The Sirens of Baghdad

by Yasmina Khadra

  The swinging doors close with a squeak. The sound of the writer’s footsteps fades and then disappears, absorbed by the carpet in the lobby.

  Dr. Jalal grabs his head with both hands and mutters an unintelligible curse.

  “Do you want me to blow his brains out?” I ask.

  He glares at me savagely. “Leave him alone!” he says. “There’s more to life than that.”

  21

  Dr. Jalal hasn’t emerged unscathed from his encounter with the writer. He seldom rises before noon, and at night I can hear him pacing in his room. According to Shakir, Jalal has called off the lecture he’d been scheduled to give at the University of Beirut, canceled several interviews with the press, and made no further progress on the book he was about to finish.

  I don’t see how a scholar of his stature could be flustered by a servile scribbler. Dr. Jalal’s an eloquent man, a man with great rhetorical powers. The thought of such a genius allowing himself to be caught off guard by a vulgar hack disgusts me.

  This afternoon, he’s slouched like a sack in an armchair, his back to the reception desk. His cigarette’s dying a slow death, leaving behind a little stick of ash. Staring at the blank television screen, his legs outspread, his arms hanging down over the arms of his chair, he looks like a battered boxer slumping on a stool.

  He doesn’t glance over at me. On the table beside him, some empty beer bottles accompany a glass of whiskey. The ashtray is brimming with butts.

  I leave the lobby. In the hotel restaurant, I order a grilled steak, fried potatoes, and a green salad. The doctor fails to appear. I wait for him, my eyes riveted on the door. My coffee gets cold. The waiter clears my dishes and takes down my room number. No one comes through the restaurant door.

  I return to the lobby. The doctor’s in the same place as before, but now he’s leaning his head on the back of his chair and staring at the ceiling. I don’t dare approach him. And I don’t dare go up to my room. I step out into the street and lose myself in the crowd.

  Shakir slaps his hands together forcefully when he sees me come in. He’s sitting on the sofa in my suite, as white as a candle. “I looked everywhere for you,” he says.

  “I went for a walk on the esplanade and lost track of the time.”

  “You could have called, dammit. One more hour and I was going to raise the alarm. We were supposed to meet here at five o’clock.”

  “I told you: I lost track of the time.”

  Shakir restrains himself from jumping on me. My composure exasperates him, and my lack of concern fills him with rage. He raises his hands and tries to calm himself. Then he reaches down to the floor, picks up a little cardboard folder, and hands it to me. “Your airplane tickets, your passport, and your university documents. Your flight to London leaves the day after tomorrow, at ten past six in the evening.”

  Without opening the folder, I place it on the night table.

  “Something wrong?” he inquires.

  “Why do you always ask me the same question?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Have I complained about anything?”

  Shakir puts his hands on his thighs and stands up. He looks red-eyed and sleep-deprived. “We’re both tired,” he says, still furious. “Try to rest. I’ll come by tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. We’re going to the clinic. Don’t eat or drink anything beforehand.”

  He wants to add something but then decides it’s not necessary. He asks, “May I go?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  He wags his head, gives the cardboard folder one last glance, and leaves. I don’t hear any steps fading away in the corridor. He must be standing guard at the door, stroking his chin and wondering I don’t know what.

  I lie down on the bed, clasp my hands on the back of my neck, contemplate the chandelier above me, and wait for Shakir to go away. I’ve come to know him; when he can’t figure something out, he’s incapable of making any decision before the matter is settled. Finally, I hear him go. I sit up and reach for the folder. Along with the passport, the university papers, and the British Airways tickets, it contains a student identification card, a bank card, and two hundred pounds.

  I take one of the pills that usually help me to sleep, but it has no effect. It’s as though I’ve drunk a whole thermos of coffee. Lying on my back, fully dressed, with my shoes still tied, I stare at the ceiling, which a neon sign outside splashes with bloodred light. The traffic noise has diminished. Occasional vehicles pass with a muffled swish, taunting the silence that’s taken hold of the city.

