“One night I went home with my whole body riddled with bullets. It had been a fierce battle and a perilous chase, and I only just managed to get my hands around the neck of my target, a criminal who was supplying many of the armed gangs with dynamite and other explosives regardless of their ideological or political background. He was a merchant of death par excellence and was living with some other members of his gang in a house close to the Shorja market in central Baghdad.
“The three madmen extracted many of the bullets from my body. The Magician and the Sophist helped by trying to sew up the parts that were damaged. A piece of flesh on my shoulder wouldn’t stay in place—it was all runny, like flesh from a several-days-old corpse.
“When I got up the next day, I found that many parts of my body were on the ground, and there was a strong smell of rot. None of my assistants was nearby—they’d gone up to the roof to escape the smell.
“I wrapped myself in a large piece of cloth and went looking for them. Fluids from various exposed parts of my body seeped into the cloth. I stood at a distance from them on the roof and asked, ‘What’s happening? Is this the end?’
“The Magician looked at me anxiously. The others were smoking and peering through the gaps in the parapet at what was happening on the streets down below.
“‘Whenever you kill someone, that account is closed,’ the Magician said. ‘In other words, the person who was seeking revenge has had his wish fulfilled, and the body part that came from him starts to melt. It looks like there’s a time factor. If you exact revenge for all the victims ahead of the deadline, then your body will hold together for a while and start to dissolve only later, but if you take too long, when you come to your last assignment you’ll have only the body part of the last person to be avenged.’
“‘That’s bullshit,’ said the Sophist. ‘He doesn’t die and he doesn’t fall apart—none of that lousy shit,’ he continued, throwing his cigarette on the ground. ‘You’re just trying to frighten us. The savior doesn’t die.’
“The Sophist turned to the eldest madman, who was more interested than the others in this idea. He soon raised his fist in the air and shook it. ‘Yes, the savior doesn’t die,’ he declaimed.
“The two of them continued to argue while the others watched what was happening below. Apparently two groups were about to clash in broad daylight. It was risky to stay on the roof and look through the openings in the parapet wall because you might be killed by a stray bullet. But curiosity got the better of everyone.
“I spread the piece of cloth on the roof and lay down, naked in the sun. Sticky fluids were oozing from my wounds and from the fissures where the stitches were coming apart. I needed a complete overhaul. In fact—and this was a conclusion that took me by surprise—I needed new spare parts.
“Down below, deafening bursts of gunfire broke out, and piercing screams. I felt I was roasting in the sun, so I stood up, wrapped myself in the cloth, and went over to the parapet. The battle was furious. One group was soon defeated and took flight, while the other managed to capture two members of the group that was running away. With their rifle butts they pushed them against a wall that was riddled with holes made by PK machine guns. One of the two captured men had serious wounds and was groaning; he might have been asking for help. The other one was silent and unbowed, like a holy martyr, as if he knew there were spectators who would praise him for how bravely he had faced death. It didn’t take long. The captors pushed the young men against the wall, shouted ‘Allahu akbar!’ two or three times, then opened fire. The men collapsed to the ground, and the gunmen clutched their rifles to their shoulders, like farmers with spades, and hurried off.
“I looked at my assistants. All looked horrified except for the Magician, who said: ‘Nice young men. What a waste!’ Then he added, ‘Aren’t they victims too?’
“‘I don’t know. Ask the Sophist,’ I replied.
“‘They’re all victims, as far as I can see,’ said the Magician.
“Over the next three hours, I lost my right thumb and three fingers from my left hand. My nose was disintegrating and large holes appeared on my body—my flesh was melting. I felt weak and had to fight off sleep. My six assistants were sitting in a room, on furniture taken from the abandoned houses, talking anxiously.
“‘According to the schedule that I have, my mission ends tonight. I’ll get hold of the Venezuelan mercenary officer at a hotel in Karrada. I’ll take lots of bullets before I get my hands around his neck, then I’ll leave in a car belonging to one of the security agencies, arranged by the Enemy, and head to Abu Ghraib. There my mission will come to an end: I’ll kill the al-Qaeda leader, then leave this horrible world of yours.’
“As evening fell, I dozed off. When I opened my eyes, I found the three madmen bent over me. Splattered with blood, they were bathing me. We were in the bathroom of an apartment on the third floor. They had clearly been up to something.
“After heated discussion, my six assistants had come to a decision. The three madmen left the building and crossed the dark street toward the building where the two young men had been executed. They dragged away the body of the man who had died bravely, leaving the body of the man who had pleaded for his life—we called him ‘the saint.’ In a room on the ground floor of our building, the body was prepared to provide spare parts for me. The parts I needed were cut off and put in a black plastic bag. Then the saint’s body was carried off and thrown atop the rubble of a house that had been destroyed by American missiles.
“The eldest madman cut out the rotten parts of my body, and the other two madmen—the young one and the elder one—stitched in the new parts. Then they all carried me to the bathroom on the top floor, where they washed off the blood and the sticky plasma fluids and dried me. The Enemy gave me the uniform of a U.S. special forces officer and some identity papers. Then the Sophist set about applying a thick layer of women’s foundation cream to my face and gave me a mirror. I looked but didn’t recognize myself. I moved my lips and realized the face was mine.
