All this was only the first stage of Mahmoud’s misfortunes. He had lost an excellent job. He had been waiting to be paid at the end of the month so he could settle his debts with the hotel. And now he couldn’t take a job as a mere editor at another magazine or newspaper, having become accustomed to the power and influence of being editor in chief, not to mention the lifestyle he had grown used to because of Saidi. He had put too much trust in Saidi.
Mahmoud sold his best clothes and shoes to the secondhand clothes dealers at Bab al-Sharqi and agreed to sell the rest of his stuff to some friends. Before selling his phone to one of his friends, he made three last calls. The first was to his elder brother Abdullah, to tell him he would be coming back to Maysan.
“Why are you coming back? Aren’t you happy in Baghdad?” asked Abdullah.
“No. I miss you. Baghdad’s heading for civil war. I’m worried I might die from a car bomb one morning.”
“But your work is there. Try to be careful.”
“The people who die every day are usually careful,” said Mahmoud.
“I don’t understand, Mahmoud. You know your friend is now a senior official in the province. He might remember you and make trouble for you.”
“He won’t remember me. He’s too important now to bother with me. My article’s ancient history.”
“As you say, brother,” said Abdullah. “You know we miss you.”
“Good, I’ll come back. Don’t call me on this phone—I’m about to sell it. When I get home, I’ll tell you what happened here.”
“Come home safe now.”
His second call was to his friend Hazem Abboud, who told him he wouldn’t be back in Baghdad until the next week. He was busy taking pictures with the U.S. military unit and might e-mail Mahmoud some pictures for the magazine.
“What magazine?” said Mahmoud. “There is no more magazine. I wanted to see you before I go back to Maysan.”
Hazem was taken by surprise. They chatted for three minutes, but when it became clear that Mahmoud wouldn’t get to see his friend, Mahmoud looked for another number to call. The number 666 appeared on the screen, and he pressed the Call button and put the phone to his ear. A soft female voice answered: “The number you have dialed is not valid or is out of service. Please . . .”
He wanted to hear her voice and see her before he left Baghdad. He didn’t believe what Saidi or Sultan had said—they were lying and trying to tarnish her image. He knew he had a chance with her. If he heard her voice now, instead of that automated voice, he would find a good excuse to stay in Baghdad, even if he had to live in the Orouba Hotel again, with its stuffy, humid rooms, and if he had to work at any newspaper or magazine, whatever the pay. She was the only person who could give him hope and make him act a little mad—madness and hope that he greatly needed right now.
He called her number again, and again he got the automated message. He felt very bitter, as if night were descending on him, a night that would never end. He opened the back of his phone and lifted up the battery so he could take out the SIM card. He put the battery back in place and snapped on the back of the phone. Then he went to give the phone to his friend who had bought it. He put the SIM card in his pocket, then took out the digital recorder to try to sell it.
• • •
MAHMOUD HAD TOLD me all the details over two days, and I had listened to the recordings on the digital device. I was struck by the fact that the voice on the recordings, attributed to the man Mahmoud called Frankenstein, was deep, like that of a well-known broadcaster. I had suspicions that the whole story was made up, but a week later, in one of the wards at the Kindi Hospital, I heard the voice again, when I sat down next to the bed of an old man called Abu Salim. He told me further interesting details relevant to the story of this Frankenstein. I couldn’t be absolutely sure the voices belonged to the same person, but the story completely engrossed me, and I started looking for other sources to corroborate it.
Mahmoud sold all his possessions and paid off the staff of al-Haqiqa magazine. He packed a small bag, the one he had originally brought with him from Maysan, and settled his account at the Dilshad Hotel.
The country was about to succumb to further waves of violence. It made sense to move away, and that’s what many of Mahmoud’s friends would do. Farid Shawwaf was going back to his little village near Ishaqi, north of Baghdad; he was going to renounce, at least temporarily, the glory of satellite television and smart suits. Zaid Murshid was going to Hilla. Adnan al-Anwar would go to Najaf, where his family and uncles lived. Because of his work as a press photographer embedded with U.S. military units, Hazem Abboud wouldn’t be able to go back to Baghdad’s Sadr City, and he wouldn’t find the Orouba Hotel still standing, or Abu Anmar; he would end up sharing a room in another cheap hotel with a photographer friend.
3
Abu Salim left the Kindi Hospital on crutches. His children came to discharge him. They didn’t take him to their house on Lane 7 but rather to the home of the husband of one of Abu Salim’s daughters, until they could rebuild the front part of the house.
The NGOs and archaeological authorities had asked for work to be suspended on filling in the crater that the explosion had left, because of the wall that had appeared in the middle of the pool of water from the burst sewage and drinking water pipes. Some claimed it was part of the wall of Abbasid Baghdad and was the most important discovery in Islamic archaeology in Baghdad for many decades. Others ventured to speak, rather boldly, about the “advantages of terrorism,” which had enabled this important discovery. But the Baghdad city authorities ignored all this and took everyone by surprise by filling the large hole with soil. The spokesman for the city authorities said, “We do not take half measures. We’re going to preserve these remains for future generations, and they can judge for themselves how to deal with them. If they decide to demolish the whole Bataween district, that’s their business, but for now we have to repave the street.”
