Out of Mesopotamia

by Salar Abdoh

  Meanwhile, we waited.

  This was a peaceful interlude that I didn’t want to violate by calling north to see how the war was going. The war was not going anywhere. I’d get back to it soon enough.

  I tried to get Miss Homa to eat, but she would not budge about her fasting. Proust retired into himself, and would only occasionally take up the slack for the barber. The barber had a name but I cannot remember it now. Sometimes it seems that it is only the names of the dead I can recall. The living being immaterial. Miss Homa wasted to nothing by the hour and the barber appeared to understand perfectly why we were here. He asked no questions. We were his pilgrims. He would not deny us. A woman had come to die in Samarra. This to him was as good a reason as any to be in Samarra.

  “I have put all my affairs in order, Saleh.”

  “I know. You have already told me these things.”

  “My paintings. Everything. After I am gone, you will give notice that I have departed. Then they can dig each other’s eyes out over the prices of my works.”

  Proust came back from a visit to the shrine sometime on the second day. He had a book in his hand. It was Spanish poetry that had been translated into Arabic. I knew he could not understand enough Arabic to read with ease, but it appeared to have been the closest thing to his heart that he could dig up in this place. So I left him with his poetry and his sulking and waited for Miss Homa to die.

  She died on the third day around noon. Three hours before, we had been chatting about the martyrdom of Imam Husayn and she had told me of her special love for Imam Husayn’s brother, Abu al-Fazl. This was the man who had given up his life for the imam and his thirsty companions while trying to fetch water through enemy lines.

  “Do you think it’s wrong to love Abu al-Fazl as much as Imam Husayn, Saleh?”

  She was descending into a state of semiconsciousness and delirium. She had not had a religious bone in her body most of her life. Now she was comparing her love of Imam Husayn and Abu al-Fazl; it was the kind of transformation you don’t know whether to be suspicious of or admire.

  I held her hand. “It’s all right to love Abu al-Fazl like you love Imam Husayn.”

  She smiled and did not say another word after that.

  It was a Wednesday, I think. Proust was cutting hair next to the barber. His knack for the job was impressive. His book of Spanish poems lay by the sink, dog-eared on a page with a poem titled “Y Nada Importa.”

  And Nothing Matters.

  The new cemetery of Samarra was a straight shot down the road. The barber had already made arrangements. I left a sizable wad of money on the dresser for him.

  Noon prayer would begin soon.

  I had expected Proust to weep. But I never saw him weep again. Nor did he take his book of poems along. He left it for the barber and his shop.

  13

  H wrote: Our terrors don’t always match the dangers that inspire them.

  It was the second time he had sent these words. Now I was sure he had lost his mind. There is something not right with the world when the man who is supposed to be your interrogator, your anchor, your nemesis, starts to get overly literary. These men should be the bastions of equilibrium. A steady ship in their occasional cruelty. What had happened to H? What did he want from me?

  Proust and Abu Faranci had become inseparable. Sometimes they spoke in whispers, in French, for long hours. They also went from somberness to occasions of downright boisterousness that were out of character for both. They would, for instance, join the Arab men in their nearly daily routines of one-upmanship in the impromptu war-poetry slams. It was breathtaking, the Arab predilection for verse at any moment anywhere. Standing there watching Abu Faranci and Proust at those times, I had to wonder what was going on in each man’s mind. Did Abu Faranci truly not think about his son anymore? Was this it for him? And what of Proust? Miss Homa had only just died, and Proust had seemed to reach some sort of an end with it. Yet now it looked like he had fresh lease on life next to Abu Faranci.

  In all this time I never broached the subject of what Abu Faranci had done about Cleric J’s request at Tal Abta. He’d carried out the execution, I knew that much.

  It was his business.

  The mokeb itself was in a bit of a lull, though the smell of some looming battle was not far. It came from the north and the east, and sometimes even from the direction of Syria. A few times we caught groups of enemy men coming right up to the Eye of the Horse, probing our defenses, looking for weakness, trying to figure where to hit. I did not know of the information that the interrogation of such men brought, and capturing them alive, I imagined, was still rare here. They were rabid things, consummated with a purpose that could make you question your own resolve and spirit.

  At the same time there was also an inner stirring and a sense of reckoning. It was time for Cleric J and his men to pack it in for the month and go south. But they were staying put. The capture of Mosul still seemed a long way away. Yet we had our slice of the war and would be damned to abandon it for flatbread and olives back home.

  I finally wrote back to H: Do you not think that your usage of cell phones is detrimental to your occupation and well-being, seeing that you are a bona fide representative of our distinguished republic?

  H: No need for your cynicism, Saleh. I have many phones. It is one of my occupations.

  Me: What is it you want? I am certain you are not writing to me about Proust (I do not mean the writer and his book, but the man I have here with me).

  H: No, I am not writing you in regards to him. Just have him remain there. They’ll send him some money and new identity if you tell me this is required.

  Me: Why do you care so much what happens to him?

  H: Shouldn’t I?

  Me: It’s actually a beautiful thing that you do care. But it surprises me.

