Amid the waves of pain, a voice in Hadi’s head told him that things would proceed as in an American action movie. His superhero would suddenly appear on the roof in the form of a dark hulk, then come down and at the speed of lightning fell his enemies with powerful punches, saving his friend and creator, his aging father. But that didn’t happen. One of the assistants picked up a walkie-talkie and in a low voice summoned the driver. Two minutes later everyone left Hadi’s house, taking with them the things they had stolen. The officer with the bandage was upset, feeling they hadn’t accomplished what they had come for. Before he reached the door, he turned as if he wanted to go back to beating Hadi, but his colleague pulled him away.
“You worm, you’ll be seeing stars again if you’re not careful,” he shouted, looking into the darkness where Hadi’s body was sprawled.
5
Abu Anmar was shocked by Faraj’s offer. He hadn’t expected anything like it. But as he walked the short distance between the door of the Rasoul realty office and that of his hotel, the truth became clearer in his mind: Faraj had come up with the cleverest, most cunning way possible to finish off Abu Anmar forever.
He had made him an excellent offer. They would be partners, Abu Anmar with the bricks and mortar, the walls and the roof, and Faraj with everything else. Faraj’s share would be more than Abu Anmar’s, but Abu Anmar would be in charge of managing and supervising the hotel. The most irritating thing was that Faraj wanted to change the name from the Orouba Hotel to the Grand Prophet Hotel.
The men argued for a full hour, and in the end Abu Anmar rejected the offer and went back to his hotel with heavy steps. Despite the heat, he closed the glass door firmly, as if he wanted to drive the image of Faraj’s office far out of sight.
As he sat on his chair behind the reception desk, he set about drinking, calmly and slowly, and flicked through the thick book that contained prophecies of the end of the world. His mind was wandering, retrieving a stream of images from deep in his memory—of his youth and his glory days. He thought about the time when, as a trader traveling between Baghdad and Qalat Sukkar, a town on the banks of the Gharraf Canal in the south, he formed a partnership with the original owner of the hotel, and how, after his partner died, he ended up buying up the whole hotel. He felt he was standing on the edge of a complete cycle of his life, as he sat there looking at the reflection of his face in the closed door of the hotel.
His reflection in the glass door swung away, and the door opened. It was his old friend Hazem Abboud, panting, his face sweaty and a cloth bag hanging heavily from his left shoulder.
Hazem had gone through hell to find a taxi to bring him here. He had been threatened by an armed group where he lived and thought it would be best to spend the night away from home, and maybe other nights too, until he had a clearer picture.
Hazem noticed that the hotel seemed almost empty of furniture. Abu Anmar told him about everything he had done in the last few weeks, concluding with the offer that Faraj had made that afternoon. Hazem bowed his head a moment, then told him he could always take out a mortgage on the hotel or get a loan from the government with the hotel as security, in order to have it refurbished.
“That would mean debts, and who could guarantee the hotel would do well enough to repay them? I would end up falling into a big hole, and then the government would take over the hotel. Things are getting worse and worse.”
“Then accept Faraj’s offer.”
“No, impossible. I will not work under this criminal. I will not let him humiliate me at my age. I was the king in this area when he was renting houses to whores and pimps. I was king.”
Abu Anmar leaned down to take a massive photo album from the big drawer in his wooden desk. There were black-and-white pictures of Abu Anmar in a suit and tie, looking thin and young. In one he was standing next to a basketball team from Maysan Province, in another sitting next to some short-haired girls who were in a church choir from Mosul. There were pictures of celebrities and people who had once been famous but who nobody but Abu Anmar seemed to know.
“So, what will you do? Will you just go on like this till your savings run out?” asked Hazem.
“No,” said Abu Anmar, draining the dregs of his drink, filling another glass calmly and slowly, and putting it on the small wooden table in front of his friend. “I won’t accept that bastard’s offer, but I’ll make a counterproposal. I’ll sell him the whole hotel.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE JEWISH RUIN
1
ELISHVA WAS SITTING as usual in the parlor with her shedding cat. Through the thick lenses of her glasses she was contemplating the picture of the saint, the yellow light of the oil lamp dancing on the picture’s ripples, while her ears picked up cries and groans of pain coming from the house next door. The sounds continued for a quarter of an hour.
She should have gone to the service to commemorate Saint Shamouni and her seven children on their feast day, but she preferred to stay at home. After Faraj had slapped that poor young man, Umm Salim came to see her and said that Faraj was evil and might do anything. He might forge the title deed to her house and throw her into the street. Besides, no one had even seen the title deed—perhaps Elishva didn’t even have it.
Why was Umm Salim telling her this? Had she turned against her? But she had made her a tempting offer: Elishva could move into a room in Umm Salim’s house, and then one of Umm Salim’s children could convert Elishva’s house into lodgings and rent out the rooms, and the rent money would go to Elishva. Faraj and others who had designs on the old woman would feel she was protected.
But that might be a way for Umm Salim to get hold of her house, she thought. Perhaps greed was at work inside the fat old woman and she was just another wolf in sheep’s clothing, or maybe she was working for Faraj.
