Frankenstein in Baghdad Read online

  3

  Mahmoud had been working at a small newspaper called al-Hadaf before Ali Baher al-Saidi asked him to work with him at the magazine. He had started his life as a journalist in April 2003 at the weekly paper Sada al-Ahwar in the city of Amara, where he lived. For reasons he was still secretive about, he had suddenly moved to Baghdad. He came to the capital at a time when other people were leaving. “Stay where you are until things calm down in the capital, then come,” Hazem Abboud had said to him.

  But things didn’t calm down. They got much worse. And Mahmoud didn’t take his friend’s advice. He badly needed to move to Baghdad, or, to be more precise, he needed to escape Amara. His friend Hazem didn’t discover the reasons until later.

  Mahmoud worked at al-Hadaf for some months until Ali Baher al-Saidi contacted him through his friend Farid Shawwaf, who was already working at the magazine. From his first meetings with Saidi, Mahmoud found he was drawn to the man, who was at least twenty years older than he was, though it was hard to judge his age. Saidi was extremely stylish, the embodiment of elegance. Over months of observation, Mahmoud never spotted a flaw in his appearance. He was also active and energetic, always on the move, with a permanent smile and a talent for smoothing over crises, however serious they might be, and treating them as minor obstacles that could be overcome with a quick leap. On top of that, he inspired those around him, too, to be active and energetic.

  Maybe that was why Mahmoud hardly ever challenged the orders Saidi gave him. Mahmoud hadn’t worked as hard in any of the other jobs he had held over the previous two years. He was always exhausted, but he believed in Saidi and knew deep down that he was pushing him in the right direction.

  4

  “God damn you, Hazem Abboud, now and forever.”

  Mahmoud repeated these words into the digital recorder, this time in the tone of those who recite tragic stories about the death of Hussein in Shiite meeting halls. He still had a headache when he reached the gates of the Kindi Hospital, perhaps because he hadn’t eaten anything, or perhaps because of all the alcohol he had drunk the night before to relieve the tension he felt after his experience at the brothel. Now he was at the hospital reception desk, and he was still turned on. He was looking at the bottoms of the female staff and the cleaning women; he wanted all the women in the world at once. He pictured every woman in some lewd position, with him on top. Tired, he rubbed his face and played with his soft beard. Saidi would be critical if he saw him in this state. He would say, “You mustn’t make people who look at you feel depressed. Always be positive. Be a positive force and you’ll survive. Shave off your beard, change your shirt, and comb your hair. Take every opportunity to look at yourself in the mirror, any mirror, even in the windows of parked cars. Compete with women in this, and don’t be too oriental.”

  “And what does ‘too oriental’ mean?”

  “Being oriental can be summed up in a line of poetry by Antara ibn Shaddad: ‘Are you surprised, Abla, that I haven’t washed or anointed myself with oil for two years?’”

  Mahmoud had never heard this before. But it had a big impact on him. He memorized it and repeated it often to himself. And he realized that on that day, that morning, he was a true disciple of the poet Antara.

  Mahmoud had trouble reaching the victims of the explosion that had taken place in Tayaran Square that morning. He saw other journalists and the cameramen and correspondents of satellite channels. He kept following them and going into the rooms they went into. They were trying to finish off brief spot stories, while he needed to carry out more detailed interviews and to get photos that would be exclusive to the magazine.

  He finished his work there without great satisfaction, then left. He felt more and more exhausted. After buying a disposable razor, he went to a restaurant on Saadoun Street, had lunch, washed his hands and mouth at the basin, then took out his razor and had a quick shave amid inquisitive looks from the restaurant staff and customers. He combed back his coarse hair with his wet fingers, then went out into the street, where he took the digital recorder out of his bag and spoke into it: “So, Riyadh al-Sawadi, father, may you rest in peace. Because of you I’m here. Because of you I’ve reached this place. But I’m tired. My joints hurt, and I haven’t had enough sleep. All this has to come to an end before I reach my twenty-third birthday.”

