A stupid night-A true story from Iraq

A Stupid Night True Story from Iraq Written by: Waleed Khalid Edited by: Sahar Jaafar

1 A late wake up

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Abbas is a smart and clever student. He studies law at the university of Baghdad. One day he woke up at 6:10 a.m. He was shocked. He could be late to school since his final exam is scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m at Baghdad University, college of law. “What should I do?” Abbas pondered anxiously. He woke up his wife in frantic manner. She was startled. She told Abbas that today we were caught of guard by our clock. “We

just overslept. How come time darted by so fast that we did not realize it was this late now?” Sarah recollected herself and got off the bed running to iron his usual stripped shirt. Later, she quickly fixed him a cup of tea and brought a left over piece of cake from their son’s Ali birthday the day before before he headed to college. He got dressed abruptly and did not even save a time to wash his face. He left his house after that. When he was leaving the threshold of his house, he glimpsed with his blurry vi2

sion the ticking clock that was hanging over the unwashed dark yellow-wall. The hands of the clock where showing the time at 6:13 a.m. Suddenly, it downed to him that he did not have someone to pick him up from his distant village in the countryside south of Baghdad. “My God! Help me! I have no one but you. That feeling of loneliness exacerbated his dilemma. “I do not want to fail” he begged God. “I do not want to fail my family and my parents” Abbas prayed to God.

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A Problem

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Sarah wept loudly when he left. “ I should blame myself for this mistake.” “if he fails, its me who should be blamed for this dire mistake. I do not want my husband to fail. We all fail if he does”. Their kids heard the weeping of their saddened mother. Her weeping woke them up wondering what was happening. “Nothing” Sarah whispered. Go back my babies. I just miss you your dad and afraid of any harm that might happen to him in the road”. They returned to their beds with their eyes wondering about what had happened. She had to lull to her youngest son Ali to make him sleep.

3 Dad

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Abbas’s father did not have a car at that time to drop his son off at the highway. He watched his son Abbas from the broken window of his adjacent house while strolling up the highway. Deep inside Abbas’s father, there was an anguishing and unfathomable feeling of pain about the whole situation in Iraq at that time. He wished he could send Abbas to a better school and have him drive his own car. Then Fadhel, Ab-

bas’s father recollected that sometimes the wind goes against the will of the traveling ships as it is said in Arabic. He used to be an under-privileged Iraqi soldier in the impoverished army. He served ten years in the war against Iran only to ended up with heavy debt and peripheral psychological trauma. He used to borrow money during war to feed his family and continued borrowing after the American invasion in 2003 to help Abbas to be able to commute to work. He ended 5

up being insolvent to his debtors. He kept looking at the trail of Abbas’s shadow while going deeper in the darkness of the heavy tree road.

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Abbas’s Mom

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Abbass’s mom is a warmhearted, and delicate woman who used to sow the farm-land and sew clothes to sustain her family living and provide for her little children. She used to throws a jar of water behind Abbas before sun rises every morning when he leaves to college. It is considered as as a

sign of protection from omen and bad luck according to Iraqi traditional culture. As she grew older, it was heavy on her to carry the jar. She could only have him hear prayer as he goes out of the house heading to his school. Lately, she developed a complicated heartrelated diseases that slows the blood transfer to the peripheral limbs. That diseases 7

started to get complicated and give her unbearable amount of excruciating pain.

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Imminent Danger

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Abbas spearheaded the darkness of night that early morning. He used to walk few hundred metered away of his home before someone passes by and picks him up. To his misfortune, that gloomy morning was dark, bleak enough not be let anyone pass by. The road had no sign of someone coming up any time soon. “What is happening?” Abbas wondered. Abbas is a moderate religious man. He believes in God. While he was trodding

the rural steep road that was full of swinging eucalyptus trees, he began to suspiciously think of apocalypse or the End of the world. In Islam, he thought, if Sun does not rise for two consecutive days, it is a sign that it will rise up from the west. It is the sign of Doomsday. The feeling of coldness of January of that year of 2004 enshrouded his sultry fear and disheartening hope of someone picking him up more. “What is happening to me?” Abbas conjectured. The knifelike winter gusts passed through his face and thin 9

torso. He started to shiver like he has never before. “ I guess that the cold” He thought. He did not put on many layers of clothes because he used to get sweaty during tests at the University. Therefore, and as a precaution, he left his extra layers at home.His tension during tests was enough to give his body a dose of heat. Abbas strolling reached him to a crossroad eventually. To his surprise, there was a pack of hungry wild dogs awaiting for any pedestrian to run by. He was startled. “ Oh my God! These dogs caught me off the guard”.

