The Sirens of Baghdad (6 page)

“I beg you, please don’t shout. My son is mentally ill, and you’re scaring him.”

The black GI didn’t understand very much of what the blacksmith was trying to tell him; the fact that someone would address him in a language he didn’t know seemed to infuriate him, and so now he was doubly angry. His lacerating screams made my joints twitch and prickle.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up or I’ll blow your brains out! Hands behind your head!”
Around us, the impenetrable, silent soldiers kept a close eye on our slightest movements. Some of them were hidden behind sunglasses, which made them look quite formidable, while others exchanged coded looks. I was astonished as I looked down the barrels of the weapons pointed at me from all sides, like so many tunnels to hell. They seemed vast and volcanic, ready to bury us in a sea of lava and blood. I was petrified, nailed to the ground like a post, incapable of speech. The blacksmith got out of the car, his hands on his head. He was trembling like a leaf. He tried to speak to the Iraqi soldier, but a kick to the back of his knee forced him to kneel down. When the black GI leaned in for the other passenger, he noticed the blood on Sulayman’s hand and shirt.
“Goddamn! He’s dripping blood,”
the soldier shouted, jumping away from the car.
“This asshole’s wounded.”
Sulayman was terrified. He looked for his father. The soldier kept yelling,
“Hands on your head, hands on your head!”
The blacksmith cried out to the Iraqi soldier, “He’s mentally ill.” Sulayman slid across the seat and got out of the car in confusion. His milky eyes rolled in his bloodless face. The GI screamed out his orders as belligerently as before, reducing me another notch with every shout. You could hear nothing but him; he alone drowned out the din of all the earth. Suddenly, Sulayman gave
his
cry—penetrating, immense, recognizable among a thousand apocalyptic sounds. It was a sound so weird that it froze the American soldier. But the blacksmith had no time to hurl himself on his son or hold him back or stop his flight. Sulayman took off like an arrow, running in a straight line, so fast that the GIs were flabbergasted.
“Let him go,”
a sergeant said.
“He might be carrying a load of explosives.”
All weapons were now aiming at the fugitive. “Don’t shoot,” the blacksmith pleaded, partly in English. “He’s mentally ill.
Don’t shoot. He’s crazy.
” Sulayman ran and ran, his spine straight, his arms dangling, his body absurdly tilted to the left. Just from his way of running, it was evident that he wasn’t normal. But in time of war, the benefit of the doubt favors blunderers over those who keep their composure; the catchall term is “legitimate defense.” The first gunshots shook me from my head to my feet, like a surge of electric current. And then came the deluge. Utterly dazed, I saw puffs of dust, lots of them, bursting from Sulayman’s back, marking the impact points. Every bullet that struck the fugitive pierced me through and through. An intense tingling sensation consumed my legs, rose, and convulsed my stomach. Sulayman ran and ran, barely jolted by the projectiles riddling his back. Beside me, the blacksmith was shrieking like a maniac, his face bathed in tears.
“Mike!”
the sergeant barked.
“He’s wearing a bulletproof vest, the little prick. Aim for his head.”
In the sentry box, Mike peered through his telescopic sight, adjusted his firing angle, held his breath, and delicately squeezed his trigger. Bull’s-eye, first shot. Sulayman’s head exploded like a melon; his unbridled run stopped all at once. The blacksmith clutched his temples with both hands, wild-eyed, his mouth open in a suspended cry, as he watched his son’s body fold up in the distance and collapse vertically, like a falling curtain: the thighs on the calves, then the chest on the thighs, and finally the shattered head on the knees. An unearthly silence settled over the plain. My stomach rose, backed up; burning liquid flooded my gullet and spewed out through my mouth into the open air. The daylight grew hazy…And then, oblivion.

I regained consciousness slowly. My ears whistled. I was lying on the ground, facedown in a pool of vomit. My body had lost its power to react. I was in a heap next to the Ford’s front wheel, and my hands were tied behind my back. I had just enough time to see the blacksmith shaking his son’s medical record under the nose of the Iraqi soldier, who seemed embarrassed, while the other soldiers looked on in silence, holding their weapons at ease. Then I lost consciousness again.

By the time I recovered some of my faculties, the sun had reached its zenith. The rocks were humming in the broiling heat. They’d taken the plastic cuffs off my wrists and placed me in the shade of the sentry box. Still in the spot where I’d parked it, the Ford looked like a ruffled fowl; all four of its doors were open, its trunk lid hoisted high. On the ground beside it, there was a little heap consisting of the spare tire and various tools. The search had yielded nothing—no firearms, no big knives, not even a medical kit.

