Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

  Before the end of the workday, the cell phone that Saidi kept in his office rang. Mahmoud picked it up and saw 666 on the screen, and the image of Nawal came into focus in front of him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Silence.

  “Don’t be childish,” he continued. “I know who you are, and Baher’s away in Beirut. Speak.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IN LANE 7

  1

  ABU ANMAR STOOD on the sidewalk and looked across the street at the Rasoul Real Estate office. A sense of gloom came over him: Faraj the realtor had put up a new sign; he was doing well for himself. Meanwhile, Abu Anmar couldn’t understand why his hotel business was in constant decline. He hadn’t had a real guest in a month or more, other than his two permanent guests. Even Hazem Abboud came only now and then to take pictures of the balconies that were collapsing and the coats of paint that were flaking off the walls. He might sit down to have a cup of tea with Abu Anmar, but since the summer he had practically stopped spending the night at the hotel.

  On Hazem’s last visit, Abu Anmar told him with some enthusiasm that he was working on renovating the hotel. Hazem noticed that many of the rooms no longer had any furniture. Abu Anmar didn’t tell him how hard he had had to negotiate with Hadi the junk dealer. If he had had any alternative, Abu Anmar would have kicked him out the door rather than submit to his tiresome bargaining. What Hazem didn’t know was that Abu Anmar couldn’t replace the carpet in the lobby or the shabby wooden table at which he usually sat. He couldn’t replace a single broken window or repair the leaks or blockages in the pipes and the sewerage. He couldn’t even buy a bottle of air freshener to cover up the smell of rot and mold. He was getting rid of the hotel furniture in order to stay alive, to eat.

  Abu Anmar didn’t know what he would do, but he was prepared to be adventurous and take a risk if necessary. He had to stand on his own two feet and not let anyone see him as a laughingstock, especially that bastard with the mustache and the hennaed beard who was sitting at his polished desk behind the clean front window of his air-conditioned office, looking out at him morning and evening from the other side of the street.

  2

  Since the Whatsitsname had stopped visiting, Hadi had gradually gone back to being his usual self. Some people felt he was more like his old self than ever, even to the point of excess, as if he were trying to make up for having stayed out of the public eye in recent months.

  At his old space by the big front window of Aziz’s coffee shop, Hadi told a new story about meeting the Iraqi president on a street in Jadriya the night before. An armor-plated black Mercedes stopped, and the driver got out and rushed to the other side to open the door for the president, who was extremely fat. The president put his right foot on the pavement, but his body stayed slumped in the backseat. Hadi ignored the car and kept walking with his canvas sack of empty soda cans.

  “Hadi, Hadi!” called the president.

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Can’t you stop telling your stories? Stop talking about us. There’s nothing we can do, and you’re going to start a revolution against us.”

  “What can I say, Mr. President? Do your job properly, and I won’t tell stories about you.”

  “Why don’t you come along with me? Come, let’s make a deal. They’ve made us a good dinner in the Green Zone.”

  “No, Mr. President, I’m not hungry. But if there’s arak, I’ll come. Do you drink arak, Mr. President?”

  “Shame on you—I drink distilled water. You should quit telling your stories, Hadi.”

  The president laughed and shut the car door, and then the car drove off down the street and disappeared.

  Most people just laughed at these little scenes with which Hadi embellished his stories. Once someone had shown him a copy of al-Haqiqa magazine with a picture of a disfigured Robert De Niro on the cover. In it was Hadi’s story about the Whatsitsname, with details that had never been part of the story. Hadi’s name didn’t appear in the story, but Aziz the Egyptian and some of the regulars at the coffee shop knew Mahmoud al-Sawadi, who had written the story, and knew that Hadi was his source. Turning the pages without any reaction on his dry, wrinkled face, Hadi said the journalist had made up parts of the story.

