i s h t a r r i a........

While the age gap that separated Dina and me wasn’t great—only a few years stood between us—we were, however, as unlike as two people could be in our personalities. She was a strong-willed individual, who had a reputation for being logical and rational. She would pinpoint her goals in life incisively, and would march towards them with dogged determination. In contrast I was frequently a prey to emotions, and harboured such overwhelmingly romantic aspirations. She was living then, just like any other unmarried fellow female, with her father and her brother, my Uncle Sam, who was a few years older than she was, and who was also unmarried. Dina worked at the time as a banker, while Uncle Sam managed his own business—an agency selling automobiles spare parts. My sweet old grandpa was a retiree, who had spent his entire life working in the governmental sector, just like the majority of Iraqis. He was the most wonderful grandpa one could ever wish for, gifted with a phenomenal sense of humo...

A reticent and devastating sadness enveloped me upon hearing all that hierarchy of taboos and inviolable rules; my eyes swam in tears again. My helplessness and powerlessness, however, didn’t escape Dina’s eyes. She must have realized the enormity of my attachment to him, and I guess she felt for me. She hugged me, soothing and assuring me of her hand of help, but only if I submitted to her guidance and followed her instructions. Otherwise, she warned that she would fork it all over onto my parents’ hands. She also demanded that I arrange for her to see him without his knowledge, and she came up with a plan. Dina left nothing to happenstances. Her extremely scrupulous and meticulous nature overrode by far her emotionality especially in issues like this. Being in love, after all, was a delicately sensitive issue that embroiled honour and reputation, matters of priceless value in the life of any Iraqi, requiring consummate attentiveness to ensure that nothing had gone, or would go, wron...

Entirely bewildered and confused, I slumped into my chair, sapless and devastated, my anguish spilling over and obliterating any liveliness surviving from the previous three days. ‘How could you be so cruel, Martin? Much as you love me, you have also hurt me’ . I was incensed, too. The harsh obnoxious surroundings quelled a sudden, insane impulse, which stormed through me, to run after him, and stop him from leaving. He was still around, in the vicinity of the building, and breathing the same air, yet everything around me seemed suddenly to be shifting colours and losing warmth, turning cold, dull and lifeless. I wondered how I would stomach his absence. Pain exacerbated. I sat there engrossed counting: ‘ Seven days, seven long agonizing days, twenty-four hours a day, a hundred and sixty eight hours a week, and thousands of minutes’ . Without him being around, I was like a fish that was taken out of water. The place was going to be a real hell for seven days. I couldn’t endure staying...

Often I wondered whether it was my innocence and inexperience that had further intensified his passion for me. Or was it, perhaps, my brittle emotions and handy tears that appealed to his virility. Or could it have been all these together that made him see in me a dissimilar type of woman, one he hadn’t possibly met before? Whatever the truth of the matter, it was becoming more and more obvious that he delighted in demonstrating his overwhelming love as much as he had taken joy in its enkindling. On our last afternoon together, prior to his final departure, he asked me if marriage to an American would jeopardise my safety on future visits to my country. I affirmed this to be a possibility. Well, just the mere thought of marrying someone from the enemy’s camp would have been sufficient to bring upon me the charge of high treason, and render me vulnerable to the grievous consequences following upon that. I would not be spared by those Baathists and informants from their ubiquitously in...

His ferocious war wasn’t waged against my shyness, since he found my bashfulness quite enthralling; nor was it waged against my artlessness, which he adored. Rather, it was against the reserve that tradition and culture had deeply embedded in my innermost being through years of social and religious acculturation. He assumed the role of a mentor, guiding me tenderly and with incredible patience and respect, teaching me not to loathe or be disdainful of my emotions and feelings, but to esteem and admire them. His copious wisdom was the medium that bridged the cultural chasm that often reared between us. Given the limited time he had, since his assignment in Iraq was temporary, he used it intelligently so that it worked to his advantage. His love galloped along, taking magnificent strides by the day, by the hour, and by the minute. It must have been for him a different type of love, a peculiar love that he had perhaps never lived or experienced before—a chaste, pure and flawless love, bu...

Work was increasingly becoming the blissful haven and the umbrageous oasis in which we were fed sweet nectar. Conversely, weekends, days off, and holidays were like the desert, barren, arid and desolate. The few hours away from work each day were an excruciating drag, whereas the time at work would just speed by until the loathed but inevitable hour of our daily parting. I could do nothing to avoid the separation inflicted by the hateful weekends, but he would adamantly refuse to take his two days off in the middle of each week. If personal necessity forced him into some time off, then it wouldn’t extend beyond two or three hours, during which he would call several times on various pretexts, and eventually return to work. He thus increased his weekly working days to seven. But then, notwithstanding my sheer certainty about his daily attendance at work, my eyes would apprehensively surf the parking lot each morning on those two days, in search for what signalled his presence, his car. ...

The trace of blind jealousy that was crowned by my bashful smile and my unstoppable tears formed an instrumental ensemble for imparting openly to him, and beyond any doubt, what my shy love had been withholding. Such exuberant proclamation amounted to turning the light to an out-and-out green for him, allowing him to haunt my office for as many times as he wished and on various pretexts. First, it started with him increasing the number of his visits to two or three daily. Soon they rose to as many as five, some of which were meetings with other advisors, which he would designedly orchestrate so that they took place in my office. Or he would drop in more often than not for casual collegial chats, in which he would position himself in strategic angles that allowed him an ideal view of me. There was for me the unutterable joy of seeing him pop in for tasks he could simply achieve over the phone. But most wonderful of all were those visits that he would resourcefully fix up at those times ...