Between Two Worlds Read Online Free PDF Page A

it was my turn to practice ablution, I took my time as I rinsed each hand, my face, the top of my hair, each ear, and each foot as the teacher taught us. It was a hot day, and the water felt not only cooling, but spiritual. I was enjoying that moment until Mohammed belittled me again, this time in front of everyone.
    “This isn’t bathing, Zainab,” he said. “This is ablution! Don’t you know the difference?”
    Afterward, when we went into the gymnasium where we were going to practice praying, I looked around and saw that some kids were holding their hands at their sides like me and others were holding their hands over their stomachs like Mohammed, and I remember feeling newly drawn to those who prayed like me, if only because I had been judged inferior by someone who prayed like Mohammed.
    I asked my mother about this when I got home, and she gave me the standard schoolteacher answer: “In Iraq, we have people who are Shia and people who are Sunni, but we’re all the same, we’re all Muslims.” That was the first time I can remember thinking my mother wasn’t exactly telling me the truth. I knew there was a difference. I had seen it in the sneer on Mohammed’s face. I thought about Mohammed’s behavior before I went to sleep that night and came to the conclusion he had been rude to me, a major transgression in Arab culture, and I privately decided to penalize him by not liking him anymore. It would be years before I dared to let myself have a crush on another boy. Only later when I was living in America did I come across an expression that described exactly how he made me feel. He made me feel like I had cooties . If I had to come up with a way to describe a child’s first premonition of danger, that would be it: she would feel as if she had cooties, and she would fight the instinct to hide.
    On July 22, 1979—Saddam Hussein made sure his cameramen were there to record the date—my mother was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the screen of our little black-and-white TV. I stood at her side and watched over her shoulder. A tall man in a suit with a large black mustache, our new President Saddam Hussein was standing on the stage of a large auditorium filled with men I would later understand were ruling Baath Party members and government officials. Looking very stern and sad, as if one of his children had disappointed him by doing something very bad, he announced that he had come upon “disloyal” people in the government. He brought out onstage a stiff-looking official who confessed to taking part in a plot to overthrow him. He began announcing his “co-conspirators,” and as he called out their names, armed guards went into the audience, found them, grabbed them by the elbows, and walked them out the door. I remember the faces of only two men of the hundreds who were present in that hall. Once was a man who was screaming his innocence as he struggled with guards as they took him away. The other was the man I later came to know as Amo, who watched it all onstage with a paternal expression on his face. He was smoking a cigar.
    After the president had the last of these “traitors” taken into custody (effectively eliminating his principal political opponents) he praised everyone left in the hall for their loyalty. The men shifted uncomfortably in their seats. I could see how scared many of them looked. Then, group by small group, they stood to applaud him. Whether they approved of his actions or were just terrified of being next, they gave a standing ovation to the man who was about to execute friends and colleagues who had been sitting next to them just minutes before.
    The event was broadcast and rebroadcast around the world. Saddam Hussein never tried to hide what he did that day. He wanted those men and others like them to be afraid. I have seen the tape since then, so it is hard for me to distinguish what I saw then from what I have factored in as an adult. I know I didn’t fully grasp as a