The Corpse Exhibition (9 page)

On the edge of the soccer field there was a large Dumpster that gave off white smoke with a putrid stench that drifted over the playing area. Women, some in abayas and some without, came out of the houses around the field with bags of trash. Jaafar watched them through his binoculars while the boys ran after the ball, shouting. With his binoculars Jaafar also watched the boys playing.

The Sector 32 team arrived, accompanied by a young man with a beard, and he and Jaafar agreed that Jaafar would referee the first half and the other man the second half. The match began. Jaafar pushed his wheelchair up and down the field at high speed in a frenzied passion. He shouted at the boys, either to encourage them or to reprimand them, and when they were too far off he would follow them with his binoculars. “Goooooooooaaaaaal!” shouted Jaafar. The Sector 32 referee objected that Jaafar was supporting his own team and wasn't impartial. Jaafar ignored his objections. He worried about his players as if they were his own children, and when they fell down he would check their knees and legs for any damage. Sometimes his mind would wander and for a few moments he would see them as ghosts in battle and recall the boom of artillery on the front. But then he would go back to the match and blow his whistle to award a penalty kick, as cheerful and enthusiastic as ever. He dripped with sweat as he pushed the wheelchair around with all his strength to keep up with the boys running after the ball like antelopes.

Jaafar blew the whistle. “Foul!”

“I swear it wasn't a foul, Jaafar,” objected one of the boys.

“I tell you it's a foul. Don't argue, you idiot.”

“But Jaafar, you were far away.”

“What are these, then? Do you think I'm blind?” said Jaafar, holding up his binoculars.

The match ended in a 2-2 draw, and the boys pushed Jaafar's wheelchair to the coffee shop. He said good-bye to them and advised them to prepare for next week's match with the Sector 52 team.

Jaafar played dominoes in the Shaab coffee shop and gave the others his analysis of the quality of the various Spanish clubs. His laugh echoed through the coffee shop and shook the big picture of the imam Ali hanging on the wall. The coffee shop owner said the Americans were going to search the sector that night for weapons.

“What does that bunch of cowboys want? It's because of them I lost my legs in the Kuwait war. What do they want next? Fuck them. One day America's going to go to shit,” Jaafar said indignantly, then changed the subject back to soccer. He and the Real Madrid supporters started arguing and joking. Jaafar was an avid supporter of Barcelona and sometimes Liverpool.

I was waiting for him at the coffee shop door. He came out laughing loudly and gave me a friendly punch in the guts. I pushed his wheelchair and we crossed the street. He asked after his sister, who is my wife, and I said, “She's well.”

“Are you going to do the disappearing knife trick today?” he asked, coughing. He was a chronic smoker.

“No, but I may talk a little about the interpretation of dreams.”

I knocked on the door and Souad opened it. “Ah, both of you,” she said as she kissed Jaafar on the head. She helped me get his wheelchair through the narrow doorway. I pinched her bottom and she slapped my hand discreetly, but Jaafar didn't notice.

In the room there was a bare wooden bench, and Salih the butcher was sitting on it. Allawi was sitting cross-legged on the ground with a set of green prayer beads in his hand—the same way he sat when he was making a knife disappear.

Jaafar shook Salih's hand and said, “Hey, Allawi, come and sit on the bench.”

Allawi answered proudly, “I've never sat on a chair or a bench.”

“You mean in all your life?”

“Of course.”

“But you're only fifteen, damn it. Anyone who heard you would say you were as old as the dinosaurs.”

Jaafar laughed his booming laugh as he adjusted the photograph of his father on the wall.

Souad disappeared into the kitchen, and I sat next to the butcher. Jaafar turned his wheelchair to face us. Souad came back with a tray of tea, sat on the carpet close to Allawi, and poured the tea, smiling amiably at everyone and winking at me several times. I blew her a kiss. Jaafar turned to me and said, “Hey, lovebirds, we've got work to do. When the meeting's over you can throw each other as many kisses as you want.”

In his weird woman's voice, the butcher said, “Now, Jaafar. Anyone who heard you would say this was a meeting of some underground party that was going to change the world. We've made so many knives disappear, and Souad always brings them back again. . . . And it's been going on like this for ten years.”

