Roy Scranton - War Porn

The old man laid his stick across his thighs and then his book atop it. It was a large book and its leather was worn by years of handling. He’d written through it many times, each cycle over the one before, until the pages held all he’d ever known or thought or felt—or nearly all. The end was coming, but it wasn’t there yet. There was another sura to write.

He felt for the ribbon between the pages and opened to where he’d left off, his fingers skimming the lines, tracing the scant indentations of yesterday’s pen. In a day it’d be flat like the others and return to blankness, but for the moment it held the impression. He read yesterday’s verses and then again, remembering, reciting, then took the cap from his pen and began on the left his verse for today. He wrote slowly and with great care words he would never see and only briefly know, the same words or different, the one song in many verses.

Sometimes he’d pause and stick his pen in his mouth. He’d jab at the pen with the jerking stub that was all that remained of his tongue, remembering how many years ago, in a dark and stinking hole he could only barely now envision, a cold blade had been forced between his teeth and his mouth had filled with blood.

Qasim took the phone up onto his uncle Mohammed’s roof, where he sat in a plastic chair and turned east to face the prayer call from the loudspeakers of Um Al-Tobool. The sun sank behind him, a red burn against darkening violet, the last light flaming on the mosque’s dual minarets, their paired domes, the delicate twinned crescents.

What would come of it all?

God’s will, as the call closed with the Fatiha: “Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those who have incurred Thy wrath, nor of those who have gone astray.”

Silence opened across the city. A dog barked below. Qasim dialed his uncle Jibril. His cousin Bahira answered, and Qasim asked to speak with his mother.

“Qasim?”

“Peace be upon you, Mother.”

“Upon you be peace, little fox.”

“How are you?”

“Allah carries us in his palms. The children are putting tape on the windows. Izdihar is such a precious lamb, she drags a chair in from the kitchen to stand on. She can’t reach all the way up, so she puts little designs in the corner. She wrote her name on the one in my room. Little Izdihar. Written in tape. Did I tell you Afifah and the children are coming? Your brother Darud, his division is near Basra, they say. Jibril says we will crush the Americans even more quickly than we did last time, God willing. Are you praying, little fox?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Are you coming home for Ashura? Jibril has put his foot down like every year, but Rahimah and I are going to celebrate and it’s for the children, anyway. It’s important. You always tell the story of Ali Husayn so well, little fox. Won’t you be coming home for Ashura?”

“I don’t know, Mother.”

“You’ll be home before the infidel comes, I’m sure.”

“Mother, I need to talk to you about that.”

“What do you need to talk about? Your father, God preserve his soul, would want you home. If not for me, for Lateefah.”

“How is she?”

“Her heart is like fire on you. What do you expect? What’s she supposed to do while you waste your days in Baghdad? She can’t make a child. She can’t make a home.”

“Did she quit her job at the school?”

“No, not yet. But it blackens her face to work like a girl with no husband.”

“Mother, you know I’m working.”

“You left a fine job your father would have been proud of to live like a beggar.”

“Father would want me to finish my degree.”

“Your father knew what needed to be done and did it. He would not have run away from his family. He would never have left me alone as you have done with Lateefah.”

Father would have found a way.

Long ago, Faruq had planned that after Qasim completed his bachelor of science at Baghdad University, he’d be sent abroad for a doctorate. Money was put aside, crucial favors were done for certain well-placed officials. Then came the war with Kuwait. Faruq got Qasim a draft deferment and Qasim finished near the top of his class; few of his peers were so lucky. The peace, though, turned out to be almost as bad as the war: continued bombing and crippling sanctions ruined the already weak economy. Business stopped, trade stopped, the dinar plummeted against the dollar, inflation surged—it was as if Faruq’s savings were being eaten by rats. At the worst of it, they spent their cash in stacks and wads; a month’s salary might buy a chicken or a few dozen eggs. Then, in the purges and paranoia following the Shi’a uprising, Faruq’s delicately nurtured connections died on the vine. Those few friends still hanging on to power wouldn’t stick their necks out. Nevertheless Faruq found a way, somehow, scraping together enough hard cash and finessing enough shady deals to send Qasim to Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. With some help from the school, there was just enough money to get him started; Faruq impressed upon his son the necessity of finding funding.

Qasim had been north only a few gloomy months—cold, humiliating months full of unnerving lessons in the limits of his talent; dismal months of constipation, headaches, and a constantly running nose; lonesome months where the English he so struggled to master always seemed to bend back on his tongue into gibberish; nightmare months where he wandered the streets in a muddle, baffled and awed by the strange stone city around him and the cruel, doughy faces of the Scots who lived there; despairing months where each night, curled under his duvet with the door shut against his roommates, he struggled desperately to keep from weeping, to keep them from hearing him weep, despondent for home and exhausted from working so hard and falling behind and the unending gray skies pissing rain—when at last the phone rang and his mother told him in a stern, quiet voice that his father was ill and the doctors did not expect him to survive the winter.

Qasim flew back to Baqubah, elated to be home until he saw his mother’s haggard face, his father’s withered body. Over the next year, Faruq slowly shrank, crumpling and shriveling in the grip of the cancer. There was no going back to Edinburgh, even if Qasim had wanted to, there was no money left for anything, yet on his deathbed Faruq demanded his son’s promise: finish your schooling. The machines beeped and hissed. Faruq’s dry, fleshless fingers burned in Qasim’s palm. I promise, Father. I promise.

“Do you hear me, Qasim?” his mother shouted. “Are you even listening? Qasim, you must come home!”

“Mother, I’m staying in Baghdad.”

“What? Qasim, you can’t. You must come home.”

“If I want to keep my place here teaching, I have to stay.”

His mother snorted. “Ridiculous boy who thinks he can tell his mother about his great responsibilities. Little boy who can’t even take care of his wife, who isn’t even a father, who leaves his family to be murdered by the infidel.”

“Mother…”

“A fine man, a fine hero, devout, brave…”

“Mother, please.”

“A real Saladin.”

“I’m not coming back to Baqubah. That’s my decision. That’s the end of it.”

“Fine. Then I live with the shame of having given birth to a coward.”

“Mother!”

“At least your brothers are men.”

“Put Lateefah on the phone!”

“Remember, Qasim, that a man who cannot tend his wheat will eat his barley.”

“Mother, put Lateefah on!”

He heard the phone hit the table and his mother curse him as she walked away. A moment later, Lateefah’s voice: “Qasim?”

His knees went weak. His voice went weak. “Lateefah.”