Summer Roof
by Choman Hardi
(Life For Us, Bloodaxe Books)

Every night that summer
when we went to bed on the flat roof,
I stayed awake
watching the opposite roof
where he was,
a tiny light turning on
every time he puffed his cigarette.

Once I was shown his paintings
and I went home
and wrote his name all over my books.

I kept imagining what he would say,
how I would respond.
I imagined being married to him,
looking after him when he fell ill,
cooking for him and washing his hair.
I imagined sleeping on the same roof.

A whole year went by and we never talked
then suddenly an empty house opposite us,
an empty roof, not staring back
and sleepless nights for me.

Years later we met again
the same man with a few fingers missing,
bad tempered, not able to paint.

We never spoke,
we remained on our separate roofs.

Choman Hardi’s family left the Kurdish regions of Iraq for Iran shortly after she was born. They returned when she was five, only to flee again when she was 14, and the Iraqi Government used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988. This poem may be drawn from her time as an adolescent in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, because she describes the romantic dreams that an adolescent girl might have. And when the man on the roof opposite vanishes, we could draw the conclusion that he was possibly imprisoned (and tortured) as a consequence of living in a country under siege.

While this is only conjecture, we know that he is an artist who, by the end of the poem, can no longer paint. He is as angry as any man (or woman) who has suffered the loss of several digits, and with them the ability to work. Even if he could use his toes or his mouth instead, perhaps the desire to paint has been beaten out of him. The poet leaves the possible cause of his afflictions to our imagination.

But, for the summer before he is taken – sleeping outside on the roof on hot summer nights – the poet is able to view the artist’s movements in an intimate way while remaining at a safe distance; a voyeuristic opportunity that she does not waste.

It is possible that the occasion when the poet saw the man’s paintings initiated her attraction towards him, although she may have been watching him at night for some time already. She doesn’t say whether it was he who showed her the paintings, or someone else, nor is his appearance mentioned. We only know the effect that his artistic abilities have on her adolescent heart because she writes his name all over her books; she is infatuated. He is all the more attractive because she doesn’t know him well enough for reality to disprove any attributes that she might credit him with.

It is natural that, having invested her romantic notions in him, she would have sleepless nights when he vanished. This probably understates the romantic longing she experienced, and the curiosity to know what had become of him.

Years later, however, when they meet again, he is missing fingers and cannot paint. He is no longer the man that she fantasised about; he is incomplete. Her idealistic dreams of marriage hadn’t accommodated the possibility of a fingerless, bad-tempered husband. If she had been present to witness the changes in him as they occurred, then perhaps she might have remained attracted to him, but the differences are now so extreme that it isn’t possible. So they remain on their separate roofs. His suffering alienates our poet because she cannot share it.

We can project ourselves into entirely imaginary relationships with strangers when they might not actually suit us at all; ignorance of their real character allows us to fill in the blanks to please ourselves. Reality – in this case a loss of fingers and development of a foul temper – usually dispels any idealistic imposition. It can also distance us from each other because we cannot always identify with the experiences of others. And sometimes we don’t want to.

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