When the Apricots Bloom

“‘What brings you to Baghdad, Ally?’ Before she could answer, Tom leaned forward. ‘I’m the deputy ambassador at the Australian embassy.’”

Tom intercepts a question that Rania intended for Ally, answering with his own occupation. This rudeness shows his willingness to overshadow Ally’s life and goals, for the emphasis on his own career clearly takes precedence, and the fact that Tom answers not with Ally’s current occupation but with his own also reflects Ally’s powerlessness upon her arrival in Iraq. This exchange foreshadows later conflicts for Ally with other diplomats and with Tom, as well as her internal conflicts about her goals in Baghdad.

“Screw it, Ally whispered to her reflection, words can’t hurt. The catcalls of the street were no worse than the solitary confinement inside her rented home of marble and concrete. She wrapped a thin cotton scarf around her neck, checked the bulging contents of her handbag, then fished out her keys and set to work on the front door. She turned three locks, pulled aside a bolt, and unlatched a chain, then heaved open the door.”

The contradiction in this passage between Ally’s acknowledgement that words cannot physically hurt her and the numerous locks on her front door present a tenuous contrast between bravery and foolishness. While Ally is brave to go about her life regardless of the harassment she faces, the locks on her door indicate the possibility of threats that go beyond just words. There are physical dangers in Iraq that her internal mantras cannot ward off.

“Abdul Amir took great pains to keep the lawn lush and neat. He refused to admit that the Iraq of the fabled Fertile Crescent was gone, that the gardens of Babylon would never bloom again. Instead, when he wasn’t at the tea shop, he watered pruned, and fertilized, keeping close watch over his plant. He sought out pests and exterminated them. Weeds were consigned to the compost bin or, if they threatened to lay seed, burned in the firepit.”

Abdul Amir’s garden serves a dual purpose of both displaying his resolve and dedication to his home country and revealing his rigidity in adhering to his values. He maintains his garden to hold onto the past, in which Iraq was once the Fertile Crescent, but also the more recent past before Saddam’s rule, in which the economy flourished. The note about burning weeds that threaten to lay seed reflects Abdul Amir’s intolerance for the spouting of new ideas or plans, such as Huda’s later plans to get Khalid out of the country.

“‘No good will come of your questions.’ Mrs. al-Deeb threw another furtive glance at the guards. ‘Now, please, go.’ Ally’s fingers trembled as she shoved the photos into her handbag. She hurried away, past the mother and daughter, hands still entwined. The old woman groaned again. Her pain vibrated through the waiting room. Ally felt it like a stitch in her side long after she slipped past the guards and left the hospital behind.”

The mix of Ally’s pain, Mrs. al-Deeb’s concern, and the suffering patients in the hospital serve to highlight how Ally’s search for her mother is not the only struggle occurring at this moment. Mrs. al-Deeb might want to tell Ally more about the picture, but she cannot do so without endangering herself. Likewise, families in the hospital struggle with their own illnesses and injuries, reflecting a damaged Iraq. Though Ally’s fingers tremble, showing her own sadness and frustration, the setting of this interview broadens the scope of those emotions, encompassing the Iraqi people as well.

“‘I’m not a poor village girl anymore.’ Huda stared at her. ‘I work at the embassy. I am simply fulfilling my work duties.’ Behind them, the foreigners bayed with sudden laughter. ‘You may be a secretary,’ whispered Rania, ‘but to them, that means nothing.’ Huda drew herself up to her full height. She was still two heads shorter than Rania. ‘I am nothing?’ she hissed.”

The nature of Huda’s resentment toward Rania is revealed in her misunderstanding of Rania’s comment, for Rania simply means that being a secretary does not excuse Huda from the rules set for Iraqi citizens when it comes to interacting with foreigners, but her words have hit a nerve. Huda unconsciously exposes her resentment for Rania’s status as a sheikh’s daughter, calling back to her fears as a young woman that Rania would leave her behind.

“Huda sighed. As much as she wanted to leave the past alone, these days it was always there, an itch at the back of her throat, a spasm that woke her just before dawn, gasping for breath. Westerners liked to proclaim that the truth would set them free. That was foolish. And dangerous. But lying to Ally was harder than Huda had foreseen.”

