Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

Professor Ghany didn’t come and bid me farewell. Since Shakir had been sent off duty, it was Sayed who stayed with me in the afternoon. After nightfall, we left the subterranean parking garage in a small rental car and drove away from the clinic. The city lights were at full blaze, illuminating even the surrounding hills. The streets were seething, like my veins.

We pick a table in the back of the dining room so we won’t be disturbed. The restaurant’s packed: families with lots of kids, groups of laughing friends, couples holding hands, shifty-eyed businessmen. The waiters are busy on all fronts, some of them balancing trays, others writing down the customers’ orders in minuscule notebooks. Near the entrance, an enormous and rather odd fellow laughs hard enough to burst his carotid artery. The woman sharing his meal looks uneasy; she turns toward her neighbors and smiles wanly, as if asking them to excuse her companion’s indecorous behavior.

Sayed reads and rereads the menu and remains undecided. I suspect that he regrets having invited me. I ask him, “Have you been back to Kafr Karam?”

He flinches but doesn’t appear to understand my question. I restate it. This relaxes him a bit; he lowers the menu he’s been using as a screen and looks at me. “No,” he says. “I haven’t been back to Kafr Karam. Baghdad gives me no time off. But I’ve remained in contact with our people. They often call up and tell me what’s going on over there. The latest news is that a military camp has been established in the Haitems’ orchards.”

“I sent my twin sister a little money. I don’t know whether she got it.”

“Your money order arrived intact. I talked to Kadem on the phone two weeks ago. He was trying to reach you. I told him I didn’t know where you were. Then he put Bahia on. She wanted to thank you and to find out how you were doing. I promised her to do everything possible to find you.”

“Thanks.”

Neither of us finds anything to add. We eat in silence, each of us lost in his own thoughts.

Sayed drops me off at my hotel. Before getting out of the car, I turn to him. He smiles at me so sadly that I don’t dare shake his hand. We part without pats or embraces, like two rivulets spilling off a rock.

There’s a message for me at the reception desk. An envelope, taped shut, no writing on it. Inside, a card with an abstract design on the front, and on the back, a line written with a felt-tipped pen: “I’m proud to have known you. Shakir.”

I slip the note into the inside pocket of my jacket. In the lobby, a large family swarms around a low table. The children squabble and jump off the backs of chairs. Their mother tries to call them to order, while the father laughs, ostensibly having a conversation on his cell phone. Beyond them sits Dr. Jalal, exasperated by the kids’ racket and deep in his cups.

I go up to my room. A brand-new leather traveling bag is sitting on my bed. Inside, there are two pairs of designer pants, underwear, socks, two shirts, a thick sweater, a jacket, a pair of shoes in a bag, a toilet kit, and four large volumes of literature in English. A piece of paper is pinned to a strap: “This is your baggage. You’ll buy whatever else you need once you’re in place.” No signature.

Dr. Jalal comes in without knocking. He’s drunk, and he has to keep clutching the doorknob to avoid falling. He says, “Going on a trip?”

“I intended to tell you good-bye tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He staggers and catches himself twice before he manages to close the door and lean back against it. Totally disheveled, with half his shirt hanging out of his pants and his fly wide open, he looks like a bum. The muddy blotch on his left pants leg is probably the result of a fall in the street. His face is ghastly, with swollen eyelids, wild eyes, and leaking nostrils.

His mouth, which he wipes on his sleeve, has gone soft, unable to articulate two consecutive words without drooling. “So, just like that, you’re going away on tiptoe, like a prowler? I’ve been hanging around the lobby for hours because I didn’t want to miss you. And what do you do? You pass me by without a word.”

“I have to pack.”

“Are you running me off?”

“It’s not that. I need to be alone. I have to get my bags ready and put some things in order.”

He squints, thrusts out his lips, sways, and then, with a deep breath, gathering all his remaining strength, he straightens himself and cries, “Tozz!”

Although it’s a weak cry, it makes him reel. He clutches at the doorknob again. He says, “Can you tell me where you’ve been from morning till night?”

“I went to see some relatives.”

“My ass! I know where you were holed up, my boy. You want me to tell you where you were holed up? You were in a clinic. Or maybe I should say a nuthouse. Son of a bitch! What’s that like, the world of mental-defectives? Shit!”

I’m stunned. Paralyzed.

“You think I’m stupid? You think I couldn’t figure it out? A transplant, for God’s sake! You don’t have any more scars on your body than brains in your skull. Damn it all, don’t you realize what they’ve done to you in that shitty fucking clinic? You have to be stark raving mad, putting yourself in Professor Ghany’s hands! He’s completely fucked-up in the head. I know him. He could never even dissect a white mouse without cutting his finger.”

He can’t know, I tell myself. Nobody knows. He’s bluffing. He’s trying to trap me. “What are you talking about?” I say. “What clinic? And who’s this professor of yours? I was with some relatives.”

“You poor sap! You think I’m trying to fool you? That moron Ghany has lost it altogether. I don’t know what he shot you up with, but it’s surely a load of crap.” He takes his head in his hands. “Good God! Where are we, in a Spielberg film? I’d heard about that nutcase doing creepy things to prisoners of war when he was with the Taliban. But this is going too far.”

“Get out of my room.”

“Not a chance! It’s very serious, what you’re going to do. Very, very, very serious. Unthinkable. Unimaginable. I know it won’t work. Your shitty virus will eat you alive, just you, and that’s all. But even so, I’m still worried. Suppose Ghany has succeeded, loser though he is? Have you thought about the extent of the disaster? We’re not talking about terrorist attacks, a few little bombs here, a few little crashes there. We’re talking about pestilence. About the apocalypse. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of dead, maybe millions. If this really is a revolutionary mutating virus, who’s going to stop it? With what, and how? It’s completely unacceptable.”

“You yourself said that the West—”

“We’re well past that point, you idiot. I’ve said a lot of stupid fucking things in my life, but I can’t let you do this. Every war has its limits. But this — this is beyond all bounds. What do you hope for after the apocalypse? What’s going to be left of the world, except for rotting corpses and plagues and chaos? God himself will tear out His hair….” He jabs his finger at me. “Enough of this bullshit! Everything stops now! You’re not going anywhere, and neither is the filth you’re carrying. Teaching the West a lesson is one thing; massacring the fucking planet is something else. I’m not playing. Game over. You’re going to turn yourself in to the police. Right away. With a little luck, maybe you can be cured. If not, you’ll just have to croak all by yourself, and good riddance. You unspeakable fool!”