Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

“Are they coming?” he shouted up to the terrace, where his fourteen-year-old son was stationed as a lookout.

“Not yet,” the boy replied, keeping his hand over his eyes like a visor, even though the sun was behind him.

“What the hell are they doing? I hope they haven’t changed their minds.”

The boy stood on tiptoe, carefully studying the horizon to show his father how conscientious he was.

The Haitems were making them wait. They were an hour late, and still no cloud of dust was rising from the midst of their orchards. The part of the wedding procession that was due to set out from Kafr Karam was ready: Five automobiles, polished and beribboned, were parked and waiting across from the bride’s patio, their doors wide open because of the heat. With an exasperated gesture, the man keeping an eye on the cars shooed away the flies that were buzzing around his head.

For the umpteenth time, Khaled looked at his watch. Disgusted at what he saw, he went up to the terrace and joined his boy.

The Haitems hadn’t invited many people from Kafr Karam. They’d presented a rather short list of handpicked guests, among them the eldest of the tribe and his wives, Doc Jabir and his family, Bashir the Falcon and his daughters, and five or six other notables. My father was not eligible for this honor. Although he’d been the Haitems’ official well digger for thirty years — he’d dug all the wells in their orchards, installed the motorized pumps and the rotary sprinklers, and laid out a great many irrigation channels — he had remained, in the eyes of his former employers, a mere stranger. This casual ingratitude had offended my mother, but the old man, sitting under his tree, couldn’t have cared less. And in any case, it wasn’t as though he owned clothes he could wear to such a party.

Evening crept up on the village. The sky was sprinkled with a thousand stars. The heat nevertheless promised to maintain its siege until late in the night. Kadem and I were on the terrace at my house, sitting on two creaking chairs, a teapot between us. Like our neighbors, we were gazing out toward the Haitems’ orchards.

Swirls of dust lifted by the wind occasionally traversed the whitish trail, but no vehicle turned onto it.

Bahia appeared regularly to see if we had need of her services. I found her a bit nervous and noticed that she kept coming back upstairs to bring us biscuits or fill our glasses. Her little game intrigued me, and soon, by watching the looks she gave us, I realized that my twin sister had her eye on our cousin. She blushed violently when I caught her smiling at him through the window.

Finally, the Haitems’ procession approached, and the village went into a frenzy of car horns and ululations. The streets were jammed with unruly kids; only after much supplication was the first flower-laden Mercedes allowed to pass through the crowd. The Haitems had spared no expense. The ten vehicles they sent were all luxury cars, excessively decorated; they looked like Christmas trees, with their multicolored sequins and spangles, their bright balloons and long ribbons. All the drivers wore identical black suits and white shirts with bow ties. A photographer brought in from the city immortalized the event, his video camera on his shoulder and his every step accompanied by a swarm of children; flashes went off wildly all around him.

Superb in her white dress, the bride issued forth from her family home and was greeted by bursts of celebratory rifle fire. As the procession made a small detour past the mosque before returning to the dirt road, a powerful movement rippled through the crowd in the square. Kids ran behind the vehicles, shouting at the top of their lungs, and the entire throng accompanied their virgin to the outskirts of the little town, joyously kicking stray dogs as they went.

Kadem and I were standing against the railing of the roof terrace. We watched the procession moving away — he captivated by his memories, and I amused and impressed at the same time. Off in the distance, in the growing darkness, we could glimpse the party lights amid the black mass of the orchards.

“Do you know the groom?” I asked my cousin.

“Not really. I saw him at the house of a friend, a fellow musician, about five or six years ago. We weren’t introduced, but he seemed like an unpretentious guy. Not a bit like his father. I think he’s a good match for her.”

“I hope so. Khaled’s a good man, and his daughter’s adorable. Did you know that I had my eye on her?”

“I don’t want to know about it. She belongs to someone else now, and you have to put such things out of your head.”

“I was just saying—”

“You shouldn’t have. Just thinking about it’s a sin.”

Bahia appeared again, her eyes glowing. “Will you stay for dinner with us, Kadem?” she chirped in a quavering voice.

“I can’t, but thanks anyway. The old folks aren’t well.”

“But no, you’re staying for dinner,” I said peremptorily. “It’s almost nine o’clock. Don’t insult us by leaving just as we’re about to sit down.”

Kadem hesitated, pressing his lips together. Bahia’s hands tormented each other as she awaited his response.

“All right,” he said, yielding. “I haven’t tasted my aunt’s cooking in a long time.”

“ I did the cooking tonight,” Bahia declared, crimson-faced. Then she dashed down the stairs, as happy as a child at the end of Ramadan.

We hadn’t finished eating when we heard a distant explosion. Kadem and I left the table to go and have a look. Some neighbors, soon joined by the rest of their family, appeared on their terrace, too. Down in the street, someone asked what was going on. Except for the tiny lights shining through the orchards, the plateau appeared serene.

“It was a plane,” someone cried out in the night. “I saw it come down.”

The sound of running footsteps moved past the house in the direction of the square. Our neighbors started leaving their terrace, eager to hear the news in the street. People came out of their houses and gathered here and there. In the darkness, their silhouettes loomed together distressingly. “A plane crash,” people said, passing the words around. “Ibrahim saw a burning plane crash to the ground.” The square was teeming with curious villagers. The women stayed behind their patio doors, trying to gather bits of information from passersby. “A plane crashed, but very far from here,” they were told reassuringly.

Suddenly, two automobile headlights emerged from the orchards and zoomed toward the trail. The car bore down on the village at top speed.

“This is bad,” Kadem said, watching the vehicle bound and pitch as it hurtled toward us. “This is very bad.”

He made a dash for the stairs.

The car nearly fishtailed as it bounced onto the smaller trail leading to Kafr Karam. We could hear the blasts of its horn, indistinct but disturbing. Then the headlights reached the first houses of the village, and the horn blasts catapulted pedestrians against walls. The car crossed the soccer pitch, braked in front of the mosque, and skidded a good distance before stopping in a cloud of dust. The driver leaped out while people were still running toward him. His face was distraught and his eyes white with terror. He pointed at the orchards and babbled unintelligible sounds.

Another car roared up. Without taking the trouble to get out, the driver shouted to us, “Get in, quick. We need help at the Haitems’. A missile came down on the party.”

People started running off in all directions. Kadem pushed me into the backseat of the second car and jumped in beside me. Three other young men piled in around us, and two more sat up front.