  In fact, an ending was very close indeed, or at least a pivotal moment. When Mahmoud got to the magazine offices, he set about typing up his notes and recordings, and downloaded the photos he had taken onto his computer. He was chatting with Farid Shawwaf and his other colleagues when an old messenger came to tell him that the editor wanted to see him.

  Mahmoud went into the editor’s office to find Saidi alone, holding a remote control and flicking through the channels on the large television screen facing his grand desk, while in his other hand he held a cigar like a thick pen. Saidi asked Mahmoud about his day and what he had accomplished, then asked him about the status of stories it was agreed would be written over the next few days. There was a large folder on the desk. Saidi reached for it, turned it over, examined it, and said, “These are the stories your colleagues have written in the past month. None of them is fit for publication.”

  Saidi lit his cigar and took deep drags on it till it produced thick smoke. He blew smoke casually into the air, then went back to talking to Mahmoud, who seemed uneasy.

  “I’m going to get rid of Zaid Murshid, Adnan al-Anwar, and that thin girl, Maysa, and tell your friend Farid Shawwaf to stop being so lazy. He’s a good writer, but he doesn’t believe in his work here,” Saidi said.

  “What should I do with him? I thought you had a good relationship with him,” Mahmoud replied.

  “I don’t want to argue with him. He’s a real pro at arguing. I wish he would channel that energy into writing, and then he would be in a better position. Drop him a hint. You’re his friend. Make it clear to him indirectly.”

  Mahmoud tried to come up with an indirect way to send the message but he couldn’t think of anything. In silence he looked at Saidi for a moment, then turned toward the television.

  “There’s something else, my friend,” Saidi said. “You’re working too hard.” Mahmoud was taken aback. The remark came as a great relief.

  The cigar went out, and Saidi placed it on the edge of a large ceramic ashtray. He kept looking at his watch: it was time for Nawal al-Wazir to come, Mahmoud assumed. He hadn’t noticed that Saidi hadn’t finished his sentence yet—the man loved to punctuate his meticulously constructed sentences with dramatic pauses. Saidi looked at Mahmoud for a second and then continued: “You’re tenacious. That’s why, starting tomorrow, you are editor in chief of al-Haqiqa.”

  5

  Three of his colleagues sat before Mahmoud at a wooden table with a red tablecloth and a thick sheet of plastic covering it. Each had a can of Heineken, a glass mug, and a bowl of boiled beans. Mahmoud had ordered a bottle of soda, and the others had failed to persuade him to drink even one can of beer. His stomach was unsettled after the adventure of the day before. Mahmoud looked at their faces as they laughed: Zaid Murshid, Adnan al-Anwar, and Farid Shawwaf. Saidi had made up his mind that the first two should be fired and the third was at risk of dismissal, while Mahmoud had been promoted to the second most important position at the magazine. How could he break this news without them overturning the table on him? Should he tell them now, before they got drunk? Or should he wait until their reflexes were dulled and they could take the shock more easily?

  Might it help if he, too, had a drink? It felt like a major ordeal, and he decided to put it off until the next day.

  They were laughing. Farid Shawwaf was talking enthusiastically about something he was working on—an anthology of the one hundred strangest Iraqi stories.

  Why don’t you first try to finish what you get paid to do, Mahmoud thought as he listened to his friend explaining how these weird but real stories had to
be saved from oblivion.

  “Why don’t you write them as features for the magazine? We need stories like that,” Mahmoud said.

  “For the magazine?” Farid replied scornfully. “But that’s just journalism. It gets published one day, and the next day it’s gone. That’s just a way to make a living. I’m talking about a book.”

  “Okay. Publish them here first, and then put them together as a book,” said Mahmoud.

  “No. You have to think of them as a book from the start.”

  “Write them as a book from the start, and then serialize them in the magazine.”

  Zaid Murshid and Adnan al-Anwar laughed. Farid Shawwaf looked at them and shouted, “This guy’s killing himself for the magazine. God damn the magazine!”

