Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

  “That was pretty sick. My God. But why did he allow me to witness all this? I asked Abu Anmar about the four beggars, and he confirmed it. Everyone in the area had heard the story, and the local people were afraid and on the lookout because the killer had killed the beggars, who had become famous in death if not in life. He had strangled them, and then, by some bizarre and complicated operation, he’d put their hands around each other’s throats.”

  “There are certain points on the shoulders, the back, and the spinal column, and if you put acupuncture needles in them, all the muscles in the body tense up and go rigid. Maybe that’s what happened to the four madmen,” Saidi had said.

  “The beggars,” Mahmoud corrected him.

  “Yes, the beggars. The traffic lights will miss them and the taxis in the traffic jams,” Saidi said with a chuckle. He stopped the car at the end of Lane 7, where Mahmoud always got out. Mahmoud asked him whether he should pursue that story.

  “There are other stories that are more worthwhile. Forget about that one,” he said.

  Mahmoud got out and walked off. He was exhausted and felt a heaviness in his gut. He went over in his head the interesting conversations he had heard, especially over lunch. It was a fine lunch that Brigadier Majid had prepared in honor of the visiting journalists. The table was covered with food and drink, everything except alcohol. Mahmoud gathered that the brigadier wanted to keep his image intact in the eyes of the parties in the ruling coalition. He was in a sensitive position. Just as he was spying on ordinary people, there were people spying on him and reporting on him to the government parties, which did not look kindly on him because of his past and his work serving the old regime. But they had to accept him because of his acknowledged competence and because the Americans supported him and protected him from the whims and reckless excesses of their Iraqi counterparts.

  Saidi and the brigadier had gone over all the country’s problems, and unlike those in power, they seemed to know the solutions. There was stupidity and shortsightedness among the new rulers. Solutions were readily available. All these problems could be solved in half an hour, at least in theory, if people genuinely had the will to solve them.

  But there were two fronts now, Mahmoud said to himself—the Americans and the government on one side, the terrorists and the various antigovernment militias on the other. In fact “terrorist” was the term used for everyone who was against the government and the Americans.

  Mahmoud turned his digital recorder back on and brought it close to his lips. “Aren’t they both, in one way or another, working with the Americans?” he said. “Why did they want to give me the impression they were such patriots? What is this chaos? Oof! I’ll have to say no to Saidi next time he invites me on one of his trips, which always make me dizzy. My work at the magazine ends at three or four in the afternoon. That’s when my relationship with Saidi ends too. I have a job on his magazine, not in his life.”

  In the morning Mahmoud put on his last two clean pieces of clothing and put his dirty clothes in a large bag to give them to the Akhawain laundry next to the hotel when he went out. He went down to the lobby and was surprised to find Hazem Abboud sitting with Abu Anmar and Luqman, the only Algerian in the whole of Iraq and a long-standing resident of the Orouba Hotel. It would have been hard to detect that Luqman was Algerian because he spoke the Iraqi dialect so well. Everyone was gathered around the table, chatting over thick cream, pastries, and cups of strong tea. Veronica, the plump chambermaid, and her teenage son were flitting from room to room with a mop and a bucket, making their weekly cleaning rounds.

  Had Hazem slept the night at the hotel? Mahmoud greeted him and Luqman and Abu Anmar, and they asked him to have breakfast with them. He sat down with a hot cup of tea, then thought back over some of the mysterious exchanges of the previous evening. He took a large gulp of the tea, as if he wanted to erase those uncomfortable memories.

  Mahmoud turned to Hazem to ask where he had spent the night, when he had come to the hotel, and how the exhibition of photographs was. But Abu Anmar interrupted him.

  “Mr. Sawadi,” he said, “I’d be careful going out—the police are all over the place. A man was killed this morning.”

