Short Fiction by Muhammad Khudayyir

An Autumn Vision

By Muhammad Khudayyir

Translated by Nazim Mizhir

Autumn arrived with a new vision, different from those of autumns past. It wasn’t like the visions of the riverbank: “The Severed Head,” “The Stopped Clocks of Town Squares,” “The Island of Statues,” and “The Hanged Flies”—a series of visions wet with the dew of dawn, pulsing like the heart of the great river.

Every face in this autumn vision is shrouded in fog and panic, except for a single clear visage. It’s that of an older woman who is moving ahead: maternal, calm, and resigned to her fate. A throng of people, each of them carrying only a few belongings, pours from a bridge or ferry on the river’s opposite bank. As soon as they reach the shore, they scatter in every direction, leaving behind the deliberate old woman, walking as slow as a turtle.

The vision returned later, to be examined slowly, contemplatively, and with a searching gaze, now enriched with additional details. The scene unfolds, sometimes pausing on a small fragment that is its focal point: the woman’s ancient face as it emerges from the mist behind the dispersing crowd. Other details freeze within the frame of vision, intertwined with her face: the rippling surface of the river, the boats, the wooden stakes of an old bridge, and the braided iron wires that dangle in the water. Other elements remain indistinct—perhaps a squadron of aircraft, perhaps a cloud of fear. Hours later, the crowd surges and disperses again, along with other details, and the same ancient face, as if emerging from nowhere, makes her way like a river turtle toward the ferry landing.

I went out before sunset to investigate the source of this new vision. Stillness gripped the ships that were anchored on the murky water, where fleeting breezes stirred withered yellow leaves, creating a faint rustling sound beneath my feet. I arrived at the landing that carries people from this bank to the opposite one—the very place that has appeared, again and again, in the vision of this autumn: the remains of the bridge’s wooden pillars, the braided wires fallen among the rocks from which the water has receded, a wrecked iron ship eroded by the waves, and tethered boats gently swaying.

I waited for a long time, but nothing happened. Not even the faintest warning flashed by. The last ferry returning from the far bank stopped, and a few passengers disembarked. Darkness descended, shrouding the giant trees along the shore, and the lights of scattered ships flickered on. The ferry landing was empty. A few birds’ wings swept across the river’s sky one final time. The recurring vision sharpened the image of the old woman, who resembled the original grandmother of long ago—the midwife of hundreds of births, the turtle grandmother—with her slow, swaying gait and her smooth, dark-green face. Forty years later, the face remained the same, unmarred by a single crack or furrow.

* * *

That day in the spring of 1941, when British ships landed their Indian soldiers from the island of al-Karka to occupy al-Ashar, my family sent me, along with my midwife, to my relatives in the village of Nahr Khuz, near Abu al-Khasib. The midwife took me to a house built of river mud. We had arrived at night. The next day, I realized how large that house was, with its five rooms and the long wall that surrounded it, separating the house from a river that ran alongside it, amid a dense palm grove. The following day, to my surprise, I discovered that I was not alone in that house. In addition to two elderly relatives who were living in one of the rooms, I was surprised by ten boys evacuated from the local orphanage by the city’s security committee and placed in the custody of the elderly midwife, after the residents’ resistance to the occupation forces had intensified. The city workers and police withdrew from the city and chaos spread, followed by the looting of homes and the theft of property.

That morning, the midwife invited us all to breakfast. We sat on the floor around a long, low table, raised a foot or so off the ground. It was a quick introductory meal, and my eyes, from the rim of the metal cup, darted between the quiet faces, all intent on sipping their milk. We were all thin, dark-skinned boys; the oldest of us was no more than ten. After breakfast, we went out to the river through one of the house’s three doors. It led to a sloping stone staircase, the last rungs of which were covered by the river’s waters, shaded by the trees on its banks. The river was not wide, but its clear water tricked our eyes with its depth and the tiny fish that teemed within it. The orchard’s stillness pressed down on us, forcing us to bend our heads. In the evening, we returned to the low table and watched the midwife move slowly behind us as she distributed bowls of hot soup and pieces of fresh bread. We were to drink water from clay jugs and cups. We heard one of us say, “She’s as slow as a turtle.”

In that place, in that solitude, this simile clung to our imaginations like the clear, sticky sap of the jujube fruit, more than any real turtle we saw leaving the river that morning. And when she sat at the head of the table, the dim light of the lantern illuminated part of her green face, as she gazed at us, her small eyes beneath faint eyebrows. She seemed like a deeply rooted tree, her peaceful turtle-like face concealing her long life and her arduous journey between bellies and births, until the ferry cast her ashore on this autumn vision. Nothing about her had changed.

* * *

I returned to the apartment late in the evening. None of my friends had arrived yet. I gazed out through the window that overlooked the bus station, watching the scattered movements of the people returning home. The slow boarding of the buses, followed by their sluggish departure, left bus shelters, like solitary hats, scattered along the sidewalks, pressed down by the hot autumn humidity and framed by the dim light that filtered from lampposts and hotel facades. From this elevated vantage point, something was perpetually descending. I didn’t know.

