‘Think upon what has befallen others—and prepare yourselves!’
Here he turned to pick up a slender volume from off the table, flipping to a marked section before turning back to the camera.
‘As for the matter of epidemics, I would like to pause here. I think we’ll agree that nothing really has happened to our dear city if we compare it with, say, what happened in Europe during the Black Death. In my hand right now is a strange and curious tale from the time of that deadly plague, about how it began and how it spread on the old continent. A gifted Central Asian storyteller narrates a tale of his Tatar ancestor, and how one ordinary war was transformed overnight into one of putrid biological warfare. If you like, I shall read you the whole story, although in the voice of the Tatar narrator of course.
‘Listen closely, then:’
* * *
On the Crimean Peninsula, in the time of my ancestors, there was a disastrous battle that took place between my Tatar forefathers and the Venetians, whose colonies had extended far beyond the walls of Italy. Those Venetians were fortified in an impregnable fortress, one that was far harder to storm than the Tatar commander would have liked.
The Tatar soldiers were brave however—none of them wearied or complained about the Venetian defences. That is, until the plague started to spread among them, and individuals and then whole battalions began to drop. Given how much their commander took pride in his troops, it was almost too much to see his valiant men writhing about, from the fever and the pain, like headless chickens.
The encampment seemed to fill with the excrement of the afflicted soldiers, and the corpses piled up everywhere. As the Tatar commander watched this, growing more mortified by the second, an idea occurred to him. He ordered his soldiers to load up the catapults with the rotten corpses and fire them into the Venetian fortress. Of course, the only problem with this was the ignoble position my particular antecedent found himself in, as I will relate to you.
This man lived out a miserable existence during this time as a cowardly fighter, who could not have stood up to a Venetian mouse. He hated war and sacrifice, thinking them silly ideas sadly lodged deep in most men’s minds. Therefore, he thought it best to think of a way to successfully flee from that hellish place, much as he knew doing so would entail a great deal of danger—perhaps ending in death. This all makes me want to bury my head in shame—I tell it to you now for the first time since I heard it from my father, who heard it from my grandfather, who heard it from his father … and so on.
And so, on a pitch-black night, when many of his comrades were meeting their fates and succumbing to the sickness, my ancestor tried to sneak out of the Tatar camp. Yet all of a sudden he found his way blocked by a wall of gleaming horsemen, charged with guarding the encampment. He stopped behind a tree and thought of what he might do in the meantime.
In the end, he found there was nothing for it but to bury himself among the corpses of the plague dead, and was carried off with four other corpses to one of the catapults and was projected high into the night sky. He twisted in the air for a few seconds, trying to keep from screaming as he thought of how he would die the moment he hit the ground, all hope of escape dashed.
My ancestor felt a rumbling in his stomach, and nearly expelled his leavings like a bird in flight, when he noticed the ruinous losses the plague had inflicted on the Tatar ranks below him. He thought for an instant of becoming a bird himself, of sprouting two wings and flying away.
You might not believe what happened next.
My forefather came to no harm. He fell on a cart filled with hay, then rolled until he came to rest alongside other Tartar corpses hurled by the catapult. There were other corpses of dead Venetians who had been struck by the attack.
The Venetians were so shocked by the sight of corpses raining down upon them that it took three whole days before they thought to begin setting fired to them. My ancestor realised that he could no longer pretend to be one of the corpses or he’d be burned alive.
So he put on the uniform of one of the dead Venetians and waited until the smell of the dead and burned corpses filled the fortress. From there it was only too easy to slink away to one of the anchored ships that was filled with fleeing people, bound for Sicily. This was at a time when the Black Death had all of Europe in its embrace.
* * *
He snapped the book shut and set it aside.
‘The story is over, my brothers and sisters! Do you understand now? Can you imagine what I’m thinking about now? Questions like: Have any of you been hurled from a catapult with rotten corpses? Know that the terrible state this Tatar soldier reached is the worst thing that could happen to a person in the middle of a deadly epidemic like the Black Death in Europe.
‘All we experience now are a few diseases spreading here and there, like cholera and measles, tuberculosis and leprosy, maybe even AIDS. Yet none of you has yet approached that horrendous state of affairs that existed on the Old Continent.
‘There is nothing I can do on this painful occasion other than promise you, by the very beard and moustache you see before you, that things have not reached the point of firing rotting corpses into the air with catapults or even with cannons. I will take decisive action to save what can be saved, but you must know that what is happening in our dear city could easily happen in any other city. Do you understand, my beloved friends?
‘As for the selling and enslavement of children, there will always be some father who sells his children out of dire hunger. Or he might need to provide a child with food and all the necessary things in life, yet find his pockets empty. Other societies experience this—even if it seems unnatural to see it in our society at present, it is a long-standing state of affairs elsewhere.
‘We know that the trade in children is a serious matter, about which we cannot be silent. Yet things have not reached the point where we have open markets for slave trading. If we cast a discerning glance over the path of prior nations, the size of our current calamity would shrink in comparison.