  4

  The man was none other than Abu Zaidoun, the old barber, who was all skin and bones. They found him slumped on his white plastic chair in front of the barber shop that had once been his—he had handed it over to his youngest son years ago when he could no longer stand on his own two feet. He looked to be asleep, at least to anyone seeing him from afar, but the handle of a pair of stainless steel scissors protruded from the top of his breastbone, at the base of his neck. Someone had slipped into the shop while the son was out having a cup of tea at the cart on the corner, where the lane met the main street, and had grabbed the scissors and jabbed them into the old man, who was far off in the fantasy world of those with advanced dementia.

  There were those who had long expected him to meet such an end. Abu Zaidoun wasn’t going to die quietly in bed: divine justice wouldn’t allow it. The medical report said he had died of a heart attack. Maybe the criminal had killed a man who was already dead. The old man’s sons were satisfied with this explanation, not having the energy to pursue a vendetta.

  When Faraj the estate agent heard that Abu Zaidoun had been killed, he said, “Poor man! It only took a little push for him to meet the Supreme Comrade.” He spoke with a touch of sarcasm, stretching out the word “comrade” with a wry smile.

  Others recalled the man’s long career and how he had been responsible for sending so many young men off to war. He had been active in Baath Party organizations, doggedly pursuing all those who deserted from the army or tried to avoid military training. He may have taken part in raids on some houses, and he wasn’t short of enemies, but no one knew who had killed him. It clearly wasn’t random. At the condolences ceremony people did their best to cite Abu Zaidoun’s virtues—how he had helped others and done favors for those in need and how, in the end, his record as a zealous, merciless party member applied only to the first years of the Iran-Iraq War. That’s how everyone wanted to remember him; death gives the dead an aura of dignity, so they say, and makes the living feel guilty in a way that compels them to forgive those who are gone.

  There was at least one person who wasn’t prepared to make excuses for Abu Zaidoun. Justice at some later stage wouldn’t do. It had to happen now. Later there would be time for revenge, for constant torment by a just god, infinite torment, because that’s how revenge should be. But justice had to be done here on earth, with witnesses present. Elishva had a vague sense of this when her friend Umm Salim told her in amazement how the wicked old man had been murdered. Umm Salim herself had once vowed to slaughter a sheep at her front door if God took revenge on Abu Zaidoun, but now she had forgotten all that. It had been more than twenty years since Salim, her eldest son, had been killed in battle. But Elishva hadn’t forgotten. Umm Salim had three other children and a house bustling with life, whereas old Elishva had only a mangy cat, some photographs, and old furniture. When she heard about the murder of Abu Zaidoun, she thanked God and remembered one of her solemn vows—she would light twenty pink candles on the altar of the Virgin Mary in the Armenian church, and she wouldn’t leave the altar till all the candles had burned down and the twenty wicks had sunk into the molten wax. Then the heartache at the loss of her son would also come to an end: she would see the justice of the Lord, and He would deserve her thanks.

  If she asked Father Josiah, he would tell her to ask for forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun—she never would. If she asked God or Saint George the Martyr or the ghost of her son, they would tell her she didn’t need to ask forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun. She was fully entitled to seek revenge because it would strengthen her faith and give her ailing spirit the energy it needed to keep on living.

  • • •

  TWO YOUNG MEN were sitting opposite Hadi at his usual bench in Aziz the Eg
yptian’s coffee shop. They were plump with downy mustaches and were both wearing pink shirts and black linen trousers, like fellow members of a sports team or club. They had short hair and sideburns trimmed level with their ears, and they laughed often and told jokes. Since arriving that morning and sitting down in front of Hadi, they had drunk four cups of tea. One of them placed a small digital recorder in the middle of the wooden table. They both looked at Hadi. “Tell us the story of the corpse,” they said in unison.

  “The story of the Whatsitsname, you mean.” Hadi insisted on correcting them, using the name he had given his creation. It wasn’t really a corpse, because “corpse” suggested a particular person or creature, and that didn’t apply in the case of the Whatsitsname. Hadi could tell his story at length, and he usually did, but the sight of the digital recorder made him nervous, and the mood in the neighborhood at the time was unsettled and confused. Aziz brought over a fresh glass of tea and put it in front of Hadi. He gave him a double wink, a gesture that Hadi immediately understood. Aziz was uneasy with the two young men. They were from the Mukhabarat, or military intelligence, or some other security agency, and the meeting would no doubt end in Hadi being arrested.

