Excerpt
“Are you okay? You look like something is bothering you.”
“Hakim, do you ever think about home? Do you miss home?”
“Yeah, I think about home, why?”
“For a long time now I’ve been having these dreams. I’m losing sleep because
of nightmares.”
Hakim’s eyes get cloudy while he browns the prawns in a pan. He turns and
looks deeply into Talal’s eyes and asks, “Why do you have nightmares? What
kind of nightmares?”
“Things from back home in Falluja, the war, the destruction,
things like that. I have nightmares about my parents when they died in front of
our house, their bodies badly burned. I see them in my dreams all the time.”
Hakim becomes agitated when he hears Talal’s description of his dead
parents. He finishes cooking the prawns and checks the rice in the cooker; it will
be ready in a few minutes. He knows very well about nightmares—he has his
share of them. He has had his own nightmares for a long time now, and hasn’t
said anything to anybody, not yet. Not even to Talal, who opens the discussion
about nightmares as if they were his monopoly. He knows too well the
devastating images from home, during those dark days of the war. He has seen
himself under the rubble of his house, covered by pieces of cement blocks and
broken furniture, the night when the American bombs fell from the sky like lava
from heaven and destroyed most of Baghdad. He takes his wine glass and raises it
to Talal’s glass.
“Don’t worry, bro. Don’t let these nightmares control your life. Here’s to
you!”
Talal doesn’t answer. Instead, he goes to the fridge and takes out the lettuce
for the salad. He starts to cut the lettuce, “I see the images of my parents over and
over in my head, as if they are in front of me, like the day it happened.”
“Tell me how your parents died, Talal.”
“It was that offensive; I think it was 2004, at the beginning of the war, when
the Americans fought against Falluja, against what they used to call insurgents.
Do you remember?”
“Yeah, those were the days of hell. I remember well. I was with Uncle Ibrahim
during that time. By then, our house was already destroyed.”
“Well, in our case the Americans tried white phosphorous against the
insurgents. They used chemicals that burned the bodies like fire. That is how my
parents died, because they didn’t leave their house. So much damage was done to
the people who stayed behind instead of leaving as they were advised to. People’s
flesh got burned up right on the spot. That’s how my mom and dad died. We
were a couple of kilometers away at my grandfather’s house,
Manolis Aligizakis 