With the new freedom, which took people by surprise, the wardens of the prisons were forced to open their locked gates. Former prisoners quit the jails and returned to their cities, which welcomed them like legendary heroes whose exile had ended. Hameed Nylon and his men, who entered Kirkuk carrying red flags, stood in a central city square where people had gathered and presented vivid displays of the torture they had endured in the prisons and concentration camps where they had resided. Hameed Nylon removed his blue and white striped shirt, revealing his hairy chest and scarred back, where whips and burning cigarettes had left their marks on his flesh. The other men who had been with him in prison staged realistic, dramatic demonstrations of the forms of torture common in Iraq. Some interrogators came out of the truck where they were being detained and stood before their trembling victims, who were forced to endure the experience one final time. Some young women in the crowd of spectators volunteered to join the victims, many of whom had their hands bound with ropes. The interrogators beat them with switches made from a skein of wire, paying no attention to the spurting blood that stained their hands. Although they felt embarrassed, the victims found themselves screaming and pleading with the interrogators to stop beating them, but to no avail because the interrogators had regained their former spirit, which had never really deserted them.
This spectacle, which was presented in the open air, was thrilling and entertaining and the crowd demanded to see everything. Thus the interrogators were forced to bring out their leg vises and to beat their victims on the soles of their feet. Then there were the bottles that they rammed up their victims’ anuses, and the nail-pulling pincers. They even brought out ceiling fans, which they hooked up to the light poles. They tied their victims’ hands behind their backs and, lifting them off the ground, fastened them to the fans, which they ran at full speed until the victims’ shoulders were dislocated. The interrogators beat them with batons while they turned, striking them at random and chortling with laughter. The clothes of the women volunteers were torn to shreds and they were raped in front of all those present, and yet they did not utter a single word about their secret cells. Then the interrogators forced those who had collapsed because they were incapable of enduring the torture to stand in a line and howl: once like stray dogs on a moonlit night and again like hungry wolves or jackals that grew excited on nearing the edges of villages.
This demonstration of human frailty caused the crowd, which was smitten with the heroism that had propelled the revolution, to lose their nerve and attack the devastated traitors, whom they beat until the victims’ howls mingled with their own curses, which arose from every direction: “We’ll cut off the hands of any traitor who betrays his people.” Only Hameed Nylon’s eloquent intervention, amplified by a megaphone, saved the situation. He thanked the people for their zeal and pointed out that their anger ought to be directed against the interrogators, not the victims, who had sacrificed everything they had of value for the sake of the nation’s freedom.
The moment the interrogators heard these provocative words, they took to their heels. People with sparks flying from their eyes caught up with them and killed them with blows from sticks and feet, then they stripped them of their clothes, fastened ropes to their feet, and dragged them from one street to the next. Children pursued them, singing and cheering, in imitation of the grown-ups. Some men who were fastened to vehicles that dragged them regained consciousness and began kicking, trying to escape from the ropes. Three or four of them succeeded in freeing their legs, rose, and ran off naked through the streets, exciting the laughter of the crowd, which stopped pursuing them. Others were hanged from trees or fastened to electric and telephone poles.
The city of Kirkuk, for its part, had become addicted to death like other cities, in keeping with the desires of the lieutenant colonel, whose thoughts changed from time to time. He was influenced by a spring of light that flowed from his spirit like inspiration falling on him from the heavens and that took the form of stern directives provided to the security agencies, which ran death squads of every type and variety. When it seemed that the lieutenant colonel was turning Communist, the squads began to patrol the cities, delivering anyone whose chest was not decorated with a hammer and sickle to butchers who hanged them by their feet with meat hooks beside the carcasses of their lambs. When the lieutenant colonel turned against the Communists, as frequently happened, the other factions attacked them and took them prisoner, forcing their own mothers and fathers to slay them with knives and bayonets. Many, however, were burned alive at civic parties, where women handed around chocolates, candy, and bonbons to the crowd, which always cheered the prevailing tendency.
After some months, the lieutenant colonel, who had filled the city with his portraits and statues, changed course again and issued a number of papers, each of which attacked one of the factions, saying that the lieutenant colonel himself stood above all of them. Laws were issued that forbade anything that was not linked to the name of the lieutenant colonel, who had dedicated his entire life to the people’s benefit. These laws forced popular singers to insert his name into songs of love and romance. They would flirt with their beloved, who refused to sleep with a man who did not love the foremost lieutenant colonel. Women would experience painless childbirth if the midwife recited to them the lieutenant colonel’s teachings and sage maxims, published in countless tomes and distributed to school children, government employees, and labor unions, and popularized in the poetry collections of the poet Abd al-Ta’ib Abd al-Gha’ib, who in his odes pioneered the notion that the lieutenant colonel was seated on the cusp of eternity with his legs spreading over history.
