Between Two Worlds (16 page)

After they had been drinking for what seemed like a long time outside, Amo stood up and indicated we should move indoors. No one asked why. “Implement, then discuss”—that was the Baathist motto, after all. Once we were seated in the two-level living room, he informed us we were going to have a family piano recital. He called on me first and sat back and relaxed, ready to be entertained by his beloved ones. I had memorized the Blue Danube Waltz, and I played it that night. Surrounded by my fifteen or twenty members of this artificial family, I was nervous, but I played without a mistake. When I finished, Amo didn’t just clap—I remember this vividly for some reason—he clapped slowly, with respectful pauses between each clap: clap . . . clap . . . clap. When you did something to cause Amo’s admiration, he would shine his eyes on you. We all knew that shining-eye look and sought it out. It was the prize, the deposit you put in the bank against a dry spell. That night I got it, the best shining-eye I’d ever seen. After I finished, he called on Luma and Tamara and complimented them too. Then he stood up, signaling he was ready for dinner, and the recital was over.

But one other pianist, Sarah, was left behind on the sofa. Amo might as well have slapped her. Why had he deliberately snubbed her? Sarah had grown up with Amo. He was almost like a real uncle to her, and I always thought she genuinely loved him. She competed more enthusiastically for his favor than any of the other kids; she was inevitably obedient and prepared. I could count on one hand the times I had won our competitions. My most important victory was at a gold donation when I was sixteen. Sarah had stayed up all night memorizing an original poem written by her father and delivered it perfectly for the cameras. I pulled out my plastic smile, enunciated the name “Salbi” clearly for the microphone to get proper credit for my family, and spontaneously added a bit of heartfelt personal enthusiasm for the country, our soldiers at the front, and Amo. Later, Amo told Sarah that she was “good.” But he told me, with that same slow syncopation, that I was “very . . . very . . . good.”

I had seen her slip up just once, when we had been together a few months earlier. Her father had been publicly criticized in the newspaper, and Sarah understood nothing could appear in the paper without Amo’s approval, so she had shown him how she felt by shaking his hand instead of kissing him. And it dawned on me that he had set up this whole recital as his revenge for that slight. It occurred to me, at some cost to my ego, that even his praise for my waltz was directed not at me, but at poor Sarah. Here he was, the president of a country of sixteen million people, and she was a fifteen-year-old girl! How cruel, I thought, a despot manipulating a kid—the one who probably cared for him the most.

As everyone headed out of the living room for dinner, I went to look for her and found her crying outside on the balcony. Everyone had seen her shamed, but she was all alone. Where was her mother? But I knew the adults could not leave Amo’s company without his permission, and Sarah and Luma had their own competition for Amo’s attention. As I walked outside onto the porch, I saw that there were soldiers nearby, and I was afraid they would see her this way and report her behavior to Amo.

For just once, I wanted this painful charade to end. I wanted something to be real. I walked over and put my arms around Sarah, and tried to comfort her as Aunt Layla had comforted Mama after Amo had screamed at her. I held her for a few minutes, until her sobbing subsided.

“It’s not fair,” she said when she stopped crying. Then, knowing exactly where our boundaries lay, she turned her grief into an acceptable youthful complaint and added: “I can’t wait until I’m older so I can drink too.”

I can’t remember if it was on that trip or a later visit to the same spot that Sarah reprimanded me loudly for sipping my tea before Amo had tasted his. Amo only smiled at her and commented that Zainab was family and wasn’t it nice that I felt comfortable enough to drink my tea when I felt like it? If we were all horses in his stable, which is actually not a bad analogy, I think he might have described me as the mare with the independent streak. It was to be expected that I would occasionally rear up. Unfortunately for Sarah, she had positioned herself as the steady obedient one. If she reared up, he would beat her back down.

