The kurdish bike, p.1
The Kurdish Bike, page 1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
- Prologue
- One: A Circuitous Route to the Village
- Two: Forms of Obedience
- Three: Going Local
- Four: Nonessential Body Parts
- Five: Faces of Longing
- Six: Heating Up
- Seven: Dreams and Delirium
- Eight: Leaps Of Faith and Otherwise
- Nine: Desperation
- Ten: A Crown for Every Achievement
- Epilogue
- Author's Afterword
- About the Author
- Glossary
This is a work of fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
Lightbourne, Alesa. The Kurdish Bike: A Novel.
Copyright © 2016 Alesa M. Lightbourne
All rights reserved.
For my parents,
who worried
but still said yes
“A work of fiction is an arrangement which
the author makes of his experience
with the idiosyncrasies of his own personality.”
~ W. Somerset Maugham
Prologue
Two women laugh exuberantly in a snapshot, their arms around each other, heads close together and aimed toward the camera. This is no pose -- they are caught mid-hysterics. The older-looking Middle Eastern one is wrinkled and mostly toothless, and sports a Gore-Tex traveler’s rain hat, something she clearly finds ridiculous. Straggles of gray hair escape from under the hat; she squints, partly because her stomach aches from laughing so much, but also because she can’t see the camera clearly. Despite the rapture in her face, she gives the sense that she hasn’t laughed like this in a very long time, and this moment is something of a miracle. That’s because on this funny, sunny afternoon, right here on her very ordinary concrete porch, she is important to somebody outside of her family. She matters. She is a star.
The Western woman beside her is also of grandmotherly age, but her teeth are white and perfect. Her hair is carefully streaked blonde, and bangs sneak out from under her black scarf, amateurly wrapped and slipping off the back of her head. It’s such an American face -- sun-damaged from outdoor fun, not field labor, and nourished by decades of protein and fruit. This is a miracle moment for her, too, but for different reasons. She’s re-discovering, after a long, paralyzing dry spell, the radiance of being alive.
Behind them, in front of the rough concrete blocks of a privy, funereal clothes dry on a wire. There’s the shadowy opening to a kitchen, a flat corrugated roof weighed down with old tires, and a modest blue bicycle propped up against a water tank. You wouldn’t want to place bets on where in the Third World this humble house might be; it could be anywhere, from a village in the Balkans to Africa or Brazil. The only clue would be inside -- a framed portrait of Massoud Barzani, leader of the Iraqi Kurds. Every household has one.
This snapshot is my most prized possession from six months of living in semi-rural Iraq. That was me in the scarf, the day when my village family flipped on a Kurdish radio station, and we kicked up our heels and danced. Widows aren’t supposed to kid around like that. But nobody else was there that day except Ara’s daughter, Bezma, who took the photo, and she was giddy too, in the early flushes of love. With my camera, which she was good at using by then, she clicked while her mother twirled a scarf the way the men do when they lead the local dances, and the two of us tripped around with our little fingers linked and shoulders shrugging Kurdish-style in time to the music. How daring, how silly! The world was aligned perfectly that day; Allah had indeed been merciful and compassionate, as the prayer goes. For once, all three of us were free of care.
It was a good thing we took that picture. Because before I could even print and frame a copy for Ara, everything had changed. Everything. And without the photo for proof, nobody could have convinced the three of us that that brief shining moment had ever existed. Before hope and safety unraveled. Before the three of us found ourselves utterly bereft, each in her own way, surrounded by danger and scarcity and death — struggling beneath a sense of futility circling like a vulture above her. The utter futility of a world run by men.
One: A Circuitous Route to the Village
It’s New Years Day, 2010.
High on a hill, overlooking the plains of Iraqi Kurdistan, lurks a massive concrete school painted muddy tangerine. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire and interrupted with prison-type guard towers encircles the rocky perimeter. Below, I can make out lights coming on through the chilly dusk in the faraway city. It’s all so forbidding. The harshness of bare winter earth, the silence of the empty edifice behind me, the red rear lights of the taxi wending its way back down to the main road, leave me achingly alone.
I'm running on fumes of faith here -- trusting that someone will appear with keys to the promised apartment. Trusting that I'll somehow be able to sleep, and that someone will show me where to get food. Trusting that I will, improbably, learn to survive in this desolate place. The fact that the promised representative failed to meet me at the airport, though, does not bode well.
The school advertised this job as an opportunity to help rebuild a war-torn nation, now that the Kurds are enjoying relative security and autonomy within Iraq, and oil revenues have prompted an economic boom. I’d be happy with something much more modest, like rebuilding my own life, plus educating a few dozen young people at the same time. A long teaching career has made me realistic about how little a person can accomplish in a mere six months. And I know that often it takes more than a clean slate to set your finances and self-esteem aright. Even so, this leap represents boundless optimism, like the Kurds themselves are supposed to be finally feeling. I've left so much behind; they have buried so much.