  H: Without people like him and you, I would not have the job I have. I am a reader. This is a blessing.

  In all this time, I had intermittently thought about that other “enemy.” Not the enemy that faced us right here at the Eye of the Horse. And not the Americans who were not really an enemy but more of an apparition and a nuisance, by turns obscenely generous and then stingy, and then generous again and without a comprehensible mission in Mesopotamia. This, rather, was the enemy that I had never seen in flesh and blood. It felt that the scholar had written that first e-mail to me ages ago. I opened my e-mail account and saw that H had been using it to be in touch with her. The back and forth, from his end, was written in questionable English. He had invited her to Erbil: Erbil is free territory Madam. Is safe. No danger for everyone. Even you come with good passport. No problem. Good food. Come here and I see you first. Then I research for you Jewish places in all old Tehran.

  She had said yes to that, not even bothering to ask why she would need to come to Kurdistan to meet me before I did some basic research work that anyone could do in Tehran. The e-mails had gone on for another several rounds and she had given some dates she could get away from teaching. I sat there, in my little mokeb room in Iraq, reading e-mail exchanges of Interrogator H pretending to be me. I did not know what H’s madness entailed for him to do this. And one can throw the word “madness” around too easily. But there was something most definitely reckless in H’s behavior.

  * * *

  Proust and Abu Faranci were outside my room; I could hear Abu Faranci teaching Proust a French poem. Others had joined their duo and everybody was trying to imitate Abu Faranci’s French. It was heartbreaking, and sublime. And I wrote to H: What is this Erbil business? What do you mean to get from it?

  H: Out.

  Me: You are mad.

  He quoted again: A woman who you love rarely satisfies you completely. So you betray her with a woman you don’t love.

  Me: What in Imam Husayn’s name does this mean?

  He did not answer and I didn’t press it.

  Outside, I heard a blast. It was deafening, and while the window to my room with Cleric J remained int
act, the rest of the windows nearer the mokeb entrance were shattered.

  I ran outside, following Proust, Abu Faranci, and the others toward the thoroughfare to see the damage.

  What had happened was that the old man with the sheep who’d pass by the mokeb at least once a day, sometimes twice, had finally blown himself up. The only casualties were him and his sheep. He had been a good hundred meters off before the vest he was wearing detonated. For an hour sheep entrails lay about the road while convoys squashed it all into a diminishing soup. There was not much left of the old man. We didn’t know who had put him up to it. It appeared he may have detonated early on purpose or there was a malfunction. It put you at a stinging unease, this. The Eye of the Horse was mostly a militarized town. For someone to come right up to your doorstep and blow himself up like that made every precaution seem worthless.

  I walked back to the mokeb to busy myself with feeding the men. I had to shut off my mind. For the next few hours I did nothing but cut frozen chicken and make rice to feed a thousand boots.

  Before the call for evening prayer I finally looked up to see Abu Faranci standing there watching me. Apparently he’d been there for some time.

  My arms were exhausted from negotiating pots you could cook a whole goat in.

  “What?”

  “You have barely talked to me since you came back from the south, Saleh.”

  I shrugged.

  “Are you unhappy about what happened at Tal Abta? Maybe I didn’t carry out that execution, you know.”

  “You did. The men told me. I don’t care how you did it, if that’s what you want to talk about.”

  “I did it with a bullet. How else would I do it?”

  “You should be very proud of yourself then, Claude. Welcome to our world.”

  “It’s war, you know. People die.”

  I stood up and got right in his face. He had aged. Literally aged in a matter of days and weeks. As if he’d been here doing this for many years. This story was winding down and I wanted to hit Abu Faranci, and mostly because I cared for him.

  He had managed to make himself a part of our myth. I did not begrudge him that. I begrudged him his absence of indecision, the lack of uncertainty. He hadn’t come here to write dispatches for anyone.

  I begrudged him his conviction.

  “You’ve proved yourself. Go home now, Claude. What you did was not part of the war. It was personal business between Iraqis.”

  “I don’t agree with you. When there is war, everything is war. All the wheels that turn.”

  “Go back to your wife and child. Do it before it’s too late. They will come for you.”

  “Who will come for me?”

  “The man’s tribe.”

  He smiled. “My wife and child are no longer mine. They are another man’s. You know this very well. You are angry with me for something that I do not know. I do not understand this anger you have now.”

  Proust came toward us and stood at a respectful distance. Haji Yusuf let out a few rounds of AK at the tea stand on the other side of the thoroughfare near Khaled’s old place. I knew it was him by the way he exhaled his rounds—it was a tat, tat-tat, tat-tat-tat burst that made me think of my old bike’s sleepy exhaust on a winter day in Tehran.

  I turned to Proust, speaking Persian: “Have you told this man why you are here?”

  “Bale, yes.”

  “What does he say?”

  “He says every reason is a good reason.”

  “What language does he say it in?”

  “French.”

  “You discuss literature?”

  “Often.”

  I pushed past Abu Faranci who now stood there silently listening to our incomprehensible Persian.