Abu Salim may have left the hospital, but someone else from Lane 7 had to stay rather longer—Hadi the junk dealer. The bandages on his hands and face had been removed, but he wasn’t strong enough to get out of bed. He lay there, wondering what had happened to him and to his house, which had probably collapsed and become a real ruin. But was it really his house? By the time he left the hospital he might find that Faraj the real estate agent had leveled it, rebuilt it, and registered it in his name.
But first he had to get well; he could sort out his other problems later. That’s what Hadi kept telling himself, to calm himself down, although he couldn’t bear having to lie down like that all the time and made desperate attempts to sit up and get out of bed.
One evening, needing to pee, he tried to get out of bed once again. The patients nearby were asleep, and the nurses on duty were elsewhere. He heaved himself upright and moved his feet, which were wrapped in bandages. Then he slowly put them down on the floor, touching the cold tiles with the tips of his toes. Within a few minutes, he had managed to stand. He started to move forward, supporting himself against his neighbors’ beds. Then he put his hands on the wall and started walking slowly toward the bathroom.
Once he got there, he noticed his reflection in the mirror above the sink. The fire had completely disfigured him. He had realized this days earlier, when he came out of the coma and saw the pattern on the skin after the bandages had been removed, but he had expected his face to be in better condition. He was a horrible creature, and even if he made a full recovery he would never look the same as before. In shock, he wiped his hand along the surface of the mirror to make sure it was really a mirror and then leaned in to examine his disfigurement. He wanted to cry, but all he could do was stare. As he looked closer, he detected something deeper: This wasn’t the face of Hadi the junk dealer; it was the face of someone he had convinced himself was merely a figment of his fertile imagination. It was the face of the Whatsitsname.
H
adi let out a horrible scream, startling the patients sleeping in the ward. His leg was in a plaster cast, and he slipped on the bathroom tiles and fell backward, banging his head on the edge of the toilet seat and losing consciousness.
4
“My face changes all the time,” the Whatsitsname told the old astrologer that night. “Nothing in me lasts long, other than my desire to keep going. I kill in order to keep going.” This was his only justification. He didn’t want to perish without understanding why he was dying and where he would go after death, so he clung to life, maybe even more than others, more than those who gave him their lives and parts of their bodies—just like that, out of fear. They hadn’t fought for their lives, so he deserved life more than they did. Even if they knew they couldn’t prevail against him, they should at least have fought back. It wasn’t honorable to surrender in battle, and what a battle! It was a battle to defend their lives, the only battle worth fighting in this life.
Fear of the Whatsitsname continued to spread. In Sadr City they spoke of him as a Wahhabi, in Adamiya as a Shiite extremist. The Iraqi government described him as an agent of foreign powers, while the spokesman for the U.S. State Department said he was an ingenious man whose aim was to undermine the American project in Iraq.
But what project might that be? As far as Brigadier Majid was concerned, the monster itself was their project. It was the Americans who were behind this monster.
People in coffee shops spoke of seeing him during the day and vied to describe how horrible he looked. He sits with us in restaurants, goes into clothing stores, or gets on buses with us, they said. He’s everywhere and has an amazing speed, jumping from roof to roof and wall to wall in the middle of the night, they added. No one knew who his next victim would be, and despite all the assurances from the government, people grew more convinced with every passing day that he would never die. They were well aware of the stories of bullets passing through him. They knew he didn’t bleed and didn’t let anyone catch a glimpse of his face. The definitive image of him was whatever lurked in people’s heads, fed by fear and despair. It was an image that had as many forms as there were people to conjure it.
Although I had been immersed in this story for a long time, even I started to feel afraid.
5
Brigadier Sorour Majid was forced to retire. That was the last I heard. But apparently he didn’t take it lying down: he sought a new job through his connections and finally succeeded in getting back into government service, not in the Tracking and Pursuit Department, which had been disbanded, but in some remote place outside the capital, as just a security officer in the local police headquarters. Yet again, he obtained an exemption from the de-Baathification decrees.
I spent many months visiting Bataween to fill in the other parts of the story. I sat in the coffee shop of Aziz the Egyptian, who said he had visited Hadi in the hospital three times. The first time, Hadi had been in a coma. The second time, Hadi spoke to him from behind layers of bandages. The third time, the doctors told him that Hadi had left without anyone noticing.
I didn’t manage to speak to Faraj the realtor. He spent most of his time at home, and one of his sons had taken on the responsibility of running the office. Umm Salim prevented me from meeting her husband again, after my interesting first meeting with him at the Kindi Hospital. But I did get in touch with Father Josiah. I visited him in church and heard from him parts of the story of Elishva, her lost son, her daughters in Australia, and Nader Shamouni the deacon.
In messages from Maysan, Mahmoud al-Sawadi gave me the latest on his dealings with Ali Baher al-Saidi, who was on the run from justice. When I saw a picture of Saidi in an old issue of al-Haqiqa magazine, I remembered I had seen him before—at a conference for intellectuals at the National Theatre some years earlier. He was a brilliant and eloquent man. At the time I felt hopeful that men like Saidi would break into the political arena, rather than leave it to semieducated people and illiterates.