She didn’t respond to Umm Salim’s proposal. Umm Salim assumed the feebleminded old woman needed time to think. But she wasn’t thinking about Umm Salim’s proposal. That thin young man who wanted to buy her house on behalf of the state? He hadn’t understood that she wasn’t going to sell her house. She wouldn’t feel proud living in a house that belonged to the state when it had once been her house, and the money she would make from selling it would be more than she needed.
She shut her eyes awhile, and her head felt heavy. Nabu dozed off on her lap, and maybe she too was about to fall asleep on the sofa when she heard a noise in the courtyard and the sound of heavy footsteps. She turned toward the door: standing there was the specter of her son, Daniel.
2
Hadi felt he was dying. But a strong pair of arms picked him up from the broken tiles covered in his sticky blood. He opened his eyes but couldn’t see anything—it was completely dark. The arms lowered him gently onto the foam mattress in the middle of the courtyard. A damp cloth ran over his body, then two dark hands helped him put on his shirt and pants.
“Don’t worry, you’re not going to die, but you deserved this thrashing,” the stranger said before disappearing. A few minutes later, Hadi heard a commotion. He felt a torpor in his limbs and seemed about to fall asleep when flashlights shone on his face.
“What do you want from me? What do you want from me?” he shouted, thinking the interrogators had come back, perhaps to finish him off this time.
“What have they done to him?” one of them said. They started to turn his body over and inspect his wounds.
Abu Salim had noticed the people when they first went into Hadi’s house but couldn’t tell what was happening inside. He watched from the balcony till he saw the interrogators come out with some stuff in their hands, then get into the truck and drive off fast. One of them waved out of the truck window a table lamp with a shade made of colored glass and hit it against the wall. Abu Salim went into action, calling some of his children and shouting for some of the young men who lived nearby. They burst into Hadi’s house, and when Hadi came round from his delirium
, Abu Salim’s youngest son ran home to get bandages, disinfectant, medical gauze, and medicine, because he sold such things in a stall in the Shorja market and had considerable knowledge of first aid. He told Hadi that the wounds on his thighs needed stitching, and he wasn’t good at that, but he could bandage them up till the morning, and the next day he should go to a nurse or a dispensary to have them stitched, and he shouldn’t move too much during the night so his condition didn’t deteriorate. They treated him with great decency and compassion, and also tried to find out what had happened, but when they pressed him with questions, Hadi started to swear: he wasn’t prepared to go through two interrogations in one evening.
A feeble breeze blew down from above into the hollow where Hadi lived between two-story houses with high walls. The drugs that Abu Salim had given him had had an effect, and he regretted his harsh words, but the questions kept coming: Would the interrogators come back? Why did they suddenly stop before getting the answers they wanted? Why did they cut him like that? Who had pointed them in his direction? Was it the journalist? Or one of the customers at Aziz’s coffee shop?
He didn’t yet know that his savings from the hard work he had done over the past week had disappeared, or that the statue of the Virgin Mary had had its head smashed, or that the valuable plates and his most precious possessions had been taken. All that would become clear on the afternoon of the next day. For the moment he felt that everything he had been through had the effect of a powerful slap, maybe from a heavenly hand, to open his eyes to the error of his ways and to the abyss into which he was sliding.
He would make a fresh start for himself. He would hold out till his wounds healed completely and then go to the Sabunji hammam in Sheikh Omar. He would plant himself like a statue under the hot steam for three hours, then shave his head and face and buy smart new clothes and leave this damned Jewish ruin and rent a large, airy room in Faraj’s new lodgings, then think about renting a shop to buy, sell, and repair used things, because he was good at that. He would find a wife who would put up with him and restrict his drinking to one session a week. He would do all these things and keep doing them if he could sleep peacefully that night and if he could wake up alive and well in the morning.
3
The Whatsitsname didn’t think the savage beating and the knife cuts would be enough to kill Hadi, but it looked like the kind of punishment he deserved for his many sins and mistakes. That’s what the Whatsitsname was thinking as he came down into the courtyard to put his creator on the bed and help him put his clothes on. When he heard the neighbors approaching, he quickly climbed up the stones toward Elishva’s house.
He found Elishva sitting in the parlor, staring blankly at the picture of Saint George the Martyr. She saw him in the doorway, and not a single muscle in her face twitched. She looked at him as if he had been living there for some time and had just come back from the bathroom.
He felt lonely. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in weeks. He had only two acquaintances left: the junk dealer and the mad old woman. He could have finished off the pink officers and their three assistants without batting an eyelid, but that would have created a bigger problem for the junk dealer, who would be accused of killing them. In order to help Hadi resume his normal life, he had better not show his face to him again.
The Whatsitsname was now at a loss for what to do. He knew his mission was essentially to kill, to kill new people every day, but he no longer had a clear idea who should be killed or why. The flesh of the innocents, of which he was initially composed, had been replaced by new flesh, that of his own victims and criminals. He thought if he took too long avenging the victims in whose name he was acting, the body parts he had taken from them would decompose in situ. It would be the end of him, and he would be free of this world.