“‘What happened?’ I asked.
“‘We’ve brought you back to life,’ said the Magician, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip and his arms spread along the back of a chair in the sitting room. He was the mastermind behind all this. He convinced my other assistants that the saint was a victim whose soul would seek revenge, so there was no harm in using his body for spare parts.
“Standing up, I felt a surge of vitality and new sensations, as if I had awoken from a deep sleep. Strange faces appeared around me, and I forgot what I had been planning to do in the morning. Putting on a Marines cap, I hurried out of the building and headed east, where the gang that had carried out the execution had last been seen. The saint’s fingers pushed open doors, showing me the way. I found them sitting on the ground, drinking tea. The guard stationed at a nearby building didn’t see me coming, so they were taken by surprise—I had gotten close enough to grab their rifles or push aside their weapons and subdue them with punches and kicks. Bullets were fired, and others came in from nearby rooms. For all the shooting and screaming, the outcome was not in their favor. I was shot in the back many times but got my hands on their necks and soon broke one after the other. Half an hour later there was only one member of the group left, sitting terrified in the corner. I couldn’t see his face clearly in the dim light of the rechargeable electric lamps, but I could see he was crying. I moved closer and saw that he was shaking, like a frightened sheep submitting to a butcher. He was well aware that it was no normal enemy that he and his group were up against tonight. It was the wrath of God. In the end, I caught a glimpse of his frightened eyes. Because he felt guilty he made my task easier, abandoning any attempt to resist even before I touched him.”
4
“I killed the Venezuelan mercenary in charge of the security company responsible for recruiting suicide bombers who had killed many civilians, including the guard at the Sadeer
Novotel, Hasib Mohamed Jaafar. I killed the al-Qaeda leader who lived in Abu Ghraib and who was responsible for the massive truck bomb in Tayaran Square that killed many people, including the person whose nose Hadi picked up off the pavement and used to fix my face. I had spent several weeks making preparations, tracking and infiltrating hostile groups. It takes some time, but if you have a strong case, you can win the trust of the group that’s opposed to the person you’re targeting.
“My list of people to seek revenge on grew longer as my old body parts fell off and my assistants added parts from my new victims, until one night I realized that under these circumstances I would face an open-ended list of targets that would never end.
“Time was my enemy, because there was never enough of it to accomplish my mission, and I started hoping that the killing in the streets would stop, cutting off my supply of victims and allowing me to melt away.
“But the killing had only begun. At least that’s how it seemed from the balconies in the building I was living in, as dead bodies littered the streets like rubbish.
“We strengthened our defenses in the face of the increased killings. The three madmen got some light and medium weapons and set up PK machine guns on the roof, pointing in all four directions. They closed off the entrance to the building with concrete blocks and bags of soil from I don’t know where. They worked long hours on it, for several days, and then I found they had recruits to help them with the work. Overnight the building had become a virtual military barracks: apart from all the weaponry, it now had troops who had volunteered to protect this miniature garrison.
“Each of my three madmen promoted his own idea of me to his clique, amassing followers who were fed up with what they saw around them and were seeking some kind of salvation.
“The young madman took over the whole ground floor with his followers, who had come from various parts of the capital. Like him, they believed I was Iraqi citizen number one. I found out later that he had given them numbers instead of names, so he was number two, and the others took numbers starting from three and rising as the number of his followers grew day by day.
“The elder madman and his followers took over some of the apartments on the second floor. Like him, they believed that I was the black hole and the Great Azraeel, the Angel of Death, who would swallow up the whole world under the protection of divine grace.
“The eldest madman took the other two apartments on the second floor for himself and his followers, who were fewer in number. He imposed on them his own holy book, in which he ordained that I was the image of God, incarnate on Earth, that he was the ‘gate’ to this image, and that they were forbidden to see me. So when they ran into me in the corridors or on the stairs, they had to bow quickly and cover their faces with their hands in fear and dread.
“The Magician was uncomfortable with these developments and thought they would not end well, because we were now more visible.
“‘You might not die if our building is shelled, but we’ll be mincemeat,’ he told me. He looked to the Sophist for confirmation, but the Sophist remained silent. A few minutes later, when the Magician went out to the bathroom, the Sophist came over to me and said, ‘He’s jealous. He wants to keep you under his control. Please don’t take seriously what he says.’
“The Sophist had no affection for the Magician, and I took what he said as an attempt to win my favor and take over the Magician’s place. He wasn’t happy with the absolute certainties that the Magician put forth, especially when it came to my itinerary and the routes I took, which were usually precise and safe.
“The Enemy wasn’t always around. He would be away for long periods and then reappear. On his last visit he brought wireless equipment, cell phones, and a security system involving cameras on the balconies and a monitoring screen.
“That was the last service the Enemy performed for me, and I never saw him again. He called me on the phone a few days later. He sounded anxious and said his cover had been blown. There was an internal inquiry under way in the department to track his latest movements, and the Americans had also sent for him. It seemed likely he would be accused of collaborating with terrorist groups or something like that.
