The Last of the Angels (3 page)

Al-Hajj Ahmad al-Sabunji personally memorized these verses, passed down from al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, and started repeating them along with the others. He learned from the partygoers that this poet, who was crucified on a palm trunk in Baghdad, was actually not a human being. He was, rather, one of the God-fearing jinn. They cherish him very highly, and his standing with them is just below that of King Solomon the Wise, who possesses limitless sovereignty over all factions of the jinn.

During the exuberant enjoyment shared by everyone, al-Hajj Ahmad al-Sabunji decided to make a mark that would provide irrefutable proof later on. Thus he approached Harun, who was wearing his navy-blue jilbab, and burned the sleeve of the garment from the rear with a cigarette butt that left a small hole, without Harun noticing. Finally he found an opportunity to slip back to the street again, more than a little concerned for his safety. On the way home through a darkness attenuated at intervals by feeble street lamps, he met thieves carrying their bags on their back, sentries who blew their whistles from time to time, solitary drunks singing Turkmen folk songs as loudly as possible while drunks in other streets responded with their songs in response to the songs they had just heard as they awaited an answering song. But al-Hajj Ahmad al-Sabunji, plunged into another world, was oblivious to everything—the stealthy thieves, the night watchmen, and even the Turkmen folk songs, which he normally enjoyed. Shaking with stress and fright, he might almost have been a prophet upon whom divine inspiration had been bestowed.

As soon as he reached home, he slipped into bed to ponder the events of his amazing night. He tried to sleep but could not and stayed awake until dawn, when he heard Harun jump onto the wall once more, slink into the house, and then—through the keyhole in the door—tell Dalli Ihsan, who had apparently stayed outside, “It was a great night, wasn't it?” He heard Dalli Ihsan whisper, “Naturally, of course,” and then add, “Good-bye.” Harun replied affectionately, “May the Prophet Solomon be with you.” Al-Hajj Ahmad did not close an eyelid all night long and did not leave bed save to perform the dawn prayer, when he saw Harun stretching by the threshold, as if nothing had happened. Al-Hajj Ahmad deliberately donned his navy blue jilbab, in which he found the hole he had created with his cigarette butt. Then he turned to Harun and—to his wife's astonishment—asked the cat, “Do you see, Harun? You've burned my jilbab. You ought to have asked my permission before you wore it.” Harun understood that al-Hajj Ahmad had found him out. Lowering his head, he left the house, never to be seen there again.

From that day forward, ever since al-Hajj Ahmad al-Sabunji had told his story in the coffeehouse, Dalli Ihsan wore a halo of sanctity. It is true that most people, especially the unsophisticated and the children, feared him, but the neighborhood's sages considered him a gift from God and a blessing for them from Him. As a Muslim jinni in human form, he could only bring them good fortune. This madman, unlike all the other ones in the city, was quite fastidious, always wore clean clothes, and acted with admirable composure, except for his public conversations with the jinn. He naturally did not have a staff he rode like a hobbyhorse the way other madmen did. Moreover, not a single child dared follow him or chase after him, even though the neighborhood was crawling with children. Not one man could think, even think, of teasing or taunting him, since a matter like that could have cost him his life.

There was thus no doubt in anyone's mind concerning Dalli Ihsan's true nature. Indeed, they were even able to trace his jinni lineage. There was first of all the account of al-Hajj Ahmad al-Sabunji, whose piety, righteousness, and honorable actions no one could question. But this was merely one of the proofs, since Dalli Ihsan's mother had been forced, when an elderly woman of more than a hundred years, to admit under pressure from her neighbors that a king of the jinn named Qamar al-Zaman had been her lover, visiting her secretly at night, and that she had married him according to the precedent established by God and his prophet Muhammad. Ihsan was his son, although she had attempted to conceal his identity from everyone. Her spouse, who had later been taken prisoner in one of the wars he waged against Jewish jinn, had died of grief and sorrow at being separated from his wife and son.

