The Last of the Angels (19 page)

Although the government had no wish to intervene in this affair, which was none of their business, at first three helicopters went up and hovered over the human throngs that surrounded the grave, pouring cold water on people to alleviate the impact of the intense heat, which was causing people to faint. No one knew exactly what was happening at the tomb, for the human mass surrounding it extended for a long way in every direction. Khidir Musa was afraid of the consequences of allowing public access to the grave and contacted the governor to explain the necessity of intervening to bring the situation under control while that was still possible. The governor was forced to ask for assistance from the second brigade's commander, who—with his officers—devised a plan to retake control of Qara Qul's grave, dubbing it “Operation Holy Month of Sha‘ban.” Accordingly, parachutists were dropped on the grave and took possession of it after fighting off the people who surrounded it. At the same time, tanks were stationed at the ends of the streets that led to the cemetery to prevent more people from reaching it, but the soldiers who forced the crowds to withdraw found the grave empty. The corpse of Qara Qul Mansur had vanished. Someone had already made off with it.

The officer in charge of the operation ordered his soldiers to fill the grave with dirt again in a desperate attempt to keep something secret that could not be. The governor was upset by the disappearance of the corpse and decided to get it back, no matter the cost. He declared, “A corpse can't vanish into thin air.” Finally the director of public security contacted the governor to tell him that his men had discovered that residents of the nearby village of Tawuq were responsible for abducting the corpse in hopes of burying it in their village, which did not have the sepulcher of any saint to bring it blessings. Armored police units rushed off to the village, which lay no more than half an hour from the city and surrounded it from all sides, firing into the air. The abductors, who numbered more than twenty armed villagers, decided to resist and withdrew into nearby orchards and woods, dragging the corpse, which they had wrapped in a quilt fastened with ropes. The pursuing policemen traded shots with them. During the battle, which lasted more than an hour, two villagers were killed and three others wounded. One policeman took a direct hit to his heart and fell over on his back, dead. Another was wounded in the shoulder. As the abductors fled by a route that led through fields and orchards, the knot in the rope with which they had secured the quilt came undone, and the corpse, which was totally naked since people had plundered its shroud when it was taken from the grave, rolled down into an irrigation ditch. One of the villagers reached out, grabbed the corpse's foot, and dragged it behind him during their retreat under police fire. The men took turns dragging the corpse, as its glossy black skin was lacerated and befouled with mud and grass. They were eventually forced to abandon the body when pressure from the police intensified. Then they hightailed it away and disappeared into thick woods where the police did not dare charge them.

Thus the police rescued the body of Qara Qul Mansur, whose spirit had ascended to heaven on the back of Buraq the night before. They tossed the putrid cadaver in a Jeep and transported it back to the barracks. The government quickly printed leaflets, which they dropped by airplane over all the neighborhoods of Kirkuk, bringing people the good news that the corpse of the saint Qara Qul Mansur had been rescued from the wicked abductors and announcing that the next day would be an official holiday to allow people to pay their respects to the remains in a procession featuring both the people and the government.

This gesture of good intentions by the government caused people to forget even the battles they had waged against the police. A rumor spread that the policeman who had killed Qara Qul Mansur would be executed immediately subsequent to the funeral procession. The young men, in response to Khidir Musa's personal intercession, proceeded to release their hostages, who had been held in a room of the Chuqor community's mosque, but the rifles the insurgents had seized from the police had vanished without a trace. The chief of police was forced to keep silent about this matter and to turn a blind eye to it, until some opportunity should present itself to reclaim the rifles that had been taken by force from his men.