  “Do you think about Miss Homa?”

  “I try to keep myself busy so I don’t think at all.”

  I patted Proust gently on the shoulder and kept walking, heading for my usual spot at the mokeb roof.

  Abu Faranci called out: “I was sure that old man with the sheep would blow himself up one day.”

  I stopped and turned. “Why not say something then?”

  “I did not know when he would do it. If I said something, they would question him and he would never do it. Then I would look foolish. People would say, ‘Abu Faranci thinks he knows more than us.’”

  “You were worried about your reputation?”

  “I was worried the old man would do something worse after that.”

  “But how did you know in the first place?”

  “The old man looked desperate. No one watched him. I did. I understood him. He came and went, came and went. Like a clock. No one was watching. But he was watching. And I was watching.”

  I said, “I paid attention too. I saw him.”

  “Then why did you not say anything?”

  “No one would believe me. I am not an expert.”

  “Then you understand my silence.”

  I did.

  * * *

  The mokeb roof was often as close as I could come to solitude.

  Below, they were all there, on the other side of the road around a little bonfire, warming themselves, drinking tea and eating dates, stretching their limbs, glad that they had all of their limbs, glad the old man hadn’t killed anyone but his animals and himself.

  I wrote to Atia: Miss Homa is dead.

  It took a long time for her to answer. More than an hour. And then all she wrote was What?

  Dead, I repeated.

  Atia: Where are you?

  Me: She died in Iraq. In Samarra.

  Atia: What was she doing in Samarra?

  I could not help it: She had an appointment.

  Atia: Saleh!

  Me: Tell your husband the news. He can be the one to break it. It’s a scoop. Tell him if he has money, which he does, he should buy whatever he can get his hands on of Miss Homa’s. Price doesn’t matter. Tell him to borrow money if he has to. Because after the news, tomorrow or the next day, her prices will double, even triple. He can sell then.

  Atia: Saleh!

  Me: Tell him these exact words: Miss Homa made sure there are not too many of her works left for buying. She gave them all away to charity or destroyed them. But there are still a few left here and there. Tell him to go to anyone selling her works and pay any price they ask for before he breaks the news. If he can hold onto what he bought for even a few months, he can sell it for a fortune. Tell him! All right? I’m your art guy, don’t forget! I know about these things.

  Atia: Saleh!

  Me: This is my way of paying your husband back for all his help. I hope we are now even. And I pray you have a wonderful life.

  She tried calling, but I didn’t answer.

  I wrote to H next that I was ready for Erbil and asked him what exactly he wanted me to talk about with the “enemy” scholar once I met her there. He didn’t answer. Two hours later, when the weather went from chilly to downright cold, I was still sitting there waiting.

  My Iranian data plan was dwindling fast. I could tell by how slow my phone was getting. I did a sluggish crawl through the Western papers to see how the war was going according to them. As usual, they didn’t disappoint. There were several pieces about the Afghan fighters and how the Iranians were using them as mercenaries and giving them citizenship in return for their services. I thought about my Afghans in Syria, especially of that moment when they all ran back into the red house to support us, afterward kissing me and Moalem like we’d been their long-lost fathers. Later still that night: how we all stood in two rows at a special prayer with Moalem leading, speaking the same mother tongue, and later somebody opening a page of Hafez and reading it out loud, then someone reciting a verse by Rūmī, and finally calling it a night with something from Khwaja Abdullah of Herat. I wanted to shout through the ether of the Milky Way and set the record straight. I wanted to explain about Hafez and Rūmī and Khwaja Abdullah and ask the world: What the fuck do you know about Khan-T and the Afghans and the red house?
What do you know about the Arab warriors still standing there by Khaled’s old house, warming their hands on this chilly night in Mesopotamia with little more than the shirts on their backs and their ancient Kalashnikovs?

  I wrote to the enemy scholar: Madam, I can meet you in Erbil exactly two weeks from now.

  I had created a new e-mail address for myself and apologized to her for having to take extra precautions. I asked her not to write to the old e-mail again. I gave her a precise location at the Lengeh Souk in Erbil’s old town, where resourceful Syrian Kurd refugees had ended up running small businesses. They also ran excellent coffeehouses, better than anything the local Iraqi Kurds in Erbil could manage.

  By early the next morning, when she still hadn’t written back, I knew she wasn’t coming to the coffeehouse I had designated. This had been another case of “chasing after black peas,” as the Persians say, and I had no idea what H had meant to do in Erbil with this enemy scholar. But I had wanted to go there anyway. If for nothing else, just to get away from the mokeb for a while—to go to a hotel bar and order a shot of anything and drink it without dread and without anyone’s judgment.

  Meanwhile, Proust insisted more than once that if he were to die, I must take him back to Samarra and bury him next to Miss Homa. He liked to talk about himself in the past tense. I said yes to his request though I never intended to make good on it—not because it pained me, but because I was lazy. And it all really depended on how a man went; if it turned out to be a case like that old man and his sheep, then you’d feel stupid collecting meat parts off the earth to go bury them a couple of hundred klicks down the road.