The Sirens of Baghdad (15 page)

“I can’t complain.”

“I can,” he said. “I pity you.”

He fidgeted, successfully liberating the tail of his jacket from under his behind. He’d changed, Yaseen had. I’d have thought he was ten years older than was actually the case. A few months had been enough to harden his features. His stare was still intimidating, but the corners of his mouth were furrowed, as if they’d cracked under the pressure of his fixed grin.

I decided not to let him upset me. “Are you going to tell me why you pity me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You think you’re not pitiful?”

“I’m listening.”

“He’s listening. Finally, he can hear, our dear well-digger’s son. Now, how shall we aggravate him?” He looked me up and down before going on. “I wonder what goes on in your head, my friend. You have to be autistic not to see what’s happening. The country’s at war, and millions of fools act as if everything’s cool. When something explodes in the street, they go back inside and close their shutters and wash their hands of the whole affair. The trouble is, things don’t work that way. Sooner or later, the war will knock their houses down and surprise them in their beds. How many times did I tell you and everybody else in Kafr Karam? I told you all: If we don’t go to the fire, the fire will come to us. Who listened to me? Hey, Hassan. Who listened to me?”

“Nobody,” Hassan said.

“Did
you
sit around waiting for the fire to come?”

“No, Yaseen,” Hassan said.

“Did you wait until some sons of bitches came and yanked you out of your bed in the middle of the night before you opened your eyes?”

“No,” Hassan said.

“How about you, Hussein? Did some sons of bitches have to drag you through the mud to wake you up?”

“No,” Hussein said.

Yaseen looked me over again. “As for me, I didn’t wait, either. I became an insurgent before someone spat on my self-respect. Was there anything I lacked in Kafr Karam? Did I have anything to complain about? I could have closed my shutters and stopped up my ears. But I knew that if I didn’t go to the fire, the fire was going to come to my house. I took up arms because I didn’t want to wind up like Sulayman. A question of survival? No, just a question of logic. This is my country. Scoundrels are trying to extort it from me. So what do I do? According to you, what do I do? You think I wait until they come and rape my mother before my eyes, and under my roof?”

Hassan and Hussein bowed their heads.

Yaseen breathed slowly, moderating the intensity of his gaze, and then spoke again. “I know what happened at your house.”

I frowned.

“Oh, yes,” he continued. “What men consider a grave is a vegetable garden as far as their better halves are concerned. Women don’t know the meaning of the word
secret.
”

I bowed my head.

Yaseen leaned back against the wall, folded his arms over his chest, and gazed at me in silence. His eyes made me uncomfortable. He crossed his legs and put his palms on his knees. “I know what it is to see your revered father on the floor, balls in the air, thrown down by a brute,” he said.

My throat clamped shut. I couldn’t believe he was going to reveal my family’s shame! I wouldn’t stand for it.

Yaseen read on my face what I was shouting deep inside. It meant nothing to him. Jerking his chin toward the twins and Sayed, he went on. “All of us here—me, the others in this room, and the beggars in the street—we all know
perfectly well
what the outrage committed against your family signifies. But the GI has no clue. He can’t measure the extent of the sacrilege. He doesn’t even know what a sacrilege is. In his world, a man sticks his parents in an old folks’ home and forgets them. They’re the least of his worries. He calls his mother ‘an old bag’ and his father ‘an asshole.’ What can you expect from such a person?”

Anger was smothering me. Clearly recognizing my condition, Yaseen raised the bidding. “What can you expect from a snot-nosed degenerate who would put his mother into a home for the moribund, his
mother,
the woman who conceived him fiber by fiber, carried him in her womb, labored to bring him into the world, raised him step by step, and watched beside him night after night like a star? Can you expect such a person to respect
our
mothers? Can you expect him to kiss the foreheads of
our
old men?”

The silence of Sayed and the twins increased my anger. I had the feeling they’d pulled me into a trap, and I resented them for it. If Yaseen was meddling in a matter that was none of his business, well, that was pretty consistent with his character and his reputation; but for the others to act as his accomplices without really getting completely involved—that enraged me.

Sayed saw that I was on the point of imploding. He said, “Those people have no more consideration for their elders than they do for their offspring. That’s what Yaseen’s trying to explain to you. He’s not chewing you out. He’s telling you facts. What happened in Kafr Karam has shaken all of us, I assure you. I knew nothing about it until this morning. And when I heard the story, I was furious. Yaseen’s right. The Americans have gone too far.”

“Seriously, what did you expect?” Yaseen growled, annoyed by Sayed’s intervention. “You thought they’d modestly avert their eyes from the nakedness of a handicapped, terrorized sexagenarian?” He made a little circle with his hand. “Why?”

