The Last of the Angels (20 page)

The mullah said in a sermon, which he delivered one Friday in his mosque and which became famous as “The Coffin Sermon,” that what destroys a man's heart is not the temptation of life but a forgetfulness of death. Every living being has a right to enjoy his time, but this enjoyment wins goals that seem imaginary when he realizes that death lies in wait for him. Once people remember this reality, no ruler will tyrannize his subjects, no notable will take pride in his glory, and no rich man will be stingy with his wealth. Mullah al-Qadiri also said, “True wisdom is revealed twice in this lifetime: first when a person is born and next when he dies. Each of us is condemned to be born; each of us is condemned to die. Anything over and beyond that is foam left by the wave on the shore.” Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri was so touched by these realities, which were revealed to him all at once without his ever having thought about them, that tears poured from his eyes as he said, “Now that I have become a director general, I must not forget this truth. There has never been a prophet or a saint who did not carry his coffin on his shoulders. Why should I not also have a coffin, for my part?”

This influential sermon, which dumfounded the rumormongers and silenced them, in point of fact raised the standing of Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who had displayed extraordinary brilliance in the acquisition of metaphysical wisdom. Even the governor himself, some days after this sermon, the text of which was published in the newspaper
Kirkuk,
was forced to pay a courtesy call to his office, where the mullah received him in his customary way: reclining in the coffin, which he had outfitted with a pad and feather pillows. The governor sat in the open porch, which the mullah had furnished with carpets and cushions, in the style of Arab divans. He drank two cups of bitter coffee, which a man served to him from a pot with a curved spout. The fellow, obviously a servant working for the agency, held the pot in his hand. The governor started the conversation with a jest: “I didn't know you had such a restful office. At least you won't suffer the way I do from back pain.” The mullah, who had reared back a bit, raising his head to look up, responded: “I tried it for two days without a pad, and my back was almost destroyed from the pain. It was truly unbearable. May God be merciful to the dead, who are placed in it naked, with only a shroud to cover their body.”

The conduct of Mullah Zayn al-Abidin was an innovation that no one before him had practiced. It demonstrated to the residents of the Chuqor community, however, that the wellspring of light they had heard about for generations had not run dry, despite the corruption that the flood of Iranian, Indian, and Turkish pilgrims introduced to the city. Men neglected their employments, and teenagers fled from their schools in order to hover around the shrine and pursue the foreign women visitors who had come to seek the intercession of Qara Qul. Some of them devised novel ways of attracting women's attention and tempting them—wearing a cloak and a turban, for example, along with a fake beard. Some of them also claimed to possess a gift for magic and the ability to slay the jinn that trouble women's bodies and prevent them from bearing children. On dark nights they would entice these women to the deserted area of al-Musalla, at the far edge of the cemetery and stage what they termed “A Night of the Jinn.”

Whether these desperate women visitors followed these young men in the belief that their destiny awaited them there or from a desire to contact the world of spirits, they all were convinced that a world existed where the boundaries between possible and impossible disappeared and where everything could turn into its opposite, so that the world was in effect turned upside down. They wished to reach this world, which would perhaps provide deliverance to them.

Women wrapped in cloaks would slip through the dark night, between the tombs, while reciting the opening prayer of the Qur'an on their way to the ruins of a nineteenth-century gristmill, guiding themselves by the feeble light of a candle placed on the ruin's wall facing the city. Inside the mill, candles were burning on the giant, circular grinding stone in the center of the room. Atop it sat a man who was completely naked except for the red veil covering his eyes. He was reciting in Arabic in a monotonous fashion—between singing and howling—distorted verses from the faux-qur'an of the Liar Musaylima and from an Arabic verse translation by Ahmad al-Safi al-Najafi of the quatrains of Umar Khayyam. From time to time this man would strike a cheap container made of aluminum. Nude young men, weeping and pounding their chests with their palms, circumambulated the millstone. Women arriving at the mill were commanded to remove their cloaks and to circle the millstone until they were overcome by fatigue. Then the man sitting on the millstone descended with a dagger in his hand, seized one of the women by her hand, and forced her to climb onto the millstone, where he extinguished the candles. Then each of the other young men embraced one of the women in a gloomy corner of the mill and together they raised the monotonous, communal, bestial cry “Out, out,” while the woman standing on the stone swayed right and left until she entered a trance state close to inebriation. Then the young man climbed up, still carrying the dagger, and removed her clothing, one piece at a time. So the other women imitated her. Next the woman on the millstone stretched out and the young man threw a cloak over her, covering her body. He climbed inside it, repeating cryptic phrases, which were closer to Satan's language than to that of human beings:

