All This Fabulous Magical Space Embraced Me Between Its Two Wings in an Upper Room Which

(1)

Four walls, covered with saltiness and decorated by the termite which engraved on them numbers and names some marks of which disappeared. A damp ceiling, a window alone with rusty steel bars, on its upper edge a worn-out curtain was clung. A steel bed on which lies a macerated mattress and a wooden antique chair.

All this fabulous magical space embraced me between its two wings in an upper room which I rented in the middle of an antique public district, keeping to a place, challenging the bygone time ferocity in the middle of a narrow lane whose collapsing walls recline upon the opposite ones by thick tree trunks! Children’s shouts, women’s screams, peddlers’ and fortune tellers’ voices were slapping among its twists.

Silence and expatriation were panting behind me when I came to this lane from Zeidan Alkhalaf Alilhaybi’s village which was dozing on the other bank of the river Tigris, opposite to Alqayara region, tucking craziness of my wishes and my mother’s weeping hopes to obtain a university degree for which she prepared in advance a higher place at the fore part of our muddy house courtyard, under its ceiling we all lived and were brought up.

Hope and determination were quivering inside me from an edge to another like polished mercury grains while I was taking steps forward with the broker to receive the magical room key! An appeal of steam for help loomed from me like those slayed by wishes and effaced by despair and despondence.

My desire in consent to take over the room was fading away and falling as I was entering the house porch, but I agreed, for the time was too little and the study date was approaching. In my exhalation, I felt the warmth of a newly-born human being while I was penetrating the large gate of Mosul University. My lean body was sprayed by my mother’s tears, my brothers’ invocations and my village citizens happiness, who were keeping to a place far away from me there among the orchards and our silent village banks of the rivers. When I returned to my upper room, I approached the window edge and remembered the days of my adolescence: transient faces I liked one day and now they are far away from me. Mere rural airs come and relax in my imagination then fade away and melt in my eye while I am looking into the marks of this magical lane. I measured my need for air and the desire in scattering the courses of my blood and among my teeth that suppress an appeal for help or a confession. I have come from a stagnant environment in which all nature glitters under summer and I have come to the clamor of people whom I don’t know and to the lanes not washed by the sun’s ray. I remembered my father’s face, that old-aged peasant and his physiognomy that suffered from unskilled furrows. Torturous history or torture of history on the man’s face that centuries have left for a long time. But his destiny remained linked to the land he was born on and its red mud that embraced his corpse.

My father was pushed towards me by puzzles and talisman whose secrets were understood by no one but the original peasant. Before passing away last year, he was teaching and shaking me saying:

- “O son. Do something ....anything. Isn’t it wonderful,” added he, “to come out here a hero tucking a higher degree which you become proud of before the village ?”

From his question I concluded his need for freedom and emancipation from the village fetters to the carpet of the green horizon. Between his question and dialogue a long time passed. That forms his authority on me. I turned over on the flames so as to close my eyelids outside the tickling flames and I see his wish bitterness repressed in his eyes. But the latter glittered with warm brightness when he knew about my desire to keep on studying and determine to succeed regardless of the consequences. Whenever I turned over in my bed on the house roof, I heard him say as if he were consoling himself in isolation “Haven’t you slept yet, my son ?”.

Several weeks passed since I have occupied my upper room in that clamorous lane. I got acquainted with people who liked me particularly Alhaj(1) Sabri Abu Mahmood, owner of a grocery shop at the main street corner.

- “I wish you stayed with us and never left till you got the big degree.” said he one day.

- “God willing, uncle.”

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(1) Pilgrim

- “How are things going on with you right now ? Does anything worry your comfort ?”

- “All right. Thanks God. But is there anything I am not familiar with, Uncle ?”

- “I don’t know, son. Whoever resides in this room does not withstand for a long time. He shifts from a room to another. I don’t know the reason for that despite the simplicity and goodness of the lane people as you yourself have seen them.”

- “What is the reason for that, Haj ?”

- “You’re better than we do in revealing the secret of this bewildering puzzle when you decide to shift from it to another one.”

When I ascend the long gypsum stairs to my upper room, I proceed my tips of the fingers on the echo roughness and get sure that the leisure here effaces my desire and wishes. But the leisure shakes and allocates me a new space in another world unlike the one in which I lived in the middle of our clear village world until one day a neigh sneaked to my window. I began to expect the neigh and the faint light together. I spy secretly by my glittering pupils of the eyes to distinguish its ghosts across the bars of my window overlooking another one located against my window in the adjacent house of mine.

