Before you read:
Hello everyone, I apologize for such a lengthy gap between posts. February has been one hell of a month and, alas, there hasn’t been much time to read, write and reflect. However, it is now time to break the silence! I have permission from a friend of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous) to post a short story he wrote a few years ago somewhat based on his childhood in Birmingham, England. In a few days, I’ll also be posting a screenplay he adapted from the story. So, without further ado, I present to you all “Uncle Saddam.” Enjoy.
Uncle Saddam
As she flew across the screen with a defeated howl he slammed the controller onto his pillow, but it bounced off and onto the floor, pulling the Super Nintendo console down with it. Ibrahim recovered the console from the floor, popped the Street Fighter II cartridge back inside, and placed it back on the drawer next to the ancient television they’d got from the Indians. As he waited for the title screen to appear his mum came in.
‘What was that noise?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘I dropped the controller.’
‘Well be careful, that thing wasn’t cheap.’ She’d been in the bathroom dying her hair and had a towel wrapped around her shoulders which was covered in dark red patches, like dried blood. ‘You should go out and play with your friends tomorrow,’ she continued, adjusting some hairpins and walking back to the bathroom. ‘You’ve been playing that bloody game all week.’
She was right; he’d missed out on some fun that week. The kids from down the flats had got hold of a load of fireworks from somewhere, so that was bound to be fun, and yesterday his mates from school had managed to get in to Lethal Weapon 3 at the cinema, which was a certificate 15, the lucky bastards. He didn’t particularly want to spend the whole school holiday playing Street Fighter II, but he just couldn’t tear himself away.
Halfway through a fight he started to hear voices downstairs, their muffled tones coming to him as if from under a forgotten lake, an occasional yell bobbing to the surface. He paused the game and tiptoed out onto the landing, then leant over the banister to see if he could see anything. He couldn’t really, only the distorted shape of his dad swimming in the glass living room door.
‘Mum,’ he called. She had the tap on. ‘Mum!’ he called louder.
‘What do you want now?’ she said irritably.
‘What are Baba and Bibi arguing about?’
‘They’re not at it again, are they?’ she exclaimed, coming out onto the landing. ‘Your father and his mother are as bad as each other.’ They listened for a while. ‘I’ll have to go down,’ she said. ‘The neighbours’ll complain again.’
He followed close behind her but stopped on the third step from bottom and looked through the half-open living room door at what was going on. Baba was standing and shouting at Bibi, pointing his finger at her like a schoolteacher, thick moustache and eyebrows emphasising the anger scored in his face. Bibi obviously wasn’t intimidated however, and shouted back at him from inside her cocoon of clothes, the same look of disgust on her face as he. Mum walked in to the room.
‘Can you believe this?’ Baba said turning to Mum. ‘She wants to go to the fucking mosque.’
‘Well what do you expect? She’s worried.’
‘And she thinks that’s going to help. It’s pathetic.’
Bibi looked at the clock and stood up using her stick, then hobbled around to the back of the two armchairs, rolled out her carpet and slowly got down on her knees.
Mum took Baba by the arm and led him into the hallway.
‘Go upstairs,’ Baba said in his not-to-be-disobeyed voice, so the boy ran up and watched from the top stair.
‘I can take her to the mosque,’ Mum said quietly, peeping in at Bibi praying. ‘It’s near the Aston Villa ground, isn’t it?’
‘No! I forbid it!’ Baba yelled. ‘She’s not going.’
Mum stood looking at Baba quietly as he rummaged in his coat and found some cigarettes. He went out the backdoor without a word, the red butt of his cigarette rising and falling like a flare over a black ocean through the patterned glass.
Ibrahim ran down the stairs and into the living room.
‘Shh,’ Mum said. ‘Your granny’s praying.’
He watched Bibi for a bit and was soon joined by the cat, who nudged open the door with his head and walked in. It was as if the cat looked forward to Bibi’s evening prayers, he never missed them. As was his custom, he sat nearby watching her like she was mad, but was gradually lulled into the performance, the soft purrs of her whispered chants drawing him closer until he was sat beside her on the rug like an Egyptian statue.
