Free The Girl from Baghdad by Michelle Nouri

way! It’ll drown!’
    â€˜Don’t worry. They don’t feel anything. They won’t even realise it.’ He removed the little dead body from the water and dropped it on the ground. He grabbed another.
    Klara ran to the door. ‘Mum! Mum! Grandpa is killing the kitties! Run!’
    I clung to Grandpa’s arm and tried to put myself between him and the cluster of mewling kittens.
    â€˜Jana, get rid of this little pest,’ he shouted, losing his temper.
    â€˜Don’t kill them. I beg you!’ I pleaded.
    My mother arrived to separate us. She dragged Klara and me inside the house. We were both crying and screaming; she comforted us while Grandpa finished what he had started.
    â€˜Those beasts. They have litters all the time,’ murmured Babička. I tried to protest, saying it wasn’t right, but it was no use. ‘Do you want to live among a colony of stray cats? There is no other way. If we don’t kill them there will be a dozen full-grown cats in our yard in a few months. Don’t you understand?’ Babička scolded.
    Although it seemed brutal to me, it was the most widely used system in the neighbourhood to keep the number of domestic animals under control. For Babička, it was simply one of the numerous things that they had to do to maintain the household.
    My Czech grandmother certainly didn’t hate all animals. She loved Maida. And she treated that dog better than she did people. She was famous among the neighbourhood kids for the blows she gave out with herstick. As a result, everyone stayed away from our gate. In the house, she guarded her spiz , the pantry, like a Rottweiler. She locked it with a deadbolt and told us to keep out. If something went missing, she accused us of having stolen food. Of course, we discovered that there hadn’t been a robbery, and it was all her imagination.
    Babička was obsessed with food and the fear of starving due to her terrible experiences during the Second World War. The war she spoke about was fought before Mum was born – when Czechoslovakia was invaded by Germany. Nazis stole everything and burned her restaurant, leaving her in poverty. ‘Nazis’ and ‘pantry’ must have been in some way connected, because Babička used to tell us the same story every time she accused us of stealing something.
    Babička often shouted, and not just about food. As I was the eldest she forced me to help her with the housework. She didn’t even say ‘please’; she ordered.
    â€˜Iron the clothes! Don’t waste time.’
    And if I complained there was too much ironing, she’d answer, ‘You’d better hurry up then. You’ll only go out to play when you’ve finished.’
    I’d gripe to my mother, but she always advised me to be obedient. ‘It’s not right! She does it on purpose! She’s always mean to me!’ I harped.
    â€˜You know that’s not true, Michelle. Grandmother’s like that: she’s rough but she still loves you. Remember,we are at her house and we have to abide by her rules.’
    Since Babička always won, I was used to spending the majority of my summer afternoons doing housework. By the time I was free, my neighbourhood friends had already gone home and the only thing I could do was play cards with Grandpa. It was my duty to go and buy his beer at the only shop in town, a sort of market full of smoke and half-drunken men, not far from Babička’s house. She used to give me the exact amount in small change and sent me to the store with a terracotta mug in my hand. The street on the way back was sloped, and I had to be really careful to not spill a drop. When I brought the mug to Grandpa, he used to give me a tiny sip as a thank you. Tasting beer was something I could only do in Czechoslovakia, as alcohol was absolutely forbidden to children in Baghdad.
    We tolerated life in Dobříč, counting down the days until Dad