I could not die. Hassan needs me. Aunt Maida needs me. My finger jerked on the trigger, and the American was ripped apart, slumped to the ground.
My legs would not support me any longer, and I knew the screaming was coming from me.
When Hassan quiets and is able to sit up, I let myself cry soft tears, silent tears. I hear the American whispering, hear him sob and sigh a breath, hear the beads clicking together. I stand up, brush the dirt from my knees, and go over to him. He looks at me, but I do not think he sees me. Perhaps he sees someone else, maybe his mother, or a friend, or a wife.
I take his hand in mine. I do not care that he is an infidel, and that I will be unclean from touching a man like that. I only know that Allah would want me to pray for him. So I pray. I pray the prayer to ease his passing into Allah’s arms, not knowing whether the god he prays to was like Allah or if the beads themselves were his god, or if he only prayed to his ancestors, like the people I learned about in school, before I stopped going. I pray, and I let myself cry for him, because if he has a mother, or a sister, or a wife, I know they would want someone to weep at his death.
He dies while I pray, and I close his eyes, as I closed Mama's, and Papa's, and Uncle Ahmed's. I fold his hands over his prayer beads. They are smooth and worn from being rubbed so often. I place his camera on his stomach as well, so that when the other Americans find him, they will be able to see his pictures.
I stand up again and go to the doorway, trying not to see the American's body. I feel very grown up as I creep carefully toward Aunt Maida’s house, Hassan trailing behind me, clutching his arm, teeth grinding against the pain. I feel old in my heart, tired in my soul.
I am glad I prayed for the American, and I hope his god heard me.
I pray to my god, to Allah, and wonder if he hears me.
* * *
The fighting has moved away from where we live, Hassan and Aunt Maida and I. The bombs flash in the night, shaking the earth until dawn. Gunfire rattles and cracks, and there are faint yells and screams. It is the constant sound of death. I hear the whump-whump-whump of American helicopters, the high howl of jets, the rumble of tanks and the things that carry many soldiers, like tanks but without the cannons. It is all far away now, though.
Hassan's arm heals slowly, and he burns with anger, and with impatience to join the fighting. "I am a man!" he yells. "I will kill the Americans, as they killed Mama and Papa. As soon as I am well, I will go and kill them."
I beg him to stay here, where it is something like safe. Aunt Maida just sits at the table, staring with blank eyes at the wall, and she does not say anything. After her husband, my Uncle Ahmed, died she began to drift away in her mind, so that she will not have to miss him anymore. She will die soon, I think, and then it will be only me and Hassan in this world.
Aunt and Uncle and Mama and Papa each had very little money, and now it is only Aunt Maida. Life continues, despite the war, despite the death all around. Shops open in the morning to sell food, the stalls with their hawk-eyed vendors. I try to beg for food, to steal it, but I get little. Hassan is hungry, and so am I. Aunt Maida says nothing, does not move, but I think her body is eating itself to keep her alive, and soon there will be no more body to eat, and she will close her eyes forever.
I pray to Allah to save her, to wake her up so she will take care of Hassan and me, because I am just a girl and I do not know how. I pray to Allah to protect Hassan, to keep him away from the fighting. I think of the dying American and how his praying did not save him. Uncle Ahmed called on Allah to save him, and he died. I prayed for Allah to spare Mama and Papa, but they died, too. I am beginning to wonder if Allah hears me. Maybe because I am only a child he does not listen. Perhaps he only hears the prayers of adults.
I do not think I will pray anymore if Aunt Maida dies and leaves us alone.
* * *
Iraq, 1993
I wake up to early morning sunlight streaming in through the boarded-up window, piercing the gloomy gray of our small house. It is still, too still. I sit up, adjusting my dress on my shoulders. My head covering, or what is left of it, is on the ground beside me, but I do not put it on yet. My hair is long and loose and tangled, glinting black and almost blue on my shoulder. I should brush it, but I do not have time, because I must continue to search for food for Aunt Maida and Hassan and me.
I look around without standing up. The house is so small I can see it all from where I sit on my bed beneath the window, next to the door. There is the kitchen, a stove and an empty refrigerator. There is the couch, threadbare and ripped, empty. Hassan is gone. I feel panic in my belly, knowing he is too young to understand what he is doing, but I cannot go after him yet.
Something else is wrong. I find Aunt Maida in her chair by the little black and white TV, now always off. She is still sitting straight up, her hands folded in her lap, staring at the wall, but her thin chest does not rise and fall as it has for so many weeks now. I managed to feed her for a while, some soup heated on the stove, then some bread and beans I bought, found, or stole. Then she turned her face away and would not eat anything. She would let me pour water into her mouth, so at least she would not die of thirst, which I think is worse than dying of hunger, although I do not know why I think that.
Perhaps it is because hunger is only a dull ache in your belly, growing sharper as the days move past. You grow more hungry, always more hungry, like a hole in your belly growing ever larger until you think it may swallow your ribs and your heart and your liver and whatever else hides behind the skin of your chest and belly, parts I do not know the name of.
Thirst, however...it is a desperation. You would do anything for one drink of water. To be thirsty is worse than to be hungry. You can eat a bug, or worm, you can snatch a can of beans or a hunk of hard bread from a market stall. But to find water? It is not so easy. A bottle of water is heavy. It does not fit beneath the folds of a dress, or in a sleeve. You get thirstier and thirstier until it is like anger or hatred. Your mouth turns into a desert, dry and sandy and empty, your lips cracked.
I think this is why thirst is worse than hunger.
Aunt Maida dies of hunger, but really of a broken heart. She is old, and she loved my Uncle Ahmed for all of her life, since she was a little girl. He never hit her, like many men do their wives. He loved her. When he died, I think she did, too—it just took a longer time for her body to realize her heart and mind were already dead.
I touch her face, and it is cold, so cold, and hard. Her eyes stare unseeing. She sees Uncle Ahmed in heaven, I think.
"Do you see Allah?" I do not recognize my voice, or why I am asking questions of a dead woman. "Is He there, Aunt Maida? Ask Him why He does not answer me!"