The Corpse Washer (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Read online

  Dr. Ammoury, the handsome, shy one but who nonetheless succeeded in charming Wasan, our neighbor, and made her fall in love with him. My mother rushed to ask for her hand so they would be engaged before his graduation. He was drafted into the army after graduation, but died before they got married. Wasan, with her long black hair and lovely legs, a student of architecture at the University of Baghdad. I felt guilty when I couldn’t drive her away from my sexual fantasies. Ammoury, of whom I was greatly jealous, because he was the favorite, pampered—an ideal I could never approach. I felt guilty because I couldn’t stop myself, even in this moment, from wondering so selfishly: Would the news of my own death in this seemingly endless war leave a quarter of the pain and sorrow that Ammoury’s departure will have left behind? I wiped my tears and scolded myself for this utter narcissism.

  I got to the mghaysil, the washhouse. The door was ajar. I crossed the walkway and saw the Qur’anic verse “Every soul shall taste death” in beautiful Diwani script hanging over the door. The yellowish paint on the wall was peeling away because of the humidity from the washing. Father was sitting in the left corner of the side room on a wooden chair listening to the radio. Death’s traces—its scents and memories—were present in every inch of that place. As if death were the real owner and Father merely an employee working for it and not for God, as he liked to think.

  Death, ever present in Father’s place of work and his days, was about to declare its presence once again, but with a cruelty and force that would tattoo itself on Father’s heart and on what was left of his years. The washing bench was empty and dry. Father’s yellow amber worry beads were clicking in his right hand. Hammoudy must have gone out to buy something and left him alone. Father’s eyes greeted me. He must’ve heard my footsteps. “Hello, Father.”

  I had not set foot there for more than a year. I had tried to steer away from death, and my relationship with Father had soured. He must have sensed something in my voice and seen the sadness on my face. There was anxiety in his voice:

  “What? Is something wrong with your mother?”

  “No, Father.”

  “What then?”

  I approached him and leaned to embrace him as he sat in his chair. He asked me: “What then? Did something happen to Ammoury?”

  The news in the past two days had been all about the bloody battles in al-Faw and the heavy casualties inflicted there. Two months earlier, Ammoury’s unit had been transferred from the northern sector to al-Faw. I hesitated for a few long seconds trying to postpone the grave news. Then I told him, as I hugged him and kissed his left cheek without being able to stop my tears: “May you have a long life, Father. They just brought him home.”

  He put his arms around me and repeated in a trembling voice: “Oh, God. Oh, God. There is no power save in God. There is no power save in God. There is no God but God. Only he is immortal.” Then he wept like a child. I hugged him tightly and felt that for a few minutes we’d exchanged the roles of father and son. I sensed he wanted to stand up, so I loosened my arm. He stood up and wiped his tears with the back of his right hand, without letting go of his worry beads. He turned off the radio and put on his jacket. We locked the door and went back home together without exchanging a word.

  We didn’t wash Ammoury. According to tradition, martyrs are not washed. He was buried in his military uniform. I never saw Father cry after that time, but the grief I saw piercing his eyes and voice that day would resurface every now and then on his face, especially when he gazed at Ammoury’s photograph which hung on the wall, as if he were silently conversing with him. It was the same look I saw on Father’s face when Ammoury’s coffin was being covered with dirt and the gravedigger recited:

  We come from God and to him we return. O God, take his soul up to you and show him your approval. Fill his grave with mercy so that he may never need any other mercy but yours, for he believes in you and your resurrection. This is what God and his messenger promised us. Verily they have told the truth. O God, grant us more faith and peace.

  After the funeral was over the black banner hung for months on the wall at the entrance of our street:

  “Think not of those who die for God as dead,

  but rather alive with their God.”

  The martyr Doctor Ameer Kazim Hasan, died in the battles to

  liberate al-Faw on the 17th of April, 1988.

  Father had never been very talkative and laughed rarely, but Ammoury’s death intensified his silence and dejection and made him more moody and volatile. My mother was the one who had to withstand the waves of his anger with a mumble or a complaint she would whisper to herself when he yelled: “Enough already” or “Turn the TV down.” The TV had become her only solace. I hadn’t spent much time at home even before Ammoury’s death, but my clashes with Father became more frequent, and I tried to avoid him so as to avoid them. When I came back late at night, he would tell me that I treated our house like a hotel.

  In August of 1990, almost three and a half years after Ammoury’s death, Saddam invaded Kuwait. To secure the eastern front with Iran and withdraw troops from there to Kuwait, he agreed to all the Iranian conditions and relinquished all the demands for which he’d waged the war in the first place. Father punched the table and shouted: “Why the hell did we fight for eight years then and what in hell did Ammoury die for?”

  FOUR

  Like all children I was very curious and would pester Father with questions about his work, but he said he’d tell me all about it later when the time was right. I would accompany him when I was old enough. “It’s too early, focus on school.” Ammoury had started helping Father when he was fifteen and started to wash at eighteen, but my father never allowed me to go inside his workplace. He wanted to keep work and home separate. When I used to ask Ammoury about work, he never gave me satisfying answers; these were matters for grown-ups and I was still a child.

