Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

I looked him up and down, trying to make him dissolve with my eyes. I said, “I think Yaseen’s right, Hussein. Running errands is all you’re good for.”

And I hastened to slam the door behind me.

I went to look at the Tigris. Turning my back on the city, I fixed my gaze on the water and tried to forget the buildings on the other bank. Kafr Karam occupied my mind. I imagined the sandy stadium where youngsters chased soccer balls; I saw the two recovering palm trees, the mosque, the barber clipping away at the skulls of his clientele, the two cafés majestically ignoring each other, the clouds of dust swirling along the silver-gray desert trails, and then I saw the gap where Kadem and I listened to Fairuz, and the horizons, as dead as the seasons…. I tried to retrace my steps, to return to the village; my memories refused to follow me. The images blurred, stopped, and disappeared under a great brown stain, and Baghdad caught up with me again, with its streets bled white, its ghost-populated esplanades, its ragged trees, and its tumult. The sun beat down like a brute, so close that you could have reached it with a fireman’s hose. I think I’d walked across a good part of the city, but I remembered nothing of what I might have encountered, seen, or heard. I’d been wandering around ever since I left Hussein.

As the river didn’t suffice to drown my thoughts, I started walking again, without any notion of where to go. I was lost in Baghdad, my obsession drowned out by the roar of the void, surrounded on all sides by whirling shadows — a grain of sand in a storm.

I didn’t love this city. For me, it represented nothing. Meant nothing. I traversed it like a land accursed. We were two incompatible misfortunes, two parallel worlds that ran side by side and never met.

On my left, under a metal footbridge, a broken-down van attracted a group of children. Farther off, near the stadium — now fallen silent — some American trucks were leaving a military installation. In the roar of the convoy, Kafr Karam reappeared. Our house was in shadow, and I could see only the indefinable tree, under which no one was sitting anymore. There was nobody on the patio, either. The house was empty, soulless and ghost-free. I looked for my sisters, my mother…and found no one. Except for the cut on Bahia’s neck, I saw no face or furtive shape. It was as though my loved ones, once so dear to me, had been banished from my memory. Something in me had broken and collapsed, burying all trace of my family….

A bellowing truck made me jump back up on the curb. “Wake up, asshole!” the driver shouted. “You think you’re in your mama’s backyard?”

Some pedestrians stopped, ready to gather other rubber-neckers around them. It was crazy, but in Baghdad the smallest incident attracted a huge crowd of spectators. I waited for the truck driver to continue on his way before I crossed the street.

My feet were burning. I’d been pounding the pavement for hours.

I sat down at a table on a café terrace and ordered a soda. I hadn’t eaten all day, but I wasn’t hungry. I was just worn-out.

“I don’t believe it,” someone behind me said.

What joy I felt, what relief, when I recognized Omar the Corporal. His new overalls were stretched tightly across his belly.

“What are you doing in these parts?”

“I’m drinking a soda.”

“You can get a soda anywhere. Why here?”

“You ask too many questions, Omar. I can’t think straight.”

He spread his arms to embrace me and pressed his lips insistently against my cheeks. He was genuinely happy to see me again. Dropping into a chair, he mopped his face with his handkerchief. “I’m sweating like a Camembert,” he said breathlessly. “But I’m truly happy to find you here, cousin. Really.”

“Likewise.”

He hailed the waiter and ordered a lemonade. “So,” he said. “What’s new?”

“How’s Hany?”

“Oh, him. He’s a lunatic. You never know what you’re getting with him.”

“Is he still planning to become an expatriate?”

“He’d get lost in the countryside. That one is a certified city dweller. If he loses sight of his building, he cries for help. He was playing games with me, know what I mean? He wanted to make sure I cared about him…. What’s up with you?”

“Are you still with your old warrant officer?”

“Where else could I go? With him, at least, when things get tight, I know he’ll advance me some cash. He’s a nice guy. And you still haven’t told me what you’re up to around here.”

“Nothing. All I do is go in circles.”

“I see. Look, I don’t have to tell you, you can always count on me. If you want, I could talk to my boss again. We might be able to work something out.”

“You wouldn’t be thinking about paying a visit to Kafr Karam, would you? I’ve got a little money I want to send to my family.”

“Not anytime soon. Why don’t you just go back home — I mean, if you think there’s nothing for you in Baghdad?”

Omar was trying to sound me out. He was dying to know whether he could bring up certain delicate subjects again without making me mad. What he read in my face made him recoil. He lifted up his hands and said in a conciliatory voice, “It was just a question, that’s all.”

According to my watch, it was a quarter past three. “I have to go back,” I said.

“Is it far?”

“A fair distance.”

“I could give you a ride. You want? My van’s in the square, close by.”

“No, I don’t want to trouble you.”

“You won’t be troubling me, cousin. I’ve just dropped off a sideboard, and now I’ve got nothing else to do.”

“Well, I’m warning you, it’s ’way out of your way. You’re going to have to go the long way around.”

“I’ve got plenty of gas.”

He downed his lemonade in one swallow and signaled to the cashier not to let me pay. “Put this on my tab, Saad.”

The cashier refused my money and jotted down the amount of the check on a piece of paper, next to Omar’s name.

Night was starting to fall. The last glints of the sun splashed the upper stories of buildings. The noises of the street subsided. The day had been a rough one: three attacks in the city center and a skirmish around a suburban church.

We were in Tariq’s house. He, Yaseen, Salah, and Hassan had shut themselves up in a room on the second floor, no doubt refining the plans for the next operation. Hussein and I weren’t invited to the meeting. Hussein pretended not to care about this slight, but I sensed that it had stung him. As for me, I was beside myself, and like Hussein, I brooded over my anger in silence.

The upstairs door creaked, and a babble of conversation signaled the end of the conference. Salah came down first. He’d changed a great deal. He was enormous, with a mug like a bouncer and hairy fists constantly clenched, as if he were strangling a snake. Everything in him seemed to be boiling, like the inside of a volcano. He seldom spoke, never gave an opinion, and maintained his distance from the others. All his attention was focused on Yaseen, from whom he was inseparable. When we saw each other for the first time since Kafr Karam, Salah hadn’t even greeted me.

Yaseen, Hassan, and Tariq stopped and chatted for a while at the top of the stairs before coming down to join us. Their faces expressed neither tension nor enthusiasm. They all sat on the padded bench facing us. With great reluctance, Hussein picked up the remote control that was lying on the floor at his feet and turned off the little set.