But he wasn’t sure this was the right choice either. He had to stay alive until he worked out what his next steps should be. And because he was an exceptional killer who wouldn’t die by traditional means, he thought he should exploit this distinctive talent in the service of the innocent—in the service of truth and justice. Until he was sure of his next steps, he would concentrate on ensuring his own survival. He would salvage the spare parts he needed from the bodies of those who deserved to be killed. It wasn’t the ideal option, but it was the best one possible for now.
The Whatsitsname explained some of his worries to the old woman. She was listening and stroking the back of her old sleeping cat. She didn’t seem capable of understanding such a complicated subject, but she was someone who would listen, and that’s what the Whatsitsname needed at the moment.
He told her he sometimes ran into some of his followers who were on the run after surviving the minor civil war they had fought at the barracks in the shell of the building in Dora. The way they treated him depended on which of the three madmen they had followed, and they didn’t seem to have lost much of their faith in him.
One night he saw Citizen 341 walking down the street in the Waziriya district. He bowed to the Whatsitsname and kissed his hand. The man said he had no idea what had happened to the other numbers—who had been killed and who had survived the terrible bullet fest that night. Also, although he still believed and had a deep desire to reorganize, he had no idea who Citizen 342 was, or Citizen 340, or where they would resume counting if they gained new supporters and believers, or which numbers were now vacant and how many citizens there really were now.
Another night he had some serious putrefaction problems and ran into a follower who believed he was the savior. The man took him to his house in the Fadhil district, avoiding the neighbors and prying eyes. When they were in the courtyard, this believer went into the kitchen and came back with a large knife. He told the Whatsitsname he could kill him and take the parts he needed. The offer took the Whatsitsname by surprise. After thinking for a few minutes, he decided it was a good idea, especially as the alternatives would cause much more commotion and he might have to kill off many people before he managed to replace the worn-out parts with fresh new ones.
He cut the man’s arteries at the wrists, so he died slowly and went into a coma before he gave up the ghost. He didn’t want to stab him in the stomach or cut his throat because that would seem violent, and this believer, or anyone else in the same situation, wouldn’t be able to control himself and the animal instincts of his body. He might scream or maybe decide on impulse to fight back against the death that was coursing through his body.
Elishva kept listening to what she thought was the specter of her son who had disappeared two decades ago, without giving any sign that she understood what he was saying.
It was getting late for the old woman, and she had a feeling her visitor might go on talking till the morning. If there was anything of her son in him, he ought to understand that she was holding out against death, and she wouldn’t give advice that promoted any kind of death.
“Why don’t you relax, my boy?” she said, wanting to put an end to his long ramble. “Shall I make up a bed for you in the courtyard?” He felt she was reminding him of the role she had played in shaping his identity. He also felt that in other circumstances he would really like to accept her offer, to lie down on a low cotton mattress and look at the square patch of sky, counting the stars till he fell asleep. But that was a life that wasn’t his.
She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let out a long sigh. When she opened her eyes again, her talkative visitor was nowhere to be found. She looked at the picture of the saint hanging in front of her, his lance raised and the dragon crouching beneath him. She wondered why he hadn’t killed the dragon years ago. Why was he stuck in that posture, ready to strike, she wondered. Everything remains half completed, exactly like now: she wasn’t exactly a living being, but not a dead one either.
“You’re tormenting me,” she said, picking up the sleeping cat and putting it beside her on the sofa. The cat opened his eyes, gave a long yawn, and stret
ched.
“You haven’t killed this dragon, have you, you warrior?” she said, then waited patiently for his answer. She stood up, still staring into the handsome face of the silent saint.
“Everything will come to an end, Elishva. Why the hurry?” said the saint, his lips not moving in the slightest. Nothing in the picture moved, and yet she could hear his voice clearly.
4
Hadi lay awake, looking up at the square of blue sky above and the birds darting past. He closed his eyes a while, then opened them again and caught sight of the silhouette of an American helicopter flying past, making a thunderous whacking noise. He wanted to get up, but he didn’t think he had the strength. Then suddenly his whole body convulsed at the sound of a powerful blast and the ground shaking beneath him.
It was a car bomb in the Sadriya district, several miles from Bataween in the heart of the old capital. But Hadi didn’t find out anything about the explosion till late in the day. He sat on his bed, his body throbbing with pain, and then he heard a movement at the front door of the house. It was Aziz the Egyptian with two young men from the neighborhood. Aziz swore as he shoved the temperamental door closed, then gave Hadi a broad smile and approached with a bowl of clotted cream, some bread, and a Thermos of tea.
“Thank God you’re safe,” said Aziz, patting his friend on the shoulder. Less than an hour later, the young man who worked with Hadi showed up. He had an appointment to deal with the rest of the stuff from the old hotel and was taken aback to see Hadi tied up in bandages.
After breakfast, Aziz encouraged Hadi to inspect his house. Hadi was shocked to discover that his savings and some valuables were missing. At first he suspected the people who had dressed his injuries, but then his suspicions shifted to the interrogators. Seeing the damaged statue of the Virgin, Aziz looked upset.
Frankenstein in Baghdad Page 18
