The Sirens of Baghdad

by Yasmina Khadra

  My eyes were riveted on the rearview mirror; I couldn’t stop looking at the two corpses.

  “Eight months, man,” the driver continued. “Eight months putting up with their arrogance and their idiotic sarcasm. Real American GIs have nothing to do with the Hollywood marketing version. That’s just loud demagoguery. The truth is, they don’t have any more scruples than a pack of hyenas let loose in a sheep barn. I’ve seen them fire on children and old people as though they were cardboard training targets.”

  “I’ve seen that, too.”

  “I don’t think so, kid. If you haven’t lost your mind yet, that’s because you haven’t seen very much. Me, I’ve gone off the deep end. I have nightmares every night. I was an interpreter with a regular army battalion—angels compared to the Marines—but it was still pretty hard to take. Plus, they got their kicks making fun of me and treating me like shit. As far as they were concerned, I was just a traitor to my country. It took me eight months to realize that. Then, one evening, I went to the captain and told him I was going home. He asked me if something was wrong. ‘Everything,’ I said. In fact, the main thing was that I didn’t want to have anything more to do with those bleating, dim-witted cowboys. Even if I’m on the losing side, I’m worth more than that.”

  Some policemen and soldiers made vigorous gestures in our direction, urging us to get a move on. They weren’t checking anyone; they were too busy trying to free up the congestion on the highway. My driver stepped on the gas. “They think all Arabs are retarded,” he muttered. “Imagine: Arabs, the most fabulous creatures on earth. We taught the world table manners; we taught the world hygiene and cooking and mathematics and medicine. And what do these degenerates of modernity remember of all that? A camel caravan crossing the dunes at sunset? Some fat guy in a white robe and a keffiyeh flashing his millions in a gambling casino on the Côte d’Azur? Clichés, caricatures…”

  Upset by his own words, he lit a cigarette and ignored me until we reached Al Hillah. He was plainly eager to get rid of me; he drove directly to the bus station, stopped the car, and held out his hand. “Good luck, kid,” he said.

  I took my packet of money—still tied with string—out of my back pocket so I could pay him. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I owe you fifty dinars,” I said.

  He rejected my money with the same backhand gesture he’d made at the service station a few hours ago. “Keep your little nest egg intact, my boy,” he said. “And forget what I told you. Ever since I went off the deep end, I talk nonsense. You never saw me, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “Good. Now fuck off.”

  He helped me get my bag, made a U-turn, and left the bus station without so much as a wave.

  9

  The bus, a backfiring old relic stinking of burned oil and overheated rubber, seemed to be on its last legs. It didn’t roll so much as crawl along, like a wounded animal on the point of giving up the ghost. Every time it slowed down, I felt a tightness in my chest. The sun was blazing hot, our progress had been interrupted three times (two blowouts and one breakdown), and the spare tires, as smooth and worn as the two flats, didn’t look very encouraging.

  When the driver, who was clearly exhausted, stowed his jack the second time, he reeled a little. One of his hands was bandaged—the result of a recalcitrant tire—and he seemed generally to be in a bad way. I didn’t take my eyes off him; I was afraid he might pass out on the steering wheel. From time to time, he put a bottle of water to his lips and drank at length, without paying any attention to the road; then he went back to wiping his face on a towel he kept hanging from a hook on the back of his seat. Although probably around fifty, he looked ten years older, with sunken eyes and an egg-shaped skull, hairy at the temples and bald on the crown. He insulted his fellow motorists continually.

  Silence reigned inside the bus. The air-conditioning didn’t work, and the heat inside was deadly, even though all the windows were open. Sunk in their seats, the passengers were mostly dozing, except for a few who gazed absently at the fleeting landscape. Three rows behind me, a young man with a furrowed brow insisted on fiddling with his pocket radio, spinning the dial from one station to another and filling the air with static. Whenever he found a song, he’d listen to it for a minute and then start looking for another station. He was seriously getting on my nerves, and I couldn’t wait to get out of that coffin on wheels.

