Mothballs Read Online Free PDF Page B

“God Almighty, God damn you and damn the bloody day you were born!”
    I hid the cakes of soap in the big buckets, dunked the bowls into the hot water and poured it over their heads, burning their scalps and skin. I pissed in the great tank. I clamped some of the children between my legs; I kept this one away from that one and began to massage their heads with the pumice stone until they were bloody. Before the huge quantities of clean, hot water I observed my first innocence and united with it, drew on it with a pencil and confessed: as if I were saved from the flood today.
    My resistance ripened on the oil fire and the wood logs, blazing and transforming into a creature I have just come to know; Huda, covered with sin, affliction, and ruin, was dragged like an animal to complete the first blessing; and after I am left for a short while between the waters; the offspring of Iraqi women reach the perfection of their beauty.
    Umm Suturi emptied the bowls of hot water over my head, and soap went from hand to hand among my aunts. They rubbed and twisted my braids. I died among these women’s fingers; my eyes were blinded by the soap lather. Aunt Najiya clutched my thigh as if she were holding a chicken leg. My aunt sighed and leaned over her knee, her breasts putting me into a stupor. The soap, steam, and all that noise; I was an egg thrown on to the ocean. I was moved from one lap to another and I see.
    There, crying, wailing, and kicking are useless. After a round of washing, you were left alone and free. They stuck their tongues in your ear and sucked out the water left there. They braided your hair into ponytails, and you watched them all. The steam at the end got into your eyes, ears, and mouths.
    Laugh and look well: the hair on the limbs is delicate, fine, coarse, long, short, plucked out. Then all these limbs descended at once and removed their underclothes. You gaped at that continent of femininity. The black bag sewn with big stitches in white thread first appeared on their backs. Every woman turned her back to her neighbour, and every one who let down more coils of dirt than the other proved her strength and youth.
    You turned around with them when they stood. Their height blocked the walls, which were spattered with waterdrops. Sweat stimulated the appetite to drink water and eat fruit. The talk was of neighbours, children, and husbands. Rachel, the Jewess, whose second son was aborted at the hand of Rasmiya – the “needle lady”, the midwife. There were no great scandals in our street, nor any great abominations in our houses. The men intensified their glands in obedience to women, and the women waited for their husbands on the benches, on the iron beds, on the ground, on high roofs, half asleep, half dead, half … half.
    Your aunt hurried behind you. She wanted you to stand in front of her:
    â€œI swear to God I’ll kill you, may God take you and give me a break!”
    Aunt Najiya answered her: “Come here – I’ll finish washing you.”
    I slowed down, and stood among them. All the vapours and odours made me dizzy. Aunt Najiya, standing near me, released a fart. I raised my head toward her and laughed loudly. Suddenly she struck me on the face with the bag:
    â€œLaugh, you impudent thing. Just wait, I’ll teach you.”
    She lifted me up as if I were as light as a punctured ball. I was squeezed by her arms; she began scrubbing my forearm, panting, “Why do you make me smack you? Aren’t you afraid of anyone? God Almighty. Don’t you get tired?” She slid down to my belly and thigh. “She’s weak, like her mother, like she’s eating on credit.”
    She curled me up between her thighs. Her hair was loose, long, and wet, sparse and fine. She did not see very well; her eyelashes had fallen out, and her eyelids were swollen.
    You gave in and slept. Your skin was now vacant, emptied of its secrets; filth too was a secret. Thus far