The Long Way Back by Fuad al-Takarli

Author:Fuad al-Takarli
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781617971914
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
Published: 2007-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

She was with him in the car speeding madly along the winding road which was lined with orange trees in blossom, whose perfume filled her nose and her soul as she moved her head in time to the sentimental song playing gently on the radio. He talked to her, laughing, but she didn’t listen, so he began shouting but still she didn’t listen. She opened the car window, and the warm spring air rushed in and her hair blew around her face. She was drunk with the smell of life on the blossom-laden breezes, glad to forget the irritations of the morning in her sister Maliha’s house—the screaming children, the stupid behavior of their father, the complaints of her own mother. She had not imagined that deliverance would come so easily when she whispered to Adnan that she was bored and asked if they could go to his father’s orchard on the banks of the river Diyala. It was a Friday, and as they slipped out of the house, the sun was singing in a diaphanous blue sky. He drove off down the narrow streets at this crazy speed, making people jump out of his way, until they reached the outskirts of Baquba. On the green-fringed country road, the song and the scent of orange blossom in the warm air had combined to intoxicate her; she could no longer hear what he said and answered him with happy laughter.

This was her second spring in Baquba. She had come there several years before, but only staved a few days, and the vivid memory of the visit was always associated with the smell of orange blossom in her mind. Now she was hack again to stay, as she had been transferred to a school there. She had had no idea what to expect before she and her mother arrived at her sister’s house one dull evening the previous September. She knew vaguely that there were a lot of difficulties in the family, but didn’t bother to go into them, agreeing with her mother and brother that the move to Baquba was the only solution for the coming school year, but hoping that it would be temporary. Her brother promised to talk to someone he knew in Kirkuk who could pull strings to have her transferred to Baghdad.

Adnan switched off the radio. She turned to him, and he switched it on again, laughing. He was a well-developed young man, only just eighteen, tall, with thick black hair and moustache, and fierce dark eyes. Because he was held in awe at home by his mother, brothers, sisters, and, to some extent, even his father, and because he had some ideas, not very clearly thought out, for subverting things, she felt drawn to him and was glad that she was his aunt and could remember his childhood and adolescence and have long, affectionate conversations with him. He grabbed hold of her flying hair and pulled it, and she pinched his hand gently. The trees rushed past on either side like unstoppable columns of mad soldiers.

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