  Hadi felt exploited. Mahmoud had promised he would act in the Whatsitsname’s interests and treat him fairly. Two days later Hadi received his last visit from the Whatsitsname, who came to his house at night to tell him about the civil war between his followers and to say that the Americans had again sealed off the area where he had been living and had tried to arrest him several times with help from a special missions unit of Iraqi intelligence, forcing him not to stay in one place for more than a day. As for the story the journalist had written about him, it hadn’t done him much good: it had portrayed him as a figment of Hadi’s sick imagination.

  The Whatsitsname was looking for believers who would facilitate his work and wouldn’t use their belief in him for their own purposes, as the three madmen and their followers had done. He didn’t want to be turned into just an urban legend, as the journalist had portrayed him. Hadi promised the Whatsitsname that he would pass this on to the journalist when he saw him, but the Whatsitsname said it didn’t matter any longer.

  “There’s no harm in warning him so he doesn’t offend me again. I’m now taking revenge on people who insult me, not just on those who did violence to those whose body parts I’m made of,” the Whatsitsname said.

  Hadi never again saw his creation after that. He knew the big criminal the Americans and the Iraqi police were looking for, and who was always mentioned on television, was the Whatsitsname. He and the Whatsitsname were linked only in his mind and maybe in the mind of Mahmoud al-Sawadi, but eventually Brigadier Majid, pacing anxiously around his spacious office with a fat cigar in his mouth, lost in thought about the best way to track down the One Who Has No Name—as that fortune-teller with the pointy beard called him—eventually he made the connection.

  3

  Faraj was sitting behind his desk in the real estate office, carefully monitoring the door of the Orouba Hotel across the street. He knew all Abu Anmar’s routines by heart, and knew the financial straits he was in.

  Abu Anmar emerged through the hotel door, swung his vast frame around to close the door behind him, then slowly descended the three steps to the sidewalk. He adjusted his headcloth on his shoulders and walked off, twirling his string of big shiny prayer beads around his fat hand like a propeller. Before he passed the Akhawain laundry next door, a hand touched him on the shoulder. He turned to find Faraj with his thick red beard, smiling at him.

  The narrow gap between him and his rival unnerved Abu Anmar. For the first time he noticed two large moles on Faraj’s face, one at the inner end of his left eyebrow, apparently inflamed, and the other right above his thin mustache.

  “Go and finish your errands, and then drop in and have a cup of tea with me,” Faraj said.

  “Inshallah,” replied Abu Anmar, twirling his beads faster and giving a quick nod of his head. Abu Anmar quickened his pace, and Faraj went back to his office, rubbing his chin; he seemed energetic and relaxed. That morning he had slapped a thin young man with unkempt hair and a goatee beard, sending him spinning before collapsing to the ground. The young man was a member of the Association for the Protection of Historical Houses. He had gone to Elishva’s house, and she had welcomed him in and given him a cup of tea, according to Umm Salim. Someone had come running to tell Faraj, who hurried to the lane to find the man sticking his head out of Elishva’s house and taking out his camera to snap photos of the mashrabiya balconies of Umm Salim’s house. Abu Salim, Umm Salim’s husband, put his head out of the window on the second floor and stared in amazement at the young man, who took another picture, as if Abu Salim’s appearance enhanced the traditional ambiance of the old house. He felt someone approaching, and turned and saw Faraj’s angry
face. Then came the resounding slap.

  Faraj’s assistants picked up the young man and gave him a shove. He hurried off and looked behind him to see them waving him away, while some of them held Faraj back to keep him from running after the poor young man.

  Faraj dusted off his clothes and straightened his skullcap. He turned and saw Elishva looking through the gaping doorway. Her face was pale and tired, more like that of a ghost than of an ordinary woman. Faraj raised his hand and waved it in front of her face.

  “Won’t you drop dead already and give me a break? You’re as tough as old boots, for God’s sake!” he said.

  Faraj went back to his office, and the slap he’d planted on that poor thin young man continued to echo down the lane. Less than an hour later Abu Anmar returned to his hotel with some black shopping bags. Faraj shouted to one of his young workers and sent him to the hotel to remind Abu Anmar of their appointment.