  During the summer break after ninth grade Father told me that I could start accompanying him to work to watch and learn the basics of the trade. On the first day, I was ecstatic. I felt a sense of awe as I stood in front of the door. Father moved the sufurtas he was carrying from his right hand to his left and put his right hand in his pocket looking for the key. The sky was clear and cloudless that day. I noticed that there was no sign indicating what the place was, and when I asked him he said there was no need for a sign, because it was not a shop or a store. He added, as he turned the key in the lock to open the door, that everyone knew where the mghaysil was. It was the only such place for Shiites in Baghdad, and the vast majority of others were off in Najaf. He said that with great pride, adding that everyone in Kazimiyya knew the place.

  It was a bit smaller than I had imagined it. The scents of lotus and camphor wafted through the air, and I felt the humidity seeping into my skin. He closed the door behind us and went inside ahead of me. The first object that struck my eyes after we crossed the hallway and entered the main room was the marble bench on which the dead were washed. Its northern part, where their heads would rest, was slightly elevated so that the water could flow down. The mghaysil was more than six decades old, and many generations of our family had worked in it, including my grandfather, who had died before I was born. The walls and ceiling were painted a yellowish white, but time and humidity had peeled portions of them, especially on the ceiling. The patches looked like autumn leaves about to fall. My father pressed a button on the wall, and the fan in the middle of the ceiling started to whirl. I looked to the right and saw the coffins brought from the Religious Endowment Center piled in the corner. Close by above them on the wall was a modest window which allowed the sun to illuminate the room. A slant of light had snuck in and left a spot on the floor. The window was above eye level and left the corners a bit dark, but I could see a fragment of the sky. The old ceiling fan traced fluttering wings on the opposite wall. Directly beneath the window was a door leading to a tiny garden where the pomegranate tree my father loved so much stood. Next to the door was a wooden benc
h on which relatives would wait and watch their beloved dead be washed and shrouded. Six feet away from the marble bench was a big white basin right below a copper-colored water faucet. Copper bowls and jugs were piled inside the basin. My father scorned plastic containers, which had recently become quite common. Under the basin to the left was another faucet with a low wooden stool in front, the kind we used in the bathroom to sit on and wash. To the right of the basin was a big wooden cupboard with glass doors that held the bags and boxes of ground lotus leaves, camphor, shrouds, cotton, and soap.

  The marble bench was rectangular and its base was ringed by a moat lined with white ceramic tiles funneling into a small stream that took the water into the tiny garden rather than into the drain— for the water used for washing the dead was never to mix with sewage. From the left-hand corner a small walkway led to the bathroom and a small storage room. On the western wall the Qur’anic verse “Every soul shall taste death” in Diwani script hung within a thick wooden frame right over the wooden door which led to a side room where Father sat most of the time. That room had two wooden chairs separated by a small table. There was only one window, and next to it a portrait of Imam Ali.

  Father went in and hung his jacket in the storage room. Then he came back and went to the side room and sat on one of the wooden chairs and turned the radio on, setting the dial to his favorite station. I followed him. He motioned to me to sit down. My eyes wandered again. I don’t know why I’d thought that we would start working right away. He said that first I had to just watch him and Hammoudy at the job for a number of weeks. Hammoudy was five years older than I was and had worked with my father from a young age. This was how he began. Afterward I could start to help out and hand him the necessary items. I wouldn’t start washing until I’d mastered the preparatory work and had fathomed its meaning. I nodded dutifully. Half an hour later, Hammoudy arrived and asked what he should do. Father asked him to sweep the place and check the cupboards to make sure they were fully stocked. He told me to go with Hammoudy, so I did.

  I watched Hammoudy sweep the floor around the marble bench and the corners—although there was really no need to sweep. After he took the broom back to the storage room, he seemed eager to explain the lay of the land to me, proud to display his professional knowledge of the place.

  Hammoudy was not the only one in his family who worked as a body washer. His mother, Umm Hammoudy, was also a washer, in charge of the women’s mghaysil, which lay behind this one and whose door opened onto the next street over. His father had died when he was three. Two years later, his mother married another man, but Hammoudy’s stepfather was captured by the Iranians during the war. He was in the popular army militia. Because he never returned after the war ended, he was considered missing in action and presumed dead. No one married her after that. People said that whoever married her would die. Umm Hammoudy had asked my father to take her son on as an assistant, and he agreed. He had left school after tenth grade to help her out and was exempt from military service because of the limp in his right leg which he got when he was hit by a speeding car while riding his bike on one of Kazimiyya’s streets.

  Hammoudy gave me a quick tour and showed me where the lotus, camphor, cotton, soap, and shrouds were shelved. Then we went to the storage room where the towels and boxes of shrouds and other materials were kept, and where there was also a tiny gas stove to make tea and heat food.

