face had gone crimson and her legs were trembling so violently that the sound of her thighs slapping together could be heard.
Coca cried out, “I’m telling you — something’s happened to Ibrahim!”
The woman shook her head.
The accountant then cut in: “Ibrahim is fine, but a friend of ours was in a car accident, and we are seeking someone to vouch for him.”
Coca stepped back into the house, her thoughts circling like trapped birds. A friend in an accident? Who else among them was a non-Iraqi who would need a guarantor, other than Ibrahim?
She waited. Eleven o’clock came and went, and still she sat there, watching her friend, who trembled and said nothing, with suspicion.
Then she heard the blare of her brother’s car horn outside. She ran to the door. Her brother was stepping out of the car, followed by her mother and Ibrahim’s sisters.
“Ibrahim’s dead!” she cried.
Her mother replied, “No, he’s not dead, but ruin’s been shat on you and on your head. He had an accident, and he’s between life and death.”
Coca fell silent, her body turning cold, bloodless. She walked towards the door when someone said, “Ibrahim wants to see you.”
In a daze, she wandered towards one of the many cars gathered outside. She doesn’t remember which car, who she rode with, or which road they took. The world had thinned to sound and shadow.
Ibrahim’s voice cut through the mist surrounding her.
“You came?”
“I came.”
“Thank God. I’m still here, alive. Take care of yourself—and the children.”
His words, gentle and familiar, settled over her like a dream she couldn’t wake from. Later, she would say she remembered little else from that night—only that voice, steady and near.
She placed her hands on his legs and pressed, but he did not feel her. She lifted one of his arms; when she let go, it fell heavily against his side. She tried the other—it fell the same way.
She didn’t understand, not yet.
When the doctor arrived, she learned the truth: Ibrahim was completely paralyzed. They said he had twenty-four hours—if he survived beyond that, he would live.
That night, Coca prayed as if her breath were itself a plea:
“Ya Rabbi, I ask only one thing — that the child in my belly be born knowing his father. Don’t let me lose my way, don’t leave me in tatters in people’s hands. Let me finish my road, ya Rabb, even if it’s only one more breath. It doesn’t matter, ya Rabb — paralyzed, helpless — so be it.”
Through the long hours, she prayed until morning came. Then they said, “Forty-eight hours—if he gets through them, he’ll live.” And still she prayed.
By the sixteenth day, she was still coming every morning at six and returning each evening at six to her friend’s house, where she was staying with her mother and the children. Her days had settled into a rhythm of waiting, her prayers circling the same few words—part plea, part defiance, part love refusing to surrender.
Ibrahim lay in al-Kadhimiya Hospital, under the care of a doctor named Muhammad Iyad Allawi. They pierced his lung and inserted a tube to help him breathe, and placed another in his intestines to drain waste. Around his neck hung a three-kilogram weight, pulling at his spine and stretching the vertebrae apart to keep them from collapsing into each other.
The accident happened suddenly. Ibrahim was driving with a colleague beside him when the car swerved at a sharp bend. Thinking first of the man beside him, he slammed on the brakes and flung out his arm to shield his friend from the glass. But the car struck the concrete median, hurling Ibrahim through the windshield. He landed flat on his back in the middle of the road. The impact tore the sixth and seventh vertebrae apart.
When he saw another car speeding toward him, a last flicker of life made him move. He walked and sat upright on the opposite curb, waiting for the ambulance. They transported him to the hospital seated, unaware that this position would fuse his vertebrae incorrectly, severing his spinal cord forever.
When Ibrahim learned he would never walk again—that his body had become a cage—he vented his anger on everyone who came near him. He cursed every visitor, shouting until his voice broke. He called for the nurses, accusing each guest of conspiring with Iranian officers.
One by one, those who had sat with him through the night refused to return. Someone, desperate for silence, even stuffed a roll of gauze into his mouth and sealed it with tape. His father struck him across the face, and the doctors expelled him from the ward.
But Coca turned her left cheek toward him.
Ibrahim poured all his fury onto her, the only one who stayed. He grew cruel in his helplessness, cursing her before doctors, nurses, and visitors alike. He refused every kind of food, yet demanded that she stand beside his bed all day, a bottle of water in her hand, pouring it into his mouth, sip by sip. When the bottle ran dry he flew into a rage, so she kept another tucked in her pocket. If both were empty, she would call softly to whoever passed by the door, asking them to refill them. She spent the days standing, never sitting, never returning insult for insult, never angry.
