* * *
I went home. My brother was sleeping. I stepped into my room and comforted my wife over the loss of her gold. We agreed that she wouldn’t tell anybody it was stolen.
Later, I decided to monitor the entrance to the red man’s house in Dolai. I saw lots of guys the same age as my brother going in and out. I also saw a few older men, but the strange thing was the comings and goings of women and girls, all of them carrying bags or household objects. I realized that the florid-faced man’s front was his old business—buying and selling secondhand goods.
In the following days, I heard talk of murders in a number of parts of Hurriya City. The most horrific was in the Dabbash District, where a mother found her child crucified on his wooden cot with a pacifier still in his mouth. The killer, it seemed, had stuck it there after crucifying him—a final touch to the scene of the crime.
On that same Tuesday as the crucifixion of the child, I came home late at night and my mother pressed me with questions about Abdullah. He had not come home yet, which was unusual. I told her not to worry; he was probably with his friends or at work, and would certainly return. I tried to persuade her to sleep, but she continued to moan and sob. She carried on like that during the days we spent searching for my brother at hospitals, police stations, security offices, the morgue, and any conceivable place he might’ve been. But he had vanished, disappeared in an instant, just like Hamza, despite the enormous differences between the two of them.
The world turned black once I was certain that my name was on the red man’s death list. I was a dead man with only a short reprieve set by the red man’s ideological clock. Should I just wait for my demise? Fine! If I was dead according to that man, should I act like a corpse without emotion or feeling—without a heart or conscience?
* * *
Now it was Wednesday, and the clock of fate might as well have been showing ten minutes to doomsday. Cloudy before sunset, a chill wind blew between my feet and up to my head as I walked, carrying an Aladdin paraffin heater. I crossed the street, imagining that I was holding the body of a tiger about to be born into the world from the womb of the days to come. I didn’t look in the direction of the Working Men’s Café and didn’t notice the rows of yellow buses perched on either side of the street. I paid no attention to the crowds of people coming out of the isolation of their homes. As calm as an invisible man, I rode in a long yellow coffin that soon disgorged me in front of the Hurriya 3 buses and then turned back toward Hurriya 2. I crossed the street by the al-Farouq mosque and immediately climbed aboard another long yellow coffin heading for Dolai Road. Many familiar faces assailed me: Hamza, the tailor, my murderous brother, my mother, my wife, Vice President Izzat al-Douri, and many anonymous others, all striking at once in furious pandemonium. The bus was almost empty and I took a seat in the last row—always my favorite choice. From my left-hand jacket pocket I took out a piece of white cloth. I tore it into two pieces of the same size and wrapped one piece tightly around my right hand, and the other around my left. From my right-hand jacket pocket I took a length of thin wire and wound it over the cloth on my right hand. I got off the bus near the market and headed toward the Rasoul Bakery. I walked slowly, with the dark closing in around me, until I reached the street of the terrifying house where that man dispatched death. The heater weighed heavy in my right hand, but I could not switch hands in case the wire should uncoil. I passed the Rasoul Bakery and then finally arrived. The big green iron door was still half open and the street empty. I looked through the gap and saw him as I had become used to: seated behind the ping-pong table, scowling. I pushed the door open smoothly and walked in as gracefully as a tiger with retracted claws. Unlike my brother, I did not sit down opposite him on the small metal chair. With all the skills of a hardened veteran, I set the Aladdin paraffin heater down in front of him, and like lightning I was behind him uncoiling the thin wire with my left hand. In a trance and half blind, I strangled him. Immune to the sting of his blood that had soaked the cloth and my hands, I had not realized that I had cut his throat from vein to artery; I did not hear him kicking the heater onto the floor or perceive his panic-stricken gasps. The shock of being strangled killed him. He had never anticipated someone would have the electrifying courage to take his life. He was above the law of mortals, far removed from death. The time of his garroting was not written on the clock of fate that he held in his hands; he believed that the purveyor of death could not die.
