Delicate echoes tolled within my thoughts. The clinking of her bracelets. The whispers of her prayers every morning. We had stacked the prayer mat somewhere in a drawer. Yahya took it out occasionally for Baba, knowing he liked seeing her things around. Her little notepads still rested on the edge of our bookshelves, against several volumes of Attār Mama had worn out with reading.
Every morning, I peeled carrots and grated them into fine crescents. Every bit had to go into the pan because Mama didn’t like waste. I added rose-water, cardamom, vanilla and a few strands of saffron. I stirred. A faint sigh of relief escaped my weary body.
It was nearing the end of Ramadan and the jars were accumulating. The older ones at the back of the fridge sprouted fuzzy rings. Baba threw some out and stored some in the garden shed. When I ran out of jars, Yahya bought some and left them out for me on the kitchen counter.
“I’m going to need a lot more, please buy me more jars next time? I’m making it every morning and there is never enough,” I said.
“Sure, Samah, I’ll get you your jars. Anything else?” he said, holding a book titled Measure Theory. He packed his book away in silence. Our arguments had dwindled since last year. I almost miss our maths lessons. He used to help me, although his patience always fell short of his knowledge and passion. From the moment Yahya started his degree, Baba had called him a mathematician. He mentioned it every time he tended to the gardens of a new house. When Baba worked longer hours at large estates—places that could fit our entire flat several times over—I joined him. He assigned me small tasks to keep me close. Baba once told me that in Baghdad, before they left, he briefly worked in the gardens of Al-Faw Palace, one of Saddam’s many palaces. It was work he couldn’t refuse, yet it brought instability and fear into their lives. Mama had to quit university, and eventually, they seized the chance to trade their reality in Baghdad for a new one in London. Here, Baba continued his gardening, and Mama found solace in reading the poetry she had studied and written essays about.
“The plants are dying outside, Samah, could you please bring them in? It will likely continue raining today,” Yahya said without glancing at me, his gaze focused on his bag.
I brought the plants in and lined them against the wall near the garden door. Only one week after the funeral, on Eid-al-Fitr, Baba still kept the back garden perfectly, even planting new bulbs for spring. Perhaps he wished I didn’t hear his phone call that day, his concerns were almost legible in the folds of his face, like script on parchment. He hadn’t looked so old before, or maybe I had only now begun to truly observe him. Mama used to say that wrinkles were a sign of a well-bred and hard-working man, the kind that truly devotes his time to the wellbeing of one’s family.
I didn’t understand her, as if she was speaking a different language. I blamed her, too, for feeling out of place when I was at school. And yet, I still sat next to her when she carefully ran fabric through her sewing machine. I listened while she prayed, praising the only One she believed was worth her time. Everything she did was deliberate, every action had a reason. She spent her evenings sewing because it was a useful skill. She woke up for Fajr earlier than usual because she wanted to ensure we were all awake. Yahya woke up instantly, never uttering a word, joining Baba in the living room and quietly headed back to bed. I would rebel at the early morning prayers the most. But that was all before. Before, I thought her world had to be perfect for me to accept that it was real.
Later that day, I couldn’t help but fixate on the psychologist’s pale, smooth hands opening a carefully organised notebook, as she scribbled something in a blue-tagged section. She smiled, pleased that I was opening up. I thought six or seven months had passed since my morning routine didn’t involve peeling carrots. She would have needed a much thicker notebook if I truly spoke.
At school, things were slowly returning to how they once were. I at least had to act normal; otherwise, they would have made me speak with the school psychologist for the rest of the year. Our conversation was a study in contrasts—her civility and grace stark against my abrasive silence. I didn’t like the mild coloured books on her shelf, or her attempt to get me to really speak my mind. Maybe it was the abstraction, maybe I just didn’t understand what 10 habits to a more fulfilling life meant because more fulfilling than what exactly? I’d now had a year of practice naturally speaking the words people most wanted to hear.
“What do you enjoy in school?” she asked.
“Sports and maths. I find relief in moving and, you know, maths is just sports for the brain.” My instinctive reply was something Mama used to say.
The next morning, I decided to tell the head teacher I no longer needed to see the school psychologist. I folded the warm fresh carrot jam into a new jar, stacking it into the fridge, pushing the older ones back. Yahya gave me a brief stare. Maybe he wanted to mention what a waste of time and resources this was and that I was doing it for attention. If this was before, he would have unleashed an argument that overtook the house and Mama would have eventually told us to face each other for five seconds without speaking. Yahya and I were four years apart. We had a good relationship. We could easily spend hours on the PlayStation together. He didn’t always feel like an older brother to me because he was softly spoken and calm, just like Baba. I was the loud and demanding one. When I insisted during dinner conversations that gymnastics were my true calling, Yahya couldn’t put a word in until Mama or Baba made me quiet down.
Maybe he disliked the smell of honeyed carrots, but Yahya never said a thing. Or maybe he was just glad he didn’t need to sit by my bed anymore as I lay there motionless that entire July. Maybe he was glad he didn’t need to open my blinds every morning anymore, or ensure that I ate something. So, instead, he sat down on the small round table in the kitchen updating me on his final year of university.
