Before I learned about war, loss, or cruelty, I learned about joy from a boy named Ahmed. My great aunt’s neighbor couldn’t speak yet, but I enjoyed spending time with him. He was quiet, and I often found myself wanting time away from the louder children. He enjoyed playing with water – on the rare occasion it was available – in his family’s concrete garden. The trickle of water from the hose pipe made him laugh and screech, his eyes widening with delight as the water flattened the curls of his hair.
He’d crawl up to the edge of the concrete garden where it gave way to the street. His mother always told him to come back, and one of his older siblings would return him under the safety of the canopy.
She sold vegetables from a stall outside their home to feed her eight children. She’d joke with the neighbors while weighing tomatoes, and chat for what felt like hours to my great aunt, pausing only to shout after Ahmed when he wandered too far. Her husband had died long before I met her; one of the countless ghosts from the Iran-Iraq war. After the bombs stopped falling, the sanctions began. The war left bodies; the sanctions left emptiness.
Their chaotic household contained a warmth I’d later identify as a usual feature of more deprived areas, regardless of country or culture. The comings and goings of older siblings, cousins, friends, and others, made it seem a happy place to be, as far as I could tell at six years old.
I’d often ask my mother why Ahmed didn’t speak, and she would explain that he was late to talking, like some other kids. I’d then ask why he couldn’t walk yet, insisting that only babies crawled. She’d patiently explain that this, too, could be delayed in some children. I wasn’t convinced. But I got to play with him now and then, and that’s what mattered most.
We spent a great deal of time at my great-aunt's place, near my maternal grandmother's house, where we also spent a lot of time. Love, sacrifice, and care were abundant, despite our hunger.
I grew up in Al-Rusafa, on the east side of the Tigris River, which splits Baghdad in two, as it weaves its way south to meet its sibling, the Euphrates. My father would often take me swimming on its banks. I’d watch him and his friends float in the deeper waters, as I could not swim.
I didn’t understand much about bombs or borders then. Only that the Iranians bombed us, and then the Americans, and then the latter made sure we stayed hungry and broken. We weren’t starving from neglect. Someone, somewhere, had chosen this for us. In fact, I was lucky; my father had returned from the wars that had taken so many others. He was a reluctant conscript like most young Iraqi males of his generation.
That autumn of 1993, I was to start school at the grand age of six—my first experience of formal education. Nursery had been lost to bombing and sanctions. I’d heard that in school, you were to learn how to read and write. I dreamt of all the questions I could ask my teacher and all the answers she might give me.
The one downside was that I’d have to spend more time at our rented flat and couldn’t see my friend Ahmed as often. I’d recently learnt––by using Google Maps––that he was eleven minutes away by car. But it felt a world away then, especially since there was no car.
My mother reminded me that I could spend more time with my cousins, and that seemed a fair trade.
What I really wanted, though, was to taste chocolate. And a banana. I’d heard they were sweet. In sanctions-era Iraq, bananas had become a signifier of wealth. If you were a child who had tasted a banana, you likely came from a well-off family—perhaps the child of a ranking official or army general.
I’d once been led by my older cousin on a wild goose chase in search of chocolate. We walked and ran, past busy shops, through throngs of people, until my little legs hurt. The search yielded nothing but disappointment, sweat, and tears. As an adult, I realize that my parents must have recruited my cousin to help stop my incessant requests for something unavailable to us.
I wanted to share some with Ahmed if I ever got my hands on it. I imagined his shriek of joy, that bubbling sound he made when the water flattened his curls.
I wouldn’t get to taste bananas or chocolate until we later moved to Scotland. They tasted as sweet as I had imagined. Maybe sweeter.
On the first day of school, I watched a teacher slap a hysterical child into silence. Mum handed me over, and that was that. From day two, I walked to school and back in the searing heat of Baghdad. The classroom had no glass in the windows, and the dust swept in freely.
There were not enough benches for the sixty children in my class. A few had been cobbled together from scrap wood. One day my cousin arrived early and found an empty bench, and as he sat, he cried out as an exposed nail plunged into his flesh, blood seeping into the wood. Maybe the floor wasn’t so bad after all.
My favorite time on the hotter school days was when the jug of water would come around in the afternoon. An oasis, a communion. Sixty children. One glass. One sip each. Bliss.
One time, with diarrhea and no toilet, I shit myself in class. Calling home wasn’t an option for the school, since the phone lines still lay in pieces from the bombings. The clean-up process when I got home must have been something.
I often wondered what Ahmed’s school would look like. Would he cry like I did? Would he fight for his sip of water? Would he have a desk to sit on?
Thursdays were flag-raising day. We’d all line up in the school courtyard first thing in the morning. Then the pupil of the week would say a few words about national pride and raise the flag. Someone would fire an AK-47 into the sky, and the Iraqi national anthem would be sung with gusto. I didn’t know why we had to do it.
When I asked my parents why Saddam was so important, they quickly changed the subject and told me not to speak to anyone else about the matter. So I didn’t. But Saddam’s wooden-framed photo in the school's hallways always seemed pristine to me.
By the time the holidays came round, I was ready for them. The excitement of spending extended periods at my great-aunt's house was unparalleled. There I could play with Ahmed again.
I don’t remember the last time I saw Ahmed before we moved to Scotland in late 1994. But it was likely the summer of that year. We’d play in their garden the way we always did. He still wasn’t speaking, but we managed to communicate. He expressed joy in shrieks and hums, frustration in low growls and tears.
The water still stuttered slowly, with Ahmed tilting the hose awkwardly, trying to get the water to land on his head. When he managed, or when I helped, he’d close his eyes and squeal, soaking, happy. Sometimes he turned the hose on me, and we both giggled.
One day, there was a commotion outside. Loads of voices, panicked, raised. Some I recognized, while others sounded strange to my ears.
Ahmed was nowhere to be found.
We searched. The neighborhood came together for it. A hive of communal support. But come nightfall, the search was called off. Electricity was scarce in Baghdad, and without light, there was little to be done. There were no police with flashlights, no police dogs, and no helicopters. Better to continue the search the next day.
Um Hussein’s wail pierced the street, the haunting cry of a mother with nothing left to give. She tore her clothes and pulled at her hair in the middle of the street, as her family tried to calm her.
Ahmed had been found after all. His tiny, lifeless, bloated body, fished from the drain outside their home. He had crawled into it unnoticed and drowned.
There was no manhole cover. Only an open drain where a garden should have been, and a mother’s scream where a child’s laughter had once echoed.
