Hassan Blasim - The Iraqi Christ

My wife, my friends and the head of the Association for the Defence of the Unfortunate are all praying for me to sleep and to receive my due in life. They’re right when they feel they are privileged, because those who sleep are kings who are born by day, quietly and in good health, outside the hospital, and they do not know the screams of childbirth. I envy them this peace of mind and graciousness. As for me, you can label me ‘distrustful’, as well as ‘disreputable’, because I can’t submit my spirit to daybreak stealthily and without protection. I’m also faithless, and I intend to announce a new battle with the pharmacy. That’s why I won’t visit the doctor from now on. The trouble is that they stop you drinking alcohol when you’re taking their pills — those insecticides they offer you with a broad grin. The nurse also gave me the telephone number of a ‘suicide paramedic’. Do you think I’m joking? Haven’t you heard of this job? The nurse said, word for word: ‘You can call this number if you feel you’re about to do something dangerous. They’ll come straight away.’ I didn’t believe it when I heard there was an ambulance specially dedicated to the suicidal. But is it to rescue them, or just to satisfy their curiosity, to witness failed attempts at suicide? And what kind of loser would put his head in the noose and then take his mobile phone out of his pocket and call for an ambulance? Okay, okay, okay, I agree to visit the doctor, but on certain conditions: he has to come up with other answers, not the ones I already know. I want convincing answers about my crisis when I wander round the streets at dawn. I want to ask the doctor about that mysterious religious desire that jolts me at such an ungodly hour in the morning.

Thank you, madam. Give me the phone number of your association. Your eyes are beautiful, and this beautiful flower — I mean the earring — is it a daffodil?

Before the doctor was cut in half and burnt the children with his car, I said to him: ‘Doctor, did you know that when I leave the house and the cold air touches my face, I feel this desire? Warm water wells up into my head from unknown springs. I feel lighter and then it’s like I’ve turned into a Buddhist cloud. How can I explain it to you? Look, there’s a seagull snatching a small piece of bread from that group of sparrows and taking it up to the roof of the train station.’

Doctor, I can identify my feeling at that moment as a desire to kiss, to stand in front of the station gate like the people who give out free newspapers and adverts, to stand in the way of people in a hurry and to stop them to kiss their hands, their shoes, their knees, their bags. And if they allowed me to bare their arses for a few minutes, to kiss them too. Excuse me, madam, can I kiss the sleeve of your coat? Please, sir, accept from me this kiss on your necktie. Kisses for free; sad, sincere kisses. And very often, doctor, I don’t just want to kiss people, I want to kiss the vestiges they leave on the pavements: kisses for cigarette butts, for a key that an old woman lost, for the beer bottles the drunks left behind last night, for the numbers on discarded receipts; kisses that combine the maternal instinct with lust, as day and night are combined in my head.

Then suddenly, doctor, these desires evaporate completely, as happens when a clear sky is invaded by a gang of fat and insolent clouds. Something like torture occurs as if a brutal jailor were pulling out my fingernails. Doctor, I feel as if my jaw has turned into an animal’s jaw and a tail has sprouted out of my arse. Doctor, fear runs riot in my throat, which dries up and seeks out a drop of water at any cost, even at the cost of human dignity. Thirst and hatred are mixed up in my head, which turns into a trumpet playing sadistic anthems. So now, all of a sudden, I want to take back those free kisses of mine. I want to cut the balls off that man in a hurry who lights his cigarette at the station gate. I want to dig my nails into the face of that child whose mother is pushing him towards the station. A child to whom they’re teaching travel and fear. Another child, doctor. Another sleepless hiatus between night and day.

Doctor, I was born in Baghdad. My grandfather was a peasant farmer who moved to the city. My grandfather thought the streets were like the waterways in the southern marshes. A car hit him and he was killed. My father was a soldier until he passed away from a stroke. My mother couldn’t read or write. My mother mourned in war and in peacetime. I was sitting one midday in July reading Badr Shakir al-Sayyab’s Rain Song . My brothers had become policemen, jailors and people who pray. So by the rules of authenticity I should write a realistic novel about the life of water, about lamentation and the grandchildren of Ali ibn Abi Talib. I should devote my time to studying tradition in order to understand the endeavours of the lice that make my scalp itch. My grandfather came to the city to carry a picture of the leader. My grandfather who ran away from hunger and mosquitoes.

Doctor, you know there are two types of poison — natural and synthetic — and they are classified according to where they come from or their chemical properties. There are caustic poisons, inflammatory poisons, neural poisons and haematic poisons. The caustic ones damage the tissues directly, the inflammatory ones burn the mucous membranes, and the haematic ones prevent oxygen reaching the blood. I also know that poisons usually reach the body through ingestion, inhalation, stings or sucking. Oleander, jequirity, castor beans, datura, colchicum and hemlock are examples of poisonous plants. Venomous stings and bites are the speciality of scorpions, snakes, stinging fish, and salamanders. The most important symptoms of poisoning, which differ according to how long the poison stays in the body, include the emission of breath with a smell that resembles that of alcohol. You know best, doctor, but let me finish speaking. I was born with this defect — my breath has smelled since I was a child, and the smell is this rotten, vicious tongue. The other symptoms my life has brought me are: dilation and contraction of the pupils, a burning in the throat, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions, delirium, cyanosis of the skin, a defect in feelings of love, fainting or narcolepsy, as well as drowsiness. If someone is poisoned with medicine, you can grill an apple and give it to the victim while he gets to hospital. But cider vinegar is used as an antidote in cases of poisoning with rotten fish or salted mullet or tinned sardines. It is drunk after the stomach has been evacuated through vomiting. There’s no need to panic over bee stings or mosquito bites. We take out the sting and rub the spot with garlic, leek leaves or basil. As for when one human stings another, fellow human, it’s definitely an unfortunate end and we console the victim at the point of death. By that stage not much is needed, just to light a small candle to drive away the demons that might try to tear at the body of the dead, or to blow quickly into the mouth of the dying person, which helps him in those moments to uncover the vast accumulation of delusions by which he lived.

Doctor, I sit in the cafe for hours and hours until my arse hurts. The young woman who was leaning over her papers and writing has gone out to smoke a cigarette in the doorway. Her pen fell when she stood up. I fell in love with the pen, a pure, honest love for a pen lying angry next to the table leg. The pen of a beautiful young woman who’s gone to smoke a cigarette lies there alone, hating its short life. Every movement, doctor, every gesture, however simple or insignificant, gives me the love headache. So I try to look instinctively spiteful. But what does that mean? I don’t know. As you can see, I behave like an alcoholic for whom alcohol no longer holds any pleasure. Didn’t you notice? I’m embarrassed by the idea of these little love stories of mine leaking out to others. Once I told a friend that I thought about the shirt buttons of someone sitting in the cafe more than I did about the country’s wars. I wasn’t pretending to be poetic or mad. But the way he looked at me was like an insult.