Free Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq by Hala El Badry

Hussein is here. You have established a precedent today. From now on they know that inviting you means also inviting your husband. They will make inquiries about him and reassure themselves security-wise, then they won’t bother you or Hatim ever again.”
    He added, laughing, “Perhaps they are making those inquiries even as we speak.”
    “Did you know that ahead of time?” I asked.
    “Of course,” he replied.
    I like to go out early in the morning, to expose myself to the cool drizzle and enjoy the sun which sometimes, coyly, takes her time rising. I follow the thawing of patches of light and rare patches of snow covering the green gardens and sometimes staying on treetops and car roofs. On such days I arrive at the office with my pants wet up to the knee and their bottoms muddy, and my shoes soaked in rainwater. I leave a pair of clean dry shoes in the office that I put on as soon as I arrive. I place my wet shoes in the sun on the balcony railing. The fashionable platform heel style in which the heels rose ten centimeters above the ground did not help protect against the wetness either. I saw that Iraqi journalists were always very well dressed and I didn’t understand how they did it, then I realized that they used their work cars in moving about and did not have to walk in rain-covered streets. My appearance after a walk in the rain must cause them to wonder as much as it causes my resentment. Once I said to myself, “I am working and this is a price I have to pay for that and they must also wonder when they read my beautiful feature articles.”
    I would run on my way upstairs. Our neighbor Karima would hear my footsteps and she and her young daughter Dina would say, “Good morning.” I found out from the director that only chance led him to this place when the Iraqi government decided to evict all bachelors from apartments as one way to solve the housing problem in the capital. A number of Egyptians applied to police stations and registered their request for apartments. Most of the apartments in the building went to university professors and al-Zahra magazine bureau.
    Karima told me, “All the tenants are Christian except for my apartment and al-Zahra magazine.”
    I laughed and told her, “And an Iraqi family and an Indian family.”
    The dual use of the office as a place of work and residence had created an interesting problem for the bureau director. He used to go to the roof to hang his clothes to dry, because he was too embarrassed to hang them in the balcony. He noticed that his Indian neighbor did not return his greetings if he met him on the streetand looked away, knitting his brow. One Friday morning the director went up on the roof and found the clothesline moved away from the apartment of the Indian neighbor. When he met him he moved directly toward him and said, “Please don’t be offended if I hang my washing on the roof because I have no choice in the matter.”
    The neighbor said, “We are an oriental family and we have certain traditions.”
    The director said, “We are also oriental and we have the same kinds of traditions which I respect.”
    He never went up on the roof again. The problem was resolved with help from the cleaning and ironing shop.
    An increasing number of Iraqi and Egyptian journalists pay the office visits from time to time. Hilmi Amin invited one of them, Muzaffar al-Mosuli, to write critiques of Iraqi art. A few days later the director told me that some of these journalists invited us to a picnic on Friday morning. During a quick visit to the Journalists’ Union the following day I ran into some of them and told them that I’d go with them. One of them said, “In the future we will organize an outing somewhere outside Baghdad every Friday and let the beautiful days begin!”
    I said, “Great! These outings would be a good opportunity for me and my husband to meet your families.”
    Some of them said in a soft voice, “Yes.”
    The bureau director told me on