And so, when Yaseen finally opened his arms to me, he seemed to be opening up the path that would lead me to retrieve what I wanted more than anything else in the world: my family’s honor.
13
Yaseen and his two guardian angels, Hassan and Hussein, didn’t return to the store. Sayed invited all four of us to dinner at his house to celebrate our reunion and seal our oath; then, after the meal was over, the three companions bade us farewell and disappeared. It would be a while before I saw them again.
I resumed my work as night watchman, which meant I opened the store for the other employees in the morning and closed it behind them in the evening. Weeks passed. My colleagues hardly warmed to me. They said “Good morning” when they arrived and “Good evening” when they left, but nothing in between. Their indifference exasperated me. I tried for a while to gain their confidence; eventually, however, I started ignoring them, too. I still had enough pride to stop myself from foolishly smiling at people who offered no smile in return.
I took my meals nearby, in a restaurant with questionable hygiene. Sayed had made an arrangement with the manager, who ran a tab for me and sent the bill to the store at the end of the month. He was a small, swarthy fellow, sprightly and jovial. We got on well together. Later, I found out that Sayed owned the restaurant, along with one newspaper kiosk, two grocery stores, a shoe store on the avenue, a photographer’s studio, and a telephone store.
At the end of each week, Sayed paid me a good salary. I bought myself various necessities and miscellaneous items with it and socked away the rest of my pay in a leather pouch meant for Bahia; I intended to send her everything I managed to save.
Things fell into place without difficulty. I carved out a little routine, custom-made for myself. After the store closed, I went for a walk in the city center. I loved walking, and there were new spectacles every day in Baghdad. Attacks were answered with barrages of gunfire, raids were carried out in retaliation for ambushes, and the coalition’s response to protest marches was often racist violence. People made the best of the situation. The area where an explosion or summary execution had taken place was barely cleared before the crowd poured back into it. The population was fatalistic, stoic. Several times, I came upon some still-smoking scene of carnage and stopped to ogle the horror until help and the army arrived. I watched ambulance drivers picking pieces of flesh from sidewalks, firemen evacuating blasted buildings, cops interrogating the neighborhood residents. I stuck my hands in my pockets and whiled away hours in this pursuit, inuring myself to the exercise of rage. While the victims’ relatives raised their hands to heaven, howling out their grief, I asked myself if I was capable of inflicting the same suffering on others and registered the fact that the question didn’t shock me. I strolled calmly back to the store and my room. The nightmares of the street never caught up with my dreams.
Around two A.M. one night, I was awakened by muffled sounds. Switching on the lights, I went downstairs to see whether a burglar had slipped in while I was sleeping. There was nobody in the store, and none of the merchandise appeared to be missing. The noises were coming from the area in the back of the store reserved for repairs and off-limits to all nonauthorized personnel. The door was locked from the inside, and I didn’t have permission go in there anyway, so I stayed in the showroom until the intruders departed. The next day, I reported the incident to Sayed. He explained that the technician, the engineer, sometimes came to work at odd hours to satisfy demanding customers, and he reminded me that my duties didn’t extend to the repair shop. I detected a peremptory warning in his tone.
One Friday afternoon, as I was rambling among the palms on the banks of the Tigris, Omar the Corporal approached me. I hadn’t seen him for weeks. He was wearing the same jacket and trousers, which now looked faded, and new, grotesque sunglasses. The front of his shirt, stretched tight over his belly, was splattered with grease.
He started talking right away. “Are you sulking, or what? Every day, I ask for you at the warehouse and the warrant officer tells me he hasn’t seen you. You’re pissed off at me, right?”
“For what? You’ve been more than a brother to me.”
“So why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not avoiding you. I’ve been very busy, that’s all.”
He was uneasy, trying to read my eyes to see whether I was hiding something from him. “I’ve been worried about you,” he confessed. “You can’t imagine how much I regret thrusting you into Sayed’s arms. Every time I think about it, I tear my hair.”
“You’re wrong. I’m doing fine with him.”
“I’d never forgive myself if he got you involved in some shady business…in some…in some bloodshed.”
He had to swallow several times before he could bring up that last bit. His sunglasses hid his eyes from me, but the expression on his face gave him away. Omar was in dire straits, tormented by pangs of conscience. He was letting his beard grow as a sign of contrition.
“I didn’t come to Baghdad to get a job and settle down, Omar. We’ve already discussed that. No use going over it again.”
Omar was far from reassured by my words, which, in fact, offended him. More apprehensive than ever, he clutched at his hair.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go have a bite to eat. On me.”
“I’m not hungry. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been eating much, not since I had that harebrained idea of entrusting you to Sayed.”
“Please…”
“I have to run. I don’t want to be seen with you. Your friends and I aren’t tuned to the same frequency.”
“I’m free to see anybody I want.”
“Not me.”
Nervously squeezing his fingers, he cast suspicious looks all around us before he spoke again. “I talked to an army buddy of mine about you. He’s prepared to take you in for a while. He’s a former lieutenant, a really nice guy. He’s about to start up a business, and he needs someone he can trust.”
“I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
He nodded, but his heart was heavy. “Well,” he said, extending his hand. “If you know what you want, all I can do is let the matter drop. But should you happen to change your mind, you know where to find me. I’m someone you can count on.”
“Thanks, Omar.”
He pressed his chin against his throat and walked away.
After about a dozen steps, he changed his mind and came back. His cheek muscles were twitching spasmodically.
“One more thing, cousin,” he whispered. “If you insist on fighting, do it properly. Fight for your country, not against the whole world. Keep things in perspective; don’t mistake wrong for right. Don’t kill just for killing’s sake. Don’t fire blindly — we’re losing more innocent people than bastards who deserve to die. You promise?”
I said nothing.
“You see? You’re already on the wrong track. The world isn’t our enemy. Remember all the people who protested the invasion all over the world, millions of them marching in Madrid, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, South America, Asia. All of them were on our side, and they still are. We got more support from them than we got from the other Arab countries. Don’t forget that. All nations are victims of the avarice of a handful of multinational companies. It would be terrible to lump them all together. Kidnapping journalists, executing NGO workers who are here only to help us — those kinds of things are alien to our customs. If you want to avenge an offense, don’t commit one. If you think your honor must be saved, don’t dishonor your people. Don’t give way to madness. If I see pictures of you mistaking arbitrary execution for a feat of arms, I’ll hang myself.”