The Nightingale Read online

  The Nightingale

  The Nightingale

  Morgana Gallaway

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For my parents

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgments

  I would never have written this book were it not for my father, James, who was a police advisor in Mosul, Iraq, in 2004. His vast knowledge and expertise have been a tremendous help to me; if there are any errors in accuracy, they are mine and not his. Dad, you were (and are) one of the “good guys.” Huge thanks also to my mother, Molly, for your proofreading skills, constant support, and boundless love and encouragement.

  Thank you so much to my agent, Dan Lazar, for taking a chance on an unknown kid; your enthusiasm and ideas shaped this story into something very special.

  Many thanks to my editor, Danielle Chiotti, for your dedication, hard work, and the way you made this novel feel like itself.

  To the families of Wadi Musa, Jordan, for your lovely welcome and my peek behind the closed doors of the Arab woman’s life. I did not spend as much time with all of you as I’d have liked. One of you in particular inspired me to undertake a full study of the Arab culture, on the chance that I would join it.

  To A.D. the translator, whom I never knew personally, and who would have had a bright future.

  Journalist Jon Ronson’s The Men Who Stare at Goats gave me the first inkling that the war in Iraq is not what it seems, and provided some interesting plot bunnies. Other sources of inspiration came from several Internet blogs, including but not limited to “Xymphora,” “Smoking Mirrors,” and the Alex Jones Web site. Also helpful were the Web sites of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

  For some nice details on weddings, I consulted the blogs of two Iraqi women, both of whom are incredibly interesting to read, and I thank them for sharing their thoughts with the world: “Rosebaghdad” and “Neurotic Iraqi Wife.”

  For further atmosphere of Mosul and the American operations there, I found Colby Buzzell’s My War: Killing Time in Iraq to be a wonderful resource; also Mike Tucker’s Among Warriors in Iraq, about the U.S. forces in Mosul and Fallujah. On Arab culture, The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, by David Pryce-Jones, was invaluable.

  Street descriptions in Mosul are courtesy of the ever-helpful Google Earth.

  Chapter 1

  The road to the market was long and dusty, but at least it was paved. The fresh asphalt was the only extravagance that Leila al-Ghani could find in Mosul in recent days. Her shoes had started to wear out along the length of the road, back and forth on trips from her flat-roofed home in the Wahdah neighborhood. A breeze came skittering down the street, flapping her dress about her legs, and she reached up with a hand to readjust her head scarf. The pins kept it attached to her hair, so her black locks couldn’t peek out, but as always, wearing the hijab and the long modest dress somehow made Leila more aware of her body, not less.

  In a way, Leila was grateful for the walk. In Mosul, vehicles were unsafe—they could trigger the explosives, the IEDs, hidden on the roadside, or provoke a burst of gunfire from some idiot bunch of self-appointed mujahideen. At least the horror of antipersonnel land mines had not made their way to her home city, with their hair triggers that the light weight of a foot would ignite. Regardless, the walk gave her a chance to clear her head.

  Leila’s father disapproved of these walks—a woman walking alone in Mosul was a transgression of its own. Before the war, she could go wherever she liked and even wear Western-style clothing without fear of reprisal. The family had been secure then, with her father’s job as a judge and Baathist party official and their high standing in the community. Leila had been a princess of one of Mosul’s finest families.

  Now she wondered how they would all get through this year alive.

  It was just after ten in the morning, the best time to do the shopping, for all the stalls would be open but the noontime rush had yet to start. It was a chilly day, moving toward the outright cold of the winter months. Mosul was high in elevation, rising on the Levant plains toward the mountains of Kurdistan and Iran. Leila’s corner of the world—for this was how she thought of Mosul, her corner—was the first to develop agriculture some ten thousand years ago. Now the world thought them uncivilized, barely capable of ruling themselves.

  Of course, Leila thought, there’s reason to think that. Civilized people don’t blow themselves up every day.

  The midmorning call to prayer lifted through the air from the loudspeakers atop the minaret tower at the Al-lah Al-Hasib Mosque, a scant thirty meters away to Leila’s left. It had yet to be blown up, though Leila was glad she was not a man and not beholden to attend mosque, or to pray at certain times of the day. She could pray whenever she wanted—or not at all—and no one would notice. Truth be told, she had stopped praying six months ago when her cousin Inaya had her arms cut off by mujahideen, all because Inaya’s husband had been seen chatting with an American soldier. In an insane world, it seemed impossible to believe in the good presence of Allah.

  The call to prayer was loud, wailing, and grated on Leila’s ears. Leila once again adjusted her scarf into place and emerged from the long, asphalt-paved street into the main market area of Mosul.