I had lost the power of speech.

Sayed took advantage of my tongue-tied state to land a few blows of his own. “Why should they turn away? These are people who can catch their wives in bed with their best friends and act as though nothing’s wrong. Modesty’s a virtue they’ve long since lost sight of. Honor? They’ve distorted its codes. They’re just infuriated retards, smashing valuable things, like buffalo let loose in a porcelain shop. They arrive here from an unjust, cruel universe with no humanity and no morals, where the powerful feed on the flesh of the downtrodden. Violence and hatred sum up their history; Machiavellianism shapes and justifies their initiatives and their ambitions. What can they comprehend of
our
world, which has produced the most fabulous pages in the history of human civilization?
Our
fundamental values are still intact;
our
oaths are unbroken;
our
traditional points of reference remain the same. What can they understand about us?”

“Not very much,” Yaseen said, getting up and approaching me until we were nose-to-nose. “Not very much, my brother.”

Sayed went on. “They know nothing of our customs, our dreams, or our prayers. They’re particularly ignorant of our heritage and our long memories. What do those cowboys know about Mesopotamia? Do you think they have a clue about this fantastic Iraq they’re trampling down? About the Tower of Babel, the Hanging Gardens, Harun al-Rashid, the
Thousand and One Nights
? They know nothing of these things! They never look at this side of history. All they see in our country is an immense pool of petroleum, which they intend to lap dry, even if it costs the last drop of our blood, too. They’re bonanza seekers, looters, despoilers, mercenaries. They’ve reduced all values to the single dreadful question of cash, and the only virtue they recognize is profit. Predators, that’s what they are, formidable predators. They’re ready to march over the body of Christ if they think it’ll help fill their pockets. And if you aren’t willing to go along with them, they haul out the heavy artillery.”

Yaseen pushed me toward the window, crying out, “Look at them! Go ahead, take a look at them, and you’ll see what they really are: machines.”

“And those machines will hit a wall in Baghdad,” Sayed said. “Our streets are going to witness the greatest duel of all time, the clash of the titans: Babylon against Disneyland, the Tower of Babel against the Empire State Building, the Hanging Gardens against the Golden Gate Bridge, Scheherazade against Bonnie Parker, Sindbad against the Terminator….”

I was completely bamboozled. I felt as though I were in the thick of a farce, in the midst of a play rehearsal, surrounded by mediocre actors who’d learned their roles but didn’t have the talent the text deserved, and yet—and yet—and yet, it seemed to me that this was exactly what I wanted to hear, that their words were the very words I was missing, the ones I’d sought in vain while the effort filled my head with migraines and insomnia. It made no difference whether Sayed was sincere, or whether Yaseen was speaking his real thoughts to me, speaking from his guts; the only certitudes I had were that the farce suited me, that it fit me like a glove, that the secret I’d chewed on for weeks was shared, that my anger wasn’t unique, and that it was giving me back my determination. I found it difficult to define this particular alchemy, which under different conditions would have made me laugh out loud, but now it gave me great relief. That bastard Yaseen had pulled a nasty thorn out of my side. He’d known how to touch me in exactly the right spot, how to stir up all the crap that had filled my head ever since the night when the sky fell in on me. I had come to Baghdad to avenge an offense. I didn’t know how to go about it, but from now on, my ignorance was no longer a concern.

And so, when Yaseen finally opened his arms to me, he seemed to be opening up the path that would lead me to retrieve what I wanted more than anything else in the world: my family’s honor.

13

Yaseen and his two guardian angels, Hassan and Hussein, didn’t return to the store. Sayed invited all four of us to dinner at his house to celebrate our reunion and seal our oath; then, after the meal was over, the three companions bade us farewell and disappeared. It would be a while before I saw them again.

I resumed my work as night watchman, which meant I opened the store for the other employees in the morning and closed it behind them in the evening. Weeks passed. My colleagues hardly warmed to me. They said “Good morning” when they arrived and “Good evening” when they left, but nothing in between. Their indifference exasperated me. I tried for a while to gain their confidence; eventually, however, I started ignoring them, too. I still had enough pride to stop myself from foolishly smiling at people who offered no smile in return.

I took my meals nearby, in a restaurant with questionable hygiene. Sayed had made an arrangement with the manager, who ran a tab for me and sent the bill to the store at the end of the month. He was a small, swarthy fellow, sprightly and jovial. We got on well together. Later, I found out that Sayed owned the restaurant, along with one newspaper kiosk, two grocery stores, a shoe store on the avenue, a photographer’s studio, and a telephone store.