I jolted out of my trance after my palms started burning, as the thin wire cut into them and caused some bleeding. My semiblindness lifted and I saw him lying on the floor by the heater. His eyes were bulging, but they were not asking for mercy. I wiped the blood off my hands onto his dark-brown trousers, grabbed the heater, ran over to the green iron door, and shut it with the large bolt. Seeing as I was unsure whether the house was empty, that was as stupid as trying to make a getaway down a dead-end street.
I saw an arched entranceway leading to a large room built to look like a mosque—it had a prayer niche, a small wooden lectern, and an untidy heap of prayer mats alongside a small table piled with ten or so copies of the Koran. I noticed five wooden doors leading off to smaller rooms. Each room had its own distinct style of couches and beds, but they were all like wedding suites, arranged and decorated to evoke scenes of Paradise. The furniture gave off an otherworldly scent of perfume, the likes of which I had never inhaled before. But I ignored all the opulence of the rooms and their perfumes; I was looking for something unknown, something that would guide me to itself and clear up the enigma of this house full of mysteries. I ascended the cement steps and found more rooms in the same sensuous style upstairs. I was not reckless enough to continue up to the roof. I rummaged through the rooms, searching without success for that unknown thing. I was afraid someone would knock at the door, or that a visiting murderer such as my brother would show up. So I decided to abandon everything and go back out to the street and to the world.
I slipped as I hurried down the stairs. I would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed ahold of the metal banister. At that moment, I spotted a closed door under the stairs with a bunch of keys hanging from a padlock. I opened the door in a hurry, and everything leaped out at me: different kinds of pistols, packs of ammunition, bundles of cash, a large ledger, a green telephone, sticks of incense, miswak toothbrushes, boxes of musk and ambergris perfume, and other small and valuable things piled on top of each other. I stuffed my pockets with cash, then picked up a large black pistol and stuck it in my belt—after checking to make sure it was loaded. I grabbed the ledger and went back through the arched entranceway toward the metal door and out onto the street.
I carried the heater with my injured hand, as my blood dripped and mixed with the blood of the florid-faced man. I took out my blue handkerchief and wrapped it around my right hand while I walked calmly like Abdullah had done after killing the tailor. Once I was beyond the Rasoul Bakery, I stopped a taxi driven by an old man wearing thick spectacles. I had him drop me at the front door of my house. As we drove, I conversed with him about the good times before the siege. I was well aware that the so-called good times were a lie, because our country had always been on a knife’s edge.
* * *
I shut myself off from the world and threw myself into deciphering the massive ledger I had collected from the florid-faced man: the doomsday book. I quit working at the Shorja near the Church of the Virgin Mary; the fate of my friends with pitches and stalls was of no concern to me anymore. I abandoned my wife, my mother and father, everyone. I imprisoned myself in my room night and day, exploring the ledger’s mazes. Monstrous symbols leered at me from the undergrowth of lines, frightening me. They snarled in my face, bearing the promise of destruction. I unearthed the symbol for my brother: A.J.M. –> Afghanistan.
Here were my brother’s initials, with a list of the gifts and donations he had offered up for the victory of the mujahideen: the juicer, the Kashan rug, and my wife’s gold. I also noticed a section title
d Cleansing the Righteous Path—cleansing it of stones, weeds, and filth. There was a drawing of five brooms, including one for the tailor—implying that my brother had committed five crimes. The encoded tragedy was that the tailor was the brother of the florid-faced man; I unraveled the mystery of that riddle after I devoted myself to analyzing and deciphering the signs and symbols. It became clear that the florid-faced man had cleansed the righteous path of all his family. He had uprooted the weeds represented by his four brothers and eleven nephews—among them, the child who had been crucified on the wood of his cot with a pacifier in his mouth—dispatched by the florid-faced man himself. By dissecting a few lines and pulling the veil off the words, I learned that the florid-faced man’s family had kicked him out; his tribe had kicked him out as well. He wanted them to obey him and execute his orders, because in his mind they were orders from God. His family had removed him once they gave up hope of curing him: he was sick with the plague of religious perversion. He intended to completely finish off his brothers and the rest of the names on the list—including his other family members—uprooting them from the Righteous Path. All the murders were carried out with the express approval of God. They were divine, holy murders chosen with absolute care to aid the establishment of the Caliphate.