Whatever he said, she replied with a single phrase, gentle and steady as breath: “Yes, habibi.”
Her patience was neither submission nor pity. It was a form of prayer—an offering made in silence, as though every sip of water she gave him were a promise she intended to keep until the end.
In Coca’s tribe, when children reached adolescence, they chose their sect freely, according to an event they considered a sign, an inclination toward one sect because of rituals they had witnessed as children, or any reason they found fitting.
Coca chose the Sunni madhhab — her father’s. She doesn’t remember exactly why. But she refused all Shia rituals.
Coca chose her father’s path, the Sunni faith. She could never say exactly why. Perhaps it was the sound of her father’s voice in prayer, or the calm she associated with him. Or perhaps there was no reason at all—only instinct, the kind that moves beneath words.
But from that day forward, she turned away from every Shi‘i ritual. Not out of disdain, but out of certainty—a private line drawn within her, steady as her breath. For Coca, belief was never something she wore on the outside. It was how she carried herself through the world: quietly, faithfully, without compromise.
On the night of the sixteenth, Coca’s friend came to her, holding a small glass filled with soil.
“This is the earth from Sayyid Malik,” she said. “Mix it with water and give it to Ibrahim.”
Coca didn’t hesitate. When she reached the hospital, she stirred a bit of the earth into water and gave it to him to drink. With what remained, she anointed his hands and feet.
A little while later, Ibrahim asked for breakfast. It was the first time he had spoken about food since entering the hospital. Coca still remembers the dishes—jam, butter, boiled eggs, cheese, and bread. He ate it all, hers and his, then fell into a deep sleep.
At noon, he woke, asked for lunch, ate again, and went back to sleep.
She whispered to herself, “My God, could it really be that bit of earth that raised him?” Hope stirred within her.
Dr. Allawi arrived shortly after, examined Ibrahim, and then took him for an X-ray while he was still asleep. When he returned, he looked at Coca and said softly, “You’re a woman of faith and patience. Call your family—our friend’s condition is at a standstill.”
Coca smiled, half in jest, half in challenge. “What, did a revelation from God come down to you now?” she said. “There’s a soul in me, and a soul in him, and God can lift him up and put me in his place if He wills.”
Her words were simple, yet they carried the weight of belief that has nothing to do with miracles and everything to do with love—the kind that endures without asking why.
Ibrahim woke up in the afternoon and asked her to roll his bed to the hospital courtyard under the palm tree so he could commune with God. She moved him and went to make the call, no longer as hopeful as she had been, thinking, “This is the revival that comes before death. Ibrahim will die tonight.” Her family and his sisters came to visit him and left. The doctors decided to move him from the intensive care unit but prohibited anyone from accompanying him.
Coca recalls:
“I went home one eye weeping, one eye laughing — poor Ibrahim, no one to stay with him. The moment I got in, I slept. I woke up and looked at the clock. Its hands pointed at twelve and six.”
She leaped out of bed, got dressed hurriedly, and rushed out. She walked quickly, almost running, through the dark, heading toward the bus station; the sun, like a white disc in the sky, seemed to be ahead of her.
After walking past some fifty buildings, she stopped beneath a lamppost and looked at her watch: the lower hand on eight. She stared at it dazedly for a minute before realizing it was forty minutes past twelve, not six in the morning.
She looked up at the moon, then turned back, slapping her cheeks and lamenting, “Oh God, take everything from me, but not my mind.”
She opened the door to find her mother standing there.
“Where have you been? You’ll put gray hairs on your parents’ heads.”
“Where else? I went to Ibrahim, thinking it was six o’clock, but when I found myself alone in the street with dogs chasing me, I looked at my watch and saw it was twenty to one.”
“A funeral on you and your father’s house! If the Hnood had caught you and carried you off, what would people have said? She abandoned her husband and children and ran off!”
“Is that all you care about?”
She woke at five in the morning, certain that Ibrahim was dead. She walked to the hospital, her steps weighing her down. When she reached the reception, she asked them:
“Has Ibrahim died?”
“God forbid! The man is alive. Are you waiting for him to die?”