This passage expresses criticism for members of Western cultures, whose own beliefs in truth and free speech render them incapable of appreciating the delicacy of Huda’s position. While the urge to confess all her dealings to Ally might bring her relief from guilt, it would also likely lead to Huda’s death or imprisonment. The idea that Huda must ignore the unspoken truths of her past and her present to maintain her survival might be a foreign concept to some readers, just as it is foreign to Ally. At the same time, the insistence on needing to hide the truth foreshadows a reversal of this position, implying that Huda will eventually tell the truth and escape.

“The thing is, Ally longed to remember more of the past, something other than the burning feeling when her mother’s bony finger touched her cheek. A familiar rush of guilt swept through her. A better daughter would remember more than that. A better daughter would know how the smiling woman in the photo became the woman in the darkened bedroom. All she knew was that here, in Baghdad, she felt closer to the answer. If she left now, she’d never find out.”

This moment of guilt is critical in Ally’s characterization, as her desire to be a better daughter comes out as her main motivation in investigating her mother’s past. She understands that the woman with the bony finger was not an imposter, and she wishes she had the resolve and willpower to get to know that stage of her mother’s life. In Iraq, she can hold onto the smiling photo of her mother, but she can also discover more about her mother to make up for the failure of rejecting her mother while she was alive.

“‘Thanks.’ Khalid stabbed a plastic spoon into the offending sundae. ‘I guess.’ Huda grit her teeth and glanced at the coffee shop. Abdul Amir had taken a seat on one of the benches out front. She had a feeling he knew she was watching, but he didn’t meet her eye—just like the teenager hunched over the table in front of her.”

The divisions in Huda’s family are clear in this instance, as both Abdul Amir and Khalid turn away from Huda. Each of them resents Huda for her involvement with the mukhabarat, as well as her position as the sole provider for the family. The fact that Abdul Amir is equated with Khalid shows a confusion of roles in the family. Khalid is almost expected to reject his mother, since he is a teenager, but Abdul Amir is Huda’s husband, and his behavior paints him more like Huda’s second son, instead.

“‘They saw a chance to be free.’ Blood pounded at Huda’s temples. ‘And they would have succeeded if the Americans had lived up to their promises.’ ‘Bah!’ Abdul Amir flung his hands wide. ‘Your brothers should have known two things: you can’t trust the Americans, and you can’t beat the system. You can only adapt and work out how to use the situation to your advantage.’ He eyed her fiercely. ‘Did their deaths teach you nothing?’”

Abdul Amir’s response to Huda is ironic in two ways. The first is that Huda blames the Americans for her brother’s death, and Abdul Amir considers that attitude to be foolish, yet even he commonly blames his own unemployment on foreign intervention. The second is that Huda has learned from her brothers’ mistakes, but she has developed openings for rebellion, namely removing Khalid from the country, rather than going along with the system, as Abdul Amir advocates.

“Huda watched Ally disappear down the road. She wished she could fling open the door of the photography studio and call after her. She wished they could stroll down the riverside, like people did before, in the golden years, the years of plenty. Most likely Ally would crack some jokes, or point out how the sun’s rays split into rainbows as they bounced off the blue dome of a mosque. She wished they could simply be friends, free to speak their minds.”

Huda’s feelings about Ally are unavoidable at this point. Though she decided that she and Ally could not be friends, her desires are simply being suppressed, not eliminated. At the same time, the fantasy of Ally and Huda walking by this river and that mosque reflect the real possibility of a friendship between the two happening within Iraq under different conditions. The environment and religion of the region are not the impediment here; only the pervasive interference of the government prevents such a vision from becoming a reality.

“Huda nodded, relieved she wouldn’t have to sit side by side with Rania in the close confines of the Corolla. That would be too intimate. She needed time alone to banish her girlish nostalgia, and forget about the childhood friendships, magic salves, and blood oaths. She needed time alone to think of her dead brothers, time to rebuild the vengeful fire in her chest.”

As with Ally, Huda’s intrinsic desire to be friends with Rania comes out as they part ways. Truly, Huda wants to rekindle her friendship with Rania, and she must fight against that urge with memories of her brothers’ deaths to maintain her resentment. Nostalgia and the power of the magic salves and blood oaths are stronger than her desire for vengeance, so Huda must willfully disregard the memories that support her friendship with Rania.

“Once upon a time, the Ministry had been a valued patron: commissioning new artworks, building museums, even ensuring old poets got a decent pension. Like everything else, it had withered from war and sanction—except for the Division of Presidential Works, which continued to pump out gilded statues and gold-leaf portraits that would make even the vainest caliph blush.”

