The Sirens of Baghdad Read online

“You shouldn’t hold it against me. I spend my days boring myself to death and my nights losing my mind.”

  I got up. Just when I reached the end of the wall, he said, “I think I have a pair of shoes at home. Pass by the house in a little while. If they fit you, they’re yours.”

  “All right. See you later.”

  He was already ignoring me.

  2

  In a square transformed into a soccer pitch, a bunch of boys shrieked as they kicked a well-worn ball. Their attacks were chaotic, their fouls breathtaking. They looked like a flock of sparrows fighting over a kernel of corn. All at once, a little runt managed to extract himself from the melee and took off like a grown man in the direction of his opponents’ goal. He dribbled around one adversary, blew past another, swerved toward the sideline, and sent a no-look pass to a teammate behind him, who charged the goal at full speed and fired a lamentably wide shot before falling on the sharp gravel and cutting his behind. Without warning, an abnormally tall boy who’d been quietly squatting against a wall sprang to his feet, ran for the ball, picked it up, and sprinted away as fast as he could. Puzzled at first, the soccer players quickly realized that the intruder was stealing their ball and set off en masse in pursuit, calling him names.

  “They didn’t want him on their teams,” the blacksmith explained, sitting with his apprentice on the doorstep of his workshop. “So he’s playing the spoilsport.”

  The blacksmith smiled tenderly and his apprentice looked distracted as the three of us watched the tall boy disappear behind a block of houses, with the others on his heels.

  “Have you heard the latest news?” the blacksmith asked me. “The Italians are leaving.”

  “They haven’t said when.”

  “The important thing is they’re getting out,” he said, and then he launched into a long analysis that soon branched off into some imprecise theories about the renewal of the country, freedom, et cetera. His apprentice, a puny fellow as dark and dry as a nail, listened to him with the pathetic docility of a dazed boxer between rounds, nodding at his trainer’s instructions while his eyes are lost in space.

  The blacksmith was a courteous man. When called upon at impossible hours to repair a small leak in a tank or an ordinary crack in some scaffolding, he always came without grumbling. Tall, strapping, heavy-boned, he had bruises all over his arms and a face like a knife blade. His eyes sparkled with metallic glints identical to the sparks he sent flying from the tip of his blowtorch. Jokers pretended to wear a welding mask when they gazed upon his countenance. Actually, his eyes were damaged and watery, and his vision had been growing increasingly cloudy for some time. The father of half a dozen children, he used his workshop much more as a refuge from the pandemonium that reigned in his home than as a place for tinkering with metal. His oldest son, Sulayman, a boy nearly my age, was mentally retarded; he could remain in a corner without budging for days on end, and then, without warning, he’d throw a fit and start running and careen along until he passed out. No one knew what it was that came over him. Sulayman didn’t talk, didn’t complain, was never aggressive; he lived entrenched in his world and ignored ours totally. Then, all at once, he’d give a cry—always the same cry—and take off across the desert without looking back. In the beginning, we’d watch him scamper off into the blazing heat, his father charging after him. As time passed, however, people realized that those headlong dashes were bad for Sulayman’s heart and that the poor devil was in increasing danger of dropping dead from a coronary. So the villagers organized a sort of rapid-response system designed to intercept him as soon as the alarm was given. When he was caught, Sulayman didn’t struggle; offering no resistance, he let himself be overcome and brought back home, his mouth open in a lifeless smile, his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “How’s that boy doing?”

  “He’s as good as gold,” the blacksmith said. “He’s been good for weeks. You’d think he was completely cured. And how’s your father?”

  “Still under his tree…I have to buy a new pair of shoes. Is anyone going to town today?”

  The blacksmith scratched the top of his head. “I thought I saw a van on the trail an hour ago, but I couldn’t say if the driver was going to town or not. You have to wait until after the prayer. In any case, it’s getting harder and harder to move around, what with all these checkpoints and the hassles that go with them. Have you talked to the cobbler?”

  “My shoes are beyond repair. I need new ones.”

  “But the cobbler’s got more to sell than just soles and glue.”