  It would be Abu Anmar’s first and last time in Faraj’s office. He hadn’t known it was so grand and spacious. His emotions swung between envy at the wealth of his rival and surrender to the sensory effects of the office’s opulence.

  The young servant put a cup of tea in front of Abu Anmar and another in front of Faraj, and amid the clatter of spoons Faraj got straight to the point.

  “Abu Anmar, you’re very dear to me. You’re a professional and you understand business. I’d like us to work together, you and I.”

  “Okay. What did you have in mind.”

  “Good, good. I’ve noticed what a terrible state your hotel is in. It’s going to waste.”

  “I’m hoping to have it renovated,” said Abu Anmar.

  “What with, Abu Anmar? Where will you get the money?”

  “God is generous.”

  “Yes, God is generous. No need to be embarrassed, my brother Abu Anmar. I know very well that you don’t have a penny. I’m your brother—don’t be shy with me. I mean, I’d like us to be partners, you and I. I’ll take on the cost of renovating the hotel and furnishing it, and we’ll be partners, half and half. What do you say?”

  4

  “Where are you from?” asked Hadi.

  “We’re from the traffic department,” the two officers in pink politely replied.

  Hadi was sitting on his bed in the middle of the courtyard as the sun set in the west. The officers, along with some assistants, had raided Hadi’s house, sent by Brigadier Majid.

  “But I haven’t committed any traffic offenses for two years,” said Hadi. “And besides, I don’t have a car.”

  “Are you making fun of us, sir?” replied one of the officers, who had a thick bandage around his neck. Hadi had no way of knowing that it was this officer whom the Whatsitsname had tried to throttle on that terrible night of the chase. And now he was apparently trying to work out whether Hadi was the same height and had the same physique as the monster who had almost killed him. Taking hold of Hadi’s arms, he thought this scrawny old man wouldn’t be agile enough to run or put up much of a fight, but he wasn’t quite certain.

  “Playing the hero and resisting the Americans, are you?”

  “I’m a junk dealer. Look around you.”

  Hadi pointed at ten wooden wardrobes lined up against the wall.

  “Yes, of course. You could always open a bureau for terrorist services, car bombings, and assassinations with silencers.”

  “Silencers?”

  “Go ahead, pretend to be innocent.”

  They left Hadi and went off to search his room. A powerful stench hit them in the face. His things were in piles, and there was a small mound of Heineken beer cans in the corner. There were shoes; jugs made of copper, aluminum, and plastic; wooden tables with broken legs; clothes; pigeon and chicken feathers; bedcovers and faded blankets; a stove; two gas cylinders; a plastic barrel full of kerosene; and a cupboard littered with onions, garlic, empty milk cans, and tins of fish and beans. They quickly left, then surrounded Hadi’s bed again and resumed their questions about the crimes he was committing in the streets of Baghdad.

  A plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, her arms spread in a gesture of peace and with faded touches of color on her long dress, had caught the officers’ interest.

  “Are you Christian?” asked one of them.

  “No, I’m Muslim.”

  “So what’s this statue of the Virgin Mary for?”

  “I don’t know. There was a copy of the Throne Verse on top of it. The inscription fell apart and the statue appeared.”

  “My God, you’re a story. What are you going to do with her?” the officer with the bandage around his neck asked threateningly. And then the guys from the traffic department began to question Hadi about crimes he knew nothing about, asking him about a corpse or Whatsitsname in a fictional story he had made up to please the people sitting around him, to make himself more popular among the local people, so they would like him and sympathize with him.

  “Are you completely sane?” Hadi asked in a sudden display of courage, frustrated by the interrogation. “What corpse? What Whatsitsname? What are you talking about? Now you’re making up a horror film to attack me with, all because of a made-up story, some coffee shop talk.”

