The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  “Like a beast, actually,” said Mustafa, who’d been reading the Book of Daniel as part of his research into rapture theology. “ ‘You shall be driven away from human society, and your dwelling shall be with the wild animals.’ ”

  “But the story has a happy ending,” Saddam said. “At the end of the seven years, the king returned to his right mind, and to his throne.”

  “Yes.” Mustafa glanced at the whiskey bottle. “After he submitted to God and became a righteous man . . .”

  Saddam seemed to mull something over. Finally he reached under the edge of his desk and toggled a hidden switch. The section of wall on which the map of Al Hillah was mounted gave a shudder and began to swing inwards.

  “Finish your drink,” Saddam said. “I want to show you something.”

  “I call it my alternate-reality room,” Saddam Hussein said. “You know this expression, ‘alternate reality’? It’s a new media thing.” He waggled his hands in the universal gesture of the over-fifty trying to get a grip on the Internet Age. “My daughter Hala explained it to me. They do this thing now, to promote movies and new TV series, sometimes video games as well. They plant clues and hints in cyberspace, so it’s like this mystery for people to solve, but really it’s an advertisement.”

  “They?” Mustafa said.

  “Bollywood. The Hindus invented the practice. But now film companies here are doing it too, and in Israel. Some of the cutting-edge alternate-reality productions are very elaborate, not just stuff on the web, but live-action events with props. Hala, who is very interested in new media, got wind of an alternate-reality campaign that seemed to be about me. Now you know there’s going to be a movie version of Zabibah and the King—if my producer ever gets off his ass—so at first I thought it was connected to that. But nobody at the production house knew anything about it. So I had my people do some investigating, and they started finding these items, these—”

  “Artifacts.”

  “Yes. Like pieces of a puzzle. As you can see, someone is quite fixated on me.”

  The room was like a small museum whose focus was the same as the vanity art in the rest of the house. On the walls behind glass were many newspaper and magazine clippings, all featuring Saddam’s image. Most of the clippings seemed to be from English-language publications, or ghost publications—Mustafa spotted several New York Times front pages.

  Display cases in the center of the room held other types of artifacts. Mustafa lingered beside a tabletop display of a war game. The playing board showed North America, divided into sectors; an invasion force of brightly colored plastic tanks and troops had landed on the east, west, and Gulf coasts and was pushing into the heartland. Mustafa was confused as to how this fit with the general theme of the room, but then he saw the art on the game box lid—the face of the invaders’ leader—and he understood.

  “So what does it all mean?” Mustafa said. “If this is a puzzle, what’s the solution?”

  “I’m still working that out,” Saddam Hussein said. “But these objects tell a story about another world, an Arabia and an Iraq with a different history.”

  “And you are the hero of this story?”

  Saddam spread his hands and smiled, as if to say, Who am I to argue with my fans? “Every legend needs its champion.”

  “What about the other characters?” Mustafa said. “Who else is in the story?”

  “Various celebrities, politicians mostly.” Smirking: “That clown Al Gaddafi, though I think he’s the comic relief.”

  “Osama bin Laden?”

  “Ah, that one.” Saddam shrugged. “He might have a role I suppose. But you know, I don’t even find him interesting in real life. He’s too stuck up, like a Saud without the pedigree.”

  “And America?” Mustafa looked down at the game board. “What’s America’s role in the story?” He looked up again to find Saddam nodding.

  “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” Saddam said. “Something to do with the Americans.”

  “It seems this alternate-reality campaign, or whatever it is, has caught the attention of a number of crusaders,” Mustafa told him. “But they think it’s a true story.”

  Saddam chuckled. “Americans . . . Always confusing fantasy and reality.”

  “Tell me where you get these items,” Mustafa said. “Are they all from eBazaar?”

  “I have various sources. Lately though, yes, a lot of items have been turning up on eBazaar. The auctions are typically private, but there’s an email notification list for people known to be interested in such things . . . By the way, as long as your friend Wajid Jamil is giving away personal information about his customers, I would love to know who has been bidding against me. That game, for instance, that cost me almost ten thousand riyals.”

