“There wasn’t any rubble in the south. Just wrecked tracks and bodies. Men’s helmets burned onto their heads because of the webbing inside and the coating, the laminate on the inside of the helmet. It just melted onto their skin.”
Othman sat on the couch. He watched the TV’s blank screen while Ratib got up and scanned the DVD rack.
“I need a drink,” Othman said to himself. “Mohammed!”
Mohammed shuffled in from the kitchen. “Stop yelling, pig. If I’d known you had the habits of a Jew, I’d never have brought you into my home.”
“Where’s your bottle?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The good stuff, the Johnnie Walker, not the arak you give your clients. It’s time for a real drink. We could all be dead tomorrow.”
“I should see my God with liquor on my breath?”
“As if your God cared,” said Othman.
“He cares,” said Ratib.
Othman waved him off. “Go get your bottle.”
“You’ll order me now, like I’m your little woman?”
Othman leaned back and gazed soulfully into Mohammed’s eyes: “‘Your yearning shows, whether you restrain it or not, and likewise your weeping, whether or not your tears flow. How many times your composed smile deluded a companion, while between your hips—what was invisible. The heart commanded its tongue and its eyelids and they concealed it, but your body is an informer.’”
Mohammed laughed and rubbed Othman’s shoulders. “Sad bachelor. If you want to drink so bad, why don’t you go down to the Writers Union?”
“I want to drink with my old friend Mohammed and his son-in-law Ratib.”
“I don’t drink,” Ratib said.
“There is a time for your God, and there is a time for your heart,” Othman said. “You’ll have one drink.”
“Alas, my friend,” Mohammed said, throwing up his hands. “I already drank it all.”
Othman closed his eyes and covered them with the fingers of one hand. “‘Father of every perfume,’” he recited, “‘not of musk only, and of every cloud—I do not single out the morning clouds—every man of glory boasts of only one quality, whereas the All-Merciful has joined in you all. While other men are esteemed for their generosity, in your generosity you bestow esteem.’” His eyes opened, peering into Mohammed’s. “‘It is not much that a man should visit you on foot, and return as king of the two Iraqs. For sometimes you give the army that has come raiding to the lonely petitioner who has come begging, and you despise this world as one who has proved it all and seen everything in it—except yourself—perish.’”
Mohammed smiled, but not Othman. There was a sadness in his voice that slowly dissolved his friend’s smile, and brought Ratib back to the stretches of silence that followed the bombs in the south, after the wounded had been trucked away and the dead buried, when they waited for more death to come. The feeling of relief at having survived lent the dread a cutting edge, laced the bitterness with painful sweetness. “Please, beloved and righteous Mohammed, name of the prophet, by the grace of God and by the mercy of God and by the infinite compassion of God, go get your bottle. This may be our last night. The last night for Iraq.”
“There will always be Iraq.”
“Like there will always be Akkadians or Abbasids or Ottomans. A country is a day. Come. Let’s drink like men.”
“Ratib,” Mohammed said, “go upstairs to my office and in the filing cabinet, the tall gray one, open the bottom drawer. There, back behind some blueprints, you will find a bottle of oil to light our lamp tonight. The Johnnie Walker Black.”
“It’s not permitted that…”
“Ratib,” Mohammed snapped. “Your piety is commendable. Go get my bottle.”
Ratib fetched it, and the two older men began to drink. Eventually, after much cajoling, Ratib did too. In the meantime, Thurayya and Warda had returned from putting the children to bed and, seeing the bottle on the coffee table, went into the kitchen. The night passed slowly, the men drank slowly, sometimes going into the kitchen for water or chai or to speak with the women, and sometimes Warda or Thurayya would come into the living room to speak with the men. It was a quiet night, a night of conversations and stories of other wars, quiet but quickened by an unheard buzz. The radio played a low babble behind their talk, old patriotic songs and bullshit state bulletins. Just after midnight, as the men were becoming drowsy, Othman sat up with a start. Then they heard it: the distant chug of antiaircraft fire.
It went on for a while. Othman sat back down. The shooting stopped. Started. Stopped. A distant machine turning off and on, throwing metal into the sky.
Thurayya and Warda told the men good night and went upstairs to bed. Shortly after that, Mohammed told Othman to wake him if anything happened, then went upstairs himself. Eventually Ratib fell asleep in his chair. Only Othman was left, listening alone in the darkness. He had another drink, then another.
He woke, later, to the walls’ dull shaking. The world shuddered once, then again and again. Antiaircraft guns flacked in the distance. There were several more explosions, far but not that far, and more guns. Mohammed came downstairs and looked at Othman. The two men looked at Ratib, still asleep, and went swiftly upstairs to the roof. To the northeast, Baghdad was in flames.
A fireball lit the sky. Then came the boom.
“It’s all in the Karkh.”
“They must be going after the government buildings.”
Tracers cut the sky in loping arcs of red.
“I didn’t hear any planes.”
“No, you wouldn’t. They’re too high. Or stealth jets.”
Another fireball; they counted—one, two, three, boom. Red and yellow light flashed and shifted, the city danced with shadowed fire. They stayed and watched until the bombs then the AA guns stopped. In the east, the sky lightened to a smoky blue.
They went back downstairs and turned on the BBC. George W. Bush’s voice filled the room.
“My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war. These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign…
“I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm… Helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable, and free country will require our sustained commitment. We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization, and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people…
“Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now… so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities… I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half-measures and we will accept no outcome but victory.
“My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail.
“May God bless our country and all who defend her.”
He lay in bed thinking, why them again? The two men, standing over him, one slowly waving his hammer.