‘Father, are you all right?’
My father doesn’t respond. He stands up and picks an orange. As he is about to speak the black cat, stretched out along the top of the garden wall, opens its eyes.
* * *
Through its eyes I can see bright sunlight flooding the scene. I can see the father sitting with his son under the orange tree. I can hear an enormous mass of sounds. I can make out every note and mutter in this feast of sounds. At first the sounds surprise me but after a while they make me uneasy. I try to ignore the concerto of sounds and concentrate on what the translator’s father is saying.
* * *
‘Listen to me, son. That Abu Zahra, he never listened to what I said. I warned him and pleaded with him. In my head, he became the rebellious angel. The oil pipeline explosion tore him to shreds and roasted him. It’s Babylonia. It’s damned. He didn’t believe me. This lousy country is inhabited with devils. We’re just slaves, man. Don’t be an oaf. I’ve said that a hundred times. He ranted on about morals and conscience as if we were living in God’s promised paradise. Everything he said reminded me of the Arabic religious drama serials: morals eloquently expressed in a moribund language. Abu Zahra—you know him, my colleague, a fellow antiquities guard—he blocked his ears and didn’t turn his useless brain on. I swear by God Almighty, I kissed his hand and pleaded with him on his last night. We were sitting close to the Babylon lion.’
* * *
I leave the cat. I feel sorry about that. I felt really comfortable inside it. I sit close to the guards at the lion, wearing my facemask. They light a small fire to get warm.
* * *
‘It was a cold winter’s night. I buried myself in my coat and started listening to his nonsense, my blood boiling. He kept saying the same thing, like a preacher in a mosque. Shame, man. This is your country, and those people are bastards who burn and steal in the name of religion and want to take the country a thousand years backwards so that they can live in their paradise with slave girls and virgins and all that bullshit.’
* * *
I take my mask off and the guards disappear, but the lion of Babylon is still there. It’s a beautiful night. The sky is clear and the weather is mild. For sure I’m in another season. Not winter and not cold, or even sandstorms. What time am I in? I hope I don’t get lost. I lie down on the sand and look at the stars twinkling in the sky. I shut my eyes. The cat on top of the wall opens its eyes. I can see the father and his son the translator again. The father gets up, touches the leaves of the orange tree and continues:
* * *
‘Six months ago the parliamentary committees began to descend on the archaeological area. The Antiquities and Heritage Agency accused the Oil Ministry of destroying the ruins of the city of Babylon by extending a pipeline for oil products across an archaeological area that hadn’t be excavated, but the Oil Ministry denied it and said the pipeline had been built in an area where two other pipelines, one for gas and one for oil, had been in place since 1975. The Antiquities Department didn’t give in but submitted the case to the courts. The department said that the ministry’s pipeline would irrevocably prevent the Babylon ruins being reincluded on the list of world heritage sites after the former dictator had messed with them, because in 1988 the Iraqi authorities had carried out restoration work on the ruins but UNESCO, after inspecting the site, said the work did not meet international standards. Materials had been used that were different from the original materials used by the Babylonians, and on some pieces of stone they had carved the words “From Nebuchadnezzar to Saddam Hussein, Babylon rises again.” So UNESCO insisted that the ruins of the city of Babylon could not be included on its list. When the media reported the story of the new pipeline, a fierce debate broke out between the political parties in parliament and they started accusing each other of corruption and serving foreign powers. My wife’s uncle, who is known as Abu Aqrab, visited me and made me a tempting offer. He said his armed religious group wanted to blow up the old oil pipeline in Babylon and he asked Abu Zahra and me to help him. My wife’s uncle knew Abu Zahra well. They had worked together in a primary school in the days of the former dictator. Abu Zahra taught religion and her uncle taught geography. The uncle is now a senior official in an armed religious organisation called the Sword of the Imam. The organisation claims to be fighting the new government and the infidels, and it calls everyone traitors. The organisation was set up by a cleric who had broken away from a broad-based religious movement that had laid down its weapons and joined the nascent political process. The mainstream movement changed from being a movement of murderers that fasted and prayed, into one with ministers, members of parliament, businessmen and people of influence. Within a year they and their religion and the rest of their world had drowned in the sea of corruption that swept the country. Now the Sword of the Imam was offering a large sum of money in return for us turning a blind eye to their activities during the night shift at the ruins. They would sneak in and blow up the oil pipeline, then issue a statement on YouTube saying they had blown it up as a warning against building a new pipeline in Babylon, and that the government of corruption and occupation, together with the Americans, were stealing the country’s oil while the people were starving and impoverished. Oh, and death to traitors.
‘I told Abu Zahra we wouldn’t be helping them to kill innocent people and they could just blow up a pipeline in an area far away from any people. And besides, when it comes to this oil—we’d been living for decades in fear and terror and conflict because of this oil. What have we seen it bring, other than death and oppression and shit? Let them blow it up and rid us of this oil and its curse forever. Eveything else had been plundered in this Babylonian site. The bones of the ancients and the liquidised bones of prehistoric life had both been stolen, and what had we gained from guarding the greatest civilization in the world? We were guards protecting thieves. In the time of that bastard the dictator, the president’s cousins had dug up antiquities and sold them to the West, as part of its ongoing collection of antiquities and oil. And today, the imam’s cousins want their share of this store of bones. They want to make a new deal with the smart markets of the West.
