“I never said you were a nutcase, Hussein.”
“Neither have the others. But they think it. You imagine I don’t see that? Before, they used to send me on real missions. Ambushes, kidnappings, executions — I was at the top of the list. Now they let me buy provisions or pick up someone in my old car. When I volunteer for a serious job, they tell me not to bother, they’ve got all the guys they need, and they don’t want to expose our flank. What does that mean, ‘expose our flank’?”
“They haven’t given me anything to do yet, either.”
“You’re lucky, cousin. Because I’m going to tell you what I think. Our cause is just, but we’re defending it very badly. If I laugh from time to time, maybe that’s the reason why.”
“You’re talking rubbish, Hussein.”
“Where’s it getting us, this war? Can you see the end of it?”
“Shut up, Hussein.”
“But I’m speaking the truth. What’s going on makes no sense. Killing, killing, and more killing. Day and night. On the squares, in the mosques. Nobody knows who’s who anymore, and everyone has it in for everyone else.”
“You’re raving….”
“You know how Adnan, the baker’s son, died? The story is, he flung himself heroically against a checkpoint, but that’s a crock. He was sick of all the slaughter. He’d been in action full-time, sniping one day, blowing things up the next. Targeting markets and civilians. And then one morning, he blew up a school bus, killed a lot of kids, and one of the bodies wound up in a tree. When the emergency units arrived on the scene, they picked up the dead and wounded, put them in ambulances, and took them to the hospital. It was only two days later that people on the ground began to smell the dead kid decomposing up in the tree. Adnan happened to be in the area that day — just by chance — and he saw the volunteers pulling the kid out of the branches. I’m telling you, Adnan did a U-turn on the spot. He completely flipped. He stopped being the dedicated warrior we all knew. And one night, he put on a belt stuffed with loaves of bread — baguettes, all around his waist, so they looked like sticks of dynamite — and he went to a checkpoint and started taunting the soldiers. After a bit of that, he suddenly opened his coat and revealed the harness he was wearing, and the soldiers turned him into a sieve. As long as the belt didn’t explode, they kept firing. They used up all their clips and their comrades’ clips, too. Adnan was reduced to a pulp. Afterward, you couldn’t tell the chunks of flesh from the chunks of bread. And that’s the truth, cousin. Adnan didn’t die in combat; he went to his death of his own free will, without a weapon and without a battle cry. He simply committed suicide.”
There was no chance that I was going to stay in Hussein’s company one minute longer. I placed my cup on the low table and made for the door.
Hussein stayed in his armchair. He said, “You haven’t killed anyone yet, cousin. So get the hell out. Set your sails for another horizon and don’t look back. I’d do the same thing if I didn’t have a battalion of ghosts holding on to my coattails.”
I looked him up and down, trying to make him dissolve with my eyes. I said, “I think Yaseen’s right, Hussein. Running errands is all you’re good for.”
And I hastened to slam the door behind me.
I went to look at the Tigris. Turning my back on the city, I fixed my gaze on the water and tried to forget the buildings on the other bank. Kafr Karam occupied my mind. I imagined the sandy stadium where youngsters chased soccer balls; I saw the two recovering palm trees, the mosque, the barber clipping away at the skulls of his clientele, the two cafés majestically ignoring each other, the clouds of dust swirling along the silver-gray desert trails, and then I saw the gap where Kadem and I listened to Fairuz, and the horizons, as dead as the seasons…. I tried to retrace my steps, to return to the village; my memories refused to follow me. The images blurred, stopped, and disappeared under a great brown stain, and Baghdad caught up with me again, with its streets bled white, its ghost-populated esplanades, its ragged trees, and its tumult. The sun beat down like a brute, so close that you could have reached it with a fireman’s hose. I think I’d walked across a good part of the city, but I remembered nothing of what I might have encountered, seen, or heard. I’d been wandering around ever since I left Hussein.
As the river didn’t suffice to drown my thoughts, I started walking again, without any notion of where to go. I was lost in Baghdad, my obsession drowned out by the roar of the void, surrounded on all sides by whirling shadows — a grain of sand in a storm.
I didn’t love this city. For me, it represented nothing. Meant nothing. I traversed it like a land accursed. We were two incompatible misfortunes, two parallel worlds that ran side by side and never met.
On my left, under a metal footbridge, a broken-down van attracted a group of children. Farther off, near the stadium — now fallen silent — some American trucks were leaving a military installation. In the roar of the convoy, Kafr Karam reappeared. Our house was in shadow, and I could see only the indefinable tree, under which no one was sitting anymore. There was nobody on the patio, either. The house was empty, soulless and ghost-free. I looked for my sisters, my mother…and found no one. Except for the cut on Bahia’s neck, I saw no face or furtive shape. It was as though my loved ones, once so dear to me, had been banished from my memory. Something in me had broken and collapsed, burying all trace of my family….
A bellowing truck made me jump back up on the curb. “Wake up, asshole!” the driver shouted. “You think you’re in your mama’s backyard?”
Some pedestrians stopped, ready to gather other rubber-neckers around them. It was crazy, but in Baghdad the smallest incident attracted a huge crowd of spectators. I waited for the truck driver to continue on his way before I crossed the street.
My feet were burning. I’d been pounding the pavement for hours.
I sat down at a table on a café terrace and ordered a soda. I hadn’t eaten all day, but I wasn’t hungry. I was just worn-out.
“I don’t believe it,” someone behind me said.
What joy I felt, what relief, when I recognized Omar the Corporal. His new overalls were stretched tightly across his belly.
“What are you doing in these parts?”
“I’m drinking a soda.”
“You can get a soda anywhere. Why here?”
“You ask too many questions, Omar. I can’t think straight.”
He spread his arms to embrace me and pressed his lips insistently against my cheeks. He was genuinely happy to see me again. Dropping into a chair, he mopped his face with his handkerchief. “I’m sweating like a Camembert,” he said breathlessly. “But I’m truly happy to find you here, cousin. Really.”
“Likewise.”
He hailed the waiter and ordered a lemonade. “So,” he said. “What’s new?”
“How’s Hany?”
“Oh, him. He’s a lunatic. You never know what you’re getting with him.”
“Is he still planning to become an expatriate?”
“He’d get lost in the countryside. That one is a certified city dweller. If he loses sight of his building, he cries for help. He was playing games with me, know what I mean? He wanted to make sure I cared about him…. What’s up with you?”