The Sirens of Baghdad

by Yasmina Khadra

  He explained to us that he’d been returning from a routine mission when he discovered that his unit’s assault team had been sent into action. “When the duty officer read me the coordinates of the operation, I couldn’t believe it. The superintendent’s target was your hideout. He wanted to conduct the action on his own and score points on his rivals.”

  “You could have warned me immediately,” Yaseen said reproachfully.

  “I wasn’t sure. You were in one of the most secure refuges in Baghdad. I didn’t see how they could have gotten close to you, not with all the alarm bells I’d set up all around. Somebody would have warned me. But not wanting to take any chances, I went to the area where the raid was about to take place, and that’s when things became clear.”

  He lifted the trunk of his car, which he’d parked in the garage. A half-smothered man was lying curled up inside, wrapped like a sausage in a roll of clear packing tape. His mouth was gagged, and his face looked lumpy and battered.

  “It was him. He’s the one who gave you up. He was there before the operation began, showing the superintendent your hideout.”

  Yaseen shook his head sadly.

  Thrusting his muscular arms into the trunk, Salah violently extracted the prisoner, threw him to the ground, and kicked him away from the car.

  Yaseen squatted down beside the stranger and tore off his gag. “If you yell, I’ll poke out your eyes and throw your tongue to the rats.”

  The man must have been around forty years old, with a scrawny body, a malnourished face, and graying temples. He wriggled in his bonds like a maggot.

  “I’ve seen that face before,” Hussein said.

  “He was your neighbor,” the policeman said, strutting a little with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “He lived in the building on the corner next to the grocery, the one with the climbing plants on the front.”

  Yaseen stood up. “Why?” he asked the stranger. “Why did you give us up? We’re fighting for you, dammit!”

  “I never asked you to,” the informer replied disdainfully. “You think I want to be saved by hoodlums like you? I’d rather die!”

  Salah gave the man a brutal kick in the side, knocking the breath out of him. He rolled about, gasping for air. But as soon as he got his wind back, the snitch took up where he’d left off. “You consider yourselves fedayeen,” he panted. “But you’re nothing but murderers. Vandals. Child-killers. I’m not afraid of you. Do what you want with me, you won’t change my mind. I think you’re a pack of mad dogs. Criminals, heathens, head cases. I loathe you!”

  He spat at us, one after the other.

  Yaseen was astounded. “Is this guy normal?” he asked Jawad.

  “Perfectly,” the police officer declared. “He teaches in a primary school.”

  Yaseen thought for a while, holding his chin between his thumb and index finger. “How did he spot us? None of us is on any poster anywhere. None of us even has a police record. How did he know what we were?”

  “I’d pick that gorilla face out of a million gorilla faces,” the snitch said contemptuously, jerking his head in Salah’s direction. “You bastard, you dog, you son of a whore…”

  Salah was ready to take him apart, but Yaseen held him back.

  “I was there when you killed Mohammed Sobhi, the union leader,” the informer said, his face crimson with fury. “I was in the car, waiting for him in the basement garage. And I saw you shoot him in the back when he stepped out of the elevator. In the back. Like the cowardly murderer you are. Disgusting pig! If my hands were free, I’d break you in half. That’s all you’re good for, shooting someone from behind and running like a rabbit. And afterward, you think you’re a hero and you swagger around the square. If Iraq has to be defended by spineless cowards like you, I’d rather let it go to the fucking dogs. What a pathetic bunch of wankers. What a—”

  Yaseen kicked him in the face, cutting him off. Then Yaseen said, “Did you understand any of that rant, Jawad?”

  The police officer twisted his mouth to one side. “Mohammed Sobhi was his brother. This prick recognized Salah when he saw him going into the place where you were holed up. Then he went to the station and informed the superintendent.”

  Yaseen pursed his lips and looked circumspect. “Gag him again,” he ordered, “and take him somewhere far from here. I want him to die slowly, bit by bit. I want him to start rotting before he breathes his last.”

  Salah and Hassan assured him they’d carry out his orders. They stuffed the “parcel” back in the trunk of Jawad’s car, got in, and drove out of the garage, preceded by Jawad himself, who was behind the wheel of Salah’s car. Hussein closed the garage door.