The following day, the funeral cortège set out from the Palace of Government building. At the front of the procession were musicians playing monotonous funeral tunes on trumpets. They were followed by people carrying black flags at half-mast. A bouquet of artificial roses had been placed on the chest of Qara Qul Mansur's corpse, which had been set in an open military vehicle that was surrounded by tanks as a precaution against a repeat of the previous attack and abduction. Behind the tanks marched a procession of government officials, prominent citizens, Kurdish feudal lords—invited by the government—and clerics representing Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. These were followed by a large military contingent marching slowly to the beat of the music. At the rear came the citizens, who were subdued this time. Many, among them women and children, preferred to stand on the sidewalks and watch this awe-inspiring spectacle. At al-Musalla Cemetery, builders and construction workers were waiting for the arrival of the funeral cortège. The moment the soldiers returned the body to its grave, they began building a marble and plaster tomb, which they surmounted with an extraordinary dome that had windows of interlacing iron rods and a green door, above which was placed a bronze plaque inscribed in Kufic script: “Do not think that those who are killed serving God are dead. Rather, they are alive, receiving sustenance from their Lord.” Beneath this was the phrase “Here rests the saintly martyr Qara Qul Mansur who ascended to the heavens.” The governor announced in a brief statement, delivered in front of the sepulcher, that His Majesty King Faisal II had decided to appoint a director general to oversee the sepulcher's affairs and to allocate enough funds to rebuild the tombs in al-Musalla Cemetery of all the dead Muslims whose families could not afford to do so, as a way of honoring the martyr Qara Qul Mansur, whom he hoped God would honor too. He also said that a police detachment would guard the tomb night and day to prevent anyone from profaning the sanctity of the graves of saints.

This was, in fact, more than people had been expecting, for the governor had displayed extravagant, almost incredible generosity. Even so, their hearts were still unsettled because they wanted revenge on the killer of their martyred saint. This was a matter that left the officials in a quandary. They knew that the people would be satisfied with no punishment short of hanging, but the police chief and the director of public security opposed that: “How can we expect our men to work if they know that acting in their own self-defense may get them hanged?” Finally the police chief proposed that the government limit its actions to whipping the man in a public square, thus leaving to the people the fate of the man, whom everyone expected they would kill. The next day the killer was taken to al-Musalla Square and stripped of his clothing. Then his chest was fastened to a post and the back of his head was covered by a red cloth that had been soaked in water. A huge sergeant stood behind him and struck him twenty times with a bamboo pole, which landed on the man's butt or back. At first the killer tried to steel himself. After the third blow, however, he began to howl like a dog—provoking laughter among people who had come to watch the punishment of the policeman who had killed the saint Qara Qul Mansur. The flogger, whose bamboo staff as it cut through the air created a swishing sound that could be heard far away, began to sweat profusely. The victim now was splattered with blood and had even ceased to moan. The sergeant sighed with relief after delivering the final blow and proclaimed, “This is the punishment for those who kill a saint.” Then he untied the rope that bound the killer to the wooden post, and the men with him collected the ropes and the post and departed, after pushing the victim to the ground and spitting on him. Sensing the danger surrounding him, the man attempted to rise in a desperate effort to save himself, but his legs betrayed him and he fell on his face once more. At that, Qara Qul Mansur's two black sons, who were ten and twelve years old, stepped forward. Each of them had in his hand a straight razor taken from their slain father's barber shop. They flipped the exhausted man onto his side. One of the boys seized his hair and pulled his head back while the other one grasped his chin and tried to slaughter him. A mullah who emerged from the crowd of spectators cautioned them, “It's not right to slaughter him this way, my son.” One of the brothers rebuffed him, saying, “Don't interfere. Go ahead and step aside. He killed my father.” The agitated cleric responded, “I know that, my son. Point his head toward Mecca first and recite: ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate the Merciful,' before you cut his throat, with God's blessing.” Then he helped them point toward Mecca the head of the man who was kicking and pounding the dirt with his hands in awkward attempts to rise. The policeman, however, having heard their conversation and seeing the blade near his throat, suddenly shook himself. The two boys were startled but clung to him even tighter. Then the boys' mother, a plump black lady, came forward and sat on the man, weighing down his chest, and he ceased resisting. She told her older son, “Slay him! What are you waiting for?” So the boy cut the man's neck, severing his head from his body, and blood gushed out over the dirt like a fountain. The boy then rose, tossing the head, which had remained in his hand, to the ground. No sooner had the plump lady stood up, however, than the headless body quivered and rose to its feet. It began to run every which way, eventually colliding with a light pole. Then it fell once more to the ground, and moved no more, ever.