  We’d been rolling along for three hours without interruption. Fixing the two blowouts and patching the burst radiator hose had put the driver well behind schedule, and we’d had to cancel the planned stop for a snack at a roadside inn.

  The previous day, after my benefactor dropped me off at the station, I’d missed the Baghdad bus by a few minutes and had to wait for the next one, which was supposed to leave four hours later. It arrived on time, but there were only about twenty passengers. The driver explained that his bus wouldn’t leave without at least forty passengers on board; otherwise, he couldn’t cover his expenses for the trip. So we all waited, praying for other passengers to show up. The driver circled the bus, shouting “Baghdad! Baghdad!” Sometimes, he approached people loaded down with baggage and asked them if they were going to Baghdad. When they shook their heads, he moved on to the next group of travelers. Very late in the afternoon, the driver came back to the bus and asked us to get off and retrieve our luggage from the baggage hatch. There were a few protests, and then everyone gathered on the sidewalk and watched the bus return to the depot. Those who were local residents went home; the rest of us spent the night in the bus station. And what a night! Some thieves tried to rob a sleeping man, but their victim turned out to be armed with a cudgel, and they couldn’t get near him. They retreated for a while but then returned with reinforcements, and since the police were nowhere to be seen, the rest of us witnessed a disgraceful thrashing. We remained apart from the scene, barricaded behind our suitcases and our bags, none of us daring to go to the victim’s aid. The poor fellow defended himself valiantly. For a while, he gave as good as he got, blow for blow. In the end, however, the thieves knocked him to the ground and assailed him with a vengeance. Then they relieved him of his belongings and left, taking him with them. By then it was about three o’clock in the morning, and nobody slept a wink after that.

  Another military roadblock. A long line of vehicles advanced slowly, gradually squeezing closer to the right side of the road. There were road signs in the middle of the highway, along with large rocks marking the boundaries of the two lanes. The soldiers were Iraqis. They were checking everyone who went through, inspecting automobile trunks and bus hatches and baggage; men whose looks the soldiers didn’t like were gone over with a fine-tooth comb. They came into our bus, asked for our papers, and compared certain faces to the photographs of the people they were looking for.

  “You two, off the bus,” a corporal ordered. Two young men stood up and walked down the aisle with an air of resignation. Outside, a soldier searched them and then told them to get their things and follow him to a tent pitched on the sand about twenty meters away.

  “All right,” the corporal said to our driver. “You can shove off.”

  The bus coughed and sputtered. We watched our two fellow passengers, who were standing before the tent. They didn’t look worried. The corporal hustled them inside, and they disappeared from our sight.

  Finally, the buildings on the outskirts of Baghdad appeared, wrapped in an ocher veil. A sandstorm had blown through, and the air was laden with dust. It’s better this way, I thought. I wasn’t eager to see what the city had become—disfigured, filthy, at the mercy of its demons. In the past, I’d really loved Baghdad. The past? It seemed like a former life. Baghdad was a beautiful city then, with its great thoroughfares and its posh boulevards, bright with gleaming shop windows and sunny terraces. For a peasant like me, it was truly the Elysian fields, at least the way I imagined them from deep in the boondocks of Kafr Karam. I was fascinated by the neon signs and the store deco
rations, and I passed a good part of my nights ambling along the avenues in the refreshing evening breeze. Watching so many people strolling down the street, so many gorgeous girls swaying their hips as they walked on the esplanades, I had the feeling that all the journeys my condition prevented me from taking were there within my reach. I had no money, but I had eyes to gaze until I got dizzy and a nose to inhale the heady scents of the most fabulous city in the Middle East, set astride the beneficent Tigris, which carried along in its meanders the enchantment of Baghdad’s legends and love songs. It’s true that the shadow of the Rais dimmed the lights of the city, but that shadow didn’t reach me. I was a young, dazzled student with marvelous prospects in my head. Every beauty that Baghdad suggested to me became mine; how could I surrender to the charms of the city of houris and not identify with it a little? And even then, Kadem told me, I should have seen it before the embargo….

  Baghdad might have survived the United Nations embargo just to flout the West and its influence peddling, but the city assuredly wouldn’t survive the affronts its own misbegotten children were inflicting on it.

  And there I was, come to Baghdad in my turn to spread my venom there. I didn’t know how to go about it, but I was certain I’d strike some nasty blow. It was the way things had always been with us. For Bedouin, no matter how impoverished they may be, honor is no joking matter. An offense must be washed away in blood, which is the sole authorized detergent when it’s a question of keeping one’s self-respect. I was the only boy in my family. Since my father was an invalid, the supreme task of avenging the outrage he’d suffered fell to me, even at the cost of my life. Dignity can’t be negotiated. Should we lose it, all the shrouds in the world won’t suffice to veil our faces, and no tomb will receive our carcasses without cracking.

  Prodded on by some evil spell, I, too, was going to rage: I was going to defile the walls I’d caressed, spit on the shop windows I’d groomed myself in, and unload my quota of corpses into the sacred Tigris, the anthropophagous river, once greedy for the splendid virgins who were sacrificed to the gods, and today full of undesirables whose decomposing remains polluted its virtuous waters….

  The bus crossed a bridge and traveled alongside the river. I didn’t want to look at the public squares, which I imagined devastated, or at the sidewalks, teeming with people I already no longer loved. How could I love anything after what I’d seen in Kafr Karam? How could I appreciate perfect strangers after I’d fallen in my own self-esteem? Was I still myself? If so, who was I? I wasn’t really interested in knowing that. It had no sort of importance for me anymore. Some moorings had broken, some taboos had fallen, and a world of spells and anathemas was springing up from their ruins. What was terrifying about this whole affair was the ease with which I passed from one universe to another without feeling out of place. Such a smooth transition! I had gone to bed a docile, courteous boy, and I’d awakened with an inextinguishable rage lodged in my very flesh. I carried my hatred like a second nature; it was my armor and my shirt of Nessus, my pedestal and my stake; it was all that remained to me in this false, unjust, arid, and cruel life.

  I wasn’t returning to Baghdad to relive happy memories, but to banish them forever. The blooming innocence of first love was over; the city and I no longer had anything to say to each other. And yet we were very much alike; we’d lost our souls, and we were ready to destroy others.

  The bus stopped at the station square, which had been occupied by a horde of ragged urchins with crafty faces and wandering hands: feral, garbage-eating street kids whom the bankrupt orphanages and reform schools had dumped onto the city. They were a recent phenomenon, one whose existence I hadn’t even suspected. The first passengers had hardly stepped out of the bus when someone cried out, “Stop, thief!” A group of kids had gathered around the hatches and helped themselves amid the crowd. Before anyone realized what had happened, the band was already across the street and moving fast, their booty on their shoulders.

  I pinned my bag tightly under my arm and got away from there in a hurry.

  The Thawba clinic was several blocks from the bus station. I decided to walk there, as I was stiff from sitting so long. There were a few cars scattered across the clinic’s parking lot, a little square surrounded by bashed-up palm trees. Times had changed, and so had the clinic; it was merely the shadow of its former self, with scary-looking windows and a tarnished facade.

  I walked up the outside staircase and came to a security officer, who was cleaning his teeth with a match. “I’m here to see Dr. Farah,” I said.

  “Let me see your appointment slip.”

  “I’m her brother.”

  He asked me to wait on the landing, entered a small, windowed office, and spoke to the clerk, who shot a suspicious look in my direction before picking up the telephone. After two minutes or so, I saw him nod his head and make a sign to the officer, who came back and escorted me to a waiting room furnished with exhausted sofas.

  Farah came in about ten minutes later, radiant in her long white apron, her stethoscope dangling on her chest. She was carefully made up, but she’d put on a little too much lipstick. She welcomed me without enthusiasm, as if we saw each other every day. Her work, which allowed her no rest, had probably worn her out, and she’d obviously lost weight. Her kisses were fleeting and accompanied by a lifeless embrace.

