The store routine started to seem like a sentence to the gallows. The weeks passed over me like a herd of buffalo. I was suffocating. Boredom was slicing me to pieces. I had long since stopped going to the sites of terrorist attacks, and the sirens of Baghdad no longer reached me. Since I almost never ate, I grew visibly thinner, and every night I lay in bed with my head on fire, waiting to fall asleep. Sometimes, when I was hanging around in the store, I caught my reflection in the shop window, soliloquizing and gesticulating. I felt as though I’d lost the thread of my own story; all I could see was exasperation. At the end of my rope, I decided to talk to Sayed again and tell him that I was ready, that this farce was unnecessary, that I didn’t need to be drawn in any further.
He was in his little office, filling out some forms. After contemplating his pen at some length, he laid it down on a stack of papers, pushed his glasses up on top of his head, and pivoted his chair to face me.
“I’m not trying to string you along, cousin. I’m awaiting instructions in your behalf. I think we have something for you, something extraordinary, but it’s still in the conceptual stage.”
“I can’t wait any longer.”
“You’re wrong. We’re not trying to get into a stadium; we’re at war. If you lose patience now, you won’t be able to keep cool when you have to. Go back to your work and learn how to overcome your anxieties.”
“I’m not anxious.”
“Yes, you are.”
And with that, he dismissed me.
One Wednesday morning, a truck detonated at the end of the boulevard; the explosion leveled two buildings, left a crater two meters deep, and destroyed most of the storefronts in the area. I’d never seen Sayed in such a state. He stood on the sidewalk, holding his head with both hands and teetering as he contemplated the devastation. As the neighborhood had been spared ever since the beginning of hostilities, I assumed that things hadn’t gone according to plan.
Amr and Rashid lowered the metal shutter in front of the store, and Sayed and I immediately drove to the other side of the Tigris. Along the way, he spoke to several “associates” on the telephone, telling them to meet him at once at “number two.” He used a coded language that sounded like a banal conversation between businessmen. We came to a suburban area bristling with decrepit buildings and inhabited by a population abandoned to its own devices; then we turned into a courtyard and parked next to two vehicles that had arrived just ahead of us. Their occupants, two men wearing suits, accompanied us into the house. Yaseen joined us there a few minutes later. Sayed had been waiting for him to begin the proceedings. The meeting lasted barely a quarter of an hour and essentially concerned the attack that had taken place on the boulevard. The three men looked at one another with inquiring eyes, unable to propose an explanation. They didn’t know who had been behind the explosion. It looked to me as though Yaseen and the two strangers were the leaders of the groups that operated in the neighborhoods traversed by the boulevard; the attack had clearly taken all three of them by surprise. Sayed therefore concluded that a new, unknown, and obviously breakaway group was trying to horn in on their territory. It was absolutely imperative, he said, for the other three to identify this group and stop it from interfering with their plans of action and, as a consequence, disrupting the operational schedule currently in force. The meeting was adjourned. The two men who’d arrived before us left first; then Sayed also drove away, but not before consigning me to Yaseen “until further orders.”
Yaseen was not exactly delighted to take me under his wing, especially now that some unknown rivals had encroached on his turf. He contented himself with driving me to a hideout on the north side of Baghdad, a rat hole a little larger than a polling booth, furnished with a bunk bed and a miniature armoire. The place was occupied by a spindly young man with a face like a knife blade, its prominent feature a large hooked nose, whose effect was softened by a thin blond mustache. He was sleeping when we arrived. Yaseen explained to him that he would have to share the place with me for two or three days. The young man nodded. After Yaseen left, my new roommate invited me to have a seat on the lower bunk.
“Are the cops after you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Have you just arrived in Baghdad?”
“No.”
Seeing that I was in no mood for conversation, he gave up. We remained seated, side by side, until noon. I was furious at Yaseen, and also at what was happening to me. I had the impression that I was being tossed about like some worthless bundle.
“Well,” the young man said. “I’m going to buy some sandwiches. Chicken or lamb brochettes?”
“Bring me whatever you feel like.”
He slipped on a jacket and went out onto the landing. I heard his footsteps going down the stairs, and then nothing. I listened closely. Not a sound. It was as though the building had been abandoned. I stepped to the window and watched the young man hurrying toward the square. A veiled sun shed its light on the neighborhood. I felt like opening the window and puking.
The young man brought me a chicken sandwich wrapped in newspaper. After two bites, my stomach tightened. I put the sandwich on top of the little armoire.
“My name’s Obid,” the young man said.
“What the hell am I doing here?”
“Dunno. I’ve been here only a week myself. Before that, I lived downtown. That was where I operated. Then the police raided the place, but I got away. Now I’m waiting to be assigned to another sector, if not to another city. How about you?”
I pretended I hadn’t heard the question.
That evening, I was relieved to see one of the twins, Hussein, turn up. He informed Obid that a car would come to pick him up the next day. Obid leapt for joy.
“And me?”
Hussein favored me with a broad smile. “You? You’re coming with me pronto.”
Hussein piloted a beat-up little car. He kept running into curbs and drove so badly in general that people got out of his way instinctively. He laughed, amused by the panic he was causing and by the things he was knocking down. I thought he was drunk or drugged, but neither was the case; he simply didn’t know how to drive, and his license was as fake as the car’s registration papers.
I asked him, “Aren’t you afraid of getting busted?”
“For what?” he replied. “I haven’t run over anybody yet.”
I relaxed a little once we’d made it out of the heavily populated areas. Hussein was giggling and making jokes. I’d never known him to be like that. In Kafr Karam, he’d certainly always seemed like a nice guy, but a bit slow on the uptake.
Hussein stopped his jalopy at the entrance to a suburb that had been severely damaged by missile fire. The hovels looked deserted. Only after we crossed a kind of line of demarcation did I realize that the townspeople were holed up indoors. Later, I would learn that this was the sign of the fedayeen’s presence. To avoid attracting the attention of soldiers or the police, the local people were ordered to keep a very low profile.
We walked up an alleyway until we reached a grotesque three-story house. The other twin, Hassan, and a stranger opened the door for us. Hussein performed the introductions. The other man was the home owner, Tariq, a pallid individual who looked like an escapee from an operating room. We went to table at once. The meal was sumptuous, but I failed to do it justice. Shortly after nightfall, we heard the belch of a distant bomb. Hassan looked at his watch and said, “Good-bye, Marwan! We’ll meet again in heaven.” Marwan must have been a suicide bomber.