  Yaseen, his neck bent forward, his shoulders sagging, was still standing in the spot where he’d interrogated the prisoner. I stood a few steps behind him, severely tempted to leap onto his back. I had to go to the deepest part of my being to recover my breath and say to him, “You see? Omar had nothing to do with it.”

  It was as if I’d opened Pandora’s box. Yaseen shook from head to toe and then whipped around to face me, brandishing his finger like a dagger. His voice gave me a chill when he said, “One more word out of you, just one tiny word, and I’ll tear your throat out with my teeth.” Whereupon he shoved me aside with the back of his hand and went to his room to mistreat the furniture.

  I stepped out into the night. In the anemic lights of the boulevards, while the curfew was regaining the upper hand, I measured the incongruity of people and things. Baghdad had turned away everything, even its prayers. And as for me, I no longer recognized myself in mine. I walked along with a heavy heart, hugging the walls like a shadow puppet…. What have I done? Almighty God! How will Omar ever forgive me?

  17

  Sleep had become my purgatory. Almost as soon as I dozed off, I started running again, fleeing through labyrinthine corridors with a shadowy shape hot on my heels. It was everywhere, even in my frantic breathing…. I jerked into consciousness, drenched from head to foot, my arms waving in front of me. It was always there—in the bright light of dawn, in the silence of the night, hovering over my bed. I clutched my temples with both hands and made myself so small that I disappeared under the sheets. What have I done? The horrible question penetrated me at full tilt, like a falcon striking a bustard. Omar’s ghost had become my companion animal, my walking grief, my intoxication, and my madness. All I had to do was to lower my eyelids and it would fill my mind, and when I opened my eyes, it hid the rest of the world. There was nothing left in the world except Omar’s ghost and me. We were the world.

  It was no use praying, no use beseeching him to spare me, if only for a minute; I supplicated in vain. He remained where he was, silent and disconcerted, so real that I could have touched him had I stretched out my hand.

  A week passed, things grew more and more intense, and my inner turmoil, a compound of weakness and dread, steadily increased. I felt myself slipping deeper and deeper into depression. I wanted to die.

  I went to see Sayed and informed him of my desire to get it over with. I volunteered for a suicide attack. It was the most conclusive of shortcuts, and the most worthwhile, as well. This idea, on my mind since well before the mistake that had led to the Corporal’s execution, had by now become my fixation. I wasn’t afraid. I had no attachment to anything anymore. I felt as qualified as any suicide bomber. Every morning, you could hear them exploding on the streets; every evening, some military post was attacked. The bombers went to their deaths as to a party, in the midst of amazing fireworks displays.

  “You’ll stand on line like everybody else,” Yaseen later told me. “And you’ll wait your turn.”

  Any rapport that had existed between Yaseen and me was gone. He couldn’t stand me; I detested him. He was always after me, interrupting me when I tried to get a word in edgewise, rejecting my efforts to make myself useful. Our hostility made life miserable for the other members of our group, and things promised to get worse. Yaseen was trying to break me, trying to make
me toe the line. I was no hothead; I never challenged his authority or his charisma. I simply hated him, and he took the contempt he aroused in me for insubordination.

  Sayed eventually faced the obvious facts. My cohabitation with Yaseen was at risk of ending badly and endangering the entire group. Sayed authorized me to come back to his store, and I returned in haste to my little upstairs room. Omar’s ghost joined me there; now he had me all to himself. Nevertheless, I preferred the worst of his pestering to the mere sight of Yaseen.

  It was after closing time on a Wednesday. I had dinner at the greasy spoon nearby and walked back to the store. The sun was going down in flames behind the buildings of the city. Sayed was waiting for me in the doorway, his eyes glittering in the obscurity. He was extremely excited.

  We went up to my room. Once we were inside, he grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Today I received the best news of my life.”

  His face was radiant as he hugged me to him, and then his happiness burst out. “It’s fantastic, cousin. Fantastic.”

