The American Granddaughter by Inaam Kachachi Read Free Book Online Page B

I had returned after fifteen years to find myself in the birthplace of the dictator that we came to overthrow. This was turning into a bit of a horror movie, No Beast Left in the City .
    I got out of the Humvee that dropped me off at my station. The sun was about to set. I stood and took in my surroundings, in a 180-degree pan from left to right. I counted no less than twelve palaces, the biggest being the one I was standing right outside. It was built with some kind of light-coloured stone. On every stone of the outer wall were carved the letters SH – Saddam Hussein. The marble covering the floor was fascinating, with patterns in rose, pistachio green and violet. I looked up as I entered, taking in the high walls with inlaid wood and the sparkling crystal chandeliers dangling from the ceilings. There was a vast reception hall, still holding some remnants of earlier times, some French-style sofas, Louis XIV and all that. But the upholstery was worn and the wood disintegrating. Did things really fall apart so quickly?
    I took the small camera out of my bag and asked someone to take a photo of me sitting on one of the gilded sofas with my leg over the armrest. Vulgarity was necessary under the circumstances. So that was my first photo of the New Iraq. I wasn’t disturbed by the thought of whose behind might have rested on this seat before me, or of how this hall was once crowded with the master of the house and his guests. They were all a bunch of hypocrites and corrupt rulers who’d clung with their teeth to power until the bitter end.
    It was a spacious palace, but they couldn’t find room for me to sleep on my own. They seemed to have been expecting a male translator. They debated the issue among themselves while I sat on my gold throne awaiting the outcome. I was then taken to a room that stood between the big palace and the guards’ house, which was itself another palace, though smaller. My room had once been the kitchen of the smaller palace. I panicked a bit as I looked around me at the boxes of provisions and piles of tin cans that filled the place. But then two soldiers came and carried everything out to be stored somewhere else. I spent the evening washing the floor until the coloured marble tiles gleamed once more. Just like that, the guards’ kitchen came to be my personal room in Saddam’s palace. I opened my big green bag and started arranging my clothes and things into food cupboards and cutlery drawers. The two soldiers returned with an iron bed, sheets and a blanket, and wished me a good night. I slept the sleep of the dead.

XIII
    Rahma addressed her morning prayer to the miracle-working silver-framed painting of the Virgin Mary that was placed to the left of her bed. Rahma’s style of worship was devised to suit her different moods, her preoccupations and the state of her health. It was even adaptable to the availability or lack of electricity in that it wouldn’t interrupt the soap operas. The morning prayer could be held in the evening, especially when there was a power cut and no TV. There was no harm, either, in saying her Hail Marys while she rubbed her arthritis-stiff hands with almond oil, or in adding in a massage for her strange-looking feet whose big toes curled on top of the others, if she felt like prolonging the prayer. Her ritual was completely her own.
    This morning she’d woken up to find there was electricity. So she rushed to the electric massager and proceeded to pray while pressing it in circular movements over her knees. ‘Virgin Mary, mother of beloved Jesus, preserve what’s left of my health and protect me from falling. You are my friend, Maryam, my kind ally and my companion in my loneliness. It is to you that I turn in times of trouble and you listen, to you that I pray and you answer, on your door that I knock and you open. I ask you to include our dead in your mercy, O tender one, and to bless my children and my grandchildren and those still living of my loved ones: