Majda found joy in the interlacing of the dried grasses, her fingers working quickly. She never knew when she began to work the pile of dry and sage-colored reeds exactly what form they would take. Finally there emerged a variety of baskets, each unique in its beauty and utility. She laced them together with hemp cording and cushioned her forehead with a fold of cloth to support them. Then, the bundle of baskets on her back bigger than she herself, she went into the streets of Basra.
Wearing the white head scarf, the blue denim shift and the leather sandals that were like a uniform for her, she sat out through her neighborhood near the waterfront, visiting one shop then another. She exchanged her baskets for pomegranates, first testing their heft and the toughness of their scarlet and green rinds. In the shops and open-air markets, she swapped baskets for flat bread that could be staked like pancakes and tied together with string, for small and coarse-skinned oranges, for brown and sticky dried dates.
Her biggest challenge was within the butcher shop where Mustaffa, a lean man with narrow and murderous eyes and a melon of a belly hanging low beneath a red-streaked apron hacked away with an immense knife at the morose carcass of a sheep. Behind him a chicken and a duck, naked, and pale, dripping pink from their yellow bills, hung from a hook by their bound legs. He frowned slightly to remind Majda that he was not a man to be taken lightly and then greeted her with a courteous formality, "Ahlan wasahlan, Majda,"
"Ahlan—hi—Mustaffa. Today, kind sir, may be the most glorious day of your life. I have the finest baskets I've ever woven. I will trade the remaining six for a modest amount of that stringy mutton there, and you can resell them at a great profit."
Mustaffa tilted his head, eyes narrowed even more. "Ah, Majda, stringy mutton? This is the finest, the most tender lamb that ever graced my shop. It was grown by shepherds who love sheep even as they love their own children." He hacked again at the beloved sheep.
Majda, her eyes never leaving the sheep's carcass, replied, "With that degree of affection, they probably held onto it until it was quite elderly before the slaughter." She sighed, "But, all six baskets for one kilo."
Mustaffa drew his head back. "One kilo? Would you have my family starve? Perhaps one fourth. Not a smidgen more."
"Mustaffa, how right your are. I could not take an entire kilo and thus deny your family. Yet you are known throughout Basra as a man of probity, of mercy, of wisdom and charity. Perhaps I could sacrifice these baskets for three fourths of a kilo because of your devotion and civic virtue. But recall, please, that I too, have a family. My mother-in-law, Mushirah, poor woman, is a widow, aged and blind. I am myself, by the will of Allah, also a widow whose husband died in the defense of the fatherland. And there is my infant daughter, Bashira. I know that you, a man of virtue and devotion, would not have old women, widows and orphans starve."
When Majda left with a half kilo of lamb, Mustaffa, wiping his hands on his apron, smiled in his fearsome way, for he'd seldom perceived a woman of such true virtue and understanding.
Majda, though reminding herself that pride was a sin, smiled also. Hadi, her late husband, she knew, would be proud of her.
She had met Hadi while they were students at Basra University. She was slender, petite, her long dark hair showing auburn highlights. He had been handsome, deliberate, steady. They couldn't stay away from each other. Though she had loved her studies in the year she was there, once Hadi broached the subject, they had married quickly and without hesitation. The aging mullah who performed the ceremony seemed to drone on forever. One missed period had been followed by a second. Hadi and her pregnancy, Majda had known, were God's great gifts. Then the letter had come. Hadi was summoned to military service. Made a sergeant because of his engineering studies, he had been stationed at an air defense radar station to the west. One hundred and fourteen days after his departure, he was struck by shrapnel from an aerial bomb and so was "martyred" as the second letter had said. The pension was not much to begin with, and of less value as time passed.
After the funeral, Majda had lain on her low cot for two weeks, her face turned toward the wall, unable to find the will to go on. Finally Mushirah had come to her, the infant Bashira in her arms. "Majda," she said, her voice chronically hoarse, sad yet quite firm. "Hadi was your husband, but he was also my only son. My grief, too, is without measure. Yet after a certain point, grief is self-indulgence. Arise, Majda, and take your child."
Majda had remained motionless, recalling in that moment how she had once despised the old woman. She had been, after all, a usurper, an unwanted and needless furnishing in the house that should have been Majda's alone. She had come as part of the package when she and Hadi married. And she knew, too, that at least at first, Mushirah had viewed her as an ingénue who had, by whatever questionable and indecent wiles, stolen her son from her.
Like two cats suddenly thrust into the same house, though, they had gradually accommodated to each other's presence. And without Majda realizing it, as imperceptibly as the sculpting of rock by the waters, her attitude toward the old woman had changed. She had come to love the sometimes crotchety and bossy Mushirah, the old woman who became her mainstay as surely as her Bashira was her hope. Mushirah had come to refer to Majda with affection as "my daughter."
That day two weeks after her husband's funeral, Majda had stirred restlessly on the cot of her mourning. Then, with Bashira reaching toward her, she had slowly sat up, slid her feet into her sandals and took the child in her arms and arose.
The war began after midnight. Basra, ancient and quiet, was slumbering one minute, then one fiery detonation after another echoed through the night as the Tomahawk cruise missiles from ships in the Persian Gulf landed without warning in the city center. With each flash-banging roar entire buildings and all within were destroyed. Majda, her amber eyes widened by her terror, jerked to wakefulness with a sense of dread. She reached first for her daughter who slept there with her. Bashira was screaming. Sitting up, Majda brushed a fall of her long dark hair from her face, smoothed the denim shift she had slept in and felt for her sandals with her feet. Holding the quivering child close, Majda winced, her exhalations squealing as the bombardment continued.
In the front room where her mother-in-law slept on a dilapidated couch, Majda heard the tinny sound of urine striking the bottom of the pail that was Mushirah's chamber pot. She stood and stepped carefully through the darkness there. Stepping past the old woman, she peered through the front window, a hole in the wall covered by plastic sheeting tacked to the frame.
Mushirah stirred behind her. Sturdy and short, she soon joined her at the window, her hands whispering across the wall as she felt her way along. Majda reached over and took her hand to draw her near. Another explosion rolled over, closer now, the earth trembling, the flash of the ordinance lighting the street. Chunks of masonry clunked to the floor. A rain of grit and gravel rattled down. A crack wide enough for Majda to see starlight through split the ceiling with a noise like the tearing of a sheet. Inexplicably the bare 40-watt bulb in its ceiling fixture came on. Mushirah gathered her loose black dress to her bosom as if to warm herself. "We must leave quickly or we'll be crushed." Her voice was low and urgent, and her opaque corneas reflected a milky-green light from the overhead bulb. Bashira was wailing again.
Majda, holding the old lady's hand, listened as Mushirah continued, her voice low. "If we walk northward for 70 kilometers, there's the village of my birth, Al Gineyna—The Garden—at the junction of the great rivers. As I've told you, some think it is the place told of in The Book where Adam and his wife Eve lived. Because of the springs and creeks and the rivers, there are groves of trees, dates, pomegranates, fields of wheat. The villagers have goats and sheep, and the children are happy and well fed. It is a place so fine that sometimes I even see it in my dreams." Majda, her voice resigned, heart still beating fast, eyed the opening in the ceiling the blast had caused and said, "Yes, we must go."
On the table in the kitchen, they stacked some dates wrapped in waxed paper, a cold porridge of lentils in a plastic cup, flat bread stacked and tied together. She added three pomegranates and a knife from the kitchen to cut their tough rinds, and two plastic jugs of water. They were rolled into a blanket for Mushirah, and bundled into a square of cloth for Majda. Finally Majda, Bashira in one arm, grabbed the framed picture of her husband Hadi, a splash of color no bigger than her hand from the wall. She tucked it into her bundle, slung it over her shoulder, and they stepped into the street.
The air of that early morning was permeated by the acrid smell of nameless burning substances. Through the haze of smoke that streaked the air, gray tinted with the gold of crushed oranges colored the eastern horizon. They made their way toward the legendary Shatt Al-Arab, the port from which Sinbad the Sailor had sailed, where ships had come with treasures to sell or swap for four thousand years and more. They crossed the footbridges, the usual stench arising from the garbage and the occasional bloated animal carcass in the waterways that flowed into the bay.
Although the water was filthy, during happier days children splashed in the canals and the adjacent tidal pools, their cries and laughter filling the air as older children sold cigarettes and soft drinks nearby. Beside the bay, one hundred and one statues of grim soldiers stood, each with a hand aloft and an accusing finger pointing towards Iran some few kilometers to the east. On normal days, old men laughed and bickered over dominoes at the base of the statues. The great hulk of an oil tanker, its flat deck bristling with standpipes and fittings, sat alongside the quay at one of the city's oil refineries. Its lights were darkened.
A scattering of others, burdened by their belongings joined Majda's entourage as they fled the city. They turned finally onto the highway that led northward to the silt-darkened and foam streaked confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. Majda and Mushirah paused on a high spot in the road and looked back. The city of was now scrubbed alight by the morning sun. The land sloped down to the waterfront. Another explosion erupted in the center of Basra. Here and there smoke bloomed into the air above the flames.
This was the focal point of the region where writing first occurred, the wellspring of myth and legend and poetry. It was the place where the concept of romantic love sprang forth, the land of the first written and codified law, the place of the beginnings of philosophy and of three great religions. To Majda, though, it was simply home. It was the place she belonged, the place of her strength and her refuge, the place where those who knew and loved her best resided. Majda's voice trembled as she spoke. "It's burning, Mother."
"Don't think of it, child," Mushirah replied, shaking her head. "To do so only multiplies your sorrows. Think instead of the village of the garden that is before us. There the earth is black and rich. I will grow basil, cardamom, thyme, whatever we wish, and there will be enough to sell in the marketplace with your baskets. We will prosper. Come now." It was when they turned to continue that Majda first noticed the dog, his coat the lusterless yellow of the desert. Skulking beside the roadway, it appeared to be half-wild, half-domestic. Its smile was permanently inscribed and revealed sharp teeth and a pink tongue that lolled to the side as the creature eyed them intently, its stare contemptuous, calculating, and fiercely intelligent. It began to follow along, parallel to the road. Majda picked up a clump of metal the size of a lemon, shrapnel from the previous war, and threw it overhand at the dog. The dog had survived this far by great discretion and the avoidance of threat. It whimpered, turned and trotted away, only to pause again and stare at them from a distance.
As Majda watched the creature, a shiny Mercedes, horn blaring, boastful and insistent, intruded on her reverie. The auto pushed its way through those who trekked along behind them. Inside the automobile, an Iraqi man with heavy jowls could be seen through the tinted windows, his palm pressing the horn as he drove. There was a woman beside the driver, her face hidden beneath her headscarf. "Government bastard," Majda said quietly. Mushirah spat on the ground by way of agreement.
In front of them, a man and his wife were pulling a wooden cart filled with goods, including a lidded iron kettle that Majda supposed contained food for the family. To the rear of the cart, two boys were pushing. The younger was blind, his face toward the sky as he leaned into the cart, which rattled off the road to allow the Mercedes' passage. The kettle's lid clanged askew, the contents spilling over the rim. Majda held Bashira closer to her bosom as the cart lurched off of the pavement and the blind boy stumbled and fell to the ground. Helped by his brother, the child struggled to regain his feet. In the Mercedes, two children with flat and impassive faces kneeling in the back seat stared from the rear window at the fallen boy. The car continued honking imperiously forward.
Majda considered this. The mullahs taught that even such things were within the will of the Deity. Yet it said in The Book that Satan also walks the earth, attempting to unravel the good that evolves from the mind of God. Yet Hadi, her husband who had been the love and light of her life, had died. And for what purpose? The city of her birth was burning. The blind boy, struggling to his feet before her, was the weak fallen to the mighty once more. Sometimes it was easier to believe in the presence of Satan than of God. Alongside the road, the skinny yellow dog was slinking forward.
The earth quivered as the shock wave from another bevy of explosions to the rear rolled over. Majda steadied herself and glanced back to see fat clouds of black smoke fuming into the air, bits of debris rotating into the sky, then falling slowly earthward again. Bashira awakened and Majda comforted her as she began to yowl. "Now, now, it will be alright. Hush, sweet baby," but her voice shook and lacked conviction. They walked faster, Mushirah grasping Majda's arm more firmly for support as the pace increased.
As the sun climbed higher, sweat streaked Majda's face and she could hear Mushirah's coarse and rapid breaths. The explosions were distant now. They rounded a curve in the highway and drew abreast of three half-burned-out military trucks that stood at odd angles beside the road, canted to one side or another. High metal stakes that once supported canvas covers over the cargo beds poked up like ribs. The wheels were splayed, their tires collapsed, the vehicles as hopeless and broken as crushed bugs.
4,000 meters above, unseen and as yet unheard, a pilot looked down from the cockpit of his aircraft. He saw, barely discernable beneath him, what might be trucks. He tilted the nose of his plane downward and accelerated. At a certain point, the pilot confirmed that it was the familiar outline of military trucks below, boxy and clumsy beasts of burden. He flipped back the red safety cap that covered the switches for his air-to-ground missiles. Majda saw the diving plane in the distance. For a brief instant she noticed only how beautiful it was, like the gyre falcon that stoops, plummeting from the heights to grasp the sparrow far below. Then, gripped by terror, she dived for the roadside holding Bashira close to shield her.
Above her the pilot methodically centered the trucks in the sight of the Target Identification System that glowed red on his helmet visor. He hit the switch marked "FIRE." One missile, then another slid forward on its carrier and coursed through the air toward the hulks alongside the road. As he pulled back on the yoke, he switched the afterburners on. Jet fuel surged through lines as thick as a man's wrist into the twin turbofan engines. The plane, cruciform and splendid, climbed on its column of fire at 60,000 feet per minute, rolling as it ascended. Pilot and plane were at one with the raptors. The wind and roar of the exhaust swept over the desert and the people now scattered on the earth beneath. For a period of time after the rockets struck, Majda lay unmoving, her mouth half-open. There was agony in her ears from the concussion. Her abdomen ached as if struck by a fist. She felt nauseated, and swallowed twice to clear her throat. Am I blind? She felt with her fingertips. Then, slowly, she brushed the layer of sand from her eyelids and face and looked up. She dabbed at her nose, looked at the blood on her fingertip then wiped it away on the skirt of her dress.
Then she looked at Bashira, who lay next to her, her face contorted as she wailed. Majda heard nothing, for she was deafened by the blasts except for the dreadful ringing in her ears. She rubbed her ears to clear them, but to no avail. She looked at Bashira again. A fingernail-sized spot of blood stood out on the left shoulder of the child's garment. Biting her lips, dizzy, moving slowly, Majda unwrapped her daughter. There was a tiny wound, no bigger than a grain of wheat, where shrapnel had entered in front near the junction of Bashira's shoulder and arm. Her brow furrowed, she pulled her bundle to her with one hand and removed the kitchen knife. She cut into the hem of her dress and tore a strip from the circumference, then used it to bandage the injury. Only after she wrapped Bashira once more did she think to look for Mushirah.
Struggling unsteadily to her feet, she saw Mushirah's familiar form in the distance. Her hearing began to return, and she heard herself cry out "Mother Mushirah?" There was movement there, and biting her lip, she ran, dodging around the bits of charred vegetation, the nameless debris that was strewn across the field of destruction. Majda kneeled beside her mother-in-law and grasped her shoulder, rolling her to her side. "Mother Mushirah?"
The old woman's voice was low and dry, like the sound of her hands when they had slid across the wall of her room to help her find her way. "Yes," she said in a breathy exhalation that was barely above a whisper.
Bashira still in the crook of one arm, Majda knelt down and embraced her. Her voice trembled as she spoke. "Dear Mother, can you stand up? Oh please, we must hurry, the plane may come back." Mushirah's eyes opened, flat and unseeing, as Majda continued, her voice whimpering and her inflection rising. "We must go to the village? There you will grow your spices, and we can sell them and my baskets in the market place? We will, won't we? We will have new cooking pots for chicken and we will have fish from the river? Bashira will laugh and play before us? Say this is true, please, dear Mother."
Mushirah replied, her voice like the wind whispering through the dry reeds, her eyes staring toward the sky. Majda leaned close to better hear the old woman. "Majda, child, I see the village quite clearly now. I smell the freshness of the flowing streams. Fields of grain are waving, dates heavy on the palms. Listen, Majda! The children are playing, plump and happy children. I need go no further, Majda." Mushirah's eyes slowly closed again. Her head fell to the side. "Oh Mother, no…" Majda pulled her to her breast and held her close, rocking her in her arms. "Mother, Oh dear Mushirah, say that you are only sleeping, and stand and go with us." But Mushirah was unmoving.
After a moment though, still holding Mushirah's corpse close, Majda felt not sad, but somehow guilty. She recalled with shame her resentment and jealousy of the old woman early on. It was now as if she had sinned greatly against God, that all the misdeeds of her young life had been recalled and due penance visited against her. She wondered, looking at the field of destruction about her, if she had in fact died and been cast quite justifiably into hell.
On the great holidays, the flagellants, torsos bare, paraded the streets beating their backs raw with whips. She pictured herself, naked and alone, with such an instrument of atonement in her hands, flogging herself for her transgressions. On her back, on her thighs, until her blood ran in scarlet streams from her mortified flesh. Then the rivulets of blood disappeared, and Majda, sinking to a sitting position, pulled Mushirah's corpse even closer, and snuffling, sobbing and rocking, wept the hopeless tears of a much-beaten child.
Wiping her eyes, Majda glanced back to see the dog again, waiting, watching them all from a distance. The creature's eyes were small and bright, ears erect, its tail curled over its back. Beyond the southern horizon another rack of bombs exploded. Majda stood and walked to the foremost of the burned-out trucks. The door screeched as she tugged it open and, glancing back at the dog, placed Bashira on the far side of the seat. She returned to Mushirah, and using all her strength, she grasped her body beneath her arms and pulled her to the truck. She managed only with great effort to heft her up and position her on the bare springs of the burned out seat behind the steering wheel, hoping this would afford some degree of protection from marauding animals, including the dog that followed them. She closed the door gently, its hinges groaning, the latch scraping as it caught. She went around to the other side and retrieved Bashira from where she lay on the seat, glancing toward the continuing explosions to the south. She quickly murmured prayers for Mushirah, then rummaged through her bundle and found the picture of her husband. Hadi's photo was safe, untarnished.
She recalled a time when she and Hadi had gone to the countryside for a holiday. She had spied a serpent beside the road, an adder, he'd said. A workman had come because of her cries and severed it with a shovel, the two parts of the snake still twisting helplessly in the dust of the roadside as they turned and left. She found herself thinking of her life as being like the severed serpent. Before the bombing and after, her life now cut in half in ways so that it could never be rejoined.
Even after Hadi's death, life had been workable, doable, given to its own joys in the small house. What was that house now, a heap of broken and twisted masonry? Was it burning? Or worse, did it stand, to be inhabited by another woman? Another family? And where, now, would they go, and what would they do, what would sustain them? And where would they lay their heads? Bashira whimpered. Majda folded back her swaddle, looked at her, brow wrinkled, and kissed her on the forehead.
Mushirah, whom she had come to love and depend on, was now already a dream, a mystery, a part of another life. The two halves of the serpent twisting in the dust. She took a last look at the picture of her husband. Hadi amused at her alarm about the serpent. She returned it to her bundle. Bashira calmed as her mother held her close and, no matter the aching of her body, the ringing in her ears, the nausea that she still felt from the blow of the explosions, trekked northward once more.