Another Ramadan was ending and another Eid was approaching. I threw away the peels of carrots and wiped the counter clean of some spilled cardamom. The last iftar of the month always accompanied the smell of klecha that Mama made every Eid, but last year, the morning after, it was carrot jam again. Our world returned to how it was before the month paused our traditions and the smell of that carrot jam was the sign of that normality returning. Last year, Khale Zaina had made the klecha and brought it over because Mama was back in Iraq. Shortly after iftar, whilst the Athan still echoed in the house, as we lay our mats out to pray, Baba received the phone call.
***
Second of July, 2016, the day before Eid. Karrada, the largest shopping district in Baghdad, bustled with shoppers. I had only visited Baghdad once, shortly after the war, when Mama’s mother, Bebe, would wash the entire front garden to keep the house cool from the blazing heat that reached fifty degrees Celsius.
I only knew that Karrada Street was loud, smelling of sewage and oily shawarma.
“La illaha ila Allah,” Baba shouted, there is no god but Allah. His voice broke but grew louder. Tears rolled down his face as he reached for the remote, turning up the TV’s volume to mask his pleas to God.
“La illaha ila Allah.” His voice trembled, cracked, broken. Yahya and I were frozen, waiting to see what it was. Was it another cousin? Another bomb? Who was it this time?
Grey scenes on TV, burnt buildings, screams in the background as a man with a heavy Iraqi dialect spoke to the correspondent about what was happening. My spoken Arabic wasn’t too bad, but I was a slow reader, so it took me a while to read the subtitles. It read: BAGHDAD BREAKING NEWS: Explosion in the mall of Karrada, death toll unclear so far. I looked at Baba, waiting to hear the name of a relative. Maybe words escaped him because silence fell onto our house.
I ran upstairs to call Mama, seeing that she hadn’t replied to the photo I sent her of my Eid outfit. Each ring reached far into the silence of the house. Khale Zaina arrived, her face as pale as the shawl loosely wrapped around her head. She held Baba’s hand, their eyes glued to the TV. Carnage. Fires. “ISIS claims latest attack in Karrada mall,” it read, in the moving banner at the bottom of Al-Jazeera news. But it’s Ramadan?
“Baba, who was that on the phone?” I could no longer wait.
Baba’s expressions were falling off his face, his eyes drooping.
“She was there.”
***
“You know your Mama would hate that you don’t wear your hijab properly, Samooha. Come, I will fix it for you.” I had just walked into the house from school, taken my shoes off at the door, and approached to kiss my grandmother’s hands and rest them against my forehead, just like mama taught me.
Bebe slowly pulled her hands back, patting me on the head, her posture was bent quite heavily now and the skin on her arms was like thin paper.
I let her tuck the hairs that stood out of the black jersey scarf loosely tied around my head. She could barely reach my head, so I had to bend down a little; her sweet, exhausted face softly judged me. She still spoke about her. She spoke of her as much as she spoke of the other children she had lost. After all, the loss of a child was a familiar grief to her.
“Baba said you should stay over. I’ll give you my room, Bebe,” I said.
“If I do, you’ll have to let me get rid of all that awful jam you have in the fridge. What a waste. Why are you making it anyway? You shouldn’t waste food like that.” Bebe said, firmly as always.
“Yes, I know, I will throw it away, ok. I’m planning to give some to the neighbours. I’m getting better at it, please try it, Bebe.”
I knew she would refuse. She had stopped eating sugary foods and instead carried dry dates in her bag to have with her tea.
“Life is not the same after,” she said, pleading, locking her eyes with mine, “Samooha, stop making that sugary jam, Mama will not bless you from her grave.”
It’s not that life changed after Mama was gone. It didn’t change. But how could I have told her that? I didn’t know how to explain to Bebe, Baba and Yahya how much it bothered me that life remained the same. The skies continued to invite light and darkness. Leaves still grew on the trees and birds still flew above us. Even lessons kept going on at school and the girls in my class still gossiped about the English lit teacher. My hair still needed washing and it tangled easily. Skyscrapers were still being built. So, I had to peel the carrots, grate them finely, place them in a pan and watch them slowly simmer in their own sweet water.
***
News came in of more family friends who had died. The heaviness in my heart kept my eyes open for days, every blink took energy, every step I took was tiresome for the days that followed. I stopped listening to the names, to the stories, to their grief.
***
Around dinner time, Bebe and Yahya spoke softly in the living room. I knew that when Yahya spoke quietly, he was saying things he didn’t want me to hear. Is she asking him if I was doing well? Bebe didn’t worry quietly, so perhaps not. I sat by Baba’s feet on the floor, ate a few of the pickled beetroots that Bebe had made and brought with her. We sat there in silence, Baba flipping through a Kanafani book, Bebe sat on the couch as she could no longer tolerate floor-sitting and Yahya watching Al-Jazeera as if anything on the ‘news’ was actually new. The same scenes glared back from the screen. Palestinians threw stones at their occupiers, ISIS claimed another attack in southern Iraq, leaders of parliaments accused of corruption, the Saudi government killed another journalist. Scenes that had filled my entire childhood with perfect predictability. Not that different from my jars of jam, I thought.