She entered Ibrahim’s room.
“How are you, my friend?”
“You abandoned me, but God never abandons His servant.”
“What?”
“The Sayyid came to me, sat with me, we chatted, he gave me water and tea, and then he left.”
“What, Sayyid? When did he come to you? Are you dreaming?”
“No, by God — not a dream. A knowing.”
She went and asked the nurses. They told her no one had come anywhere near his room. She returned and told Ibrahim what they had said.
“I swear he came,” Ibrahim insisted. “He told me I’d get better. Put your trust in God, then come and visit me at home. God willing, you’ll leave here healed and walking again.”
Coca left him and went to visit Imam al-Kadhim, her mind spinning: Was this misfortune a sign from God? Was He trying to show her that the Shia path was the true one? Was she meant to become a seeker of the Imams?
She went in to the Imam, gripped the lattice of his shrine, and poured her heart out in supplication. When she left, she bought small portraits of several sayyids and hurried back to Ibrahim. One by one, she showed him the images, asking softly, “Who is this?” He did not recognize any of them—until she reached the picture of Malik.
At once, his gaze steadied. “This is Sayyid Malik,” he said. “He came to me, sat beside me, and told me, ‘If you come to my home and visit me, you will recover.’”
Coca’s heart trembled. She could not carry him alone, so she went to her brothers, called on their nakhwa, one by one, and then to his father, begging them all to take Ibrahim to visit the Sayyid. They refused—accusing her of madness, even the Shia among them.
Ibrahim didn’t go to visit the Sayyid, and he never recovered.
Coca was deeply pained by their refusal, and in that moment, she silently vowed never to ask them for anything again. This resolve came just as Ibrahim needed to be transferred from the hospital, so she began travelling alone from Baghdad to Tikrit, taking it upon herself to handle all the paperwork for his work injury compensation. She arranged for him to be moved to the military hospital, Ibn al-Baytar, so his treatment would be fully covered by the presidential office.
Determined to find a cure, she submitted two applications for him to receive treatment abroad—one to the Jordanian embassy and another to Saddam Hussein’s presidential office. The second request was rejected because she had listed herself as a Jordanian citizen.
When she went to inquire, the head of protocol looked at her and said, “Your own country has more claim to you.”
She answered sharply, “Why? Where do you think I come from? Iran or Israel? I am an Iraqi woman.”
He advised her to submit a new request, this time declaring her true nationality, and said that when she met the president, she could explain everything herself. She followed his instructions, and only a few days later she received a call from the presidential office informing her that her request had been approved and that she was to come meet Hussein Kamel.
Moments later, another call came—this time from the Jordanian embassy—saying that her request there had also been approved and that she could come to collect it.
“What do I need Hussein Kamel for now?” thought Coca.
She went to the Jordanian embassy, collected the approval, opened it, and read: ‘There is no objection to the travel of Mr. Ibrahim Abd Dumnan to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”
“What! Was I exiled from Jordan, begging you to take me back? You call yourselves responsible for citizens? You lot couldn’t be trusted to graze goats! I’m Jordanian, my husband’s Jordanian, my children are Jordanians. I’ve killed no one, and I’ve pimped for none of your mothers. I’ll come back whenever I want.”
“Then what should I do?”
“I’ll tell you what. Why are you even an ambassador? Why do we have officials like you? Why are you here and paid if you can’t help?”
He sighed. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to address the higher authorities, from Saddam down, and request that the patient be sent abroad for treatment in Denmark, Sweden, France, or wherever treatment is available. You want to send me to Jordan. What’s in Jordan but its filth! I’m telling you: damn you, and damn whoever comes to you, and damn whoever put you here.”
Coca left, walking along Al-Zaytoun Street in the Mansour district of Baghdad, her rounded belly jutting forward like a grain-sack. As she walked, she panted, cursing her luck: “Since my life is already in tatters, I’ll go neither to this one nor to that.”
At Ibn al-Baytar Hospital, Coca was finally allowed to stay with Ibrahim through the nights. She left her son and one daughter with her mother, entrusted her youngest to a relative, and moved her belongings, indeed her whole life, into the hospital room. Their marital home had shrunk to a single room within the hospital, run by the presidential administration and staffed entirely by English personnel.
