A Brighter Fear Read Online Free

she dug us out with her bare hands, split and bleeding. But when she found us, we had died. And she cried and cried; cursing herself, saying that if she had come home a minute earlier or walked faster, we would still be alive.
    I told Papa about that dream and he looked at me with such compassion and love that I finally found the courage to ask him what had happened to Mama.
    I knew she had disappeared, of course.  I was aware that one day she was there and the next she was not, and that afterwards Papa would not again speak the name of Saddam.  And I thought she had been taken, but I had never asked about the details. I had never wanted to know the details, because knowing them might make her gone forever.
    Papa rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his curly hair, and through the banging and crashing of bombs, and the ground shaking and the house foundations moaning, he finally told me.
    “On October 28th 1999, at half past four, I went into a meeting at work. As I left my desk, my phone rang. I ignored it; I didn’t want to be late. Five minutes later, as I sat in the room, talking to my bosses, my mobile rang. I apologised, and turned it off without checking who was calling. Ten minutes later the secretary knocked on the door and told me I had a visitor. I was annoyed. My boss was looking to see if I was suitable for promotion. I asked the secretary to tell the visitor to call back tomorrow.
    “A few minutes later, there was shouting coming from the corridor and doors opening and banging shut, and Tariq, a man who worked with your Mama, barged into the office shouting and waving his arms around. To me it was a stream of words; I couldn’t tell what he was talking about. It was my boss who understood what had happened.
    “Your Mama had been arrested. She… she had just gone and I… I’d been too wrapped up in what I was doing to think. What if I’d answered the phone in my office, or my mobile? I could’ve followed. I could’ve found her. Got her back again.”
    His voice trailed away and I kept my eyes away from him, afraid that if he looked at me he would’ve seen my face saying he was a fool to think that. Probably I would have neither of them now.
    “Your Mama’s legal success rate had earned her respect from unlikely admirers. She was wanted by the… the highest authority, to serve them. That went against everything she believed. Refusing the offer to work for them was to defy the regime and its leader. That wasn’t acceptable. She refused to bow to pressure.
    “I can guess where they took her. I reported her missing, of course, but after a week of going to the police every day I was told it would be in my, and your, best interests if I didn’t return. That I should forget her and if I did keep coming back, you might not have a papa any more. I couldn’t put you in danger. Your mama had purposefully kept going to work, not hidden away from them, or run away, to keep them from us.”
    I had listened to whispered gossip on street corners and knew some of what happened to those who were arrested, especially those considered to be political prisoners. I had heard the stories of torture. But I never knew if it was true or not, and there was nobody to ask. Were they urban myths made to keep us in fear? Or true accounts from the few who made it out alive? I didn’t know. I assumed Papa had heard these things too. I wondered how he managed to keep his hope in her still being alive. What would he have left if he could no longer hope for her return?
    As I sat in the protection of his arms listening to the bombs drop, I thought of the possibilities: if Mama was still in prison, had been there for nearly three and a half years, then how much suffering had she endured? Was she still enduring? Was it selfish of Papa and me to want her to still be alive, if every day for her brought more torture? Was it better to believe she was dead, and had been released from her pain?
    But I wanted her to be alive.
    I