The presence of strangers who worshipped the devil in the Chuqor community actually excited such anxiety and fear in people’s hearts that they continued to wonder whether this was possible. How could a creature worship the devil while God existed? Some rash youth considered attacking these strangers or even setting fire to their dwelling. The community’s elders, however, forbade them from doing that because the issue concerned communal rights, which the Chuqor community considered sacred. In fact, according to Kirkuk’s citizens who had witnessed Satanists, the matter was not entirely clear. People also differed about these strange men. It was said that they had migrated from Mount Sinjar. Some thought they were Muslims who followed their own special sect. Others said they were pagans to whom the message of Islam had not yet arrived. Scholars, however, said they were Zoroastrians who had come from Iran a thousand years before. They had embraced Islam but had shaped it to make it more like their previous creed. Apparently the spirit that people called the devil had coveted these simple folks from the moment they left the city of Yazdam in Fars, leading them along valleys, beside rivers, and across rugged mountains and escorting them past wild Kurdish tribesmen who lived in caves, to Mount Sinjar. Then they had placed young warriors at its access points and had planted their red flags on its peaks. This devil who had loved them and served as their guide was Ta’us Malak (the Peacock Angel). After many years, it became clear that he himself was the angel chief who had protested God’s command when He ordered the angels to bow before Adam. This was the origin of the problem. Whereas Muslims say that the chief angel’s rebellion angered God, who transformed him into a devil who deserves to be stoned, these people say that God discovered a lofty wisdom in this angel’s rebellion and so raised his status. Ta’us Malak refused to bow down before Adam for some important reasons. First, God created him from fire and Adam from dirt. Second, it is wrong to bow before any creature except God, as God Himself has decreed.
This idea actually sparked the imagination of the Chuqor community’s residents, who launched into heated debates with these strangers who had come to settle in the city of Kirkuk because there was so much truth in their view that it was difficult to refute. As usual, the city of Kirkuk split into two factions. One endorsed God’s position and the other that of the chief angel. Those who supported God’s position said that there is always wisdom in everything God says or does, even if this wisdom seems obscure or even imperceptible to many. Perhaps God had wanted to bestow with this strange request a special sanctity on Adam and to grant him precedence over all other creatures. Those who opposed this position and endorsed that of the chief angel acknowledged with a courage that led them to infidelity that God had contradicted Himself by asking His angels to bow down before Adam. Any angels doing that had been motivated by limited intellect, a wish to flatter God, fear of His anger, or a desire for enhanced prestige. These opponents said that the chief angel had rejected an idea that contradicted God Himself in order to defend the truth and that this position deserved greater respect than that of the other, opportunistic angels.
From the very beginning, these strangers refused to call themselves worshippers of the devil, whom they referred to as Satan (instead of al-Shaytan), because they did not dare pronounce the letter shin (sh), which would remind the devil of them. Indeed, they went on to say that the devil was a creature God did not create. Instead, he emerged from nonexistence to combat and to mislead God’s children, because it made no sense that God, who is filled with love for His children, would have created an evil being like the devil, whose only mission in life is to lead human beings to the abyss. At one time the old man told Burhan Abdallah, “I know you will see the devil one day. If only for that reason, you’ll learn the bitter truth, my son. As for us—we’re just poor angels like all the other angels on this earth, which is heading toward annihilation.”
Burhan Abdallah, who from the beginning had sided with the chief angel’s position, had determined to befriend these strangers who said things other people did not. They trusted him enough to take him with them every day to dig for gold in the Khasa Su River. Then they informed him about the Black Scripture that Shaykh Yazid had composed under the inspiration of the Malak Ta’us. Burhan’s imagination was excited by texts that related the appearance of creation and the emergence of the four sacred elements: fire, earth, air, and water. Finally, they allowed him into their home, after he changed his blue shirt for a white one and stopped eating heads of lettuce, since the devil lives between lettuce leaves. One evening after returning from the Khasa Su River, the old man who was known as Shaykh Yazid said something to his sons Zayfar and Bayjih in a language that the young Burhan Abdallah did not know, and then turned toward him affectionately, saying, “No one in the Chuqor community has so far entered our house. You will be the first.” Zayfar approached the door and knocked on it. After a few moments, the door was opened by an elderly woman who wore red clothes embroidered with silver thread. In the courtyard, Burhan Abdallah saw a large pit in which flames were blazing. The area around the pit was spread with Persian carpets. He sat down near the fire, which warded off the dark and threw shadows on the walls. Shaykh Yazid removed from a wooden chest, which rested in a corner of the house’s courtyard, a gold statue that resembled a rooster and placed this before the blazing fire. Then they all began to chant a prayer in a monotonous voice while shaking their heads to the right and left. Burhan Abdallah had never heard anything like this before.
Yazid is himself the sultan.
He is known by a thousand and one names,
But the mightiest of these is “God.”
Sultan Yazid perceives
The water contained by the sea
And the whole world before him.
