Mother of All Pigs Read online

  The antiterrorism platoon spent the night marching up a rough spur. As dawn rose, Hussein recognized the landscape of his father’s stories. The Dead Sea to the north reflected the sun’s rays like a great bronze plate cradled between the mountains of Moab and Judah. Reading the landscape, Hussein was sure that the very spot his unit had drawn up to was in the shadow of Jebel Nebi Harun, where Musa’s brother Harun was killed and buried during the great exodus of the Israelites. Behind the platoon lay the Nabataean city of Petra, the site of many great biblical prophecies. It was hard for Hussein to be lulled by a vista that was in many ways familiar, because he understood the dangers of relaxing his guard. The Bedu inhabited the land’s hidden nooks and crannies, while the Salafis who followed them were known for their mercilessness.

  It was midmorning when Hussein’s squad emerged from the low cliffs and thorn bushes of the mountains onto the undulating dunes of desert scrubland. Hussein would not have ordinarily stopped there, but the mission’s commander ordered them to halt for twenty minutes. Suddenly several sharp cracks punctuated the air, and without warning the man next to Hussein was lying on his back, arms thrown wide embracing the sky. Blood welled from the corner of his mouth, and a red patch spread across his chest. He was twenty-three.

  Twenty yards away Hussein could see the unit’s communications officer, either unconscious or dead, clutching a handheld radio. If there was any chance of saving his men, Hussein knew he had to take it. He got up and ran, crouched over, to call for help. But as he did so he realized that even if he reached his goal, the line was not secure—the Americans had not yet given the Jordanians the technology—and his actions would probably alert more of the enemy to where they were. He was reaching for the radio when something as heavy as the hand of God hit him in the back, and he fell among the rocks.

  He stayed in the hospital for three months. During the first few days as he hovered between darkness and light, the war on terror worsened, but Hussein was not aware of it. He drifted in and out of consciousness, oscillating between pain when he was awake and morphine-drenched nightmares when asleep.

  Al Jid had told his son the story of Enoch and the ring of fire. A group of angels came down to earth, succumbed to temptation and mated with human women. The resulting offspring was a race of voracious monsters that copulated with everything in sight. Outraged, the rest of creation—animal, vegetable, and mineral—appealed to God for salvation. The Almighty responded by creating a hole ringed with fire into which the sinning angels and their appalling progeny were dumped for all eternity.

  One day, the prophet Enoch was walking where water is borne on Jebel ash-Sheikh and heard voices bemoaning their everlasting punishment. They begged him to mediate on their behalf. Only a holy prophet had the ear of the Lord. Touched by their suffering, Enoch agreed to plead for them, but the Almighty was unimpressed by his servant’s ignorance: “Angels intercede for man. A worm cannot plead for the divine.” A terrible thundering raged in the landscape of fire, “When your time comes, which invertebrate will speak for you?” As Hussein lay in his hospital bed, the tale ran around a fevered imagination. Occasionally he was Enoch, but more often than not he was one of the damned.

  He was lucky. Some of the shrapnel was removed from his back and the bone in his shoulder healed well enough. He left the hospital wearing a sling. The doctor advised him that given time his left arm would improve, but there would be residual shaking in the hand because of injury to the nerve. However, it was not only his body that had been damaged. When he returned to his hometown for three weeks’ convalescent leave and his neighbors welcomed him as a hero, all he answered was “You’re mistaken.” He closed the curtain of his father’s house and sat in the cramped space between the zariba animal pen and storage bins, hardly acknowledging the greetings of his stepmother or youngest half sister. He made up his mind to leave the army, but the decision only made him feel worse. All day he sat by himself, speaking to no one, lost in thought.

  When Al Jid came in from the fields one night, he came to Hussein carrying a pot of Arabic coffee and the arghileh. “We should talk,” the old man said.

  Haltingly at first, then with growing emotion, Hussein told his father about the broken promises and his disillusionment. It was the terrible futility that bothered him the most, the killing of Arabs by Arabs. When he finished, the old man nodded. “If any one people needed a sign or a miracle, God knows it is us.”

