Shimon An Iraqi in Paris

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-913043-53-7
Verlag: Banipal Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 282 Seiten

A fully revised third edition in translation of this best-selling 'gem of autobiographical writing' in the Arab world, by an author who has been called 'a relentless raconteur', 'a modern Odysseus', 'the Iraqi Don Quixote'. Providentially leaving Iraq just before Saddam Hussein installs himself as President, the Assyrian narrator of An Iraqi in Paris dreams of becoming a Hollywood film-maker after his hero John Ford, but after arrest and torture in Syria - accused of being a Jewish spy on account of his name, similar treatment in Jordan, and escaping execution in Lebanon by armed militia, he eventually lands up on the streets of Paris, where he meets up with Jean Valjean and tries to escape his fate as a homeless refugee with wit, humour and amorous adventures, all the while writing the story of his childhood, his deaf-mute father Kika, and film buff Kiryakos. After all his experiences, Samuel Shimon, 'the runaway from museums', writes an urgently needed and timely 'manifesto of tolerance'. Translated from the Arabic by Christina Phillips and Piers Amodia with the author.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shimon, Samuel

Leseproben

PART ONE

The Road to Hollywood

Baghdad, 1979

One morning in January, I woke up and immediately looked up at the clock hanging in the hall to see that it was nearly six o’clock. That was good because the bus that would take me from Baghdad to Damascus wasn’t leaving until half past nine. I had packed my little shoulder bag before going to bed the night before.

I looked at my family. They were still asleep in the large room that we used as a bedroom at night and a living room during the day. They slept in their day clothes on the threadbare mattresses spread out on the damp cement floor. My mother was sleeping in the middle of the room, and beside her were my two little sisters Nahrain and Mary. On the far side of the room, Robin and John were sleeping next to one another, and my father slept on a heap of old clothes in a corner at the back, while Teddy and Samson were on the two long wooden benches in the hall.

I lay down next to my mother and kissed her head, whispering in her ear, ‘Mum, Mum, Mum. Wake up, Mum! You’re usually awake at this time, why not today? Please wake up! I’m going, I’m leaving soon, and you might never see me again.’

‘Have you gone crazy?’ my mother whispered back. ‘Where are you going, my son?’

‘To Hollywood,’ I replied. ‘Have you forgotten all my dreams, Mum?’

‘He’s going to Hollywood!’ she uttered in a low mocking voice and closed her eyes again.

‘Yes, Mum, to Hollywood,’ I said loudly. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’ She didn’t answer.

I drew close to Mary, kissed her and whispered in her ear, ‘Good morning, Mary … Hello!’ But she didn’t stir.

‘Oh! I have to go to school,’ I then heard Nahrain say. I rushed to her and kissed her face and neck.

‘Nahrain, I’m travelling to America now.’

Beautiful Nahrain smiled at me and said, ‘Let me go and wash my face.’

I kissed her face, telling her it was cleaner than the water. Then I looked again at sleeping Mary’s face. My God, how I loved her. I used to tell her: ‘When I become a film director, I’ll make you the star of my movies.’

‘When will you get to America?’ Nahrain asked.

‘In a month, perhaps two,’ I said.

At that, my mother said, ‘You fool, you’ll be back in two or three days.’ I threw myself at her and kissed her repeatedly.

‘Impossible, impossible, Mum. I’ll never come back, no matter what. Believe me. Please, Mum, kiss me before I leave. That’s all I ask of you.’

My mother opened her eyes and said, ‘Bring your head closer, crazy boy,’ before kissing me.

Then I turned to my father and kissed him. He opened his eyes and smiled. I gestured to him, slicing through the air with my hand while blowing breath out of my mouth, then pointing with my right index finger to my chest and then to the ground. My father understood I was telling him I was going.

He smiled, climbed out of his bed, and went to the bathroom, to return moments later having washed his face and combed his hair straight back in order to look elegant for the goodbyes. I gave him a big hug, then watched him go back, sit on his bed and gaze at me for a long time with a smile on his face.

At last, I put my little bag on my shoulder, blew my father a kiss in the air and left home.

Before the bus left Baghdad, a worker from the transport company came up to my window, put his head through and, pointing to three ladies sitting in front of me, said, ‘What a lucky guy you are! You’re travelling with three foxes.’

I looked at the women, their sweet perfume sweeping up my nostrils. I whispered innocently to the man sitting beside me wearing a keffiyeh, ‘God bless you, Haj. What does he mean by foxes?’

