Baghdad Central (14 page)
The other cadets glanced at the page and then at Muhsin.
“I'm sorry, sir. But I think there's a mistake in the book then.”
“And why do you think that?”
“That doesn't fit the meter, sir.”
The class watched the teacher's fingers move on a strange abacus as he slowly read the line over out loud.
“No, it scans perfectly. Thank you, Cadet. Let's move on.”
“Actually, it doesn't scan, sir. It's the light meter, correct? Listen.” As Muhsin read the words back to the class, the mistake in the textbook showed itself.
“Total ruin doesn't only make more sense in the context of the meaning, it actually fits the meter in this case. Sir. And this is a central part of the tension of the poem â using the light meter to talk about such a heavy event.”
Red-faced, the teacher sat down in his chair and closed the book. “You need to learn basic respect, Cadet Muhsin, even when you believe you are in the right. Please report to the Director's office.”
Khafaji wakes up with a headache. The bathroom light hurts his eyes, so he turns it off and shaves in the dark.
He leaves first thing, before making tea, before he hears any of the neighbors stirring. He greets the beards at the front door. The men last night were exceedingly polite when he came in. And these ones are even more so. They rise to their feet and salute as he walks by. He arrives at the end of the street, relieved.
Khafaji wanders far and wide before he looks for a taxi. He arrives at the front gate. The small crowd tells him he needs to arrive even earlier. Hungry, he eats a fat falafel sandwich with extra amba sauce at Haydar Double's.
This time, Khafaji has a book to read for the wait. When he takes his place in line and looks at the cover, he realizes he took the wrong book from the piles on the floor. This one isn't Jawahari's
Diwan
. It's not even poetry. It's a history of the Qaramatian revolt against the caliphate. Annoyed, Khafaji begins to read half-heartedly about the Africans and Persians who, according to the author, created a utopian state that lasted more than a hundred years. Even without a headache, reading prose sometimes seems like work, even
if the story's good. This is no exception. The words jiggle and squirm on the page, and Khafaji's eyes can't follow. He closes the book and rubs his temples. He can't remember why he owned the book in the first place. He looks at the title page and it comes back. Spring 1985. Two years before Uday was conscripted. A dinner party. People talking about how nothing ever changed and nothing ever would change. A familiar, coded kind of conversation about how nothing on the inside could ever unseat the regime, and how no one on the outside would be foolish enough to try it. Discussions like this usually took place only in families. Or between close friends. But this was different. There was a history professor from Damascus that night. He started it all by asking whether the regime really was as coup-proof as people really claimed. Between his provocations and the alcohol, otherwise stiff tongues became loose.
Someone asked the professor about his work and he began to lecture about the Qaramatians. He kept insisting they were the first Muslims with a genuine anti-imperialist ideology. Someone recounted the infamous stories. Tales of desecrations, massacres of pilgrim caravans and fire worship. But the professor protested, “No, no, no! That's nothing but Abbasid propaganda!” He didn't hesitate to explain. “Look, Islam is the only religion that was founded as a state. What do states do?” He looked around at the others holding glasses of wine and Scotch.
“They expand and conquer, they take and they absorb. They eliminate those who dare to resist.”
“Are you saying Islam was imperialist?”
“Not like the British or the Americans. It could have been, and it would have been, had it not been challenged and subverted from within. That's why the movements like the
Zanj and Qaramatians are so important. These were the first Muslims to challenge the imperial character of the Islamic state. The Qaramatians shared their property communally, and made their decisions collectively. Between trying to suppress the slave revolt in the south and trying to eliminate the Qaramatians in the Gulf, the whole northern flank of the Abbasids lay wide open and vulnerable. We remember the Mongols, but we forget they would not have been able to conquer Baghdad had the Abbasids not been so busy with their counter-insurgency campaigns down south.”
“Well then â it doesn't sound like we have much to thank them for, does it?” It was Suheir who challenged the man on this point. “I mean, why should we celebrate them if they're the ones responsible for destroying our city at the height of its glory?”
Pushing his glasses back on his nose, the professor continued. “We're so used to celebrating the Abbasids that we forget the political realities that made their accomplishments possible. We forget the secret police and the coups and the repression of dissent. The Qaramatians were a downtrodden people who built a commune that lasted more than a hundred years â that's why we should study them and remember them. The Abbasids fell trying to put down a popular, democratic movement â and we're supposed to feel bad for them? If you want to celebrate all-powerful caliphs and their slave armies, feel free. I'd rather celebrate those who struggle to make a better world.”
Someone proposed a toast to his rebels that night, and everyone raised their glasses and smiled. Afterwards, everyone was embarrassed. At least Khafaji was. The next week, however, Suheir had found a copy of the man's book and read it. Then she wrote “Celebrate our anti-imperialist past!”
on the title page and gave it to Khafaji. And today it made its way into Khafaji's hands, perfect reading for anyone standing at the gates of empire.
The line moves fast eventually. Khafaji has to look up from the page every few minutes to take a step forward. At some point, the same photographer from yesterday returns, strutting across the street and photographing the circus playing out across the square â the traffic jam, the vendors and their carts, the children playing on the mounds of debris, and the line of petitioners at the gate. After a few moments, someone appears on the ramparts and tells the photographer to leave. He disappears the same way he entered.
At the outer gate, Khafaji removes his jacket and goes through. At the second gate, he finds an identification card waiting for him.
“Wear it around your neck at all times,” the man says.