Taking a single step,
He traverses it instantly.
Zayfar brought out a small tambourine and began to beat it gently to the rhythm of the prayer they chanted. Little by little, Burhan Abdallah also sank into a distant dream to which he was unable to cling, for it escaped from time and disappeared into the flaming tongues of fire. Suddenly he noticed small angels the size of his hand. Silver-colored, soft fuzz covered the bodies of these winged angels, which emerged from one of the cages and danced in a circle around the gold cock. Burhan Abdallah suddenly felt terrified and thought of fleeing and leaving the house, but the old man noticed the boy’s fear and took his hand, as if wishing to reassure him that everything was fine.
The prayer, which was chanted to the beat of the tambourine, had scarcely ceased when the little angels stood humbly before the statue of Ta’us Malak, who resembled the rooster. Then they called out his name in a reverberating voice: “Long live the glory of the greatest sultan in the heavens and on earth!” They turned round and greeted the people sitting there, one after the other, by name. Burhan felt almost blissful when the small angels greeted him and spoke his name, “Welcome, Burhan Abdallah, to the house of truth.” Burhan Abdallah struggled to open his mouth: “They even know my name.” He turned toward Shaykh Yazid, who smiled as he sipped the tea placed before him. Seeking clarification, he asked, “Did you tell them my name?”
Shaykh Yazid shook his head no. He said, “I didn’t tell them anything. They know everything. Ask them anything you want. You can count on it; they see even the Unseen.”
Burhan Abdallah did not know what he could ask them, and was silent for a moment. Then something came to him: “Who is the best soccer player in Kirkuk?”
The small angels said in a harmonious voice that sounded like a choir, “There’s not a single finest player. There are two: the brothers Widad and Sidad.”
Young Burhan Abdallah, who was excited by the answer, cried out, “My God, they’re right. Widad and Sidad are truly the two finest players in the city.” Then he hazarded another question: “Tomorrow Kirkuk’s team plays Erbil at Sharika Field. Could I know the outcome of this important match?”
The small beings answered once more in a calm, monotonous voice, as if reading from a boo
k set before them—an open book that contained everything that had happened in the past and that might occur in the future, “Of course you can, Burhan. Kirkuk’s team will have twelve goals to a single one for Erbil.”
Burhan Abdallah trembled as if he had touched a live wire: “My God, that will be an unforgettable event.”
In fact, this match, which Burhan Abdallah attended the next day, having already learned the final score, became a game unlike any the city had witnessed when Sidad scored six goals and his brother Widad five. The twelfth goal for Kirkuk was scored by Erbil against itself. That made the crowd laugh a lot because the Erbil team had previously claimed that it would wipe the ground with the Kirkuk team, whose entire strength consisted of the brothers Widad and Sidad, whom the English had trained. This claim certainly contained some element of intimidation, since it called into question the patriotism of the two best players the city of Kirkuk had ever reared. The crowd could have accepted this taunt as merely sour grapes if the Erbil team had demonstrated enough skill to justify its challenge, boast, and false assertion. When it was defeated in this deplorable way, the spectators—who included even their governor, who had watched the match from a private box he had shared with Kirkuk’s governor, who had forgotten himself more than once and begun to shout for his city’s team—swept onto the field and attacked them, cursing. They would almost have killed the members of Erbil’s team had not Sidad and Widad intervened, telling the attackers, “That’s enough. Their defeat is the best punishment for them.”
The police arrived, put them on a bus, and drove them to the guesthouse, where Erbil’s governor was waiting for them by the door. They had scarcely entered when he ordered the door locked. He glared at each of them in turn, without uttering a word. When he finally opened his mouth, he told them, as if affirming something he had just discovered, “I wasn’t expecting this from you. You have defiled my honor and your city’s.” The coach, who was a physical education instructor, replied, “We’ve worked really hard. It boils down to luck.” These words, which the coach had hoped would excuse his team’s defeat to Erbil’s governor, whose heart was filled with shame, enraged the governor even more than the preceding events. So he raised his hand and slapped the coach, who stepped back, asking involuntarily, “What have I done, Your Excellency the Governor?” The governor called him back, gesturing with his hand, “Come!” Trembling with terror, the coach obeyed the order and took two or three steps forward. Then the governor slapped him again, prompting the coach to step back. The governor followed him, intending to kick him from behind, but his foot plunged into one of the garden’s irrigation ditches, and he slipped and fell on his back in the mud. At that, the governor ordered his guards, who rushed to help him rise, to teach some manners to these men, who had defiled his city’s honor.
The policemen, who had also watched the match, had been waiting impatiently for this type of order. They attacked the squad members with the batons they carried till the players were bloodied. They chased them around the garden until its roses were trampled under foot. Blood gushed from the coach’s head after a Kurdish sergeant who had trained as a boxer assumed responsibility for beating him. Finally they handcuffed the players and led them to a truck that transported them back to Erbil, where they were booked in the prison on charges of harming the city’s reputation.
