Betrayed Page 20

  My work finished, it was back to the confines of my father’s home and the dark face of my grandmother. A month went by before my aunt said: ‘Guess who’s just got married? Your friend Diyar. He’s married his cousin. Isn’t that wonderful news?’ So he had taken her on the rebound from me. My secret was safe as far as his telling his bride about me was concerned, but there was always the danger that he might tell my father should anything at all upset him.

  The US battleships were moving into the Gulf. Saddam Hussein remained defiant. The Middle East braced itself for the inevitable war, which everyone knew would break out within weeks.

  My father had a surprise in store. He had beckoned me into the men’s room to ask me ‘about something’. Now what, I wondered. Another crisis? I was expecting to hear the name David, or Diyar on his lips, but it was Jamilla. A woman in her 40s, she was living with her younger brothers as tenants in a house my father’s family owned in Mosul. My father said that the divorce from my mother, Baian, had been completed and he wanted my blessing to marry Jamilla. The big shock was not the marriage plan but the fact that he had asked for my blessing, which I readily gave. As time was to later tell, she had to dye her dark blonde hair black because it reminded my father and his family too much of my mother.

  There was a reason for his marriage plan. ‘I know that one day you are going to get married here and I’m going to need someone to look after me in my old age.’

  These Kurdish men, I thought—all they could think of is how they could turn women into slaves and he obviously had me earmarked for the same kind of miserable life. Yet this was the first time my father and I had had a decent conversation since the beating he had given me. Jamilla, who was eight years younger than my father, had been a guest at his wedding to my teenage mother and was actually a distant relative.

  Just a week after obtaining my blessing, the wedding went ahead. A small gathering at the house because my grandmother made a point of mentioning that after all the time that had passed—four years—she was still in mourning for her son. When I say ‘small’ it was still very colourful. The Islamic ceremony had taken place in a house where Jamilla was staying with an aunt, the event being witnessed by three male relatives, my grandmother and the following day came the celebrations. Compared to many Islamic weddings, this was a mild affair. The more valuable the bride (judged on her beauty) the more gold she receives from the husband. She could receive up to 10 kilograms of gold in jewellery and then be expected to wear it. There would be bracelets running up her arms, earrings, ankle bracelets, rings, a necklace and a gold head piece. It is amazing they can even walk! But after three or four days it is common for the husband, whose family has given the gold, to take it back to sell, and pay his debts. Only the rich girls get to keep their jewellery.

  My father’s bride was picked up by my father from the aunt’s house where she had been staying and a beep from a ribbon-decorated vehicle outside told everyone that my father had arrived with his new bride, Jamilla, in her white gown—accompanied by one of his sisters and his mother. Women from along the street had gathered outside their homes and began calling with a ‘whoop’, ‘whoop’—their way of expressing their delight. Jamilla was escorted into the house, women holding her gown and her arm, for this was not only a wedding celebration; it was the ‘foreplay’ before her official deflowering. Even so, despite the lovely gown she wore and her carefully-applied make up—the only time she’d be allowed to wear it—she still had to retire to the women’s room with all the others while the men spread themselves out around the house and garden. I had put on a colourful Kurdish dress, black and silver with a silver belt and, looking at Jamilla’s sad face I could tell that she was not 100 per cent happy. She had been very close to her brother, with whom she shared the rented house, and this was the parting she knew had to come or, with the years going by, she would remain a spinster. Now she was sitting in this closed-off room, saying nothing, as the other women sat talking among themselves and staring at her, as though she were a stone idol on display. I managed to speak to Jamilla, as all the women sat in one room and the men in another, as usual, about how I and my brother and sister had grown up in Australia and perhaps one day she might persuade her new husband, my father, to take her there. That, I hoped, could lead to my escape.

