Final Winter

Aliyah Fulenz was sixteen years old and knew that she was lovely and educated and lucky. Yet with all these good things, she still felt a terrible guilt over keeping a secret from her papa and mama, especially now, with another war being waged in the air above her home in Baghdad.

This was the second war she had lived through, but she’d been just a little girl during the first one. All she recalled from that war were the nights spent in the basement of their home, cuddled up with papa and mama, listening to the ghastly shriek of air-raid sirens and the far-off explosions from the enemy bombs and missiles. She had been too young to know who was fighting or why, and her most vivid memories were just the faces of papa and mama looking up with fear at the ceiling, like they were waiting for some warhead to burst through and kill them all. Even with the loud noises and the way her mama held her close and tight, she hadn’t been that scared. It had been like an adventure, an adventure like that of some princess she had read about in her picture books, and if mama and papa were there, how scared could she be?

Plenty scared, she would learn later, plenty scared indeed.

Now she was sixteen, and a war had come back, and she was older and wiser and oh, so much lovelier, and the fear that came each night with the wail of the sirens and the thudding noises of the bombs was now outweighed by guilt, for she had never kept secrets from her papa and mama, and the secret she had now was one that she wasn’t sure she could keep.

For Aliyah was in love.

His name was Hassan, and he was a nineteen-year-old militiaman who had volunteered as an air-raid warden for their neighborhood, and he was tall and dark and had brown eyes and a wide grin and a mustache that tickled her whenever he kissed her, for he had kissed her exactly twice, and she sometimes daydreamed, wondering what the third kiss would be like. And on this winter evening, mama had noticed her absent-mindedness, scolding her for not drying the supper dishes properly. Not complaining, like the good daughter she was, Aliyah had rewashed and redried each plate and fork and spoon, washing each item mechanically, trying to remember that firm touch of Hassan, the softness of his lips, and the way his sweetness stayed on her lips, minutes later after each kiss.

She closed the cabinet doors, went out to the main room of their house, where papa and mama were resting, sitting on a couch, the television on but the sound off. On the screen a man in a western suit was sitting behind a desk, reading what passed for news these days. She ached for a moment, looking at her parents, knowing she was lucky indeed to have such a man and a woman to raise her. Papa was a doctor and worked in the Ministry of Health, in an office concerned with pediatrics, and he would bring home piles of papers and folders in an old, scuffed leather briefcase. Lately he had been grumbling and examining these papers, late into the night, trying to work with French and German pharmaceutical companies, trying to find some way of importing medicines for the city’s hospitals during the war.

Mama taught French at Baghdad University and had promised Aliyah that this summer, once the war was finally -over, the two of them would fly to Paris and mama would be her own personal tour guide to that magnificent and civilized city. Paris! Aliyah had gotten books from her school library that showed the monuments and museums and the Eiffel Tower, and mama had laughed, gently brushing Aliyah’s hair one night, saying, ‘Paris is a beautiful city, my daughter, but remember this. Your own Baghdad was a center of culture and civilization, for the entire known world, when Paris was nothing more than mud and wattle huts, with peasants who still prayed to the gods of thunder and lightning. Never forget your heritage, Aliyha, never.’

Now she looked at them both, sitting there, her father with the papers in his lap, mama knitting a pair of gloves for her father, who suffered so much in the cold of winter. Mama looked up at her. ‘Are the dishes now done properly, Aliyah?’

‘Yes, they are,’ she said, her chest tightening with the ache of what she was trying to do.

‘Very good,’ her mother said.

Aliyah remained standing. Her mother returned to her knitting and looked up again. ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘I…I’m going for a walk. Is that all right?’

Her father looked up. ‘Now? At dusk? It’s not safe!’

‘Only to the end of the block! Papa, I promise I will be careful!’

He shook his head. ‘Suppose the bombing starts up? Eh? What then?’

‘When the sirens sound, I will run right home.’

Her mother stopped her knitting. ‘No, you will not run home. You will run to the shelter, that’s where you will run.’

Father grumbled and said, ‘I forbid it, wife. It’s too dangerous to go out. Just one bomb, one missile…’