Ibrahim bore the consequences of medical negligence at al-Kadhimiyyah Hospital; they had failed to turn him over in bed and left him lying there, and the tissue on his back had rotted, decay gnawing to the bone. Surgeries were necessary, and long, gruelling physical therapy was required so that one day he might sit in a wheelchair. However, his mental state improved significantly, and he began to slowly return to his former self. As his spirits lifted, his attachment to Coca deepened. If she vanished even for a few hours—to Tikrit for clothes, to gather necessities, or to prepare food—he would call the nurses unceasingly, asking about her.
Coca, who had resisted all pressure to abandon him and remarry, saw her devotion not merely as love but as duty. She resolved to shoulder the full weight of his care, no matter what it cost.
Her brothers and Ibrahim’s father sought to restrain her, fearing for her safety as she travelled between provinces to complete the necessary paperwork for Ibrahim’s compensation. They argued that, as a woman, she was vulnerable to abduction or assault while the war with Iran still raged, especially since most transportation was filled with soldiers either joining or on leave from service, and danger lurked everywhere.
Undeterred, Coca turned to her elder brother, gathering him, her other brothers, and her father-in-law: “I have taken care of everything,” she declared, her voice steady. “I have reached the lawyer, and the money is about to be released. And now you come to me, saying, ‘We do not let our women go about on their own.’ What’s your solution?”
Her eldest brother answered: “Whoever’s ashamed, whoever fears for Coca — let him roll up his sleeves and walk with her. And whoever won’t walk with her can bite down on a sandal and keep quiet. You have no claim over her.”
“I am the one who receives no share of the egg rations—two trays for each of you, six people in total—while I get nothing because I am not Iraqi. Twelve trays divided, and not one of you ever thought, ‘Let this tray be for my sister’s children.’”
Her brother Adel’s voice broke through, soft yet resolute: “I will provide for you.”
“My dear,” she said, her voice steady with conviction, “for how long will you provide for me? A year, two years, and then you will pour cold water on my ass, and say, ‘I am not responsible for Ibrahim’s children. You are my sister; I am responsible for you, not your children.’ And must I then beg you? No. This is my husband’s and my children’s right, and I will claim it.”
Coca received Ibrahim’s compensation and insisted on staying by his side. She defied everyone, vowing she would never ask for help, never return in tears, and never regret her choice. She stayed with him in the hospital until her delivery was scheduled for June 1, 1985.
Ramadan had begun, and the heat of Iraq pressed down relentlessly. That day, she returned home, leaving Ibrahim alone in the hospital. But the child did not come. The next morning, she travelled from Tikrit to Baghdad, stayed with him until the end of the day, and returned home once more. This rhythm continued, day after day, until the sixth of June.
That morning, she arrived before noon, carrying a pot of maqluba she had prepared for Ibrahim. She set the meal before him, invited some nurses to join, and sat, feeding him with care. When he had eaten his fill, she felt it—the first pangs of labour.
“I need to leave.”
“Not now, not yet!”
“My good man, I’m telling you, I can’t stay; I’m going to give birth.”
“There’s still time.”
“Still time?! Do you think it’s something I can stitch up and hold in?”
“Then take your things with you.”
Ibrahim knew that giving birth would mean her absence for at least a month, so he clung to childish excuses to delay her departure. Coca, now accustomed to yielding to his wishes, never refused him anything, so she began gathering her belongings from the hospital, packing them into large bags, and carrying them to the Al-Alawi garages next to the hospital, one by one.
Once everything was loaded, she booked a seat and got into the car with four soldiers, who smoked throughout the journey until they reached a rest stop at the call to Maghreb prayer. Everyone spilled out to break their fast—everyone but Coca and one of the men.
Her labour pains surged, fierce and unrelenting, yet she was too shy to cry out. She bit into the front-seat leather, tearing it with clenched teeth. The man in the front seat noticed her struggle and asked if he could help. She told him to call his companions—or she would give birth right there in the car. He did, and the vehicle sped on as Coca continued to tear at the leather, praying she would hold on until she reached home.
Finally, she arrived at the top of her street, carrying the weight of four months’ worth of hospital belongings. She dragged them a few metres at a time, pausing whenever contractions struck, sitting until the pain subsided, then pressing on, step by step, until she reached the door. She dropped everything, called to those inside to bring the bags in and fetch the midwife, then ran to the neighbour’s house to use their phone. She called Ibrahim to say she had arrived, then returned to her room.