  The men as usual had their lunch first, a meal of various meats, rice with nuts and currants, tirshik (a stew of meat and onions in a soup) and the famous dulmah (stuffed vine leaves) after which boxes of sweets were passed around. Everyone drank juices and tea, the closest to alcohol being grape juice. For me this was a wonderful occasion, for my prison home had become a place of gaiety, except for the poor bride and if only for a few hours for me. My grandmother had hired a woman to do the cooking and one of them told me her sad story, even though it had been expected of me to entertain the guests. I wanted to stay in the kitchen and listen to what she had to say. Hearing someone’s story took me away from my own misery. Her husband had been executed by Saddam Hussein’s secret police—she did not reveal his ‘crime’—and because she was then deemed to be a single woman her children had been taken away from her and given to her husband’s family because her own parents had passed away. Another woman relayed to me the hardship of each day, with her husband ill and unable to work, which meant she had to run between two cleaning jobs to support him and their six children.

  When the men had devoured all they could eat, the remainder of the food was sent into the women’s room, where it was laid out before the bride. She was invited to take the first mouthful and then the women joined in but I could see that Jamilla did not feel in the mood for eating.

  Finally after boxes of sweets had been handed around and the children cried with tiredness, it was time for everyone to leave—including me. I would be staying at my aunty Khalida’s house because this was the night when only the married couple, my grandmother, the bride’s aunty and one of my father’s old uncles and his wife would be allowed to remain to witness that the ‘breaking in’ of the bride had occurred.

  I felt so sorry for Jamilla. This should have been such a personal celebration between a happily married couple whose love affair had been allowed to blossom. But of course, this was the way it was done in Kurdistan. On my return to the house the following day the men crowded around my father, congratulating him on the start of his new married life, but the bride was kept from view, it being deemed discourteous to see her after the wedding night. Discourteous after those relatives had been hanging around outside the bedroom door to wait for my father’s successful appearance!

  Jamilla wore a maroon Kurdish gown that day and sat once again in the women’s room. The only times I saw her were the occasions when she went to the bathroom. That night, for the first time, they retired to my father’s room, which he had furnished with a new bedroom set. The following day it was straight into the housework. There was to be no honeymoon. Such happy events did not exist. Jamilla coped with her new rules well, for having lived with her brother for so long she was quite used to the daily routine of washing clothes, cooking, doing the dishes and sweeping floors. There was one occasion in the first week of her marriage when one of my aunties told her to take a rest—but my grandmother, hearing those words, scowled at the suggestion. Such was the control my now 65-year-old grandmother held over this second woman in the house—me being the first, of course—that when Jamilla wanted to visit her brother in Mosul she had to virtually beg for permission. Even then she was told she could not remain for the week she had requested and had to return after three days. The time was to come that when a second request to visit her brother was made, my grandmother refused outright, leaving Jamilla in tears. I would ask her to sit with me for a short time to watch the latest news about the war threat, but she would always reply: ‘No, your grandmother is on her own.’

  When she did take time away from the housework—which we were both sharing—to sit with my grandmother in the women’s room, I would see my grandmother hogging t
he heater while Jamilla was forced to sit further away, shivering. On one occasion my grandmother saw a CNN news feed on the local channel, which we were now receiving because the war was all that anyone wanted to hear about, and when she saw an American reporter she commented: ‘Just look at that woman.’ Then, to the woman on the screen, she said: ‘Are you wearing enough make-up, you slut?’

  Aware of her mother-in-law’s fierceness, Jamilla went out of her way each day to please her. She must have mentioned something to my father because I heard him tell her: ‘You must show her respect. She’s an old woman.’ Not so old to be tough, though, for she was always walking to the shops to bring back groceries and, as a former fashion designer, she was also often doing embroidery on an old pedal-operated sewing machine, calling out to Jamilla from time to time for her to do this and that. She had positioned the machine in the front window so she could see who was coming in through the gate. I wondered if the day would ever come when I would see her smile.