  In the next room, Dr. Jalal’s awake, too. I hear him walking in circles. His condition has worsened.

  I wonder why I didn’t mention the writer’s visit to Shakir.

  Shakir’s here on time. He waits in the suite while I finish my shower. I get dressed and follow him to his car, which is parked in front of a large store. Despite a chilly breeze, the sky is clear. The sun ricochets off windows, as sharp as a razor blade.

  Shakir doesn’t drive into the clinic’s inner courtyard. He goes around the building and down a ramp to a small underground parking area. We leave the car, enter a hidden door, and climb a few flights of stairs. Professor Ghany and Sayed meet us at the entrance to a large room that looks like a laboratory. The doors leading to the aboveground floors of the clinic are reinforced and padlocked. At the end of a corridor illuminated by a series of recessed ceiling lights, there’s a gleaming room entirely covered with ceramic tiles. A large glass panel divides it in two. On the other side of the glass, I see a kind of dentist’s office with an armchair under a sophisticated light projector. There are metal shelves loaded with chrome-plated containers all around the room.

  The professor dismisses Shakir.

  Sayed avoids looking at me. He feigns interest in the professor. Both of them are tense. I’m nervous, too. My calves are tingling. My pulse pounds in my temples. I feel like vomiting.

  The professor reassures me. “Everything’s fine,” he says, pointing me to a chair.

  Sayed sits beside me; that way, he doesn’t have to turn away from me. His hands are red from kneading.

  The professor remains on his feet. With his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, he informs me that the moment of truth has come. “We’re going to proceed to the injection shortly,” he says, his voice choked with emotion. “And I want to explain to you what’s going to happen. Clinically, your body is fit to receive the…the foreign body. In the beginning, there will be some side effects, but nothing serious. Probably some dizziness in the first few hours, maybe a touch of nausea, but then everything will return to normal. I want to put your mind at rest immediately. Before today, with the help of volunteers, we’ve carried out several tests, and all along adjustments have been made as required, based on whatever complications arose. The…vaccine you’re going to receive is a total success. You have nothing to worry about on that score. After the injection, we’re going to keep you under observation all day—a simple security measure. When you leave the clinic, you’ll be in perfect physical condition. Forget about all the medications I prescribed for you earlier—they’re no longer necessary. I’ve replaced them with two different pills, each of which must be taken three times a day for a week. You leave for London tomorrow. A physician will assist you once you’re there. In the course of the first week, things will go along normally. The incubation period won’t cause you any major undesirable effects. It varies from ten to fifteen days. The first symptoms to appear will be a high fever and convulsions; your medicine will be at your side. After this phase, your urine will gradually turn red. From that moment, the contagion is operational. Your mission then will consist in riding the subway and going to train stations, stadiums, and supermarkets, with the goal of contaminating the maximum number of people. Particularly in train stations, so the epidemic will spread to the other regions of the kingdom. The phenomenon propagates with lightning speed. The people you contaminate will transmit the virus to others less than six hours
before they themselves are struck down. It acts somewhat like the Spanish flu, but the catastrophe will have decimated a good part of the population before people realize that the two epidemics aren’t really alike at all. This new one is unique, and we alone have the knowledge that will be required to stop its further spread. And our intervention will require compliance with certain conditions. This is an unstoppable mutating virus. A great revolution. It is our ultimate weapon…. The physician in London will explain whatever you’d like to know. You can confide in him; he’s my closest collaborator…. After the onset, you’ll have three to five days to visit all the most frequented public places.”

  Sayed takes out a handkerchief and pats his forehead and his temples. He’s on the point of passing out.

  “I’m ready, professor.” I don’t recognize my voice. I have the feeling I’m slipping into a trance. I pray for the strength to get up and walk without collapsing to the air lock that leads to the room behind the glass panel. My sight blurs for a few seconds. I breathe deeply, struggling for a little air. Then I come to my senses and heave myself to my feet. My calves are still tingling and my legs wobble, but the floor remains firm. The professor puts on a silver HAZMAT suit, complete with mask and gloves, so that he’s entirely covered. Sayed helps me get my own suit on and then watches us go through the air lock to the other side of the glass panel.