At the end of each week, Sayed paid me a good salary. I bought myself various necessities and miscellaneous items with it and socked away the rest of my pay in a leather pouch meant for Bahia; I intended to send her everything I managed to save.

Things fell into place without difficulty. I carved out a little routine, custom-made for myself. After the store closed, I went for a walk in the city center. I loved walking, and there were new spectacles every day in Baghdad. Attacks were answered with barrages of gunfire, raids were carried out in retaliation for ambushes, and the coalition’s response to protest marches was often racist violence. People made the best of the situation. The area where an explosion or summary execution had taken place was barely cleared before the crowd poured back into it. The population was fatalistic, stoic. Several times, I came upon some still-smoking scene of carnage and stopped to ogle the horror until help and the army arrived. I watched ambulance drivers picking pieces of flesh from sidewalks, firemen evacuating blasted buildings, cops interrogating the neighborhood residents. I stuck my hands in my pockets and whiled away hours in this pursuit, inuring myself to the exercise of rage. While the victims’ relatives raised their hands to heaven, howling out their grief, I asked myself if I was capable of inflicting the same suffering on others and registered the fact that the question didn’t shock me. I strolled calmly back to the store and my room. The nightmares of the street never caught up with my dreams.

Around two
A.M
. one night, I was awakened by muffled sounds. Switching on the lights, I went downstairs to see whether a burglar had slipped in while I was sleeping. There was nobody in the store, and none of the merchandise appeared to be missing. The noises were coming from the area in the back of the store reserved for repairs and off-limits to all nonauthorized personnel. The door was locked from the inside, and I didn’t have permission go in there anyway, so I stayed in the showroom until the intruders departed. The next day, I reported the incident to Sayed. He explained that the technician, the engineer, sometimes came to work at odd hours to satisfy demanding customers, and he reminded me that my duties didn’t extend to the repair shop. I detected a peremptory warning in his tone.

One Friday afternoon, as I was rambling among the palms on the banks of the Tigris, Omar the Corporal approached me. I hadn’t seen him for weeks. He was wearing the same jacket and trousers, which now looked faded, and new, grotesque sunglasses. The front of his shirt, stretched tight over his belly, was splattered with grease.

He started talking right away. “Are you sulking, or what? Every day, I ask for you at the warehouse and the warrant officer tells me he hasn’t seen you. You’re pissed off at me, right?”

“For what? You’ve been more than a brother to me.”

“So why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not avoiding you. I’ve been very busy, that’s all.”

He was uneasy, trying to read my eyes to see whether I was hiding something from him. “I’ve been worried about you,” he confessed. “You can’t imagine how much I regret thrusting you into Sayed’s arms. Every time I think about it, I tear my hair.”

“You’re wrong. I’m doing fine with him.”

“I’d never forgive myself if he got you involved in some shady business…in some…in some bloodshed.”

He had to swallow several times before he could bring up that last bit. His sunglasses hid his eyes from me, but the expression on his face gave him away. Omar was in dire straits, tormented by pangs of conscience. He was letting his beard grow as a sign of contrition.

“I didn’t come to Baghdad to get a job and settle down, Omar. We’ve already discussed that. No use going over it again.”

Omar was far from reassured by my words, which, in fact, offended him. More apprehensive than ever, he clutched at his hair.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go have a bite to eat. On me.”

“I’m not hungry. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been eating much, not since I had that harebrained idea of entrusting you to Sayed.”

“Please…”

“I have to run. I don’t want to be seen with you. Your friends and I aren’t tuned to the same frequency.”

“I’m free to see anybody I want.”

“Not me.”

Nervously squeezing his fingers, he cast suspicious looks all around us before he spoke again. “I talked to an army buddy of mine about you. He’s prepared to take you in for a while. He’s a former lieutenant, a really nice guy. He’s about to start up a business, and he needs someone he can trust.”

“I’m exactly where I want to be.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

He nodded, but his heart was heavy. “Well,” he said, extending his hand. “If you know what you want, all I can do is let the matter drop. But should you happen to change your mind, you know where to find me. I’m someone you can count on.”

“Thanks, Omar.”

He pressed his chin against his throat and walked away.

After about a dozen steps, he changed his mind and came back. His cheek muscles were twitching spasmodically.

“One more thing, cousin,” he whispered. “If you insist on fighting, do it properly. Fight
for
your country, not
against
the whole world. Keep things in perspective; don’t mistake wrong for right. Don’t kill just for killing’s sake. Don’t fire blindly—we’re losing more innocent people than bastards who deserve to die. You promise?”

I said nothing.