To tell the truth, all the factions were stricken by something close to languor in their charred spirits. When members of the Afterlife Society attacked the Communists, they shouted first of all, “Long live the lieutenant colonel, the foremost Muslim, the victor over Communism and internationalism!” The Communists replied to them with the slogan “Long live the foremost lieutenant colonel, the victor over reactionaryism!” When the Baathists differed with the Nationalists, they yelled loudly, “Long live the foremost lieutenant colonel, the founder of the Arab Socialist Baath Party!” to drown out the cries of “Long live the foremost lieutenant colonel, leader of Arab Unification and liberator of Palestine!” The Kurds usually intimidated the Turkmen with the slogan “Long live our brother the foremost lieutenant colonel, unifier of Kurdistan!” They responded with the slogan “Long live the foremost brother lieutenant colonel, liberator of the Turks from the rabble!” The conflict was not limited to this war of slogans, which hid behind the lieutenant colonel’s name. People began to kill each other in plain daylight with bullets, daggers, and axes and to set fire to their foes’ homes during the night. Fire would devour them and frequently spread to neighboring houses too, reducing them to ashes.
Khidir Musa, whose heart was distressed by the devastation that had settled over his city, seemed to be a lost soul. Everything had escaped from his control, and he could no longer find anyone who would listen to him. The world fell apart before his eyes in one fell blow when security agents on one occasion led his two aged brothers to the station and beat them, accusing them of promoting atheism in the Chuqor community. He was obliged to seek out Lieutenant Colonel Adnan al-Dabbagh, who intervened to get them released. He advised Khidir to send them back to Tashkent, where they had once lived. They preferred, however, to seek out the holy city of Mecca, where they appropriated for themselves a corner of the courtyard of the Ka‘ba, which shelters all those who seek its protection. Once Khidir Musa had been deserted by the last hope in his heart, he withdrew again to his tower above the monastery, after first changing out of his military uniform, which he returned to Lieutenant Colonel Adnan al-Dabbagh. He cut his ties with the secular world and dedicated the remainder of his life to the remembrance of God, in the company of his two friends Dada Hijri and Dervish Bahlul, who joined him, seeking to distance themselves from the evil rampant in all parts of th
e city.
The three men no longer ever left their tower. Everything seemed repetitive and monotonous. Death followed death, and insanity succeeded insanity. The city lost its innocence and became filled with scoundrels and killers. The three men refused to receive anyone other than Hameed Nylon and Burhan Abdallah, who brought them food and cigarettes every day. Eventually it seemed people had totally forgotten these men, whom no one thought of anymore. Dervish Bahlul scaled back his work. He was content to keep his watch with the alarm beside him so he would remember to cross off this name or that from the Preserved Tablet, which he placed beneath his pillow. Dervish Bahlul was not being deliberately neglectful, but people no longer paid attention to death. They began to die so nonchalantly that it seemed they had lost any sense of life’s significance. They handed themselves over to death without ever growing weary of it, and even composed songs they chanted in the streets, like, “The people die, the lieutenant colonel lives,” and, “Execution, execution, the people so will it, execution, execution.” The lieutenant colonel, who had some peculiar characteristics, replaced the nightingale that warbled before the radio programs commenced with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion, which roars at the beginning of each of the studio’s films, to frighten his enemies. Along with death, superstitions the lieutenant colonel’s astrologers popularized spread like fire through chaff. Thus many villagers who lived in reed-mat huts purchased a spyglass that they directed at the moon every night so they could see the lieutenant colonel, who was said to look down from there, granting light and affection to the world.
People had changed so much that it was difficult to get to know them. Each of them had stumbled upon some new cause that shaped his life until he no longer remembered the past from which he had developed. Everything seemed new. It was like a virgin land that dazzled newcomers enter, trailing guides who know everything—past, present, and future. It became a popular custom to worship idols, which the new priests often colored with henna and placed on benches in the corners of streets and alleyways and in front of coffeehouses and bars, as if they were signs warning of the advent of a time when earth and sky would unite.
Hameed Nylon broke with his village fighters, whom he left to their new destiny. Others pursued them and made them join peasant collectives that raided and plundered cities from time to time, with or without a pretext. Prison had left many scars on Hameed Nylon’s spirit. He had gone out like an ember under the influence of time or his defeat, but no one else noticed. Many believed that he had increased in wisdom and maturity. For his part, though, the world seemed like a play performed by comic actors of every type. He would tell himself, “Now that they’ve all become revolutionaries, what role is left for you, Hameed Nylon?” He began to sit every evening in the Oil Workers’ Union Club drinking arak, sunk in his memories. They had proposed to appoint him head of the Oil Workers’ Union, which was no longer a covert organization, but he declined that. He was chosen its honorary president, even without anyone asking him. His visits to the tower where Khidir Musa, Dervish Bahlul, and Dada Hijri lived multiplied. He was gripped by the discussions that these men conducted. Each time he left the tower he would burst into tears, filled with emotions of uncertain origin—like a man awakened by distant cries.