  “His merchandise is old-fashioned. The shoes I want have to be soft and stylish.”

  “You think they’ll be a hit with your audience here?”

  “That’s not a reason not to get them. I wish someone could give me a ride to town. I want to get a nice shirt, too.”

  “In my opinion, you’re going to wait a long time. Khaled’s taxi’s out of commission, and the bus stopped coming here a month ago, after a helicopter nearly wasted it.”

  The kids had got their ball back and were returning in triumph.

  “Our practical joker didn’t get very far,” the blacksmith observed.

  “He’s too big to outrun them.”

  The two teams reoccupied the pitch, lined up as before, and continued the game at the point where it had been interrupted. Right away, the shrieking began again.

  I took a seat on a piece of cinder block and followed the match with interest. When it was over, I noticed that the blacksmith and his apprentice had disappeared and the workshop had closed. By now, the sun was beating down with both fists. I got to my feet and walked up the street in the direction of the mosque.

  There was a crowd in the barbershop. As a rule, on Fridays, after the Great Prayer, the old men of Kafr Karam met there. They came to watch one of their number submit to the clippers wielded by the barber, an elephantine individual draped in a calf butcher’s apron. Before, when discussing things, they used to avoid certain subjects. Saddam’s spies were always on the alert. One inappropriate word, and your whole family would be deported; mass graves and gallows appeared everywhere. But ever since the tyrant had been caught in one rat hole and shut up in another, tongues had loosened, and the men of Kafr Karam—at least those with nothing to do—had discovered in themselves a stunning volubility. That morning, all the village sages were gathered in the barbershop, and since the discussion promised to be a lively one, there were also several young men standing outside. I identified Jabir, known as “Doc,” a grouchy septuagenarian who had taught philosophy in a prep school in Basra two decades ago and then spent three years languishing in Baathist prisons because of some obscure etymological controversy. When he left the dungeons, the Party informed him that he was forbidden to work as a teacher anywhere in Iraq and that the Mukhabarat had him in their sights. Realizing that his life was in danger, Doc returned to his natal village and played dead until the statues of the Rais were removed from the public squares. Doc was tall and looked rather lordly, even hieratic, in his immaculately clean blue djellaba. Next to him, hunched on a bench, Bashir the Falcon was holding forth at some length. He was a former highway robber who had scoured the region at the head of an elusive band before taking refuge in Kafr Karam, where his booty made him respectable. He wasn’t a member of the tribe, but the elders preferred giving him hospitality to suffering his raids. Facing him were the Issam brothers, two formidable old fellows, who were trying to destroy everyone else’s arguments; they had contradiction in their blood and were capable of totally rejecting an idea they’d advanced twenty-four hours previously should an undesirable ally adopt it. Beyond them, immovable in his corner, sat the eldest of the tribe; his distance from the others was a demonstration of his prominence. The wicker chair he occupied was carried by his supporters wherever he went, while he fingered his imposing beads with one hand and with the other grasped the pipe of his narghile. He never intervened in debates, preferring to voice his opinions only at the end, unwilling t
o let anyone usurp his right to the last word.

  “They got rid of Saddam for us, all the same,” protested Issam two.

  “We never asked them to,” the Falcon grumbled.

  “Who could have done that?” asked Issam one.

  “Exactly right,” his brother added. “Who could even spit without risking his hide? Without being arrested on the spot for an affront to the Rais and hanged from a crane?”

  “If Saddam tyrannized us, it was because of our cowardice, large and small,” the Falcon insisted contemptuously. “People have the kings they deserve.”

  “I can’t agree with you,” said a quavering voice. The speaker was an old man sitting on the Falcon’s right.

  “You can’t even agree with yourself.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s the truth. One day you’re on one side, and the next day you’re on the other. Always. I’ve never heard you defend the same opinion two days in a row. The truth is, you don’t have an opinion. You climb on the bandwagon, and when another bandwagon shows up, you jump on that one without knowing where it’s going.”

  The old man took refuge behind a look of grim outrage.