  ‘You’re not just married to my father,’ I thought, as I saw Jamilla’s daily distress. ‘You’re also married to my grandmother, you poor thing.’

  But I was no better off, of course. At least it was officially accepted that she was no longer a virgin. My own secret hung in the balance. Would Diyar break his word and go to my father with my confession? Each morning I woke with that fear on my mind and it was only when I lay down at night did I thank God that another day had passed without a new threat to my life.

  Sometimes I would ask myself how mentally strong I really was. My body had protested against my treatment as revealed in the outbreak of spots and the shedding of my hair—I still had the bald patches—but I wondered whether, in relation to other girls who might find themselves in the same position, I was being incredibly strong or behaving like a wimp.

  ‘No, you’re not a wimp, Latifa,’ I told myself. ‘Fight back if you must, but do not give in to this culture which will eat you alive if you succumb to it. Love God by all means, but that does not mean you must love the way of life that tells you to pray each day. If you do lose your life fighting to retain all that you believe in, well, that is how it will have to be.’

  Such things I repeated frequently as the weeks passed after my father’s wedding. I was shackled, that was true, but I was determined it would not be for the rest of my life. Whenever I was doing the dishes or helping Jamilla in the kitchen I would plug in my earphones and listen to Tracy Chapman, sometimes humming with it. Because I also had a tape player, I would sometimes play it softly in the kitchen when my father and my grandmother were out, but I could tell this scared Jamilla because this was Western music, which had always been so foreign to her, and she feared the worst if she was to be caught enjoying it. I had other music, including Aretha Franklin and Sade—but I couldn’t play Sade without bursting into tears because it was too romantic and reminded me of David. How would I ever see him again? He had obviously found no escape for me because I was certain he would have found a way of getting the message to me, even if it was by sending a kid from up the street to call on the girls across the road to pass it on.

  As I watched Jamilla’s daily misery in the presence of my grandmother, I wondered if my mother had also had to endure the same pain from the same woman. My mother had been taken from her home at a young age to live with my father and his own mother—and her husband when he was still alive—and I now recalled words that she had uttered just once when we were living in Sydney: ‘Your father’s sisters, your aunties, are two faced and as for your grandmother, she put me through hell.’

  I could imagine that, enduring the same hardships, but the thought of what my mother may have endured could not bring me to forgive her for what she had done to me. She had betrayed me and I would never, ever forget that.

  SEVENTEEN

  At 5.30 on the morning of March 20, 2003, allied forces began bombing Iraq. As Tomahawk missiles and GBU-27 bombs struck Baghdad, Special Forces teams from the US, Britain and Australia, which had already been covertly positioned on the outskirts of the city, hit specified targets. Ground forces began moving up from the Gulf. The war had begun. For Saddam Hussein there was no turning back.

  The Kurds had been waiting for this for years and even from the first scent of war in mid 2002 had been preparing their own battle ground in the mountains bordering Iran, where fundamentalists who supported Osama bin Laden had been expected to launch an attack against the Peshmergas.

  While it was obvious from the news reports that war was about to break out, there had been more than enough evidence for the Kurdish people that nothing could stop it. The Americans had been bringing supplies in from the Turkish side of the frontier, huge trucks laden down with weapons, missiles and heavy machinery that passed by on the highway near Dohuk. The word was that they would be setting up bases at strategic points in Kurdistan. But I had found out in another heartbreaking way that Iraq was soon to be in turmoil. I was shopping with my aunty in central Dohuk when, standing at the roadside, I noticed a convoy of four-wheel drive vehicles approaching. I knew what they were immediately. Blue and white flags fluttered on the bonnets and there were blue letters on the side that made my heart pound: UN. David and the UN staff were leaving!