That weekend was one of the few times I spent time with his mistress, Samira. Chairs had been arranged in a large circle for us on the lawn after dinner and each of us had a servant in full military uniform standing behind us in case we needed anything. Amo was in a jovial mood that night with Samira at his side. She was laughing and fawning over him, throwing her relationship with him in my parents’ faces. Behind their facade of courtesy, I could see disgust on the faces of all the adults. Samira flirted with him endlessly as we watched, reveling in her superiority over this supposedly elite circle as she whispered in his ear and ran her fingers along his thigh. Forced to witness this overtly sexual interplay, I thought about what it must be like to be her sons who were there watching it all. Unable to get up, unable to speak, each of us sat there in our own cells of silence. Inside, I could feel a scream churning. I wanted to jump up and scream and run away into the mountains around us that smelled like wild sage and the wind. Instead, I sat absolutely still, with my hands clenched in my lap, and I prayed for a hero on a white horse to gallop in and carry me away.

On some of the weekend trips we took with Amo, I was blessed to see Iraq’s stark natural beauty and some of the most magnificent physical settings I have ever known. I love the wind, and especially in those days when I thought I would never get enough air to breathe, there were a few times when I felt the wind blow against my face and it revived something inside me. My mother had a way of turning her face to the wind and closing her eyes as her long hair swirled around her, and I remember thinking how beautiful she was one impeccably starry night, and how perfect that night would have been if Amo had not been in it.

We were all fishing that night. Amo loved to fish. In a land where water is more precious than oil, he took water from our rivers and flooded the desert with dozens of private lakes so well stocked Mama and I used to joke he had SCUBA divers under the water putting fish on our hooks. We were having a “family fishing contest” in which he announced he would give a thousand-dinar prize, about $3,000 U.S., to the person who caught the biggest fish. We all lined up in our chairs with our fishing rods beside one of his lakes. Luma and Sarah were sitting next to me. I remember Luma holding the fishing rod in her ladylike way, with her perfectly curled hair and manicured nails, and Sarah relaxing beside her, understanding that her role was to enjoy her privilege. It was a beautiful night with a full moon reflecting on the lightly rippled water, and everything felt very quiet and peaceful as I looked over the lake. But if I turned in my seat, I faced one man in a uniform with a huge black mustache staring at me and another ready to jump toward me to see if I was thirsty. Behind them was a swarm of soldiers, servants, and cooks, all there to wait on us or guard us. Suddenly, my line started to move around in the water, and the tug was so strong I didn’t have the strength to pull it back.

“I caught a fish!” I screamed. “Help! It’s heavy!”

Instantly there were three men around me, all in military uniforms, helping me reel it in. The fish was more than a meter long and so big that I started jumping up and down and screaming, “I caught a fish! I caught a fish!” I was so thrilled I forgot myself in front of Amo, the families, the guards, the servants, and everyone else. I remember Amo’s smile and his shining white teeth as he looked over at me. He seemed genuinely happy for me. “Zainab is the winner!” he announced later that night.

 

Luma, Sarah, and I were sitting in front of Aunt Nada’s farmhouse one afternoon when Amo drove up in a little red sports car. You couldn’t help but notice he was wearing a racing helmet. When he learned that our parents were taking their afternoon nap, he asked us if we wanted to go for a ride. I was about sixteen.

Yes, Amo, we would love that! we all said.

“Then come with me, girls, for a private tour of my private compound.”

We jumped in the car, he turned up the radio very loud, and we sped off, zipping across the flat desert road through that inner wall into a brilliant world of lush green lawns, shiny cars, and private lakes. There were security guards everywhere, but they weren’t following us around; I felt free. He seemed very relaxed as he drove us around enjoying the music and the sunny afternoon. It was fun to drive with him.