  It was a chaotic scene, with motorbikes zipping through with honking horns and goods being off-loaded from trucks and donkeys. Large, colorful billboards advertised soda drinks, mobile phones, and grocery stores; fresh new promise in a world that seemed dusty dark. Most of it was only that: promise. The sim cards for the mobiles were unreliable, and the grocery stores usually had empty shelves with a few mean little bags of rice or crates of onions. The soda drinks were all right; Leila was almost addicted to Diet Coke, thanks to her university years in Egypt, and once a week treated herself to a three-hundred-milliliter bottle of it. Not today, however; today she needed to haul a sack of flour back home, down the sand-edged road.

  The way was filled with people: men in white robes with their red- or black-checkered kaffiyeh headdresses, loose about their heads; Iraqi men in Western clothes, jeans and baseball caps; women in groups of two or three, dressed in modest dark colors with scarves pulled tight about their hair, as Leila’s was. Leila noticed a Western man with a gray mustache bartering with a shopkeeper. This one was a journalist, as Leila had seen him before with his press pass. They had a certain annoying curiosity, that flat blue-eyed “Hi, how are you? I’m here to write about your misery” look. Leila did not care for journalists. It was the journalists in the West who brayed about Saddam Hussein’s evilness; it was the journalists in Iraq who fed the flames of anti-American hatred. Without the constant chatter of the press, Leila thought something might be accomplished.

  She did not look twice at the gray-mustached American, or his armed, privately hired bodyguards.

  Instead, Leila went to the Afdhel Baqqal, the “Best Grocer” shop. It was owned by her mother’s cousin Khaled and thus the flour and rice were always
a few dinars cheaper for the al-Ghani family. She stepped across the muddy drainage ditch, taking care of her shoes, and ducked inside the low entrance to the store.

  “Al-salaam alaykum,” Leila said.

  Khaled, hunched in a lazy posture behind the counter, returned the greeting and asked after her parents.

  “They are well,” she replied.

  “Good, good,” said Khaled. “And Fatima?”

  Leila smirked. Khaled was engaged to her older sister, Fatima, and had been for five years while he earned enough money to marry. It was set in stone, yet Khaled insisted on acting as though he courted Fatima. “She is also well,” said Leila, occupying herself by inspecting a row of imported goods. “Skippy…” she read aloud.

  “Ah!” Khaled jumped up. “We get this from America. It is called peanut butter. You should try some, I only charge three thousand dinars for it. The other shops ask much more. Your sister will like it!”

  “Maybe next time,” said Leila. She read the rest of the peanut butter label in English. She was proud of her English. At the university in Cairo, classes had been conducted in English and Leila discovered a natural affinity for the language. It was not as expressive as Arabic, but had greater clarity, especially in terms of science and government—and those were subjects that interested Leila.

  “I hear your cousin on your father’s side is coming to town,” Khaled said. “The doctor. What is his name?”

  “Abdul,” said Leila, running her fingers along the clean plastic cases of bottled water. “Or, Abu Mohammed, if you like.” Abdul the doctor was older, thirty-five, and had a son named Mohammed, hence his title of Abu. His wife had died three years ago in childbirth, resulting in the stillbirth of their second son. The man was on the prowl for a new wife to take care of five-year-old Mohammed. Leila figured Khaled was worried this other cousin might snatch away his fiancée.

  “He is still widowed?” Khaled persisted.

  “Yes,” she sighed. “Still widowed. Probably he will marry Fatima.” A look of alarm crossed Khaled’s face, and Leila almost giggled at his expression. “I am not serious!” she said. “Fatima is intended for you, cousin, and everyone knows it. Don’t worry.”

  He scowled. “You go too far with your jokes, cousin Leila,” he said.

  Leila just smiled. “Can I get three kilograms of flour, please?” she asked.

  Khaled nodded, but was slow in measuring the flour. He handed the cloth bag to her with a surly glance, which improved a small measure when Leila unfolded her bills to pay him. She thanked him for the flour and settled the large bag into the crook of her arm for the walk home. By the time she wormed her way out of the market, it was nearly eleven o’clock. It was best to get back; Father would want his meal prepared, and Mother and Fatima would need help chopping tomatoes.

  Instead of taking the more direct route, Leila circled the outside of the marketplace once and took a spur road that ran at a diagonal to the shiny black asphalt. It was a peculiarity of hers, never taking the same way coming as going; a friend at the university had called her obsessive-compulsive. It was difficult to argue in the safe, cloistered environment of Cairo University, but in Mosul this habit felt like prudence, not eccentricity.

  Her intuition proved itself worthwhile as she came out onto the new paved road. An American convoy roared by just as she stepped out, and Leila waited for them to pass. She held a fascinated dread for the wide-slung American vehicles, with their thick armor and fifty-caliber machine guns swinging about from the top. This group was likely from the American base in Mosul, Forward Operating Base Marez, from which daily patrols originated.

  They went fast as they passed by the spur road and Leila averted her eyes from the convoy when it got close. It would not do to be seen gawping at the Americans and making eye contact with strange men. The Quran prohibited gazing between unmarried men and women, and as for gazing between Iraqis and Americans…Leila could just imagine the trouble. Best to stare at the space in front of her feet as she walked. The growl of the petroleum-fueled engines faded and Leila coughed. The air was tinged with exhaust.