The midwife arrived, and there, in that room suffused with quiet determination and exhaustion, Coca gave birth to a boy.
Coca stayed with her newborn for twelve days until Ibrahim called and insisted she come back. She pleaded with her brother’s wife, Ibrahim’s sister, to go in her place, but the woman refused, saying she hated hospitals. Coca left her newborn with the woman who cared for her youngest daughter and returned to the hospital. For a whole month, she stood at the washbasin every morning, emptying her breasts, her tears flowing as she bitterly blamed Ibrahim for making her abandon her child.
After a while, she went to visit her children and found her father-in-law there.
“Have you abandoned the baby to the women’s care and gone to that worthless man?”
“Uncle, look at me. That ‘worthless man’ is the father of this baby. If I have no good in me for this fallen man, then I have no good in me for my children; and the baby will not be better than his father. I told you, I won’t abandon him while he still needs me.”
Her daughter didn’t recognize her, and her son wouldn’t stop crying in her arms until she handed him back to his caretaker. Coca left the house, saddened by her children’s coldness toward her yet angry and defiant after her uncle’s words, as though they had ignited her stubbornness. She had endured it all, certain that what she was doing was the right choice, both morally and for her family’s good, and was bitterly disappointed when the person she thought was on her side stood against her.
A while after giving birth, Ibrahim asked Coca for the first time if they could make love. She didn’t ask how, given his paralysis, but simply obliged, coming to his bed, letting him bite parts of her body, then mounting him to complete the act. They repeated this several times, and Coca began to think that even though he couldn’t physically feel his body below his neck, he was mentally fully awake and desired it, and as his wife, it was her duty not to abandon him physically.
The following month, her period was late, so she told Ibrahim.
“Listen, you asked, I came to you, and you got an erection.”
“So what?”
“So what?! I’m still a young woman, 26 years old. What if I get pregnant? What will people say, with my husband paralyzed?”
“By God, I can’t get a woman pregnant,” Ibrahim insisted.
“You can’t get a woman pregnant? Are you implying I got it from the street?” Coca retorted angrily.
“You’re free to think whatever you want. If you picked it up from the street and brought it to me, trying to cover it up by claiming we slept together, well, I have no manhood left and can’t father children,” Ibrahim said dismissively.
“So after everything I’ve done for you? After all the nights I stayed awake by your side? After leaving my own flesh and blood for your sake? And it turns out I’m not worth a spit to you. You’ve no shame, no dignity. Every ounce of effort I wasted on you was for nothing.”
One of her brothers, Adel, walked in.
“Why are you fighting with Ibrahim and insulting him?” Adel said.
“Brother, I’m not ashamed. If I end up pregnant and my husband disowns the child, can you force him to acknowledge it?”
“If you end up pregnant, we’ll have it tested,” Adel said.
“You’re even filthier than he is, believe it or not. But God willing, if I’m not pregnant, I swear I won’t touch him from now on. I’ll forbid myself to him and give myself to the dogs before ever coming near him again,” vowed Coca.
Coca felt that her life with Ibrahim was over. She went to her family, entered the courtyard surrounded by her brothers’ and their wives’ rooms, and raised her voice:
“I might be pregnant with the child of Ibrahim, that lowlife. And he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Adel, who’s even more of a lowlife, wants to run a paternity test. If it turns out I’m pregnant, we’ll see whose child it is once I give birth. But if I’m not, and my husband, who knows me, and my brother, who’s supposed to have my back, accuse me, from this moment on, I forbid myself to him and won’t be a whore for his sake.”
After a year and a half in the hospital, Ibrahim’s treatment was complete. When it came time for him to be discharged, they decided to return to Jordan, as he could not bear to go back to their old neighbourhood in his condition. Coca booked a car, and they travelled. She rented a house in their old district using the salary provided by the Iraqi government. When she received the compensation of eight thousand dinars, she bought a plot of land and building materials and began construction of their house. As soon as the roof was completed in 1989, she told Ibrahim they would move in and save every penny to finish the construction, since there was no need to spend half of his government salary on renting a house that did not belong to them.