‘Abu Zahra categorically rejected the offer from the Sword of the Imam group and threatened to write to the security agencies and to the governor if they didn’t stop their threats. I never saw anyone so stupid in my life! Which governor and which security agency was he talking about? All the security agencies were militias that belonged to them. Abu Aqrab himself went to see Abu Zahra and threatened him. But what can I say? He blocked his ears and dug in his heels. Life’s crazy. Life’s shit.’
The father falls silent and stands up. He looks at me, his son now, and, hugging me, asks me to forgive him. He puts his cheek against my cheek and his tears wet my skin. He takes from his pocket a DVD wrapped in ordinary paper and puts it on the table.
‘Keep it,’ he says as he leaves.
* * *
The cat leaves at the same time. It goes down to the neighbours’ garden, then climbs up to the second-floor window of their house. It sits on the windowsill and looks at what’s inside the room. There’s no furniture in the room—just a red Persian carpet. A naked man, with his paunch hanging beneath him, in the prostration posture for prayer. His whole body is covered in hair. He looks just like a pile of hair. A young woman is leaning forward right behind him. She puts her middle finger up his asshole, while the man moans with pleasure. He suddenly stands up straight, then bows. He’s performing Muslim prayers and every time he bows or prostrates, the young woman sticks her finger up his ass. Maybe he imagines she’s one of the houris of paradise. Finally the gorilla man turns over on his back and kicks his legs in the air in ecstasy. Then he gets up and goes out. The woman sets about locking the door. I look at her beautiful slim body. It looks like Sara’s intoxicating figure. Where is Sara? Why don’t I get in touch with her? Does what’s happening have anything to do with the story by our writer who killed himself? There’s
no mention of the man praying with his ass bare in his story. The ass man comes back and knocks loudly on the door. He kicks the door and starts shouting, asking the woman to open the door. The woman sits on the floor and starts crying. The cat tires of the man shouting behind the door and goes back to the garden. It prowls warily, then suddenly braces itself to pounce. Maybe there’s a mouse there. I have a good look. Ah, okay, it’s just a little bird.
* * *
The old writer slips a pistol out of the table drawer and goes out.
I follow him. He walks barefoot across the snow. I walk behind him. I ask him to stop but he keeps walking. I shout out loud: ‘Stop. I know you. I’m a story designer like you and I’ve come to turn your story into a smart-game!’
Our writer looks back. ‘It’s all the same,’ he says with a smile.
The cat goes back to the house of the translator, who sees it through the window. He opens the door for it and it goes up to him. He strokes it, picks it up and carries it in his arms. He looks at the computer screen. I can’t see anything. I’m outside the cat now. Where am I, I wonder? What’s he reading? Maybe he’s translating the Carver story. In the original story he’s translating What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Bloody cat! Maybe it felt me inside and evicted me. The translator plays the DVD that his father gave him. I can’t see anything that’s on the screen. It’s true I’m outside the cat but now I’m close to the lion. Always the same places, but outside time! I don’t need the cat’s eyes. I know the content of the DVD. I’ve read the story dozens of time. The video starts, with night descending on a view of the giant oil pipeline. The only light is the light of the moon. Abu Zahra is down on his knees with his hands tied behind his back and his eyes blindfolded, next to the pipeline. The antiquities guard, the father of the man translating Carver, comes into the frame. The guard looks at his colleague Abu Zahra for some moments. He bends over him and kisses him on the head and moves out of the frame.
I feel very thirsty. The translator opens the window in the room, his hands trembling and terror in his eyes at what he’s seen on the DVD. What’s all this ranting and raving that goes on inside our skulls? A brutal struggle for ephemeral survival. An illusory survival, just a postponed death walking about on two legs. What is this instinct that imprisons us? Can imagination solve the riddle? The cat leaps from the window. The girl’s scream reaches their neighbour. The translator runs to the neighbours’ house. He bangs on the door but no one opens. He leaps from the wall to the garden, then smashes down the door to the house. I stay in the translator’s room. I roam around his house. It’s a modest house but neatly arranged. So this is the style of houses at the beginning of the last century. In the sitting room there’s a picture on the wall that strikes me as familiar—a picture of a young girl standing under the Lion of Babylon. It’s the same picture I keep in my room in Dome 2, a picture of my mother when she was a child. Perhaps it just looks like my picture. Could it really be the same picture? It is my mother. The translator saves the poor girl from the man who’s praying, who broke down the door of the room and started threatening the girl with a knife. I don’t understand what happened to him. A short while earlier the pious gorilla was enjoying having her finger in his asshole. I look for more pictures in the translator’s house. I come across a photo album of his life. It’s my history.
