#4. JUMILIA SQUARE, SADR CITY, BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Monday May 4, 13:18
ALI HASSAN limped painfully out of the hospital. There was no room for a boy with a mere twisted ankle. He peeped in at Fatima sleeping under heavy sedation, a snake-like tangle of tubes and wires connecting her frail body to a bank of bleeping, blinking machines. Her long black hair was wrapped inside a white bandage. Her right leg had been amputated just below the knee. He gazed at her sadly until a nurse chased him out then Uncle Wagdy took him back to the flat. They did not speak.
The owner of the flat, who lived next door, was a rat-faced little man with a ragged moustache. He wore a grey cardigan over a grey, washed-out galabeya. He was kind and solicitous, offering mint-tea and sympathy. Wagdy cried a little as they talked.
''All dead?'' Ali heard Suleyman say. ''God above. What will he do?''
''I don't know,'' Wagdy murmured. ''I can't afford to rent this flat, not as well as my own, and he can't live here by himself. He's only just fifteen.''
''Well,'' said Suleyman, ''Take your time, Wagdy. You'll need to get everything cleared out first. I won't re-let the flat until you're ready.''
Ali wandered numbly into the kitchen with its battered tin pots and pans, its china plates still lined up in the dish-rack, a pan of lentil soup still on the stove, his mother's yellow rubber gloves draped limply over the edge of the stainless steel sink, onions, peppers and aubergines still in the vegetable basket, and in the fridge the yoghurt and cheese and cheap cuts of chicken that his mother had been planning to cook that evening. The washing machine was half-full of dirty clothes. So normal. So sad. A home waiting. For no-one to come.
The living room was dominated by a big, black Goldstar television in the corner. His father, snug in his armchair, had loved to watch football, drinking Sprite, snacking on crisps, punctuating each game with cries of disbelief and crows of glee. His mother, reclining on the worn brown sofa, had loved Arabic movies and the Turkish soaps that came in Ramadan. He and Fatima had watched Tom and Jerry, lying side-by-side on their stomachs on the carpet, propping up their chins with their hands. Ali looked at the silver-framed photos standing on the polished cabinet that housed the best china. Mother and Father on their wedding day, Fatima as a baby, gap-toothed teenaged Hussein playing a guitar, Mohamed graduating from high school, a family picnic in a Baghdad park… He inhaled the room. It smelt of his father's cheap cigarettes.
His parents' room: a double bed covered in a brightly patterned throw-over, a smaller camp-bed that Fatima slept in, her favourite pink teddy perched on the pillow, a head-scarfed Fulla doll on the rug, a cheap dresser with a mirror, a hairbrush and a dirty tea-cup.
His own room: Mohamed's couch, a crumpled pale blue sheet, his grey and crimson pyjamas heaped on the bed he had shared with Hussein, posters of Lebanese pop-stars Nancy Ajram and Fairouz and their favourite English football club, Manchester United, tacked to the white-washed wall. Mohamed's leather jacket hung from the back of the door. The small desk they had shared for their school-work still had the books open, the pens waiting, the essays half-written. An ashtray overflowed with Mohamed's long-cold Marlboro butts. A dirty glass, rimmed orange from the Mirinda Hussein had drunk that morning, stood next to it, forming a ring on the cheap wooden surface.
Little details.
Lives lived.
Lives lost.
Ali stripped off the galabeya his uncle had lent him and rummaged in the wardrobe for a fresh white slip, clean blue jeans, a spotless white vest and a pressed Manchester United football shirt. He dressed quickly, then slipped on his orange flip-flops. He grimaced as pain swelled in his ankle. Then, thinking ahead, he took more pants, a couple of vests, two pairs of white socks, and two of grey, the worn, frayed pair of grey trousers he had inherited from Hussein, a pair of white shorts, navy blue tracksuit trousers, a bottle-green crew-neck sweater, his best shirt, which was black and shot through with silver threads, a beige Tasmanian Devil T-shirt, a blue Ash and Pikachu T-shirt, a yellow, white and grey horizontally striped T-shirt, his pyjamas, his blue and brown galabeya and his black school shoes and folded them all carefully into the blue Pokémon rucksack he used for school. A pack of playing cards, a little radio, three Pokémon comics and a yellow plastic torch went on top. He tied up the rucksack, put on his denim jacket and returned to the reception room where Wagdy and Suleyman were finishing their tea.