My hopes ice over as I search that first night for someone, anyone, to welcome me and let me in. How could this place, with its slabs of modernistic symmetry and its machine guns and bomb-detection mirrors at the gate, be something nurturing like a school? It’s too male, too impregnable. Too much like a citadel prepared for siege.
Like the thunk of a distant mortar thudding into earth, an image solidifies in my mind, reinforced by the unease of this first windy evening. The sign outside calls this the International Academy of Kurdistan. Before getting here, I’d envisioned it as an intellectual incubator, where young people could be molded with Western values — like democracy — for a more promising future. But now that I’m here, I can see that my new home is more like a military barracks, a bastion of something as yet unclear.
The Fortress.
Sleep eludes me. So I bundle up in my wool coat, and shiver on the sandy patio outside my sliding glass door, awaiting the dawn with trepidation. Last night had not been reassuring. A Bangladeshi janitor had eventually appeared to open the apartment, carry in my bags, show me how to turn on the heat, open the mini-fridge to reveal bread and cheese, and deliver a note reminding me to appear in the principal’s office first thing in the morning. Typical expat teacher stuff, but not exactly personable. The Fortress expects its employees to be tough, that’s clear. And pretty darned self-sufficient from the get-go. That’s clear too.
Still, there are homey touches. The apartment is well-appointed, with a comfy sitting room separate from the bedroom, and a galley kitchen with a microwave. The dishes, pots and pans must have been looted by other teachers, but I’m confident that new ones will appear. The Internet works, amazingly enough. They’ve even put a spotted shag carpet under the glass coffee table, relieving the starkness of the terrazzo floor.
But the odd thing is that everything, from the curtains and comforter to the sofa and carpet, is orange. Not a soft, sunsetty orange, but the jarring color of highway danger cones. A sulfur street lamp, also orangey, stays on all night right outside the apartment, bathing everything in an other-worldly glow. I blame it, and the jet lag, for keeping me awake.
Then there’s the morgue-like silence of the hallways. Last night I sat out there on the corridor floor for a long time, hoping a human being would emerge. Names taped to doors told me that people live here. My door says “Rabinowitz.” But nobody appeared, and I gave up. Later, I heard the echo of a few doors closing, but no voices — which made me even more lonesome than before. I kept remembering the time I had to put down our German Shepherd, and my son Andy slept in the dog crate all night before it lost the smell of his fur. That kind of lonesome.
Now after a restless night, I’m out on the patio, and it’s better; craggy hills beyond the school fence keep me company. They’ve witnessed so much over the millennia — everything from the birth of human civilization to Saddam Hussein with his land mines. I’m out here because I want to know all this, not from books or lectures but in the pores of my skin. Also, there’s my (perhaps naive) conviction that simple women in less-developed countries retain a wisdom that we in the busy West have lost. Being a well-meaning and sympathetic person, I will miraculously discover this wisdom, to the wonder of the rest of the world.
People have tried to disabuse me of this idea. One Persian friend was horrified I was coming here. “There’s nothing in Kurdistan,” he warned. “No beautiful mosques. No great literature. Just a bunch of stubborn people we call mules. You’ll be miserable.”
&n
I hadn’t expected this heaviness from the hills, though. A sharpness in the air rasps against the lungs, which I take as a warning to be on guard. Against the greying sky, the treeless hills march; at first glance they appear to be rows of bald ogre heads. Fellows like Gilgamesh, the mythic Akkadian hero-king, came from here. Patriarchs like Abraham. This is where Alexander triumphed over Darius. A Who’s Who of Ancients chiseled themselves into the gritty embrace of history on this very plain. It’s hard to believe it, however, until I try to soak up something from the ambiance, ready for instant reverence, and instead inhale a grittiness of unease. An abrasion, perhaps, from countless centuries of war. An expansiveness that leaves me feeling like the merest dust mote settling inevitably to earth, but in an ominous rather than inclusive kind of way.
I shiver. I’m reading way too much into all this. I’m merely a teacher near the end of her career who grabbed an opportunity to see a new part of the world. And to conveniently leave some inner baggage behind.
I watch the amber rose of dawn creep over the dreary hills, trusting that its light will make The Fortress more bearable.
I dress carefully for my meeting with the principal in a floor-length black skirt left over from my years teaching in Saudi Arabia, and a droopy long-sleeved sweater. I’ve tied a dark scarf around my neck, for whipping over my head in case a male takes offense. The look is meant to be conservative and respective of Muslims sensitivities, but feels downright dowdy. To my surprise, however, my new boss greets me with uncovered graying hair, wearing a snug red pantsuit. She’s stubby and stout, probably about sixty, and her clipped British accent has Arabic overtones, throaty in a way I’ve always found appealing. Her secretary has instructed me to call her “Madame”.
“Miss Turner — I trust you found the apartment to your satisfaction?” Madame shakes my hand and steps up to a massive leather chair, elevated on a dais that puts her a head above me. I do my friendly professional smile; this woman wields immense power over my future here, and I need her to both like and respect me. But I also genuinely want to like and respect her in return, so we can be allies. Perhaps even friends. I could use a few of those.