“After that he vanished. When we called the number he had called us from, the phone was out of service.”
5
“I know that things haven’t been going the way I would like. That’s why I’m asking anyone who listens to this recording to help me by not obstructing my work until I finish it and leave this world of yours. I’ve already been here too long. I’ve had many predecessors who have turned up here, carried out their missions in tough times, and then left. I don’t want to be any different from them.
“I was careful about the pieces of flesh that were used to repair my body. I made sure my assistants didn’t bring any flesh that was illegitimate—in other words, the flesh of criminals—but who’s to say how criminal someone is? That’s a question the Magician raised one day.
“‘Each of us has a measure of criminality,’ the Magician said, smoking a shisha pipe he had prepared for himself. ‘Someone who’s been killed through no fault of his own might be innocent today, but he might have been a criminal ten years ago, when he threw his wife out onto the street, or put his aging mother in an old people’s home, or disconnected the water or electricity to a house with a sick child, who died as a result, and so on.’
“As usual, the Sophist reacted negatively to what the Magician had said. Late one day I went to the roof to verify a report that the Americans had withdrawn from the area. I noticed that the Sophist was following me. Standing before me, with a serious expression on his face, he said, ‘Please don’t believe what the Magician says. He’s speaking for himself. He killed someone ten years ago and threw out his wife and his mother and killed a baby. He’s a criminal.’
“I looked away, picked up the telescope that the Enemy had brought me on his last visit, and started to look to the far ends of the street, where the Americans had posted their Abrams tanks. The tanks were gone, the makeshift quarters, the observation posts on the tall buildings, and the checkpoints on the side streets. They had completely withdrawn, as I’d been told, and that was strange.
“I turned to the Sophist and said, ‘Don’t let it worry you. Get the Magician out of your head. Didn’t I take the revolver with me on my last mission, at your urging?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Then shut up and don’t talk about this ever again.’
“I went back to looking through the telescope, but my mind was elsewhere. I had serious suspicions that when they last patched me up they had used body parts from a criminal. Maybe without knowing it, they had used parts from a terrorist. Maybe that was why I wasn’t in a good mood and felt confused and flustered. I looked out on the streets and the roofs until things began to look hazy, my vision clouded by a bright milky film. I put down the telescope and asked the Sophist to follow me downstairs.
“An hour later I had recovered my sight. I was worried the problem might be that my eyes had worn out and would need to be replaced. But I no longer trusted the parts my assistants brought me. The street was covered with bodies, and new bodies piled up every evening, almost all of them those of criminals who had been fighting each other.
“When I had a chance to talk to the Magician in private, he told me unequivocally that half my body was now made up of the body parts of criminals.
“‘How did that happen?’ I asked him, as he filled another shisha bowl and then took a deep breath through the tube to make the coals glow. He blew out the smoke and looked at me scornfully. ‘Was the body of the saint really holy?’ he asked.
“‘What do you mean?’ I said.
“‘If he bore arms, he was a criminal,’ he replied, taking another hit from his pipe. I then realized that the Sophist was outside the door, listening to our discussion. I was in the process of getting ready for a new mission that n
ight and wasn’t going to allow a repeat of the sterile argument they had had, so I stood up and asked the Sophist to help me prepare. The new mission involved a militia leader who lived in a working-class neighborhood in the east of the city. Producing some clothes that looked like the militia’s uniform, the Sophist sat me down on a chair in front of a dressing table and started applying makeup to suit my new identity. But he had not forgotten what he had heard the Magician saying to me, and he began his response as he ran his hands across my face.
“‘He convinced you that now you’re half criminal,’ he said, ‘that half your flesh comes from criminals. Tomorrow he’ll tell you you’re three-quarters criminal, and later you’ll wake up to find you’ve become totally criminal. But you’re not an ordinary criminal. You’ll be the supercriminal, because you’re made up of criminals, a bunch of criminals. Ha!’
“He didn’t stop talking till I went out, leaving him fuming with rage that I didn’t answer. Unfortunately, we’re now enemies.
“Just a short time earlier, very important changes were taking place outside the building. Part of the Magician’s prophecy had started to come true. The number of followers recruited by the three madmen had grown so much that the apartments they had taken over could no longer accommodate them. Having so many people also brought logistical demands related to food, drink, and bedding; I didn’t know how they were getting hold of these things.
“After some shouting among the three madmen and their followers, they decided to expand into other buildings, leaving some guards on the ground floor of the building where I lived and moving into adjacent ones. That evening I was amazed how many young gunmen bowed down to me in the street. All of them believed I was the face of God on earth, according to the teachings of the eldest madman, who wore an orange turban, had a long beard, and became the prophet of a religion that was new in both substance and imagery. It was very much the same with the elder madman, but his followers looked pale and were less noisy. The two groups accused each other of quackery and talking gibberish. As for the followers of the young madman, the Iraqi citizens, there were now more than a hundred and fifty of them, and they were thinking of taking part in the upcoming elections.
Frankenstein in Baghdad Page 14
