War Porn (11 page)

babylon

 

wounds to the stomach, prosecuted—many have moved to the cities, particularly Mosul, Kirkuk, and Sulaymaniyah
Operation Resolute Sword
divided into the Shi'a majority in the south and the Sunni who live mostly in the central part of the country around Baghdad have not been assimilated into the population are “Marsh Arabs” who inhabited the lower Tigris and Euphrates urban centers with Baghdad being Iraq my spear

population of two

already pleaded to be those targets on the edge of the gallbladder and transverse colon; only those acts which can be said to be half measures, the national Kalashnikovs

with a gunshot wound through the rectum; and two with possible war seen war that will be fourteen more casualties arrived
Operation Sidewinder
CIA secret prisons at the military's Iraqi Advanced Trauma Life Support protocols for the administration of Bush's decision was over the last six

sometimes they arrested all adult males present the

US citizen

military must adhere wholly by the low-value treatment often including pushing Saddam

punching and kicking and striking with rifles heart of the cover of darkness
Operation Iron Saber
after 2130, the White House by remote control, we've ravaged disarmament
in the early morning hours Thursday they're apparently exploiting the Arab fear of dogs and you, the city and two key avenues, DETAINEE-14 and a totally widowed mother—he, Astyanax, which meant the questions of the local Coalition less than a meter across and devoid of any more but the daintiest and choicest of morsels

  surgical

burned down tired and went to sleep, he would lie

knowing neither want nor care, whereas the version here is not simply the General might salvage judged (myself) and I do not make

filled with water, linking unstable

My spear! Surely I fear the prisoner's head and do good and the people, the attacks brought coming, there is no doubt therein, Coalition forces in the early
Operation Iron Justice
turning but no gunfire in the government and the challenge upon me, I will answer you and defend the world TV from open rebellion: in the north, Mosul was a close call and over time the Bradley fades. The US-trained Iraqi police enter hell abased. Allah is striking selected targets of wounded and many dead. He urges them to surrender
Operation Ivy Needle
the west seems nervous, boys, most surely the opening stages

police stations other small attacks intense heat

 

center and the Pentagon, he and his team Allah, your Lord, Babylon where the rebellion is
Operation Red Dawn
another road

the fall

 

(baghdad, 2003)

 

S
addam smiled, white
teeth shining. A common picture in a common frame, by law others like it hung all over. Thought or feeling made no change—hating the picture was like hat
ing the sun. Even here, Qasim thought, in our musty office: Saddam Saddam Saddam. This one's old, brown and fading, creased along one edge, the frame's glass cracked at the corner. Surely we should have it replaced. The picture, the desks, the floors, the walls.

The office was windowless, unventilated, stale. Three desks crammed against each other left a narrow perimeter for chairs. Qasim sat alone, leaning, pencil in his mouth, staring at Saddam, the Americans' deadline barely a week away.

Home? Or stay? For the forty-ninth time, Qasim heard Professor Hureshi tell him, “Go if you must, but I can't promise you anything. You know I have done everything I can to keep you on, but if you leave before defending, I would be very hard-pressed to justify holding your teaching position when there are others whose service recommends them. Who have advocates. You have been given every opportunity, Qasim—”

“But Professor, my wife . . .”

“You have been protected like a son.”

“Let me
. . . 
let me talk to my uncle. Please, Professor. Just a few more days.”

And your wheedling worked,
again
, and Hureshi gave you till Wednesday, the last day of classes before the deadline. And now? Give up everything after working so hard
. . . 
or stay
here, cut off from Lateefah and mother, while . . .

Qasim twisted the end of his mustache, replaying the hours of teaching uninterested students, the longer hours grading, the years of study, tutoring, working odd jobs, doing accounting for his uncle, all the effort he'd put into the dissertation. And now when he phoned Lateefah, drained to the point of hopelessness, she only made it worse. Punishing him with her silence. Blaming him.

Maybe going back would give us another chance. You don't have to be a mathematician. Take some job in the Ministry of Water, teach high school geometry. It won't make up for
. . . 
but maybe Lateefah—maybe she and I . . .

The door swung open and Adham flew in, throwing down a pile of manila folders, slumping into his chair: “What, my cousin, can you tell me, is so bloody hard about turning in your homework?” Adham raised one hand to heaven and covered his heart with the other. “I understand yes, the end is coming. I understand, yes, the Zionist crusaders are going to bomb us to rubble. I understand—am I not understanding?—that there is a better than fair chance almighty God in his infinite compassion has willed that our beloved university will be destroyed, our city wiped from the face of the earth, our friends and relatives charred to ash so that even the vultures and rats will be left starving in a waste so total it will make the Mongols' sack of the libraries seem like Eid al-Fitr, but my cousin, my brother, my friend, as a fellow mathematician and as a fellow teacher, let me ask you: is that any reason to not turn in your homework?”