  I place myself in the chair, which immediately starts rising and reclining with a mechanical hiss. The professor opens a small aluminum box and extracts a futuristic syringe. I close my eyes and hold my breath. When the needle enters my flesh, every cell in my body, with a single unified movement, seems to rush to the perforated spot. I feel as though I’ve fallen through a crack in the surface of a frozen lake, which pulls me down into its depths.

  Sayed invites me to dinner in a restaurant not far from my hotel. It’s a farewell meal, with all that such an occasion entails for him in terms of embarrassment and awkwardness. You’d think he’d lost the power of speech. He can’t bring himself to say a word or look me in the face.

  He won’t drive me to the airport tomorrow. Neither will Shakir. A taxi’s going to pick me up at 4:00 P.M. sharp.

  I spent the whole day in Professor Ghany’s subterranean clinic. He came in to examine me with his stethoscope from time to time. His satisfaction grew with every visit. Then I had four uninterrupted hours of a deep, dreamless sleep, followed after I woke up by only two dizzy spells. I was as thirsty as a castaway on the sea. They brought me some soup and crudités, which I couldn’t finish. I didn’t feel sick, but I was groggy and pasty-mouthed, and I had an incessant hum in my ears. When I got out of bed, I staggered several times; then, little by little, I was able to coordinate my movements and walk properly.

  Professor Ghany didn’t come and bid me farewell. Since Shakir had been sent off duty, it was Sayed who stayed with me in the afternoon. After nightfall, we left the subterranean parking garage in a small rental car and drove away from the clinic. The city lights were at full blaze, illuminating even the surrounding hills. The streets were seething, like my veins.

  We pick a table in the back of the dining room so we won’t be disturbed. The restaurant’s packed: families with lots of kids, groups of laughing friends, couples holding hands, shifty-eyed businessmen. The waiters are busy on all fronts, some of them balancing trays, others writing down the customers’ orders in minuscule notebooks. Near the entrance, an enormous and rather odd fellow laughs hard enough to burst his carotid artery. The woman sharing his meal looks uneasy; she turns toward her neighbors and smiles wanly, as if asking them to excuse her companion’s indecorous behavior.

  Sayed reads and rereads the menu and remains undecided. I suspect that he regrets having invited me. I ask him, “Have you been back to Kafr Karam?”

  He flinches but doesn’t appear to understand my question. I restate it. This relaxes him a bit; he lowers the menu he’s been using as a screen and looks at me. “No,” he says. “I haven’t been back to Kafr Karam. Baghdad gives me no time off. But I’ve remained in contact with our people. They often call up and tell me what’s going on over there. The latest news is that a military camp has been established in the Haitems’ orchards.”

  “I sent my twin sister a little money. I don’t know whether she got it.”

  “Your money order arrived intact. I talked to Kadem on the phone two weeks ago. He was trying to reach you. I told him I didn’t know where you were. Then he put Bahia on. She wanted to thank you and to find out how you were doing. I promised her to do everything possible to find you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Neither of us finds anything to add. We eat in silence, each of us lost in his own thoughts.

  Sayed drops me off at my hotel. Before getting out of the car, I turn to him. He smiles at me so sadly that I don’t dare shake his hand. We part without pats or embraces, like two rivulets spilling off a rock.

  22

  There’s a message for me at the reception desk. An envelope, taped shut, no writing on it. Inside, a card with an abstract design on the front, and on the back, a line written with a felt-tipped pen: “I’m proud to have known you. Shakir.”

  I slip the note into the inside pocket of my jacket. In the lobby, a large family swarms around a low table. The children squabble and jump off the backs of chairs. Their mother tries to call them to order, while the father laughs, ostensibly having a conversation on his cell phone. Beyond them sits Dr. Jalal, exasperated by the kids’ racket and deep in his cups.