Clearly the madman, who would not have spoken to anyone, was responsible for the miraculous rain that suddenly inundated Kirkuk, for who else would be able to order the sky to fill with clouds and have it obey, or to order the clouds to rain and have them do so? As always, however, there were people ready to wrangle and to express extreme opinions recklessly. They claimed that the rains had fallen in torrents for Hameed Nylon's sake, since had he not been sacked by the company and had there not been a demonstration on his behalf in which the Chuqor neighborhood had participated fully, the miracle would never have occurred. This theory seemed rather logical but did not clarify the miracle. Others responded to this theory, saying, “If we were to adopt this logic, then it would be necessary for us to proceed even a step beyond Hameed Nylon.” By this they referred to the flirtatious Englishwoman, since without her affairs with men and her fickleness, Hameed Nylon would not have been sacked. They concluded, “Such an opinion would inevitably lead us to a denial of the faith.”

Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri was disturbed by all these views, which he considered heretical and noxious. He announced that neither the jinn nor Hameed Nylon was responsible for the miracle. God had quite simply accepted the plea of the Muslims and had caused the rain to fall abundantly on them. Truth to tell, this view appeared totally logical and was welcomed by the hearts of the inhabitants of the Chuqor neighborhood, especially since Hameed Nylon himself had joked about the idea that he had caused the miracle, saying, “If I were able to cause miracles, I would have made the English whore sleep with me.” And he meant what he said.

The rain fell for three consecutive days without cease until low-lying houses were filled with water, the roofs of many homes collapsed, and the Khasa Su River flooded its banks, submerging the neighborhoods closest to it. People reached the point of praying again, but this time for the rain to stop. On the third day of what he termed Noah's flood, Hameed Nylon lifted his head to inspect the sky and told his wife, who had seized the opportunity to spend most of the time in bed with him, “It seems the sky is peeing a lot, after having to hold it in for months.” His wife Fatima replied, nervously, “Don't blaspheme, Hameed; it's a miracle.” Then Hameed, laughing, answered, “True, it's a miracle, but the sky should not get carried away.” During this nonstop torrential rain, Hameed Nylon remained trapped in the two upper rooms they rented in the home of his sister Nazira and her husband—the itinerant butcher Khidir Musa—who lived in a large room downstairs at the end of the courtyard with their three daughters, the eldest of whom was five and the youngest less than a year old.

During these rainy days, Hameed Nylon only descended to the large room once. Then he sat on the carpet near a charcoal brazier with ash covering its embers, a plate of Ashrasi dates and walnuts before him. He affectionately told his sister to pour him a tumbler of tea, and then his niece Layla came to sit on his knee. Khidir Musa expressed his concern: “How will I be able to sell my lambs if this rain lasts much longer?”

Hameed Nylon teased him, “Think of the rain as a holiday, man. Your money will last a thousand years.”

Khidir Musa laughed, “That's the rumor my sister Qadriya spreads about me, God curse her; she says I place dinar bills under my mattress and sleep on them, ironing them that way.”

Hameed Nylon answered, “What's wrong with that? They're your dinars. Do whatever you want with them.” Then he fell silent, gazing by the lamp's faint light at the cabinets. Their gold and silver doors were painted with red and blue peacocks, which had symmetrical tail feathers, and with larks sitting on boughs. There were flowers around the edges.

Khidir Musa said, “There's not much work left in Kirkuk. There are as many butchers here as grains of sand. I'm going to move to al-Hawija, where there's not even one butcher.”

Hameed Nylon knew that Khidir Musa craved money and that his avarice was so extreme he only rarely patronized the coffeehouse. Indeed, Hameed Nylon thought Qadriya's assertion justified. He did not realize that the person who really ironed dinar bills was his own sister Nazira, who earned at times more than Khidir Musa—trading in fabrics and women's wear. She would travel and buy her goods from other cities that no one else visited. It was even reported that she had been to Aleppo, a city that women said was in Syria or Lebanon. She would bring back colored fabrics, beautiful blouses, and the famous Raggi Abu al-Hil brand soap, which she sold to the women in the neighborhood (and nearby ones) on credit, but for high prices. Moreover, her mother, Hidaya, a crone who lived in the adjacent Jewish quarter, ran a depilatory service for women's faces (using ceruse), practiced magic, and read fortunes. In fact, it was said that she could turn stones to gold by reciting arcane incantations she had learned from her Jewish neighbors. The two women—Hidaya and her daughter—took care to adorn their sturdy ankles with anklets, their wrists with bracelets, and their necks with coins fashioned into gold chains.