I saw many sets of those same initials with an arrow pointing to Afghanistan. That’s where my brother was then, educating himself in the universities of jihad, while I was a confused mess. What lessons did he learn? What degree would he get?
By chance, I stumbled across the solution to the riddle of the rooms from Paradise, with their perfume-wafting couches and beds. I cracked it when a page fell out of the ledger. It was a description of Paradise, with symbols for sixteen dark-eyed virgins and the names of those taking part in a mass wedding, whose bridal suites were those chambers. The wedding date was not far off—I guessed that enticing teenagers into an earthly Paradise would make them hot with desire for eternity in Heaven.
I sunk up to my nostrils in the quagmire of the ledger, then dived deep between the lines and signs, enigmas and runes. I trembled in terror when I discovered that the florid-faced man was just one among hundreds of others like him, spread across cities and neighborhoods, from one end of the country to the other; all of them working night and day to rip out the weeds and cleanse the Righteous Path of stones and filth. They all received orders from the Caliph, who accepted them directly from God. With great reverence and piety, they were working to institute the Caliphate—God’s state.
I trembled and dived back into the horrific ledger holding my breath. As soon as I turned a page, I was sprayed with the stench of blood from the clouds of lines. I smelled the foulness of corpses wafting from the paper—their ghosts rising from the ink, in search of their unknown killers. What hole have I slid into? Wading through mazes of blood and forests of bones, I read and shivered. Tears welled up in my eyes as I sat in my room above a grenade set to explode at any moment.
Translated from Arabic by Raphael Cohen
Jasim’s File
by Sinan Antoon
al-Rashad Hospital
I. Jasim Goes Home
The Americans kind of liberated me. They were looking for WMDs, I guess, and stormed the place like cowboys—cowboys with iron horses. There was a slight problem, though. There were no Ws—only MDs! The medical doctors! But there weren’t many; their number had dwindled in the last few years. They ran away, leaving that place and the whole country in droves because of the embargo. That’s what I’d heard at least. Anyway, the Americans drove right through the wall thinking it was a military camp or a weapons depot. Instead, they figured out right away it was nothing of the sort, and then went through another wall. I didn’t see any of that myself. I was asleep.
Abu Hinich, the toothless old bastard whose bed was next to mine, woke me up. “They’re here! The Americans are here!” he yelled.
He’d been saying that since the bombing started weeks before. So I told him to leave me the fuck alone, as I usually did.
“They’re outside!” he said. “People are escaping!”
That last bit got my attention. I’d heard a lot of noise and distant screams, but reckoned they were part of the normal soundtrack of my nightmares. I’m (still) not a deep sleeper at all, but I’d managed to sleep soundly the night before. Thanks to the sleeping pill I’d won playing cards with some guys from the adjacent ward. I sat up. Something was off. The ward was almost empty. Except for Garo, the Armenian engineer who stood by the window, looking outside. I ran over to see what the hell was going on.
Some of the inmates were roaming around like terrified sheep. But there were outsiders too. I could tell, since they weren’t wearing those silly blue uniforms. Some of them were dragging beds and chairs out of the other wards, and others were trying to unhook the air conditioners from the windows.
“Uncivilized bastards,” Garo muttered.
“They’re wrecking the place,” I said.
Abu Hinich ran up to me, joining us by the window. “I told you. They’re here.”
“The Americans are already gone,” Garo pointed out, in his usual unfazed tone.
