Escape from Baghdad! (8 page)

“There are three of us,” Kinza said.

“What?” Xervish felt the acid snaking in his stomach, a churning anguish prophesying disaster, the certainty that he would soon be tested, and fail, as he had done repeatedly in the past, to make the right choices.

“Kinza, you have to dump them,” he wailed. “You have to think of yourself. Salemi is already looking for all of you. He has the descriptions—you, the soft man with glasses, the crippled man. Three of you together will be so easy to find. You must forget about them. If Salemi takes them, then maybe he will be satisfied and call off his dogs.”

“I don't give a fuck about Hassan Salemi,” Kinza said quietly. “I'm not giving up anybody. You make arrangements for three.”

“Kinza, he'll cut your
head off
.”

Kinza laughed. “I have a grenade in my left hand that says otherwise. When I die, you'll hear the earth shake.”

“Why do you make it so
hard
?” Xervish cried out, his equilibrium gone. “Why can't you for once just…”

“I remember when two Syrians kidnapped your sister, old friend,” Kinza said. “They raped her and then killed her. Do you remember?”

“You know I do.”

“I found them for you, Xervish,” Kinza said. “I hunted them and I tied them down. I cut them for you, friend, when you couldn't hold your knife straight. I held you up so you could see them scream their
voices away. And when you looked away, I shot them for you. Do you remember, friend?”

“I wish you hadn't,” Xervish said. “I wish to god you had never gone near them. I wish they were still alive somewhere, I wish I couldn't see them anymore. Do you think you fixed anything? I'll do as you say, Kinza. Go to the house. You'll be as safe as anywhere. I'll find a way to get you out of Shulla.”

Thus, the three men found their way to the House of Furies. The blue doors were faded, gummed shut with cobwebs. Xervish stirred nervously and left them in the stairwell, his parting words hurried, lost in the thick swirls of wind dusting through the alley.

“Where the hell have you landed us now?” Hamid asked.

“A place to lie low for a while,” Kinza said. “Xervish is lining up a way to get us out of here.”

“You're making a mistake,” Hamid said. “That man is broken. He'll betray us.”

“I've known him for a long time.”

“I've looked into the eyes of a thousand men like him,” Hamid said. “Grown men have wept at the sound of my voice, soiled themselves at the fall of my foot.”

“What's your point?”

“My point is, why do you consistently disregard my experience?” Hamid said. “I can read men like a whore reads your wallet. I know when they are lying, when they are holding back. That man Xervish is afraid of you, and he hates you for it. Do you think some childish attachment will count for anything when he is put to the test by the Mahdi dogs? Are you really that much of a fool?”

“Should we part ways then?” Kinza asked.

“No,” Hamid said, looking away, his voice dull. “What would be the point of that? None of us would get to Mosul then.”

“And all that gold,” Kinza snorted.

Dagr meanwhile was standing, entranced, by the door, tracing the lines on the blue, remembering, long ago, another blue door, with handprints smudged three feet from the floor, where his daughter used to push, breathless, wobbling into their apartment, as he chased her, growling hideously, sometimes a bear, sometimes a giant dog. The door was always open because they knew all the other tenants, were like a family, really, the old couple below, adopted grandparents who would babysit at a moment's notice, every day even, and the landlord on the ground floor, a kind-faced engineer drifting into unwilling bachelorhood, who used to make small brass toys by hand, hiding them all over the building so that her holidays were an ongoing, elaborate treasure hunt.

The hallways had been narrow, cluttered with the smell of cooking, the sound of his daughter shrieking, running from door to door, under the impression that the whole building was hers, the other tenants mere extensions of her will. Each of the doors had been painted blue by the engineer landlord, who believed fiercely in the efficacy of paint, and it had worked out for him, in the end, for he had died on the street on his way to work and not home in bed as he had feared.

Dagr leaned forward, oblivious, and the door opened of its own accord, making him stumble into a dark hallway. He fell near a pair of slippered feet, stockinged, rising up through varied clothing to a diminutive, incredibly old head.

“Welcome, dear,” the crone said, reaching forth a feathery hand and ruffling his hair. “Are you certain you are at the right door?”

“Door…no,” Dagr said. “It looks like a door I once knew.
My
door. It was open. This door, I mean. Xervish brought us here.”

“Xervish,” the crone said. “A good boy. He is haunted by this house. This door, specifically. It frames the substance of all his dreams. Thus, he consigns to this place all those who disturb him.”

“My friends are outside,” Dagr said, rising to his feet. “Two of them. May we come in?”

“Are you asking permission?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” The crone asked. “Your friends outside have guns. Even now they are moments from drawing them.”

“We are not here to turn you from your home,” Dagr said. “If you want us to leave, we will go away.”

“You might, dear boy,” the crone said. “You might go away. But those two outside would not. Do you venture to speak for them?”

“I do.”

The crone smiled, revealing a most awkward dental landscape. “What a good boy you are. I am Mother Davala. You may come in. This house has been home to many. Three more will not tip the balance.”

“Is there room enough, for us, grandmother?” Dagr asked, letting the others in.

“Oh yes,” Mother Davala said. “Plenty of room. Would you like some tea?”