  “Ten thousand?”

  “I wanted it,” Saddam said, sounding defensive. “But some bastard tried to snipe it out from under me at the last minute.”

  “Do you know the source of these items?” Mustafa asked next. “The return address for the deck of cards—”

  “A shop in Frankfurt, yes. It’s a front. All the return addresses are—I’ve checked them out. The ultimate source of the items is elsewhere.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Let’s say I have an idea. If I’m willing to pay ten thousand riyals for a board game, what would a clue about the game’s maker be worth?”

  “You want money?”

  “If you were a banker I might ask for money. As a servant of the president, there are more important things you can do for me.”

  “Like help you with a legal problem?” Mustafa guessed.

  “There are rumors of a new indictment being prepared against me by the IRS. If the president could shut that down, it would go a long way towards earning my gratitude.”

  “A long way, or the whole way?”

  “Perhaps one other small favor as well,” Saddam said. “You’re not the only one intercepting my deliveries. Recently I had a private shipment that was stolen on its way into Baghdad . . .”

  “That sounds like a matter for the local police. Surely you’ve got that covered.”

  “Ordinarily that would be true. But the thieves come from a neighborhood where police influence is . . . weak.”

  Sadr City, Mustafa thought. “The Mahdi Army stole a package from you? Does that mean Muqtada al Sadr is playing the alternate-reality game too?”

  “No, no,” Saddam said. “This is nothing to do with that. It’s a different kind of shipment.”

  “If it’s alcohol or some other drug—”

  “Please. If it were that, the Mahdis would just have set fire to the truck. Who knows, maybe that’s what they had in mind. But the shipment is an antique, something whose value would be obvious even to ignorant Shia bandits. So they took it.”

  “And you want me to get it back?”

  “I could do it myself,” Saddam said, “but you know I hate to disturb the peace. And if I send my men into Sadr City . . .”

  “Right.” Blood in the streets. More importantly from Saddam’s perspective, there was a good chance his men would never be heard from again. “What is it you expect me to do, send in the real army?”

  “The method I leave to your discretion. But if the president’s servant can’t get my property back, who can?”

  Mustafa frowned. “I can’t promise anything now.”

  “Of course not,” Saddam said. “You go check back with the president—about the IRS thing too, don’t forget—only don’t take too long. If the Mahdis decide to destroy my property, or sell it to someone else . . .”

  As they returned to Saddam’s office, there was an urgent knock on the outer door. “Come,” Saddam said, and Abid Hamid Mahmud—the ace of diamonds—entered looking flustered. “What is it, Abid?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Saddam, but there’s trouble at the main gate. A crazy woman. She says she’s Anmar al Maysani’s daughter, and says if we don’t let her in, she’ll have the
estate reduced to rubble.”

  Saddam Hussein looked at Mustafa.

  “A friend of yours, perhaps?” he said.

  THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

  A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

  Mahdi Army

  This article is about the contemporary, Baghdad-based Mahdi Army. For other Armies of the Mahdi throughout history, please see the disambiguation page.

  The Mahdi Army of Iraq is a Shia community relief organization whose stated mission is to provide security, charity, and other services to poor neighborhoods that have traditionally been ignored or underserved by government agencies. Based in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, the Army has established chapters in other parts of Baghdad and in other Iraqi cities such as Najaf and Kufah.

  The Army’s founder and leader is Muqtada al Sadr.

  ORGANIZATION HISTORY

  In 1959 the Baghdad city council, faced with a huge influx of poor Shia workers from southern Iraq, voted to build a public housing project called Revolution City in northeast Baghdad. Much of the money allocated to the project ended up in the pockets of corrupt city and union officials. The new housing was shoddily constructed, and Revolution City quickly gained a reputation as a slum.