Meanwhile, the other women were also stretching out on the ground in the corners of the mill. The young men covered them with cloaks, beneath which they then crept to begin slaying jinn. On average, each youth found that more than one jinni was possessing the woman he was treating. Yet he was able to slay all of them. One young man even slew—with a single thrust—five rebel jinn lurking in one woman's womb. After that, the young men wrapped around each woman's wrist an amulet of green scraps of cloth to protect them from the evils of the jinn forever. Next the women reached their hands into their pockets and paid liberally, kissing the youths' hands for saving them from Satan's evils. Then they slipped away, enveloped by their black cloaks, and disappeared into the night.

It is true that people continued to praise Qara Qul, who had benefited them more dead than alive, but the sight of the riches raining down on his mausoleum caused them to forget even his miracle of riding Buraq and ascending to heaven. Many of them felt more entitled to this wealth than a stone tomb was because it did not eat, whereas their children were hungry. What would Qara Qul—who must currently be in a circle of angels seated in a garden of riches in paradise, singing the praises of God—do with gold, silver, Iraqi dinars, Iranian tomans, Turkish liras, and Indian rupees?

These demonic thoughts tempted them until they no longer paid any attention to the principles of Islam. In fact, they forgot Islam's five pillars and substituted for them other principles, which they said they were compelled to follow. The first to be seduced by this wealth were the letter carriers, who started opening letters addressed to Qara Qul, looking for the banknotes that women normally placed inside the folded sheets of their letters. Their example was followed by the policemen guarding the mausoleum. They imposed on each male or female visitor to the shrine a fee for the visit. This was decreed by the deputy lieutenant in charge of the guardhouse. Although this tax was a trivial sum, Director General Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri abrogated it, threatening to inflict the stiffest penalties on anyone whose soul seduced him into placing a barrier between Muslims and the tomb of Qara Qul. The souls of these policemen did not find any rest until the director general decided to appoint Abbas Bahlawan and Mahmud al-Arabi as supervisors for the mausoleum in recognition of their heroism in the battle they led against the police in defense of the grandfathers' cemetery—or that was what he said. As a matter of fact, he was motivated by his fear of them. This was an attempt to ensure their loyalty to him.

Actually, Abbas Bahlawan and Mahmud al-Arabi did not even have recourse to a go-between. They met the mullah one day in the Chuqor community and told him half in jest, “We heard that you had appointed us supervisors for the mausoleum. You shouldn't have done that, Mullah, without at least consulting us. All's well that ends well, however; we accept.” Disconcerted, the mullah apologized, “I knew you would accept; I would not think of accepting the post of director general without you beside me.”

A deep friendship between Abbas Bahlawan, Mahmud al-Arabi, and the policemen in the guardhouse began the very first day they worked in “The General Directorate for the Shrine of Qara Qul.” This was the official name, which Hashim al-Khattat—the most famous artist in Baghdad—had undertaken to paint in Neskhi script on a silver plaque that Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri affixed to the curved façade of his directorate's entry, which he painted green. When the policemen vented the complaint that was troubling their heart—the abrogation by the director general of the visitation tax—Abbas Bahlawan laughed and commented, “If your worries involve money, you can forget them from now on. Each of you will have a share of the money Qara Qul receives. Why should you think that a locked door, the key of which the mullah places in his pocket, will hinder us from accessing the wealth that fills the tomb? I wonder what Mahmud al-Arabi has learned during his lifetime if not the care of locked doors.” Mahmud al-Arabi, who was enjoying a tumbler of tea in the police guardhouse, replied, “There's always at least one way to solve any problem.”