  “The Whatsitsname has died, I’m sorry to say,” said Hadi.

  “Died how?” one of them said. “No, tell us from the start—how did you make the corpse?”

  “The Whatsitsname,” Hadi corrected them again.

  “Yes, the Whatsitsname. Tell us the story, and the drinks are on us.”

  “I tell you. He’s dead.”

  At that point Hadi stood up and called out to Aziz to take away the fresh tea and put it back in the pot. He walked out of the coffee shop, leaving the two young men puzzled. They tried to persuade Aziz to talk, but his lips were sealed. They stayed another half hour, talking to each other in whispers. Their broad smiles were gone. They gave Aziz five thousand dinars, much more than the price of all the teas, and left.

  At midday Hadi went back to the coffee shop. He sat in his usual place, and a tray of rice and beans arrived from Ali al-Sayed’s restaurant nearby. Hadi sat there eating, and when Aziz had finished cleaning some glasses and plates behind the counter, he came over and sat opposite Hadi, a serious expression on his face.

  “What’s the matter with you, man?” he said. “You should forget that bullshit story of yours.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “What’s happened! They’re looking for the guy who killed the four beggars and Abu Zaidoun and the officer they found strangled in the whores’ room in Umm Raghad’s house.”

  “And what’s that to do with me?”

  “Those stories of yours are going to get you into trouble. When the Americans grab you, you’ve no idea where they’ll take you. God alone knows what charge they’ll pin on you.”

  Hadi’s heart started pounding, but he finished his lunch. Without informing Aziz, he made a private decision not to mention the story of the corpse ever again. Aziz told him the story the drunken beggar had told—about the criminal who killed the four other beggars and how horrible he looked, with a mouth like a gash across his face. He told him what Umm Raghad and her girls had said too—about the person who burst in on them in the dark and strangled the officer who was sleeping in the room of one of the girls. Its body was sticky, as if it was smeared with blood or tomato juice. When it jumped onto the roof, some of the young men fired at it with their rifles. Everyone has weapons these days. They fired many shots, but the bullets just went through its body. It didn’t stop running, skipping from roof to roof until it disappeared. No one knows what will happen in the coming days. The story may or may not end with what Umm Salim said. She claimed that as she was sitting on her front stoop in the lane she saw a strange-looking person in a faded army jacket and with a headscarf wrapped so tight that nothing of his face would be visible to someone in the distance. He was looking at the ground, coming from the direction of Abu Zaidoun’s barbershop. He walked past her, and she glimpsed part of his face—it was the most horrible thing she had ever seen. It’s hard to believe God would create such a face; just looking at it was enough to make your hair stand on end. She spoke about this strange person to anyone who happened to be around and claimed that he had killed old Abu Zaidoun. But one evening Abu Zaidoun’s sons came to her house and had words with her, making threats if she went on telling her story. Their father had died of a heart attack, they said.

  “Your stories have started frightening people. You’d better keep a low profile,” Aziz finally said to Hadi. He then got up to take orders from some elderly customers who had just come into the shop. Hadi sat in his place, looking through the front window at the cars and the passersby in the busy street. He took a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, and smoked for half an hour—the longest time he had ever spent in sustained silence. For a while he forgot about the errands he usually ran in the afternoon. A seed of fear had started to grow deep inside him, and he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Because lies can come true. He remembered a dream from the distant past. He went over the dream in his mind’s eye and thought again about what Aziz had said. He was sure Aziz had received some information. Except for what was said about the blood or tomato juice, the other details were familiar: the big mouth like a gash right across the jaw, the horrible face, the stitches across the forehead and down the cheeks, the big nose.

