Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

From my deep, echoless sleep, I kept only the stabbing pain that racked my joints. I wasn’t overjoyed to recognize the room where I’d been wasting away for weeks, waiting for I knew not what. I felt like the smallest in a set of Russian nesting dolls; the room was the next-size doll, the house the next after that, and so on, with the foul-smelling neighborhood as the lid. I was inside my body like a rat in a trap. My mind raced in every direction but found no way out. Was this, I wondered, claustrophobia? I needed to come unglued, to explode like a bomb, to be useful somehow.

I staggered to the bathroom. The terry-cloth towel, filthy beyond expression, hung from a nail. The windowpane had last been touched by a cleaning rag several decades ago. The place smelled like stale urine and mildew; it made me nauseous.

On the dirty sink, a battered piece of soap lay next to an intact tube of toothpaste. The mirror showed me the haggard face of a young man at the end of his rope. I looked at myself the way you look at a stranger.

There was no water. I went downstairs. Hussein was sunk in his armchair, watching an animated film on TV and chuckling as he nibbled roasted almonds from a plate beside him. On the screen, a band of alley cats, fresh from their garbage cans, were mistreating a terrified kitten. Hussein relished the fear the little animal embodied, lost in the suburban jungle.

“Where are the others?” I asked him.

He didn’t hear me. I went to the kitchen, made myself some coffee, and returned to the living room. Hussein had switched channels and was now absorbed in a wrestling match.

“Where are Hassan and Tariq?”

“I’m not supposed to know,” he grumbled. “They said they’d be back before nightfall, and they’re still not here.”

“Has anyone called?”

“No one.”

“You think something’s gone wrong?”

“If my brother had run into problems, I would have felt it.”

“Maybe we should call Yaseen and find out what’s up.”

“Forbidden. He’s always the one who does the calling.”

I glanced out the window. The streets were bathed in the bright morning light. Soon people would emerge from their miserable houses and kids would invade the neighborhood like crickets.

Hussein manipulated the television’s remote control, making a sequence of different broadcasts flash by on the screen. None of the programs interested him. He fidgeted in his chair, but he didn’t turn off the TV. Then, abruptly, he said, “May I ask you a question, cousin?”

“Of course.”

“You mean it? You’ll answer me straight out?”

“Why not?”

He threw back his head and laughed that absurd, cringe-inducing laugh of his, which I was really starting to loathe; as usual, it seemed to have no cause and come from nowhere. It was all I heard, day and night, because Hussein never slept. He was in his armchair round the clock, clutching the remote control like a magic wand, changing worlds and languages every five minutes.

“So you’ll be frank?”

“I’ll do my best.”

His eyes gleamed in a funny way; I felt sorry for him. He said, “Do you think I’m…nuts?”

His throat tightened on the last word. He looked so wretched, I was embarrassed.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“That’s not an answer, cousin.”

I started to avert my eyes, but his dissuaded me. “I don’t think you’re…nuts,” I said.

“Liar! In hell, you’re going to hang from your tongue over a barbecue. You’re just like the others, cousin. You say one thing and think the opposite. But don’t kid yourself — I’m not crazy. I’ve got a full tank and all the accessories. I know how to count on my fingers, and I know how to read people’s eyes to see what they’re hiding from me. It’s true that I can’t stop myself from laughing, but that doesn’t mean I’ve flipped out. I laugh because…because…well, I don’t know exactly why. Some things can’t be explained. I caught the laughing bug watching that simpleton Adel get all frazzled because he couldn’t find the button to blow himself up. I wasn’t far away, and I was observing him as he mingled with the other candidates in front of the police recruiting center. At that moment, I was in a panic. And when the cops fired on him and he exploded, it was as if I disintegrated along with him. He was someone I really liked. He grew up on our patio. I sincerely mourned him, but then the mourning was over, and now, whenever I picture him stabbing at his explosive belt and cursing, I burst out laughing. It was so insane…but that doesn’t make me a nutcase. I can count on my fingers, and I can tell what’s right and wrong.”

“I never said you were a nutcase, Hussein.”

“Neither have the others. But they think it. You imagine I don’t see that? Before, they used to send me on real missions. Ambushes, kidnappings, executions — I was at the top of the list. Now they let me buy provisions or pick up someone in my old car. When I volunteer for a serious job, they tell me not to bother, they’ve got all the guys they need, and they don’t want to expose our flank. What does that mean, ‘expose our flank’?”

“They haven’t given me anything to do yet, either.”

“You’re lucky, cousin. Because I’m going to tell you what I think. Our cause is just, but we’re defending it very badly. If I laugh from time to time, maybe that’s the reason why.”

“You’re talking rubbish, Hussein.”

“Where’s it getting us, this war? Can you see the end of it?”

“Shut up, Hussein.”

“But I’m speaking the truth. What’s going on makes no sense. Killing, killing, and more killing. Day and night. On the squares, in the mosques. Nobody knows who’s who anymore, and everyone has it in for everyone else.”

“You’re raving….”

“You know how Adnan, the baker’s son, died? The story is, he flung himself heroically against a checkpoint, but that’s a crock. He was sick of all the slaughter. He’d been in action full-time, sniping one day, blowing things up the next. Targeting markets and civilians. And then one morning, he blew up a school bus, killed a lot of kids, and one of the bodies wound up in a tree. When the emergency units arrived on the scene, they picked up the dead and wounded, put them in ambulances, and took them to the hospital. It was only two days later that people on the ground began to smell the dead kid decomposing up in the tree. Adnan happened to be in the area that day — just by chance — and he saw the volunteers pulling the kid out of the branches. I’m telling you, Adnan did a U-turn on the spot. He completely flipped. He stopped being the dedicated warrior we all knew. And one night, he put on a belt stuffed with loaves of bread — baguettes, all around his waist, so they looked like sticks of dynamite — and he went to a checkpoint and started taunting the soldiers. After a bit of that, he suddenly opened his coat and revealed the harness he was wearing, and the soldiers turned him into a sieve. As long as the belt didn’t explode, they kept firing. They used up all their clips and their comrades’ clips, too. Adnan was reduced to a pulp. Afterward, you couldn’t tell the chunks of flesh from the chunks of bread. And that’s the truth, cousin. Adnan didn’t die in combat; he went to his death of his own free will, without a weapon and without a battle cry. He simply committed suicide.”

There was no chance that I was going to stay in Hussein’s company one minute longer. I placed my cup on the low table and made for the door.

Hussein stayed in his armchair. He said, “You haven’t killed anyone yet, cousin. So get the hell out. Set your sails for another horizon and don’t look back. I’d do the same thing if I didn’t have a battalion of ghosts holding on to my coattails.”