Hameed Nylon had barely finished drinking his first tumbler of tea when his wife Fatima came for him, pretending to be annoyed at being left home alone. As a matter of fact, she was concerned instead that Nazira might be plotting to turn her husband, Hameed, against her. She knew also that Khidir Musa, who was incapable of opposing his wife, would join the plot against his sister-in-law. Hameed Nylon, who was tired of sitting in a darkness dissipated only by the flame of an oil lamp with a dirty globe, rose, saying, “The best thing a man can do during rain and gloom like this is to sleep.” His wife followed him. On the steps to their pair of rooms he heard one of Khidir Musa's lambs bleat. He answered sarcastically, “And upon you peace.” His wife, climbing behind him, cautioned him about the broken steps. He responded in the dark, “I know each of them by heart.” Fatima was happy they were returning once more to their suite, where he was safe from his sister's snares. Perhaps he would feel like sleeping with her, too.

Hameed Nylon stretched out on his back in bed, but did not hear her until she asked if he wanted some tea, since he had been dreaming, and his dream had outstripped the Chuqor neighborhood and the city of Kirkuk to reach a vast, open space, a strange, limitless area he had never seen before in his whole life.

T
he Chuqor neighborhood actually had only two concerns: poverty and afreets. Poverty had driven many, especially migrant Arabs, to adopt theft as a profession, so that they broke into shops and houses by night. And the afreets, with which the neighborhood teemed since it was near the cemetery, similarly had led many residents, primarily the Turkmen, to become dervishes and sorcerers, devoting much of their time, which was always freely given, to encounters with the ghosts that had chosen the Chuqor neighborhood for their home. People thought it odd when Burhan Abdallah, who was a boy of seven at the time, told them one day that afreets follow poverty and thieves follow afreets. When they asked him what this meant, he did not reply, for he himself did not understand the sentence. When his father, Abdallah Ali, who worked for the Iraq Petroleum Company, wanted to learn the source of that statement and whether the mullah with whom the boy studied Qur'anic recitation had taught it to him, the boy insisted stubbornly, “No, I dreamt it in my sleep.” Then he recounted the story of his dream.

He had been sitting on a hill that overlooked the Chuqor community, fearfully watching the afreets and the thieves who thronged the region. He was screaming, but three old men, who had long beards dyed with henna and who were wearing white robes, came to him and, placing their hands on his head, said, “Don't be afraid, my son, for afreets follow poverty, and thieves follow afreets.” Then they planted a green banner where the boy sat and departed.

The boy's father nodded thoughtfully and told his wife Qadriya, “I believe our son will be a prophet.” His wife, however, objected to this idea, explaining instead that the flag represented leadership and that he would become a police officer. The boy's father asked him to keep this dream quiet and to refrain from telling it to anyone.

Qadriya Musa, in point of fact, when disclosing her hopes that her son would become a deputy lieutenant, was merely disclosing her envy for the good fortune enjoyed by the household of the gravedigger's daughter Husniya, who had worked herself to the bone until her son became a deputy lieutenant. Then jugs of oil, sacks of rice and wheat, coops of chickens, and baskets of eggs began to arrive at her home every day as bribes offered to her son. These were always delivered by uniformed policemen. In fact, over and beyond that, Deputy Lieutenant Najib, who was no more than twenty, would always arrive in a Jeep that brought him to the door of his home, while every policeman he encountered, even those he did not know, saluted him smartly. All this had generated widespread envy, and the hearts of neighborhood girls pounded whenever he passed. They would deliberately peek out at the street or raise the curtain normally blocking the doorway of their home, hopeful that his eye would light on one of them and that he would send his mother to ask for her hand in marriage.

No matter how it might be, the statement that the boy Burhan Abdallah had not understood at the time was destined to influence his later life. It was true that the three men with long beards and white robes had said that in his dream, but he had heard it previously in a fog-shrouded, magical valley where he had found himself on opening a secret box bequeathed by his ancestors, for he had stumbled upon a wooden chest in a forgotten corner of his home. The boy was really an artful fellow and even thought of himself as an original thinker. He was fascinated by his father's prediction that he would be a prophet, since he considered himself worthy of such a mission because he had memorized the whole Qur'an in only a few months. During that time, from observing the letters and discovering their relationship to the spoken words, he had learned to read and write, although he had not confided this secret to anyone, especially since neither of his parents was well placed to discover this fact because neither of them had ever learned to read or write. Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, for his part, spent most of his time placing the feet of student troublemakers in a foot press so he could beat their soles with his stick.