Allawi laughed and said, “I've been making knives disappear all my life. But I want to go on making them disappear again and again, and I don't know why.” Jaafar changed the subject and asked Allawi whether Umm Ibtisam would be coming today. He replied that he was certain this time, because she had sworn to him three times by Ali's son Abbas that she would come. “She must be on her way now. You know the shitty Americans have closed half the roads.”

2

We were like one family. Our knife-handling skills weren't the only thing we had in common. We also shared our problems in life, our joys, and our ignorance. We were buffeted by all forms of misfortune, and several times we grew disappointed with the knives. There were other concerns in life. We almost split up on several occasions, but we were drawn back together by the strangeness and pleasure of our gift, by the feeling among all of us—except, perhaps, Salih the butcher—that knives could be a solace and give our lives the thrill of uncertainty.

Ten years have passed since we became a team in the knife trick. Allawi joined us three years ago. I continued my studies and went to the School of Education. Souad went into the sixth year of high school, specializing in the sciences, and dreamed of going to the School of Medicine. Salih the butcher has extended his shop, divorced the mother of his children, and married a young woman who had a bad reputation in the neighborhood. Jaafar found Allawi a job in the factory that makes women's shoes. He didn't want Allawi to stay in the market playing with knives. Jaafar himself was the same as always—busy with soccer, refereeing, dominoes, the coffee shop; always anxious to ensure that our group didn't fall apart and constantly seeking out new talent in soccer and also in the knife trick. He believed that our knife skills were a secret vocation that would change the world. As to how and why and when, these were all unanswered questions; he had nothing to do with them. “I've never even read a newspaper in my life. How could I understand the secret of the knives?” he said.

The butcher, Allawi, Jaafar, and I had the ability to make knives disappear. Souad was the only person who could make them reappear, but she couldn't make them disappear. Souad's difference compounded the mystery of our talents, which did not progress one step despite the passage of all those years.

Two years ago I was assigned to read books in order to find out what the knives meant, and I soon came to the idea that the knives were just a metaphor for all the terror, the killing, and the brutality in the country. It's a realistic phenomenon that is unfamiliar, an extraordinary game that has no value, because it is hemmed in by definite laws.

I married Souad a year and a half ago. It was Jaafar who arranged this early marriage with my father. Souad's cousin had approached Jaafar with a proposal to marry her. Jaafar didn't want Souad to move away from us and go to live in the village. He wasn't unaware of the tentative affection we felt for each other. My father was persuaded straightaway, especially as Jaafar made my father an attractive offer. He said he would buy Souad and me a small house. My father agreed at once because he wanted to relieve the strain in his own house. We were nine brothers and three sisters all living in two rooms, and my father was struggling to keep the family afloat. He worked as a baker and my mother gave injections to sick people in the neighborhood, though she didn't have a nursing certificate. In fact she was illiterate, and because she was so kind, people called her the angel of mercy.

When I was a youngster I played on Jaafar's soccer team. He discovered my talent by chance. He was watching me as I made a knife that some boy was holding disappear. He was ecstatic and started to hug me. He cheerfully took me to their house and introduced me to young Souad, whose eyes projected the force of life like a strong and beautiful flower. The next day Jaafar took me to Salih the butcher's shop and introduced me to him.

In those days we used to meet in Jaafar's house, but his mother and his five brothers would disturb us, so then we moved to Salih's house. He had a room on the roof of the house, where he raised birds. We would put the knives on top of a round wooden table and make them disappear one by one, then Souad would make them reappear. We would exchange views and try to analyze the trick. But the conversation soon moved away from knives and turned to jokes and stories about the people in the sector. We continued to meet in the pigeon loft until I got married and Jaafar bought us that small house. Jaafar had considerable wealth from a business he'd been in since he was young. He used to deal in pornographic magazines, which were banned, but he was careful to cover his tracks, selling them only in wealthy neighborhoods.