When the sun had sunk halfway to the horizon, Majda realized how still and quiet Bashira had become. She stopped to check her. The splotch of blood on her blanket was now half as big as Majda's palm. She pulled it to the side and unwrapped the soaked denim bandage. As she watched, the tiniest scarlet drop pulsed slowly from Bashira's wound. Majda made the bandage tighter, then readjusted the infant's clothing. When her mother felt her forehead, it was cool. Her eyes were shut, her face was pale, fading into the light blue around her lips. "Oh, Bashira, sweet baby," Majda said, "Please get better. It was only when you were born that I knew I had done something truly good." Bashira didn't respond. Majda took the scarf from around her head, and wrapped Bashira. She squatted beside the road and uncapped the water bottle, touching drops of water to the child's tongue. Bashira stirred feebly and opened her eyes. Her dark eyes followed her mother, and she even smiled the thinnest of smiles. Majda, her words interspersed with sniffs and gasping, said, "Oh, Bashira, you are better. We will continue to the village. There you will be much better. You really will." Majda stood and began walking again. She saw another airplane in the distance and decided, for safety's sake, to leave the highway and take a little used trace to travel toward the green that bordered the river, then to follow the river north until she reached the village. She crooned to Bashira as she went.
Twenty minutes later, she looked at an unmoving Bashira and was struck by a sense of dreadful foreboding. She stopped abruptly, her heart drumming, then unwrapped the child and put her ear to her chest, listened, then listened again. The infant's chest was silent and still.
Majda stood, looking into the distance, then slowly sank down to a squat, holding Bashira tightly, shaking her head occasionally, breathing rapidly through her mouth as if she had been running. Only after a lapse of time did she begin a moaning that grew into a keening, then ululation that came from some previously unplumbed depths within her. Her eyes were squeezed shut now against what they had seen. Then she opened them, and holding Bashira's corpse skyward, she cried, "Please, please, no, no, no…." Her mouth was a dark wide cave from the intensity of her supplications. She sank to a sitting position, one hand tearing her hair as the other held Bashira.
As the sun dipped further toward the horizon, her protestations ceased. She felt something growing anew within the center of her, something far and apart from grief; a white-hot coal that was hatred. She considered it in surprise, for she had not known it before. Then she embraced it. She raised her fist, shook it to the heavens, and called loudly, "Oh God, give me twelve strong sons. Let them each be armed and dreadful, that they might take vengeance on the infidels." No matter her fury at God and man alike, no matter the intensity of her entreaties, no matter the desolation, the wasteland that was her heart, the heavens were silent, the world unchanged. Finally exhausted, she sank to the earth and placed the infant's corpse before her. Breathing hard again, she sobbed and whimpered with each exhalation as the sun moved lower yet. Finally she stood, took up Bashira's corpse and trudged toward the tree line once more. She glanced to her rear. The dog was still trailing her, bolder now, drawing closer, its pink tongue lapping at its jaws. As it drew closer, she reached down and picked up a stone and tossed it at him. He withdrew slightly.
When all that remained of the sun was just a nail-clipping of magenta above the western horizon, she came to an outcropping of sandstone, tan streaked with apricot, flat on top, as high and large as a kitchen table. She climbed up, the grit of it harsh against her knees and palms. Placing both her bundle and Bashira's wrapped corpse beside her, she dozed fitfully, always sensing the dog somewhere near. And what else is there? What creature from sky, desert, river?
Toward dawn, when the approaching day made the entire world the gray of burned out ashes, Majda slept soundly for a few minutes. She heard the sound of Mushirah's hands sliding across the masonry of her room. Then she jerked to a sitting position, blinking, heart racing. But Mushirah is dead, her body is in an army truck! Looking to the ground next to the flat rock on which she had slept, she cried out in dismay and jumped to her feet. The dog had the edge of the white cloth that swaddled Bashira's remains in its mouth, and pulling backwards, was dragging her away.
Majda screamed, "No, no, no, go away!" She jumped down from the rock and rushed toward the dog, kicking and striking with her fists. The creature whirled and growled and snapped at her, releasing the cloth that bound Bashira. She landed a solid kick on its shoulder, and it turned and fled, tail down, crying pitiably. She snatched the white-wrapped bundle to her breast and held it firmly, looking toward the fleeing dog. Then she saw her husband's picture on the ground before her. She had stepped on it more than once as she had battled the dog. The frame was broken, the glass shattered, the picture torn in two. She took the torn fragments from the frame and pieced them together. Hadi's face didn't quite fit because a piece was missing. "But only a small piece," she said out loud, breathing heavily. She stood looking at him, and felt for an instance the heat in her groin that her husband's proximity had caused when he was still with her. Then his scent came to her, his presence. She shivered, gasped, then looked slowly around, but there was nothing but the narrow road, the withering desert, the wind whistling across the dunes. Then Hadi was rapidly receding from her consciousness to such a point that she wondered for a moment if he had ever existed. She shook her head as if to clear it, then stuck the damaged photo into her bundle. Murmuring, sometimes prayers, sometimes curses, she continued toward the green of the distant trees.