The camera moves to a place far from the oil pipeline. The antiquities guard blows up the pipeline by remote control. Abu Zahra burns. I burn too. I scream in terror. Darkness descends on the forest. The pain is unbearable. Someone wraps me in a blanket to smother the flames. Our classical writer fires the bullet into his head as he sits under the tree. I don’t want to die. I shiver from the intense cold. I’m stretched out close to Abu Zahra as he burns. The pain in my body stops, but the smell of roast flesh makes me feel sick. The cat goes out into the street, then runs in panic toward the main road. The smell of human flesh burns my brain. I want to get rid of everything. I just want to be this cat. A police car almost runs it over. The cat cuts through the streets of the damned city of Babylon. It goes through houses, then goes down into the gardens of other houses. It climbs a tree, then walks cautiously along a branch that almost touches the balcony of one of those historic Babylonian-style houses. On the balcony there’s an old woman whose face radiates goodness and wisdom, sitting in a wheelchair and watering the flowers on the balcony. ‘Go to Adnan,’ she whispers to a flower. ‘Go to Adnan.’
Might Adnan be her son, or her dead husband? I very much enjoy the sight of the old woman and I feel a strange peace course through my feelings. The smell of Abu Zahra’s flesh subsides. Peace and the smell of flowers descend. The old woman puts her lips close to the plant and whispers a song to the flower:
From winter we learn the magic of our fable: warmth, nakedness, bed
From time we learn how to store memories in the drawers of the spirit house
From autumn we learn the shape of the leaves of life
From cruelty and hatred we learn how strange the face of man is
Then we scatter our thoughts
And play again …
The mangle of life as it drips saliva on the shirt of our days!
We’re frightened and we gather
We fall in love and we part
We learn the game and play it!
We learn to laugh from the silence of the toy that is broken in the arms of man
We go to sleep and wake up
Then we go to sleep and don’t wake up
It’s the sleeping rock that said, ‘Life is the mirror of death.’
Both of them are a dead life!
We learn fear before faith
We learn faith before love
We learn love before truth
So we make a mistake and learn to be dizzy, as if it’s a lesson to be learned
We learn how emotion drifts from the music of silence and speech
From the depths of caves blows the wind of our toy that’s broken in the lap of a child
From sleeping fields and forests blow all the stages of drunkenness
The forest of life a grape
The forest of death a barrel
The forest of life fermentation
The forest of death a cup
Then the fingers of man hold the wineglass of pleasure and he eats the thorns of uncertainty
Then we inscribe our poor human sentence
On the blackboard of darkness:
‘Sleeping in oblivion’.
The cat thinks about coming down from the tree. The old woman notices it. She smiles at it and calls it: ‘Puss puss puss puss.’ The cat advances warily along the branch and jumps onto the balcony. It sniffs the old woman’s feet. The old woman puts out her fingers to the cat and it sniffs those. The smell of flowers on the old lady’s fingertips puts me at ease. The old woman strokes the cat’s head. I feel the affection, the love, the peace, the value of human touch and the sweet power of love.
* * *
I feel numb.
I doze off.
I dream.
I wake up.
* * *
In the cyber garden of Babylon, the weather is more than wonderful. Sara lets out a shrill laugh every now and then as I tell her about my trip.
Sara says, ‘I did everything I could to control the effect of the insect so that you could have a good trip, but your brain’s so stubborn and so sunk in melancholy that even that Brazilian insect wasn’t any use.’
‘Okay, Sara,’ says Adnan. ‘What you say may be true but your Brazilian insect did me an invaluable service. Firstly, my story-game will be based on the cat as a main character for getting into the story of that writer who killed himself. But more importantly, what’s really surprising about what happened is that I finally found out who my grandfather was. You might not believe it, Sara, but my grandfather was the man who translated the Carver stories.’
THE CORPORAL
ALI BADER
TRANSLATED BY ELISABETH
JAQUETTE
The true identity of the alleged soldier apprehended two nights ago in a café, speaking about his life and the circumstances surrounding his death, has still not been confirmed. The things he claims to have experienced are historically quite possible, as they are supported by records. News of the man has spread quickly, although there is little information available. According to the Kut Observer, two days ago local metropolitan police detained a strange, angry man speaking in an accent apparently dating back one hundred years. This individual claims to be a soldier in the American War, who was born in 1960 in Nasiriyah, promoted to the rank of corporal, and then killed in the city of Kut in 2003. Investigators are looking into his testimony and outlandish claims. Meanwhile, the man insists that what he says is true, and will not stop repeating his tale.
* * *
I’ll tell you everything, if I can, except for the falling, from Heaven to Earth. My voice echoes … boom … and I’m dying all over again. I don’t know what my death looks like this time, what it’s like at all.
What’s important is I’m someone else today, not the soldier I was a hundred years ago. I’m not scared anymore, not like I used to be. I’m intent on telling the truth, no matter the cost.
They say truth is timeless. This tale happened at a specific time, though: the time of the truth. It would be pretty grand if I told you the truth, and went into every detail.
Whatever the cost. Especially since you know I’m not alive, that I’ve been dead for a long time. The truth is, I’m a fallen hero. That’s right, a war hero, the last soldier in the American War. You want details? I’m a fallen Iraqi hero. How’s that? Well, to make a long story short: an American sniper shot a bullet through my forehead in 2003, about a hundred years ago.
Iraq + 100 Page 4
