The Iraqi Christ (7 page)

‘Even the woman I met that day, the one with the face punctured with needle holes, didn’t take up my invitation. She moved to another table and waited for better rubbish to come along. If she’d accepted my invitation to fuck and come back to the flat with me, she would have run off and called the police or the neighbours. Perhaps the wolf would have eaten her. What wolf? Impossible. There must be some mistake in the facts of this case, or some hallucination. I was speaking like this to my image in the mirror.
 

‘I looked through the keyhole again. It was crouched in the same place. There were only a few hours left till morning. I thought that tomorrow someone would be worried I was missing. Of course it was a ridiculous idea, and my only aim was to give myself some false consolation. Because I’ve been living alone for years, and I only know freaks that haunt the most secluded bars, and they’re like me – loners who scrape together a livelihood where they can, or else slope back to their dirty beds to be consumed by sadness the long night through. The only ones who might knock on my door are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they stopped coming a while back. Perhaps they’ve had enough of my constant mockery of their Lord. There was a time when they would swamp me with their books and magazines. One thing I liked in those magazines was that desperate attempt to link the discoveries of science to the stories in the Bible. Two beautiful women from the Jehovah’s Witnesses used to visit me regularly. My sick imagination made me welcome them warmly. I thought that establishing a serious relationship with them would lead to passionate lovemaking. Imagine. The two Jehovah’s Witness women, naked in my bed. One of them sucking my cock and the other giving her clitoris to my tongue while reading a passage from the Bible. We used to talk about lots of things. The subject that interested me most was the fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in blood transfusions. I used to joke with them and say that blood is delicious and it’s what vampires drink. I used to talk to them about the importance of blood.
 

‘“The Director of the Bio-Ethics Centre at the University of Pennsylvania says in complete scientific coldness, ‘The importance of blood in healthcare is comparable to the importance of oil in the transport sector. Just as billions of barrels of oil are extracted every year to satisfy the human demand for fuel, about ninety million units of blood are drawn from volunteers to save mankind. That vast amount of blood is equivalent to all the blood in the veins of eight
million people.’ Nonetheless, blood stocks seem to be insufficient. Just like oil. There are constant warnings about this shortage.”
 

‘This cocktail of scientific information or, to be more precise, pretentious waffle, was so that the Jehovah’s Witnesses would know I really was an important person before I came to Finland and began to stagnate. I told them I was an expert on Hebrew and that I translated secret reports for the Ministry of Defence and the Intelligence Agency. To make my professional life sound more exciting, I added some adventures, detective book stuff. With them I would prattle on at length, making up stories and mixing serious talk with nonsense. I would pose questions too, and answer them myself while the women sat there like doves of peace. They would smile as if they had just arrived from heaven.
 

‘“But what if a deadly plague broke out across the world and everyone needed new blood?” Before the older woman could guess the answer, I would say, like an expert explaining genetic science, “Without a doubt, a new global war would break out. But even so, there’s no need to worry because, if a war for blood did break out, I think it would be a clean war in which they would ban the use of traditional weapons, or modern weapons, or even paring knives. So the war would be like a game of American Football and the soldiers would wear padded sports clothes. Of course there would be no point fighting a war in which blood flowed for no purpose, at a time when the world was in dire need of it, so there would be no toleration or mercy towards soldiers who used weapons of any kind. But what kind of war would that be? Fuck that. The aim of the fighting would be to capture as many of the enemy troops as possible. The troops would clash, and each side would try to capture the other’s troops and then move them away in trucks that would wait in the rear lines. It would be the last war and it would come to an end when the last person gave blood. The trucks would take the captive soldiers to blood donation centres and the blood would then be distributed fairly among the population…”
 

