Muhsin Al-Ramli - Dates on My Fingers - An Iraqi Novel

She laughed, reclining her broad shoulders against the seat back. Then she leaned forward and said in all seriousness, “Ohhh! I see what you mean now. I see what you mean. Listen, your father has amazing fingers. He knows how to play the entire instrument of the body with a skill that puts the best musicians to shame. My God! I have never experienced the pleasure and delight that I enjoy with him with any other man. He has strange and surprising styles, such as using dates — don’t ask me how! And his tongue too. Oh, what a tongue he has! And what knees! And ….

“As you must know, a woman, and especially a romantic woman like myself, isn’t looking merely for meaty appendages in a man. Rather, many other things draw her to him. Love is not just the short moments in bed, but rather the coming together of many little things. Such as the masculine traits in his behavior, his mindset, his personality, his way of speaking, the tone of his voice, the nature of his glances, the way he touches me, as well as where and the timing of it. The feeling, when I’m next to him, of confidence, strength, and affection. And ….”

She went on speaking about love, lovingly.

There are people who are happiest when living in a constant state of activity. That’s why they talk about many projects, even if these projects will never see the light of day. They fill their closely scheduled time by lining up promises, appointments, and engagements that are only words. Some of these people appear very busy when actually they are not, for at the very least, making you think they are pressed for time gives them a feeling of importance.

On the other hand, there are people, such as myself, who prefer the details of their lives to be clear and defined, easy to control and arrange. Therefore, any unsettled matter makes them feel that they, too, are unsettled, and creates a kind of anxiety that keeps them up at night. Maybe my habit of isolating myself after every important conversation or event comes from this. I run through each episode and analyze it as though I’m trying to fit it into what I believe to be the order of my life. Perhaps this too provides an explanation for my flight from Qashmars Village when the corpses were rotting, when I felt suffocated because I had no way of putting that difficult situation back into order.

I put forward this introduction in order to discuss the most important matter that was still unresolved and kept me from sleeping. That was my father’s goal of ramming the last bullet into the anus of the diplomat who was a reckless youth once upon a time. My father’s smiles and his intimating winks, which I always interpreted as a sign of the secret between us, confused me. I was frightened by the thought that a moment would come when he would disclose the matter to me and ask me to join him. I would certainly refuse, but the problem, which I couldn’t resolve, lay in how I might turn him away from carrying out this deed. Especially since I knew that it was the fundamental goal behind this strange journey of his. It was for this ultimate purpose that he planned, acted, worked, behaved politely, and suffered. It was the oath in front of Grandfather, and he’d never feel at peace until he fulfilled it.

Here I was after having spent approximately one month working at the club. I found myself fitting in and satisfied. Indeed, I was thrilled with this kind of work, perhaps because of its energy, the sense of renewal that came from always seeing new people, and the convivial atmosphere. There was also the feeling that I was free to be present, late, or absent, given that I was a manager and not just a low-level employee.

The final factor was that my relationship with Fatima was progressing toward its expected outcome. We officially became a couple after we declared to each other what was in our hearts, our minds, and our desires. The physical contact on a daily basis at work led us to further contact out in the street, in the presence of our close friends, and at home. She repeated her request, when she was kept late at work, to spend the night at my place, until in the end I provided her with her own set of keys. The marks of a woman’s presence in my life and in my house became obvious. We opened ourselves up to each other completely. We touched and kissed, we slept together in my bed, and we decided together what clothes to wear and what movies to go to on our days off each week. She informed her sister, whom I was soon helping with some of her homework. I told my father and Rosa, who said they knew and gave us their blessing. In the same way, our regular customers learned about the matter, as well as our friends, my Cuban neighbor, and the building doorman.

I was perfectly aware that Fatima wasn’t Aliya, and that my comparing them was not appropriate because I didn’t want to force her to adopt behaviors that were not part of her true personality. Every individual has their own separate being, something I’m always aware of deep down. But I wasn’t completely able to pull up Aliya’s roots from my spirit. Consequently, I wasn’t entirely able to avoid drawing comparisons between them. Fatima had wide eyes, with attractive, black pupils — striking in the midst of the surrounding white. Aliya had small eyes that burned my spirit. Fatima had thick, African lips — double the size of Aliya’s delicate ones — which made a fertile soil for plucking passionate kisses.

The lovely thing about it all is that, from time to time, I was able to persuade Fatima to smear our fingers and lips with dates and date nectar. We would suck at each other gently, drowning in each other’s kisses. She found the idea strange at first, but she got used to it. Indeed, she began to relish the pleasure of it, which gave me a sense of comfort, satisfaction, and victory. It was as though I began to see in this matter something that was essential to who I was, especially after Rosa alluded to the way my father used dates. I had been surprised at that, but her comments allowed me to understand better why there were dates in their Madrid apartment, as well as an abundance of them in her Barcelona house where I spent the night alone.

Their apartment had been very neat, as though intended for tourists. When I saw the plants and the flower vases filling its walls, I remembered that my house lacked plants entirely. How did that happen when I was from a family of farmers, while Rosa is the daughter of a gold merchant? At the time, I didn’t reflect on the matter for long, contenting myself with the first justification I found, that everyone seeks what they lack. But I thought that, in the future, I would put something green in my prosaic home. Instead of focusing on that, I was occupied during the train ride back by thoughts about my father’s fingers and the dates, which led me to wonder about Grandfather’s insistence on a well-stocked bag of dates in our house. Was Grandfather like us too?

The thought came to me that the three of us resembled each other in many ways. Perhaps we were actually one person multiplied across bodies and generations. But we were different from each other in many things too. Was it humanity’s way of attempting to attain perfection? And what was this special character in our relationship that makes each of us secretly desire to educate, or re-educate, the other? I wonder, do our similarities outweigh our differences? Were we truly three people, entirely independent of each other in our existence? During that journey, I boarded the train with many questions: though it carried me until I reached my destination, I didn’t arrive at any answers.

One night, when I made a move to have sex with Fatima, she apologized and said she didn’t want to, that she preferred to wait for marriage. That made me very happy because it was what I had actually been hoping for and wanting myself deep down. Perhaps it was a kind of resistance till the end against succumbing to sin, given that Grandfather had planted in my conscience a fiery fear of the punishments for iniquity. I told her I agreed, indeed, agreed happily, and that I had been very reluctant and had only intended to have sex because I thought that she might doubt my manhood. I also thought that her living in the West for several years would have influenced her attitude toward something like this. She revealed to me that she had done it only with her former husband, and that for her part, she was firmly committed to resisting any fall into sin. So we did everything together with the exception of intercourse.