T
he mausoleum the government erected for Qara Qul had a big impact on the life of the Chuqor community and indeed on the whole city of Kirkuk because people began to flock there from every direction, eager to visit the mausoleum of the man who had ascended to heaven in a cloud of light, mounted on Buraq. At first, news about him spread to the villages surrounding Kirkuk. Then it was quickly transmitted to Alton Kopri, Chamchamal, Qara-Teppa, Sulaymaniya, Erbil, and Mosul. Next it reached Baghdad by means of traveling merchants and soldiers. From there, the news went out not merely to the other cities of Iraq but to Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and even to the Arabs who remained in Israel, where it was carried by livestock smugglers. Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, and Iskenderun learned about Qara Qul's ascension to heaven from Turkmen travelers, who frequented Turkish cities more often than Baghdad itself. Shi‘i pilgrims from Persia and India on visits to Karbala, al-Najaf, and al-Kazimiya carried varying reports about the miracles of Qara Qul to Tehran, Qum, Khurasan, Islamabad, and Kashmir.

The fact of the matter is that these reports stirred up many disagreements among Muslim religious scholars, mujtahids, and jurisprudents, both Sunni and Shi‘i, especially in Turkey and Iran. If at first the Shi‘a refused to recognize the miracles of Qara Qul, that was because they did not believe God would bestow such a huge honor on a Sunni who was not a descendant of the Prophet's family. This egotistical approach was refuted by Sunni religious scholars who affirmed that Islam had made all people equal and that there is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, since only piety counts. The way Turkish ulema looked at the matter revealed a certain taste for revenge, since they never failed to point out that Qara Qul's grandfather had worked in the service of the Ottoman governors, who had rescued him from the treachery of Arabs wanting to seize this African in order to sell him to the shaykhs in al-Ahsa' in the Arabian peninsula. This allegation was naturally denied by the Arabs, who pointed out that the man would not have been able to commit the miracles that had been witnessed had it not been for Islam, which descended on the Arabs before anyone else.

These religious disputes soon ended, however. The Shi‘a began to spread the word that the man had been Shi‘i, even if he had not made that public—for fear of Sunni reprisal, since these Sunnis believed that a Shi‘i had on his bottom a short tail, which was knotted into a kind of braid into which beads were woven. The Shi‘i change of heart occurred after Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran presented to the mausoleum a door made of pure gold. This door was studded with gems and inscribed with verses by Sa‘di of Shiraz and by Umar Khayyam. Some people in the Chuqor community and Kirkuk whose lives revolved around the mausoleum spread a rumor that Qara Qul was both a Sunni and a Shi‘i at the same time. The goal of this strange claim was clearly to attract the greatest number of people possible to visit Qara Qul's mausoleum.

The caravansaries and the hotels filled with the visitors flocking into Kirkuk and new ones were built. Among these were the Beasts of Burden Inn, which was located by the entrance to the Chay community, the Stars Inn on the road to the railway station, and al-Alamein Hotel, which overlooked the Khasa Su River and was managed by Saqi Baqi, a tall, athletic young man from the Chuqor community. He had taken part in the battles of Gawirbaghi and the cemetery and was wounded in his right leg during both of them, so that he limped for quite a while. Restaurants selling kebab flourished and raised their prices. Students of Islamic jurisprudence from the colleges of the universities lined their pockets as they began to spend most of their time among the tombs, reciting the sura “The Cow” from the Holy Qur'an. Frequently they would do an abbreviated version in exchange for ten fils, which they received from people visiting the spirit of saintly Qara Qul. Battles flared between these students and seminary pupils who came to the cemetery bearing copies of the Qur'an and who vied with them in their pursuit of customers.

