The Baghdad Eucharist by Sinan Antoon

Author:Sinan Antoon [Antoon, Sinan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789774168208
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

2

On my way back, I passed by a house whose owners were obviously neglecting the date palm in their courtyard, neither pollinating nor pruning it. I was reminded of Brisam, the date palm climber, or saaud, who’d pruned and pollinated our trees for more than thirty years. He would have been hopping mad at the sight. Brisam would wander along the streets of residential neighborhoods and ring on doorbells whenever he saw a date palm that looked neglected. He’d ring until someone answered the door and would then give them a piece of his mind, berating them for being heartless and mean. In his last years, when he was almost deaf, he went around declaiming at the top of his lungs: “All I have are God and the date palms . . . only God and the date palms!”

Sometimes, you’d hear him shouting, “This one is a Barhi!”

God loved him for sure: he took Brisam to his eternal rest one day around noon after the saaud had shimmied up a tree to pollinate it. Brisam’s arms were wrapped around the tree trunk and his body was held aloft in a brace when his heart simply came to a stop.

He died caring for a tree to which he spoke as if it were a human being. According to Jasim, who looked after our two trees after Brisam died, he had become a legend among the date palm climbers.

Jasim wasn’t much of a talker. Whenever I asked how the trees were doing, he gave me a reply that was both vague and terse,

“Thanks be to God, sir! Everything is going as it should.”

The only time he ever let loose was three years ago when he rang the bell and told me that he’d decided not to work as a saaud that season because he was going back to his village. I asked him why.

“I’m going back home,” he said. “These days, when I knock, people I’ve never seen before in my life come to the door. Some of them say they’re relatives of the owners, that they’re looking out for the house, but that’s baloney. When I ask them where the owners have gone, they don’t have an answer. Anyhow, it’s none of my business. Did you know that twelve of us have been killed? Better for me to go home and work in the orchards down south. It’s safer over there.”

People had stopped giving him keys to let himself into their courtyards and tend to the trees while they slept, or when no one was home. Now, when the women and girls of the household were there alone, they wouldn’t allow him in and would tell him to come back when one of the men was home.

“Honestly, I was better off before the Americans came . . . I could go and come as I pleased. I could sleep under a tree or in a corner anywhere and no one bothered me. Now I have to get a room in a hostel or else get killed.

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