The Sirens of Baghdad

by Yasmina Khadra

  When I reached the blacksmith’s patio, Sulayman’s hand was already completely bound up in a terry-cloth towel, and there was a tourniquet around his wrist; his face showed no sign of pain. I found this strange. I couldn’t believe that a person would show such insensibility after he’d just sliced off two of his fingers.

  The blacksmith put his son in the backseat and sat beside him. Disheveled and sweating, his wife arrived on the run, looking like a desperate madwoman; she handed her husband a stack of dog-eared pages held together by a rubber band.

  “It’s his medical record. Someone will surely ask you for it.”

  “Very good. Now go back inside and try to behave. It’s not the end of the world.”

  Tires squealing, we left the village, briefly escorted by an urchin band. Their shouts pursued us across the desert for a long time.

  It was about eleven o’clock, and the sun sprinkled false oases all over the plain. A couple of birds flapped their wings against the white-hot sky. The trail proceeded in a straight line, pallid, vertiginous, and quite unusual on that stony plateau, which it bisected like a gash from one end to the other. The dilapidated old Ford bounced over the deep potholes, rearing up here and there and giving the impression that it was commanded by nothing but its own frenzy. In the backseat, the blacksmith, clutching his son tightly so he wouldn’t strike his head, said nothing. He was letting me drive as best I could.

  We passed an abandoned field, a disused pumping station, and then emptiness. The naked horizon spread out to infinity. Around us, as far as we could see, there was not so much as a hut, not a machine of any sort, not a living soul. The health clinic was sixty kilometers west of Kafr Karam, in a newly built village with paved roads. The new village also boasted a police station and a preparatory school, the latter—for reasons that escaped me—studiously avoided by our people.

  “You think we’ve got enough gas?” the blacksmith asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s not a working gauge on this dashboard.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. We haven’t passed a single vehicle. If we break down, we’re screwed.”

  “God won’t abandon us,” I told him.

  Half an hour later, we saw an enormous cloud of black smoke rising in the distance. By this time, we were only a few hundred meters from the national highway, and the smoke intrigued us. After we passed a small hill, we could finally see the highway and the burning semitrailer. It lay across the road, its cabin in the ditch and its tank burst open; gigantic flames were devouring it.

  “Better stop,” the blacksmith advised me. “This must have been a fedayeen attack, so it can’t be long before the military shows up. Go back to the access ramp and take the old trail. I don’t feel like winding up in the middle of a fire-fight.”

  I turned around. Once we reached the old trail, I started looking out for soldiers on their way to the scene. Hundreds of meters below us, running parallel to our trail, the national highway sparkled in the sun. It reminded me of an irrigation canal, perfectly straight and terribly deserted. Soon the cloud of smoke became a grayish smudge in the distance. Every now and then, the blacksmith stuck his head out the window and scrutinized the sky for helicopters. We were the sole sign of life in the vicinity, and we might be making a mistake. The blacksmith was worried; his face grew gloomier and gloomier.

  As for me, I felt rather serene; I had an injured person on board, and I was on my way to the neighboring village.

  The trail made a wide swerve to avoid a crater, climbed a hill, plunged down, and leveled out after a few kilometers. Once again, we could see the national highway, still straight and still disconcertingly deserted. The trail turned toward the highway and then merged with it. As soon as the Ford’s tires hit the asphalt, they changed their tone, and the engine stopped its incongruous gargling.

  “We’re less than ten minutes from the village, and there’s not a vehicle in sight,” the blacksmith said. “Very odd.”

  I didn’t have time to reply to him. A checkpoint was blocking our route with barriers on both sides of the roadway. Two individuals dressed in bright colors were on the shoulders of the road, holding automatic weapons at the ready. Facing us, erected on a mound, a makeshift sentry box was barricaded behind barrels and sandbags.

  “Stay calm,” the blacksmith said, his breath hot on the nape of my neck.

  “I am calm,” I assured him. “We haven’t done anything wrong, and one of us needs medical attention. They won’t give us any trouble.”

  “Where are the soldiers?”

