A rusty iron wire encased a lamp hanging from the ceiling of the khan. It swayed above the head of the Kurdish carrier who was responsible for lighting and extinguishing it. Three other Kurds from Irbil and two from Basra worked as gutter cleaners. They often fought over this miserable lamp before falling off to sleep and filling the room with their moans and snores. Their moaning was sometimes interrupted by the sound of cracking bones, insults, and swearing. When they came back to this place at night shivering, coughing, and spitting, they would sit in a corner and smoke their cheap cigarettes. They usually hunched on their legs, like balls, their teeth crackling from the cold and their behinds numb from the humidity. Sometimes they brought a prostitute, who was even more miserable than they, paler and smellier, and with her hair all stuck together. She’d often be cross-eyed, stammering, lame, or crazy. They’d sleep with her in the same dirty bed, one at a time, laughing like mad, shaking their hands and their pale faces. Once done, they’d shout and jump like monkeys around her, give her money, then one after another go to take a piss.
At dawn Ismail would leave the khan with those failed, broken creatures, exiting from the mangled wooden door of the hotel. They’d all move watchfully, a pack of people who had known nothing but hardship, grief, and moral depravity, swearing, fighting, and stealing. If the police arrested Ismail — for theft or drunkenness or skipping out on his restaurant bill, teasing a girl, or fighting with a prostitute — he would spend the night at the police station, but the inhabitants of the khan would do their duty toward him. They’d treat him with great kindness and generosity, give him money, and bring him food and drink. When he returned to the khan they’d steal his food, drink, and money, and return to their usual selves — dirty, shabbily dressed, hungry, poor, nasty, and most often unemployed. As soon as one of them found work he’d disappear for a while only to return when he lost his job.
Ismail appeared one day in Mahallet al-Sadriya selling pornographic photographs and pictures of Turkish strippers after having lost his municipal job. He went to Mahallet al-Sadriya every day, in fact, for a particular client who was addicted to this type of photograph. No one paid more money for those photographs than Shaul, though the transactions were never straightforward and were concluded only after lengthy haggling and aggravating delays. Still, he always ended up paying the price Ismail was asking. Lately Ismail had been paying more frequent visits to Shaul’s shop and was spending more time there. He even received money for some photographs he’d brought from one of the Kurds in the khan. The Kurd was a baggage handler at one of Baghdad’s western stations, where he carried the bags of travelers going to Mosul, Basra, or Turkey. Some travelers gave him money, others food, and others gave him dirty photographs to sell. This Kurd was the wealthiest man in the khan. He brought woolen clothes and rare and unique merchandise from Dahuk. He smuggled hash that Ismail ended up getting most of the time, either by raiding his stash at night with Abboud’s help, or by buying it for resale to Shaul.
One day Shaul threw his assistant Salim out of his shop. Salim was a Jew who wore his glasses low on his nose and looked over them at people like a hedgehog. He also spoke through his nose. Salim did not like Ismail. He thought he was a swindler who wanted to take his employer’s money in exchange for worthless paper photographs. This Saturday morning Salim was thrown from the shop and fell on his face in the street. His glasses fell off his nose. Shaul came out behind him steaming with anger. “You betrayed me, Salim! I made you into a human being. Why did you betray me?”
A couple of days later Shaul was wondering who would replace Salim in the shop. He needed another person, but this time things were different. He was free to choose someone he could mold with his own ideas and principles. His wife had imposed Salim on him because he was a relative of hers. Shaul was convinced that only ideas last, that everything else was futile. If he succeeded in imbuing someone with his ideas and principles he would be able to control and subdue him, if not by making him aware of the social difference that separated them then by their shared ideas. He did not want someone with a set way of thinking, someone who would not acknowledge his debt to him; he wanted someone green, a blank page that he could fill with ideas of his choosing and so induce to think the way he wished. One fine day Ismail entered Shaul’s shop with the pornographic photographs deep in the pocket of his shabby, well-worn black jacket. He was disheveled, his hands red from scratching bug bites, and his shirt collar dirty and smelling of cheap arrack. He sat on a clean sofa in a remote corner of the shop filled with shiny new merchandise. He blew his nose in his hand and wore a sad look on his face. Shaul stared at this miserable excuse for a man lurking in the corner. He moved closer until he sat facing him and began to speak softly. Meanwhile Ismail was fingering the smooth photographs in his pocket, trying to judge when might be the right moment to take them out and wondering all the while why Shaul had not asked about them. But Shaul was talking about a totally different subject. He wanted Ismail to understand, he said, that he was a victim of social exploitation, that his adversity was only a temporary situation, and that he would be able to pull him out of it, change him, and provide him with a new appearance. He also told him that nothing in life was permanent, that everything was subject to the vicissitudes of time, a difference in the availability of money, and one’s ability to make and spend money. He told him that he, Ismail, would be a different person if he filled his pockets with money, if he worked hard and joined the social order.
Shaul was promising Ismail something concrete, something that would happen to him in this life, something he could touch and feel with his own hands. He told him that his poverty was a historical poverty, not caused by him or his family but the result of History. Ismail was shocked when he heard this and immediately pulled a knife out of his pocket and told him, “Show me History and I will rip out his guts.” Shaul smiled and replied, “We have to correct History, not kill it.” He uttered those words then smacked his tongue and wet his lips. His eyes gleamed from behind his thick glasses. They were flat, lifeless eyes, moving left and right like plastic beads, and the thick black plastic frames hid his eyebrows.
Shaul’s words destroyed the sturdy wall behind which Ismail used to hide. Such serious ideas sent him reeling, though he understood nothing from them except that he could overpower people. He understood only the essence of those words, and, according to Ismail, the essence was that he would get rid of the rags he was wearing, become clean and tidy, and acquire importance in society as others had done. He understood that he’d abandon his unruly life and live an organized one. He’d have to give up the freedom that led him only to misery and enter a life of slavery that would eventually make him a master. Since he had already tried the first kind of life, he was willing with all his heart to try a new one. He was filled with a strong desire to be wealthy and famous, meet clean women, and gain false honor— and the one to provide him with all this was, his savior, Shaul.