Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

The police had no doubt taken over the neighborhood with the intention of stopping the killing. But the city was a sieve; it leaked everywhere. Murderous attacks were the order of the day. When the authorities plugged one hole, they freed up others that were more dangerous. Baghdad was no longer an urban center; the lovely city I remembered had become a battlefield, a firing range, a gigantic butcher’s shop. Several weeks before the Allied bombardments began, people had still believed a miracle was possible. All over the world, in Rome and in Tokyo, in Madrid and in Paris, in Cairo and in Berlin, there were mass demonstrations and marches — millions of strangers converging on their city centers to say no to war. Who listened to them?

For two weeks, I wandered around in rubble, without a penny and without a goal. I slept anywhere and ate anything and flinched at every explosion. It was like being at the front, with the endless rolls of barbed wire marking off high-security areas, the makeshift barricades, the antitank obstacles against which suicide bombers occasionally detonated their cars, the watchtowers rising above the facades of buildings, the caltrop barriers lying across roadways, and the sleepwalking people who had no idea where to turn but nevertheless, whenever an attack was carried out, rushed to the scene of the tragedy like flies to a drop of blood.

Baghdad was decomposing. After spending a long, tortured time docked in repression, the city had broken from its moorings and gone adrift, fascinated by its own suicidal rage and the intoxications of impunity. Once the tyrant had fallen, Baghdad found much that was still intact: its forced silences, its vengeful cowardice, its large-scale misery. Now that all proscriptions were removed, the city drained the cup of resentment, the source of its wounds, to the dregs. Exhilarated by its suffering and the revulsion it aroused, Baghdad was trying to become the incarnation of all that it couldn’t bear and rejecting its former public image. And from the grossest despair, it drew the ingredients of its own agony.

Baghdad was a city that preferred exploding belts and banners cut from shrouds.

I was exhausted, demoralized, appalled, and nauseated, all at once. Every day, my contempt and my rage rose another notch. One morning, I looked in a shop window and didn’t recognize myself. My hair was bushy, my face wrinkled, my eyes white-hot and hideous, my lips chapped; my clothes left a lot to be desired; I had become a bum.

Now I was sitting on the sidewalk across from the checkpoint. I don’t know how many hours I’d spent in that position when a voice barked, “You can’t stay there.”

The speaker was a cop. It was a few moments before I realized he was addressing me. With a scornful wave, he signaled to me to clear off. “Let’s go, let’s go, move on.” I got to my feet, a little dazed by my nagging hunger. When I reached out a hand for support, I found only empty air. I drew myself up and staggered away.

I walked and walked. It was as though I were marching through a parallel world. The boulevards opened up before me like giant maws. I went reeling along amid the crowd with blurry eyes and shooting pains in my calves. Now and then, an exasperated arm pushed me away. I straightened up and continued on aimlessly.

A crowd gathered around a vehicle burning on a bridge. I passed through the throng easily.

The river lapped at its banks, deaf to the clamor of the damned. A gust of sand-laden wind stung my face. I didn’t know what to do or where to go.

“Hey!”

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t have the strength to turn around; one false move, and I’d collapse. It seemed to me that the only way to stay on my feet was to walk, to look straight ahead, and, especially, to avoid all distractions.

A horn sounded — once, twice, three times. After an interval, running footsteps came up behind me, and then a hand grabbed my shoulder.

“Are you deaf, or what?”

A pudgy form straddled my path. My clouded vision prevented me from recognizing the interloper right away. He spread out his arms, inadvertently displaying his oversized belly. “It’s me,” he said.

It was as if an oasis had emerged out of my delirium. I don’t think I’ve ever known such a sensation of relief or felt so happy. The smiling man before me brought me back to life, revived me, became at once my only recourse and my last chance. It was Omar the Corporal.

“You’re amazed, aren’t you?” he exclaimed with delight, turning in a circle in front of me. “Check this outfit. A real knockout, right?”

He smoothed the lapels of his sport jacket and fingered the crease in his trousers. “Not a drop of grease, not a wrinkle. Your cousin is impeccable. Like a brand-new penny. You remember, in Kafr Karam? I always had oil or grease stains on my clothes. Well, since I’ve been in Baghdad, that doesn’t happen anymore.”

All of a sudden, his enthusiasm subsided. He’d just realized that I wasn’t well, that I was having trouble staying upright, that I was on the point of fainting.

“My God! Where have you been?”

I stared at him and said, “I’m hungry.”

Omar took me to a cheap eating place. All the while I ate, he said not a single word. He saw that I wasn’t in a position to understand anything at all. I bent over my plate, looking only at the wilted fries, which I devoured by the fistful, and the bread, which I tore apart ferociously. It seemed to me that I wasn’t even taking the trouble to chew the food. The giant mouthfuls flayed my throat, my fingers were sticky, and my chin was covered with sauce. Other customers seated nearby gawked at me in horror. Omar had to frown to make them turn their eyes away.

When I’d finished stuffing myself, he took me to a shop to buy me some clothes. Then he dropped me off at the public baths. I took a shower and felt a little better.

Afterward, with a hint of embarrassment, Omar said, “I assume you have nowhere to go.”

“No, I don’t.”

He scratched his chin.

Overly sensitive, I said, “You’re under no obligation.”

“It’s not that, cousin. You’re in good hands — it’s just that they’re not completely free. I share a little studio flat with an associate.”

“That’s all right. I’ll manage.”

“I’m not trying to get rid of you. I just need to think. There’s no chance I’m going to abandon you. Baghdad wastes no pity on strays.”

“I don’t want to bother you. You’ve done enough for me already.”

With an upraised hand, he asked me to let him give the matter some thought. We were in the street; I was standing on the sidewalk, and he was leaning against his van, his arms crossed and his chin resting on an index finger, his great belly like a barrier between us.

“That’s the way it’ll have to be,” he said abruptly. “I’ll tell my roommate to beat it until we find you something. He’s a nice guy. He’s got family in Baghdad.”

“You’re sure I’m not causing you trouble?”

He straightened up with a thrust of his hips and opened the passenger door for me. “Get in, cousin,” he said. “Things are going to be tight.”

As I hesitated, he grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me into the van.

Omar lived in Salman Pak, an outlying neighborhood in the southeastern part of the city. His flat was on the second floor of a flaking apartment building that stood on a side street overrun by packs of children. The outside steps were falling into ruin, and the doors were halfway off their hinges. In the stairwell, miasmal odors lingered, and the mailboxes hung askew; there were empty spaces where some of them had been wrenched away completely. The cracked stairs mounted into an unhealthy, pitch-black darkness.