The change in Iraq over Saddam’s reign is highlighted in the dominance of the Division of Presidential Works, as is the consequence of such dominance. Though the country is filled with statues and portraits of Saddam, a trend that does provide employment for sculptures and painters willing to profit from Saddam’s vanity, the other arts, like poetry, suffer greatly for it. In this scene, Wilkinson invokes remembrance of the celebrated poet Adnan Nawab, noting that artists were previously cared for by the government rather than used and discarded.

“Before the economy went into freefall, Hatim made a good living as an architect. Ally could easily picture him at a drafting board, pencil tucked behind his ear, measuring angles and plotting dimensions. Now, his family scraped by on his wife’s teaching salary of five dollars a month, government rations, and whatever Hatim could make ferrying passengers to and from the market.”

Like Adnan Nawab and Abdul Amir, Hatim, too, has been forced out of his occupation by the sanctions and restrictions from foreign nations and the Iraqi government. Hatim’s situation mirrors Abdul Amir’s, as well, in that both men depend on their wives’ incomes to survive. The fact that Ally can picture Hatim at work as an architect allows an outsider’s view into the consequences of both Saddam’s regime and foreign nations’ responses to that regime. While the intent of the sanctions is to punish Saddam, the real victims are men like Hatim and Abdul Amir.

“Ally leafed forward and backward, pulse accelerating with each page. But the photo and the chapter on Saddam were gone. The wind rattled the front door, startling her. She imagined the mukhabarat testing her locks, slipping inside, sifting through her photos, tearing pages from her books, copying the files on her laptop. Yusra Hussain, 82nd Avenue.”

In this moment, the reality of perpetual surveillance sinks in for Ally, as she realizes that someone must have broken into her home to remove the pages from her book. Critically, the missing pages show Saddam’s bloody rise to power, and Ally links their removal to the information she has just gained on Yusra. Just as Saddam had a list of 68 names, Ally has a list of just one name, foreshadowing Yusra’s fate when Saddam took power. Likewise, Ally realizes that she is not as safe as she once thought, even in her own home.

“Rania gave a small shrug. She knew it was hard for outsiders to understand, but the idea of leaving Iraq seemed contrary to the laws of physics, as if asking metal to defy the pull of a magnet, or the tide to turn its back on the moon. Iraqis had given their lives for this land, men like Huda’s brothers, Mustafa and Ali. Didn’t she owe it to them to stay?”

Though the primary advocates of nationalism in the book are Khalid and Abdul Amir, Rania shows that all Iraqi people feel a sense of responsibility to their country. The irony of this passage is both that Rania cites Mustafa and Ali’s deaths as justification for loyalty, when their deaths are also the reason for Huda’s resentment toward Rania, and that Rania decides to get Hanan out of the country later in this same chapter.

“The two women paused at the top of the zigzagging steps. The Tigris burbled below them, sunlight reflecting off the ancient river. From the masgouf firepit, a graceful thread of smoke twisted into the bluest of skies. Ally wished that more people could see what she did: beautiful waters, and a generous friend. Huda and her countrymen didn’t deserve the suffering inflicted on them. Huda might pray in a different manner than Ally, bake her bread flat instead of leavened, but underneath that, they weren’t so dissimilar. They just wanted the chance to break bread in peace. Ally knew it sounded cliché, but weren’t clichés born from a greater truth?”

Ally’s idealism in this passage shows a simplistic view of Iraq from an outsider’s perspective. The idea that only racial, religious, or nationalistic animosity is at fault for all of Iraq’s troubles ignores the deep-seated issues in Iraq during this time. She and Huda can share this afternoon together, but in this moment, Ally is not even aware that Huda is an informant, and that her family is at risk unless she can find incriminating evidence on Ally. The idea that the situation could be resolved by a dinner and stroll by the river is a little naïve, but Ally notes how this idea is drawn from a greater truth of mutual understanding, which is only held back by the authoritarian methods of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“He’d lapsed into a wheezy silence, but Huda knew the words left unsaid—traitors had their houses bulldozed. That’s why, when Ally knocked, people had closed their doors and slammed their gates. What was she doing with a traitor’s photo in her handbag? Did she have any idea how dangerous that was? ‘I felt like the old man recognized Yusra.’ Ally twisted toward her. ‘Maybe we can come back another day and try again.’”

