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

He paid no attention to what I said. All he said was that there was no need for me to be upset, because he would leave the hole soon and I would fall into another hole from another time. He said his book would stay with me. It’s a book full of hallucinations. It has detailed explanations of the secret energy extracted from insects to create additional organs to reinforce the liver, the pancreas, the heart, and all the body’s other organs.

3

Before leaving the hole, the old man told me he was from Baghdad and had lived in the time of the Abbasid caliphate. He had been a teacher, a writer, and an inventor. He suggested to the caliph that they light the city streets with lanterns. He had already supervised the lighting of the mosques and was now busy on his plan to expand the house lighting system by more contemporary methods. The Baghdad thieves were upset by his lanterns, and one day they chased after him after dawn prayers. Close to his home the lantern man tripped on his cloak and fell down the hole.

One of the things this Baghdadi told me was that everyone who visits the hole soon learns how to find out about events of the past, the present, and the future, and that the inventors of the game had based it on a series of experiments they had conducted to understand coincidence. There were rumors that they couldn’t control the game, which rolls ceaselessly on and on through the curves of time. He also said, “Anyone who’s looking for a way out of here also has to develop the art of playing; otherwise they’ll remain a ghost like me, happy with the game…. Ha, ha, ha. I’m fed up with trying to decipher symbols. There are two opponents in every game. Each one has his own private code. It’s a bloody fight, repetitive and disgusting. The rest is memory, which they can’t erase easily. In your day, experiments with memory were in their infancy. The scientists went on working for more than a century and a half after those first attempts, the purpose of which was to discover the memory centers in rats’ brains. It turned out that the rats remembered what they learned even if their brains had been completely destroyed in the laboratory. Those would be amazing experiments if they were applied to humans. Is memory a winning card in this game that we play so seriously till it’s all over, or should we merely have fun? Everyone that falls down here becomes a meal or a source to satisfy the instincts, or energy for other systems. We who… damn, who are we? No one knows!”

The old man died and left me really helpless. Day had broken and snowflakes fell from the mouth of the hole. The Russian’s body looked ghostly. I wanted to reach back to other times I might have lived in, the traces of which are scattered to places I previously thought imaginary. My consciousness was moving like a roller coaster at an amusement park. I watched the snowflakes swirling. The vision of the soldier had disappeared. My eyes were open and my mind was asleep. I may have been sleeping for hundreds of years. I imagined a dead cell. Am I really just in my mind or in every cell in my body? A strong smell of flowers filled the hole. I closed my eyes, but then a young girl fell into the hole. She was carrying on her back an electronic bag tied around her chest with many straps, and to her thighs were tied metallic phosphorous clusters. In her hand she was holding something that looked like an electronic gauge.

“Who are you?” she asked me, panting. There were wounds disfiguring her pretty face.

“I’m a jinni. What happened to you?”

I felt as if my voice went back to ancient times.

“A blood analysis robot was chasing me,” she said.

She was sucking her finger, which was swollen like a mushroom.

“That’s normal,” I said apathetically, then crawled toward the corpse of the old man.

IN THOSE UNFORGETTABLE DAYS BEFORE THE MIRACLE happened and I discovered the truth that everyone now denies or ignores, we used to guard the platform where the two statues stood. We had light arms, three mortars, and seven RPG launchers. The prominent people and opinion-makers in the neighborhood had rejected an order from the new government to remove the statues, and we had information that the army would storm the neighborhood by night. While deep down I didn’t consider this to be my battle, it was much easier to deceive myself than to bear the shame of running away. The battle might break out at any moment and I might lose my life for the sake of these two young men cut from stone who stood upright on the dais as though they were about to fall flat on their faces. It’s clear that the sculptor was just a building worker who knew nothing of the art of sculpture. The fanatical Islamists had a fatwa that all the statues in the country should be removed because they were idols and incompatible with Islamic law. As for the government, it had decided to remove everything that symbolized the period of the former dictatorial regime. The notables and other people of the neighborhood held the view that the statues had nothing to do with the former regime nor with repressive fatwas. I didn’t believe in that kind of nonsense. My father said it was a symbolic battle of destiny for the sake of the neighborhood’s future. I don’t know how my father, as a science teacher at the high school, could believe such superstitions. Of course, there are dozens of versions of the statues story, but perhaps the version that my grandfather told was the one closest to the truth. The touch of realism in my grandfather’s story made the people of the neighborhood seem even more naive, whereas his intention was to portray them as friendly, intelligent, and generous. This is what I was thinking at the time, before my life changed forever.

Perhaps it would be best if I first repeated to you in brief my grandfather’s version of the story, before I tell you what happened to me on the night of the battle. With great sadness he would say, “No one knows when exactly the two young men appeared. They were the same age, the same height, and as alike as twins. People in the neighborhood thought they were from those rich districts far away, but they could not guess where they were going. Each of them carried a backpack, and they wore smart clothes suggesting they were wealthy and well bred. What struck the people of the neighborhood most was their blond hair and their white complexions. The Darkness district was one of the most wretched in the city, and the inhabitants were skinny with swarthy complexions they had inherited from their peasant ancestors. It was the people in nearby parts of the city who gave the name Darkness to the neighborhood, the only one that did not have electricity. I imagine it was the first time the people of the neighborhood had seen visitors of this species of humanity.

“Every morning the two young men would walk through the village toward the river in the distance, coming from the direction of the wasteland that separates the Darkness district from the Arbanjiya district. They would smile tenderly and with affection at the half-naked children of the neighborhood, and greet the elders with a slight nod that suggested respect. They would avoid the muddy patches in the lanes simply and unassumingly, without showing signs of disgust or haughtiness. The people of the neighborhood saw them as angels from heaven. Nobody spoke to them or asked them any intrusive questions, or stood in their way for any reason whatsoever. The neighborhood was dazzled by the aura of light that radiated from the young men. They would walk with confident, measured steps, as though they had learned to walk in a private school. Their silence added to the mystery of them. They were well mannered and dignified, but with a light touch of good humor. The people of the neighborhood fell in love with the two young men and grew accustomed to their radiant appearance every morning. Day by day people became more and more attached to the two handsome youths, and their coming and going became like the rising and the setting of the sun. The children were the first to grow attached to them: They would gather early in the morning on the edge of the quarter to wait for the young men to appear from across the wasteland. They would bet Sinbad cards on which lane the men would come down today. When “the blonds” arrived the children would be thrilled. The children would tag along with them until they reached the other side of the neighborhood, jumping up around them, laughing, and touching the young men’s clothes with their fingertips, in a mixture of fear and exhilaration. The children would be even happier when the men would graciously bend down, without stopping walking, to let the children touch their blond hair. The girls of the neighborhood fell for the blonds, and before long it was as though a sacred and secret covenant had been concluded between them and the local people.