  I go up to my room. A brand-new leather traveling bag is sitting on my bed. Inside, there are two pairs of designer pants, underwear, socks, two shirts, a thick sweater, a jacket, a pair of shoes in a bag, a toilet kit, and four large volumes of literature in English. A piece of paper is pinned to a strap: “This is your baggage. You’ll buy whatever else you need once you’re in place.” No signature.

  Dr. Jalal comes in without knocking. He’s drunk, and he has to keep clutching the doorknob to avoid falling. He says, “Going on a trip?”

  “I intended to tell you good-bye tomorrow.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He staggers and catches himself twice before he manages to close the door and lean back against it. Totally disheveled, with half his shirt hanging out of his pants and his fly wide open, he looks like a bum. The muddy blotch on his left pants leg is probably the result of a fall in the street. His face is ghastly, with swollen eyelids, wild eyes, and leaking nostrils.

  His mouth, which he wipes on his sleeve, has gone soft, unable to articulate two consecutive words without drooling. “So, just like that, you’re going away on tiptoe, like a prowler? I’ve been hanging around the lobby for hours because I didn’t want to miss you. And what do you do? You pass me by without a word.”

  “I have to pack.”

  “Are you running me off?”

  “It’s not that. I need to be alone. I have to get my bags ready and put some things in order.”

  He squints, thrusts out his lips, sways, and then, with a deep breath, gathering all his remaining strength, he straightens himself and cries, “Tozz!”

  Although it’s a weak cry, it makes him reel. He clutches at the doorknob again. He says, “Can you tell me where you’ve been from morning till night?”

  “I went to see some relatives.”

  “My ass! I know where you were holed up, my boy. You want me to tell you where you were holed up? You were in a clinic. Or maybe I should say a nuthouse. Son of a bitch! What’s that like, the world of mental-defectives? Shit!”

  I’m stunned. Paralyzed.

  “You think I’m stupid? You think I couldn’t figure it out? A transplant, for God’s sake! You don’t have any more scars on your body than brains in your skull. Damn it all, don’t you realize what they’ve done to you in that shitty fucking clinic? You have to be stark raving mad, putting yourself in Professor Ghany’s hands! He’s completely fucked-up in the head. I know him. He could never even dissect a whi
te mouse without cutting his finger.”

  He can’t know, I tell myself. Nobody knows. He’s bluffing. He’s trying to trap me. “What are you talking about?” I say. “What clinic? And who’s this professor of yours? I was with some relatives.”

  “You poor sap! You think I’m trying to fool you? That moron Ghany has lost it altogether. I don’t know what he shot you up with, but it’s surely a load of crap.” He takes his head in his hands. “Good God! Where are we, in a Spielberg film? I’d heard about that nutcase doing creepy things to prisoners of war when he was with the Taliban. But this is going too far.”

  “Get out of my room.”

  “Not a chance! It’s very serious, what you’re going to do. Very, very, very serious. Unthinkable. Unimaginable. I know it won’t work. Your shitty virus will eat you alive, just you, and that’s all. But even so, I’m still worried. Suppose Ghany has succeeded, loser though he is? Have you thought about the extent of the disaster? We’re not talking about terrorist attacks, a few little bombs here, a few little crashes there. We’re talking about pestilence. About the apocalypse. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of dead, maybe millions. If this really is a revolutionary mutating virus, who’s going to stop it? With what, and how? It’s completely unacceptable.”

  “You yourself said that the West—”

  “We’re well past that point, you idiot. I’ve said a lot of stupid fucking things in my life, but I can’t let you do this. Every war has its limits. But this—this is beyond all bounds. What do you hope for after the apocalypse? What’s going to be left of the world, except for rotting corpses and plagues and chaos? God himself will tear out His hair….” He jabs his finger at me. “Enough of this bullshit! Everything stops now! You’re not going anywhere, and neither is the filth you’re carrying. Teaching the West a lesson is one thing; massacring the fucking planet is something else. I’m not playing. Game over. You’re going to turn yourself in to the police. Right away. With a little luck, maybe you can be cured. If not, you’ll just have to croak all by yourself, and good riddance. You unspeakable fool!”