Cars on the other side of the barrier were asking Hussein about the road ahead, and he replied wryly, “There’s always someone who knows the road, and everyone follows him.” A man who opened his car window was taken aback when Hussein yelled to him without warning that they were carrying a corpse, which was why they were in the goods lane. The man tried to avoid looking at them and continued his conversation with his corpulent wife, who watched them out of the corner of her eye. In a wave of black glee, Hussein asked the driver of another small car for an aspirin because the stink of the corpse had given him a headache. The man just fiddled with his steering wheel without replying to Hussein, who said to his siblings, “We have to have some fun. In a few hours we’ll all be dead of cold, or of the smell.” He turned up the volume of his tape player a little and began to drum out the rhythm of the songs. Fatima glared at him, but Hussein didn’t care. Bolbol prayed to all the gods that their task would end successfully, with everyone still sane. No one could predict Hussein’s reactions now, and Bolbol couldn’t complete the journey by himself. He needed Hussein to be in his right mind; he was more than familiar with this other face of his, which sneered at everything. Life had wounded him deeply; he had lost all his dreams, and his present was nothing but a nihilistic wait for nothing in particular. He would always be a private driver for a group of Russian dancers working in a club in Damascus, waiting outside their cheap hotel to convey them to the cabaret, coming back at four in the morning to bring them home again. His life had become one long errand. By day he worked as a minibus driver just to get out of his house.
It wasn’t for this that Hussein had broken with Abdel Latif. He’d dreamed of leading an empire, not of becoming a petty driver for a bunch of women who sometimes ordered him to pull over and negotiate with potential clients on their behalf. In those moments he felt like a disgusting insect or, as his father put it, a cheap pimp. He worked for free for a small, obscure gang that sold things on behalf of a large, well-known gang. They were connected to the Mukhabarat and worked openly to sell Russian escorts, hashish, cocaine, and heroin. But he was on the lowest level in this gang, with no hope of ascending to become a full member. Everything was finished, in his opinion. He was no good for anything anymore.
Hussein, persisting in his drumming, switched to the radio and began to sing along loudly to the Saria Sawas song playing. The solemnity and dignity of the presence of death was dispelled. Fatima looked at Bolbol, hoping perhaps that he would reestablish order. For his part, Bolbol was amused by what he saw and wished he could join in the singing; such futility could only be defeated by song and laughter. Often, he had seen people sitting silent and despondent at an ʿaza, avoiding one another’s gazes so they wouldn’t burst out laughing and ruin the mourning.
They would be waiting a long time if things carried on this slowly. The agents at the checkpoint were scrutinizing everything: identity cards, bags, cups. They examined the cars carefully, shooting out unexpected questions about the passengers’ occupations and intended destinations, questions that were normal in themselves but disconcerting when asked by an armed group of men more like a mob than an official squadron. They stood at the checkpoints with their fingers on their triggers. Their clothes and headscarves denoted sectarian affiliations; Hezbollah badges mixed with the green badges of the Iraqi Shiʿite groups who were working with the death squads established by the regime. There were no curbs on their behavior; they were entitled to pass judgment on any person for any infringement, execute them, and throw them in a mass grave, or else just leave them where they fell for their family to pick up and take away.
After an hour and a half of waiting, the minibus pulled up to the checkpoint proper. The three siblings didn’t speak until spoken to. The bearded agent who poked his head into the van was astonished at the body. Hussein explained everything in a defeated tone, seeking a little more sympathy on account of the rapidly disintegrating corpse. Abdel Latif’s tissues had slackened, and his pores had fissured; his lower half had turned blue, his stomach had inflated, and the stench was overpowering. The agent asked them to pull over on the right and get out of the vehicle. Half an hour later they were a pitiful sight; Fatima was trembling with cold, and Hussein wore an unusually imploring look. No one spoke to them or asked any questions. This limbo of waiting could be so perilous; sometimes, soldiers would drag young men off the buses and spirit them away into nearby buildings before allowing the vehicles to pass through.
Of course, this checkpoint, like so many others, seemed less like a proper checkpoint than a small barracks surrounded by tanks. A short improvised tower was positioned on the barracks roof with snipers stationed inside, observing everyone, perpetually ready to kill. There was thunder in the air, and suddenly it was no longer distant thunder but right on top of them. The storm was approaching, but time was crawling by as usual. Bolbol found himself imagining his family stuck in place for a whole day, or a whole week. It was becoming impossible to believe that their father’s body merited such risk and sacrifice, that it should be treated so respectfully, when death reaped hundreds every day throughout the length and breadth of the country. Who could possibly make such an argument now?
Bolbol exchanged a glance with Hussein that they both understood. Bolbol approached another agent guarding the checkpoint who was smoking calmly and tried to explain their situation to him. They needed to reach Anabiya before midnight in order to be rid of the pestilential corpse. The agent referred him back to the officer inside the building, adding that they couldn’t pass without his permission. The corpse had become an object of revulsion without an identity; it wasn’t merchandise and it wasn’t a person. After death a person becomes a third sort of thing, neither animal nor mineral. Records are closed on their account; they are struck out of the family ledgers with a red line; their belongings are thrown into garbage bags or picked over by scavengers from near and far. No one asks old bedsheets about the warmth of the bodies they once protected in the heat of passion. After the file is closed on a dead person, all these little details are shed piece by piece by the memories of the living. Everything is consigned to oblivion and nothingness.