  It was completely dark. Al Jid reached for a candle and lit it. The globe of light encircled father and son, insulating them from the outside world. Even the rustle of the penned-up animals in the zariba seemed hushed and far away. In the years that had passed, Al Jid had grown wizened and bloated. He had trouble breathing and moved slowly, but he still insisted on tending the land. Lighting the water pipe, he inhaled deeply.

  “In al-Abbasiyah, the third dynasty after the Prophet’s death, there were two poets.”

  Hussein was in no mood for his father’s stories, but in the depths of his despair he felt compelled to listen.

  The old man settled into his tale: “Khalaf al-Ahmar was a known prankster with a talent for joking. He wrote many beautiful ballads that are recited to this day. He taught composition and philology to a young Abu Nuwas, still a novice in the craft of poetry.

  “One day Abu Nuwas asked for his master’s blessing so he could compose and recite his own poems in public. The experienced Khalaf al-Ahmar said that he would gladly do that, but first Abu Nuwas needed to undergo a trial by words and memorize one thousand verses. The undertaking was long and difficult, but Abu Nuwas was eventually successful. To celebrate, he honored his master by giving him a lavish feast over the course of several evenings, during which the younger poet recited the verses he learned by heart. After Abu Nuwas declaimed the last triumphant couplet, he again asked his master for his blessing. Khalaf al-Ahmar was undoubtedly impressed, but before he could agree, one more small task was required of the poet-to-be, whose life and career would eclipse that of his master’s. He had to forget each and every one of the verses he committed to memory.”

  Al Jid fanned the hot bowl of the water pipe with his open hand until the embers glowed.

  “In his great wisdom, Khalaf al-Ahmar explained that for immortal composition, one needed to know everything and to forget everything.” The old man regarded his wounded son. “Memory and forgetfulness will enable you to live your life. Then you too will find a way in your heart to continue. If you give up, your time on this earth will truly be over, and you will never be at peace with yourself again.”

  At the end of his convalescent leave, Hussein went back to the army. He resigned his commission from the antiterrorism platoon and transferred to a desk job, where he watched the war from afar and concentrated on following his father’s advice. The combination of repetitious bureaucratic duties and liberal doses of alcohol resulted in a trancelike state of amnesia, which, while not exactly contentment, was at least not too hard to endure. In his darker moments he blearily toasted Abu Nuwas. Hussein was only following in his venerable footsteps. The poet had gone off to a monastery, where he had drunk his thousand verses into oblivion.

  Mustafa’s return stirs up emotions Hussein had long put to rest. Only a day before he had come across a book of Iraqi antiwar poetry. He assumed that it was Samira’s since nobody else would have brought it into the house. He leafed through it, not really paying proper attention. Now one of the verses comes back to him:

  Abdullah liked cars.

  He drove them around the town.

  He was sent to the front.

  Afterward, the hand he steered with was sent home in a box to his mom.

  Noon brightness pierces the shutters of the butcher shop, casting an ornate pattern of darkness and light over the soldier who has nothing to show for his brother, no box, not so much as a fingernail.

  “There is someplace you can stay.” It is a tentative offer. “But you should see it first. If it offends your sensibilities we’ll
make other arrangements.”

  Hussein slips the jar into its hiding place and washes and dries the glasses as the tense young man waits, with his bags, by the door.

  8

  It is unusual for Samira to have a late start to her day. Normally by this time she would have been finishing her housework. She makes her bed, then straightens out Muna’s, dreaming of the perfect afternoon. Ideally she would like to slip away to the capital, but under the circumstances that’s impossible. Her mother said they are expecting company. Samira thinks Fadhma’s plans border on the fanciful. After all, the townspeople have been staying away. Surely the arrival of a cousin from America is not enough to lure them back.