In the new El Zarqah, at the edge of a long, narrow street, three houses down, stood Coca and Ibrahim’s home, where they lived with their children. The house had neither electricity nor running water. It was unpainted, and half its windows were missing. The kitchen consisted only of bare walls. Coca applied for a stipend from the Ministry of Development and received 45 dinars per month, which she dedicated to household expenses, while she saved Ibrahim’s Iraqi government salary to complete the house’s construction and extend electricity and water services. However, the Gulf War interrupted these plans, and Ibrahim’s salary was cut off.
Ever resourceful, Coca began preparing the paperwork to extend water and electricity to her home. Under the law at the time, extending an electrical line required at least three houses in the area or a special exception. With only two neighbouring houses, she was told she could not qualify for the exception and would need to coordinate with her neighbours and submit a joint application. When she asked her neighbours, she learned that one of them, a relative from her tribe, had already obtained an exception for his own house. The other neighbour, whose house was closer to hers, had connected an illegal wire from her relative’s house, so both neighbours refused her offer to submit a joint application.
She asked her relative to run a wire to her house, as he had for their neighbour, in exchange for sharing the bill with him, but he refused. His refusal angered her, especially since he was her kinsman in a foreign land. Her other neighbour also refused when she tried to convince him to return the stolen wire and join her in submitting the application.
But Coca was not one to give up easily: she went to the electricity company and told them that no one was willing to join her, insisting they grant her an exception. When they refused, she told the official that her neighbour’s refusal to cooperate was because he was already getting electricity from her relative, meaning he wasn’t suffering the same hardship. She argued her case while pretending to be naïve, slipping in the information as if she didn’t know that her neighbour was violating the law. The official told her he would send a representative to warn her relative to cut off the illegal connection or risk losing his own electricity meter.
When the representative arrived, her relative was furious that she had reported them. She feigned ignorance again, telling him she hadn’t complained but would do so if he didn’t either extend a wire to her or cut off the illegal connection to the neighbour. He refused, stating he wouldn’t give in to either her or the government.
After two weeks, she went back to him. When he remained firm, she threatened to file an official complaint, which she did. The second warning prompted him to cut off the electricity to their neighbour, who then agreed to join her in submitting a joint application for an electrical connection. Coca’s persistence paid off, and she got her electricity meter.
As for water, the legal obstacle to getting it connected was the building’s unfinished state. Her cousin also refused to extend any pipes to her house, so she went to the governor of Al-Zarqa. The clerks there told her that the law did not allow her to have water at this stage of construction, but the governor granted her authorization for the official water pipes to reach the end of her street. She was responsible for completing the rest of the connection herself. She then approached her neighbour, who had also been obtaining water from her cousin’s house, and proposed that he join her in obtaining the legal extension. He agreed, and she finally got her water and had a water meter installed.
After buying the water pipes, she had spent her last savings. For the months that followed, Coca, Ibrahim, and the children tried to survive on whatever their small welfare stipend could provide. Then came the winter of 1991—the winter Jordanians still remember as the Great Snowstorm. Their circumstances grew dire. Coca began cutting household expenses, trying to save enough to buy kerosene for the heater.
Enduring the ache of poverty and the endless struggle to stretch forty-five dinars across each month consumed Coca’s every thought. She sold the steel bars she had bought to finish the roof and used the money to feed the children. Soon that money, too, was gone. There was nothing left to sell. The day the last of the food ran out, Coca sat quietly with Ibrahim and the children around the heater, too despairing even to think, resigned and calm, hoping her children wouldn’t notice the hunger. Sadly, that was not to be: her youngest child climbed into her lap, crying for bread. Coca always weakened before her youngest more than anyone, overwhelmed by guilt for having left him as an infant when he needed her most. The thought that she was failing him again, unable to feed him, crushed her. Tears streamed down her face as she held him close, trying to soothe him.
Then she remembered a small handful of flour left over from a fish meal she had cooked a few days earlier. She sprang up, fetched it, mixed it hastily with a little water, and spread it on the heater’s round, reddish lid. The dough stuck and slowly dried. Fearing it might burn, Coca scraped it gently with a knife until she lifted it free; some of the heater’s burgundy kin still clinging to it:
I make scraps of bread, the tears pour down, and place them in my chick’s mouth till he quiets. That’s when she decided then and there to go out the very next day to look for a job.