This assurance, which restored hope to the hearts of the guardhouse's men after the unhappiness they had suffered, led the deputy lieutenant to rise and embrace both Abbas Bahlawan and Mahmud al-Arabi. He observed, “I've expected only the best from you two from the very beginning. I knew that you would think of us.” His men followed his example, and a policeman from Talafar, his emotions getting the better of him, went so far as to kiss Mahmud al-Arabi's hand, saying, “Son, God bless your hand, which will keep us from having to beg from everyone who comes along and which will preserve our dignity.” Abbas Bahlawan and Mahmud al-Arabi were touched by the sentiments of these men, for they realized that their meager salaries would not even feed their children. It was true that government service offered a status that others in society envied, even if it was only that of policeman, but how could a man provide sustenance to his children when all he had to show for a month's work was seven dinars, which would evaporate during a single week?

The two men circled round the mausoleum after that, examining everything about the place, as though checking out the strengths of an adversary. As he glanced at the twin locks on the mausoleum's door, Mahmud al-Arabi confided to Abbas Bahlawan, “It would not be difficult to break these locks, but that's not what we want, since the mullah would discover the matter the next day. There is a much easier way than breaking the two locks. We'll obtain what we want without even opening the door.”

Abbas Bahlawan responded jestingly, “I know you're a thief, but if you're also a magician, that's news to me.”

Mahmud al-Arabi cast a speculative glance at Abbas Bahlawan and contracted his bushy eyebrows. Then he said, “The matter requires intellect, not magic, and this is precisely what you lack.”

Abbas Bahlawan cursed him affectionately, “And this is precisely what you must prove exists in your empty head.”

Mahmud al-Arabi replied, “Fine! You'll see that this evening when people cease visiting the shrine.”

The method that Mahmud al-Arabi contrived to reach the cash inside the mausoleum was truly simple. He brought a long stick, stuck a piece of gum on one end, and poked it through the grille on the shrine's window. He used this to pluck banknotes and coins, one after the other, deliberately leaving some behind so that Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri would not catch on to the scheme when he opened the door, normally each Friday morning, to collect the donations, which were recorded by the Islamic law student from his mosque—Aziz Shirwan, whom he had named as his personal secretary—in a large ledger that the mullah had purchased for him for this purpose. He considered these funds to be contributions to a religious endowment for the shrine. Naturally there was no safe where the mullah could place this income. He simply had burlap sacks that he carried to his house, where he placed these in large jars he buried beneath a non-fruiting date palm. He asserted that the funds constituted a trust for which he was the guardian, and that a man had as great a duty to protect trust funds as his own money.

As a matter of fact, the gifts presented to the shrine and received by Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri were so varied that it would be difficult to list them: gold liras, gem-studded necklaces, silver bracelets, rare watches from China, and objets d'art from Syria. Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri placed all of these in additional jugs, which he buried beneath the sole palm tree in his home's courtyard, keeping them secret even from his wife, whom he deliberately encouraged to visit her sister's house or the neighbors, so he would be alone, after bolting the door. There were, however, also other gifts he could not bury. Villagers brought many eggs, chickens, goats, and sheep. Merchants presented sacks of sugar, rice, and wheat and boxes of tea. Of course not all the gifts found their way to Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri because the policemen, joined by Abbas Bahlawan and Mahmud al-Arabi, greeted people bearing gifts at a distance and urged them to place these in the police guardhouse, on the grounds that this was Qara Qul's very own guardhouse. Many people refused, however, insisting on delivering the goods directly to the shine's window and then having them officially recorded by the receipts clerk. At this stage as well, a portion of the gifts was divvied up by the clerk and the other employees, including the director general's secretary Aziz Shirwan, who handed over most of the eggs, chickens, lambs, sugar, tea, rice, and wheat to the city's Communist leadership. These boons caused the head of the organization to affirm, “Had it not been for this saint Qara Qul, the Party would have starved to death.” He therefore suggested they recommend to the central committee the award of the Red Star Medal to the dead man once the Party came to power.