So I’m standing in a recording studio, microphone in hand, singing. I’m singing and I can see a city street scene tumbling out before my eyes. I get to a certain point in the song and I flub it – make a mistake. I hear the recording engineer say in my headphones – “OK. Let’s call it a night.” But I don’t stop singing. I answer the engineer in song. He’s confused. I keep singing, trying to get it right. I try to stop but my throat clenches up like I’m going to cry. My eyes begin to burn with tears. I have something to say, something I need to say, something I need to say that makes me want to weep. But I can’t say it.
And then I do.
“God gave me this talent. So I have to sing.”
So the morning after I had this dream I went to a wedding. A Sabean Mandaean wedding at this run-down pool (everything is run down in this chaotic, dirty city) on the outskirts of Jaramana. As Rana and I arrived, the two brides were being dunked by the shaik in a raised, tile kiddie pool. Women were ululating and the guys were clapping and jostling to get a good angle for their cell phone cameras. Water spashed and the sun was actually hot for the first time this week. An old woman, head to toe in black, looked at me, fumbing to get my long lens attached to my camera and smiled.
“Welcome.”
Later, after interviewing three shaiks, an assitant shaik and a gravelly voiced man from Australia, we went to Kamal’s apartment. After sweet tea and lots of political talk, he told me about being kidnapped, burned with hot coals (the scars on his legs are pink), ransomed, his wife being raped in her own home(she’s sitting across from me on a couch) and the nephew he raised as a son being killed in his goldsmiths shop in Baghdad (the killers asked to see his ID to make sure he was the right guy before they murdered him). Although he knows he can never go back, Kamal wants nothing more than for Iraq to survive.
“I love my country,” he says. When his cell phone rings, it plays the Iraqi national anthem. Tears roll down Rana’s cheeks.
Later when I’m walking back to my flat in Bab Touma, filthy stray cats darting out from under the cars parked close to the walls of the narrow street, all I want is a hamburger. I’d heard or someone had told me about this moment when you’re an American and you’re traveling abroad and at some point you just want a hamburger. I wanted that hamburger. And I just wanted to be home.