“It’s great. Better than I’d expected.” Which is the truth, if we’re talking about the facilities themselves. I’ll leave out the panic at the airport and the despair in the corridor, so as not to seem whiney.
Madame adjusts herself behind the vast mahogany desk. “Excellent!” It comes out more like “egg-cellant”. “I spent 20 years in London, and it totally spoiled me. I would never put up with substandard living conditions, or expect my teachers to.” The “London” is drawn out, a little haughtily, as if London is somehow superior to the United States. But this is probably my imagination. I’ve decided to become less hyper-sensitive about things upon moving here.
She gets down to business right away. “You’ll find that we’re organized differently at the Academy than what you’re probably used to. We’re owned by an Egyptian company, part of a chain of elite schools around the world. We’re designed for the children of diplomats, and adhere to a strict schedule that is common across all of our schools. That way a student can move from one country to another without missing a single lesson. A brilliant concept, you’ll agree?”
I agree. Jet lag, with its attendant dizziness and mental numbness, is inconveniently sabotaging me. It’s getting hard to concentrate, and I’m impatient to meet my students. She must sense this, because she gives me a big-sisterly nod of encouragement.
“You’ll be paid in Iraqi dinars at the end of every month. In cash. The Academy representative hands out envelopes in person. Take good care of it, because we’ve had some problems with theft. Let’s see, what else? No open-toe shoes or flip-flops to class. But I shouldn’t have to explain to someone like you.”
My mind is wandering alarmingly — a pity, because she’s just getting started. “Now let me explain some of the Academy’s best practices. Please don’t get offended. Truthfully, I did at first myself, because naturally I had my own ways of doing things. Any experienced teacher would. Nevertheless. You’re expected to follow our regimen to the letter. This means that you will write your objectives and tactics on the board for each lesson, and not deviate one iota. You will not permit the children to interrupt. You will walk the aisles continuously to ensure that they stay on task. You will ask for questions only at the end of each class session.”
I blink in an effort to look awake, but am overwhelmed by all the things to remember. I should be writing them down. Suddenly, the polyester of Madame’s pantsuit snags my attention; I’ll bet the thing came from the London equivalent of K-Mart. It’s a deplorable thought, but perks me up with a shot of empathy. I can now see that she’s not some pampered society wife who dabbles at teaching in her spare time, but rather is a devoted educator, like me, who puts learning above fashion and other forms of conspicuous consumption. It’s like discovering that a stranger comes from your hometown, and can therefore be forgiven the coffee stain on their shirt. I release the stranglehold I’ve had on the chair’s armrests just a bit.
Now she chatters about her popularity with the Academy’s owners in Cairo. Her lifelong dedication to students. Her time-tested discipline techniques. She gestures at the wall behind her, covered with gold-framed advanced degrees and diplomas, and awards from being principal at the Light of Christ School for Girls in the U.K.
“Light of Christ?” I wake up in surprise. “Your name sounded Muslim.”
“Oh, it is,” she assures me, with obvious pride. “I’m Egyptian. But I’m also a modern woman. In fact, I haven’t covered since I moved to the U.K. I believe that tolerance is a virtue. Which is why my husband and I have even entertained Christians sometimes. And Jews.” She pats her curled and sprayed hair, thinning badly on top, and I sense a breach in the bravado, hinting at the possibility of connection between us.
As if reading my mind, she leans across the desk and reaches for my hand. She is much too short, and the desk is much too wide, to make this happen. “Actually, dear, I’ve looked forward to you coming ever since they told me about you. We’re both, how shall we say, of a certain age? We both have grown children, correct? We both…” She can’t think of anything else.
I meet her hand halfway across the desk. Her manicured nails match the pantsuit; on cars, I’ve heard the color called “traffic cop red”. My own hand, bare of either polish or rings, looks naked in comparison. “Of course. We have a great deal in common.”
“Egg-cellent. Now, let's get your textbooks and the syllabus your predecessor left behind. Or rather, the rubbish that Rabinowitz called a syllabus. Then I’ll take you to meet your class. The children! Ah, such adorable children!” She trills her “r”s. “They will absolutely capture your heart. And don’t worry. We won’t start observing until you’ve settled in for at least several days.”
Observing? Several days? But she’s already parading to the door, pausing so I can gather my purse and sweater. “Do come along, dear. Chop chop. The bell will be ringing any minute now.”
I try not to flinch at the “dear”, coming so quickly as it did after the mention of being observed. I’m the kind of teacher who gets assigned interns, not the type who is monitored for quality control. Back home I have as many awards and degrees as she does. Doesn’t she know that?
But this is no time for testiness. I’m all set for a personal renaissance, a self-induced epiphany, which will no doubt involve some ruffles to my ego. I’d better learn right now to take them in stride.
Then a thunderbolt idea hits me, and I come to an abrupt halt behind Madame.