Coca learned that she could obtain a kiosk granted by the municipality to people with disabilities, so she submitted Ibrahim’s documents to the Al-Zarqa municipality and was granted a kiosk at the Al-Zarqa governorate bus terminal. She then applied for a loan from the Ministry of Social Development and was given two thousand dinars, to be repaid once the project succeeded. She paid two hundred dinars in municipal infrastructure fees and used part of the money to stock the stall with supplies.
However, the kiosk never prospered; its remote, tucked-away corner kept it far from passersby and terminal workers. But Coca would never submit to defeat: she closed the kiosk and went to the municipality, demanding a refund and a kiosk in a better location. The mayor refused her request.
“We’re not giving anything back to you.”
“Oh, yes, you will, unless you want me to expose you as the swindlers you are and stir up a scandal the likes of which you’ve never seen!”
“Listen! I’m afraid you don’t know your way around. Shall I show you where you can file your complaint?’
“No need. I know exactly where to go—and I’llplunge you into the sea and pull you out bone-dry.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Coca went to the Ministry of Municipalities, filed a complaint, and was approved for a two hundred-dinar refund. She went back to the mayor and showed him the approval, but he mocked her, saying he wouldn’t give her another kiosk in a different location. Undeterred, she stood in the middle of the municipality, shouting “Swindlers!” at the top of her voice and threatening them, saying she knew they turned a blind eye to a man close to them who rented kiosks from impoverished women for fifty dinars, then sublet them for two hundred and fifty, not to mention the prime-location kiosks he ran himself. She shamed them for fictitious projects whose funds they had stolen, such as the asphalt the governor had allocated for paving her street, which she never saw because they had sold it to the caretakers of Mar Elias shrine and pocketed the money themselves.
A voice suddenly cut through her tirade.
“Girl.”
She turned to find a blind man leaning on a cane and walked towards him.
“What do you want?’
“I’ve been following up on my case,” and I was granted a kiosk in the Free Zone called the Blind Man’s Kiosk. Try going to the Free Zone.”
“Where is it?”
“Take one of the buses from here heading to Khaw. Tell the driver to drop you off at the Free Zone.”
Coca didn’t have twenty qirsh for the bus fare. She borrowed the fare from a shopkeeper in the market and took the bus. When she reached the Free Zone, she asked about the authority responsible for assigning kiosks. The following day, she went to the official responsible for granting kiosk permits, who refused her request. Determined not to take no for an answer, she went to the director of the Free Zones, Abu Yaarub.
She wrote a request in her own words:
“I am Neshouq. My husband is disabled, and I have four children. I seek only to live with dignity. I need a kiosk to work in the free zone. If you think a person should sell their dignity for food, reject my request.”
The director read her request and forwarded it to the zone officer for approval, instructing him to grant her a suitable location for a three-month trial. If she struggled to pay the rent, the amount would be deducted from his salary, and if she didn’t like the location, she could choose another.
She bought supplies for ten dinars and earned two on the first day, four on the second, and eight on the third — a sequence Coca would never forget. She kept going for ten days, each one leaving her as delighted as if she had stumbled upon a hidden treasure. But she was the only woman in the Free Zone, so in those early months she had to prove her fierceness and boldness to all who saw.
“One of them once came up to me and said, “Make me a sandwich,” and winked. I told him, ‘I’ll rip out that eye of yours. You’ve got a tongue; use it. Why are you winking at me? Speak politely. Say: please make me a sandwich.’ This time, I just stopped you at the door and sent you off. Next time, I’ll shred your legs to pieces. This isn’t a brothel; it’s a place of livelihood.’”
Coca’s cooking had a distinctive flavour. In her clan, if she was present, no one would let anyone else prepare food in her place. At the restaurant, customers came solely for the pickles she had become famous for, or bought them to add to dishes not served there. When asked about the secret behind her delicious food, she would smile proudly and say she never followed a strict recipe, paid little attention to measurements, and attributed its unique taste to the love and goodwill she poured into it.
The truth was that Coca’s cooking was unlike any other; even the slightest intervention by anyone else would strip it of its special magic. She became the Free Zone’s favourite chef, and her business flourished, allowing her to complete and furnish her house and stabilize their financial situation.