It wasn’t exactly something I knew, but I felt it come close to my eyes as an inaudible ringing assaulted my ears and a brush stroked my skin up and down. The room was sparsely furnished, its most important feature a long table that didn’t rise far off the floor. I sat at the edge of the table and sketched the face of Turtle Grandma, as I remembered it from forty years ago. I had made several sketches by the time I heard my friends’ footsteps creeping into the room. They were three of my nightly companions. They passed the sketches around as I asked if they knew this woman with her charcoal-brown complexion. “One of you will finally remember who she is,” I said. “We used to call her Turtle Grandma. That was many years ago.” The memory didn’t shock any of them. Then the others arrived with a flurry of noise and laughter, and one of my friends blurted out, “Guess who said: ‘A battle of your soul against the spectre of fidelity, of mine against the spectre of friendship.’”

“I don’t know. Victor Hugo?” I said.

“James Joyce,” he said.

The group, the same group we had every night, settled down, all ten of us, on the floor around the low table. I went to the other room, took their favorite bottles of wine out of the refrigerator, and placed them in front of them. “It’s a surprise,” I said. “Tonight you’ll be drinking from earthenware glasses.”

I took out a set of brown ceramic glasses. We raised our glasses, and one of the friends said, “To the clay!”

We filled the glasses, and I raised mine: “To the lost turtle!”

Leaning slightly forward, they quickly drank down the wine. I watched them from the rim of my glass. They came every night and gathered at my place, sometimes bringing their own wine and food. At the end of the night, they dispersed, and the apartment was empty of them, leaving me alone. I might have been the only solitary one among them, as they had their own homes to which they returned, their wives and children about whom I know little, since they did not speak of their families. They came alone, and they left alone. They departed swiftly, leaving no trace or sign of their presence. Their presence here was, as always, a fleeting visit or a once-in-a-lifetime encounter. Their names slipped from my memory, and I knew nothing of their addresses or where they lived. Before they came to the apartment, I wasn’t sure they would return. Their uncertain gathering at the beginning of the night ended in a ghostly dispersal. They came from a place that was far, far away, and then they dispersed.

I went to the window and looked out at the square. A few people moved among the bus shelters or sat beneath them. The last bus was preparing to leave. And that mysterious thing kept pouring down. Someone was saying, “Homelands are the framework for great friendships,” and I hadn’t been following the conversation. They were drunk, and the movements of their hands holding glasses or cigarettes slowed. They seemed like ghosts burdened by loyalty, huddled together and withdrawn.

There was the table and their shadows mingling on the walls, pressed together for ages, motionless. The ceiling fan whirred slowly, dispersing the damp, drunken breaths and cigarette smoke, its hum mingling with the low, heavy tones of the last, rough words.

They had grown old, and, for the first time, I glimpsed the early furrows carving into their faces every time they straightened or leaned back. The fingers of scorching years had passed over their faces, etching profound marks over forty long years. Before tonight, they had never watched the pasts of their tranquil days resting in the shade, the shade of the roads, the palm trees, and the dreams. But tonight, they grasped their ages, feeling their movement beneath their fingers, on the smooth surface of the earthenware cups. They were less vigorous, less inclined to speak, less noisy, and calmer, gazing from this place at a valley shimmering beneath their wavering eyes, or bidding farewell to a ship leaving the harbor waters for the sea. And though I had cared little for the passing of years, I too clutched the barrier of the see-sawing journey, peering at the vision that had occupied me through countless nights.

Ah, I realized, in that moment, that they too were part of this vision: the weary, aged, quiet, drunken friends, the close-knit group… there… here… everywhere. Their conversation, their voices, their disparate words coming from a place that was far, far away.

Night was advancing. I must have fallen asleep, for I found the room empty of my companions when I woke. The glasses lay overturned on the table beside the empty bottles, and among them lay the turtle-faced grandmother, covered in a dried pink liquid.

* * *

I left the apartment at dawn and hurried to the ferry dock. I felt the river’s dewy breeze as I drew ever closer. In the same spot, a pontoon bridge appeared, stretching to the opposite bank. A long convoy of military trucks was crossing it, heading toward the eastern side of the river. A long convoy, laden with soldiers and equipment, weighed down the pontoon, dragging pieces of corrugated iron across the bridge, causing them to rub against each other and sway.

The day passed, and I returned to the river at night. The bridge was still standing, and the convoy of trucks continued to cross.

None of my friends came to the apartment that night. They didn’t appear the following night, either.

September 1983

Muhammad Khudayyir is an Iraqi author from Basra, where he still lives. He was trained as a teacher of Arabic and worked in that capacity in southern Iraq for thirty years. His first short stories appeared in Al Adeeb Al Iraqi in 1962. In 2004, he received the Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Award for his contribution to literature. Several of his short stories, as well as his 1996 novel Basrayatha, have been translated into English, among other languages.

Nazim Mizhir is a short-story writer, novelist, and literary translator. Born in Diwaniya in 1955, he graduated from the Department of European Languages at the University of Basra in 1978. He received the Sharjah Award for his first book, The Soul’s Garden (1999), and the Katara Award for his novel Wings of Fire (2020). His other works include the short-story collection Night Railway Station (2010), The Old Faithful and Other Translated Science-Fiction Stories, and an Arabic translation of Ray Bradbury’s Mars Is Heaven. A volume of his translations featuring selected works by Iraqi short-story writers is forthcoming.