‘Our people would then remember that Basra itself was never more than a small store where a boy or a young woman might be sold. In comparison, other cities were riotous trading floors for all manner of bodies and manpower, to be employed in all manner of physical tasks or vile sexual ends.
‘So it is with other matters—unemployment, terrorism, ethnic purges, looting, poverty, homelessness and so on. All are detestable, of course, and one cannot celebrate at a time when the fallen are all around us. Yet we also must be realistic; we cannot simply wrap ourselves in victimhood without being more understanding of how these curses have afflicted other nations.
‘For terrorism is widespread all over the civilised world, likewise ethnic purges. I have no wish to bring up the Armenian massacre in Turkey, nor the Holocaust of the Jews in Germany, nor other sites of slaughter in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq decades ago.
‘No doubt there was some looting and theft during the terrible floods and storms in America as well. In all the countries that used to look down upon our people and call for us to be ‘civilised,’ all it takes is one fire to ignite, one volcano to erupt, one earthquake to rumble and all the looters and robbers you can image will pour forth from all directions.
‘Even with unemployment, there are some advanced nations that, only yesterday, were great capitalist empires, but today have become effectively socialist states. But don’t bother asking them, “Where are the jobs for the rest of the world?” So instead of demonstrating, my dear friends, instead of squawking out those protest slogans to no end—all of which only benefit foreigners, naturally—let us stand together in solidarity. We can identify points of weakness and negativity, then plan to root them out of our beloved lands.
‘By way of example, and as a question for you all, tell me: what use is the presence of these dumb idols that stare off into nothingness? They stand everywhere, at the crossroads and the public squares. Do we need them, living as we do in a place that hates idol
s? We already know that these useless statues were the work of hacks and hypocrites, second-rate artists at best. Now they serve as little more than meeting points for drug runners and addicts!
‘Therefore, my brothers and sisters, I have seen fit to order these ruined idols turned into fuel to light the future, beginning from tomorrow.’
* * *
In Umm al-Burum square, the pops and hisses of static started to overpower the Governor’s voice as he gazed down on the masses of people from an enormous screen.
‘… in me, my beloved friends, my dear brothers and sisters. Look at what has befallen others and believe me, my friends, that what has befallen you is not as bad as the feeling of poison coursing through your veins. I promise you … I will look into … ksssssshhhhhh … I hope to ta … kssssshhhh … ay that all poss … and end to all terri … here at your service, from you … ksshh … kssshhh … ksssssssshhhhhhhhh—’
The broadcast was cut off, the screen going dark.
A cry went up from the gathered mobs. Curses and spitting could be heard, grumbling along with the rumbling of empty stomachs. Before long the people dispersed, each taking their way home, until the square was deserted—aside from a few corpses strewn here and there, of course.
All, that is, except for one man carrying a hammer, dressed in overalls. All, that is, except for me.
I jumped from the concrete plinths where I had stood just moments before, leaving behind my enormous hammer. As the others departed—no handout today, it seemed—none turned to watch me grab hold of the corpses and drag them over to a waiting cart.
In 2103, just as the last of the city’s oil and gas had run out, the last automaton also stopped working. It was hurled into the open grave of automatons in the dried-up swampland near the Shatt al-Arab. After that, there was nobody left but me. Then again, perhaps I don’t count as a worker in the manner you’re used to. To be precise, I was more of a … volunteer. I just wanted to combat the stench that had swept over the sidewalks and streets and public squares since the last destruction of Basra.
Most mornings, I would be there at my usual table in a small, decrepit café, tucked away along one of the narrow walkways that led to the al-Bujarah mansion. It is no different from most of the other cafés filled with the long-unemployed. Before I’d begin cleaning Um al-Burum Square of the corpses of the starved, I would sit there, in my usual place, on a thin wooden chair facing out into the street.
I’d see every last grim, glistening face—the beggars, the homeless, the blind—as they bartered away their watches and their shirt buttons, their silver teeth, or bracelets of turquoise and onyx for pieces of barley biscuits and tiny cups of bitter tea sweetened with a bit of fruit rind. Among them were artists, engineers, architects—all of whom had lost their once-effortless ability to draw, and would now probably struggle to put primary colours on a piece of paper.
They reminded me of that old story about crows who tried to copy the way that sparrows jumped from place to place. When they inevitably failed, the crows tried to return to their old way of walking, only to be unpleasantly surprised that they had forgotten how to do so.
Outside the café, there were also sellers who filled the sidewalk with technological hardware left behind in the city’s wreckage: thin orange shopping cards, specially designed for the blind and elderly so they could check expiration dates and information about goods in the store; e-readers with flexible screens, either broken or badly creased; dilapidated robots that once helped people around the home, and pieces of mechanical gardeners; collapsible mobile phones with broken keyboards.
There were mixers, toasters, juicers, washers, refrigerators, microwaves. Pieces of furniture and space heaters, photocopiers and printers, televisions and curtains and irons. All of them ran on artificial intelligence, or were governed by the thin microchips lying just beneath their surfaces.