  He asked me to sit on the bed, made an effort to control his enthusiasm, and finally said, “I spoke to you about a mission. You wanted to see some action, and I told you maybe I had something for you, but I wanted to wait and be sure about it. Well, the miracle has taken place. I received the confirmation less than an hour ago. This incredible mission is now possible. Do you feel capable of accomplishing it?”

  “I’ll say I do.”

  “We’re talking about the most important mission ever undertaken in history. The final mission. The mission that will bring about the unconditional capitulation of the West and return us permanently to our proper role on the world’s stage. Do you believe you could—”

  “I’m ready, Sayed. My life’s at your disposal.”

  “It’s not only a question of your life. People die every day—my life doesn’t belong to me, either. But this is a crucial mission. It will require total, unfailing commitment.”

  “Are you starting to have doubts about me?”

  “I wouldn’t be here talking to you if I were.”

  “So where’s the problem?”

  “You’re free to refuse. I don’t want to pressure you in any way.”

  “Nobody’s pressuring me. I accept the mission. Unconditionally.”

  “I appreciate your determination, cousin. For what it’s worth, you have my entire confidence. I’ve been observing you ever since you first came into the store. Every time I lay eyes on you, I feel a kind of levitation; I take off…. Yet it was a difficult choice. There’s no lack of candidates. But it means a lot to me that the chosen one is a boy from my hometown. Kafr Karam, the forgotten, will take its place in history,” he concluded. Then he took me in his arms and kissed me on the forehead.

  He had lifted me up into the ranks of those who are revered. That night, I dreamed about Omar again. But I didn’t run away from him.

  Sayed came back to sound me out once more. He wanted to be sure I hadn’t spoken too soon. The day before launching the preparations for the mission, he told me, “I’ll give you three more days. Think hard. At the end of that time, we’re off.”

  “I’ve already thought hard. Now I want to act.”

  Sayed assigned me to a small but luxurious apartment with a view of the Tigris. The first time I went to the place, a photographer was waiting there for me. After the photo session, a barber cut my hair, and then I took a shower. As I was to leave Baghdad within a week, I went out to the post office to send Bahia the money I’d managed to put aside.

  On a Friday, after the Great Prayer, I left Baghdad in a livestock truck driven by an old peasant in a turban. I was supposed to be his nephew and his shepherd. My new papers were in order and looked properly worn. My name appeared on various documents connected to the livestock business. We negotiated the roadblocks without difficulty and reached Ar Ramadi before nightfall. Sayed was waiting for us at a farm about twenty kilometers west of the town. He made sure that everything had gone well, ate dinner with us, and gave us the itinerary for the next stage before taking his leave. At dawn the following day, we were back on the road, bound for a little village on the slopes of the Badiet esh Sham, the plateau of the Syrian desert. There, another driver took me aboard his van. He and I spent the night in a small town and drove away before sunrise, heading for Ar Rutbah, not far from the Jordanian border. Sayed, who was already there, welcomed us in the courtyard of a health clinic. A physician in a graying lab coat invited us to wash up and occupy one of the patients’ rooms. Our departure from the clinic was canceled on each of the following three days because of a military redeployment in the region. On the fourth day, taking advantage of a sandstorm, the driver and I set out for Jordan. Visibility was zero, but my companion drove calmly along, following desert trails he seemed to know with his eyes closed. After several hours of absorbing shocks and inhaling sand, we made a stop on the slopes of a valley, a barren place where the wind howled unceasingly. We drove onto a natural courtyard and took refuge in a cave. We had a bite to eat, and then the driver, a small, dried-up, impenetrable fellow, climbed to the top of a ridge. I saw him take out his cell phone and, apparently with the help of some sort of navigation device, indicate our coordinates. When he came back, he declared, “I won’t have to sleep outdoors tonight.” That was the only time he ever addressed a word to me. He entered the cave, lay down, and pretended he wasn’t there.

  The sandstorm began to subside, its surges coming at longer and longer intervals. The wind still sang in the crevices, but as the landscape steadily emerged from the ocher fog of the desert, the gusts gradually died down and then suddenly fell silent altogether.