  “I don’t mean to offend you, my friend,” the Falcon said in a conciliatory tone. “If I were disrespectful to you, I wouldn’t forgive myself. But I can’t let you unload our faults onto Saddam’s shoulders. He was a monster, yes, but he was our monster. He came from among us, he shared our blood, and we all contributed to consolidating his megalomania. Do you prefer infidels from the other side of the world, troops sent here to roll over us? The GIs are nothing but brutes and wild beasts; they drive their big machines past our widows and orphans and have no qualms about dropping their bombs on our health clinics. Look at what they’ve made of our country: hell on earth.”

  “Saddam made it a mass grave,” Issam two reminded him.

  “It wasn’t Saddam; it was our fear. If we had shown a minimum of courage and solidarity, that cur would never have dared become such a tyrant.”

  “You’re right,” said the man under the barber’s clippers, addressing the Falcon in the mirror. “We let ourselves be pushed around, and he took advantage of the situation. But you won’t make me change my mind: The Americans freed us from an ogre who threatened to devour us raw, all of us, one after the other.”

  “Why do you think they’re here, the Americans?” the Falcon went on obstinately. “Is it Christian charity? They’re businessmen, we’re commodities, and they’re ready to trade. Yesterday, it was oil for food. Today, it’s Saddam for oil. And what do we get out of all this? If the Americans had an ounce of human kindness, they wouldn’t treat their blacks and their Latinos like subhumans. Instead of crossing oceans to come to the aid of some poor, emasculated ragheads, they’d do better to put their own house in order. They could do something about the Indians they’ve got rotting away on their reservations, kept out of sight like people with some shameful disease.”

  “Absolutely!” the quavering old man cried out. “Can you imagine American GIs getting themselves blown up thousands of kilometers from home out of Christian charity? Not very likely.”

  Eventually, Jabir’s voice made itself heard. “May I say a word?” he asked.

  A respectful silence filled the shop. When Doc Jabir prepared to speak, it was always a solemn moment. The former philosophy professor, whom Saddam’s jails had elevated to the status of a hero, seldom joined the debates, but his rare interventions always served to put things in their proper place. His voice was loud, his gestures precise, and his arguments irrefutable.

  “I have a question,” he intoned gravely. “Why did Bush attack our country?”

  The question passed around the room without finding a taker; the others figured it was a trap, and no one wanted to be the subject of ridicule.

  Doc Jabir coughed into his fist, certain that he had everyone’s attention. His ferrety eyes searched his audience for a hostile look; then, finding none, he began:

  “Because they wished to rid us of a despot, their former flunky, but now a compromising figure? Because our sufferings had finally touched the hearts of the vultures in Washington? If you believe that fairy tale for one second, then you’re irredeemably screwed. The USA was extremely worried about two things that might interfere with its hegemonic projects. One: Our country was very close to acquiring full sovereignty—that is, a nuclear weapon. In the new world order, only nations that have a nuclear arsenal are sovereign; the others may be potential hotbeds of tension or providential sources of raw materials for the great powers, but from now on, that’s all. The world is run by the forces of international finance, for which peace is equivalent to layoffs. It’s all a matter of living space. The second thing the USA knew was that Iraq was the only military force in the region capable of standing up to Israel. Bringing Iraq to its knees would make it possible for Israel to dominate the Middle East. Those are the two real reasons that led to the occupation of our country. Saddam was nothing but an excuse. If he seems to give the Americans’ aggression legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion, that doesn’t mean using him is any less of a diabolical ploy. Their trick is to create a diversion in order to conceal the essential objectives of the exercise, which are to prevent an Arab country from acquiring the means of its strategic defense and therefore from protecting its integrity, and, at the same time, to help Israel establish definitive authority over this part of the world.”

  The conclusions landed like sudden blows, and Doc’s audience sat openmouthed. Satisfied, he savored for a moment the effect produced by the pertinence of his arguments; then, confident that he’d scored a knockout, he cleared his throat arrogantly and rose to his feet. “Gentlemen,” he declared, “in the hope of seeing you again tomorrow, enlightened and improved, I leave you to ponder my words.”