“You see? You’re already on the wrong track. The world isn’t our enemy. Remember all the people who protested the invasion all over the world, millions of them marching in Madrid, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, South America, Asia. All of them were on our side, and they still are. We got more support from them than we got from the other Arab countries. Don’t forget that. All nations are victims of the avarice of a handful of multinational companies. It would be terrible to lump them all together. Kidnapping journalists, executing NGO workers who are here only to help us—those kinds of things are alien to our customs. If you want to avenge an offense, don’t commit one. If you think your honor must be saved, don’t dishonor your people. Don’t give way to madness. If I see pictures of you mistaking arbitrary execution for a feat of arms, I’ll hang myself.”

He wiped his nose on his wrist, nodded once again with his shoulders around his ears, and concluded: “I’d hang myself for sure, cousin. From now on, remind yourself that everything you do concerns me directly.”

And he hurried away to melt into the confused crowds wandering along the riverbank.

Two months after my conversation with Omar, my schedule hadn’t changed a bit. I got up at six o’clock in the morning, lifted the rolling shutter in front of the store entrance two hours later, posted the previous day’s incoming and outgoing merchandise, and closed the store in the late afternoon. After the departure of the other employees, we locked the door, Sayed and I, and busied ourselves with drawing up a sales balance sheet and making an inventory of new acquisitions. Once we’d assessed the take and made provisions for the following day, Sayed handed me the big key ring and took away a bag stuffed with banknotes. The routine was starting to weigh on me, and my universe was shrinking down to nothing. I stopped going to cafés—stopped going out altogether, in fact. My daily itinerary ran between two points a hundred meters apart: the store and the restaurant. I ate dinner late, bought some lemonade and cookies in the grocery store on the corner, and shut myself up in my room. I spent my time staring at the TV set, zapping mindlessly from channel to channel, unable to concentrate on a program or a movie. This situation accentuated my disgust and warped my character. I became increasingly touchy and decreasingly patient, and an aggressiveness I didn’t recognize in myself began to characterize my words and my gestures. I no longer put up with the way my colleagues ignored me, and I missed no opportunity to make that clear to them. If someone failed to respond to my smile, I muttered “Dickhead” loud enough for him to hear me, and if he had the gall to frown, I confronted and taunted him. But things never went beyond that, and so I was left unsatisfied.

One evening, unable to take it anymore, I asked Sayed what he was waiting for to send me into action. He replied in a hurtful tone of voice: “Everything in its time!” I felt like small fry, like someone who counted for nothing. Just you wait, I thought. I’ll show you what I can do one of these days. For the moment, the initiative didn’t depend on me; I contented myself with chewing over my frustrations and elaborating fantastic revenge schemes, all of which served to enliven my insomnia.

And then a chain of events was set in motion….

After seeing off the store’s last customer, I was pulling down the rolling shutter when two men came up and waved me aside so they could enter. Two other employees, Amr and Rashid, who had been putting up their things and preparing to leave for the day, stopped what they were doing. Sayed put his glasses on; when he recognized the two intruders, he stood up from his desk, opened a drawer, took out an envelope, and propelled it across the table with a flick of his finger. His visitors exchanged looks and folded their hands. The taller of the two was a man in his fifties with a sinister-looking mug resting on his fat neck like a gargoyle on a church. A hideous burn scar extended high enough on his right jaw to cause a slight pucker in his eyelid. The fellow was a downright brute, complete with treacherous eyes and a sardonic grin. He was wearing a leather jacket worn at the elbows and a bottle-green knit shirt sprinkled with dandruff. His companion, thirty-something, displayed his young wolf’s fangs in an affected smile. His casual demeanor betrayed the go-getter eager to go very far very fast, assured by the cop’s badge that he wore. His new jeans were turned up at the ankles, revealing a pair of worn moccasins. He stared at Rashid, who was perched on a stool.

“Greetings, my good prince,” the older man said.

“Hello, Captain,” Sayed replied, tapping his finger on the envelope. “It’s been waiting for you.”

“I’ve been on special assignment these past few days.” The captain slowly approached the table, picked up the envelope, felt its weight, and grumbled, “Thinner than usual.”

“The amount’s correct.”

The officer flashed a skeptical grimace. “You know my family problems, Sayed. I have a whole tribe to maintain, and we haven’t been paid our salaries for six months.” He jerked a thumb toward his colleague. “My buddy here’s in the shit, too. He wants to get married, but he can’t find so much as a fucking bedroom he can afford.”

Sayed pressed his lips together before plunging his hand back into the desk drawer. He pulled out a few supplementary bills, which the captain, as swiftly as a conjurer, caused to disappear.

“You’re a good prince, Sayed. God will repay you.”

“We’re going through a rough patch, Captain. We have to help one another out.”