An ambulance with a red crescent on its side was waiting near the sentry box. The vehicle’s rear doors were open, revealing a stretcher that bore what was left of Sulayman. Two pathetic feet protruded from the sheet that covered him; the right foot was missing its shoe and displayed five toes, discolored by blood and dust.

A noncommissioned officer in the Iraqi police and the blacksmith were standing a little distance away and having a conversation, while an American officer, recently arrived in his Jeep, listened to the sergeant’s report. Apparently, they all realized that a mistake had been made, but they weren’t going to make a big deal of it. Incidents of this kind were commonplace in Iraq. Amid the general confusion, everyone sought his own advantage. To err is human, and fate has broad shoulders.

The black GI handed me his canteen. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to drink or wash my face, but in any case, I rejected his offer with a feverish hand. He put on a sorrowful expression—a vain effort, as far as I was concerned, because his new, compassionate persona seemed incompatible with his temperament. A brute is still a brute, even when he smiles; the eyes are where the soul declares its true nature.

Two male nurses, Arabs, came to comfort me; they crouched down, one on each side, and patted my shoulders. Their light taps resounded in my body like blows from a club. I wanted to be left alone; every sympathetic gesture carried me back to the source of my grief. From time to time, a sob shook me, but I did everything I could to contain it. I felt stricken by an incredible weariness; I could hear only my breath, emptying me, and in my temples the pulsing of my blood, its rhythm matching the lingering echoes of the detonations.

The blacksmith tried to claim his son’s remains, but the chief of police explained to him that there was an administrative procedure that must be followed. Such an unfortunate accident as this entailed a lot of formalities. Sulayman’s body had to be taken to the morgue and could not be released to his family until an investigation into the tragic error had been completed.

A police car took us back to the village. I didn’t completely grasp what was happening. I was inside a sort of evanescent bubble, sometimes suspended in a void, sometimes fraying apart like a cloud of smoke. I remembered clearly the mother’s unbearable cry when the blacksmith returned home. Immediately, a crowd gathered, dazed and incredulous. The old struck their hands together, devastated; the young were outraged. I reached my house in a lamentable state. The moment I stepped over the threshold and into the patio, my father, who was dozing at the foot of his indefinable tree, started in his sleep. He’d understood at once that something bad had happened. My mother didn’t have the courage to ask me what the matter was; she settled for putting her hands on her cheeks. My sisters came running with kids clinging to their skirts. Outside, the first howls began, somber lamentations heavy with anger and passion. My sister Bahia took me by the arm and helped me to my rooftop room. She laid me down on my pallet, brought me a basin of water, took off my filthy, vomit-stained shirt, and started washing me from the waist up. Meanwhile, the news spread through the village, and our entire family went to condole with the blacksmith and his household. After putting me to bed for the evening, Bahia left to join them, and I fell asleep.

The next day, Bahia came back to open my windows and give me clean clothes. She told me that an American colonel, accompanied by some Iraqi military authorities, had come to the village the previous evening to offer condolences to the bereaved parents. The eldest of the tribe received them at his home, but in the courtyard, to indicate to the colonel that he was unwelcome. The old man didn’t believe the colonel’s version of the accident, nor would he accept any justification for firing on a simpleminded boy—that is, on a pure and innocent creature closer to the Lord than the saints. Some television teams wanted to cover the event and proposed a feature story on the blacksmith so that people could hear what he had to say about the matter. On this point as well, the eldest held firm; he categorically refused to allow strangers to disturb his grieving village.

4

Three days later, a small van from the village, dispatched by the eldest himself, brought Sulayman’s body home from the morgue. It was a terrible moment. The people of Kafr Karam had never felt such gloom. The eldest insisted that the burial should take place with dignity and in strict privacy. Except for the villagers, only a delegation of elders from an allied tribe was allowed in the cemetery. After the funeral services were over, everyone returned home to ponder the blow that had robbed Kafr Karam of its purest creature, its mascot and its pentacle. That evening, old and young gathered at the blacksmith’s house and chanted verses from the Qur’an until late in the night. But Yaseen and his followers, who made an open display of their indignation, saw things differently and chose to meet at Sayed’s place. Sayed was Bashir the Falcon’s son, a taciturn, mysterious young man said to be close to the Islamist movement and suspected of having attended school in Peshawar during the rule of the Taliban. He was a tall fellow of about thirty or so, his ascetic face beardless except for his lower lip, where a tiny tuft of wild hairs, like the beauty mark on his cheek, embellished his face. He lived in Baghdad and never came back to Kafr Karam except for special occasions. He’d arrived the previous day and attended Sulayman’s funeral.

