Free My Father's Rifle by Hiner Saleem

word stamped in red across the entire page: aïdoun . 9 At the entrance to Aqra, while the police were checking our papers, I caught sight of a huge banner above our heads with portraits of President al-Bakr and Vice President Saddam Hussein on each side, announcing, “ oumma Arabia wahida zat. Risaala khalida,” “The Arab nation is one. It is the bearer of a divine message.”

This time, no one in our neighborhood came to welcome us as they had in 1970. No one ran to embrace us or escort us to our house. The house was still standing, but it was occupied. Children were playing in front of the door. A man and a woman came out; we introduced ourselves as the owners. The man replied that he had no knowledge of this. “But this house is ours,” said my father. “Come back tomorrow, we’ll discuss it,” the man said. Three months went by and this man and his family went on living in our house.
    We moved into my uncle Avdal Khan’s house, the uncle with the television. He was still in the camps in Iran. I pictured him with Mahmad Shekho, the tall, skinny singer and saz player, singing songs of hope that were swept away by the wind.
    When he died, his family had to surrender to the Iraqis in order to be able to bury him, out of respect, on his land. We then had to give his house back to my aunt, his widow, and their six children.
    So my father returned to see the man who was still occupying our house. My father looked him in the eye. “Brother, this house belongs to me. I built it with my own hands,” he said, showing the palms of his hands, “and with my children’s
help. My previous house was torn down and set on fire. This one is in my blood. I plan to die here. I’m an aïdoun , but you listen to me: even if you have the entire Iraqi government on your side, if you haven’t cleared out in a week, I’ll kill you.” Three days later our house was vacated.
    I resumed my adolescent life. One day, with my cousin Cheto and some other friends, we went to the cemetery to gather almonds, but not a single one remained on the almond tree; you’d think the dead had eaten them all. There was a bare hill overlooking the cemetery, where we spotted Slo’s donkey. The donkey was roaming free; he had become useless, he was scrawny and sick, abandoned by Slo, fated to be devoured by a wolf or a wild dog. He had climbed halfway up the hill to get to the leaves of the one tree on the slope, but he had fallen just before reaching the tree. We got closer. He was struggling to get back on his feet. We pushed him up to the top of the hill. Cheto stood aside; he knew what we were about to do, but he could do nothing to check our violent impulses.
    When we reached the top of the hill, we threw the donkey down into the ravine and laughed at the sight of the poor creature rolling to the bottom. Cheto was heartsick but tried to hide his sorrow, hoping to be spared our sarcastic remarks. To tease him we brought up his stunt pigeons. Ramo answered for him, “That time’s over, the time of the stunt pigeons … Now, it’s Dilma .” 10 Cheto had replaced the pigeons with a she-cat; for us, a she-cat was a woman’s animal. It was our belief that since his father’s—my uncle’s—murder, poor Cheto, who was an only son, was far too spoiled by the women in his house—his mother, his two sisters, and his two aunts.
    Having let off some steam, we hurtled down the hill and all of us climbed an enormous white mulberry tree to stuff
ourselves with fruit. When we were sated, we began crushing the fruit on our genitals and jerking off, competing to see who would ejaculate fastest. This was the first time I masturbated, and it was Zorab who won.
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    My school certificate covering the period I had spent in the mountains and in Iran was not approved, and I was back in the same school, in the same classroom, on the same bench. I was four