  “Hey, don’t get fresh with us or else I’ll give you a good pummeling,” threatened the man with the bandage. The other pink officer held his arm to calm him down and took charge of the interrogation. They continued to pace around Hadi’s bed, asking him questions even after people’s faces had become difficult to make out in the dark. The voices become harsher, and hands Hadi couldn’t identify pushed him onto the bed several times. Then one of them gave Hadi a sharp thump on the face, and he fell to the ground, hitting his head on one of the few intact floor tiles among the loose and broken ones. The interrogation had taken a new turn—one that was commonplace in all Iraqi police stations. Hadi had heard many stories about it from other people. Two assistants lifted Hadi’s arms, and the pink officer with the bandage started punching Hadi in the stomach like a madman. This went on for two full minutes.

  The punches didn’t stop until Hadi threw up the beans and vegetables he had eaten at noon and the two cans of Heineken he had drunk an hour before the officers had burst in on him. The foul-smelling mixture soiled the clothes of the officer, who jumped back, cursing and swearing. The two goons who had been holding Hadi’s arms let go of him and left him to fall to the ground to continue vomiting.

  An hour later, in darkness punctuated by the glow of his colleagues’ cigarettes, the calmer of the two officers concluded that the junk dealer was just an old liar, degenerate and half crazy. He might be protecting a real criminal, but the officer felt that taking him to the police station would just complicate the case they were investigating. He decided to leave this old drunk where he was and never to visit him again but to have a few people monitor him to see who visited him and who he met. He should feel at ease and not be afraid he was being watched.

  The officers’ assistants switched on some powerful electric lamps, lighting the place up. Hadi was lying on his back on the courtyard floor. He didn’t seem able to get up.

  The officers searched the place again. In a glass coffee jar on the dining table, behind the piles of onions, they found the small amount of cash Hadi had made from selling Abu Anmar’s furniture in the Harj market. The calmer of the two officers put the money in his pants pocket, then picked up some other things at random. He took a table made of metal and wood, and others picked up pieces of furniture and various antiques: a broken chandelier, a wooden wall clock with a pendulum behind a glass window. One of the assistants, after daring to venture deep into Hadi’s room, found a set of plates in a cardboard box—with pictures of King Ghazi and King Faisal II, and of Abd al-Karim Qasim, Baghdad Central Station, and other historical sites and nature scenes. He picked up the cardboard box, took it out to his friends, and opened it up with a sense of triumph.

&nb
sp; They behaved like thieves. The calm officer, wanting to add to Hadi’s confusion about who they were, gave Hadi a warning.

  “That statue of the Virgin is haram,” he said. “Do you understand? We want you to smash it right now.”

  He aimed the powerful lamp into Hadi’s face and saw his lips move. He moved closer and repeated his order. With difficulty Hadi moved his lips again.

  “I can’t. I can’t,” he said.

  “Why can’t you? You mean you don’t want to?”

  “Look at me. A curse on your fathers. I can’t stand up.”

  The angry officer kicked Hadi in the stomach, winding him completely. One of the assistants went into the room and hit the statue in the wall niche several times with the butt of his pistol, knocking the Virgin’s head off; the rest of the statue remained in place. The man pointed the beam of his flashlight at the statue to see the effects of his work. He felt a tremor of fear when he saw the woman peacefully spreading her arms but without a head.

  The official mission didn’t stop at this point. Before they left, the officer with the bandage wanted to apply a final test to Hadi, the same test he had used with the eleven ugly men they had detained in Bataween earlier that day.

  The assistants stripped Hadi naked, then examined him in the lamplight to see if there was any stitching on his body or any sign of wounds. The angry officer took out a small sharp knife the length of a finger and cut into Hadi’s arms, then his hips and thighs. Hadi cried out. The officer stopped and waited to see the blood. Hadi writhed on the ground as his blood spilled, black and sticky, onto the courtyard floor. It came out in small bursts, then stopped and congealed. It was black blood. The angry officer probed him with his fingers. His colleague didn’t move, overcome by a sense of disgust. Why were they doing this? They were collecting information. Why were they stabbing someone for information?