Burhan Abdallah came upon that amazing chest by accident. There was a large chamber in the house with two marble benches, as was typical, and a dirt entryway served as a kitchen. This earth-floored foyer stretched back to a dark, decaying room that had no natural light. Alongside the large chamber was a kind of abandoned storeroom, which hardly anyone entered, since it was overrun by scorpions. Above this abandoned pantry was an upper room, which was stuccoed with gypsum and which had two small, square windows opening on the street. Reached by broken stone steps, the upper room was also abandoned, even though light entered it during the day. Spread across one side were bits and pieces of strange and discarded items left there for years or perhaps even a century. No one in the household had ever thought of investigating these forgotten artifacts. The room was simply there, offering neither threat nor benefit. Perhaps no one felt like cleaning away the dust of the past, but another, more important consideration was the fact that this part of the house was swarming with jinn and therefore forgotten, as if it did not exist.

The boy—who had never seen a jinni—stealthily slipped away once, however, and climbed to the upper room, thinking that he might find the house's good jinni, about whom his mother had told him tales, for every home has a good jinni guarding it. Although this escapade was not devoid of danger, a powerful drive encouraged the boy to persevere. He had decided that he should not be afraid when the jinni put in an appearance. Indeed, he was determined to talk with it, just as he would talk to any other individual, even if the jinni did not treat him to a trip. He would not mind such an excursion into the jinn's strange worlds, featured in stories his father told him. All the same, Burhan Abdallah was actually carrying a list of requests that he hoped to present to the house's good jinni, for the jinn can accomplish anything. He thought he would ask the jinni to change all the doors of the Chuqor neighborhood to gold, to turn the old woman Hidaya into a cow, and to provide him with a cap of invisibility, which he needed so he could smite some of the older boys.

The boy continued to sit in a corner of the upper room, day after day, waiting for the jinni, which never showed itself to him, until he started to doubt its existence. Finally he grew convinced that the jinn show themselves when no one is expecting them. For that reason, he deliberately stopped waiting to see them and began to dig around in the discarded residue of past centuries. To his astonishment, he stumbled across a small, coffee-colored chest, a closed box on which there were carved cryptic designs and inscriptions that resembled charms and talismans. It was coated with dust and wrapped in spider webs. So he wiped it off with the end of his dishdasha's sleeve and sat leaning back against the wall, gazing at it breathlessly. Since the inscriptions on the cover, in gold, were lovely, delicate, and quite similar to the Qur'anic inscriptions with which he was familiar, he supposed at first glance that he had stumbled on a copy of the Qur'an inside a box. For that reason, he kissed the chest and held it to his forehead. No sooner had he opened the box, though, than the earth shook mightily and a brilliant light flashed through the upper room, leaving him curled up in a ball. Then everything vanished and he found himself cast into the void. He shut his eyes, perhaps on account of the surprise. There he heard the four winds blowing from their directions, blending together into a sweet music. Then everything quieted down. All that remained was the music, which could still be heard in the distance. When the boy opened his eyes once more, he found himself seated in a grassy valley. In the distance, by a boulder, a blind man stood playing a flute. Farther down the valley he observed three old men wearing white, as if they were angels that had just descended from the heavens. They came toward him, smiling and leaning on the staffs in their hands. On their shoulders were sacks that shook with each step.

At this point exactly, while he was in the valley, he heard his mother call him, but tarried to await the arrival of the three angels. Finally one of them accosted him: “Hello, Burhan. You've finally made it.”

Staring at the valley, Burhan replied in confusion, “Made it? Where?”

The man, who kept smiling, answered, “Go now; your mother is calling you.”

Burhan Abdallah asked, “How can I go, when I'm here in the valley with you?”

“Close the chest the way you opened it. We will always be with you from now on.”

It happened that the moment the boy closed the box, he found himself seated in the upper room, leaning against the wall. So he sped down the steps, his heart pulsing with light and thunder.