This incident, which was the first of its kind, was repeated frequently in later years, especially during the republic that followed the monarchy. These heads of state, most of whom were afire with patriotism, considered their soccer team’s defeat a deliberate offense and an attempt to cast aspersions on their own domestic policies. If the team returned with the trophy, then a new automobile would be waiting for each player at the door of the airport terminal, a gift from the government, which was not stingy in honoring its heroes. Once players had collected a sufficient number of automobiles—so that some even opened transport offices and taxi services—the government decided to give each of them a mansion for every victorious match, especially if they defeated a rival or hostile Arab state.
A loss also had a price. Men from the secret police—most of whom were boxers, wrestlers, and reformed criminals—climbed aboard the plane as soon as it touched down at Baghdad International Airport and tossed the team members out of the emergency exit onto the asphalt below. There they pummeled and kicked them, accompanied by screams from the soccer fans who wanted to break their bones. The faces of many were blood-covered by the time they were incarcerated. Behind bars, they were beaten again by fellow inmates, who were no less patriotic than the prison guards. They stayed in prison for a week or two, or even a month, and could not be released until the president himself ordered that, and he was generally preoccupied by more important matters. He would forget about the team members, and no one would dare remind him to pardon these men, whom the strong hand of justice had touched. Eventually the minister of youth and an official of the Olympic Committee would have recourse to the seamstress who made clothes for the wife and daughters of the president, to the private cook who excelled at preparing stuffed vegetables and cabbage leaves, or even to the companion who was closest to the president’s heart, the man who bore the title of “Chief Taster.” The president would not eat from a dish unless this man had tasted it first. One of these individuals would intervene at an appropriate moment to remind the First Lady, who normally was on the plump side, or the president himself, with a passing word or a sentence that sounded off-the-cuff, about the members of Iraq’s national team. Such a hint would suffice to prompt the president to order their release and to invite them to have lunch or supper with him at his residence in the presence of his wife and daughters because he was as eager to display his affection for them as to administer severe discipline to them from time to time. He acted in precisely the same way with his children and his subjects. Occasionally he would forget that he had set them free and again order them freed, causing the head of the police some discomfort because he was forced to arrest them for an hour or two before releasing them and transporting them to the palace, where they would dine with the president.
The beautiful match that Kirkuk’s soccer team experienced so fascinated the young Burhan Abdallah that it was etched in his memory for a long time. What interested him more than anything else was the masterful knowledge of the small angels that were owned by the family of Shaykh Yazid. These angels were polite and much more certain about things than the three angels whom he saw from time to time—those tired old men who carried on their shoulders sacks that they said were filled with spring. These small creatures, perhaps even without being aware of it, played a decisive role in creating the forthcoming history not only of the Chuqor community and Kirkuk, but of all of Iraq.
After Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri was buried, the government established a committee to search for the fortune of Qara Qul’s shrine, but found nothing, even though there was no place they did not look for the treasure that Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri had hidden from the hands and eyes of thieves. Everyone dreamt of discovering this treasure, the location of which the mullah had not even disclosed to his wife and children. If the government wished to recover what it considered its due, the widow of Qara Qul, who resorted to black magic, thought that if she found the treasure she would be spared going to court to demand what she considered her personal right and that of no one else. The mullah’s wife, who denied any knowledge of the treasure’s hiding place, certainly experienced a great deal of verbal abuse from her children, who kept searching in vain for the hidden wealth. The story preoccupied all of the Chuqor community. Many even sought to entice the madman Dalli Ihsan to search for the treasure with them, relying on his well-known ties to the jinn, but he never agreed.
This fever affecting the inhabitants of the Chuqor community petered out after two or three weeks, when it became obvious to them that Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri had taken the treasure’s secret with him to the grave, together with that other secret that had cost him his life.
They stopped pursuing this interest once despair entered their hearts. Government officials contented themselves with laying hands on all the shrine’s possessions that were in plain sight, and Qara Qul’s widow began to hope the court would award her title to all the new gifts that were presented to her spouse’s shrine.
No sooner had this fever that had gripped the Chuqor community died away than Hameed Nylon reappeared as if emerging from a void. He assured those who looked askance at his disappearance that he had been in Kuwait, where he had worked as a driver for its prince, who, he said, owned a gold toilet. As usual, no one believed him, since he showed no trace of the blessings of oil that had enriched Kuwait. As a matter of fact only a few knew that Hameed Nylon was returning from the revolution after lighting its fuse in the countryside around Kirkuk. He had granted himself a military rank and, following the custom of the leaders of world revolutions, had taken a nom de guerre—Lieutenant Colonel Anwar Mustafa—which increased his self-confidence. He had indeed even thought of growing his beard longer but had decided to postpone that till later, when the revolution would have spread to at least a few villages. He had plotted this out carefully ever since his selection as leader by the villagers who had made off with the corpse of Qara Qul and had then fled into the thickets and hills near the village of Tawuq.
The Last of the Angels Page 23