Our first stop was at a fishing house, if that’s the proper term for it, which was built out over one of the larger lakes. We stopped the car, and reached the house by walking across a long walkway above the water and into a huge circular room over the lake. Inside, upholstered easy chairs were arranged in a semicircle in front of the windows, which opened so he and his guests could sit inside, with their fishing poles out through the windows, and fish in comfort. Next to each chair there was a small table for food and drinks. “I like to work out here,” he said, and for a moment I was jolted back to reality. Was it here, in this laid back setting, that Amo had made my father read Hussein Kamel’s report?

Polite and friendly, Amo was that perfect host who made our day by giving his full attention to three teenagers and talking to us like adults. He was just Amo that day, not someone to be nervous around, just a normal guy who happened to be enormously wealthy and enjoyed showing off his real estate. He told us he had helped design many of the buildings, and he seemed proud to show them off. One of the buildings he took us inside looked like a cottage, with casual furniture. Then he took us downstairs and we wound up underground in a whole separate living area with a bedroom, living room, and small kitchen.

“This is a bunker in case of emergency,” he explained casually. “I can hide in here if I ever need to. There is enough food to last for weeks.”

He went into the kitchen and started showing us his food, opening each cabinet door, revealing stashes of food ranging from pistachios to potato chips to whiskey. Then he opened the refrigerator, which was filled with soda and juices, and offered us each a drink and snacks. He opened the soda cans for us himself—no servants. We spent perhaps two hours with him on our leisurely tour. His lakes were filled with boats, and he took us onto one of the biggest ones, an enormous yacht with a very ornate, fancy bedroom downstairs.

“Girls, remember this when you get married,” he said, looking at us. “You can use this on your honeymoon.”

Not in a million years, I thought to myself. There was no question in my mind that there were cameras behind those upholstered stateroom walls. Yet as we were driving back toward our farmhouses, I thought to myself how much I was enjoying Amo’s company. It was probably about five in the afternoon when we got back. We had been gone a few hours and all of our parents were standing in front of Aunt Nada’s house looking worried about us. Had we done something wrong? Weren’t we supposed to have gone out with Amo? We thanked him, jumped out of the car, and ran to tell our parents how much fun we’d had on our adventure.

 

 

One trip we took started out in Amo’s private helicopter, a converted Sikorsky so big it had separate rooms. For the kids, at least, this was a novelty: there was a television set, a minibar, a bathroom, a flight attendant. Less than an hour later we descended into an open field that was staged with tents to look like a hunting safari. Sarah was airsick and threw up as soon as we landed, but she managed to pick herself up, dry off her mouth, and put a big smile on her face for Amo, who greeted us in a safari outfit. He told the women and children to look for truffles and watch the exciting hunting, then directed each of his three friends and my brother Haider to a different waiting Sikorsky. The rotors spun into action with hollow whumping sounds, and the five gunships lifted into the air with their hunters. I had a stick and was dutifully poking bumps in the earth looking for the walnut-sized truffles when I heard this horrible screaming over the noise of the Sikorskys. I looked up to see a flock of wild ducks surrounded by the huge circling helicopters. The birds were trapped in the middle and flapping around recklessly, flying desperately in all directions at once. I saw Amo laughing through an open door of his helicopter as he raised his rifle and began firing, and the other men started shooting too.

“This is a
massacre
!” I half-screamed. I was shaking, looking up at the sky. “This is nothing to laugh at! This is a
massacre
!”

The ducks were
crying
. I remember thinking to myself that they were crying from the inside out, and Amo was laughing at them. Not just hunting, laughing! It was the cruelest thing I’d ever seen. I started sobbing. I must have known how dangerous and stupid it was, but I couldn’t help myself. My mother heard me and ran over to me and forced my face down into her chest to muffle the sound so the security guards wouldn’t hear.

“Shhhsh, Zainab, shhhsh,” Mama said, holding my head down as I cried. “Please stop crying. Please stop crying, honey. Be strong for me! Do it for me, please, Zanooba? Please, remember where you are!”

Around us bloodied ducks plopped to earth. But, like Sarah, I managed to wipe my tears, wash my face, and smile for Amo when the hunters returned.