  Each of the 10 or so vehicles had tinted windows so I couldn’t see into them. But they all went past me and I knew, I just knew, that David was in one of them—and he could not have failed to have seen me. Could he have wound down a window and waved? Probably not. But what hurt me was seeing him leave without warning. Again, I thought that he might have been able to get a message to me via a child. There was always a way if someone really wanted to make contact. He had clearly done nothing to help me. Just upped and left. I loved him dearly and now he was gone. But I had also betrayed his trust in me. Perhaps the stakes were even.

  However, when the convoy turned a corner and vanished from sight I felt that my one and only contact with the ‘outside world’ had been severed. I used the edge of my scarf to dab away my tears. I did not want my aunt to see them. It was as though my heart had been ripped out. I felt empty and betrayed. David had told me he loved me, yet he had slipped away like a thief in the night.

  The departure of the UN vehicles left me and the rest of the town in no doubt that war was upon us. I had also watched the daily news broadcasts to keep abreast of events, but all the signs were right outside my door. Not only my neighbours but the entire population of Dohuk were getting out of town and heading to the villages, fearing that as a last stand, Saddam Hussein would turn his wrath on the Kurds, his long-time enemy. At the mention of Australian special forces on the TV I had an immediate dream of a team of heavily armed troops rushing into town, scooping me up and carrying me far away! I certainly did not want to be caught up in a war zone after all the misery I had endured. Memories of what my mother had told me, how the Arabs had slaughtered the Kurds with their chemical bombs, flooded back to me. No wonder people were now clearing out.

  When I was able to slip across the road to the girls’ house, just before they packed up their bags to leave, I saw footage on Al Jazeera of the blasts in the night sky over Baghdad. Saddam Hussein’s forces were putting up resistance, but it was clear the allies were routing them. Would the Arabs then turn their attention to the Kurds? Would Saddam’s forces be driven north for a last stand, crushing the Kurds in their advance? Such thoughts flooded my mind.

  ‘Dad, everyone is leaving. Aren’t we going?’

  ‘We’re going nowhere. I fought for Kurdistan when I was younger and I’m not leaving my country now. This time Saddam will not defeat us.’

  ‘But if we leave, we’ll survive. Isn’t that a form of winning?’

  ‘We will survive,’ he said. ‘The Americans have learned from their mistakes in the Gulf War and they won’t make the same mistakes again.’

  ‘What about the chemical weapons Saddam has?’

  ‘We don’t know if he does have any. If he does, I’ve made preparations for you and your stepmother.�
�� He went to his room and returned with two ancient gas masks. ‘If there is a chemical attack, put these on and make sure your stepmother puts hers on.’

  ‘But what about you and your mother?’

  ‘We will remain and see it through.’

  This was nonsense. Why couldn’t we just leave for the relative safety of small villages like everyone else?

  I stood at the gate and watched the cars go by, laden down with bags of rice, cooking pots, squawking chickens in cages. Soon, it seemed, we were the only family left in the neighbourhood. I had become so used to hearing children laughing, cars honking, but now there was just silence. All the shops were closed and boarded up. My father stretched tape on our windows to prevent the glass shattering and falling in. We were in a ghost town.

  I was weighed down with despair. Bouts of dizziness hit me through the days as the bombings continued in the south and getting up each day became a struggle. It was not the fear of war coming to us. It was the feeling of being totally isolated in this house, alone with poor Jamilla, my father and his joyless mother. Despite the empty streets and the knowledge that there were no boys around to gaze at me, I was still not allowed to step outside the gates to stretch my legs, to stride out and get some real exercise. I had been so active in my schoolgirl days and now all I did was bend my knees to clean floors or stretch my arms to make my bed. Little wonder that I had put on so much weight.

  My father kept the radio on day and night. He spent most of what should have been sleeping hours listening to the news but every one of those four televisions in the house was also on, picking up feeds from the major networks. Then I heard the distant pounding of bombs and feared that it was Saddam’s forces turning on the Kurds, but my father assured me that it was the Americans hitting Mosul where many of Saddam’s forces were dug in. Our house shuddered as each bomb hit, even though the attack was many miles away.