Abbas used to have Cynophobia or fear of dogs. His story of fear of dogs happened when a domestic dog picked up his infant Ali while being left in front of t.v. and ran away in the fields of corn behind his house back in the nineties. It was by shear luck that they caught the rogue dog before he did any harm to his infant. After a long fit of barking and maybe more, the sour feeling of nearing doomsday coupled with frantic, and beastly wild dogs getting ready to devour any moving animate increasingly deepened his fear. 10

He was trembling of hypothermia and fear. “This is the end. He said to himself. “I will not see my family nor my parents anymore This is the end” he cried while sending a wheezing puff of foggy air out of his panting mouth. “There is no hope of me getting out of this predicament. I should say my last prayer before being eaten by these draconian carnivores. “They will tear me apart and shred me into small pieces.” He sadly murmured.

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A leap of faith

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Abbas used to be a clairvoyant person. He received so many compliments from his primary school teachers. He should not be easily fooled. He was not the kind of faint-hearted, gullible and easily tricked onto this den of fear. “Chin up Abbas.” he shouted “I need to think thoroughly of what is going on.” he mumbled. “Am I dreaming?” while the sound of wild dogs got closer and closer. He looked at his

left wrist and wondered if he wore his grandfather’s watch he gave him as a gift when he graduated cum laude from high school. At that time, cellphones were a privilege to the rich and luxurious life-style minority of government members. The lay people and even bourgeois did not have access to this type of avantgarde technology. Thus, It was hard on him to make any related decision regarding time or making a MayDay phone call to his family. “I wish I could have changed the watch 12

battery two weeks ago.” “It’s too late” he whispered. “Things should be done at the right time. I should have struck the iron when it is hot”.

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A late answer

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It took Abbas two hours of heavy walk under the cold weather of Iraq to realize something. When he left his house, he had a blurry vision and did not question himself whether he saw the clock at 6:10 a.m. or at 1:30 a.m. A glimpse of hope seemed to reach out his mind and send a shrilling feeling to his body giving him goosebumps all over. He look around to see if there are any dogs closer that enough. “What should I do now” “I am in the middle of crossroad.” Should I keep walking or go back home and stay with my family awaiting our destiny.” In the meantime, the wild dogs started to reach him because he heard the sound of their paws made

on the asphalt of the road. A bulb flickered in his mind and he came to a final decision. “I should run back home.” He reached to a recently cut branch of a eucalyptus tree. “I should use it to protect myself from these wild darn dogs”. “I should be brave. I can do it.” He put his books in the space between his pants and his and his skin. He ran back home like an athlete. He ran like he never ran before. The hope of seeing his family one last time before Doomsday coupled with the adrenaline and fear of wild dogs game him a blazing running speed. He ran as if it was the last time to see his family. His family were waiting impatiently for him at the squeaky aluminum-made front door. They were happy that Abbas could eventually make it back safe and sound and in one 14

piece. He smiled eventually and told them the story of Doom’s day. They were laughing all that morning. With the first sunlight of that morning, it seemed that apocalypse was not scheduled for that particular day. It was given a rain check. That day, Abbas read the clock inversely. That day, Abbas went to his university and took the test of civil rights. He received the highest mark in the class and was nominated to be the cum laude graduate of school. Now, he works as a professor of Law at the Iraqia University, College of Law.

Based on a true Story

Vocabulary Log Write any vocabulary that you found new to you here to keep a record of them.

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Vocabulary Log