  The sun burned more brightly as it touched the rim of the earth, throwing the bare, jagged hills on the horizon into bold relief. Out of nowhere, two men riding mules appeared, climbing up the valley to our cave. Later, I would learn that they belonged to a ring of former smugglers who had turned to gunrunning and occasionally served as guides for the volunteers arriving from other countries to swell the ranks of the Iraqi resistance. My driver complimented them on their punctuality, inquired about the current operational situation in the sector, and turned me over to them. Without any sort of farewell, he returned to his vehicle and sped away.

  The two strangers were tall and thin, their heads wrapped in dusty keffiyehs. Both of them wore jogging pants, thick sweaters, and espadrilles. The taller of the two sought to reassure me. “Everything’s going fine,” he said. He offered me a big woolen pullover and a hat. “Nights get cold here.”

  They helped me climb up on a mule and we set out. Night fell, and the wind came up again, icy and vexing. My guides took turns riding the other mule. The goat paths branched out before us, opalescent under the moon. We hurtled down some steep escarpments and clambered up others, stopping only to prick up our ears and scrutinize the features of the landscape that lay in shadow. The journey took place without incident, as my guides had foretold. We made a brief stop in a hollow to eat and regain our strength. I devoured several slices of dried meat and emptied a goatskin of springwater. My companions advised me not to eat too fast and to try to rest. They attended to my every need, regularly asking me if I was holding up all right or if I wanted to get off my mule and walk a little. I said I wanted to keep going.

  We crossed the border into Jordan at about four o’clock in the morning. Two border patrols had passed each other a few moments before, one in a military 4×4, the other on foot. The observation post, recognizable by its watchtower and the light shining on its antenna, stood atop a hillock. My guides observed the post through infrared binoculars. When the squad of scouts returned to their quarters, we took our mules by the reins and slipped along a dry riverbed. A few kilometers farther on, a little van carrying a cargo of plastic bowls bore down upon us. A man wearing a traditional tunic and a Bedouin scarf around his head was at the steering wheel. He congratulated my two guides and traced on the ground a secure itinerary for their return to Iraq. He informed
them that drones were flying over the area, explained how to elude their sweeps, and recommended a way to get around a unit of coalition forces freshly deployed behind the line of demarcation. The guides asked a few practical questions; when they were satisfied, they wished us good luck and began their journey back.

  “You can relax now,” the new stranger said to me. “From this point on, it’s a piece of cake. You’re in the best hands in the business.”

  He was wizened and swarthy. His large head, too big for his shoulders, made him seem unsteady on his feet. His full lips opened on two rows of gold teeth that sparkled in the rising sun. He drove like a madman, with no regard for potholes and no reticence about slamming on the brakes, which he did abruptly and violently, often catapulting me against the windshield.

  Sayed reappeared that evening, in my new guide’s house. He embraced me for a long time.

  “Two more stages,” he said. “And then you’ll be able to rest.”

  The following day, after a substantial breakfast, he drove me to a border village in a large, high-powered car. There, he turned me over to Shakir and Imad, two young men who looked like students, and he said to me, “On the other side, there’s Syria, and then, right after that, Lebanon. I’ll see you in Beirut in two days.”

  BEIRUT

  18

  My sojourn in Beirut is drawing to its close. I’ve been waiting for three weeks now. I count the hours on my fingers or stand at the window in my room, staring down at the deserted street. The rain drums on the windowpanes. On the windswept sidewalk, a tramp blows into his fists to warm his fingers. He’s been there for a good while, on the lookout for a charitable soul, but I’ve yet to see anyone slip him a coin. His leggings are soaked through, his shoes are water-logged, and his general appearance is simply grotesque. Living like a stray dog, practically in the gutter—that’s obscene. This person, possessing not so much as a shadow, isolated in his wretchedness like a worm in a rotten fruit, can somehow forget that he’s dead and over with. I feel no compassion for him. I tell myself that fate has brought him so low in order for him to function as a symbol; he focuses my awareness of life’s unbearable inanity. What hopes does this man have for tomorrow? Surely he hopes for something, but for what? For manna to rain down upon him from heaven? For a passerby to notice his destitution? For someone to take pity on him? What a fool! Is there life after pity?