“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” I suggested.
Garo said he was staying put: “We’ll get killed. I am not going anywhere for now.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” I shrieked.
Then I remembered that he was. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here. The guy had gone to California to study engineering in the late 1970s and was crazy enough to come back during the war with Iran. He had inherited the family’s business—a Jell-O factory—but psychosis too, and ended up here.
“Well, I’m leaving. Wanna come, Abu Hinich?”
Abu stood there nibbling on his index finger with his toothless gums. I don’t know why I asked him. He would’ve been a liability, and I was already wasting my time. I ran back to the dresser next to my bed, took off the sweatpants I was wearing, and put on the only pair of jeans I had. They were a bit loose; I’d lost a lot of weight. The food was so crappy here. I put on my black leather jacket and sneakers. I had saved some money from winning at cards, and kept the cash in my underwear. I took out a few bills and stuffed them in the inside pocket of the leather jacket. That should get me home. I’d memorized the address after I took a peek at my file—the shrink assigned to me had been busy answering a phone call from his chatty wife. He left the folder open, and I read: Hayy al-Khaleej, Street 43, House #13. I thought about getting my file before leaving.
I put everything I had inside the locker (some underwear, T-shirts, and a ghutra) into a plastic bag, and added the sweatpants I’d taken off.
“Good luck, guys,” I told them.
“Yeah, you too, buddy,” Garo replied, without even turning around. Maybe he thought I wasn’t serious.
Abu Hinich just took his fingers out of his mouth and waved.
There was no guard at the door. Once I got out to the yard, I saw three men approaching our ward. One of the MDs on shift, a young guy from the south, was yelling at the looters and telling a guard to lock the other ward, so I ran to the main administration office. I slipped by the tall lieutenant who was performing his daily ritual (jumping up and down, singing 1980s war songs) as if nothing had changed. I saw a kid wearing slippers come out of the main door carrying a large floor lamp. The three men were trying to get a huge leather couch out of the door. I looked through the window. The cabinets were gone; the files were scattered all over the floor. Then I heard gunshots coming from the women’s section. I ran to the main gate—it was locked. The looters were entering from the east, so I ran in that direction and saw the opening in the wall.
II. Cousin Jasim Comes Home
I heard banging on the door. I got up and drew the curtain just a bit. There was a man in his midthirties with very short black hair and a mustache, wearing a leather jacket. Dad was asleep on the couch. He barked at me when the man knocked again: “Who is it?”
“Dunno. A man in a leather
jacket,” I said.
He got his gun from the cabinet next to the TV and came to see for himself. “Good God,” he mumbled, “he’s back.”
“Who?”
“Your crazy cousin.”
“That’s him?” I asked, nodding toward the door.
“Yes,” Dad answered, sounding annoyed. “Go tell your mother. Lock the corridor door and don’t come out unless I tell you to.”
I went and told Mom, but I was scared. I stood behind the corridor door and put my ear to the cold wood to listen in. I heard Dad greeting him with forced joy. Then they talked about the photographs on the wall. Dad asked him if he was hungry or thirsty. I didn’t catch his answer, but I heard Dad yell: “Madiha, Umm Madiha! Where are you? Come say hello to Jasim and make some tea!”
III. Jasim Comes Home
A fat man with an unshaven beard, wearing light-blue pajamas and holding a gun in his right hand, opened the door.
“Jasim! What a surprise! Welcome back, son,” he said.
He sounded a bit nervous. We hugged and he kissed me on the cheeks (very bad breath). I asked him who he was.
“I’m Uncle Abbas.”
Seeing how puzzled I was, he added: “Don’t worry, I know about your condition. Come on in, please. It’s so good to have you back.”
I glanced at the gun he was still holding in his right hand. I’d felt it against my back when we hugged.
“It’s very dangerous these days. You never know,” Abbas said apologetically.
Baghdad Noir Page 4