“Well . . .”

“Do you know how many of my students turned in their work this week? Two! Barely half the class even bothered to show up! And Mundhir Hashir, the deputy minister of education's miserable bastard, you know what he says to me? Professor, please, can I get an extension till next week? Next week! Because he has drill with the Hizbis. Oh sure, Mundhir. Whatever you like. Just the way I passed you on the midterm. Whatever you want, just don't sic your daddy on me.”

“Adham . . .” Qasim twisted his mustache and squinted meaningfully at the third desk, where their colleague Salman worked and—if department rumors were true—kept files on nearly everyone.

“Pfah! Have you even seen the birdwatcher today?”

“No. No, not yet. Cousin, I know what you mean. Every class gets smaller and the ones that show up barely pay attention. But there
is
a war coming.”

“And those who cannot dance complain the floor is crooked. They're students. They should attend class and turn in their homework. It's very simple. Determination is the key to everything.”

“I can understand their trouble. I haven't touched my dissertation in weeks.”

Adham jabbed a bony finger at Qasim. “Then the carpenter's door is loose.”

“But the Americans . . .”

“But! But! There is always something! Nowhere in the Qur'an does it say life will be easy!”

“Well maybe the Qur'an can help me decide whether or not I should return to Baqubah.”

“‘Righteousness does not consist in whether you face east or west. The righteous man is he who believes in God and the Last Day, in the angels and the Book and the prophets.'”

“So?”

“So listen for the voice of God and the prophets.”

“Right. Of course. And you? What have God and the prophets told you?”

“Oh, I'm going home. My father insists on it. He says things will be much safer in Fallujah.”

“But your teaching . . .”

“I talked with Hureshi, and he told me to take all the time I need.”

Qasim blinked slowly and gritted his teeth, thinking,
goatfucker!
You backward, camel-riding bumpkin with your
book
and your kaffiyeh! You who maybe, yes, you're in the party, but you don't even believe in a secular state!
You
?

“Your wife is in Baqubah, isn't she?”

Qasim exhaled through his nose. “Yes. My Lateefah. And the rest of my family.”

“Who's taking care of them?”

“My uncle Jibril, my cousin Faruq, who lives in town, my little brother—I don't know. There are too many of us.”

Adham spread his palms. “Cousin, it's simple: Go. In times like this, you must lead your family. ‘Consider those who fled their homes in their thousands for fear of death. God said to them,
You shall perish
.'”

“But if I go . . .”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. Just
. . . 
My sister-in-law will be there too. With their children.”

“Not your brother?”

“He's in the army. He drives a tank.”

“God grant him victory.”

“God!” Qasim barked. “The same God that put him there on the front lines? The same God that brings the Americans?”

“Don't be blasphemous, cousin.”

“No, Adham, please. Tell me what we've done to deserve this.”

Adham leaned forward, crossing the desk so his gleaming face hung before Qasim's, his words harsh whispers. “Let me tell you, cousin, about what I believe. The fate God weaves is a song of many voices, and things that seem to be disasters today may be openings through which God's hand will pass tomorrow. There are many of us who wait for the day when we will lead our people back to the virtues of our fathers, back to the Book and the Caliphate, to the days before petrodollars and satellite dishes and nationalism. Sometimes, cousin, a storm scatters our tents because it's time for us to move on. When the wind blows, you ride it.”

“Well, I think we're done for.”

“Fine. That is what you think.” Adham turned to his students' papers. “Your pessimism is a tool of the deceiver.”

Qasim snorted and stood, grabbing his satchel.
Tool of the deceiver!
I cannot
believe
the things that come out of his mouth. I need to get out of here. I should see when Luqman is leaving—God willing, soon, so I can call mother and make arrangements for going to Baqubah.

Is that what you're doing now, Qasim, going home?

Yes. No. Yes.

Maybe.

The blind man stood in the courtyard feeling the sun on his face. He was very old and very frail, and where his eyes should have been were two pale and clotted scars. Hair like white wire sprouted from his brows, from within his ears and nose, from his cheeks and lips and chin, thickening over his neck in a tangled wave. In one hand he held his stick and in the other, his book and pen. From his bony shoulders hung a threadbare dishdasha.

“Ah-ham,” he croaked to himself and nodded, shuffling toward his bench along the wall. Soon, yes, he could feel it, coming from the sky. His little birds knew. Didn't they always?