‘He means prostitutes, my son,’ he replied quickly. Then in a loud voice, as if he wanted the three women to hear, he added, ‘They also call them artistes.’

As the bus passed through Fallujah, I remembered that as little boys, my friends and I used to steal the copper lines on which the women hung out their washing, and then we’d come to Fallujah to sell it.

A quarter of an hour later, the bus was running alongside a chain of mountains and hills overlooking al-Habbaniyah. I put my head out the window to look at my birthplace. The sun shone brightly and its rays reflected strongly on the surface of the water of al-Habbaniyah river. How I hated that river! I’ll never forget the day the whole of al-Habbaniyah was saddened at sunset to hear the news of Alexi’s drowning in that river. His friends said, ‘We waited a long time for him but he didn’t come out.’ They were punished severely by their parents. He was sixteen years old when I heard my mother saying, ‘Poor boy, he wanted to become a priest!’ The other women of the city agreed that God had taken Alexi because he was a ‘handsome, polite and upright boy’.

And when Jalil the Bear heard what the women had said, he took some stones and smashed the shop window of the Bata shoe shop, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘I’m evil, I’m evil.’ He was dragged by his ear to the police station and repeatedly told the chief of police, ‘I’m not good and not upright. I don’t want God to take me to Him!’ The police chief laughed and let him go.

The bus went through al-Ramadi, where I had lived for some years. After that I slept, and was awoken only by the noise of the passengers when we stopped at the inspection post on the Iraqi-Syrian border. The bus driver asked us to get out so that our suitcases could be inspected and our passports stamped. When this was done, everyone got back on the bus except for the three ladies, for whom we then waited more than two hours.

The passengers started protesting, and the man sitting beside me said, ‘These foxes are strange. They look for clients even at the border!’

‘It’s not what you think, Haj,’ the driver remarked.

When the ladies came back, they were in bad shape and remained silent until they entered Syrian territory. Then they told us that they had been held against their will and abused by the Iraqi policemen, who had given them a choice of either paying a bribe or being raped.

‘We paid them a large amount in dollars,’ they said, ‘but they still molested us.’

‘They’re highway robbers, not policemen,’ one of them said in a Lebanese dialect.

‘I’ll never return to this country of evil murderers,’ said the one with the Egyptian dialect.

The Haj retorted angrily, ‘Please, there ought to be limits to what you’re allowed to say.’

‘What limits?’ the Lebanese woman asked. ‘Don’t you see how brutally they treat passengers? You should have come to our defence.’

‘Me? Defend you? Defend foxes?’ the man asked nervously.

The three women laughed and wondered, ‘Foxes! What does he mean by foxes?’

Looking at me, the man said, ‘Tell them, my son. Tell them what I mean.’

I turned to them and said shyly, ‘He means prostitutes.’

The three women laughed and said in unison, ‘That’s even better!’

Arriving safely in Damascus, I spent two days as a tourist before starting to look for a job. I saw an advertisement on the door of a building that read ‘A car insurance company on the fifth floor is looking for a typist in Arabic’. I smiled as I hopped into the elevator. The ‘company’ consisted only of a manager, who was in his mid-sixties. Somewhat resentfully, he informed me his secretary was on maternity leave and about to give birth. He made me sit a test, which I passed.

One week into my stay in Damascus, two Syrian policemen came to my room at the hotel and asked me to accompany them. I was placed in a cold, damp room for several hours before two investigators interrogated me.

One of them asked: ‘What are you doing here in Damascus?’

‘I’ve come here to work, then I’m going on to East Beirut where there are many churches who help Iraqi Christians emigrate to America. My goal is to get to America to work in the movies.’

‘Why did you come from a rich country to work in a poor one?’ the other asked. ‘Syrians go to your country to work – are you sure you haven’t come here for other purposes?’

‘I’ve dreamed of this journey for many years,’ I explained, ‘and after I finished my military service, I decided to travel anyway, even though I didn’t have enough money. I wanted to feel that my trip to America was possible, that it could happen.’

Smacking me on the neck, one of them scoffed, ‘Could happen, huh?’

‘Yes. I’m telling you the truth. What do you want from me?’ I pleaded.

The other policeman hit me, saying, ‘You dare ask us a question, dog?’

Then I heard his partner say, ‘Let him be. Abdel Adheem is coming, he’ll know how to teach him some manners.’

A short while later, a thick-set man entered the room. He carried a wooden stick, attached to a base, with little shards of glass sticking out of it. He placed it on the floor and said, ‘Last week, there was a stupid man here...