  “They’re hunkered down behind the embankment. I see two helmets. I think they’re watching us through binoculars.”

  “Okay. Slow down to a crawl. And whatever they tell you to do, do it.”

  “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  The first soldier to step out into the open was an Iraqi. He signaled to us to stop the car in front of a road sign that was standing in the center of the highway. I followed his instructions.

  “Cut the engine,” he ordered me in Arabic. “Then put your hands on the steering wheel and keep them there. Don’t open the door, and don’t get out until you’re told to. Understand?”

  He was standing well away from the car and pointing his rifle at my windshield.

  “Understand?”

  “I understand. I keep my hands on the steering wheel, and I don’t do anything without authorization.”

  “Very good. How many are you?”

  “Three. We—”

  “Just answer my questions. And don’t make any sudden moves. Don’t make any moves at all, you hear me? Tell me where you’re coming from, where you’re going, and why.”

  “We come from Kafr Karam, and we’re going to the health clinic. One of us is ill and he’s cut off a couple of fingers. He’s mentally ill, I mean.”

  The Iraqi soldier aimed his assault rifle at different parts of me, his finger on the trigger and the butt against his cheek; then he took aim at the blacksmith and his son. Two GIs approached in their turn, tense and alert, their weapons ready to transform us into sieves at the least quiver. I kept my cool. My hands remained on the steering wheel, in plain sight. Behind me, the blacksmith was breathing hard.

  “Watch your son,” I muttered. “Make sure he keeps still.”

  “Shut up!” a GI shouted at me, looming up on my left from I didn’t know where. The barrel of his gun wasn’t far from my temple. “What did you just say to your pal there?”

  “I told him to keep—”

  “Shut your trap! And keep it shut!”

  He was a gigantic black, crouched over his assault rifle, his eyes white with rage and the corners of his mouth wet with frothy spittle. He was so enormous, he intimidated me. His orders exploded like bursts of gunfire and left me paralyzed.

  “Why is he yelling like that?” the blacksmith asked in a panicky voice. “He’s going to scare Sulayman.”

  “Zip it!” the Iraqi soldier barked. I assumed he was there as an interpreter. “At the checkpoint, you don’t talk, you don’t discuss orders, you don’t grumble,” he recited, like someone reading an amendment. “You keep quiet and you obey every order completely. Understand? Mafhum? You, driver, put your right hand on your window and slowly open your door with your left hand. Then put both hands behind your head and get out, very slowly.”

  Two more GIs appeared behind the Ford, harnessed like draft horses, wearing thick sand goggles over their helmets and bulging bulletproof vests. They approached us, aiming their rifles from their shoulders. The black soldier was hollering loudly enough to rupture a vocal cord. As soon as one of my feet touched the ground, he yanked me out of the car and forced me to kneel down. I let him manhandle me without resistance. He stepped back, pointed his rifle at the rear seat, and ordered the blacksmith to get out.

  “I beg you, please don’t shout. My son is mentally ill, and you’re scaring him.”