There were mirrors and bathroom fixtures, able to read the DNA of people using nearby baths or toilets, giving them complete medical checkups. Used suits, trousers and hats that could watch for illnesses and call for an ambulance at the first sign of danger, emailing medical information to the nearest hospital. Clothes that could also watch for any irregularities in heartbeats or breathing, and take 3D images of internal organs. All these things were being sold by the foreign tech traders on the side of the road at bargain prices before they hurried out of town.
Even maglev cars with cutting-edge GPS systems that once floated along on a cushion of magnetism—look at them now, strewn haphazardly on the sides of the road, coated by dust and soot. You can see them on any major road, shoved to the side, or dented and scarred by the gangs’ constant brawling.
Twelve years had passed since the last great disaster robbed us of what remained of the uranium, burying the mines deep within the earth. The Shatt al-Arab dried up as well, and ever since then the people had been coming to this grand plaza hoping for their plate of rice and beans. It was the only meal for the hungry, offered once every three days—donated by the well-to-do, and distributed by the government.
I would prowl around the square, surrounded on all sides by grim, wind-whipped skyscrapers; vultures, flocks of crows, migratory storks all nesting with them. The great bell repurposed from one of the churches would ring, warning of the coming distribution of cooked rice, and the hungry families would rush forward from every dark corner, every pile of rubble, like a deluge rising from the ruined alleyways and disused metro stations.
They would make for the square, their nostrils filled with the smell of cooked food prepared in enormous vats over a low flame. They would drag their thin bodies over the torn-up concrete, with metal bowls and open mouths. They would gaze into the distance, wide eyes staring out from tattered rags; skin stretched over bone. Not one of them thought of causing any trouble, or even cutting in line, out of fear of the police officers’ clubs and the butts of their rifles. That’s when I’d have my chance to clean the asphalt of everything left behind to rot.
The Governor often appeared at times like this, on the giant screen suspended above the entrance to Mata‘im Street. His white beard would be carefully groomed, the white hairs on his head looking like they were fleeing his bald patch, which always shone in the sunlight. He would begin his usual speech, saying that Basra was not the only city facing hunger, that there were waves of violence elsewhere, that India and various African countries were still reeling from a lack of energy sources.
Everyone knew that the Governor could call on his informants at any moment; he could pull down that little periscope of his, hooked up to the internet, and sweep its lens back and forth, to see if there were even a hint of rebellion anywhere. He would watch the comings and goings of the city’s denizens, weaving together scraps of information to spot any plots before they came to fruition.
Every three days, then, the people would queue up in a long, meandering line that started at the wreckage of the Al-Mina’ café, in the square, and ran as far as the Mosul Bridge, in the other direction. There, by the bridge, the line broke in three.
One branch bent down to the Khandaq Creek, winding up near Dakir on the arid banks of the Shatt al-Arab. This first line snaked past the waterfront shops and the customs building, next to the main quay where the riverboat journeys to Baghdad used to launch.
The second crossed the bridge, wending its way along Malik bin Dinar Street between the ruins of the giant workshops and enormous malls that are little more than dens for rabid dogs these days.
The third turned back at the bridge to extend around what was left of the Passport Office, ending somewhere near the General Leek Bridge behind the rubble that marks the new governorate building.
I nearly always worked at night, though occasionally I’d take advantage of the people digging into their rice and beans, and begin earlier. I would drag the corpses from walkways and streets, heaping them onto the back of large carts with sturdy tires. Skeletal mules dragged these to the Basra Teaching Hospital, where fresh meat was s
orted from the rotten, shrink-wrapped, and hung in giant refrigerators to send across the border that night. From there, these parcels would go on to every country in the world, for medical students to dissect and learn from.
Before this, the government had bartered away its wood, its metal, its wire and its telegraph poles in exchange for food and medical supplies; then it realised the worrying number of dogs that roamed the streets, feasting on corpses, could be turned to their advantage, and started selling them, too, to a few countries in East Asia.
Gravel and sand were another source of income, with the government exporting millions of tons to neighbouring nations—leaving much of the land around the city looking like one enormous crater, a mass grave.
The lasura trees, the cedars, a huge number of the palms—all went the same way. Who knew what the powers that be would think to sell next? Of course, there’s always the bronze of statues, I thought, on the last morning I saw the Governor appear, as he cursed the statues from the big screen.
When I wasn’t working, I loved to wander the streets of my ruined city, sometimes winding up at one of docks on the banks of the dried-up Shatt al-Arab. Or sometimes at the mass grave of automaton laborers that the government imported, years back, to replace local workers, who’d gone on strike and then been packed off to fill the prisons. Junked mechanical doctors, surgeons, musicians, artists, actors and cooks—all piled high alongside great metal bins full of smaller androids, some of them as small as spiders and flies, and long since deprived of their ability to scrub the air clean.
The graves of the plague victims—that sickness which hits the city every few years—take up wide stretches of along the river.
Yachts loll on the its banks looking like nothing so much as alien spacecraft, their amusements and outward decorations long since lost. Now they provide a refuge for homeless people and villagers displaced from the interior—preferring these shelters to the ruined towers and skyscrapers of the city, where at any moment you could be set upon by gangs of criminals, addicts or AIDS victims.
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