The Tobacco Keeper (34 page)

He also believed that the political tendency to uphold mob culture completely destroyed the elite class. The regime, with its vulgarity, cruelty and barbarity, did not only create and nurture the culture of the mob, but it, too, harboured populist and demagogic tendencies. The populace and the government thus stood in headlong confrontation and competed to see which of them could kill and destroy the most. The government elevated belief
in murder to a spiritual ecstasy that spread among people like a contagious disease. The people let out their screams against each other in a form of self-destruction that gave them renewed ecstasy. They felt a kind of morbidity, the love of bruised, severed bodies. They were in love with spilt blood, which infused life into their feelings.

The ghostly presence who sat in the chair looking at the garden out of the window was drunk that day with the sight of Fawzeya. He wanted to share the laughter of this helpless peasant woman who’d walked miles that day to bring him some milk. She sat in front of him, telling him of the soldiers returning from the front.

Dark blue circles had appeared under his eyes, from exhaustion, and his eyes were black with pain. He felt that the country was in the grip of mass hysteria that needed to find an outlet. He wanted to express his release from its grip through music, for it alone was capable of making the walls, barriers and darkness disappear. Music alone was able to bring light and a kaleidoscopic sparkle, and to relax his nerves. He stopped for a moment, placed his bow and violin on the stand and began to watch Fawzeya.

Her eyes were full of secrets, radiating light as though from the depths of a cave.

Music and women relieved his sorrows and made him tremble in harmony with the music of the whole universe.

The following day, he went out onto the street. There were soldiers hurrying everywhere and men dressed in traditional gowns as though they belonged to a past era. Faces were tired and angry.

He went straight home. He sat in front of his musical score, thinking with astonishment of the vulgarity that dominated both
the regime and the people. People had an instinctive veneration for excrement and blood and an adoration of chaos and confusion. It was the horrifying feeling of living in an anti-world, a world of ferocious claws.

A passage from another letter stated: ‘All my friends are gone. Nadia’s dead, Amjad’s ill, Widad has left, Janet’s been murdered and my son Omar is in Egypt with his aunt. I have pain in my joints and the hospitals have no medicine. The streets are dusty, the shops have run out of goods; poverty and crime are everywhere. The people have turned into the masses. The class system and social strata are all gone. There’s nothing but a political class that rules with unlimited violence. Only vulgar music and martial songs praising the victories of the regime can be heard. The nationalist movement is gradually becoming Islamist. Saddam prays. He believes that what happened was the will of God. People live in abject poverty and deadly despair, which they try to ease by going back to the fold of religion.’

Kamal Medhat’s most tender moments were spent with Fawzeya. He found in her a simple, spontaneous heroism, a kind of self-defence mechanism in the face of a hard, incompatible marriage. Kamal Medhat found in his love for Fawzeya some compensation for his hatred of the masses. He venerated in her the primitive, illiterate human being who remained unspoilt by the regime. Although Fawzeya expressed herself simply and spoke in straightforward, spontaneous statements, she wasn’t without complexity. Despite being illiterate and simple, she fought valiantly for her freedom. She’d been married to a cattle farmer in Al-Fadhilia. He was a vain, careless man who’d forced her to marry him. But she’d resisted him ferociously, stood up to him and asked for a divorce.
A few months before the divorce came through, he was killed in the war. In front of the judge, she gave up everything to his family because she’d never loved him.

Kamal Medhat often sat in a chair by the window, listening to a record or playing short pieces on his violin. He sometimes placed his scores in front of him to compose his dream symphony. Fawzeya would walk barefoot on the cold tiles, her tight, black trousers revealing the outline of her buttocks and her tight shirt showing her protruding breasts. She used tassels to tie her hair in a pony tail, and chewed gum energetically while she walked. She would suddenly stop in front of him and look straight at him with her lascivious eyes. She would wink at him, turn quickly around and roll her behind.