  The black GI didn’t understand very much of what the bla
cksmith was trying to tell him; the fact that someone would address him in a language he didn’t know seemed to infuriate him, and so now he was doubly angry. His lacerating screams made my joints twitch and prickle. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up or I’ll blow your brains out! Hands behind your head!” Around us, the impenetrable, silent soldiers kept a close eye on our slightest movements. Some of them were hidden behind sunglasses, which made them look quite formidable, while others exchanged coded looks. I was astonished as I looked down the barrels of the weapons pointed at me from all sides, like so many tunnels to hell. They seemed vast and volcanic, ready to bury us in a sea of lava and blood. I was petrified, nailed to the ground like a post, incapable of speech. The blacksmith got out of the car, his hands on his head. He was trembling like a leaf. He tried to speak to the Iraqi soldier, but a kick to the back of his knee forced him to kneel down. When the black GI leaned in for the other passenger, he noticed the blood on Sulayman’s hand and shirt. “Goddamn! He’s dripping blood,” the soldier shouted, jumping away from the car. “This asshole’s wounded.” Sulayman was terrified. He looked for his father. The soldier kept yelling, “Hands on your head, hands on your head!” The blacksmith cried out to the Iraqi soldier, “He’s mentally ill.” Sulayman slid across the seat and got out of the car in confusion. His milky eyes rolled in his bloodless face. The GI screamed out his orders as belligerently as before, reducing me another notch with every shout. You could hear nothing but him; he alone drowned out the din of all the earth. Suddenly, Sulayman gave his cry—penetrating, immense, recognizable among a thousand apocalyptic sounds. It was a sound so weird that it froze the American soldier. But the blacksmith had no time to hurl himself on his son or hold him back or stop his flight. Sulayman took off like an arrow, running in a straight line, so fast that the GIs were flabbergasted. “Let him go,” a sergeant said. “He might be carrying a load of explosives.” All weapons were now aiming at the fugitive. “Don’t shoot,” the blacksmith pleaded, partly in English. “He’s mentally ill. Don’t shoot. He’s crazy.” Sulayman ran and ran, his spine straight, his arms dangling, his body absurdly tilted to the left. Just from his way of running, it was evident that he wasn’t normal. But in time of war, the benefit of the doubt favors blunderers over those who keep their composure; the catchall term is “legitimate defense.” The first gunshots shook me from my head to my feet, like a surge of electric current. And then came the deluge. Utterly dazed, I saw puffs of dust, lots of them, bursting from Sulayman’s back, marking the impact points. Every bullet that struck the fugitive pierced me through and through. An intense tingling sensation consumed my legs, rose, and convulsed my stomach. Sulayman ran and ran, barely jolted by the projectiles riddling his back. Beside me, the blacksmith was shrieking like a maniac, his face bathed in tears. “Mike!” the sergeant barked. “He’s wearing a bulletproof vest, the little prick. Aim for his head.” In the sentry box, Mike peered through his telescopic sight, adjusted his firing angle, held his breath, and delicately squeezed his trigger. Bull’s-eye, first shot. Sulayman’s head exploded like a melon; his unbridled run stopped all at once. The blacksmith clutched his temples with both hands, wild-eyed, his mouth open in a suspended cry, as he watched his son’s body fold up in the distance and collapse vertically, like a falling curtain: the thighs on the calves, then the chest on the thighs, and finally the shattered head on the knees. An unearthly silence settled over the plain. My stomach rose, backed up; burning liquid flooded my gullet and spewed out through my mouth into the open air. The daylight grew hazy…And then, oblivion.

  I regained consciousness slowly. My ears whistled. I was lying on the ground, facedown in a pool of vomit. My body had lost its power to react. I was in a heap next to the Ford’s front wheel, and my hands were tied behind my back. I had just enough time to see the blacksmith shaking his son’s medical record under the nose of the Iraqi soldier, who seemed embarrassed, while the other soldiers looked on in silence, holding their weapons at ease. Then I lost consciousness again.

  By the time I recovered some of my faculties, the sun had reached its zenith. The rocks were humming in the broiling heat. They’d taken the plastic cuffs off my wrists and placed me in the shade of the sentry box. Still in the spot where I’d parked it, the Ford looked like a ruffled fowl; all four of its doors were open, its trunk lid hoisted high. On the ground beside it, there was a little heap consisting of the spare tire and various tools. The search had yielded nothing—no firearms, no big knives, not even a medical kit.

  An ambulance with a red crescent on its side was waiting near the sentry box. The vehicle’s rear doors were open, revealing a stretcher that bore what was left of Sulayman. Two pathetic feet protruded from the sheet that covered him; the right foot was missing its shoe and displayed five toes, discolored by blood and dust.

  A noncommissioned officer in the Iraqi police and the blacksmith were standing a little distance away and having a conversation, while an American officer, recently arrived in his Jeep, listened to the sergeant’s report. Apparently, they all realized that a mistake had been made, but they weren’t going to make a big deal of it. Incidents of this kind were commonplace in Iraq. Amid the general confusion, everyone sought his own advantage. To err is human, and fate has broad shoulders.