  This was hardly the last insult the neighborhood would suffer. In the decades that followed, Revolution City’s residents complained of being shortchanged on all manner of public services, from health-care access to street repair. Law enforcement was a particular sore spot—within the RC district, the Baghdad police often acted more like an armed gang, shaking down legitimate businesses while allowing criminals to run free. For their own protection, citizens formed militias, often organized around local mosques; while these militias did provide a semblance of order, they also fought one another for control, or were broken up by police when they became too powerful.

  The cycle of corruption and anarchy continued until the late 1990s, when the election of Baghdad’s first Shia mayor, Anmar al Maysani, brought a brief period of hope for change. Unfortunately, Al Maysani’s sweeping reform program did not fare well against the reality of Baghdad politics. Crime remained a serious problem, and matters reached a crisis point after the RC district’s most prominent resident, the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al Sadr, was murdered. When police announced they had no suspects in the case, Revolution City—now renamed Sadr City—exploded in protest. At a rally attended by an estimated 50,000 men, the Grand Ayatollah’s son, Muqtada, called for the formation of a new super-militia to fulfill the promise of peace and justice the occupants of city hall had failed to deliver on . . .

  CONTROVERSY AND CONFLICT

  Although the Mahdi Army’s vigilantism is excused by some as a necessary evil, it has also come in for a lot of criticism. In addition to its well-publicized attacks on muggers, burglars, drug dealers, prostitutes, blasphemers, and homosexuals, the Army is accused of targeting innocent Sunnis who wander onto the Army’s “turf.”

  The Mahdi Army has also clashed repeatedly with the Baghdad police force. The police have often come off the worse in these encounters, with the result that patrolmen are now said to be reluctant to enter Sadr City and other Mahdi Army strongholds without large amounts of backup. Al Sadr’s spokesman insists that such animosity is not the Army’s fault: “We don’t hate all cops, just the bad ones. Unfortunately, finding a good cop in Baghdad is rather like finding a righteous man in Sodom.”

  The Mahdi Army is also believed to be involved in a recent rash of assaults on members of the Baath Labor Union. Although Baath has long been implicated in the corruption afflicting Sadr City, there is speculation that the real motive for the attacks is a personal vendetta against Baath Union President Saddam Hussein, who some suspect of having ordered the murder of Muqtada al Sadr’s father. Whatever the truth, Baathists and their allies give Sadr City an even wider berth than the police do . . .

  Mustafa called his cousin Iyad.

  Iyad was the son of Fayyad, the uncle who treated God like one of his creditors. Partly in reaction to his father’s impiety, Iyad had been intensely religious as a young man, even studying for a time to become a Shia cleric. Ultimately more like his dad than he liked to admit, he’d dropped out of seminary without completing a degree and gone to work driving a cab. He stayed on good terms with his old classmates, though, and when the Mahdi Army took over Sadr City, Iyad became one of a select group of Baghdad cabbies allowed to operate in the district. A few Army big shots kept him on speed dial, and once or twice—so he claimed—he’d even given the Ayatollah’s son a ride.

  Iyad did other jobs for the Mahdis as well. A few years back he’d been arrested for vandalizing a betting parlor that had opened shop too close to Sadr City. Mustafa had intervened with the police on that occasion and was able to get Iyad released with no charge and no penalty other than the beating he’d already received.

  So Iyad owed him, and Iyad was family, but even so Mustafa knew better than to tell him what he wanted over the phone. Instead he had Iyad come by the apartment while Abu Mustafa was out and explained the favor in person, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal.

  Iyad wasn’t buying it. “You want me to help you rip off the Mahdis for Saddam?” He cocked his head to stare at the stitches on Mustafa’s neck. “I heard you’d been injured, cousin, but I didn’t know there was brain damage.”

  “I’m not looking to rip anyone off,” Mustafa said patiently. “I want to strike a bargain with the Mahdis.”

  “For something Saddam wants. You think you can bribe them into overlooking their blood feud?”