Bizarrely, within minutes, they found themselves in the sitting room, drinking glasses of mint tea from a silver filigreed teapot, a most elegant setting, the room well lit from semi-shuttered windows, a fine, faded Persian carpet on the floor, the furniture old and shabby yet still noticeably better than anything from the shops, the tea things appearing so much a part of the room that they scarcely questioned who had brewed it so fresh, with just the right number of cups, steaming at exactly the right temperature.

In a separate alcove by the window, far from the coffee table, were two striped armchairs most advantageously positioned, commanding the light as well as a fine view of the street. Two ladies sat there, dark eyed, veiled in lace, ages indeterminable but for the thin white hands moving like graceful spiders, warping, wefting.

“Don't mind them, dears, they hardly ever speak,” Mother Davala said.

“Why is that?” Dagr asked.

“Tragedies, dear, tragedies,” Mother Davala said airily. “Destroyed homes and missing families, lost loves, and soured ambitions, futures catastrophically forked into a directionless mire. What is there to speak of, little boys, when all possibilities are gone and life is reduced
to single moments of consciousness, unmoored from either past or future? Great silences stack up on each side, like my sisters here. We suffer impenetrable silences, the absence of those voices stilled forever, and when the sum of these is great enough, there seems no more purpose in speaking. This is life for those of us left behind.”

“Left behind?” Dagr asked.

“Left behind when men decide in which peculiar holocaust they will end their world.”

“Women do not perpetrate holocausts?” Dagr asked.

“Only in reaction. In the claiming of retribution,” the crone said cheerfully. “We do not initiate the madness. But sometimes we must seek redress to approach balance.”

“I notice that the ‘great silences' have not affected you overmuch,” Kinza said.

“I speak for those who are struck literally speechless,” Mother Davala said. “Those who continually lose must, at some time, begin to take back. We arrive at this conclusion at different times of our lives but arrive we must, even if at the edge of a knife, in a tub of hot water.”

“You babble, woman,” Hamid said. “Living in this empty house has robbed your mind of sense.”

“I know you, Torturer,” Mother Davala said. “You are a man who has found joy in your profession. What frightens you is the vengeance that is owed to you, that has been piling high since the day you first embarked on your career. Do you think you can avoid it forever?”

“What do you know, witch?” Hamid shouted. “Whom have you told? Kinza, we are betrayed! That shit Xervish has sold us out!”

“Do you think to command me now?”

“No,” Hamid said in a low voice. “No.”

“What game is this, old mother?” Dagr asked. “What secrets do you know of us?”

“No secrets,” Davala said. “Not by some nefarious path. I only use my eyes. Your nature, for example, is written on your face plain as the day. Your losses, dear one, mount up higher than you can bear. Soon,
you, too, will live in silence. What have you left to wager, after all? You could float away, unfettered, invisible,
valueless.
”

“You assign value most carelessly,” Kinza said.

“The city changes its currency. One would be blind to miss it,” Mother Davala turned to him. “Your friend is mere nostalgia. His day is gone. Will it return again? Who knows? It is
your
time now, the hour of the wolf.”

“You mock me.”

“No, dear one, I
need
you,” Mother Davala said. “Our sons and grandsons are dead and scattered. Nephews, uncles, cousins—all gone. Do you not see here a dearth of men? So our business lies unfinished.”

“What business?” Kinza asked.

“The business of debit and credit. Of ledgers unbalanced for too long,” she said. “The killers of our families still walk free, unafraid. They must be taught fear. They must be driven mad with suffering. You can do that, surely? It is what you were born for.”

“Who do you want killed?” Kinza asked.

“Many, oh many men need killing who walk this earth. Many men for whom death is too good a punishment,” Mother Davala said. “Seven months ago, Captain Eric Hollow of the occupation forces thought he saw a man on a truck with an AK47 during a midday patrol through a crowded market. He opened fire with his machine gun, emptying his magazine. He must have been blind. It was my great grand nephew, playing on the truck bed with a piece of wood. He was three years old. A round blew his entire head off. When the boy's father started crying hysterically, the captain arrested him for inciting a riot and took him away. They left the headless boy on the street. Later, I received a note saying compensation was denied for the accidental deaths of both father and son, as the event could not be verified. A condolence payment of $1,500 was enclosed.”

“Captain Eric Hollow,” Kinza said, with a peculiar emphasis, and it seemed to Dagr as if some giant magnet were trained on his friend, inexorably drawing him in, resonating on frequencies unseen, thrumming the rage out of some reservoir. Kinza's fingers curled unwillingly
now around imaginary triggers, the hollows of his eyes darkening with the sight of some invisible enemy, and he seemed adrift in time, loose from the moorings of reality in some hyperplane where he was free to pursue justice in any way he saw fit.

“Thirteen months ago, Commander Ismail Al-Abdur-Rashid of the New Iraqi Army arrested a young woman on the street. She was the fiancé of my grandson, the daughter of an old friend, the deceased Dr. Erban. The commander took her to his holding cell, where he and his squad repeatedly raped her for four days. They let her go afterwards, claiming that they had gotten the wrong person. She lodged a complaint with the court. The judge threw out the case and subsequently alerted his friend, the commander. That night, a squad arrested both my grandson and his fiancé on charges of prostitution. Their bodies were found in a ditch later, apparently victims of suicide. No note or condolence, however. The New Iraqi Army does not deal in such niceties.”