‘I’m going to draw a picture,’ Ibrahim said to his mum, the fancy suddenly taking him as it often did. So he collected his drawing box from under the coffee table, selected his best drawing pad, the expensive one with thick paper, and took a position on the carpet in front of the TV. He started lightly with pencil, then when he was happy went over the outline of the two fighters with black pen, relishing the details in the army uniforms. That just left the colouring in. He started selecting the colours he’d use, barely noticing his parents come in with the teapot. He was vaguely aware of the boring 9 o’clock news music coming on at some point, but didn’t hear the headlines; he was busy making the blood look realistic. When he finished he sat up and admired the drawing. Baba would love it.
He went over to Baba. ‘Look,’ he said.
‘Shh, not now habibi,’ his dad replied. He was watching the news like the cat watched birds out the front window, only he wasn’t making cat noises, just letting out an occasional Arabic mumble. The TV displayed the words ‘Iraq Sanctions’ and showed people cheering and holding pictures of Saddam, a face Ibrahim knew well.
‘Baba, look,’ he resumed, waving the picture in front of his dad’s face, but there was no reply, his dad only brushed the paper away.
He prodded Baba. ‘Look,’ he said insistently. ‘Baba…’
Baba snapped, ripping the picture from his son’s hands and tearing it. ‘What do you want?’ he growled.
Ibrahim let out a loud piercing whine.
‘Shut up!’ Baba screamed at him, pulling off his leather sandal ready to hit him, but Ibrahim was away and up the stairs onto the landing before he had chance.
‘What?’ he turned on his wife now. ‘What are you looking at?’ He paused for a few seconds, still holding the slipper in his hand, slightly out of breath. ‘Your son spends all his time playing on those fucking computer games whilst his cousins are living at the mercy of a madman.’
Baba turned to Bibi. ‘And you,’ he said. ‘Your son’s in prison for no reason,’ he repeated in Arabic, ‘being beaten and tortured.’ Again he repeated in Arabic for Bibi’s benefit, in whose eyes pools began to form. ‘And you want to go the ‘President Saddam Hussein Mosque’.’
‘Oh, let her go and pray,’ his wife broke in.
‘I don’t mind her praying,’ he said, ‘but in the fucking Saddam mosque? She’s not one of these Pakistanis… You know what the butcher said to me today? He told me that Saddam’s a great man…’
‘She’s worried that the Ba’athis are watching.’
‘So what if they are,’ he spat, hand raised about to strike. ‘You think I’m scared of those coward bastards? I beat up hundreds of them in Baghdad.’ He pointed at Bibi. ‘What will we do next? Shall we put up a picture of Saddam? Shall we have our son call him “Uncle Saddam” in case they’re more spies in the community?’
‘Your brother had a picture of him up in his warehouse in Baghdad,’ she cut in defiantly, and then quietly, ‘I’m taking her in the morning.’
Baba snapped out and grabbed her by the arms, dropping his slipper to the floor and shaking her. ‘He put it up near the roof where nobody ever noticed it… Do you hear me, you bitch!?’ His words were a deafening hiss.
‘Hey!’ Bibi barked, raising her walking stick.
Ibrahim started shelling his fists against the cheap wooden door to his bedroom. The banging resounded through the house so that Mum broke from Baba’s grip and went for the stairs, leaving the two of them in the living room, mother and father stranded on an island with just a television.
The next morning Ibrahim ate Coco Pops in the kitchen whilst Mum got Bibi’s coat on in the hallway. Mum walked in and stood next to the cooker.
‘You’re going out to play with your friends today?’ she quizzed, eyes raised to the clock high up on the wall behind him.
‘Yesss,’ he replied angrily.
She started lecturing him, ‘… can’t stay in here all day…’ But he wasn’t listening, and she didn’t notice because it was as if she was afraid the clock was watching. He was busy admiring his drawing on the fridge. It had been taped back together crookedly and Baba’s leg looked like it had been broken, but Saddam was still flying through the air from the kick, blood spurting out of his mouth.
Mum and Bibi left out the back door, and Ibrahim heard Baba coming down the stairs, so called out to him.
‘Ya Baba,’ his dad affectionately replied as he stuck his head around the half-opened door.
‘Are they going to the mosque?’
‘Yes, habibi,’ he said glumly, then lumbered in, sat at the table and watched the cat eating from the bowl next to the fridge. ‘Have you completed Street Fighter yet?’
‘Not yet. I can’t beat the final boss. I’m not playing today though because I’m going out with my friends.’
They heard the car pull off the drive and a couple of fireworks explode nearby. ‘Well,’ Baba said, with that mischievous look on his face. ‘That’s a shame, because together I think we can beat the bastard.’
T o r m e n t a 