  The black GI handed me his canteen. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to drink or wash my face, but in any case, I rejected his offer with a feverish hand. He put on a sorrowful expression—a vain effort, as far as I was concerned, because his new, compassionate persona seemed incompatible with his temperament. A brute is still a brute, even when he smiles; the eyes are where the soul declares its true nature.

  Two male nurses, Arabs, came to comfort me; they crouched down, one on each side, and patted my shoulders. Their light taps resounded in my body like blows from a club. I wanted to be left alone; every sympathetic gesture carried me back to the source of my grief. From time to time, a sob shook me, but I did everything I could to contain it. I felt stricken by an incredible weariness; I could hear only my breath, emptying me, and in my temples the pulsing of my blood, its rhythm matching the lingering echoes of the detonations.

  The blacksmith tried to claim his son’s remains, but the chief of police explained to him that there was an administrative procedure that must be followed. Such an unfortunate accident as this entailed a lot of formalities. Sulayman’s body had to be taken to the morgue and could not be released to his family until an investigation into the tragic error had been completed.

  A police car took us back to the village. I didn’t completely grasp what was happening. I was inside a sort of evanescent bubble, sometimes suspended in a void, sometimes fraying apart like a cloud of smoke. I remembered clearly the mother’s unbearable cry when the blacksmith returned home. Immediately, a crowd gathered, dazed and incredulous. The old struck their hands together, devastated; the young were outraged. I reached my house in a lamentable state. The moment I stepped over the threshold and into the patio, my father, who was dozing at the foot of his indefinable tree, started in his sleep. He’d understood at once that something bad had happened. My mother didn’t have the courage to ask me what the matter was; she settled for putting her hands on her cheeks. My sisters came running with kids clinging to their skirts. Outside, the first howls began, somber lamentations heavy with anger and passion. My sister Bahia took me by the arm and helped me to my rooftop room. She laid me down on my pallet, brought me a basin of water, took off my filthy, vomit-stained shirt, and started washing me from the waist up. Meanwhile, the news spread through the village, and our entire family went to condole with the blacksmith and his household. After putting me to bed for the evening, Bahia left to join them, and I fell asleep.

  The next day, Bahia came back to open my windows and give me clean clothes. She told me that an American colonel, accompanied by some Iraqi military authorities, had come to the village the previous evening to offer condolences to the bereaved parents. The eldest of the tribe received them at his
home, but in the courtyard, to indicate to the colonel that he was unwelcome. The old man didn’t believe the colonel’s version of the accident, nor would he accept any justification for firing on a simpleminded boy—that is, on a pure and innocent creature closer to the Lord than the saints. Some television teams wanted to cover the event and proposed a feature story on the blacksmith so that people could hear what he had to say about the matter. On this point as well, the eldest held firm; he categorically refused to allow strangers to disturb his grieving village.

  4

  Three days later, a small van from the village, dispatched by the eldest himself, brought Sulayman’s body home from the morgue. It was a terrible moment. The people of Kafr Karam had never felt such gloom. The eldest insisted that the burial should take place with dignity and in strict privacy. Except for the villagers, only a delegation of elders from an allied tribe was allowed in the cemetery. After the funeral services were over, everyone returned home to ponder the blow that had robbed Kafr Karam of its purest creature, its mascot and its pentacle. That evening, old and young gathered at the blacksmith’s house and chanted verses from the Qur’an until late in the night. But Yaseen and his followers, who made an open display of their indignation, saw things differently and chose to meet at Sayed’s place. Sayed was Bashir the Falcon’s son, a taciturn, mysterious young man said to be close to the Islamist movement and suspected of having attended school in Peshawar during the rule of the Taliban. He was a tall fellow of about thirty or so, his ascetic face beardless except for his lower lip, where a tiny tuft of wild hairs, like the beauty mark on his cheek, embellished his face. He lived in Baghdad and never came back to Kafr Karam except for special occasions. He’d arrived the previous day and attended Sulayman’s funeral.