  Mahmoud lost interest in pursuing the argument. The place was dark and full of smoke, crowded with young men and middle-aged men with paunches, mustaches, and shiny bald patches. Some of them, Mahmoud later discovered, came from outside Baghdad, possibly from remote towns and provinces. A short distance from Andalus Square, it felt like a secret, unlicensed tavern; it could be reached only through a small restaurant. Although it was seedy, it was the favorite place of Farid Shawwaf and his friends.

  The four of them left without getting completely drunk. They resented the fact that Mahmoud had drunk only a soda.

  They walked lazily toward the square because from there Farid Shawwaf could get a bus to his apartment in Karrada, while Zaid Murshid and Adnan al-Anwar could get transport to Bab al-Sharqi.

  The sky was gray and rapidly growing darker. They stood in Andalus Square, opposite the Sadeer Novotel hotel. Farid Shawwaf was still chatting about his hypothetical book. If he had crossed to the other side of the street at that moment, he would have met a certain death: an orange garbage truck loaded with dozens of kilograms of dynamite turned off the main street and slammed into the metal gate of the hotel, setting off an explosion the likes of which these four journalists had never seen.

  Everyone fell back from the blast. They were battered by a gust of dust and pebbles. It took them a minute to realize they hadn’t been hit. Without thinking, they ran to the other side of the street. On the asphalt beyond the median they saw a body. They went up to it, and Mahmoud touched it with his hand. The body suddenly moved. They lifted the man to his feet, and Mahmoud recognized him at once. It was Hadi the junk dealer, Hadi the liar, as the customers in Aziz’s coffee shop called him. Hadi looked at their faces in horror, brushed their hands off his body, and hurried away, ignoring their calls to stop because he might have a serious injury.

  They didn’t see anything else. There didn’t seem to be any victims from this explosion. The bomber who was driving the garbage truck had probably been vaporized. That’s what they told themselves when they saw the hotel staff coming out to the forecourt and heard the sirens of the police cars. They preferred to walk away toward Bab al-Sharqi.

  When they reached Nasr Square, Zaid Murshid and Adnan al-Anwar took a bus toward Bab al-Sharqi. Farid said he preferred to take a taxi. He was troubled and confused, and the stupor he was in when he left the secret bar had completely lifted.

  “You could be dead now. You were eager to keep chatting. Your wonderful stories saved you, my friend,” said Mahmoud, with a stutter and dramatic pauses between the sentences, rather like the way Saidi spoke. Farid widened his eyes in a daze, maybe because what Mahmoud had said was true.

  Farid left, and Mahmoud felt he had enough energy to walk all the way to the Orouba Hotel. He took out a cigarette and put it to his lips but didn’t light it. He felt strangely relaxed despite the disaster that had taken place before his eyes but didn’t bother to examine this apparent contradiction. He remembered a single phrase and repeated it to himself. The phrase caught his imagination. He took out his digital recorder:

  “Be positive. Be a positive force and you’ll survive. Be positive. Be a positive force and you’ll survive.”

  He repeated the words several times like someone obsessed, until he noticed that the batteries in the recorder were dead.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BODY

  1

  “GET UP, DANIEL,” Elishva shouted. “Get up, Danny. Come along, my boy.”

  He stood up immediately. So this was the command that the dead boy with the silver bangles in the cemetery in Najaf had talked about the night before. With her words the old woman had animated this extraordinary composite—made up of disparate body parts and the soul of the hotel guard who had lost his life. The old woman brought him out of anonymity with the name she gave him: Daniel.

  Daniel saw the old woman standing in the upstairs room that had collapsed. Wisps of gray hair stuck out from under the black headband she had tied loosely around her small head. She was wrapped tightly in a dark woolen jacket with torn sleeves, and at her feet the molting gray cat looked at Daniel with wide, frightened eyes, mewing softly as if talking to itself. It was almost six o’clock in the morning, and the air was very cold. The sounds coming from outside were still faint; the daytime bustle hadn’t begun yet. Hadi the junk dealer, asleep in his room and in pain, wouldn’t wake up till noon.