''Maybe we should pack a bag for Fatima,'' he said.
''She'll be in hospital for weeks,'' Uncle Wagdy replied.
''Nevertheless,'' Ali said firmly. ''We could take it to the hospital or keep it at your house till she comes out.''
He went to his parents' room and picked through Fatima's drawer. So much pink, he tutted, folding cardigans, T-shirts, variously patterned ankle-socks, white jeans, her favourite pale yellow party-frock, her hairbrush, some scrunchies and her sparkly pink lip-gloss into her pink Fulla rucksack. Then he went to the bathroom for his comb, toothbrush and Hussein's hair-gel. On impulse, he returned to the living room, removed the pictures of his mother and father and the family picnic in the park from their frames and slid them into a rucksack side-pocket.
''Let's go,'' he said.
Uncle Wagdy, Aunty Nour and their six children, all aged under seven, lived in a one-roomed flat which was even smaller and more cramped than Ali's. Before the war, Uncle Wagdy had sold imported cars. Now he drove a taxi rented from a local strong-man for seventy percent of his daily earnings. The war had wrecked the economy and many people, once-successful, were struggling now to survive. Ali's father, for instance, had run a factory which manufactured electrical cables for the military, but, after the war, the military had been abolished, and Hassan's sales outlet with it. He had tried to deal with the occupying authorities but they had shipped cables from the United States instead of buying internally. The factory had been finally looted by black-marketeers so Hassan had given it up to deliver bills and read meters for the electricity board, who spent most of the time, it seemed, cutting the power anyway.
''You'll have to sleep on the floor,'' Aunty Nour fretted.
''I need to keep my ankle up,'' Ali muttered mutinously. ''The doctor said.''
''But the children sleep on the sofa-bed,'' she said sharply.
''We'll give you a cushion,'' Wagdy smiled anxiously. As though that made a difference.
''What about Fatima?'' Ali asked.
Uncle Wagdy and Aunty Nour exchanged glances whilst Ali's cousins sat in a row on the sofa, solemn and silent and picking their noses.
''We'll see,'' said Uncle Wagdy nervously smiling. ''Get some rest now.''
Ali felt guilty for surviving the bomb. Dying would have been so much more convenient.
Later in the night, he woke with a start. The floor was uncomfortable, his ankle and shoulder hurt and he was too exhausted to sleep properly. In the half-light, he saw the six children in the sofa-bed curled up against each other like a litter of newly born kittens. A chink of light came from his uncle and aunt's bedroom. He could hear voices.
''He can't stay here, Wagdy,'' his aunt was saying. ''We don't have the space and we don't have the money. He's a teenager. You know how teenagers eat. There'll be school-books to buy and shoes every six weeks then there'll be girls and hair and… mess, then college fees, engagement, marriage... we can't afford it, not on top of our six.''
''He's family,'' said Wagdy stubbornly. ''He's my brother's son.''
''And what happens when Fatima arrives? That'll be ten mouths to feed. And you on a taxi driver's earnings.'' Aunty's tone sharpened. ''Most of your money pays for the taxi and we're in a city with no roads. Everything's pot-holed and nobody goes anywhere anyway and the taxi's falling apart and needing repair...''
''I'm doing my best,'' said Wagdy.
''I know.'' She softened a little. ''I know you are. But Fatima - we can't look after a cripple. There'll be medication, physiotherapy, trips to the doctor… think of the bills. And we'll never marry her off
, not with one leg. She'll be with us forever. No, Wagdy, they need to go into care. Family or no family, we can't take them in.''
Ali closed his eyes. From favourite nephew to unwelcome burden in the space of a fortnight. He would be sent to an orphanage. Now he knew.
He closed his eyes but did not sleep.