I stopped in front of our house in 'Nadhimiyyah,' and a strange feeling overwhelmed me that the house had shrunk in size, or perhaps it was our dreams that had grown, making places seem smaller. It pained me to see the palm tree that had been a towering giant in my memory, and I recalled my phantom self circling the house reviewing lessons under the towering shade of bitter orange trees. I remember how we would harvest their fruit, and my mother—may God have mercy on her—would squeeze and boil them, bottling them to save the taste of summer for winter nights.
Neighbors had left, and the alley's features had changed. There was no familiar face to greet me, so the street, despite its noise and crowds, seemed a barren land of souls. Spaces narrowed, and random urbanization and shops expanded at the expense of Karrada's original identity, until the landmarks of my childhood were almost erased. Only a faint trace or altered features remained of the 'Bata' shoe factory and the old 'Arrack' factory, as if they were no longer in their familiar places, or as if time had moved them to leave strange emptiness. Only the shrine of 'Sayyid Idris' in 'Zawiyah' remained fixed in its place, a sacred beacon of the descendants of Hussein, visited by pilgrims for vows and blessings as I always knew it in holiday seasons.
With difficulty, I traced the old boundaries in my imagination: here were the 'Indian Yards' and the famous Capital Secretariat swimming pool, and there on the other side of 'Karrada Inside' street was my uncle's shop in the 'Policekhana' area, adjacent to the post office and Hajj Mahdi's bathhouse. The 'Qaimar' sellers who used to adorn early mornings with their trays had disappeared from the scene.
I contemplated 'Karrada Inside' street, which began in the 1930s as an earthen causeway cutting through orchards for carts and beasts of burden, before extending to reach the 'Seven Palaces' and then to 'Hussein Al-Hamd' café near Jadiriyah on the way to the University of Baghdad. In that café, from its wooden chairs, the first stirrings of my political consciousness began, and my vision of the world took shape. In my youth, the street was crowded with doctors' clinics, pharmacies, Dr. Abdul Majeed Hospital, and grocery and vegetable shops, transforming from a path through orchards to a vital artery teeming with shoppers, patients, and passersby.