  Yesterday evening Samira peered over her oversize bifocals at Muna and felt that apart from their blood connection the two of them had little in common. She expected her to make a mistake. In the morning she didn’t have to wait long. Muna’s outfit, a pair of above-the-knee culottes and an identical sleeveless blouse—a different color from the one that she brought Samira from a stylish New York boutique—shows Samira that there’s no way of ignoring it now.

  “That’s okay for inside the house, if we’re alone,” she begins slowly, “but you won’t be able to go outside or meet company dressed like that.”

  “There’s a problem?”

  Samira had assumed Muna would have figured it out by herself; after all, she is the one who’s college educated. Last night when everyone opened their gifts, Samira held up her present of the blouse, and both her mother and Laila looked askance. It was obvious that something was wrong, but no one passed comment and Muna appeared clueless. The awkwardness was finally dispelled when Samira’s girlfriends came over. Yvette and Gigi, a pair of cheerful fraternal twins whose names were inspired by their parents’ honeymoon in Paris, worked in Amman as secretaries. Their good humor was infectious.

  “Come to Samira’s room.” Gigi winked conspiratorially as she led Muna by the hand. “We have lots to talk about.”

  After the four of them were alone, the twins quizzed Muna about New York and boyfriends.

  Once Hussein arrived home from work and Laila retrieved their guest, Samira noiselessly shut the bedroom door and showed Muna’s gift to her friends. She admitted somewhat sheepishly that she preferred to let Muna find out about the inappropriateness of the blouse by herself. Samira had, to her mind, a perfectly good excuse: her older sisters always resented being told what to do whenever they came home to visit. She cocked her head in the direction of the living room. “Why should Muna be different?”

  Yvette was the first to disagree. Of late she had been arguing with Samira. Earlier that week she accused her of putting politics before her family and friends, because Samira supported the rebel opposition in Syria, even if it meant the destruction of the Christian minority there. “You no longer know when to act in your own best interests,” Yvette told her.

  Yesterday evening the twin was again unimpressed. “If your American cousin finds out from a sharp stone in the back, what does that say about women’s solidarity and standing up for what’s right?”

  Her question has been haunting Samira this morning.

  She breaks the news gently to Muna but is fully prepared for a fight. “There is a problem. I couldn’t go out dressed like that. That blouse you gave me is really lovely. But it would have to be worn hidden underneath a sweater or a jacket but never by itself. Now the shorts…”

  Muna looks down. “These aren’t really shorts. Short shorts are in fashion but I never wear them. This is more like a skirt—”

  “That’s what it is to me and you, but for some people the idea that women have legs and show them off cause problems.” The inflection in her voice is rising; it is not something she agrees with.

  “It’s not legs,” Muna mutters under her breath. “It’s kuss.”

  Samira is not sure that she heard her cousin correctly.

  Muna is the picture of innocence as her mouth fills with filth: “Kuss umek! Kuss ukht elee nafadak aars! Who would have guessed you could learn to say ‘Fuck your mother’s vagina’ and ‘Your aunt’s vagina is a slut’ from the Internet?” she observes. “Come to think of it, a lot of Arabic cursing—and thinking—seems to focus on that one word: kuss.”

  Samira laughs out loud; her American relations don’t usually behave like this. Al Jid and Fadhma had their last child in the old world shortly before Muna was born in the new. Muna strictly speaking isn’t a cousin. A year older than her, Samira is in fact her aunt. Timing had made Samira the brunt of her siblings’ jokes—“Look at the old goat!” they scoffed among themselves. Still the closeness in the young women’s ages makes “aunt” inapproprately old, so both of them unthinkingly adopted “cousin.” Samira giggles again.

  “What?” Muna, annoyed, sits down on a single bed. “I guess I was being foolish,” she continues more seriously. “After Tahrir Square I thought women’s clothing wouldn’t be such an issue anymore—all those girls there in skimpy T-shirts and tight jeans. Teenage boys from the Muslim Brotherhood said that the women were owed an apology; no matter how they dressed they cared about Egypt. I was hoping there were more important issues at stake than a blouse.”

  Disappointed, she turns to the opened suitcase on the floor. “Is there anything you’d prefer instead?”

