Roy Scranton - War Porn

That all sounded fine, so far as it went. A bit like planning your own funeral. “Yes.”

“Good. Now we must come to a more urgent topic.”

Salman raised his eyebrows. Here it is, he thought, and struck first: “If I may, sir, I have something to tell you.” Aziz showed no response. Salman went on. “I’ve heard Munir Muhanned may be selling information to the Americans, via an agent in Kuwait.”

“You have evidence?”

“Not yet. But… I have a line. I think one of my colleagues is working with Muhanned’s men to encode the messages.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name?”

“Yes.”

“His name.”

“Yes, Salman.”

“Of course. Qasim al-Zabadi.”

“I see. Well, we’ll take care of it. For now, I need you to deliver a package.” He slid a folded piece of paper across the table. “Go here and ask for Naguib. He’ll have instructions for you.”

Salman palmed the paper. “Is that all, sir?”

“Yes, for now. You have university work, don’t you, that exempts you from emergency mobilization?”

“Of course.”

“Good. You’ll be well placed, if you manage to make it through the next few weeks. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Yes, sir,” Salman said, and left as calmly as he could, elated to have been exempted from reserve service. He’d needlessly used up his “suspicions” about that weed al-Zabadi, but that was fine. There would always be another Qasim.

Ashura had come and gone, unobserved, the Lament of Husayn forbidden on state radio. Qasim got up early all the same and prayed, irritated and guilty, thinking of his mother and Lateefah. Of more interest to the rest of the family—mostly Sunni—was the impending UN vote and the threat of veto, the worldwide protests, and the upcoming deadline. Indeed, the house buzzed like a newsroom. All day long, Al Jazeera and BBC ran on the TV in the living room and Iraqi radio played in the kitchen, while the family talked constantly. The chatter eased and obscured the fear behind their preparations.

The generator had benzine and the lines were hooked up. Extra propane tanks had been bought for the kitchen gas, since no one knew when the filling stations would reopen. The windows were taped. Mohammed had drilled a well, but the foot valve was leaking, so Mohammed’s son-in-law Ratib was out in the front garden trying to fix it. Ratib’s eldest, Siraj, worked in the garden with him, digging a hole for the benzine cans and propane tanks, and little Abdul-Majid, barely out of diapers, pretended to help, poking at the dirt with a stick till Siraj sent him running with a smack. The little one ran in the house wailing, snot-faced, crying for his mother, Warda, who was rifling through the living-room closet collecting candles—citronella candles, scented candles, beeswax candles, all jumbled together in a box.

Warda knelt and wiped Abdul-Majid’s face while he cried and told on his brother Siraj. She kissed his head and gave him some candles to carry, picked up her box, and led him into the kitchen, where Thurayya’s widowed sister, Khalida, was preparing the midday meal: chicken with red rice, salad and pickles, shineena, with golden vermicelli for dessert.

It had been a year since Khalida had come to stay with her sister. She’d once been an editor at a respected publishing house specializing in trade books, and her husband had been a policy coordinator for the National Progressive Front. About four years ago, he’d disappeared, but she kept working, living alone, waiting for him to come home, until one day her spirit just gave out. By the time Thurayya and Mohammed took her in, she was a scarecrow: withered to a stick, hair unbrushed, nails chewed to ragged nubs, darting eyes flashing out at a world full of hidden enemies. She was a bit better now, but the run-up to the war was wearing on her nerves.

“Hello, Auntie,” Warda said.

“God bless,” said Khalida, wiping her hands on a towel. “And what have you got there, little man?”

“Some candles,” Abdul-Majid said, sniffling.

“And what are you going to do with them?”

“We’ll light them with matches.”

“That’s right,” Khalida said. “We’ll light them with matches.”

“And they’ll make light,” he said.

“That’s right! They’ll make light! So that your auntie can see your beautiful face!”

Thurayya turned from her shopping list, warmed by the joy in her sister’s shy voice. She smiled at Khalida, Warda, and Abdul-Majid, her daughter Nazahah sitting next to her slicing cabbage, her precious family, her beautiful home—then scowled as she remembered the snake upstairs.

“Nazahah,” she said, “pay attention to what you’re doing.”

She still couldn’t believe Mohammed had refused to turn his back to the ingrate, brother’s son or no. After all his shiftlessness, all his laziness, and finally this, this disrespect—Thurayya had given up on him. She never thought her sister-in-law Nashwa had been hard enough on the boy anyway, especially after Faruq’s death, and now… staying in Baghdad, leaving his wife in Baqubah, during a war… unimaginable. Then, to talk to her as if she was a child! What did you expect from such a one? Those who haven’t learned from their parents will learn their lessons from the days and nights. And for her own husband to nurse this viper… Mohammed left her no choice but to snub him at every turn, to cast a pall of tension over the house so thick, they’d suffocate till she got her way.

Yet what good was hardening your heart when they’d soon be huddled together praying for mercy? What did you gain by adding trouble to trouble? It was almost enough to make her want to forgive him—but the thought of his smug smile enraged her all over again, and she reminded herself that to show weakness with men was to submit to endless trampling.

“What are you doing?” she yelled at Nazahah. “Cut thin, thin! Shred the cabbage, don’t chop it!”

“Yes, mother,” Nazahah said. She knew Mother wasn’t really mad, not at her, anyway. Thurayya doted on her daughters, and her corrections usually took the form of good-humored exasperation or gentle scolding. Only in the most extreme circumstances did she lose her temper, and when that happened there was no mistaking. Mother would volcano, throwing plates, screaming, turning the house topsy-turvy until the violator collapsed in a shamble of tears. The last time that happened was when Maha got caught with a French magazine—Heaven knows where she got it—full of shirtless male models. “That was so worth it,” Maha said after, her face still puffy and red. They had, Nazahah couldn’t deny, been exceptionally beautiful men.

Nazahah often enough found herself a target for her mother’s irritation, but never her rage. She did what she was told, said please and thank you, and hardly argued with anyone. Her eldest sister, Warda, was well behaved, too, though stubborn as a mule, very much in her mother’s mold. It was poor Maha who was doomed to be the sower of strife: daring, cruel, walking through life with a feather on her head, always fighting the flies in front of her face. She terrorized Nazahah, who cowered before her older sister like a beat dog.

Nazahah’s comforts lay elsewhere. On turning thirteen, she’d fallen in love with God, and since then she’d floated through her days awestruck, contemplative, the world around her a tremulous vision. Every thing, every moment quivered with weight and substance, perfection, symmetry, and beauty, since all was the will of God, the one and only: every thrush, every wren, every cloud, every fear, every slice of cabbage, every word her mother shouted, every shifting emotion vibrating though the house, even the coming war. All. Her only problem was reconciling Michael Jackson, whom she understood to be somehow vaguely yet irrevocably not halal, possibly even haram. She would not let him go, however, and solved her conundrum by ignoring it. Michael and Fatimah sat side by side on her tiny shrine, holding the Prophet between them in harmony.