In the morning light, the Green Zone looks more parched and neglected than the day before. Khafaji passes rocky outcroppings, and then a large abandoned cage. He pauses and lights a cigarette.
“Palace zoo. You missed the cheetahs, brother.” Khafaji hears Arabic and turns to smile at the man behind him. If his overalls and plastic flip-flops don't give him away as a gardener, the shears in his hand do. Khafaji lights a cigarette for the man.
“I was here the day they got out, believe it or not. They were hungry. They howled like someone was stabbing their bellies. They hadn't been fed for weeks. Someone opened the gate and they bolted across the lawns and ran into the palace. No one saw them again for weeks. In May, the Americans caught two of them at the pool. Kept the skins as trophies.”
Khafaji smiles and thanks him. He is almost at Ibn Sina when he hears someone calling out, “Inspector Khafaji!”
He turns to see Citrone wearing shorts and running shoes.
“Peace be upon you, Inspector Khafaji! I'm glad I ran into you. I'll be in the office shortly â there's something I need to fill you in on. It's urgent.”
Khafaji looks at the entrance to the hospital, then again at Citrone.
“Can I meet you after I visit â”
“No, this can't wait. I'll be right there.”
When Khafaji gets to the office, Citrone isn't there. Neither is the assistant. A uniformed soldier sits at an empty desk by the door. He stands when Khafaji enters, and shakes his hand so hard it smarts.
“Yes. Inspector Khafaji.”
The man speaks so fast Khafaji doesn't catch his name. “Citrone wants you to start with these.”
“I was told he wanted to see me.”
“He'll be here any minute.” The man points to a stack of files on a desk, then hands Khafaji a key and points over to a set of long filing cabinets. “When you finish the ones on your desk, start over there on the left. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Khafaji spends an hour looking through personnel files of middle-ranking officers from various branches of the police and state security. The subject matter doesn't help the throbbing in his head. Most names he doesn't know at all. Some he knows by reputation. Others are people he's worked with. Khafaji finds himself dozing off and waking up again more than once. The pictures and biographical information begin to seep off the pages and spread like stains
across the desk. Where are they now? The photographs are mostly years old. Most with moustaches, some with glasses, a couple with a cockeye â but always the same portrait stares at the camera. The blank look in their eyes â was it fear or defiance? But now, these are the photos of officers gone missing. Hundreds and hundreds of officers. Departed. Decamped. Detained. Disappeared.
Khafaji rubs his eyes and refocuses on the next file: Yezid al-Aamiri, lieutenant, Special Security Organization. Commendations for physical fitness. Three courses in the Party Preparatory School. Two essays, one on Iraq as the natural leader of the Arab nation, the other on Zionism. The first photo is from the 1970s. It shows a small wiry man, with thick black hair, thin moustache and obsidian eyes. He leans forward into the camera, his neck and chin stretching out toward the lens. The last photo is from 1995. It shows the same wiry man, older and no longer leaning into the camera. The last update is from January, and shows him as serving in Karmah, Anbar province. If that was true then, it isn't true now. There's nothing about Aamiri's face to say where he went. Each one of them has gone somewhere. Some to places no one can follow them to.
But for my luck
, Khafaji thinks,
someone else could be in this office today, looking at my picture and my dossier and wondering the same thing
.
Khafaji finishes the pile and takes them over to the cabinets and attempts to put them back where they belong. But it is not so simple. He begins to scan through the tabs, hoping to get a sense of how the dossiers are organized. There are IPS files mixed in with General Security Directorate and some Special Security, and a couple of Military Intelligence. It makes no sense. Not just because it's hodge-podge, but
because whoever arranged these files worked hard to put them in this particular order. Khafaji makes a note, looks at his watch, and puts his head down on his desk for a moment.
Khafaji wakes up as soon as Citrone and the assistant walk in.
“Good morning, Inspector! How is the work coming along?”
Khafaji rubs his eyes, and smiles. After a minute, he answers, “Exciting reading.”
“I knew it would be. Need some coffee?”
“No thanks. I'm awake.”
“Find anything?”
“I won't be able to find anything until I know a little more about where these files are from.”
The assistant goes over to his desk and opens his computer. Citrone pulls up a chair next to Khafaji.
“What do you mean?”
“I need to understand why they've been put in the order they're in.”
“We were told that the files are ready for review. Aren't they?”
“But a file doesn't mean much on its own. You need to understand the archive as a general principle before you can read its constituent parts.”
Citrone laughs. “So, here we are, having that philosophical discussion after all. I will take your question up with the people who gave us the records. But in the meantime, I need you to focus on reading them for what they are.”
Khafaji understands that Citrone wants him to agree. Needs him to agree. So he nods. The assistant comes over and sits down, then runs his hand down his red tie.
“Yesterday, you asked me why you need a police force if you have an army,” Citrone says.
“No, I asked why
you
needed the police⦔
“Do you believe that Iraqis are fully capable of governing themselves democratically?”
“Of course,” Khafaji shrugs.
“Did you know that in my country there are people who were opposed to the idea of us liberating you from tyranny? Some of them said, and continue to say, that Iraqi culture is incompatible with democracy.”
“That's their problem.”
“There are people in my country who want this experiment to fail, Inspector. And there are also people in your country who want this experiment to fail. Some of the people in my country say that western democracy has no place in an Islamic society, and some of the people in your country say the same thing.”
“Ironic.”
“We need to prove the doubters wrong. We need to show them that we were right. We need to prove that Iraqis can have democracy too â we need that to secure our win.”
