Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

I picked up my bag and followed her along a corridor and then upstairs to the next floor. She let me into a room furnished with a bed and a night table. There was a little television set on a wall bracket and, behind a plastic curtain, a shower.

“Soap, shampoo, and towels are in the closet,” Farah said. “The water’s rationed — don’t use more than you need.” She looked at her watch. “I have to hurry.”

And she left the room.

I stood where I was for a good while, staring at the spot where my sister had vanished and wondering if, somehow, I had made a bad choice. Of course, Farah had always been distant. She was a rebel and a fighter, the only girl from Kafr Karam who’d ever dared to violate the rules of the tribe and do exactly what she wanted to do. Her audacity and insolence obviously conditioned her temperament, making her more aggressive and less conciliatory, but the welcome I’d received disturbed me. Our last meeting had been more than a year ago, when she visited the family in Kafr Karam. Even though she didn’t stay as long as she’d said she would, there wasn’t a moment when she seemed disdainful of us. True, she rarely laughed, but nothing had suggested she’d receive her own brother with such indifference.

I took off my clothes, stood under the shower, and soaped myself from head to foot. When I stepped out, I felt as though I had a new skin. I put on some clean clothes and stretched out on the sponge mattress, which was covered with an oilcloth spread. A nurse brought me a tray of food. I devoured it like an animal and fell asleep immediately afterward.

When Farah returned, the sun was going down. She seemed more relaxed. She half-sat on the edge of the bed and put her white hands around one of her knees. “I came by earlier,” she said, “but you were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“I hadn’t slept a wink for two days and two nights.”

Farah released her knee and scratched her temple. A look of annoyance crossed her face. “You’ve picked a bad time to turn up here,” she said. “Right now, Baghdad’s the most dangerous place on earth.”

Her gaze, so steady a while ago, started eluding mine.

I asked her, “Does it bother you that I’m here?”

She stood up and went to switch on the ceiling light. This was a ridiculous thing to do, as the room was brightly illuminated already. Suddenly, she turned around and said, “Why have you come to Baghdad?”

Once again, there was that hint of reproach.

We’d never been very close. Farah was much older than I was, and she’d left home early, so our relations had remained rather vague. Even when I was attending the university, we saw each other only occasionally. Now that she was standing in front of me, I realized that she was a stranger, and — worse — that I didn’t love her.

“There’s nothing but trouble in Baghdad,” she said. She passed her tongue over her lips and continued. “We’re overwhelmed here at the clinic. Every day, we get a new flood of sick people, wounded people, mutilated people. Half of my colleagues have thrown up their arms in despair. Since we’ve stopped being paid, there are only about twenty of us left, trying to salvage what we can.”

She took an envelope from her pocket and held it out to me.

“What’s that?”

“A little money. Get a hotel room for a few days. I need some time to figure out where to put you up.”

I couldn’t believe it.

I pushed the envelope away. “Are you telling me you don’t have your apartment anymore?”

“I’ve still got it, but you can’t stay there.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t have you.”

“How do you mean? I’m not following you. At home, if someone needs a place to stay, we work something—”

“I’m not in Kafr Karam,” she said. “I’m in Baghdad.”

“I’m your brother. You don’t shut your door in your brother’s face.”

“I’m sorry.”

I looked her up and down. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I didn’t recognize her anymore. She was nothing like the image of her I had in my head. Her features meant nothing to me; she was someone else.

“You’re ashamed of me — that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve renounced your origins. You’re a city girl now, all modern and all, and me, I’m still the hick who spoils the decor, right? Madame is a physician. She lives by herself in a chic apartment where she no longer receives her relatives, for fear of becoming the laughingstock of her neighbors on the other side of the landing—”

“I can’t let you stay with me because I live with someone,” she said, interrupting me curtly.

An avalanche of ice landed on me.

“You live with someone? How can that be? You got married without letting the family know?”

“I’m not married.”

I bounded to my feet. “You live with a man? You live in sin?”

She gave me a dry look. “What’s sin, little brother?”

“You don’t have the right. It’s…it’s forbidden by, by…Look, have you gone mad? You have a family. Do you ever think about your family? About its honor? About yours? You are — you can’t live in sin, not you….”

“I don’t live in sin; I live my life.”

“You don’t believe in God anymore?”

“I believe in what I do, and that’s enough for me.”

I wandered around the city until I could no longer put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t want to think about anything or see anything or understand anything. People swirled around me; I ignored them. I don’t know how many times I stepped off a sidewalk, only to be blown back by a blaring horn. I’d emerge from my personal darkness for a second and then plunge into it again as though nothing had happened. I felt at ease in my black thoughts, safe from my torments, out of reach of troublesome questions, alone inside my rage, which was digging channels in my veins and merging with the fibers of my being. Farah was ancient history. As soon as I left her, I’d banished her from my thoughts. She was nothing but a succubus, a whore, and she had no more place in my life. In our ancestral tradition, when a relative went astray, that person was systematically banished from the community. When the sinner was a woman, she was rejected all the more swiftly.

Night caught up with me on a bench in a hapless square next to a car wash. Suspicious characters of every stripe were loitering about, spurned by angels and devils alike, beached on that square like whales cast out of the ocean. There was a bunch of dead-drunk bums shrouded in rags, urchins stoned on shoemaker’s glue, destitute women sitting under trees and begging with their infants on their laps. This part of town hadn’t been like this when I was in Baghdad before the invasion. The neighborhood wasn’t fashionable then, but it was tranquil and tidy, with well-lit shops and innocuous pedestrians. Now, it was infested with famished orphans, tatterdemalion young werewolves covered with sores, who would stop at nothing.

With my bag pressed against my chest, I observed a pack of cubs prowling around my bench.

A snot-nosed brat sat down beside me. “What do you want?” I asked him. He was a kid of about ten, with a slashed face and streaming nostrils. His tangled hair hung down over his brow like the nest of snakes on Medusa’s head. He had disturbing eyes and a treacherous smile playing about his mouth. His long shirt reached his calves, his trousers were torn, and he was barefoot. His damaged toes, black with dirt, smelled like a dead animal.

“I’ve got a right to sit here, don’t I?” he yapped, meeting my eye. “It’s a public bench; it’s not your property.”

A knife handle protruded from his pocket.