The “second assistant” continued to send me e-mails with documents from the Tracking and Pursuit Department, especially ones related to the inquiries that were still under way. The last document he sent me was about the junior astrologer’s confession that he was responsible for killing his superior on a Baghdad street by controlling the Criminal Who Has No Name by remote suggestion and making the criminal cut off the old astrologer’s hands to fit them onto his own body. But the junior astrologer strongly denied he was responsible for creating the criminal in the first place. He had succeeded only in exploiting it. He had wanted to eliminate the criminal, but his superior had intervened. That was the essential reason for the disagreement between them.
I was anxious as I wrote the story, fearing the door of my hotel room might suddenly open and I would be arrested. In the end, that’s what happened. I had an incomplete seventeen-chapter version of the story in my hands when I was arrested and sent for questioning in front of a panel of Iraqi and American officers. My novel was confiscated, and they asked me many questions. They were polite and pleasant. They gave me water and a cup of tea and allowed me to smoke. They didn’t harass me at all. They asked me about the documents I’d received, what I had done with them, and who this second assistant was. If he was the second, that presupposed there was a first, and the two of them must be assistants to someone. Were they my assistants? Was I running some network? What domestic or foreign connections did I have? What were my political convictions?
I was thrown into detention for a few days while their experts read the incomplete text of my novel. Then one morning they summoned me. They didn’t say much. I found a written pledge on the interrogator’s table. They asked me to sign it without reading it. I was worried and wanted to object, but I was afraid they would send me back to the cell. I signed the pledge in silence. They returned my personal belongings but not my copy of the novel. Apparently I was not allowed to rewrite it.
They set me free without even taking a close look at the identity card I had shown them. It was a fake, one of several I have to make it easier to get past the checkpoints that the warring sectarian militias in Baghdad sometimes set up.
The interrogation panel wasn’t serious, I thought as I headed back to the hotel. It seemed like a formality. I sat in front of my computer and resumed writing. I kept at it for several days, until I received another e-mail from the second assistant—the last message I would receive from him. It included a copy of the final report from the committee of inquiry.
I read it quickly, and was terrified. They were moving toward rearresting me. I had a feeling they would treat me differently this time.
I hurriedly gathered up my stuff, paid my hotel bill, and escaped to my house. On the way I remembered my fake identity card. I took it out of my pocket and threw it out the taxi window. I assumed that, as in the case of the Frankenstein they had been trying to arrest, the people pursuing me would never see me again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CRIMINAL
1
ABDULLAH BURST INTO his brother Mahmoud’s room. “The Mantis has been killed,” he announced. Mahmoud was half-asleep on his bed, resting his eyes from the constant reading he had been doing since coming back to the house in Jidayda in Maysan. He discovered he had many books he had bought but had never read and others he wanted to reread, and he had had enough of the hustle and bustle of the outside world and needed a period of peace and tranquillity. Plus his mother was worried the Mantis might carry out the promise he had made about a year earlier to kill Mahmoud if he ever came across him in the streets of Amara, and he didn’t want to make his mother anxious or cause trouble for anyone.
This went on for about two and a half months, but now his time in preventive detention was over: a group of men had ambushed the Mantis on the highway while he was traveling in a motorcade from Wasit Province. They fired a hail of bullets, killing him, the driver, and some of his aides, before taking flight.
Mahmou
d thought back to his theory about the three kinds of justice, but he wasn’t convinced it was valid. It was anarchy out there; there was no logic behind what was happening. He took a deep breath and gave a long sigh. What mattered now was that he had broken free of a worry that had been weighing heavily on him.
At last he left the house, with no particular destination in mind. His mother didn’t even look up. When he reached the main street, he remembered he hadn’t checked his e-mail in ages.
He boarded a bus and headed for the market. He ran into some friends, who couldn’t figure out why he was so cheerful. Then he headed to the Internet café, where he sat in front of a computer and opened his e-mail. There were a hundred and eighty messages, most of them junk mail, but he noticed one message from his friend Hazem Abboud. He opened it and found ten photographs. They had been taken in various places, in the countryside and in villages, old sites and ancient buildings. In the accompanying note, Hazem explained his situation—that he would probably be able to get a green card because of his work with the U.S. military and wouldn’t be able to go back home for fear of assassination by the militias. Mahmoud felt Hazem was exaggerating and wanted to justify his long-standing wish to emigrate to the United States.
There was an e-mail offering Mahmoud a position as Maysan correspondent for a major Baghdad newspaper. Then he found one from a name he didn’t recognize; he opened it and was surprised to see that it was from Nawal al-Wazir, telling him she had tried to call him several times without success, and sending him her new phone numbers.
“You must call me, Mahmoud,” she wrote. He wanted to call her immediately, but the next message he opened made him forget everything else. It was from Ali Baher al-Saidi. He had clearly spent much time and effort drafting it. Mahmoud found it completely engrossing.
Frankenstein in Baghdad Page 24