  “When did you get here?” she asked.

  “Here in Baghdad? Just a few minutes ago.”

  “Bahia phoned me to announce your visit the day before yesterday.”

  “We lost a lot of time on the road. With all those military roadblocks and the obligatory detours—”

  “Did you have to come?” she asked, a hint of reproach in her voice.

  I didn’t understand right away, but her unwavering stare helped me to see the light. She wasn’t acting like that because she was exhausted or because of her work; my sister was simply not overjoyed to see me.

  “Have you had lunch?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got three patients to attend to. I’m going to take you to a room. Then, first thing, you’re going to have a nice shower, because you smell really strong. After that, a nurse will bring you something to eat. If I’m not back by the time you’re finished, just lie down on the bed and rest until I come.”

  I picked up my bag and followed her along a corridor and then upstairs to the next floor. She let me into a room furnished with a bed and a night table. There was a little television set on a wall bracket and, behind a plastic curtain, a shower.

  “Soap, shampoo, and towels are in the closet,” Farah said. “The water’s rationed—don’t use more than you need.” She looked at her watch. “I have to hurry.”

  And she left the room.

  I stood where I was for a good while, staring at the spot where my sister had vanished and wondering if, somehow, I had made a bad choice. Of course, Farah had always been distant. She was a rebel and a fighter, the only girl from Kafr Karam who’d ever dared to violate the rules of the tribe and do exactly what she wanted to do. Her audacity and insolence obviously conditioned her temperament, making her more aggressive and less conciliatory, but the welcome I’d received disturbed me. Our last meeting had been more than a year ago, when she visited the family in Kafr Karam. Even though she didn’t stay as long as she’d said she would, there wasn’t a moment when she seemed disdainful of us. True, she rarely laughed, but nothing had suggested she’d receive her own brother with such indifference.

  I took off my clothes, stood under the shower, and soaped myself from head to foot. When I stepped out, I felt as though I had a new skin. I put on some clean clothes and stretched out on the sponge mattress, which was covered with an oilcloth spread. A nurse brought me a tray of food. I devoured it like an animal and fell asleep immediately afterward.

  When Farah returned, the sun was going down. She seemed more relaxed. She half-sat on the edge of the bed and put her white hands around one of her knees. “I came by earlier,” she said
, “but you were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “I hadn’t slept a wink for two days and two nights.”

  Farah released her knee and scratched her temple. A look of annoyance crossed her face. “You’ve picked a bad time to turn up here,” she said. “Right now, Baghdad’s the most dangerous place on earth.”

  Her gaze, so steady a while ago, started eluding mine.

  I asked her, “Does it bother you that I’m here?”

  She stood up and went to switch on the ceiling light. This was a ridiculous thing to do, as the room was brightly illuminated already. Suddenly, she turned around and said, “Why have you come to Baghdad?”

  Once again, there was that hint of reproach.

  We’d never been very close. Farah was much older than I was, and she’d left home early, so our relations had remained rather vague. Even when I was attending the university, we saw each other only occasionally. Now that she was standing in front of me, I realized that she was a stranger, and—worse—that I didn’t love her.

  “There’s nothing but trouble in Baghdad,” she said. She passed her tongue over her lips and continued. “We’re overwhelmed here at the clinic. Every day, we get a new flood of sick people, wounded people, mutilated people. Half of my colleagues have thrown up their arms in despair. Since we’ve stopped being paid, there are only about twenty of us left, trying to salvage what we can.”

  She took an envelope from her pocket and held it out to me.

  “What’s that?”

  “A little money. Get a hotel room for a few days. I need some time to figure out where to put you up.”

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I pushed the envelope away. “Are you telling me you don’t have your apartment anymore?”

  “I’ve still got it, but you can’t stay there.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t have you.”

  “How do you mean? I’m not following you. At home, if someone needs a place to stay, we work something—”