When I went to the first grade of elementary school, we had a driver who drove me almost every day to school and back. It wasn’t uncommon to have a driver in Baghdad’s early 80s, since most of the families had one car for driving to work and had to arrange a driver who had a car or a school bus for their children.
The name of our driver was Djabbar. Djabbar was in his early twenties. He was very kind, friendly and one of the most patient people I have ever known. I know he was patient, because I used to ask him question after question the second I got into the car until I got out. Questions like: „What’s that building?“, „How do you make the car go faster?“ or „What’s the name of your grandmother?“ and he answered and explained everything instead of telling me to shut up and just let him drive in peace. The car rides with him were like additional school lessons.
At the age of 6 I thought all the people in the world lived the way l did. I thought they all had a house, a car, plenty of food to eat and enough clothes in their wardrobes.
It was Djabbars stories, about his family, the way they lived and his daily struggles, that opened my eyes to a different side of life. Once he told me that his parents could not buy meat every day and that he was fed up with eggplants, potatoes and zucchinis. I asked him: „Why don’t you just buy enough meat to cook every day?“ he laughed and started to teach me about money, monthly salaries and prices. It was basically a math lesson. Way better than anything I’ve ever learned at school. He explained to me how much he earned by driving and how much he was able to spend on food. He told me that his father worked hard to pay the rent, that his mother was an illiterate housewife and that his two younger siblings were still in school. He was not at all complaining or trying to make me feel sorry for him, he was just explaining the facts. Suddenly money had a meaning to me and prices were not just numbers written on things. Those numbers made a big difference: the bigger they were the less people could afford the goods they were on. I didn’t know the word „affordable“ but I understood its meaning.
The thing I enjoyed the most was when he talked about driving. He loved driving. He explained everything in the car to me.
I watched him from the back seat and he pointed at the pedals: „See, when you want the car to go faster, you step on the accelerator. If you want to slow down you have to step on the brake pedal.“, „with the steering wheel you can change the cars direction, when you turn it to the left the front wheels do too!“
I asked him about an orange button on the side of the dashboard and he said: „If the back window is misted you have to press this button. It’s a heater. Do you see the narrow lines on the rear windows? They’re wires that get hot, thus warm the window and make the fog disappear.
We even fixed a puncture together one day. He let me lift the car with the jack and I felt as strong as hulk. That day I came home with black hands and I told my mother proudly: „I changed a flat tire.“
After almost a 6 months going to school with Djabbar I „theoretically“ knew how to drive. A knowledge that helped me 6 years later, when my sister started driving and I showed her where to turn on the car lights and the „anti-mist-button“.
Once he was telling me about his grandmother who used to make mats, hand fans and brooms from palm leaves for them. I couldn’t imagine what he meant. So the next day he took some leaves from a small palm tree that was growing in front of my school and braided a tiny mat, while he was waiting for me. He gave it to me and I used it as a mat for my Barbie.It was almost spring when he picked me up from school with a big smile on his face. As soon as I sat in the car he told me that he was getting engaged and that he was very happy and excited about it. He said his fiancée was very pretty and had just graduated from the teaching institute and was waiting to be assigned as a teacher for an elementary school. I felt happy for him and tried to picture his wedding. I was hoping that he would invite me.
The following days he always talked about the wedding preparations. He would live in his parents‘ house. He painted out his room with a friend and his mother sold an old piece of jewelry, that she had kept for this day, to buy him a bed and a cupboard. Everything was set for his wedding. The school year was almost over and summer spread out its heat all over Baghdad.
On one Saturday morning I left the house with the school bag on my back and headed to the car. But Djabbar and his light green Toyota Corona weren’t there, instead there was a white car with an elderly looking man standing outside the car and talking to my father.
When my father saw me coming he said: „This is Khudaier. From now on he will take you to school“.
I felt upset and asked: „Why? Where is Djabbar?“
My father opened the car door for me and said: „He was sent to the front!“
I sat in the back of the car, thinking of my father’s words „He was sent to the front“. I knew what he meant. Djabarr was gone; he was recruited to be on the front fighting against Iran in a war he hadn’t chosen. I never heard from him again. I always hoped that he came back safely and got married to that beautiful teacher.
After that day my drives to school were silent.