Her movements aroused him and made him feel the spirit and power of life. Love alone could explain the latent energy that he wished to express through music. It was a tidal wave of inexplicable passion. Kamal Medhat didn’t hate the deprived classes that felt the abject need for bread and faced the arrogance of urban bureaucracy. He loved folk stories in all their details and his music beautifully and poetically expressed the lives of broken, exiled people, drunken farmers, the hungry, illiterate women, lumpen workers and agricultural labourers. But what terrified him was the vulgarity of the regime that crushed those classes and turning them into a rough, ferocious beast, running amok and destroying everything.

What happened during the years that led to Kamal Medhat’s murder? Information is, in fact, quite scarce. During the years following the Kuwait war, Kamal Medhat was forgotten. When
he walked in the streets, he would meet a wave of people running towards a free meal offered by the government in some square or park. He would stop and look at a crowd of men and women in tatters, starving and barefoot, women’s headscarves billowing. They would rush through a side door opened for them by the guards, to eat a free meal of rice offered by the state to the poor. Everything else was hazy and vague. He wrote to Farida: ‘Life is cold and empty. Baghdad is a world enveloped by mystery. The streets are filthy, the shops are empty, and the faces are pale, sickly and desperate. Classical music halls have turned into popular haunts for vulgar songs.’

The only surviving image of that elderly musician in the residents’ minds was his slow daily walk on the streets of Al-Mansour. They retained the image of a widower having an affair with his maid, a man with grey hair and a light grey beard who was dressed in the same old, shabby clothes that he’d been wearing for years. He often carried a Russian book as he walked on the same street almost every day from his house in Al-Mansour to the end of Al-Haretheya Street and back. He was sometimes accompanied by his maid Fawzeya and he frequently stood in line for his ration of eggs or a piece of chicken distributed to retired state officials, from time to time, by the government.

This was all the information that we managed to get concerning his life between the two wars. We discovered that during the last war, of 2003, he heard the doorbell ring while he was watching the news on television. He got up, pulled the curtain and looked out of the window. Amjad Mustafa was at the door.

It was a huge surprise for Kamal Medhat. Amjad Mustafa was a completely changed man. His eyes were lifeless and his paunch jutted forward. He was short of breath and the effects of addiction
were clear on his face. He looked worn out. His body was flabby and his clothes were old and threadbare. He wore an old, navy blue jacket, a tatty shirt and a pair of jeans that were completely faded.

Kamal took him into the lounge and asked Fawzeya to make them some coffee. Amjad Mustafa rushed towards the bar to pour himself a glass of red wine.

‘What’s happened to you, Amjad? You look so different,’ said Kamal Medhat.

‘We’re all different,’ he answered smiling.

Patriotic talk had vanished completely from his conversation. He no longer believed in the divine mission of the Arab nation, which he’d espoused during the past years of victory, glory and historical revisionism. Now it was all the manifest destiny of the American nation, the new drive towards the Tocquevillean dream of democracy and human rights. It was a dream that Kamal Medhat also believed in, despite his fears of uncontrollable populist movements. He wanted change to happen, no doubt. But at what price? Nobody knew. It was still untested, unknown and therefore unfathomable. They could neither push it forward nor stand in its way.

‘Who can drive out the US forces?’ Amjad asked Kamal Medhat.

‘Nobody,’ he replied.

‘Then let it be. Let’s achieve democracy, development and civic rights. Then the nation can decide its destiny.’

Kamal drank his coffee and looked straight out of the window at the thick, wooded garden outside.

‘Do you trust America?’ he asked Kamal.

Kamal Medhat had absolutely no faith in imperialism, for he
rejected all forms of domination, power and violence. He totally abhorred the spirit of smug victory, whether embodied in Iraqi nationalism or American patriotism.

To refute his argument, Amjad said, ‘Haven’t you read Saadi Youssef’s latest poem,
An Invitation to Tony Blair
? He was urging the British Prime Minister to occupy Iraq.’

Kamal Medhat was astonished to hear that. Could it be true? Then he smiled a little. The dream of change dominated the thinking of all intellectuals. Amjad Mustafa was the victim of his own feelings of extreme oppression. He was an addict suffering the pain of failure and desperate for his lost dream of glory. Like a novice sailor overpowered by the wind, he didn’t know how to set his sail. Feeling totally oppressed, he made brief remarks, waved his arms, smoked, cursed and drank red wine in frantic haste.