  We went to the side room, and Hammoudy brought a third chair from the tiny garden and put it in the room. My father asked him to make some tea. I sat down and skimmed the previous day’s newspapers which were lying around. Hammoudy came back with a tray and put it on the table. The scent of cardamom filled the room. My father was intoxicated by the voice of Zuhoor Hussein coming from the radio while our spoons stirred the tea in tiny cups dissolving the sugar. We took sips and put down our cups one by one. Hammoudy took the sports page of al-Thawra. A relative calm descended, interrupted half an hour later by loud knocks at the door. Hammoudy darted toward the walkway.

  A male voice asked whether this was the mghaysil. Hammoudy said that it was and invited him to enter. The voice said that first they would go to the car to get the body. Father turned off the radio and made his way to the door. I put the newspaper down on the table and looked at him, but he seemed unaware of my presence. Five minutes later Hammoudy returned, followed by two men carrying the deceased wrapped in a large white sheet. Hammoudy pointed to the marble bench and they laid him down there.

  People used to bring in the dead after obtaining death certificates from the Office of Forensic Medicine. Father was a careful man, so he made sure to read the certificate before washing anyone. The men who brought the body both wore black. The first man was about Father’s age, in his early fifties. White had crept into his hair and the sides of his moustache. The pale rims of his brown eyes were red with tears or fatigue. The second man had similar features and hair color, but was younger and stubble-bearded. The older man asked Father about the fee.

  “Whatever you can manage,” he answered, “plus the cost of the shroud, but later. Who is the deceased?”

  “He was our brother,” the man said. “He had a stroke.” “There is no power save in God,” my father said. “May God have mercy on him and give you long lives.”

  The elder replied: “May God have mercy on your loved ones.”

  The younger man didn’t say a thing. My father invited them to sit on the bench or to stand if they wished and declared that the washing and shrouding would take about three quarters of an hour. The elder man didn’t utter a word and stood next to his brother a few feet away from the washing bench. I stood nearby, leaning on the wall.

  Father approached the washing bench from its west side and removed the sheet from the body. The pale face and hollow eyes of a man in his late fifties appeared. I was afraid and felt a tightness in my chest. This was the first time I’d seen a dead man up close. His hair and moustache were grizzled. The moustache was thin, unlike his beard, which looked like it hadn’t been shaved for days.

  Hammoudy approached the bench from the east side. My father lifted the upper part of the body so that Hammoudy could pull the sheet out from under it. They did the same thing with the lower part and then Hammoudy presented the sheet to the elder brother, who stood still. The dead man had a white undershirt and gray pants on, but was barefoot. His fists were clenched. Father grasped the right fist and opened it gently. Hammoudy did the same with the left fist. They undressed him except for his white underpants. Then Father covered the man’s body from his navel to his upper thighs with a white cloth Hammoudy had handed to him. He removed the underpants from under the cloth and handed them to Hammoudy who folded all the clothes and put them in a sack and offered it to the brother.

  Father went to the basin and removed his slippers. He took down the white apron, from where it hung on a nail to the left, and put it on. It covered his chest and body down to his knees. He tied the apron strings behind his back and rolled up his sleeves. He took a bar of soap, turned on the faucet and lathered his hands and arms up to his elbows. Then he rinsed them. He repeated this twice more.

  While he was drying his hands and arms with a towel, Hammoudy put one of the big bowls under the second faucet. Water was pouring down. He took out two bags from the cupboard. He put one down and opened the second and sprinkled some of what was inside it on top of the water. I began to smell the scent of ground lotus leaves, which I used to detect on Father when he returned home.

  Father approached the washing bench from the east side and said in a hushed voice: “In the name of God, most Merciful, most Compassionate. Your forgiveness, O Lord, your forgiveness. Here is the body of your servant who believed in you. You have taken his soul and separated the two. Your forgiveness O Lord, your forgiveness.” Then he started to gently wipe the belly to make sure all fluids were out of the body. Hammoudy put a stool close to the bench so that the bowl of water he was about to put on it would be within Father’s reach. Th
en he placed the bowl on the stool and added some ground lotus leaves to it. He put a small metal bowl in the big bowl.

  Father filled the small bowl with water and motioned to Hammoudy, who sprinkled some of the ground lotus on the dead man’s head. Father started to lather the hair and scrub it. Once the head was washed, Hammoudy helped him turn the man on his side while Father kept repeating: “Your forgiveness. Your forgiveness.” He started to wash the right side of the body. First the head, then the right side of the face, neck, shoulder, arm, hand, chest, and belly. He kept pouring water and moving his hand softly along the body, repeating: “Your forgiveness, O Lord, your forgiveness.” When he reached the deceased man’s hips, he washed his private parts without removing the white cloth. Then he washed the leg, from the thigh to the toes. Then the two of them turned the body onto its back.

  Father went to the other side of the bench and they turned the body on its left side to wash it. Father repeated the process with the same meticulousness from the head until he reached the sole of the left foot. Hammoudy had refilled the big bowl and stood waiting to replace the one Father was using. Father went to the basin and cleansed his hands and arms after the first wash. The floor around the bench was wet, but most of the water had gathered in the moat and made its way out into the garden.