Read The American Granddaughter for Free Online Page B
Authors: Inaam Kachachi
threading Rahma’s eyebrows and upper lip; sprinkling cockroach repellent in the corners and drains; washing the yard, sweeping the rooftop and wiping the dust off the satellite dish so that it didn’t interfere with reception; burning sandalwood incense in all the rooms of the house; picking olives, seasonally, from the garden, salting them and laying them out on woven trays in the sun; making pastrami by filling the saandaweylat with mince and hanging them on a rope in a breeze. The list of the tasks that this strongly built woman had mastered over decades of being a faithful companion to my grandmother went on and on.
When Tawoos first heard the term saandaweylat she thought the women of the house were talking about the hosepipes for washing the rooftop or watering the garden. Or maybe they were talking about sandals, those light shoes that they wore in summer? How was she to know that, in the dialect of Mosul, saandaweylat were the intestines of cows, which were filled with a mixture of minced meat, garlic and spices in order to make pastrami? Even after finding out the real meaning, she still found the whole thing too disgusting and kept calling them ‘ sandwilat ’ instead, with a lighter ‘s’ and shorter vowels, as if by lessening the stress on all the letters she could somehow block out some of the smell. Or maybe she found some similarity with ‘sandwiches’, that other strange word that Tawoos found a bit suspicious.
‘I’ll tell you a story that happened during one of those long green springs in Mosul. That particular spring was more red than green because of the communist tide. We nearly sacrificed our lives for our saandaweylat .’ I liked it when Rahma expounded her views on politics, sounding like an expert on strategic affairs or CNN commentator when she said things like ‘communist tide’, ‘American plot’, ‘Zionist conspiracy’, ‘the Jewish Farhud’, ‘Rashid Ali’s nationalist movement’, ‘Mosaddegh’s coup’, ‘the intrigue of Nuri Pasha’ who believed that ‘the master’s house was always safe’, ‘Kissinger’s plan’, ‘the charisma of Nasser’. Even charisma was a familiar concept to Rahma!
‘My sister Ghazala telephoned from Basra, a week before Christmas. Apparently I answered in a tired voice and she asked what was wrong, and I said I was exhausted because I’d been mixing five kilos of flour for the festive cookies and had just finished cleaning the saandaweylat and preparing them to be loaded . That same night security forces knocked on the door and turned the house upside down. When they didn’t find anything, they took my two uncles to one of their secret interrogation centres and beat the shit out of them: “Tell me where it hurts so I can help you.” They wanted them to confess where the shotguns and machine guns were hidden, those that the women had encoded as saandaweylat when they relayed the message over the phone. “Do you think the revolution is blind to its enemies?”’
I laughed, and my grandmother laughed with me as she told me how the security men came back the following day and headed straight for the fridge. They searched it, scattering tomatoes everywhere and breaking water bottles. Then they screamed at the women: ‘Where are the saandaweylat , bitches?’ My uncle’s wife, the bravest among them, signalled with her hand towards the red pastrami bundles that were hanging from a rope above their heads, giving off their strong aroma of garlic and spices, and said: ‘Here they are. You hungry? I can fry some for you and throw in some double-yolk eggs.’ Tawoos wiped her tears of laughter away and shook the hem of her dishdasha with the inevitable murmur, ‘Let this laughter bode well for us, dear God.’
Grandma Rahma ran a trembling hand across my hair, hoping those stories would win me over to her side. This woman didn’t give up easily, and it seemed like her plan was to baste me over a slow fire. She took a little bit out
When Tawoos first heard the term saandaweylat she thought the women of the house were talking about the hosepipes for washing the rooftop or watering the garden. Or maybe they were talking about sandals, those light shoes that they wore in summer? How was she to know that, in the dialect of Mosul, saandaweylat were the intestines of cows, which were filled with a mixture of minced meat, garlic and spices in order to make pastrami? Even after finding out the real meaning, she still found the whole thing too disgusting and kept calling them ‘ sandwilat ’ instead, with a lighter ‘s’ and shorter vowels, as if by lessening the stress on all the letters she could somehow block out some of the smell. Or maybe she found some similarity with ‘sandwiches’, that other strange word that Tawoos found a bit suspicious.
‘I’ll tell you a story that happened during one of those long green springs in Mosul. That particular spring was more red than green because of the communist tide. We nearly sacrificed our lives for our saandaweylat .’ I liked it when Rahma expounded her views on politics, sounding like an expert on strategic affairs or CNN commentator when she said things like ‘communist tide’, ‘American plot’, ‘Zionist conspiracy’, ‘the Jewish Farhud’, ‘Rashid Ali’s nationalist movement’, ‘Mosaddegh’s coup’, ‘the intrigue of Nuri Pasha’ who believed that ‘the master’s house was always safe’, ‘Kissinger’s plan’, ‘the charisma of Nasser’. Even charisma was a familiar concept to Rahma!
‘My sister Ghazala telephoned from Basra, a week before Christmas. Apparently I answered in a tired voice and she asked what was wrong, and I said I was exhausted because I’d been mixing five kilos of flour for the festive cookies and had just finished cleaning the saandaweylat and preparing them to be loaded . That same night security forces knocked on the door and turned the house upside down. When they didn’t find anything, they took my two uncles to one of their secret interrogation centres and beat the shit out of them: “Tell me where it hurts so I can help you.” They wanted them to confess where the shotguns and machine guns were hidden, those that the women had encoded as saandaweylat when they relayed the message over the phone. “Do you think the revolution is blind to its enemies?”’
I laughed, and my grandmother laughed with me as she told me how the security men came back the following day and headed straight for the fridge. They searched it, scattering tomatoes everywhere and breaking water bottles. Then they screamed at the women: ‘Where are the saandaweylat , bitches?’ My uncle’s wife, the bravest among them, signalled with her hand towards the red pastrami bundles that were hanging from a rope above their heads, giving off their strong aroma of garlic and spices, and said: ‘Here they are. You hungry? I can fry some for you and throw in some double-yolk eggs.’ Tawoos wiped her tears of laughter away and shook the hem of her dishdasha with the inevitable murmur, ‘Let this laughter bode well for us, dear God.’
Grandma Rahma ran a trembling hand across my hair, hoping those stories would win me over to her side. This woman didn’t give up easily, and it seemed like her plan was to baste me over a slow fire. She took a little bit out