  Hadi left the coffee shop, saying good-bye to Aziz, his most trusted friend. All the others saw him as insignificant: no one would miss him if he disappeared, and this was a time when many people were disappearing for no logical reason, and he didn’t want to disappear. He wanted to stay alive, buying stuff that people wanted to get rid of, restoring it, and selling it again, without thoughts of amassing a fortune or expanding his operations, because that would be too much trouble, like having a disease. He was interested in having cash in his pocket, nothing more, enough to sleep with women whenever he wanted and to buy a drink. To eat and drink what he wanted, to go to sleep and wake up without anyone watching over him and without responsibilities.

  He went to the junk market at Bab al-Sharqi. He had left some radios and Japanese tape recorders with one of the stallholders. The man had declined to buy all the stuff outright but agreed to take it on consignment—he would give Hadi the money for the things he sold and give back the stuff he hadn’t sold whenever Hadi wanted.

  Shortly before sunset Hadi went back to his neighborhood and was shocked to see American soldiers, in uniform with helmets and other gear, walking down the lanes, carrying their rifles across their chests and looking at everyone suspiciously. He saw Faraj in his gray dishdasha and with his black prayer beads, talking with one of the interpreters. He knew they were doing one of their routine sweeps for weapons—there had been reports of some heavy shooting the night before. He walked slowly along the wall, trying not to look any of the soldiers in the eye. Entering his house, he pushed the heavy wooden door firmly closed, then waited in dread, listening for movement in the lane and for the moment when they’d knock on the door to carry out their search, or force it open with their heavy boots, as in the scenes broadcast on television. He passed the time repairing some small wooden tables. He knocked in some nails here and there, then varnished them and put them in the courtyard to dry in the open air. At sunset he left home and went to see Edward Boulos, the man who sold alcohol. Edward had closed his little shop overlooking the Umma Garden because someone had thrown a hand grenade at it early one morning, setting fire to it. After that he moved his business, the only one he knew, into his house. Hadi bought half a bottle of arak from him and then went shopping for some white cheese, olives, and other things in the stores nearby, before heading home.

  He spent the night hours drinking slowly and quietly, sitting on his bed, with the bottle of arak, his glass, and the plate of mezes on a high metal table. In a gloom lit only by a feeble, sooty lantern, he listened to the soft warbling from the rad
io. Raising his last glass high, as always, as if he was in a noisy bar, he toasted his companions—the ghosts of people he knew who were gone and of others he had never met. And he toasted the darkness and the contents of his cluttered, rat-infested room. Downing his last glass, he heard a movement and looked in the direction of the door. The door swung wide open and beyond the doorway loomed the dark figure of a tall man. His blood froze in his veins as he saw the figure approach.

  The yellow light of the lantern struck the strange man’s face—a face with lines of stitches, a large nose, and a mouth like a gaping wound.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OUZO AND A BLOODY MARY

  1

  IN THE EARLY morning hours, one of Faraj’s assistants came and told him that some people were walking round the area marking the walls of the houses he owned with blue spray paint. They were in fact from a charity that specialized in preserving Baghdad’s old houses and were accompanied by some civil servants from the city council and the provincial council. Faraj was uneasy: he picked up his small leather briefcase and went out to find them, accompanied by some of the young people who lived in the area and helped him in his work.

  He found the strangers in front of Elishva’s house. They were knocking on the door but no one was answering. Eventually, Umm Salim came out of her house and told them that Elishva had gone to church. One of the young men shook up the can of paint and sprayed a blue X on the wall. They went on to Hadi’s house and sprayed an X on the wall, but this time in black. This meant the house was unsuitable for renovation and could be demolished. Faraj didn’t understand what the people were saying. They obviously wanted to take over his houses, or the houses he had rented from the state under contracts that were legal and in good order. They told him it was just a routine procedure for statistical purposes and to identify the historic houses, especially the ones that had wooden mashrabiya windows. But Faraj, who had got his hands on four or five of these old houses, took it as a plan to wrest the properties from him, so he had rushed to the scene to argue with the young men. One of them raised his finger in Faraj’s face and warned him that he was obstructing the work of a government employee in the course of his official duties. Some of the neighbors intervened and dragged Faraj away. Feeling uneasy, the people from the charity and the government officials who were with them left.