Around midnight, other young insomniacs joined the group at Sayed’s. He received them all with a great deal of deference and entertained them in a large room whose floor was covered with wicker mats and cushions. While everyone else was sipping tea and digging into baskets of peanuts, Yaseen couldn’t stay still. He looked like a man possessed by the devil. Trying to pick a quarrel, he stared extravagantly at the others, who were sitting or reclining here and there. As no one was paying any attention to him, he absolutely turned on his most faithful companion, Salah, the blacksmith’s son-in-law.

“I saw you crying at the cemetery,” Yaseen said.

“It’s true,” Salah admitted, ignorant of where the conversation was heading.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you cry?”

Salah frowned. “According to you, why do people cry? I felt grief, all right? I cried because Sulayman’s death caused me pain. What’s so shocking about that, crying over someone you loved?”

“I understand that,” Yaseen insisted. “But why the tears?”

Salah felt that things were escaping him. “I don’t understand your question.”

“Sulayman’s death broke my heart,” Yaseen said. “But I didn’t shed a single tear. I can’t believe you would make such a spectacle of yourself. You cried like a woman, and that’s unacceptable.”

The word
woman
shook Salah. His cheeks bulged as he gritted his teeth. “Men cry, too,” he pointed out to his leader. “The Prophet himself had that weakness.”

“I don’t give a damn!” Yaseen exploded. “You didn’t have to behave like a
woman,
” he added, heavily emphasizing the last word.

Outraged, Salah rose suddenly to his feet. He stared at Yaseen with wounded eyes for a long time, then gathered up his sandals and went out into the night.

There were about twenty people gathered in the big room, and rapid looks darted in all directions. No one understood what had gotten into Yaseen or why he’d behaved so despicably to the blacksmith’s son-in-law. A sense of ill-being settled over everyone there. After a long silence, Sayed, the master of the house, coughed into his fist. It was his duty, as the host, to set things straight.

He gave Yaseen a scathing look and began: “When I was a child, my father told me a story I didn’t completely grasp. At that age, I didn’t know that stories had a moral. This was the story of an Egyptian strongman who reigned like a satrap over the seedier districts of Cairo. He was a downright Hercules. He looked as though he’d just been cast in some ancient Greek bronze foundry. He had an enormous mustache that looked like a ram’s horns, and he was a leader as hard on himself as he was on others. I don’t remember his name, but the image I formed of him is intact in my memory. I thought of him as a kind of Robin Hood of the working-class suburbs, as ready to roll up his sleeves and lend a hand as to swagger around the square and lord it over porters and donkey trainers. When there was a disagreement between neighbors, they came to him and submitted to his arbitration. The decisions he made could not be appealed. However, although he was a strong man, he wasn’t a silent one. He was conceited, irascible, and demanding, and since no one questioned his authority, he proclaimed himself king of the outcasts and shouted from the rooftops that there was nobody in the world who dared to look him straight in the eye. His words didn’t fall on deaf ears. One evening, the chief of police summoned him to the station. No one knows what happened that night. The next day, when the strongman returned home, he was unrecognizable, his head bowed, his eyes elusive. He wasn’t bearing any wounds or any traces of blows, but he had an evident mark of infamy in the form of his suddenly sunken shoulders. He shut himself up in his hovel until his neighbors began to complain about a strong odor of decomposition. When they kicked his door in, they found the strongman stretched out on his straw mattress. He’d been dead for several days. Later, a cop described the strongman’s meeting with the chief of police: Before the chief could reproach him for anything at all, the strongman had thrown himself at the chief’s feet to beg his pardon. And he never got up again.”

“And so?” Yaseen asked, on the lookout for insinuations.

A mocking smile quickly crossed Sayed’s face. “That’s where my father ended the story.”

“That’s just rubbish,” Yaseen grumbled, conscious of his limitations when it came to deciphering hidden meanings.

“That what I thought, too, at first. As time passed, I was able to find a moral in the story.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“No. That moral’s mine. It’s up to you to find one that suits you.”

With this, Sayed got up and went upstairs to his room. Seeing that the evening was over, most of the guests collected their sandals and left the house. The only people still in the room were Yaseen and his “Praetorian guard.”

Yaseen was beside himself; he thought he’d been too vague, and he felt that he’d made a bad showing in front of his men. There was no way he was going to go home without getting to the bottom of this matter. He sent away his companions with a nod of his head, went upstairs, and knocked on Sayed’s bedroom door.

“I don’t understand,” Yaseen said.

“Salah didn’t understand what you were getting at, either,” Sayed replied. The two of them were standing on the landing.

“I looked like a chump. You and your fucking story! I bet you made it up. I bet all that stuff about a moral was a lot of nonsense.”

“You’re the one who talks nonsense, Yaseen. Constantly. And you behave exactly like that strongman from Cairo.”