  Mustafa did think that, actually, but saw no point in saying so. “I’ll be bargaining on behalf of Homeland Security. The Mahdis’ vendetta against Saddam doesn’t come into it.”

  “The Mahdis may not agree,” Iyad said. He frowned. “I’m not even sure I do. What about your own oath to put that monster in prison? And now you’re working as his errand boy?”

  “I’m no one’s errand boy,” Mustafa said. “But I have a mission, and Saddam has information I need. This is a one-time deal.”

  Iyad looked skeptical—and reproachful. “So what is it anyway, this stolen property of Saddam’s? Drugs? A weapon of some kind?”

  “An antique battery,” Mustafa said.

  “A what? You mean like for an old car?”

  “More antique than that. It’s from an archaeological site, near Al Hillah. Saddam didn’t have any pictures, but I was able to find a sketch of a similar artifact on the Library of Alexandria.”

  Mustafa showed him the printout. “That’s a battery?” Iyad said. “It looks like a vase.”

  “It’s a clay jar, about fifteen centimeters tall. There’s a cap with an iron rod attached to it, and a copper cylinder that goes around that, and you fill the jar with acid—vinegar or grape juice—and the iron and copper generate a current.”

  “And then what? You attach it to the headlamps on your war chariot?”

  Mustafa shrugged. “The Library said something about electroplating. Or maybe Nebuchadnezzar’s court magicians used it to do tricks, who knows?”

  “What sort of tricks does Saddam want to do with it?”

  “He claims he wants it for his private art collection. My own guess is he means to sell it on the black market.”

  “Which black market?” Iyad sniffed. “Grape juice . . . It’s probably full of heroin.”

  “If it is, we’re dumping it in the Tigris,” Mustafa said. “I already promised Saddam as much, and I’ll promise you too. But if it’s just a stolen antiquity, I’m willing to let Saddam have it in exchange for his cooperation. We can always confiscate it later.”

  “You really want this thing? Let me put a bomb inside. Then I’ll get it for you gift-wrapped.”

  “Sorry, no bombs . . . Now are you going to help me, or not?”

  Iyad sighed. “I suppose I can make some calls, see which faction of the Army has this thing. But if it’s possible to get it at all, it’s going to be expensive.”


  “I can get money.”

  “You’ll need a good cover story, too. And a better front man wouldn’t hurt.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Mahdis don’t trust feds any more than they do the Baghdad PD. I’ll vouch for you of course, but if they get the notion that cutting off your head might ruin Saddam Hussein’s day, well . . .”

  “Ah,” said Mustafa. “I would like to avoid that.”

  Iyad looked at the stitches again. “I hope that’s true, cousin, for both our sakes . . . In any event, I think it would be safer to have someone else play the buyer. Do you know anybody with a public grudge against Saddam?”

  “I believe I can find someone who fits that description,” Mustafa said.

  Several nights later Iyad picked the three of them up outside headquarters. Mustafa and Samir wore matching suits, while Amal had gone full ninja, donning an abaya and niqab she’d acquired some years ago for a Bureau assignment in Medina. Something about Amal’s costume—maybe just the self-possessed way she moved in it—caused it to have the opposite effect it was supposed to. As she approached the taxi, several men passing on the sidewalk turned to look at her.

  “Nice hijab,” Iyad said archly. But then he chuckled and held up the copy of the Baghdad Gazette he’d been reading. “Nice PR stunt, too.” The front page of the paper had a picture of Amal’s face, unveiled, under the headline SENATOR’S DAUGHTER RECOGNIZED FOR HEROISM IN ANTI-TERROR FIGHT. After her mother pinned a medal on her, Amal had spoken movingly about how her late father’s stand against evil had inspired her own career; it was this invoking of Shamal, the Gazette speculated, that had motivated a mysterious assailant crying “Saddam! Saddam!” to take a shot at her as she left the stage.

  “So who’s the mystery shooter?” asked Iyad.