A few days later, Kamal Medhat was sitting in an armchair by the window in the lounge, watching the movements of the tree branches outside. It was difficult for him to formulate ideas or adopt a stand. Everything was as churned and confused as the movement of the tide. Looking up, he was appalled to see the images of aircraft carriers advancing, fighter planes of all types, Marines with their helmets and military gear marching in formation, and long-range missiles being installed in the desert. Colossal forces were advancing in the desert, led by tanks and armoured vehicles. Other forces were at their bases in the Gulf countries, from which they would march to invade Iraq. The dogs of war were barking and the masses were watching the armed forces taking positions and digging trenches in the streets. Food was becoming scarce and there were numerous checkpoints in public squares and parks. Military and security patrols roamed every alley and street.

Kamal Medhat woke up from his sleep to the sound of huge explosions near the house. For a few moments, he was drenched in sweat. He was worried and afraid. He looked at the damp, rusty room swimming in darkness. With his tall, slightly stooping gait, he went towards Fawzeya, who was sitting close by. Then the sound of another violent explosion made Fawzeya jump and rush to the window. There was a burning car standing parallel to the pavement and a house was on fire. A flower shop had been completely demolished.

He returned to his place near the window and looked at the moon. It was a warm night as the weather forecast had predicted. Everything had been fine until now. He exchanged a few words with Fawzeya. They prepared a meal together, sat down and ate. He cracked a joke and she smiled. She didn’t mention anything about his excessive drinking these days. He didn’t mention the war or his dread of what the coming days might bring. He raised his glass and drank to her health. When he looked again through the window, the garden had become a block of light.

Ten days had passed since the war had begun. Looking out of the window, Kamal Medhat watched the city being consumed by fire. He saw the fighter planes like black insects bombing everything: bridges, homes, buildings and factories. He watched Baghdad as it turned into a mass of smoke. A dust storm was blowing, uprooting everything in its path while the armed forces escaped with their equipment. Soldiers launched rockets from among the houses. Ambulances carried soldiers swimming in their blood. Soldiers deserted the front while others took shelter in houses and hospitals.

He decided to go out. The moment he opened the door, a
slap of cold air struck him. He buried his neck in the collar of his coat and shrank inside it. He dragged his feet with great difficulty and walked along the pavement. He looked through the window of a semi-burnt-out villa and saw a burnt wooden table and bookcase. Firemen were carrying the wounded and the dead on stretchers.

He continued to walk. Smoke was billowing out of a rose-coloured brick house that was encircled by a wall. On the wall there was a poster inviting people to donate blood and the words ‘Death to Americans’ were scrawled in black paint. The windows of a house level with the street; a woman speaking to a man holding a nylon bag.

On the final day of the war, he sat in the living room, looking into the corner. The house was completely dark because the power had been cut off. He drew the curtains to bring some light into the room. Fawzeya entered. She seemed disturbed and the words came rushing from her lips. She told him how the army had disappeared entirely from the streets and how people were looting government offices. He was appalled. He knew that the mob would rise once again and realized that they would overtake the whole country. His heart thudded so violently that he felt out of breath.

He went back to his scores and started to arrange them. He tried to write something but couldn’t. He suddenly realized that Fawzeya had gone out; she wouldn’t be able to resist the attractions outside. He ran after her, panting with exhaustion and in agitation. Trucks carrying looted property passed by him. It was strange to see people stealing their own belongings. Every institution was being looted. The looters even took away the bricks.
Kamal moved among them and nearly bumped into someone carrying a chair, another holding a sack of flour, and a woman running with a refrigerator on her back. Among the crowd he found Fawzeya. She was carrying two bamboo chairs and running away. He gripped her hand and commanded her to get rid of the chairs and follow him. She did so, scowling in annoyance. At home, she protested vehemently, saying it was a free bonanza. Everybody took what they wanted, so why should he stop her? Where was the harm in it?