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

“Before many others had gathered, Malik the muezzin spotted the compass close to the wreckage of the car. When he wiped the blood off it, he felt a shiver run up his spine. It was an army compass with the words Allah and Muhammad engraved on it. It was clear to the muezzin that it was the sheikh’s holy compass, blessed by God and a conduit for his miracles. Many of the mujahideen claimed the compass turned blood-red when God intended good or evil for the person carrying it. Azzam had never parted with it throughout his life in jihad. Malik hid it at home for ten years. He took it out every night, polished it, and looked at it, as he shed tears of sorrow at the death of the mujahideen’s sheikh.

“The muezzin placed the compass gently into the hand of his son Waheed, like someone setting down a precious jewel onto a piece of cloth. Waheed had decided to smuggle his way into England. He might strike lucky there, help his family, and study to become a doctor. The muezzin told his son Waheed the secret of the compass and advised him to guard it with his life. With firm faith, he told him the compass would help him on his journey and throughout his life, and that it was the most precious thing a father could offer his son. Waheed was unaware of the compass’s powers and significance, and didn’t know much about those holy and special moments when the compass turned red to warn of good or evil, but his faith in his father made him treasure it. The compass then became inseparable from his person.

Waheed reached Iran and lived in dilapidated houses run by traffickers. He had to work six months to save enough money to make the crossing to Turkey. One day he went out with six young Afghans to work on a building site. A rich Iranian man picked them up in a small truck and drove them to the outskirts of the town, where he was building an enormous house in the middle of his farm. They were working for a pittance. The man dropped them off at his farm and asked them to clear away the bricks, plaster, sacks, and wood left over from the building work. The deal was that the owner would come back late that evening and take them back to town. He gave them half their wages in advance and advised them to finish the work properly. Waheed and the Afghans worked slowly and lazily all day long. When the sun set they all prayed and then sat down to relax in one of the large rooms. They poured some juice, rolled cigarettes, and started to chat about trafficking routes to Europe. Every now and then the young Afghans would give Waheed sly looks of contempt. The owner was late. The Afghans decided to pass the time by playing a betting game, which was really a malicious trick. There was a group of barrels filled with water, next to some bags full of plaster. They told Waheed the game was that they would mix the plaster with water in a barrel and everyone in the group would put his hands in the mixture up to his elbow, and whoever managed to keep them in the longest would win a sum of money. They suggested Waheed go first. Full of good cheer and innocence, Waheed stood up and went through the motions, burying his arms in the plaster mixture. Within a few minutes the plaster set hard and Waheed’s arms were trapped in the barrel. The Afghans pulled down Waheed’s trousers and raped him one by one.”

Between us we smoked nine cigarettes while listening to the story about the Pakistani. Murad Harba spat out his tale in one burst, then drank from the bottle of water next to him, cursing God. Abu Hadid took his pistol out of his belt and started to load it with bullets. The story about the Pakistani had no effect on me. I was entranced by the company of my brother Abu Hadid and by the chance to enter his various worlds. We turned off into an extensive park with bare trees like soldiers turned to stone. Murad switched off the engine. My heart was starting to pound, and I was curious to find out what they would do in the darkness of the cold park. Obviously we hadn’t come all this way to listen to the story about the Pakistani. We got out of the car. Abu Hadid looked around while Murad Harba opened the trunk of the car and took out a pick and shovel. Abu Hadid ordered me to help Murad dig. My blood began to race with excitement and fear. Abu Hadid, with his strong muscles, helped with the digging. We began to sweat. The ground was tough. The tangled roots of a tree and a large stone hampered our work. Before we’d had time to catch our breath, Murad and Abu Hadid headed back to the trunk of the car, while I stood close to the hole, bewildered like a deaf man at a wedding party. They took a man, bound and gagged, out of the trunk and dragged him along the ground to the hole. My brother told me to come close and look into the man’s eyes. The look of fear I saw is stamped in my memory as though with a branding iron. Abu Hadid kicked him in the back, and the man slumped into the hole. We shoveled soil on top of him and leveled the ground well.

Abu Hadid gave my hair a sharp tug and whispered in my ear:

“Now you’re God.”

BEFORE THE EGG APPEARED, I WOULD READ A BOOK about law or religion every night before going to sleep. Like my rabbit, I would be most active in the hours around dawn and sunset. Salsal, on the other hand, would stay up late at night and wake up at midday. And before he even got out of bed he would open his laptop and log on to Facebook to check the latest comments on the previous night’s discussion, then eventually go and have a bath. After that he would go into the kitchen, turn on the radio, and listen to the news while he fried an egg and made some coffee. He would carry his breakfast into the garden and sit at the table under the umbrella, eating and drinking and smoking as he watched me.

“Good morning, Hajjar. What news of the flowers?”

“It’s been a hot year, so they won’t grow strong,” I told him as I pruned the rosebushes.

Salsal lit another cigarette and gave my rabbit an ironic smile. I never understood why he was annoyed by the rabbit. The old woman Umm Dala had brought it. She said she had found it in the park. We decided to keep it while Umm Dala looked for its owner. The rabbit had been with us for a month, and I had already spent two months with Salsal in this fancy villa in the north of the Green Zone. The villa was detached, surrounded by a high wall with a gate fitted with a sophisticated electronic security system. We didn’t know when zero hour would come. Salsal was a professional, whereas they called me “duckling” because this was my first operation.

Mr. Salman would visit us once a week to check how we were and reassure us about things. Mr. Salman would bring some bottles of booze and some hashish. He would always tell us a silly joke about politics and remind us how secret and important the operation was. This Salman was in league with Salsal and didn’t reveal many secrets to me. Both of them made much of my weakness and lack of experience. I didn’t pay them much attention. I was sunk in the bitterness of my life, and I wanted the world to be destroyed in one fell swoop.

Umm Dala would come two days a week. She would bring us cigarettes and clean the house. On one occasion Salsal harassed her. He touched her bottom while she was cooking dolma. She hit him on the nose with her spoon and made it bleed. Salsal laid off her and didn’t speak to her after that. She was an energetic woman in her fifties with nine children. She claimed she hated men, saying they were despicable, selfish pricks. Her husband had worked for the national electric company, but he fell from the top of a lamppost and died. He was a drunkard and she used to call him the arak gerbil.

I built the rabbit a hutch in the corner of the garden and took good care of him. I know rabbits are sensitive creatures and need to be kept clean and well fed. I read about that when I was in high school. I developed a passion for reading when I was thirteen. In the beginning I read classical Arabic poetry and lots of stories translated from Russian. But I soon grew bored. Our neighbor worked in the Ministry of Agriculture, and one day I was playing with his son Salam on the roof of their house, when we came across a large wooden trunk up there with assorted junk piled up on top of it. Salam shared a secret with me. The trunk was crammed with books about crops and irrigation methods and countless encyclopedias about plants and insects. Under the books there were lots of sex magazines with pictures of Turkish actresses. Salam gave me a magazine, but I also took a book about the various types of palm trees that grow in the country. I didn’t need Salam after that. I would sneak from our house to the roof of theirs to visit the library in the trunk. I would take one book and one magazine and put back the ones I had borrowed. After that I fell in love with books about animals and plants and would hunt down every new book that reached the bookshops, until I was forced to join the army.