It was I who discovered Allawi and brought him into the group. I was in the street market buying rat poison when I saw a group of children and adults in a corner of the market, gathered in a circle, full of curiosity. Allawi was sitting cross-legged as usual, with a number of small knives of various types next to him. He didn't make knives disappear for free. People would give him a pack of cigarettes or enough money for a sandwich or to buy a grape juice or pomegranate juice, and as soon as he felt it was worth his while he would throw one of the knives onto the ground in front of the spectators and ask them to touch it to make sure it was a real knife. Then he would ask them to stand back in a slightly larger circle so that he could breathe and concentrate. Allawi stared at the knife for thirty seconds, as we all did, and as soon as tears started to glisten in his eyes the knife would disappear. The audience would applaud in amazement and admiration, and Allawi would then wait for the spectators to come up with enough money for him to repeat the trick with another knife. His main problem was that he depended on stealing knives to replace the ones he made disappear. That put him in many tricky situations.

The tears and the thirty seconds were the common denominator between us all when it came to making knives disappear and reappear. As I said, were it not for Souad, the knives would have disappeared forever and we would all have been like Allawi before he joined us—just knife thieves. Salih the butcher faced the same problem before he met Jaafar and Souad. Salih loved the trick; in his shop he would stare at knives at length until they disappeared. But after the trick he had to buy new knives. Allawi made money in the market from his gift, while Salih would lose out. If it wasn't for Souad, he said, he would have died of hunger. Every day Souad brought back the knives he had made disappear, and we were sure this was the only reason the butcher stayed with us all those years.

We were constantly on the lookout for a new member of the group, with powers like those of Souad. We would meet every Thursday and make a set of knives disappear, and Souad would make them reappear in the same way: tears and a few seconds!

I could make knives disappear easily. I began by making my mother's knives disappear in the kitchen when I was a child. In the beginning my mother would almost go crazy, but when she discovered my secret she and my father took me to a cleric to consult him on the subject. The man with the turban told them in all confidence, “Your son is in league with the jinn.” He advised my father and mother to pray and wash the courtyard of the house twice—once at dawn and again at sunset. When I got interested in soccer and met Jaafar I stopped making knives disappear at home or at the homes of friends and relatives.

The knife trick didn't have a particular purpose. Maybe Salih the butcher saw his gift as a disease and as far as he was concerned Souad was the only cure. The feelings and ideas that Souad, Jaafar, Allawi, and I had were different to some extent. Jaafar thought it was a secret and sacred vocation and believed that what we did, despite the absurdity of it, was a source of great pleasure, especially as he saw himself as the spiritual father and the leader of the group.

Allawi was addicted to the game. It was like a drug that erased his memory of the painful loss of both his parents at an early age. His father had been a drunkard who argued with the neighbors and who killed a man with his pistol. Before the police arrived one of the dead man's sons, who had seen his own father drowning in blood, came to the door of Allawi's father's house with a Kalashnikov in his hand. Allawi's father was standing behind the closed door with the pistol in his hand, and his mother was trying to stop him from going out. The son emptied a whole magazine of bullets into the door. The door fell in and Allawi's mother and father were killed.

Knives were my pastime and part of my life. Seeking the mystery of the game, I felt like someone looking for a single rare flower in a high mountain range. Often it felt like an adventure in a fable. Many a time I felt as though I was doing a spiritual exercise with the knife trick. The reality didn't interest me as much as the beauty of the mystery attracted me. Maybe this is what drove me to write poetry after I gave up looking for the meaning of the knives.

Illiteracy was one of the obstacles that compounded our failure to understand the trick or even to develop our skills throughout the years. Salih the butcher, Allawi, and Jaafar couldn't read or write. It's true that Souad was educated, but she practiced the knife trick with a childish attitude. She would always remind me, saying, “Why complicate things, my love? Life is short and we are alive. Treat the knives as a game to entertain us and leave it at that.” Souad repeatedly suggested we open a little theater in the neighborhood to amuse the local people by making knives disappear and then reappear, in hopes that this might relieve the gloom of war and the endless killing. But Jaafar was worried about the clerics, because they were acting like militias at the time. I thought he was right to worry; at any moment they could have denounced us as infidels, maybe even accused us of undermining society with alien superstitions imported from abroad. Their superstitions had become the law, and God had become a sword for cutting off people's heads and declaring them infidels.