The critical element of this passage is the disparity between Ally’s resolve and the judgments of the residents on 82nd Street. Huda asks herself, as the residents must have, whether Ally knows how dangerous the photo is, but none of them tell her about that danger. Ally cannot know the danger if she is not told, so the paradox of silence actually perpetuates Ally’s questions. If asking the question is dangerous, but no one speaks out about that danger, then the question will only be asked again.

“Huda opened her mouth as if she was about to argue, but then she stopped and looked away: at the mansion’s patchy roof, the insects darting about the citrus grove, the statue of the woman curled around her child. She looked everywhere but at Rania, whose face had crumpled like an old paper bag. Above them, the crow rocked back and forth on his branch, moaning like he could feel their pain.”

The broken blood oath comes full circle as Rania tells Huda the truth about Mustafa’s death. While Huda thought that Rania was living a life of opulence, she now notices the damage to the home and the lack of maintenance performed in the yard. Both women broke their oath, and both are now suffering from the sadness that comes with that oath-breaking.

“‘You must understand your actions have repercussions. For you. For me. For your father.’ ‘What’s going to happen?’ Khalid’s lip trembled. ‘Am I to be punished? Are we all going to be punished?’ His words spiraled into the sky, squeaky with fear.”

Despite Khalid’s outspoken distaste for the government and his mother’s cooperation with the mukhabarat, the proposal that some actual consequence might result from his actions destroys his tough demeanor. His trembling lip and squeaky voice reduce him from a rebellious teenager bent on overthrowing the government into a child, worried that he might have caused some irreparable harm to himself and his family.

“Huda fled down the path of concrete slabs, feet barely making a sound, pruning pole balanced at her shoulder, just like her brothers sprinting through wetland meadows. In the backyard, she paused to listen to the Bolt Cutter shriek and Abu Issa squeal. Just like hairless boys in short pants, she thought triumphantly, and carried the tray of tea and jam back inside the house.”

This passage displays a total transformation on Huda’s part, from timid wife and informant to renegade guerilla. Harnessing her brothers’ instruction in the past, she strikes back at the mukhabarat in the only way she can, in secret. Her stealth and satisfaction in committing the act reveal a cunning and skill that foreshadow her later efforts in escaping the country.

“‘Ally will be alright. She has diplomatic status. She has money and options in life that our children will never have. My daughter is my priority. Khalid should be yours.’ Rania guided the Volvo away from the slum and accelerated toward the freeway. ‘Besides, Ally is not as naïve as she pretends. If she’s a journalist, she’ll probably end up writing a book and making a fortune out of this.”

As Huda and Rania finalize their plans to escape from Iraq with their children, Rania is still open to the possibility that they will need to sacrifice Ally for their cause. The rationalization that Ally will survive this betrayal ignores both the ruthlessness of the mukhabarat and the emotional damage that this betrayal will bring to Ally. Even if she does make a fortune from writing a book, that will not repair the damage done to her ability to trust in the future.

“‘I’m your friend, of course.’ Huda bent her head. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night trying to think of how I could prove this to you. But honestly, what can I do or say? You need to look into your heart. Do you really believe that our friendship was a trick?’”

Huda asserts that there is no way to prove that she is Ally’s friend, pointing out the critical divide between individuals. There is no way to confirm one’s intentions in any given situation, and the only rationale that matters is intuition. Huda’s sleepless night could be the result of guilt over her betrayal of Ally, but it could just as easily be the result of fear over what might happen after she tells Ally the whole truth. The reader knows how Huda really feels, but Ally does not, nor can Ally ever really know.

“Our leader, Saddam Hussein, has granted women some of the highest positions in government. The minister of education is a woman. The chief scientific officer for National Security is too. So why should I, a loyal Iraqi woman just like them, not be fit to drive the car of a foreigner? Do you think an Iraqi woman is not good enough for that? Do you not believe the words of our great president, Saddam Hussein, when he says Iraqis are the equal of any nation?”

This passage reflects a turning point in Huda’s approach to government agents. While, earlier, she snuck around with a gardening tool to stab a hornets’ nest near the mukhabarat, here she confronts sexism and oppression head-on. Invoking the president’s name and showing examples of successful Iraqi women, Huda scares off the guards that would try to stop her from saving her child and herself. At the same time, Huda highlights a real paradigm in which sexism persists despite policies and laws meant to eliminate it.