The revolution had changed Hameed Nylon, as it had changed many others, so that friends became enemies and even traitors. A man would pass another and raise his hand in greeting, “Good day,” and then draw his revolver and shoot him. The police did not ask for witnesses. They would always arrest the person closest to the dead man, accusing him of the murder, while the perpetrators stood watching. Things came to a devastating end when a man shot Dalli Ihsan, whom everyone knew to be some other type of being—not human. The moment the three bullets pierced the body of Dalli Ihsan, it was transformed into an awe-inspiring fountain of fire that ascended toward the heavens, emitting thunder and lightning. The earth shook and quaked so that people fell down on top of each other. The fire spread to markets and homes, which were reduced to ashes. From the fire descended Dalli Ihsan’s kinsfolk: angels of death mounted on horses and motorcycles, raining destruction on the cities, one after the other. This attack, which no one had expected, lasted three days. Then another conspiratorial armed force spread its control over the capital, which planes from the Air Force had attacked after taking off from the base at al-Habaniya. The foremost lieutenant colonel was arrested and executed by firing squad. His corpse was thrown in the Tigris River.
Although the tribe that had descended from the fire withdrew, satisfied with the destruction they had brought to Kirkuk and the other cities, the new lieutenant colonel delivered a speech—broadcast by radio and television in both Arabic and Kurdish—in which he cursed those who, from ignorance, had supported the foremost lieutenant colonel, who ranked twenty-seventh in the secret faction of Satan. He announced that he himself was the foremost commander and derived his legal authority from his spirit, which soared over the mountains, rivers, and deserts. It had traversed the generations, extracting the essence of the revolution. He added modestly, however, “Even so, I’m a human being like you, even if my ancestors were angels.” He called on the people to go out into the streets to delight in the return of the man whom mankind had so long awaited.
The terrified people, who had witnessed the devastation visited upon them by the angels of fire, sought refuge in their houses and barred the doors behind them. The soldiers, however, donned their helmets and began to break down the doors with their boots and their rifles, storming into houses. They led out the young men, lined them up against the walls of their homes, and shot them. Gallows were erected at the entries of alleys and streets, and hanged men dangled from them. In the prisons and concentration camps, bands of national guardsmen arrived from every place and every era and hosted memorial services that surpassed anything anyone had previously imagined. Each day they led out three or four prisoners whom they slaughtered and then fed to the others. Even so, they frequently organized musical soirées at which they raped the youngest prisoners in front of their comrades, who were obliged to applaud and sing.
People were forced to flee to the mountains’ gullies and ravines, hiding from death, which stalked them from place to place. Hameed Nylon returned to his combatants once again to lead the revolution in which he no longer believed. The few Communists left alive sought refuge in new, even more secret cellars, after lengthy confessions had jeopardized the old ones. The soldiers surrounded the tower where the three old men were living, blocked its door and windows with cement, and turned it into a tomb.
Just as many others had disappeared, so did Burhan Abdallah. Many believed that he might have been slain and his corpse buried hastily somewhere inside some mass burial site. He disappeared so unobtrusively that he might never have existed. Many years passed without his giving any sign of life. Rumors spread that soldiers had killed him when he lobbed a Molotov cocktail at them in the Piryadi community. Others claimed that he had been killed during attacks he launched, with others, against the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. Someone else announced that an airplane had opened fire on him, striking him, as he attempted to cross the border to Turkey. Although his mother heard all these tales, she categorically refused to believe them. She kept saying, “I’m more confident of what my heart says than of what people say. I know that my son is alive. He has simply disappeared. He will return one day.” Even so, Burhan Abdallah remained absent for so long that the memory of him faded from the Chuqor community, which withdrew into itself in response to the succession of invaders that stormed it from time to time, leaving festering wounds in its smothered heart.
Twelve
Suddenly everything calmed down. An unusual yellow suffused the heavens. Was it the end or the beginning? Burhan Abdallah returned once more to his native city, which—after he had buried himself in diverse cities and continents, experiencing lethal depression and exuberant vitality—seemed no more than memories cast into time. He had become an old man who supported him
self with a cane, and—after forty-six years spent traveling from one place to another, from airport to airport, from a city lost in fog to a city where the sun sparkled over its temples—he wore a gray hat to cover his baldness. Had it really been forty-six years? He felt he had left his city only the day before. He had not matured, because the only time he possessed was that of his memories. Even so, he had endured millions, even billions of centuries. He had endured all of eternity, which had left its traces on his scrawny body but had not touched his spirit, which continued to be subject to whatever lay behind the essence of things. His teeth had taken turns falling out and his head retained only a little of its hair, which hung off the sides. His hands were wrinkled, and their veins showed clearly. Through the prescription eyeglasses he wore, he saw nonexistence and what preceded it: the first dark atom that exploded and filled existence with galaxies and suns. “My God, I was there too.”
He found it odd that he—a descendant of light and darkness—should be shackled with hands, feet, a trunk, a head, two eyes, two ears, and a nose. He thought, “What kind of game is this: that I should be everything and also nothing?” The matter seemed to him totally risible but also serious enough to be a curse. Lifting a hand he took off his glasses, which he wiped with a cloth the optician on Schönhauser Allee had given him. “This hand, which moved by itself even without an engine to regulate its powers and which looked almost like a fish, was—in some sense—a fish.” It occurred to him that he had perhaps read that somewhere…in a poster on a wall, in a detective novel. It did not matter where all that had happened. What happens, happens as a matter of habit. Human beings are always like that. Ideas always exist. To have ideas, all a person needs to do is to look. And he was looking.
The Last of the Angels Page 28
