Читать книгу A Brighter Fear - Kerry Drewery, Kerry Drewery - Страница 10

Everything became so wretched. Bad news came every day and to everyone. Good news was if you awoke in the morning, and if you survived the day. We lived as animals, thinking only of survival.

How did I feel? Like I was living on a knife edge. Like there wasn’t enough air to fill my lungs. Like I should be grateful for being alive. Like I should be making the most of my life because it could so easily be taken away. But there was no way to do this. I was scared. So scared.

Papa’s friend was killed and I cried although I barely knew him. He was running home, through a residential area, and a bomb landed. Not on him. Not close enough for him to be lifted off his feet with the force of the blast. But close enough for a piece of shrapnel to hit him in the stomach.

He died in a hospital bed among hundreds of others, all waiting for a doctor or a nurse. He died with a six-year-old boy on one side of him, half a leg missing, his face and arms covered in dirt and blood.

Rumours flew around like grains of sand. Americans killing civilians and children because they were in the way; Iraqis targeting their own, bombing their own civilians, yet blaming the Americans.

Two of my friends’ houses were destroyed. They survived but were forced to live with relatives, their brothers and sisters sent in different directions, families divided. Those who left the country, I don’t know what happened to them, I wish I did.

Then Baghdad fell.

My city, my home, was occupied. Americans were everywhere. Tanks. Guns. Soldiers.

It scared me. I didn’t know how to feel or what to do. My life was on hold. I wanted to go to school, but couldn’t, and worry filled what space was left in my head. What about my exams? My application to university? But there was nothing I could do about it. Everyone I met, everyone I talked to, had a million questions, but nobody had any answers.

The Americans shouted their orders in their brusque English, but so many didn’t understand them. I’m lucky my English is good, I have Papa to thank for that, speaking English around the house, keen for me to learn early and learn properly. His fluency and his vocabulary hadn’t come from Western films and music like so many people’s had; it came from living and studying there for years.

“English history books teach you a different kind of English,” he told me.

When I hear the Americans talk, I think they could do with some lessons from Papa.

Was I glad the regime had fallen? Yes, I suppose, I was. But so frightened and so worried.

Papa and Aziz talked about it over dinner – they chatted and argued and debated about what it would mean to us as a country and as a people. Papa, always the historian, reasoned his argument with fact, Aziz went with what he saw and what he felt. As I watched them and listened to them I sensed the change already; they were Iraqis and they were talking. But even when the debate heated up, it ended in one of two ways: either Aziz’s contagious laugh forcing up the corners of Papa’s mouth, or Hana mentioning the prisons, questioning when they would be opened, and the prisoners liberated. The opposite ends of the scale, one lightening your heart, the other making it feel like lead. Both bringing the family together.

I saw clouds cross Papa’s eyes whenever prison was mentioned. I saw the muscles fall slightly in his face.

Life in the city was beyond dangerous, a curfew in the evening, gunfire across the skies, explosions rattling the windows and doors in their frames. I felt closer to Papa than I ever had. We were a strange family for this city, this country. I didn’t know of any other single fathers and I thought of what he did, bringing me up alone, waiting for Mama’s return, and I wondered if he was lonely. He went to work and came home. He did very little else. And I wondered if his belief in Mama’s eventual return ever dwindled, if he ever dared to let himself think she wouldn’t come back.

Maybe if he had, he would’ve taken Aziz’s advice; left this country, returned to England, found a job there, at least until Baghdad was safe. Things would have been better if he had done so, if he had left. Things would not have ended as they did.

But his belief in her survival seemed forever undaunted, and he stayed.

Some days I believed she wasn’t meant to be found, that I should accept she would never come back. Other days I believed it was kinder to think she had died. I knew there had been no justice in this city, and still it eluded us, but always a smallest shadow of hope, the tiniest chink of belief, lurked somewhere inside me, and I could never let go of the possibility that one day she might just return to us.

But as we waited and we hoped, our lives continued to change before our eyes.

I watched strange men, in strange uniforms and with strange voices, march and drive into my city with weapons at their shoulders, pointing right, left, up, down, uttering promises of a better life. Safety and security. Freedom and democracy. Liberation.

When these things would come, I never heard.

I saw shops with fronts blasted out, schools with roofs caving in, holes in roads, burnt-out cars, piles of rubble that had been homes, plumes of smoke, shells of buildings, husbands comforting crying wives, mothers nursing injured children.

People at school disappeared; stopped coming, were injured, some killed. My class was suddenly only twelve.

I cried. Selfishly, I cried for everything I had lost. I missed my friends so much. I sat next to different students, spent my lunch times and breaks with girls I had never spoken to before. I felt lonely. I hoped it might bring a sense of camaraderie between us; all in the same position, all with the same feelings, but it didn’t. It brought a bigger division.

One of the girls asked me what it was like being the only Christian in the class. I was shocked. She said she couldn’t sit with me. “Baghdad isn’t a place for Christians,” she told me. “You should leave.”

Teachers left too. My science teacher, my favourite teacher, was forced to leave. A member of the Ba’ath party, he had no choice. But he was ambitious, hopeful and aspiring for his future; he joined, I’m sure, in name only, like Papa. To achieve anything, to get anywhere, to be promoted, to thrive in your career, was impossible if you didn’t join.

But to the Americans, you were a Ba’athist, so you were a threat – your job was taken.

And so Papa lost his job too. His passion for education and learning which had followed him throughout his life, pulled from under him. I could see the disappointment in his shoulders, the depression tugging at his body and his mind, the frustration in his eyes at being unable to help his students, who battled in to the university, past roadblocks and checkpoints, through explosions and gunfire. His students so loyal to him.

My poor Papa. He was lost. He was drifting.

I wished I could do something for him. Help him in some way, but there was nothing I, nor anyone else, could do.

And now, what do I wish for?

I wish that I had thought of something, anything, before it was too late.