  As she walked the rest of the way home, her mind turned over the presence of the Americans. They drove with their windows down and popular music blaring, cigarettes dangling from fingertips and eyes concealed behind fashionable reflective sunglasses that wrapped around their heads. They wore electronic gear to excess, looking half machine with wires and antennae sticking up from their helmets. They gave out chocolate bars. Flashing toothy smiles and thumbs-up to every kid they passed by, the Americans seemed like creatures from another planet. In the first year after “hostilities” ended (Leila felt like laughing at that particular declaration, in retrospect) the soldiers interacted more with the local people, or so her family had told her, but after the Iraqis’ insurgency began, the Americans retreated into their technology. The sooner the Americans left, the better it would be for everyone. Leila did not like trouble.

  The al-Ghani family’s home was large, with five bedrooms, two sitting rooms, the kitchen, and even a bathroom with a porcelain toilet. Ever since Leila’s older brother, Naji, had moved out to his own place with his wife, it left the house with four inhabitants, all with their own bedroom. It was a luxury for which Leila was grateful. The house was surrounded by high walls, with a metal gate that faced the street.

  It was this gate Leila slipped through with her package of flour, and she took off her shoes at the front door before going inside. Her flat brown leather slippers joined the pile of tennis shoes and sandals heaped outside the door. Clad now in her stockings, she came into the blue-tiled entrance hall.

  “Mother!” she called. “I’m home!”

  “In here,” came the reply. Leila peeked her head inside the kitchen to find a large pot of water boiling on the gas, and a basketful of tomatoes waiting to be chopped. “Ah, there you are,” said Umm Naji. She bustled into the kitchen from the small storage pantry carrying a load of potatoes. “You took a long time.”

  “No longer than usual,” said Leila. “The market was crowded, and Khaled wanted to talk about Fatima.”

  Umm Naji’s face glowed at the mention of the betrothal. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I think maybe this is the year they will marry. If all goes well, inshallah.”

  “If God wills,” Leila echoed. “Shall I peel the potatoes?”

  “Yes, yes,” Umm Naji said. She sat her large frame down on a stool in front of the boiling pot, and brought out a knife with which to peel the potatoes. “You chop the fruits, I will do the rest.”

  Leila sighed. She preferred peeling potatoes. Tomatoes, especially these soft ones, always got away from her in a big mess of seeds. Mother had her ways, though, and it did no good to try and switch jobs around. “I saw an American convoy on our road,” she said. “Going fast.”

  Umm Naji snorted. “Better not mention it to your father.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Leila said. She added quietly, “He might tell his friends.”

  Umm Naji looked up and glared at Leila. “Don’t speak of such things,” she said. “What your father does is his business, and we must not hold opinions about it.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Leila mumbled.

  Several moments of silence followed as Leila chopped tomatoes with a sharp serrated knife. Her father’s political opinion was a sore subject. He clung to the old ways, and spoke more and more longingly of Saddam’s regime, when he had been a party official, and a judge on the local circuit. Now that she was grown up, Leila realized that he must have participated in Saddam’s brutal brand of justice, but she hoped that Tamir al-Ghani had been fair when he could. Besides, those days were over now. At least, everyone had thought them over, until those horrible, insulting pictures came out of the American prison. It made Leila think there was no such thing as a good government.

  After the Abu Ghraib pictures, her father had started staying out late at night and getting mysterious phone calls, sometimes shuffling odd guests through the house. He
became angry. His bad temper simmered around the house. He attended mosque more than ever before, and sometimes the imam came for supper. Leila listened in on the men’s conversation from a hiding place behind the wall where there was a loose brick. She heard talk of insurgency, of the noble cause of al-Qaeda in Iraq, of something called Ansar al-Sunna, of using cell phones in dangerous ways, of how the Americans might be hurt. She heard her father grumble about the occupation and the lies of the West. The imam always spoke of the Quran, quoting the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet, and advocating a return to strict Muslim law. When they were together, the men’s voices grew louder and angrier, and Leila heard more of “the new Crusade” and the “final battle against the Western invaders.”

  Leila twisted her mouth, focusing on chopping the last of the tomatoes. She did not believe in such anger; all she wanted was to be free, open, fashionable. She hated the way Father had become since the Americans arrived. It was like walking on eggshells with him, and where Leila had once enjoyed talking politics with him, now he was a different man. He was hard and strict and bitter.

  “Get the oven going, Leila,” her mother said. “I’ll make the dough for the bread.”

  Leila nodded.

  “Tomorrow we’ll start making the delicacies for Abdul’s visit,” said Umm Naji with a new lift in her voice. “We’re all looking forward to that.”

  Leila made a noncommittal noise in her throat. She was not looking forward to cousin Abdul’s visit. Ever since Fatima had let slip that Leila wanted to go to postgraduate school to study medicine, Abdul spoke to Leila in patronizing tones and kept hinting that he could teach her about being a doctor.