The heat was palpable thing, a thick and heavy garment that could not be removed. The sweat streamed down Majda's face, and her denim dress was streaked with dark patches where it was soaked through. She paused and ate a few dates from her bundle, and she drank from her water jug. The smell from Bashira's corpse rose around her, the smell of rotting fish, of chamber pots left too long unemptied, of decay and death. She paused, looked behind, and saw the dog again, hanging back but intent. She walked faster, the sun even hotter on her face and on that which she carried. It was early evening when she arrived at the trees, the willows and poplars and palms that formed a band of jade near the water. She passed through the strip of trees, the ground beneath her feet sun-dappled, until the river lay before her. She stopped. The smell was again unbearable. She bit her lip, then walked slowly toward the stream, pausing where green reeds abounded in the shallows.
After placing Bashira on the bank, Majda withdrew the kitchen knife from her bundle. She removed her sandals, placing them neatly beside Bashira, and waded into the water. A heron, its stilted legs trailing, flapped into the air as she stepped into the stream. The river was cool against her feet and ankles. Her toes, light against the black mud that oozed up between them, spread to grip the earth. For a moment she tried to see her face in the water, but the water wasn't still, and she saw only a vague blur.
Using the knife, she cut the hollow rushes, green as malachite, that grew there, tossing them onto the bank. The pile was as high as her knees when she emerged from the water. Still barefoot, she sat between Bashira's body and the cut reeds. The stalks were slender, wiry, stiff, rough against her fingers. She aligned them and, her fingers found a familiar rhythm as she tied them into small bundles with their long and tapered leaves. Then she took the bundles, and tied one to another until she had a raft, then she gathered and tied the ends of the raft to make it canoe-like. Rising to her knees, she turned to Bashira and undressed her thin body, dusky and serene, and placed it in its green cradle. She stepped into the water and pulled the reed boat and its contents to the edge of the water. She dipped water by the handfuls on Bashira, rinsing her as carefully as she had when the child had lived, once, then again until she had completed the seven washings required by custom of long standing. Pushing the reed basket further onto the bank so the current wouldn't take it, she knelt beside it again. She removed the white scarf from her head and cut away the edges from the cloth so that it would have no seams and thus be complete in the eyes of God. She wrapped Bashira's body securely with the cloth, then placed her again in the reed container.
Majda lifted the woven casket to her bosom and tried to remember the prayers that should be said at such a time. But she could only remember the bursting of the bombs, the flashes of light that had made the night like day, the feel of Bashira shaking and restive in her arms, the people who fled the places of destruction, the stink of their terror, and the wailing and crying of the wounded. Fearing that prayer was denied her because of her dreadful blasphemies of the previous day, she trembled as she spoke, "God is great, God is great," repeating it enough times to hopefully placate God for her failed memory as well as her wickedness. Then she eyed the sunset and carefully turned the basket so that Bashira's head would be toward Mecca. She launched the craft into the water. It floated away slowly at first, then gained momentum as the muddy current took it. Majda stepped back to the bank and stood to watch as it danced and twirled through the light and froth and foam on the surface of the river that swept it toward the sea.
A lone gull sailed on the currents of air above the water, following the path of Bashira's ship of reeds. It dipped and swayed as it swam the wind, flapping its broad wings to ascend from time to time. Majda, one hand shading her eyes now, watched it for a moment, then lowered her hand to her side. The craft was silhouetted in the swath of light cast on the water, molten and fiery. The evening breeze was warm. It stirred a lock of Majda's hair, and warmed her face with its touch as she peered after the basket. Finally, Majda placed her palm above her eyes again, but even though she squinted, the reed basket was lost somewhere between the intensity of the evening light and the swirls and ripples of the river.