Another trade gained popularity in the Chuqor community, and the boy Burhan Abdallah monopolized it, for his skill in drafting letters became widely known. He had actually acquired this reputation even before Qara Qul's miracle because of the love letters he composed for the illiterate women of the Chuqor community. Young women who maintained emotional ties with young men living in other cities and who hoped these young men would come forward to ask for their hands would visit the boy, sit facing him on the ground, and open to him hearts torn by passion and desire. He would then transform all of that into flaming words of love and romantic confessions. Lovers in Kirkuk may not have exchanged anything like this before. He had learned about this from Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti's book about the amorous poet Cyrano de Bergerac. He read the book time and again without ever tiring of it. These single girls, who were not embarrassed about spilling their emotions, were content to hand him ten or twenty fils. Married women who had secret lovers and feared a scandal would shower him with gifts to guarantee his silence. Now women came to him, not to write love letters because most of them were elderly women or married women who were neglecting themselves, but to draft letters of complaint addressed to the saint, Qara Qul. In these, they would complain of the injustice of the age and of its outrages against them, requesting him to take revenge on husbands who had left them or on their co-wives and neighbors. Then there were other women who sought the saint's mediation to obtain posts for their sons in the Iraq Petroleum Company or to secure monetary compensation for their long military service. The women would take these letters to the mausoleum of Qara Qul, weeping and lamenting before him. Then they would throw the letters through the grille of the shrine's window into the domed space containing the tomb, which was covered with a green cloth embroidered with silk thread and on top of which letters and money accumulated. They would also inspect the gold wheelchair parked beside the tomb, facing the window.

King Ibn Sa‘ud had presented this vehicle to the shrine so that the Shah of Iran would not appear more supportive of Islam than he, even though the Wahhabi doctrine he advocated prohibited displays like these. The truth was that the Wahhabi Ibn Sa‘ud, who had commissioned this gold wheelchair using his private wealth accruing to him from oil wells he owned in the Arabian peninsula, had not considered the end toward which this custom-made wheelchair of gold was heading. There was no rational purpose for it at the mausoleum, although no one had considered that. The fact of the matter is that the idea of commissioning this gold wheelchair had occurred to Ibn Sa‘ud years before the demise of Qara Qul; on February 14, 1945, to be precise, when the king had met Roosevelt on board the cruiser USS
Quincy
in the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt, during his first trip outside his country since his visit thirty years before to Basra. The king told the American president, who was crippled and sat in a motorized wheelchair, “I feel that you are my twin brother.” Roosevelt had responded, “But you are very, very lucky, because you still have the use of your two legs, which carry you wherever you want.” Ibn Sa‘ud, who felt embarrassed, had saved the situation by observing, “You are the lucky one, Mr. President, because my legs will grow heavier year after year, whereas you can rely on your wheelchair.” Roosevelt had then answered, “I have two of these wheelchairs. They are twins as well. I wonder whether you would accept one as my gift?” All that Ibn Sa‘ud could think to say was, “With pleasure. I will use it every day to remind me of the person who gave it to me: my wonderful friend.”

At the conclusion of this cordial meeting, the king ordered his finance minister, Abdallah ibn Sulayman, to commission a gold wheelchair as a return present for the American president. Roosevelt died, however, before the wheelchair was completed, and then the king did not know what to do with it. So it was left out in a garden of his palace, and the children, servants, and slaves played with it for many long years, until the king heard the news of the gold door that the Shah of Iran had presented to the mausoleum of Qara Qul. Then he got the idea of presenting it to the shrine. The important thing, after all, was that the wheelchair contained more gold than the shah had put in the mausoleum door. He was hopeful that this noble deed would win him the affection of the Iraqi people and shield him against the evil of the Hashemites, who were governing Iraq. So he ordered one of his black servants to fetch the wheelchair, which was covered with mud, dust, and babies' fecal matter, and proceeded to wash it himself at the edge of the garden with a rubber hose connected to a spigot. The gold wheelchair regained so much of its former splendor and glitter that he toured the wings of his women's quarters with it, provoking the laughter of the younger children, who chased after him and sprang on his back. Then a delegation of important figures from the kingdom's political and religious establishments undertook to deliver the king's golden gift to the mausoleum of Qara Qul. It was a gift for which King Faisal II personally thanked him.

People from everywhere, men and women, headed for the mausoleum to toss their letters through the window into the domed area along with coins or currency. They would go hungry so they could save something to donate to Saint Qara Qul. Those who were unable to come to Kirkuk to visit the mausoleum of Qara Qul would post their letters, which the letter carriers, who rode bicycles, would deliver to the mausoleum and empty through the window's grill. These letters were written in many languages: Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, and Urdu, but there were also Hebrew letters mailed by Jews who had emigrated from Kirkuk. There were even letters in Russian, English, German, and French. These were written by Christians who had been guided to Islam and had embraced it.