  Samira, not as clothes obsessed as Yvette and Gigi, shakes her head. Because Muna has been honest with her, she returns the favor. What is it that Zeinab from the women’s committee told her? The goal isn’t to end a disagreement nicely. A clear, well-reasoned argument will have a longer-lasting effect and might actually end in mutual friendship and respect.

  “There has been a change but not like you think. There are still too many ‘red lines,’” Samira explains, also frustrated.

  After a pause Muna confesses, “In 2011, Dad stopped me from coming to Jordan. For this trip I didn’t bother to ask his permission, I just booked my ticket. I don’t care about Daesh. Auntie Magda and Hind believe the region is doomed, but they’ve been saying that for years. Watching the Arab Awakening from afar made me feel ashamed I didn’t have more faith.”

  “When the first demonstrations broke out it was exciting,” agrees Samira, “but with wholesale slaughter going on next door in Syria, no one in Jordan talks about the need for a democratic government. I saw Facebook posts of demonstrators being beaten up by the police in Amman. And Jordanians—you could tell by their names—were clicking ‘like.’ They believed the protestors should be arrested and tortured. And there’s something else.” Samira isn’t sure how far to go. “Daesh, Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, and Hamas are all in competition with each other. Who is more Islamic? Who’s more in charge? And so a revolution about freedom and dignity has been hijacked by armed men. Arabs never learn. ‘Disagree with me or look at my sister, I’ll kill you.’”

  Samira usually doesn’t get a chance to talk about such matters inside the family, she presses on. “So what is the difference between a ‘secular’ state and a Muslim one? Both use violence against the political opposition. Both torture in prison. They are as incompetent and corrupt as each other. The only real difference is the extent to which they control women and their bodies.”

  The reason Samira doesn’t want to tell Muna what to wear is because it makes her sound like an advocate of the conservative religious forces she despises. Covering up is loathsome to her. However, since becoming politically active, she has started to appreciate—albeit grudgingly—the value of a good disguise. Yvette is right: better safe than sorry—or at least under the radar. Samira’s approach softens. “Nowadays it’s important to blend in and not call too much attention to yourself.”

  While the situation in Jordan is not as bad as the neighboring countries, caution is still advisable. In isolation, the preaching of the town’s new sheikh would be ignored; he is a blowhard. However, with Daesh gaining ground beyond the border and an upsurge in local militancy, Samira and her friends were among the first to notice the differenc
es. In a town previously characterized by a degree of tolerance, 1970s posters of belly-dancing singers, which adorned the walls of the music store, were torn down overnight. Nasty stone-throwing teenagers chased a friend of the twins’ who had been wearing a T-shirt, vest, and baggy jeans. Suddenly the right clothes seem important. Young women out of step with the increasingly strident social order are only bound to suffer.

  Samira adds as an afterthought, “On my better days, I like to consider it a question of fashion. Remember, in Egypt in the sixties, women wore miniskirts.” She doesn’t want their lives to sound all doom and gloom, although she knows that her political mentor, Zeinab, who escaped the ongoing “starve or kneel” siege of the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk in Damascus, would have scolded her for reverting to type: good Arab girl trying to make everyone feel a little bit better. She corrects herself: “Even in miniskirts, the women in Egypt were not as sexually harassed as the women wearing veils and robes today. So what’s going on?”

  Muna doesn’t have an answer. “I just don’t believe the lives of women or families should be controlled and programmed by mullahs, priests, or rabbis.”

  During their conversation, she holds up a skirt or a top, and her cousin either nods or points to the pile of haram clothes multiplying in the suitcase.

  Samira charts Muna’s progress with growing admiration. “My brothers and sisters believe the old country has stayed exactly how they left it when the opposite is true. Wars and revolutions have altered everything. This broken promise of the Arab Awakening will only leave another deep scar on a people who have a long history of self-harm.” She reveals, “People like me long for something different, but until that happens, the men are firmly in control.” There is something brittle and apologetic in her manner, as though she is not entirely convinced by what she’s saying.