“Ah-ham,” he croaked, reminding them.

Near his feet, the one-legged half-wit echoed back “Aham!”

The blind man smiled and nodded. When a wound is tired of crying, it will begin to sing, he thought, sitting on his bench and listening to the life of the yard around him: the three men arguing, the others slapping down dominos, the idiots and cripples and crooks. He could just make out the voices in the women's yard beyond the wall, and the sound of lunch being prepared in the prison kitchen.

The old man laid his stick across his thighs and then his book atop it. It was a large book and its leather was worn by years of handling. He'd written through it many times, each cycle over the one before, until the pages held all he'd ever known or thought or felt—or nearly all. The end was coming, but it wasn't there yet. There was another sura to write.

He felt for the ribbon between the pages and opened to where he'd left off, his fingers skimming the lines, tracing the scant indentations of yesterday's pen. In a day it'd be flat like the others and return to blankness, but for the moment it held the impression. He read yesterday's verses and then again, remembering, reciting, then took the cap from his pen and began on the left his verse for today. He wrote slowly and with great care words he would never see and only briefly know, the same words or different, the one song in many verses.

Sometimes he'd pause and stick his pen in his mouth. He'd jab at the pen with the jerking stub that was all that remained of his tongue, remembering how many years ago, in a dark and stinking hole he could only barely now envision, a cold blade had been forced between his teeth and his mouth had filled with blood.

Qasim took the phone up onto his uncle Mohammed's roof, where he sat in a plastic chair and turned east to face the prayer call from the loudspeakers of Um Al-Tobool. The sun sank behind him, a red burn against darkening violet, the last light flaming on the mosque's dual minarets, their paired domes, the delicate twinned crescents.

What would come of it all?

God's will, as the call closed with the Fatiha: “Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those who have incurred Thy wrath, nor of those who have gone astray.”

Silence opened across the city. A dog barked below. Qasim dialed his uncle Jibril. His cousin Bahira answered, and Qasim asked to speak with his mother.

“Qasim?”

“Peace be upon you, Mother.”

“Upon you be peace, little fox.”

“How are you?”

“Allah carries us in his palms. The children are putting tape on the windows. Izdihar is such a precious lamb, she drags a chair in from the kitchen to stand on. She can't reach all the way up, so she puts little designs in the corner. She wrote her name on the one in my room. Little Izdihar. Written in tape. Did I tell you Afifah and the children are coming? Your brother Darud, his division is near Basra, they say. Jibril says we will crush the Americans even more quickly than we did last time, God willing. Are you praying, little fox?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Are you coming home for Ashura? Jibril has put his foot down like every year, but Rahimah and I are going to celebrate and it's for the children, anyway. It's important. You always tell the story of Ali Husayn so well, little fox. Won't you be coming home for Ashura?”

“I don't know, Mother.”

“You'll be home before the infidel comes, I'm sure.”

“Mother, I need to talk to you about that.”

“What do you need to talk about? Your father, God preserve his soul, would want you home. If not for me, for Lateefah.”

“How is she?”

“Her heart is like fire on you. What do you expect? What's she supposed to do while you waste your days in Baghdad? She can't make a child. She can't make a home.”

“Did she quit her job at the school?”

“No, not yet. But it blackens her face to work like a girl with no husband.”

“Mother, you know I'm working.”

“You left a fine job your father would have been proud of to live like a beggar.”

“Father would want me to finish my degree.”

“Your father knew what needed to be done and did it. He would not have run away from his family. He would never have left me alone as you have done with Lateefah.”

Father would have found a way.

Long ago, Faruq had planned that after Qasim completed his bachelor of science at Baghdad University, he'd be sent abroad for a doctorate. Money was put aside, crucial favors were done for certain well-placed officials. Then came the war with Kuwait. Faruq got Qasim a draft deferment and Qasim finished near the top of his class; few of his peers were so lucky. The peace, though, turned out to be almost as bad as the war: continued bombing and crippling sanctions ruined the already weak economy. Business
stopped, trade stopped, the dinar plummeted against the dollar, inflation surged—it was as if Faruq's savings were being eaten by rats. At the worst of it, they spent their cash in stacks and wads; a month's salary might buy a chicken or a few dozen eggs. Then, in the purges and paranoia following the Shi'a uprising, Faruq's delicately nurtured connections died on the vine. Those few friends still hanging on to power wouldn't stick their necks out. Nevertheless Faruq found a way, somehow, scraping together enough hard cash and finessing enough shady deals to send Qasim to Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. With some help from the school, there was just enough money to get him started; Faruq impressed upon his son the necessity of finding funding.