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

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They told me they had sold me to another group; they were very cheerful. They stayed up all night drinking whiskey and laughing. They even invited me to join them in a drink, but I declined and told them I was a religious man. They bought me new clothes, and that night they cooked me a chicken and served me fruit and sweets. It seems I fetched a good price. The leader of the group even shed real tears when he said good-bye. He embraced me like a brother.

“You’re a very good man. I wish you all the best, and good luck in your life,” said the man with one eye.

I think I stayed with the first group just three months. They had kidnapped me on that cold accursed night. That was in the early winter of 2006. We had orders to go to the Tigris; it was the first time we had received instructions directly from the head of the emergency department in the hospital. At the bank of the river the policemen were standing around six headless bodies. The heads had been put in an empty flour sack in front of the bodies. The police guessed they were the bodies of some clerics. We had arrived late because of the heavy rain. The police piled the bodies onto the ambulance driven by my colleague Abu Salim, and I carried the sack of heads to my ambulance. The streets were empty; the only sounds to break the forlorn silence of the Baghdad night were some gunshots in the distance and the noise of an American helicopter patrolling over the Green Zone. We set off along Abu Nawas Street toward Rashid Street, driving at medium speed because of the rain. I remembered the words the director of the emergency department in the hospital often used to say: “When you’re carrying an injured person or a patient close to death, the speed of the ambulance shows how humane and responsible you are. But when you are carrying severed heads in an ambulance, you needn’t go faster than a hearse drawn by mules in a dark medieval forest.”

The director saw himself as a philosopher and an artist, but “born in the wrong country,” as he would say. He took his work seriously nonetheless and considered it a sacred duty, because to him running the ambulance section of the emergency department meant managing the dividing line between life and death. We called him the Professor; my other colleagues hated him and called him mad. I know why they hated him, because the enigmatic and aggressive way he spoke made him seem screwed up in the eyes of others. But I retained much respect and affection for him because of the beautiful and fascinating things he said. Once he said to me, “Spilled blood and superstition are the basis of the world. Man is not the only creature who kills for bread, or love, or power, because animals in the jungle do that in various ways, but he is the only creature who kills because of faith.” He would usually wrap up his speeches by pointing to the sky and declaiming theatrically, “The question of humanity can be solved only by constant dread.” My colleague Abu Salim had a notion that the Professor had links with the terrorist groups because of the violent language he used, but I would loyally defend the man, because they did not understand that he was a philosopher who refused to make foolish jokes, as the stupid ambulance drivers did all day. I remembered every sentence and every word he said, for I was captivated by my affection and admiration for him.

Let me get back to that wretched night. When we turned toward the Martyrs Bridge I noticed that the ambulance driven by Abu Salim had disappeared. Then in the side mirror I caught sight of a police car gaining on us at high speed. I pulled over to the side in the middle of the bridge. Four young men in masks and special police uniforms got out of the police car. The leader of the group pointed his pistol in my face and told me to get out of the vehicle, while his colleagues unloaded the sack of heads from the ambulance.

“I’ve been kidnapped and they are going to cut off my head.” That was my first thought when they tied me up and stuffed me in the trunk of the police car. It took me only ten minutes to realize what was awaiting me. I recited the Throne Verse from the Quran three times in the darkness of the trunk, and I felt that my skin was starting to peel off. For some reason in those dark moments I thought about my body weight, maybe 155 pounds. The slower the car went, or the more it turned, the more frightened I was, and when it picked up speed again a strange blend of tranquility and anxiety would pulse through me. Perhaps I thought at those moments of what the Professor had said about the correlation between speed and the imminence of death. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but he would say that someone about to die in the forest would be more afraid than someone about to die in a speeding ambulance, because the first one feels that fate has singled him out, while the second imagines there are others sticking with him. I also remember that he once announced with a smile, “I would like to have my death in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light.”

I imagined that all the unidentified and mutilated bodies I had carried in the ambulance since the fall of Baghdad lay before me, and that in the darkness surrounding me I then saw the Professor picking my severed head from a pile of trash, while my colleagues made dirty jokes about my liking for the Professor. I don’t think the police car drove very far before it came to a halt. At least they did not leave the city. I tried to remember the Rahman Verse of the Quran, but they got me out of the car and escorted me into a house that smelled of grilled fish. I could hear a child crying. They undid my blindfold, and I found myself in a cold, unfurnished room. Then three madmen laid into me and beat me to a pulp, until a darkness again descended.

I thought I heard a cock crow at first. I shut my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. I felt a sharp pain in my left ear. With difficulty I turned over onto my back and pushed myself toward the window, which had recently been blocked up. I was very thirsty. It was easy to work out that I was in a house in one of Baghdad’s old neighborhoods. That was clear from the build of the room and particularly the old wooden door.

In fact I don’t know exactly what details of my story matter to you for me to get the right of asylum in your country. I find it very hard to describe those days of terror, but I want to mention also some of the things that matter to me. I felt that God, and behind him the Professor, would never abandon me throughout my ordeal. I felt the presence of God intensely in my heart, nurturing my peace of mind and calling me to patience. The Professor kept my mind busy and alleviated the loneliness of my captivity. He was my solace and my comfort.

Throughout those arduous months I would recall what the Professor had said about his friend, Dawoud the engineer. What did he mean by saying that the world is all interconnected? And where do the power and the will of God stand in such matters? We were drinking tea at the hospital door when the Professor said, “While my friend Dawoud was driving the family car through the streets of Baghdad, an Iraqi poet in London was writing a fiery article in praise of the resistance, with a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him to help harden his heart. Because the world is all interconnected, through feelings, words, nightmares, and other secret channels, out of the poet’s article jumped three masked men. They stopped the family car and killed Dawoud, his wife, his child, and his father. His mother was waiting for them at home. Dawoud’s mother doesn’t know the Iraqi poet nor the masked men. She knows how to cook the fish that was awaiting them. The Iraqi poet fell asleep on the sofa in London in a drunken stupor, while Dawoud’s mother’s fish went cold and the sun set in Baghdad.”