Hassan Blasim - The Corpse Exhibition - And Other Stories of Iraq

Marwan’s eyes turned bloodshot from staying up late and drinking too much, and the others got used to his behavior. They treated him as a victim of the explosion. Just another madman. His nerves would flare up for the slightest reason. His colleagues at work didn’t abandon him, and he went on devising crosswords, though he stopped writing the horoscopes. He was given a warning when he started writing very difficult crosswords, using words he found in the encyclopedia, or when he wrote, for example, “7 Across: a purple scorpion, 5 Down: a broken womb (six letters, inverted).”

“ This meat tastes salty. What’s that horrible smell? Don’t you read the Quran? Why don’t you pray? The water’s hot in the shower.” Marwan started to take revenge, taking pleasure in tormenting the policeman. He would eat and drink and do things the policeman didn’t like, like drink gallons of whiskey, which the policeman couldn’t bear.

Marwan complained to you about the things that troubled him most. He hadn’t gone near his wife’s body, except once, three months ago. He had the impression that he was sleeping with her along with another man, and the policeman groaned and wailed like a crazed cat.

The policeman didn’t submit to his fate readily. He also knew how much authority he had. Sometimes he would keep jabbering deliriously in Marwan’s head until his skull throbbed. The last time Marwan told me about the policeman was while they had a truce.

The policeman wanted Marwan to visit his family. He told him some intimate details of his life so that Marwan would seem like an old friend. Yes, yes, yes. I’m not interested in all those details. When you write, you can choose the limits and call the rest our ignorance.

Marwan sat on the sofa and the policeman’s wife brought him some tea, while his mother wiped her tears with the hem of her hijab. Marwan hugged the policeman’s little girl as if she were the daughter of a late dear friend.

It was the same scene whenever he visited. He started buying presents for the family on instructions from the policeman, and Marwan even went to visit the policeman’s grave with the family.

The policeman went into a deep silence when he heard his wife and mother weeping at his grave. He remained silent for several days. Marwan breathed a sigh of relief each time, assuming the policeman had disappeared.

He punched you on the nose when you were driving the car. I know… good… details… everything in this story is boring and disgusting.

Then one day I visited him at his magazine. He was taking swigs from a bottle of arak that he hid in the drawer of his desk and smoking furiously. I started talking about our problems working at Boutique and the state of the country, in hopes of calming his nerves. He stopped writing as I spoke.

When I stopped speaking, he stood up and asked if I’d go with him to visit the drunken boat in prison.

I wasn’t even sure she was still alive. I rang the department in charge of women’s prisons from his office and asked after her. They told me she was a patient in the city’s central hospital.

I was extremely uneasy all the way to the hospital. Marwan smoked a lot and rocked back and forth in his seat. He began pressing me to take good care of his family, his voice full of emotion.

I told him, “What are you talking about? Marwan, what do you mean, ‘going to die’? Hey, you’re like a cat with seven good lives left.”

He punched me in the nose. Then he lit me a cigarette with his and put it in my mouth. I had an urge to stop the car and give him a thorough beating.

The drunken boat was lying in the intensive care ward. Just a skeleton. She’d been unconscious for a fortnight. We sat close to her on the edge of the bed. Marwan took a small knife shaped like a fish out of his trouser pocket and put it close to her pillow.

He held her hand, and tears flowed down his cheeks.

And after that you came to visit me!

Yes, we bought a range of mezes, two bottles of arak, and twenty cans of beer, and we drove to your farm.

I was so happy to see the two of you! Time had flown, you guys! We had a wild time that night raising a toast to our memories of high school. We put a table out under the lemon tree and cracked open the drinks. Marwan seemed cheerful and relaxed, without any obvious worries. He was laughing and joking, not to mention drinking frantically. Somebody brought up that boy at school called “the genius.” He was an eccentric student who had memorized all the textbooks within months. The teachers were convinced he was a genius, and they were shocked when he got poor grades on the final exams, barely enough to qualify to study at the oil institute. In his first year of college, he sneaked in at night and set fire to the lecture hall, then shot himself with a revolver. It was all a bit of a tragedy!

You told us at length about your days of isolation on your farm, where you wanted to be free to write a book on the history of decapitation in Mesopotamia.

The conversation eventually flagged, and we started to slur our words. We were drunk, and Marwan fell back into a deep silence. We got up to go into the house. Marwan asked me to recite whatever I could remember by Pessoa, his favorite writer.

I’m not me, I don’t know anything,

I don’t own anything, I’m not going anywhere,

I put my life to sleep

In the heart of what I don’t know.

It was a wonderful summer night. Three best friends from school reunited. I lay on the grass, looked up at the clear sky, and began to imagine God as a mass of shadows. We heard Marwan’s screams coming from the bathroom. We couldn’t save him. He died in the pool of blood he had vomited.

You phoned me a week later, and we went to an art exhibition in my car. We were going along the highway when, by mistake, I overtook a truck loaded with rocks.

Enough, God keep you.

What, you’re tired!

I want to sleep awhile.

Okay, let’s sleep.

I hope that when I wake up I can’t hear you anymore and you’re completely out of my life.

Me too, you fuck.

1

I was stuffing the last pieces of chocolate into the bag. I had already filled my pockets with them. I took some bottles of water from the storeroom. I had enough canned salmon, so I hid the remaining cans under the pile of toilet paper. Then, just as I was heading for the door, three masked gunmen broke in. I opened fire and one of them fell to the ground. I ran out the back door into the street, but the other two started to chase me. I jumped over the fence of the local soccer field and ran toward the park. When I reached the far end of the park, down by the side of the Natural History Museum, I fell into a hole.

——

“Listen, don’t be frightened.”

His hoarse voice scared me.

“Who are you?” I asked him, paralyzed by fear.

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“That’s normal. It’s part of the chain.”

The darkness receded when he lit a candle.

“Take a deep breath! Don’t worry!”

He gave an unpleasant laugh, full of arrogance and disdain.

His face was dark and rough, like a loaf of barley bread. A decrepit old man. His torso was naked. He was sitting on a small bench, with a dirty sheet on his thighs. Next to him there were some sacks and some old junk. If he hadn’t moved his head like a cartoon character, he would have looked like an ordinary beggar. He was tilting his head left and right like a tortoise in some legend.

“Who are you? Did I fall down a hole?”

“Yes, of course you fell. I live here.”

“Do you have any water?”