Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

One Friday afternoon, as I was rambling among the palms on the banks of the Tigris, Omar the Corporal approached me. I hadn’t seen him for weeks. He was wearing the same jacket and trousers, which now looked faded, and new, grotesque sunglasses. The front of his shirt, stretched tight over his belly, was splattered with grease.

He started talking right away. “Are you sulking, or what? Every day, I ask for you at the warehouse and the warrant officer tells me he hasn’t seen you. You’re pissed off at me, right?”

“For what? You’ve been more than a brother to me.”

“So why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not avoiding you. I’ve been very busy, that’s all.”

He was uneasy, trying to read my eyes to see whether I was hiding something from him. “I’ve been worried about you,” he confessed. “You can’t imagine how much I regret thrusting you into Sayed’s arms. Every time I think about it, I tear my hair.”

“You’re wrong. I’m doing fine with him.”

“I’d never forgive myself if he got you involved in some shady business…in some…in some bloodshed.”

He had to swallow several times before he could bring up that last bit. His sunglasses hid his eyes from me, but the expression on his face gave him away. Omar was in dire straits, tormented by pangs of conscience. He was letting his beard grow as a sign of contrition.

“I didn’t come to Baghdad to get a job and settle down, Omar. We’ve already discussed that. No use going over it again.”

Omar was far from reassured by my words, which, in fact, offended him. More apprehensive than ever, he clutched at his hair.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go have a bite to eat. On me.”

“I’m not hungry. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been eating much, not since I had that harebrained idea of entrusting you to Sayed.”

“Please…”

“I have to run. I don’t want to be seen with you. Your friends and I aren’t tuned to the same frequency.”

“I’m free to see anybody I want.”

“Not me.”

Nervously squeezing his fingers, he cast suspicious looks all around us before he spoke again. “I talked to an army buddy of mine about you. He’s prepared to take you in for a while. He’s a former lieutenant, a really nice guy. He’s about to start up a business, and he needs someone he can trust.”

“I’m exactly where I want to be.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

He nodded, but his heart was heavy. “Well,” he said, extending his hand. “If you know what you want, all I can do is let the matter drop. But should you happen to change your mind, you know where to find me. I’m someone you can count on.”

“Thanks, Omar.”

He pressed his chin against his throat and walked away.

After about a dozen steps, he changed his mind and came back. His cheek muscles were twitching spasmodically.

“One more thing, cousin,” he whispered. “If you insist on fighting, do it properly. Fight for your country, not against the whole world. Keep things in perspective; don’t mistake wrong for right. Don’t kill just for killing’s sake. Don’t fire blindly — we’re losing more innocent people than bastards who deserve to die. You promise?”

I said nothing.

“You see? You’re already on the wrong track. The world isn’t our enemy. Remember all the people who protested the invasion all over the world, millions of them marching in Madrid, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, South America, Asia. All of them were on our side, and they still are. We got more support from them than we got from the other Arab countries. Don’t forget that. All nations are victims of the avarice of a handful of multinational companies. It would be terrible to lump them all together. Kidnapping journalists, executing NGO workers who are here only to help us — those kinds of things are alien to our customs. If you want to avenge an offense, don’t commit one. If you think your honor must be saved, don’t dishonor your people. Don’t give way to madness. If I see pictures of you mistaking arbitrary execution for a feat of arms, I’ll hang myself.”

He wiped his nose on his wrist, nodded once again with his shoulders around his ears, and concluded: “I’d hang myself for sure, cousin. From now on, remind yourself that everything you do concerns me directly.”

And he hurried away to melt into the confused crowds wandering along the riverbank.

Two months after my conversation with Omar, my schedule hadn’t changed a bit. I got up at six o’clock in the morning, lifted the rolling shutter in front of the store entrance two hours later, posted the previous day’s incoming and outgoing merchandise, and closed the store in the late afternoon. After the departure of the other employees, we locked the door, Sayed and I, and busied ourselves with drawing up a sales balance sheet and making an inventory of new acquisitions. Once we’d assessed the take and made provisions for the following day, Sayed handed me the big key ring and took away a bag stuffed with banknotes. The routine was starting to weigh on me, and my universe was shrinking down to nothing. I stopped going to cafés — stopped going out altogether, in fact. My daily itinerary ran between two points a hundred meters apart: the store and the restaurant. I ate dinner late, bought some lemonade and cookies in the grocery store on the corner, and shut myself up in my room. I spent my time staring at the TV set, zapping mindlessly from channel to channel, unable to concentrate on a program or a movie. This situation accentuated my disgust and warped my character. I became increasingly touchy and decreasingly patient, and an aggressiveness I didn’t recognize in myself began to characterize my words and my gestures. I no longer put up with the way my colleagues ignored me, and I missed no opportunity to make that clear to them. If someone failed to respond to my smile, I muttered “Dickhead” loud enough for him to hear me, and if he had the gall to frown, I confronted and taunted him. But things never went beyond that, and so I was left unsatisfied.

One evening, unable to take it anymore, I asked Sayed what he was waiting for to send me into action. He replied in a hurtful tone of voice: “Everything in its time!” I felt like small fry, like someone who counted for nothing. Just you wait, I thought. I’ll show you what I can do one of these days. For the moment, the initiative didn’t depend on me; I contented myself with chewing over my frustrations and elaborating fantastic revenge schemes, all of which served to enliven my insomnia.

And then a chain of events was set in motion….

After seeing off the store’s last customer, I was pulling down the rolling shutter when two men came up and waved me aside so they could enter. Two other employees, Amr and Rashid, who had been putting up their things and preparing to leave for the day, stopped what they were doing. Sayed put his glasses on; when he recognized the two intruders, he stood up from his desk, opened a drawer, took out an envelope, and propelled it across the table with a flick of his finger. His visitors exchanged looks and folded their hands. The taller of the two was a man in his fifties with a sinister-looking mug resting on his fat neck like a gargoyle on a church. A hideous burn scar extended high enough on his right jaw to cause a slight pucker in his eyelid. The fellow was a downright brute, complete with treacherous eyes and a sardonic grin. He was wearing a leather jacket worn at the elbows and a bottle-green knit shirt sprinkled with dandruff. His companion, thirty-something, displayed his young wolf’s fangs in an affected smile. His casual demeanor betrayed the go-getter eager to go very far very fast, assured by the cop’s badge that he wore. His new jeans were turned up at the ankles, revealing a pair of worn moccasins. He stared at Rashid, who was perched on a stool.