“Are you deaf, or what?”
A pudgy form straddled my path. My clouded vision prevented me from recognizing the interloper right away. He spread out his arms, inadvertently displaying his oversized belly. “It’s me,” he said.
It was as if an oasis had emerged out of my delirium. I don’t think I’ve ever known such a sensation of relief or felt so happy. The smiling man before me brought me back to life, revived me, became at once my only recourse and my last chance. It was Omar the Corporal.
“You’re amazed, aren’t you?” he exclaimed with delight, turning in a circle in front of me. “Check this outfit. A real knockout, right?”
He smoothed the lapels of his sport jacket and fingered the crease in his trousers. “Not a drop of grease, not a wrinkle. Your cousin is impeccable. Like a brand-new penny. You remember, in Kafr Karam? I always had oil or grease stains on my clothes. Well, since I’ve been in Baghdad, that doesn’t happen anymore.”
All of a sudden, his enthusiasm subsided. He’d just realized that I wasn’t well, that I was having trouble staying upright, that I was on the point of fainting.
“My God! Where have you been?”
I stared at him and said, “I’m hungry.”
11
Omar took me to a cheap eating place. All the while I ate, he said not a single word. He saw that I wasn’t in a position to understand anything at all. I bent over my plate, looking only at the wilted fries, which I devoured by the fistful, and the bread, which I tore apart ferociously. It seemed to me that I wasn’t even taking the trouble to chew the food. The giant mouthfuls flayed my throat, my fingers were sticky, and my chin was covered with sauce. Other customers seated nearby gawked at me in horror. Omar had to frown to make them turn their eyes away.
When I’d finished stuffing myself, he took me to a shop to buy me some clothes. Then he dropped me off at the public baths. I took a shower and felt a little better.
Afterward, with a hint of embarrassment, Omar said, “I assume you have nowhere to go.”
“No, I don’t.”
He scratched his chin.
Overly sensitive, I said, “You’re under no obligation.”
“It’s not that, cousin. You’re in good hands — it’s just that they’re not completely free. I share a little studio flat with an associate.”
“That’s all right. I’ll manage.”
“I’m not trying to get rid of you. I just need to think. There’s no chance I’m going to abandon you. Baghdad wastes no pity on strays.”
“I don’t want to bother you. You’ve done enough for me already.”
With an upraised hand, he asked me to let him give the matter some thought. We were in the street; I was standing on the sidewalk, and he was leaning against his van, his arms crossed and his chin resting on an index finger, his great belly like a barrier between us.
“That’s the way it’ll have to be,” he said abruptly. “I’ll tell my roommate to beat it until we find you something. He’s a nice guy. He’s got family in Baghdad.”
“You’re sure I’m not causing you trouble?”
He straightened up with a thrust of his hips and opened the passenger door for me. “Get in, cousin,” he said. “Things are going to be tight.”
As I hesitated, he grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me into the van.
Omar lived in Salman Pak, an outlying neighborhood in the southeastern part of the city. His flat was on the second floor of a flaking apartment building that stood on a side street overrun by packs of children. The outside steps were falling into ruin, and the doors were halfway off their hinges. In the stairwell, miasmal odors lingered, and the mailboxes hung askew; there were empty spaces where some of them had been wrenched away completely. The cracked stairs mounted into an unhealthy, pitch-black darkness.
“There’s no light,” Omar explained. “Because of thieves. You replace a bulb, and the next minute they rip it off.”
Two little girls, quite young, were playing on the landing. Their faces were revoltingly dirty.
“Their mother’s a head case,” Omar whispered. “She leaves them there all day long and doesn’t care what they do. Sometimes, pedestrians have to bring them in from the street. And the mother doesn’t like it at all when someone advises her to keep an eye on her kids…. The world’s full of lunatics.”
He opened the door and stepped aside to let me enter. The room was small and meagerly furnished. There was a double mattress on the floor, a wooden crate with a little television set on it, and a stool against the wall. A padlocked closet faced the window, which overlooked the courtyard. That was it. A jail would offer its prisoners more amenities than Omar’s studio apartment offered his guests.
“Behold my realm,” the Corporal exclaimed, gesturing theatrically. “In the closet, you’ll find blankets, some cans of food, and some crackers. I don’t have a kitchen, and when I want to shit, I have to suck in my gut to get to the toilet.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the tiny bathroom. “The water’s rationed. It comes once a week, and not much at that. If you’re not here or you forget, you have to wait for the next distribution. Grumbling does no good. In the first place, it’s boring, and in the second, it only increases your thirst. I have two jerricans in the bathroom. For washing your face, because the water isn’t drinkable.”
He opened the padlock, took off the little chain, and showed me the contents of the closet. “Make yourself at home,” he said. “I’ve got to run if I don’t want to get fired. I’ll be back in three hours, four at most. I’ll bring some food and we’ll talk about the good old days. Maybe we can conjure them up again.”
Before he left, he advised me to double-lock the door and to sleep with one eye open.
When Omar returned, the sun was going down. He sat on the stool and looked at me as I lay on the mattress, stretching. “You’ve been asleep for twenty-four hours,” he announced.
“You’re kidding!”
“It’s true, I assure you. I tried to wake you up this morning, but you didn’t budge. When I came back around noon, you were still in a deep sleep. You even slept through our local explosion.”
“There was an attack?”
“We’re in Baghdad, cousin. When it’s not a bomb going off, it’s a gas cylinder blowing up. This time, it was an accident. Some people got killed, but I didn’t look at the figures. I’ll bring myself up-to-date next time.”
I wasn’t feeling great, but I was happy to know I had a roof over my head and Omar at my side. My intensive two-week Introduction to Vagrancy course had done me in. I wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer.
“Will you tell me why you’ve come to Baghdad?” Omar asked, scrutinizing his fingernails.
“To avenge an offense,” I said without hesitation.
He raised his eyes and gave me a sad look. “These days, people come to Baghdad to avenge an offense they’ve suffered elsewhere, which means they tend to mistake their targets — by a lot. What happened in Kafr Karam?”
“The Americans.”
“What did they do to you?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
He nodded. “I understand,” he said, getting off his stool. “Let’s go for a little walk. Afterward, we’ll have a bite in a restaurant. It’s better to chat on a full stomach.”
We walked the length and breadth of the neighborhood, talking about trifles, leaving the main subject until later. Omar was concerned. A nasty wrinkle creased his forehead. He shuffled along with his chin on his clavicle and his hands behind his back, as though a burden were wearing him down. And he wouldn’t stop kicking whatever tin cans he found along the way. Night fell softly on the city and its delirium. From time to time, police cars passed us, their sirens wailing, and then the ordinary racket of a densely populated quarter returned, a din so banal as to be almost imperceptible.