Coca never stopped caring for Ibrahim, and she never once let him feel that her going out to work while he remained at home diminished him. But her resentment toward him, ever since he let her down, never faded. She had turned away more than one representative from the Ministry of Social Development who came to offer to implant embryos for her. Ibrahim welcomed them warmly each time and tried to persuade her to agree, but she would answer him:
“I have two girls and two boys. I don’t want children with a man who once said he couldn’t father a child. I won’t repeat the mistake or trust you again.”
Still, Coca, with the precision of a jurist, kept one matter separate from another. She held fast to her love for him, to her stubborn quarrels with him, and to including him in everything she did. Every day when she got home, she would tell him all that had happened, introducing him, through her words, to everyone she met: shopkeepers, traders, and people of the market.
As their neighbourhood grew and more houses were built, they came to know their neighbours. Every evening, when Coca returned from work, a ritual unfolded: she would bring out a white thobe for Ibrahim, press it, scent it, dress him in it, lift him out of bed, and sit him in his wheelchair. She prepared the tea, and they received visitors; in winter, in his room, which was furnished with a floor mattress where Coca also slept, his bed, and a few chairs for guests; and in summer, out on the balcony, where they would carry the television table to wherever they chose to sit.
Nothing in her manner with him changed; she continued to treat him as an equal, with the same spirited stubbornness. They quarrelled, cursed each other, mocked each other, and scolded anyone who tried to intervene. She never referred to Ibrahim as her husband, but as her companion or friend. She wished for him to be her companion and friend at work as well.
Coca learned that she could obtain a customs exemption from the royal court for a special vehicle designed for people with disabilities. Instead of going to the court, she met King Hussein himself at a ceremony he inaugurated for Tree Day. She handed him the petition. Two days later, the court called to inform her that she could collect the car from Prince Raad’s office. She went to the office and found six others waiting for him. Coca didn’t know that Prince Raad had had a disability affecting his leg.
When he appeared, he greeted them with a half-raised hand, then continued on his way. Coca thought him arrogant because of the half-hearted gesture. Annoyed, she kept her distance and didn’t approach him; but when he passed by his car, she saw him limping. She murmured to herself: “What luck; he, too, is disabled, and here I am taking from him.”
Coca left, refusing help from someone she believed needed it more, even if he was a prince. She decided to follow up directly with the court, but her efforts led nowhere. Later, she submitted a request in Iraq and was granted compensation, which she used to buy a car. She registered it in Jordan, then adjusted her paperwork to meet the requirements for vehicles licensed and exempt from customs duties for people with disabilities, an exemption she would be entitled to whenever she wished to replace the car. From then on, she and Ibrahim would go together to buy supplies for the kiosk.
Coca was spontaneous in everything, not only in the way she cooked. She carried a peculiar blend of fierceness and fragility, moving between them with an ease that never seemed strange; she would flare up and calm down within moments, cry, then mock her own pain, laughing until her eyes squeezed shut and her dimples appeared, her face shifting in an instant from deep sorrow to a childlike cheerfulness.
She was impulsive, never considering how others saw her. She acted on the spur of the moment without considering the consequences, especially when she witnessed injustice befalling someone. She became known in the market as the woman who might strike a man if she saw him hurting someone weaker than himself, or as the one who would lead a movement to demand rights for the neighbourhood residents as more houses were built and the area became populated. She would rush to help anyone whose government paperwork had stalled, so much so that, in the early 2000s, the residents held a meeting to persuade her to run for a seat on the municipal council, but she refused. She preferred simplicity and participation, moving easily between the men’s gathering and the women’s when the community divided itself into separate circles.
Coca was the first and, for two whole decades, the only woman to work in the Free Zone, from 1991 until 2011. When she finally retired, she rejoiced in watching her children grow, just as she had always hoped. God answered her prayers: she completed her journey with her husband until their children were grown.
Before Ibrahim died in 2015, he left her a last will:
“Do not weep; wear your white shawl at my funeral.”
His companion’s death was the one thing that left a lasting mark on her face. She grew quieter at family and neighbour gatherings, despite her attempts to be strong and join in, as though, with his passing, she had lost a part of herself that only ever appeared with him.
Publication Note: “The White Shawl” was originally published in Arabic by Ma3azef and was developed during the author’s participation in the 2020–21 Counter Academy for Arab Journalism, a year-long programme dedicated to cultivating critical and creative journalism.