It was a window of the room occupied by a fat lady in the forties, working as a dress-maker, aided by a tender young girl in the twenties who may share the room with her. I heard and saw whatsoever was running inside it. The distance between the two windows did not exceed two and a half meters. I was probing by the tips of my fingers the window edge, and every now and then I snatched the shot. I tried to resist and control myself, but I failed. In myself I determined not to do that because it was a waste of my time and wishes. But leisure and futility of things stain me from top to bottom. My tips of fingers return to their creeping and my pupils of the eyes glitter to the utmost range to see more. So suspicion appears and I remain expecting like a hungry fleeing victim. I run far away but I return again to the same beginning point from which I set out. Temporary calmness followed by a sudden fire blazing. I remain confused to take a decision in giving up all of that. But my life troubles with the passage of a heavy time. I shout fiercely
“Come on. Stop at this point and be satisfied with this rotation”. But my voice goes out as terrified cat’s mewing that fell down in the deep pit darkness. Once more I spy secretly and watch her arrange everything for her mistress: scissors, pins, thread and even the measurement ribbon. Then she lets the customer take off her dress so as to measure the dress. An interesting dream, undoubtedly tender in the heavy and light movement. But soon it scatters away like a soap foam. Nothing resulted from it ... Just nothing but nevertheless it is an interesting dream up till now. I am capable of kicking the curtain and have a look at her before she leaves the room, and even before her putting anything in order and closing the sewing machine necessities locket and let partition stand between us. It is the mouth of my refuge at last. But my patience was used up and I drew the worn-out curtain violently.

(2)

In the narrow lane where I reside, kids often shoot a ball sewn by their mothers out of remains of torn rags and old socks which were stained in mud and drainage water in the middle of the lane. The afternoon sun was shining with its ray on the higher houses roofs and sides. The shouts of gas sellers as well as rovers of small carts owners were raising out of their mouths. Some women sat on the thresholds wrapping their flabby bodies with black oriental cloaks some of which were decorated by bright grains of embellishments and shining colored pieces.

At that hour I entered the lane returning from my college, cautious not to be hit by the stained ball, avoiding as far as possible the shots of the small butting and excited feet.

With my creeping steps, I drew new images for me while I was crouching against the magical dress-maker’s window. There was special kind of ringing surprising my imagination assaulting towards me from the environs of my dozing village on the Tigris river banks far away from me now. I sat on the rocking antique chair for a few minutes. All of the sudden the light and neigh leaked across my window to settle extremely hot in the middle of my hungry pupils of the eyes. I approached in the slowness of a hunting cat towards the edge of the window. I began to stare with delicious passion at the space of the opposite room. The lady was jesting with the young girl again rubbing her two small breasts with experienced circular movements on the plea of trying to adjust the dress dimensions. The girl was resisting her mistress with a faint desire and false obstinacy following it every now and then with an delicious sighing as though she was asking for more.

The girl turned round me suddenly. Our eyes met. Her cheeks reddened. She tried to liberate herself tenderly from the arms of the fat lady. But the latter continued jesting with the girl increasing her compact hands movements, looking at me with a wicked smile as if she were inviting me to take a share in that stimulus sexual futility.

I drew the window curtain immediately and sat on my bed panting. In my head there were ideas and feelings that take countless interpretations ringing. I was afraid that I might go back to my difficult questions once more. So I went down to the nearby coffeehouse close to the street corner and sat on the first vacant seat I came across.

The coffeehouse customers were few in number. At the remote corner there was an old man smoking heavy tobacco grown in north Iraq. At the door there were two men having dark tea and playing Domino in disturbing clamor and nonsense, and the song Al-Rabee(1) comes tender and quiet from an old radio crouching on the shelf standing at the fore part of the coffeehouse.

I sat near the old man for a few minutes and all of the sudden a lad with worn-out clothes advanced towards me with a cup of tea.

- “Cash money, sir.” said he.

- “Here you are.”

- “Do you want water ?”

- “No, thanks.”

I felt I was isolated and in need of saying something. My eyes got lost in the corrosive coffeehouse roof on its corners entangled weaving of old spiders that got fed up with long waiting for their preys that were covered with last days dust. For some time I was wandering in the thoughts. Here I am now...... Ah ! How idiot and naive I was when I accompanied that tramp broker who led me to this cheap impudent district ! Is it my bad luck ? Or is it my village ignorance in the tricks and mockery of the city citizens ? But what does evil have to do with the district people ? It is a peculiar condition and I have to endure and resist my burning desires. Yet, I can’t endure patience.