‘But we’ve strayed from the subject. Is my chatter making you dizzy? Fuck that. Okay. Anyway, there I was, talking to myself and shaking. “The wolf, my god, the wolf! Why doesn’t it move from its place?” I wimpered. Why doesn’t it at least go to the kitchen to look for something to eat? All it did while posted in front of the bathroom door was sniff my underwear, then stare at the door with murderous eyes. Of course, it was a shitty idea for me to leave the forest and come back to live in the city. Damn those blood-sucking mosquitoes. Did you know it’s the female mosquitoes that feed on human blood, while the male drinks only the sap of plants and the nectar of flowers? I spent more than five months in the forest, catching fish every day in the nearby lake and in the evening translating an interesting book on the grammar of the Hebrew language. I was happy in my seclusion, with the gifts of the forest, oblivious to the world of humans. I would drink red wine, in moderation. But the disaster was that none of the creams with which I covered my face and body deterred the mosquito attacks. And how could I relax when a swarm of them was hovering over my head all day long like Christ’s halo in those old paintings? At night the female ones got through the sheets like armoured vehicles and sucked my blood greedily. The landlord made fun of me when I told him about the mosquitoes. He said they must like me a lot. And finally my sufferings from the mosquitoes were topped by a severe stomach ache. The doctor told me it was just my irregular diet and I should eat more vegetables. He also said it would be best if I went back to the city and mixed with people. The stomach clearly suffers when you live in isolation. I also gathered from him that I had started to talk about myself in a peculiar way. In short, he believed I needed a psychiatrist. Okay. I’m a good listener most of the time and I appreciate advice. But I only stuck to the first half of the doctor’s advice. I came back to the city and went back to mixing with the dregs of secluded bars. Without a drink, the world needs a bull-fighter. With a drink, the world is a farce that only needs more clowns. Fuck that.

‘Inside the bathroom there was only the towel and piles of dirty socks and underwear. I was exhausted and cold. I checked that my guest was still in his place. I took a hot shower and went back to thinking about the matter. If I had any enemies, it might be logical to think that the supposed enemy had brought the wolf to my flat. But how would you take a wolf to another man’s flat without help from someone who works in a zoo and without a special vehicle for carrying wolves? Perhaps it’s a tame wolf, like a dog. Or maybe I’ve gone mad and I’m simply imagining all this. Could a sensible man believe what I’m telling you? Don’t say you believe me, but it is, by Jehovah and all his witnesses and angels, a real wolf. Perhaps the doctor was right.

‘I covered myself with the towel and fell into a deep sleep on top of the socks and underwear. When I woke up, I had a severe headache ploughing through my skull like an angry bulldozer. It might have been midday. The other mad thing that’s hard to believe is that the wolf was still in its place. Shit. Doesn’t it feel hungry, and why’s it as still as the Sphinx? The idea of hunger seeped into my mind like a quicksilver snake. I panicked and let out a loud scream. Was I to stay trapped in the bathroom till I died of hunger, if the wolf didn’t die of hunger first? Of course, wolves can put up with hunger better than humans. But I have the water in the bathroom, whereas the kitchen tap won’t do him any good. But then he might die of thirst while I die of hunger. No, no. In the kitchen there’s a pan of soup on the table. I don’t know if he’d like last night’s soup, and besides, there’s bread on the table too if he wants it...

‘I suddenly had a horrendous attack of hysteria and started pounding on the door and screaming for help. Every now and then I would check the reaction of the damned wolf through the hole. Where are the neighbours? Have they had wolves as well? No, no, I can’t possibly die here in the bathroom. I thought it would be better to be eaten by the wolf than to die in this horrible way and not be eaten! I was looking in the mirror and going over my fears to myself. Perhaps I could wrestle with the wolf and make good my escape. Perhaps he would just wound me. And even if he bit an entire arm off that would be better than rotting to death in the bathroom. I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth and examined my reflection for more than a quarter of an hour. I kicked the wall, raving and cursing. Then I had an idea: why not open the door, throw the towel at it and see how far I get? But, brave guy, what if the wolf pounces instantly and you can’t escape? I did another round of shouting and banging on the walls, hammering on them with the shampoo bottles until they broke. Then I collapsed on top of the toilet seat again. I cupped my hands and drank water from the sink, then burst out crying. I threw myself on the cold tile floor and curled up like someone with a religious zeal to disappear from this world.
 

