Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

Evoking the shaming incident in Kafr Karam made Omar ill at ease. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. “One thing I’m sure of: My ass is going to have that offense stuck to it until the insult is washed away in blood,” he declared. “There’s no doubt about it — sooner or later, Yaseen will pay for it with his life.”

The waiter placed two cups of coffee next to our plates. Omar waited to watch him withdraw before reapplying the handkerchief to his face and neck. His plump shoulders vibrated. He said, “I’m ashamed of what happened in the Safir. Staying drunk did no good, none at all. I decided I had to get lost. I was all psyched up. I wanted to turn the country into an inferno from one end to the other. Everything I put in my mouth tasted like blood; every breath I took stank of cremation. My hands were itching for a gun — I swear, I could feel the trigger move when I curled my finger. While the bus was taking me to Baghdad, I imagined myself digging trenches in the desert, making shelters and command posts. I was thinking like a military engineer — you see what I mean? And I happened to arrive in Baghdad the day a false alert caused an enormous crush on a bridge — you remember — and a thousand demonstrators got killed. When I saw that, cousin, when I saw all those bodies on the ground, when I saw those mountains of shoes at the site where the panic took place, those kids with blue faces and their eyes half-closed — when I saw that whole mess, caused to Iraqis by Iraqis, I said to myself, right away, This is not my war. It was a clean break, cousin.”

He brought the coffee cup to his lips, drank a mouthful, and invited me to do the same. His face was quivering, and his nostrils made me think of a fish suffocating in the open air. “I came here to join the fedayeen,” he said. “It was all I thought about. Even the Yaseen thing was deferred until later. I’d settle his account when the time came. But first, I had to come to terms with the deserter in me. I had to find the weapons I’d left on the battlefield when the enemy approached; I had to deserve the country I couldn’t defend when I was supposed to be ready to die for it…. But, hell, you don’t make war on your own people just to piss off the world.”

He awaited my reaction — which did not come — and then rummaged in his hair with a discouraged look. My silence embarrassed him. He understood that I didn’t share his emotions, and that I was solidly camped on my own. That’s the way we are, we Bedouin. When we keep quiet, that means that everything’s been said and there’s nothing more to add. He saw the mess on the bridge again; I saw nothing, not even my father falling over backward. I was in the postshock, postoffense period; it was my duty to wash away the insult, my sacred duty and my absolute right. I didn’t know myself what that represented or how it was constructed in my mind; I knew only that an obligation I couldn’t ignore was mobilizing me. I was neither anxious nor galvanized; I was in another dimension, where the only reference point I had was the certainty that I would carry out to the fullest extent the oath my ancestors had sealed in blood and sorrow when they placed honor above their own lives.

“You listening to me, cousin?”

“Yes.”

“The actions of the fedayeen are lowering us in the eyes of the world. We’re Iraqis, cousin. We have eleven thousand years of history behind us. We’re the ones who taught men to dream.”

He drained his cup in a single swallow and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I’m not trying to influence you.”

“You know very well that’s impossible.”

Night had fallen. A hot wind hugged the walls. The sky was covered with dust. On an esplanade, some kids, not at all bothered by the darkness, were playing soccer. Omar trudged alongside me, his heavy feet scraping the ground. When we reached a streetlight, he stopped to look me over.

“Do you think I’m putting my nose in something that’s none of my business, cousin?”

“No.”

“I wasn’t trying to put anything over on you. I’m not on anybody’s side.”

“That didn’t even occur to me.”

I looked him over in turn. “Life has rules, Omar, and without some of them, humanity would return to the Stone Age. Sure, they don’t all suit us, and they aren’t infallible or even always reasonable, but they help us hold a certain course. You know what I’d like to be doing right now? I’d like to be home in my room on the roof, listening to my tinny radio and dreaming about a piece of bread and some cool water. But I don’t have a radio anymore, and I couldn’t go back home without dying of shame before I crossed the threshold.”

Omar worked as a deliveryman for a furniture dealer, a former warrant officer he’d known in the army. They’d met by chance in a woodworker’s shop. Omar had recently landed in Baghdad, and he was looking for some comrades from his unit, but the addresses he had were no longer current; many of the men had moved away or disappeared. Omar was about to offer his services to the woodworker, when the warrant officer came in to order some tables and cupboards. The two of them, Omar and the warrant officer, had flung themselves into each other’s arms. After the embraces and the customary questions, Omar revealed his situation to his former superior. The warrant officer wasn’t exactly flush with money and didn’t really have enough business to afford new hires, but team spirit won out over bottom-line considerations, and the deserting Corporal was engaged on the spot. His employer provided Omar with the blue van he drove and devotedly maintained and also found him the studio flat in Salman Pak. The salary Omar received was modest and sometimes several weeks late, but the warrant officer didn’t cheat. Omar knew from the beginning that he was going to work hard for peanuts, but he had a roof, and he wasn’t starving. When he compared his situation with what he saw around him, he could only praise his saints and marvel at his luck.

Omar took me to see his employer, with the idea of angling for a job. He warned me beforehand that this was going to be a complete waste of effort. Business was in general decline, and even the people with the deepest pockets were having trouble feeding their families. Everyone had too many other priorities, too many pressing concerns, to think about buying a new sideboard or changing armchairs. The warrant officer, a long-limbed personage who resembled a wading bird, received me with great respect. Omar introduced me as his cousin and spoke highly of merits that were not necessarily mine. The warrant officer nodded and raised admiring eyebrows, his smile suspended on his face. When Omar came to the reasons for my presence in the warehouse, the warrant officer’s smile went away. Without saying a word, he disappeared through a concealed door and returned with a register, which he displayed under our noses. The lines of writing, in blue ink, went on and on, but not the lines of figures, which were underlined in red. The payments received were almost nonexistent, and as for the section in green ink with the heading “Orders,” it was as succinct as an official bulletin.

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “We’re high and dry.”

Omar didn’t insist.

He called a few friends on his mobile phone and dragged me from one end of the city to the other; no potential employer we spoke to would so much as promise to let us know if an opening should occur. Our failures depressed Omar; as for me, I had the feeling that I was overburdening him. After the fifth day of not being able to get a foot in any door, I decided not to bother him further and said so.