Myself was burning and boiling while I was recollecting my childhood in my simple village where my mother’s weeping and my brothers’ invocations were. Bidoor’s clear face revealed before me as a cup of milk in the morning saucer. Her face had nothing to do with the false city women make-up. Her eyes did not know the kohl stick except from my mother’s kohl bottle. I wish I threw myself in the Tigris river water right now despite my ignorance in swimming But I proudly remember that instant in which I swang between death and life. How my village people started to save me. Here I am now recollecting it with pride between Bidoor’s face tenderness and my passing away for ever. I get scared whenever that instant neighed in my memory despite the fact that I enjoy retelling it whenever it stirred up in my memory even though I am in the mouth of this small public coffeehouse. The old man approached me.

- “O son. New tea has been prepared.” said he in fatherly kindness. “Shall I get you a cup of it?”

- “If you please. May God bless you, Uncle.”

I remained drinking tea comfortably and slowly thinking again of a glimpse of the leaking light across my window. I left the piece of coin on the steel table and left the coffeehouse taking in into my lungs the moist night breeze and the voice of Fareed Al-Atrash(2) humming by his magical lute cords the last syllable of his song Al-Rabee :

The winter nights become very long for the one whose lover has gone .

(3)

I entered from the glass gate of the College of Arts with a restless desire to run away and get rid of the strange lane nightmare remains and its endless insomnia. I sat down on the first vacant chair going over my books and manuals. Then I turned left and right seeking my guy,
Ghazi Al-Edan , but Sana arrived inattentively and sat beside me.

Sana is a wild flower, washed by the morning dew, a piece of white Mosuli(3) cloud that decorated my imagination, an elegant light brown deer in which lies spring redolence and the country tenderness. She gently whispered, welcoming as usual.

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(1) A famous song of a famous Arabian singer

(2) A famous Egyptian singer

(3) A proper adjective of the proper noun Mosul

- “Good morning, Omar.”

- “Good morning, Sana.”

- “This is the first lecture for Dr. Al-Talib .”

- “You knew that from Ghazi Al-Edan. He is a professor with great scientific reputation in the field of Arabic Language and its arts.”

Sana arranged her hanging down lock on her forehead and said, “Tell me. What’s the matter with you?”

- “Today you are full of speech. Tell me what you have got inside.”

- “How did you know that ? Are you a palmist ?”

- “It is obvious from your physiognomy. You didn’t sleep well last night, did you ?”

She was about to laugh, but she didn’t. “Life hasn’t ended yet. The road ahead is long. Attaining claims can not achieved by wishes ...... ”

With this saying, Dr. Al-Talib commenced his lecture. Then we got on very well enjoying his white jokes with the passage of time, in his brotherly joking and marvelous lecture delivery of his poetic lines particularly the erotic ones. Time passes and we do not feel how it ends in such speed and suspense together!

At the end of the lecture, I went out to the external yard of the College of Arts forwarded by Sana. Then I leaned my exhausted body against a thick-trunked lofty tree and sat squatting smoking my cigarette and watching the male and female students from far away with their creeping movement. Some of them were speaking loudly, others were eating sandwiches from the nearby stall and the rest were absorbed in a variety of things.

For a period of time I have been thinking about the subject of the fat lady and her twenty-year old girl, avoiding seeing Ghazi Al-Edan for fear of spoiling my seclusion by his endless continuous joking. I reached a decision to buy two meters of cheap cloth by which I slaughter the leaked desire neigh to my window, getting rid of this destructive insomnia which pursues me wherever my feet tread a land during the day and it is rough at night, leaving me terrified between ecstasy and frustration. After the lecture had ended, I went to Bab Al-Saraie market where there was a public market, selling abundant variety of types and colors. I bought three meters of cheap brown cloth. As soon as I arrived at the lane, Alhaj Sabri greeted me with his usual greeting :

- “Welcome ...... Welcome. May God help you, son.”

- “Same to you and fortify you, Haj.”

- “Today I’ve got excellent Arabian cream of the sort you like.”

- “Where is it Haj ?”

I took the glass plate with two furnace loaves of bread on it and went up to my upper room. It was before the evening prayer. I remembered that I had forgotten an important thing. I immediately descended to Alhaj Sabri’s shop requesting him to give me a hammer with a few nails. He pointed by his hand to an upper shelf at the shop corner begging me to return it as soon as I get through with it. I hurriedly returned to my upper room and fixed the piece of cloth by hammering the nails on the upper window edge.