‘Late on the second night, I decided to put an end to this nonsense. Either he ate me or I would eat him myself. I felt an amazing energy, driven by my thirst for revenge. I would tear apart this worthless, cowardly wolf. I would cut him up and roast his flesh, and his head too. Fuck that! I opened the bathroom door ever so slowly. The wolf jumped to its feet. I ran with all my strength and leapt towards it. The last thing I remember was when the wolf leapt towards me.
 

‘It was a cold and frightening darkness. Solid darkness. The only thing that helped me in the emptiness was remembering what happened in those last moments, although the horror of having my body disappear paralyzed my attempt to be patient and to await the mercy of God in that darkness. What I had thought is that, when you die, no thread of memory survives, no awareness of the life you lived; quite the opposite of what happened in my case. Although death, as absolute nothingness, is no more than an assumption. I wanted to shout out to ask for help but I didn’t know where my mouth was or even how I could shout. What was the mechanism or the motions I had to perform in order to shout? How could I work out where my foot was, or how could I find my hair to touch it? Was I dead? The problem with that darkness was not that you couldn’t remember what it was like to perform some action or other. The trouble was that, in the sea of darkness, you lose the means to perform it. You remember how to look, for example, but you no longer have the tools that make it possible to look. At the same time, I felt that I still existed as a small point of consciousness somewhere in the world. I don’t know how long this lasted. The small point expanded. The breathing, and a sense that my skin was somehow warm, began to come back, slowly at first but at a rate that gradually accelerated.
 

‘Apparently I had hit my head on the edge of the small nightstand and lost consciousness. I bled a little. There wasn’t any wolf in the flat. It had vanished as if into thin air. The flat door was closed and only the bathroom door was open. I put on a shirt and took my mobile phone from the pocket of my trousers, which lay on the floor close to where the wolf had been before it disappeared. Rather warily, I wandered around the rooms. There was no one at home but me. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and turned on the television. There was a repeat of the Oscars award ceremony. Brad Pitt had his arm round Angelina Jolie’s waist and was talking about his chances of winning an award. I decided to go back to the forest and try to stand up to the mosquitoes, instead of seeing them as crocodiles. Fuck that. This is the last glass I’ll drink with you. You really are a strange man – perhaps you’re rather like me. You have a suspicious capacity for listening. I think you are... Okay. Perhaps another glass before I go. Fuck that. I didn’t catch your name... I’m Salman.’

‘Hassan Blasim, pleased to meet you.’

In memory of my friends:
 

Dawoud the engineer, 2003

Kouresh the poet and doctor, 2006

Bassem the sculptor and photographer, 2007

He wakes up.

It’s a mess of a morning.

He hears the words: ‘For God’s sake, I’m going to die of thirst!’

He sits on the edge of the bed. He feels a numbness in his limbs. He pours himself a glass of water. He looks around the ward in a daze. He sees a bird hitting the window pane. A plump nurse is giving an injection to a man with an arm missing.

‘Aha! Cold water! Thank you,’ says the policeman somewhere deep inside him...

My lifelong friend Marwan used to say, ‘Across: mankind; down: the sea. The highest mountain peak in the world. A three-letter word. An unfamiliar reality.’

They published a picture of him smiling on the cover of the magazine!

It was a picture taken two years ago during the ceremony at which he received the prize for being the best crossword writer. The prize was funded by a billionaire member of parliament who came back to the country after the change in regime. They say the great passion he acquired for crosswords during his long exile was behind his decision to finance the prize. It was worth 15,000 dollars. The prize aroused much envy among certain journalists and writers who criticized it severely and at length. Marwan won it on merit; I think Marwan could be awarded the title ‘Poet Laureate of Crosswords’.
 

I found some of his old crossword puzzles at the farm once. They contained strange expressions such as ‘half a moon’, ‘a semi-mythical animal’, ‘a vertical tunnel’, ‘a poisonous grass’, and ‘a half-truth’.