In reality this mausoleum turned into a shrine that caused as much harm as good, for the people of the Chuqor community and Kirkuk became crazy about acquiring money, and this caused many arguments and disputes among them. Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who was finagling to be appointed as the shrine's director, quarreled with Khidir Musa, accusing him of not putting sufficient effort into lobbying the authorities to appoint him to this post, which he believed he deserved more than anyone else, but this accusation was unfair. When Khidir Musa had proposed his name to the governor, he was convinced of the success of his effort. There was a glitch, though. The governor forwarded the matter to the ministers of the interior and of religious endowments, expecting that a decision about the appointment would be forthcoming, but it was delayed for a long time because the minister of the interior, who transmitted requests in a routine fashion to the public safety administration, had discovered that there was a dossier on Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who had been accused of Communism. Khidir Musa had concealed this matter from the mullah to avoid arousing his anxiety. The mullah only learned the truth when the police summoned him to conduct an investigation of his character. They then wrote a report that cleared his name of the charge of Communism and established his loyalty to the monarchy and to King Faisal II.

Mullah al-Qadiri still felt frustrated and could scarcely sleep on account of the nightmares that oppressed his heart. His zest for life did not return until Khidir Musa sought him out two weeks later in the coffeehouse and told him, “I wanted to be the first to congratulate you, Mr. Director General, to appease your anger at me.” All the distraught mullah could find to say was, “Has an appointment order been issued for me?” At that, Khidir Musa handed him the text of the appointment, observing, “You can read it yourself and then you must invite us to have tea.” The mullah cast a quick glance over the document. Then he rose and kissed Khidir Musa on the forehead. He apologized for his conduct, which he said made him feel ashamed. Khidir Musa, however, gently stopped him: “That's enough, man. Even friends quarrel.” The mullah directed the proprietor of the coffeehouse to bring a tray with baklava and to serve tea to all the patrons, who on learning about the matter came forward to congratulate him on his new position.

The next day, Director General Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri sought out the governor, who congratulated him on obtaining the post and offered him a temporary office in the Palace of Government, along with two clerks from Import/Export, until a private office could be obtained for him and the employees he needed could be appointed. The mullah, however, rejected this idea, asserting that the last thing on his mind was ostentation and pomp. If he had wanted to oversee the direction of the affairs of the mausoleum, his reason had been to stay close to it, not in order to imprison himself in a room in the Palace of Government like any other government employee. The governor responded, “The matter is left to you. Make the decision you think best.”

Afterwards the mullah headed to the cemetery, where three soldiers emerged from a long room they had converted into a guardhouse near the tomb. They saluted him, since the news of his appointment as director general had reached them that very day. Two of them accompanied him on a tour, during which he inspected the mausoleum and the tombs near it before returning once more to the guardhouse, where he took a seat on a chair out in the open by the door to the long room, in which four cots had been placed. He watched the visitors who streamed in from everywhere in order to obtain the miraculous blessings of Qara Qul.

The mullah grew accustomed to sitting in this chair every day during the period while masons erected the building for the headquarters of his agency. This building, which was constructed of stone and plaster and which was located behind the police guardhouse, faced the domed mausoleum. Over its entrance flew the white, red, black, and green Iraqi flag with its twin stars representing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. On either side of the entrance were facing rooms furnished with Persian carpets, which Iranian pilgrims had presented to the shrine, and embroidered cushions that al-Hajj Ahmad al-Sabunji had donated. The entry vestibule opened onto a courtyard containing in the center a marble basin with a fountain, from which water flowed constantly. It ended with a spacious open porch, which was also paved with marble. Placed in it was a coffin that the mullah had brought from his mosque in the Chuqor community. He used it as his desk, from which he directed the affairs of his agency. He received his visitors and contacts while sitting inside it. Indeed, he would occasionally sleep in it too while enjoying the noon siesta he found indispensable, especially when the courtyard was sprinkled with cold water. This strange custom aroused the disapproval of many people, who accused Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri at times of feeblemindedness and at others of exhibitionism and self-promotion. Although the governor considered this conduct inconsistent with the status of a high-ranking state official, the mullah insisted on his position, affirming that a person ought never to forget for a moment death, which—no matter how high time may lift him—lies in wait for him at the end.