Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

“There’s no light,” Omar explained. “Because of thieves. You replace a bulb, and the next minute they rip it off.”

Two little girls, quite young, were playing on the landing. Their faces were revoltingly dirty.

“Their mother’s a head case,” Omar whispered. “She leaves them there all day long and doesn’t care what they do. Sometimes, pedestrians have to bring them in from the street. And the mother doesn’t like it at all when someone advises her to keep an eye on her kids…. The world’s full of lunatics.”

He opened the door and stepped aside to let me enter. The room was small and meagerly furnished. There was a double mattress on the floor, a wooden crate with a little television set on it, and a stool against the wall. A padlocked closet faced the window, which overlooked the courtyard. That was it. A jail would offer its prisoners more amenities than Omar’s studio apartment offered his guests.

“Behold my realm,” the Corporal exclaimed, gesturing theatrically. “In the closet, you’ll find blankets, some cans of food, and some crackers. I don’t have a kitchen, and when I want to shit, I have to suck in my gut to get to the toilet.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the tiny bathroom. “The water’s rationed. It comes once a week, and not much at that. If you’re not here or you forget, you have to wait for the next distribution. Grumbling does no good. In the first place, it’s boring, and in the second, it only increases your thirst. I have two jerricans in the bathroom. For washing your face, because the water isn’t drinkable.”

He opened the padlock, took off the little chain, and showed me the contents of the closet. “Make yourself at home,” he said. “I’ve got to run if I don’t want to get fired. I’ll be back in three hours, four at most. I’ll bring some food and we’ll talk about the good old days. Maybe we can conjure them up again.”

Before he left, he advised me to double-lock the door and to sleep with one eye open.

When Omar returned, the sun was going down. He sat on the stool and looked at me as I lay on the mattress, stretching. “You’ve been asleep for twenty-four hours,” he announced.

“You’re kidding!”

“It’s true, I assure you. I tried to wake you up this morning, but you didn’t budge. When I came back around noon, you were still in a deep sleep. You even slept through our local explosion.”

“There was an attack?”

“We’re in Baghdad, cousin. When it’s not a bomb going off, it’s a gas cylinder blowing up. This time, it was an accident. Some people got killed, but I didn’t look at the figures. I’ll bring myself up-to-date next time.”

I wasn’t feeling great, but I was happy to know I had a roof over my head and Omar at my side. My intensive two-week Introduction to Vagrancy course had done me in. I wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer.

“Will you tell me why you’ve come to Baghdad?” Omar asked, scrutinizing his fingernails.

“To avenge an offense,” I said without hesitation.

He raised his eyes and gave me a sad look. “These days, people come to Baghdad to avenge an offense they’ve suffered elsewhere, which means they tend to mistake their targets — by a lot. What happened in Kafr Karam?”

“The Americans.”

“What did they do to you?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

He nodded. “I understand,” he said, getting off his stool. “Let’s go for a little walk. Afterward, we’ll have a bite in a restaurant. It’s better to chat on a full stomach.”

We walked the length and breadth of the neighborhood, talking about trifles, leaving the main subject until later. Omar was concerned. A nasty wrinkle creased his forehead. He shuffled along with his chin on his clavicle and his hands behind his back, as though a burden were wearing him down. And he wouldn’t stop kicking whatever tin cans he found along the way. Night fell softly on the city and its delirium. From time to time, police cars passed us, their sirens wailing, and then the ordinary racket of a densely populated quarter returned, a din so banal as to be almost imperceptible.

We ate in a little restaurant on the square. Omar knew the owner. He had only two other customers; one of them, with his wire-rimmed glasses and his sober suit, looked like a young leading man, and the other, a dust-covered driver, never took his eye off his truck, which was parked in front of the restaurant, within reach of a pack of kids.

“How long have you been in Baghdad?” Omar asked.

“About two and a half weeks, more or less.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“In squares, on the banks of the Tigris, in mosques. It depended. Generally, I lay down wherever I was when my legs gave way.”

“For pity’s sake! How did you wind up in such a fix? You should have seen your mug yesterday. I recognized you from a distance, but when I got closer, I had my doubts. You looked as though some fat whore had pissed on you while you were eating her out.”

There he was in all his glory, the Corporal of Kafr Karam. Oddly enough, his obscenity didn’t repulse me as much as usual. I said, “I came with the idea of staying with my sister, at least for a while, but it wasn’t possible. I had a little money with me, enough to make it for a month at most. By then, I thought, I’ll have found some kind of place. But the first night, I slept in a mosque, and in the morning, my money and my belongings were gone. After that, I’ll let you guess.” Then, trying to change the subject, I asked, “How did your roommate take the news?”

“He’s a good guy. He knows what’s what.”

“I promise not to take advantage of your hospitality.”

“Don’t talk shit, cousin. You’re not causing me any hardship. If I were in your situation, you’d do the same thing for me. We’re Bedouin. We don’t have anything to do with these people here….”

He put his joined hands over his mouth and stared at me with great intensity. “Now will you explain to me why you want revenge? And what exactly do you intend to do?”

“I have no idea.”

He swelled his cheeks and let out an irrepressible sigh. His right hand moved over the table, picked up a spoon, and started stirring the cold soup still left in his bowl. Omar guessed what I had in mind. There were legions of peasants streaming in from the hinterlands to swell the ranks of the fedayeen. Every morning, buses discharged contingents of them at the Baghdad stations. Various motivations activated these men, but they all shared a single, blindingly obvious objective.

“I’m in no position to oppose your choice, cousin. No one owns the truth. Personally, I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, and so I can’t lecture you about anything. You’ve suffered an offense; only you can decide what’s to be done about it.”

His voice was full of false notes.

“It’s a question of honor, Omar,” I reminded him.

“I don’t want to quibble over that. But you have to know exactly what you’re getting into. You see what the resistance does every day. It’s killed thousands of Iraqis. In exchange for how many Americans? If the answer to that question doesn’t matter to you, then that’s your problem. But as for me, I disagree.”

He ordered two coffees to gain time and gather his arguments; then he went on. “To tell you the truth, I came to Baghdad to do some damage. I’ve never been able to get over the way Yaseen insulted me in the café. He disrespected me, and ever since, when I think about it — which is to say several times a day — I start gasping for air. You’d think Yaseen made me asthmatic.”