  Daniel walked over piles of bricks to what had been the floor of the room before it collapsed. He followed the old woman and her cat downstairs.

  Elishva put the heater close to Daniel in the sitting room, then went away for a few minutes and came back with a creased white shirt, an old green sweater, and a pair of jeans, all smelling strongly of mothballs. She had taken the clothes from Daniel’s chest of drawers, where they had been kept for many years. She threw the clothes at him and told him to put them on. Before leaving him to himself, she gave him a final glance. She didn’t ask him anything—she had promised her patron saint that she wouldn’t ask too many questions. All this time she had left her thick glasses dangling from her neck, but she still knew this man didn’t look much like Daniel. No matter. Not many people came back looking the same as when they left. She had heard enough stories to explain the differences and the changes—stories told by a succession of women ravaged by the effects of time and by the realization that they would never again see the missing faces they remembered so well. What was happening was a miracle, she believed, and it was hard to predict where it might lead. She was preparing to remove the big picture of the saint from the wall and stash it away in some corner of the house. Maybe she would put it in one of the dusty rooms on the upper floor. With his beautiful eyes and his white horse, Saint George could watch the specks of dust come in through the cracks in the windowpanes overlooking the street. He would regret ignoring her all those years and failing to recognize that, given the depths of her despair, it was time the Lord and His holy images listened to the bleating of His lost sheep.

  Elishva left the strange, naked man staring at the walls and furniture. Daniel stood up and looked at the pictures—one of a man in his fifties with a thin black mustache and wearing a Western-style suit, another of a clean-shaven young man with thick hair and big sideburns. His sleepy, cloudy eyes were looking away from the camera. Daniel moved closer to this picture. It must have been taken twenty years earlier. He noticed the reflection of his own face in the glass. It rather surprised him—this was the first time he had recognized himself. He ran his finger over the stitches on his face and neck. He looked very ugly. How come the old woman didn’t seem startled by his dreadful appearance? He moved on to another picture. It was a warrior-saint on a white horse, thrusting his lance into the throat of a mythical dragon. He studied it. The saint’s face was soft and gentle and beautiful, like the holy men in all icons. The old woman was inside, making something for breakfast. He could hear the clatter of pots as she went about her business. Slowly, he put on the three garments. They fit him perfectly. He went back to look at his reflection in the picture of Daniel Tadros Moshe and noticed, even though it was a black-and-white photograph, that Daniel was wearing the same clothes: a white
shirt with a wide, slightly raised collar under a V-neck sweater. Apart from the crude stitches on his face and neck, he looked almost like him. The old woman had had that in mind. Given that her sight was definitely weak, when she came back into the sitting room she would see only what she wanted to see.

  Daniel turned his attention to the picture of the martyred saint, studying it in the daylight streaming in through the window. He noticed the skill with which the artist had rendered the folds in the bright-red cloak that fluttered behind the strapping warrior-saint. It was a wonderful picture of a handsome saint with delicate lips, and now those lips began to move.

  “You have to be careful,” it said.

  The saint’s lips really were moving.

  “She’s a hapless old woman. If you harm her or make her sad, I swear I’ll plunge this lance in your throat.”

  2

  The new version of Daniel slept on the sofa in the sitting room. Elishva covered him with a thick duvet and left him, to resume her daily chores, which usually meant cleaning things she had already cleaned, dusting the furniture, the icons, and the pictures, and sweeping the courtyard—that took up half her day.

  The cat escaped once more to the roof and looked out over the courtyard of Hadi’s dilapidated house. Hadi scratched his head in puzzlement and looked all over the place for the body he had made. He imagined finding it hanging from a wall or hovering in that morning’s pure blue sky.

  Despite the pains in his joints and his head, Hadi went outside and looked up and down the lane for a sign that something strange had happened, but he wasn’t willing to stop any of his neighbors to ask, “Excuse me, have you seen a naked corpse walking down the street?”