  Whereupon he dramatically smoothed the front of his djellaba and, with exaggerated hauteur, left the barbershop.

  The barber, who had paid no attention, eventually noticed the silence that had fallen around him. He raised an eyebrow, but then, incurious, he returned to cutting his customer’s hair.

  Now that Doc Jabir had withdrawn, all eyes turned toward the eldest. He moved about in his wicker chair, smacked his lips, and said, “That’s one possible way of looking at things.” Then, after a long moment of silence, he added, “It’s true that we’re reaping what we sowed: the fruit of our broken oaths. We’ve failed. In the past, we were ourselves, good, virtuous Arabs with just enough vanity to give us a bit of guts. Instead of improving over time, we’ve degenerated.”

  “And where have we gone wrong?” the Falcon asked testily.

  “In our faith. We’ve lost it, and we’ve lost face along with it.”

  “As far as I know, our mosques are full.”

  “Yes, but what’s become of the believers? They go to prayers mechanically, and then, as soon as the service is over, they return to the world of illusions. That’s not faith.”

  A supporter of the eldest handed him a glass of water. The old man took several sips, and the sound of his swallowing resounded in the shop.

  “Fifty years ago, when I was in Jordan at the head of my uncle’s caravan—about a hundred camels in all—I stopped in a village near Amman. It was the time of prayer. I went to a mosque with a group of my men, and we set about performing our ritual ablutions in a little paved courtyard. The imam, an imposing personage dressed in a flaming red tunic, came up to us and asked, ‘Young men, what are you doing here?’ ‘We’re washing ourselves for the prayer,’ I replied. He inquired further: ‘Do you think your goatskins will suffice to cleanse you?’ I pointed out to him that it was our duty to perform our ablutions before entering the prayer hall. He took a fine fresh fig from his pocket and washed it meticulously in a glass of water; then he peeled it open before our eyes. Inside, the beautiful fig was crawling with maggots. The imam concluded his lesson by saying, ‘It’s not a question of washing your bodies, but your souls, young men. If y
ou’re rotten inside, neither rivers nor oceans will suffice to make you clean.’”

  Overcome, everyone in the barbershop nodded.

  “Don’t try to make others wear the hat we’ve fashioned for ourselves with our own hands. If the Americans are here, it’s our fault. By losing our faith, we’ve also lost our bearings and our sense of honor. We ha—”

  “There we are!” the barber cried out, shaking his brush above the crimson nape of his customer’s neck.

  The other men in the shop froze in indignation.

  Blissfully unaware that he’d just rudely interrupted the revered eldest and scandalized his listeners, the barber kept on carelessly waving his brush.

  His customer gathered up his old eyeglasses, which were held together with bits of tape and wire, adjusted them on his lumpy nose, and looked at himself in the mirror facing him. “What do you call this?” he moaned. “You’ve sheared me like a sheep.”

  “You didn’t have all that much hair when you came in,” the barber pointed out impassively.

  “Maybe not, but you’ve gone too far. You’ve practically scalped me.”

  “You could have stopped me.”

  “How? I can’t see a thing without my glasses.”

  The barber made a slightly embarrassed face. “Sorry. I did my best.”

  At this moment, the two men realized that something wasn’t right. They turned around and received with full force the outraged looks of everyone gathered in the shop.

  “What’s the matter?” said the barber in a little voice.

  “The eldest was instructing us,” someone told him reproachfully, “and not only were you two not listening but on top of it you start squabbling about a bad haircut. It’s inexcusable.”

  Made aware of their boorishness, the barber and his customer both placed a hand on their mouths, like children caught saying dirty words.

  The young people who’d been standing around the entrance to the shop left on tiptoe. In Kafr Karam, when sages and important men start quarreling, teenagers and bachelors must depart from the scene. For propriety’s sake. I took the opportunity to pay a visit to the cobbler, whose little shop stood about a hundred meters away, nestled in the side of a ghastly building hidden behind some facades so ugly, they seemed to have been erected by djinns.