“Well, if you don’t want me to set this place on fire, you’d better enlighten me. I can’t stand being talked down to, and nobody—
nobody
—is going to make a fool of me. I may not have enough education, but I’ve got pride to spare.”

Sayed wasn’t intimidated. On the contrary, his smile grew wider in direct proportion to Yaseen’s raving. After a pause, he said in a monotone, “The man who feeds on others’ cowardice nourishes his own; sooner or later, it devours his guts, and then his soul. You’ve been acting like a tyrant for some time now, Yaseen. You shake up the order of things. You no longer respect the tribal hierarchy. You rise up against your elders and offend people close to you; you even like to humiliate them in public. You shout everything you say, whether yes or no, so loudly that no one in the village can hear anything but you anymore.”

“Why should I concern myself about them? They’re worthless.”

“You behave exactly the way they do. They stare at their navels; you stare at your biceps. It comes to the same thing. No one has any cause to envy or reproach anyone else in Kafr Karam.”

“I forbid you to associate me with those imbeciles. I’m no coward.”

“Prove it. Come on, what’s stopping you from turning words into deeds? Iraqis have been fighting the enemy for a long time. Every day, our cities crumble a little more, blown up by car bombs and ambushes and bombardments. The prisons are filled with our brothers, and our cemeteries are gorged with our dead. And you, you lounge around your godforsaken village, you get your hackles up, and you cry out your hatred and indignation from the rooftops; then, once your spleen is vented, you go back home, slip up to your room, and turn off the light. Too easy. If you really think what you say, translate talk into action and make those goddamned Americans pay for what they’ve done. If not, calm down and back off.”

Then, according to my twin sister, Bahia—who had the story from the very mouth of Sayed’s sister, who’d heard the whole conversation through the door—Yaseen withdrew ungraciously, without uttering another word.

Sulayman’s death threw Kafr Karam into confusion. The village didn’t know what to do with the corpse it was carrying. Its last feats of arms dated back to the war with Iran, a generation earlier; eight of its sons had returned from the front in sealed caskets, which no one had the authority to open. What had the village buried back then? A few planks, a few patriots, or a part of its dignity? Sulayman’s end was an entirely different matter, a horrible and vulgar accident, and people couldn’t make up their minds: Was Sulayman a martyr, or just a poor bugger who had found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time? The elders of the village called for calm. No one was infallible, they said. The American colonel had demonstrated genuine sorrow. His only mistake was in broaching the subject of money with the blacksmith. In Kafr Karam, one never speaks of money to a person in mourning. No compensation can lessen the grief of a distraught father at his son’s fresh grave. Had Doc Jabir not intervened, the talk of indemnity would have veered into confrontation.

The weeks passed, and little by little, the village rediscovered its gregarious soul and its routines. The violent death of a simpleminded person arouses more anger than grief, but, alas, you can’t change the course of things. God’s concerned about being fair, so he gives His saints no help; the devil alone takes care of those who serve him.

As a man of faith, the blacksmith adopted an attitude of fatalistic resignation. One morning, he could be seen opening his shop and taking up his blowtorch again.

The discussions in the barbershop resumed, and the young people went back to the Safir to kill time with dominoes when the card games grew stale. Bashir the Falcon’s son Sayed didn’t stay among us long. Urgent business called him back to town. What business? Nobody knew. However, his lightning sojourn in Kafr Karam had made an impression; the young were seduced by his frank talk, and his charisma had compelled the respect of young and old. Our paths were to cross again later on. He would be the one to raise me in my own esteem, to train me in the basics of guerrilla warfare, and to open wide for me the gates of the supreme sacrifice.

Soon after Sayed’s departure, Yaseen and his band reoccupied the square. Sullen and aggressive, they were the reason why Omar the Corporal dropped out of sight. Since the incident in the café, the deserter had become a shadow of his former self and spent most of his time shut up in his little house. When he was forced to show his face outside, he crossed the village like the wind and went to drown his shame far from provocations, only to return—generally on all fours—when the night was well advanced. Often, some kids would spot him getting sloshed in the back of the cemetery or find him in an alcoholic coma, his arms crossed and his shirt open on his giant belly. Then one day, without a sound, he slipped away and was seen no more.

After Sulayman’s funeral, which I didn’t attend, I stayed in my room. Memories of the awful scene tormented me without letup. As soon as I fell asleep, the black GI’s screams would assail me. I dreamed of Sulayman running, his stiff spine, his dangling arms, his body leaning sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other. A multitude of minuscule geysers spurted from his back. At the moment when his head exploded, I woke up screaming. Bahia was at my bedside with a potful of wet compresses. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a nightmare. I’m here….”