His father was drinking tea, and his mother suggested to him, “Today is Wednesday, your father's weekly payday. He doesn't begin work till after noon, but we need the cash. Would you like to go with him to bring the money home?” The boy Burhan Abdallah was happy to be entrusted with tasks like this and to be treated like a reliable adult. In the past his father had taken him along when going to work and had placed the envelope of money in Burhan's pocket, advising him to take care that it not get lost or stolen. In fact, his father, who boasted of his son's cleverness and of his ability to recite the Qur'an and to chant it, had taken him to Baba Gurgur more than once. Burhan had been overwhelmed by the sight of the huge, white pipes, the giant storage tanks, the circular dials with needles resembling the hands of a clock, the flames that shot into the red sky, and the sand. He could not get that unforgettable stink—a mixture of oil and soil odors—out of his nostrils.

Burhan Abdallah went with his father this time as well to the remote location where money was distributed in sealed envelopes, each with the recipient's name on it. He walked beside his father, who always carried an aluminum lunch pail with two trays. In the top one was the rice and in the lower one the stew. A spoon was inserted into a handle on the side of the pail after it was closed. His father sent him on his way with a smile, and Burhan Abdallah headed home. He was supposed to walk all the way, but covered some of the distance clinging to the rear gate of a cart pulled by two horses. He did not let go of the cart until the driver noticed him and flicked his whip carelessly toward the back, striking him painfully on the shoulder. He walked across the stone bridge that stretched over the Khasa Su River and saw, opposite the citadel, on the dry side of the river, many men, women, and children squatting on the pebbles with their possessions beside them. A number of policemen had them surrounded. They were clearly all Kurds. Many other people had gathered to stare at them from a distance and to laugh. From time to time the prisoners raised their voices to shout in Kurdish the equivalent of, “The Truth! The Truth!” The crowd then would respond to a beat that fit the words—in Kurdish too—“Put your hand on the hammer.”

The boy was led to believe, from what he overheard from the people standing around him, that these were the followers of a Kurdish prophet who had recently appeared with a revelation that a man could marry his sister and mother and plunder the goods of the upper classes. Apparently this prophet thought everything to be the ultimate truth: life, death, woman, sex, and even the stars in the sky and the rocks on the ground.

The boy Burhan Abdallah—instead of joining in the laughing throng's cry of “Put your hand on the hammer”—felt compassion and affection for these strangers, who perhaps were actually right, for who could prove they were not? At the same time, however, the boy was bitter because he himself wanted to be a prophet, and here was someone who had beaten him to it. He told himself, “Never mind, I've still got a lot of time till I grow up.” He felt hungry and descended toward the right on the bank of the Khasa Su River, heading toward the great souk, for he saw food vendors placing their kettles on the quay. He put his hand in his pocket to extract ten fils his father had given him and ordered a plate of cabbage from a Turkmen vendor, who said he had spent ten years as a prisoner of war in Russia, where he had worked as a baker. He squatted down to eat beside three porters, who were sitting on the cushions they placed on their backs when they worked. He could have made his way to the great souk, which led to al-Qaysariya and then on to the Chuqor community but instead headed to the nearby livestock market, which was located opposite the river at the entrance to the Chay community. He liked looking at the donkeys, horses, sheep, goats, and cattle bought and sold there. He saw a small donkey standing at the corner of the square, in the midst of all the commotion and the yelling that came from all sides. He approached it and put his hand on its head, combing its mane. Then he told it affectionately, “Here I am, donkey. How are you?” The boy Burhan Abdallah was flabbergasted to see the donkey lift its head and reply in an equally affectionate whisper, “I became a donkey because I didn't go to school. Do you want to become a donkey too?”

The boy dashed off as fast as his feet could carry him and did not stop running until he entered his home, breathless. He told the story to his mother, who laughed to calm him. She told him, “You say you're a man, and then you're frightened by something like this!” Then she added, “It definitely wasn't a donkey. It must have been a playful jinni wanting to tease you.” She told him that some jinnis enjoy teasing, jesting, and playing practical jokes. Then she told him a story he had already heard her repeat more than once.

Her father, who was a herdsman, had gone out early one day—at dawn—with his flocks to the pasture. He noticed a strange ram in the herd, so he approached it and began groping under its belly toward the rear, the way shepherds do, when the ram suddenly turned its head back toward him to ask, “Ha! Do you like your uncle's balls?” Her father was frightened, but remained steadfast and recited the Throne Verse from the Qur'an. The playful jinni, who had certainly only meant to have a laugh and joke around—perhaps because it was bored or lonely—vanished.