I first saw the apple exactly five years ago this month.
It was silver and spectacular, more than 200 years old and perhaps the finest piece of Iraqi metalwork I've seen outside a museum. About the size of a small cantaloupe, the apple opened to reveal a set of miniature cups where the core should have been. The owner, my longtime friend and carpet merchant Abu Zeinab, told me the apple was used as a portable "bar" --- he said old Baghdadis fashioned such clever carrying cases for their arak, the anise liquor that is popular throughout the Middle East.
I fell hard for the apple that day in 2003, but the price tag was steep and my first priority was buying Persian carpets and Kurdish kilims for my family. Abu Zeinab lovingly wrapped the apple in a polishing cloth and locked it away, promising to keep it aside for me. It became our long-running joke that I would buy the apple on "my last day in Baghdad."
My stint as Baghdad bureau chief ended in late 2005, when I moved to Cairo to open a new regional bureau. Abu Zeinab and his three beautiful daughters came to say goodbye, yet I still didn't splurge on the apple. The time just didn't feel right.
Abu Zeinab's assistant, Waleed, called me in Cairo from time to time, nearly always with grim news from Baghdad. One time it was insurgents executing shopkeepers from the copper market, where Abu Zeinab's fourth-generation antiques store is located. Another time it was militiamen extorting money to prevent the looting of these treasure troves that hold what's called baghdadiyat, Iraqi folklore and artifacts.
At the height of the sectarian violence, Abu Zeinab took the apple and a few of his other most precious wares and hid them under his mattress at home. His shop was shuttered for months. Abu Zeinab, a proud bazaari with a shop crammed with thousands of dollars in rare and magnificent antiques, was forced to become a taxi driver to feed his family.
It was a good move that I didn't buy the apple in 2005 -- I found myself back in Iraq within a year. I have made short, frequent trips ever since, mostly to fill in when our hardworking Baghdad bureau chief takes her two-week leaves. On nearly every trip, I call Abu Zeinab or his assistant. But the days of spending hours listening to stories and sipping dried-lime tea with them were long gone.
I was in Iraq again last week to hold down the fort while Leila (the bureau chief) was away. But this time felt different, perhaps even final. I'm about to begin a one-year leave of absence to study in the States, I just got engaged, and I'm not sure where Baghdad fits into my future, given all the personal upheaval as well as the precarious state of the newspaper industry. I asked my dear Iraqi friend Shatha, whose taste in baghdadiyat is unmatched, to call Abu Zeinab and let him know it was time for the apple.
It was still too dangerous to travel to the copper market, so Abu Zeinab sent his assistant to our hotel with huge black trash bags filled with intricately patterned carpets, silk scarves and silver ornaments. I waited as the carpets were unfurled, the designs touted, the colors praised. I had only one purchase in mind that day: literally, the apple of my eye.
Finally, Shatha broke the news: Abu Zeinab didn't think I was coming back to Iraq and he'd sold the apple to another foreigner last year. None of them had had the heart to tell me. With a flourish, the assistant produced Ottoman seals and Persian filigreed silver to ease the blow. He gave me a beautiful gift: a 180-year-old canister with the silversmith's signature and the date etched into the bottom. The assistant promised he'd search high and low for a similar apple from that era, but I wasn't interested.
I glanced at Shatha, who still looked sheepish over her little white lie about the apple's whereabouts. We began to laugh and to remember how we once had dreams of buying villas side-by-side in Baghdad. We planned to stuff them with museum-worthy baghdadiyat, teach our daughters to make dried-lime tea and hold summer cookouts in the neighborhood. In 2003, those dreams didn't sound as far-fetched as today.
In her usual graceful, soothing manner, Shatha told me the apple saga offers two lessons.
The first is that you should never wait to pursue something you love. The second, she said with a grin, is that I'll never have "a last day in Baghdad."
To all the readers and contributors, thanks so much for helping to create this forum. Thank you to my editors for the space and the Web desk for the support and tips. And, most of all, thank you to all the colorful, fascinating, courageous characters whose stories filled hundreds of notebooks.
This blog will be disabled for the time being, but I hope it's back in some form once I return from the fellowship. See you in a year, inshallah!
Salaam.
