Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

The two strangers were tall and thin, their heads wrapped in dusty keffiyehs. Both of them wore jogging pants, thick sweaters, and espadrilles. The taller of the two sought to reassure me. “Everything’s going fine,” he said. He offered me a big woolen pullover and a hat. “Nights get cold here.”

They helped me climb up on a mule and we set out. Night fell, and the wind came up again, icy and vexing. My guides took turns riding the other mule. The goat paths branched out before us, opalescent under the moon. We hurtled down some steep escarpments and clambered up others, stopping only to prick up our ears and scrutinize the features of the landscape that lay in shadow. The journey took place without incident, as my guides had foretold. We made a brief stop in a hollow to eat and regain our strength. I devoured several slices of dried meat and emptied a goatskin of springwater. My companions advised me not to eat too fast and to try to rest. They attended to my every need, regularly asking me if I was holding up all right or if I wanted to get off my mule and walk a little. I said I wanted to keep going.

We crossed the border into Jordan at about four o’clock in the morning. Two border patrols had passed each other a few moments before, one in a military 4×4, the other on foot. The observation post, recognizable by its watchtower and the light shining on its antenna, stood atop a hillock. My guides observed the post through infrared binoculars. When the squad of scouts returned to their quarters, we took our mules by the reins and slipped along a dry riverbed. A few kilometers farther on, a little van carrying a cargo of plastic bowls bore down upon us. A man wearing a traditional tunic and a Bedouin scarf around his head was at the steering wheel. He congratulated my two guides and traced on the ground a secure itinerary for their return to Iraq. He informed them that drones were flying over the area, explained how to elude their sweeps, and recommended a way to get around a unit of coalition forces freshly deployed behind the line of demarcation. The guides asked a few practical questions; when they were satisfied, they wished us good luck and began their journey back.

“You can relax now,” the new stranger said to me. “From this point on, it’s a piece of cake. You’re in the best hands in the business.”

He was wizened and swarthy. His large head, too big for his shoulders, made him seem unsteady on his feet. His full lips opened on two rows of gold teeth that sparkled in the rising sun. He drove like a madman, with no regard for potholes and no reticence about slamming on the brakes, which he did abruptly and violently, often catapulting me against the windshield.

Sayed reappeared that evening, in my new guide’s house. He embraced me for a long time.

“Two more stages,” he said. “And then you’ll be able to rest.”

The following day, after a substantial breakfast, he drove me to a border village in a large, high-powered car. There, he turned me over to Shakir and Imad, two young men who looked like students, and he said to me, “On the other side, there’s Syria, and then, right after that, Lebanon. I’ll see you in Beirut in two days.”

My sojourn in Beirut is drawing to its close. I’ve been waiting for three weeks now. I count the hours on my fingers or stand at the window in my room, staring down at the deserted street. The rain drums on the windowpanes. On the windswept sidewalk, a tramp blows into his fists to warm his fingers. He’s been there for a good while, on the lookout for a charitable soul, but I’ve yet to see anyone slip him a coin. His leggings are soaked through, his shoes are water-logged, and his general appearance is simply grotesque. Living like a stray dog, practically in the gutter — that’s obscene. This person, possessing not so much as a shadow, isolated in his wretchedness like a worm in a rotten fruit, can somehow forget that he’s dead and over with. I feel no compassion for him. I tell myself that fate has brought him so low in order for him to function as a symbol; he focuses my awareness of life’s unbearable inanity. What hopes does this man have for tomorrow? Surely he hopes for something, but for what? For manna to rain down upon him from heaven? For a passerby to notice his destitution? For someone to take pity on him? What a fool! Is there life after pity?

Kadem was only partly right. It’s not that the world’s grown base; it’s that men wallow in baseness. I’ve come to Beirut because I refuse to be like that tramp. I refuse to be one of the living dead. Either live like a man or die as a martyr — there’s no other alternative for one who wants to be free. I’m not comfortable in the role of the defeated. Ever since that night when the American soldiers burst into our house, overturning our ancestral values and the order of things, I’ve been waiting! I’m waiting for the moment when I’ll recover my self-esteem, without which a man is nothing but a stain. I think of myself as poised on the verge of everything and nothing. What I’ve gone through, lived through, been subjected to so far — none of that counts. That night was like a freeze-frame. That was when the earth stopped turning for me. I’m not in Lebanon; I’m not in a hotel; I’m in a coma. And whether I emerge from it and go on or stay in it and rot is up to me.

Sayed has personally seen to it that I want for nothing. He’s lodged me in one of the most expensive suites in the hotel and put at my disposal Imad and Shakir, two charming young men who treat me most respectfully and stand ready day or night, alert to the merest sign, poised to carry out my most extravagant wishes. I will not let any of this go to my head. I’m still the shy, retiring boy from Kafr Karam. Even though I know the importance I’ve assumed, I haven’t broken any of the rules that formed my character in simplicity and propriety. My only caprice was to request that the television, the radio, and all the pictures on the walls be removed from the suite; I wanted to be left with the strict minimum — namely, the furniture and a few bottles of mineral water in the minibar. Had it been up to me, I would have chosen a cave in the desert, far from the laughable vanities of people who lead pampered lives. I wanted to be my own focus, my own reference point; I wanted to spend the remainder of my stay in Lebanon preparing myself mentally, so that I’d be equal to the task my people have entrusted to me.

I’m no longer afraid of being alone in the dark.

I’ve filled my lungs with the mustiness of the tomb.

I’m ready!

I’ve tamed my thoughts and brought my doubts to heel. I’m keeping my spirits under firm control. My agonies, my hesitations, my blackouts are all ancient history. I’m the master of what goes on in my head. Nothing escapes me; nothing resists me. Dr. Jalal has smoothed my path and filled in my gaps. As for my former fears, now I summon them of my own accord; I line them up and inspect them. The great brown blotch that hid a portion of my memories when I was in Baghdad has faded away. I can return to Kafr Karam whenever I feel like it, enter any door, step into any patio, invade anyone’s privacy. My mother, my sisters, my friends and relatives all come back to me, one after the other, and I remain calm. My room is inhabited by ghosts, by those who are absent. Omar shares my bed; Sulayman blows through like a gust of wind; the wedding guests immolated in the Haitems’ orchards parade around me. Even my father is here. He prostrates himself at my feet, balls in the air. I don’t turn away or cover my face. And when a blow from a rifle butt knocks him down, I don’t help him up. I remain upright; my sphinxlike inflexibility prevents me from bending, even over my father.