“I’ll interview myself,” the Whatsitsname said, turning to Hadi. “Would that work?”
“That would be fine,” said Hadi, watching his strange companion skip across the stones toward Elishva’s house. He disappeared into the house as the sporadic shooting came closer, along with the sound of footsteps and indistinct shouting from men running in the street.
4
The next morning the area was surrounded by the Iraqi National Guard and the U.S. military police. An African American soldier yelled at Mahmoud and pointed his gun at him when he tried to approach and explain that he was from the press. Frightened, Mahmoud went back to the hotel. He found Abu Anmar in the lobby, talking with some people about what had happened the night before. Several houses had been raided, their doors kicked in and locks smashed. Entering with flashlights, the soldiers came and arrested some men they thought were suspect, but not the criminal. The area was quickly sealed off, so the criminal was still within the confines of Bataween.
Mahmoud called Saidi, his editor, filled him in, and said he couldn’t come to the magazine that day. Saidi urged him to go out to see what was happening, to interview people, and try to find out from the Iraqi soldiers the purpose of the operation.
Mahmoud was resentful of Saidi’s insistence, but he left the hotel anyway. The information he managed to gather was worthless: that an intelligence officer had been taken to the hospital after sustaining a serious head injury during the hunt for a major terrorist who had been spotted in the area at night.
At midday they called off the search and relaxed the security cordon. Mahmoud saw some young and middle-aged men being herded into army trucks, their hands tied behind their backs. What they all had in common, Mahmoud soon noticed, was that they were ugly. Some had genetic defects, others had been disfigured by burns, and others seemed to be insane: their faces were relaxed, with no signs of fear or anxiety.
Mahmoud returned to his room in the Orouba Hotel. In the afternoon the ceiling fan stopped because of a problem with the generator Abu Anmar had bought for his four guests. Mahmoud felt he was starting to drown in his own sweat. He headed for Aziz’s coffee shop, which since the beginning of summer had a large air-conditioning unit secured with metal brackets above the big front window. There Mahmoud ran into Hadi smoking a shisha in his usual seat next to the front window.
Mahmoud sat down with Hadi and ordered a shisha and a cup of tea. Hadi seemed to have recovered his customary cheerfulness. He told Mahmoud that the police had targeted the Whatsitsname but hadn’t arrested him. He said it with considerable confidence, and then told Mahmoud that he had persuaded the Whatsitsname to do the interview.
“He’s going to interview himself,” he said.
Mahmoud now knew for sure that Hadi had lost his recorder, which was worth a hundred dollars. Laughing and cheerful, Hadi seemed like the liar and con artist everyone described him as.
But ten days later, Hadi did in fact return the recorder. Mahmoud spent hours just listening, and then listened again. The recording was sensational and shocking. The Whatsitsname came across as a physical presence—a real person made of flesh and blood, like Mahmoud or Hadi or Abu Anmar. He wasn’t as Hadi had described him with his fanciful talk.
Mahmoud listened again and again, immersing himself in the Whatsitsname’s dramatic story while drowning too in the humid heat at the Orouba Hotel. On the second day Saidi noticed the dark rings around Mahmoud’s eyes.
“I have lots of work and other assignments for you. Leave that cave of a hotel,” Saidi said, insisting that Mahmoud move to the Dilshad Hotel in Atibbaa Street. When Abu Anmar saw Mahmoud standing in front of him with his suitcase, his books, and his other possessions, determined to leave, he didn’t say anything. Mahmoud thought it must be quite a shock for Abu Anmar, but Abu Anmar behaved professionally, closing Mahmoud’s account after Mahmoud paid his balance.
Saidi was fascinated by the details of Mahmoud’s dealings with Hadi and invited Mahmoud for tea in the office’s inner garden so he could hear the story directly.
“You should appreciate the plants and the greenery,” Saidi said. “It’s good for you, important for your psychological and physical health.” Then he added, “At least it’s a change from the gray of the concrete barriers throughout the city.”
Mahmoud didn’t know what to do with this digression—whether he should continue with his story or wait for Saidi to give him a sign.
Neither of them spoke for thirty seconds, but then Saidi turned to Mahmoud and said, “Write me a story about all this. Do a feature or an interview with this person. Do something for the next issue.”
Two days later Mahmoud gave Saidi an article headlined “Urban Legends from the Streets of Iraq.” Saidi liked it immediately. When Mahmoud did the layout for the magazine, he illustrated the article with a large photo of Robert De Niro from the film of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Mahmoud wasn’t happy when he got a copy of the issue, especially when he saw that his headline had been changed.
“Frankenstein in Baghdad,” Saidi shouted, a big smile on his face. Mahmoud had been trying to be truthful and objective, but Saidi was all about hype. He had even written his own article on the same subject for the same issue.
With the latest issue in his hands, Mahmoud was lying on his bed on the second floor of the Dilshad Hotel. The cold air gave him the shivers, so he turned down the air-conditioning. It was his day off, and he tried to sleep. But he kept staring at the cover of the magazine, with Robert De Niro’s grim face looking out at a world that turned on him, and he wondered what the Whatsitsname, if he really existed, would make of the article. Would he see it as another misunderstanding of his prophetic mission?
And what would Hadi say about it? Would he insult Mahmoud or praise him?
5
As Mahmoud was lounging on his bed, Brigadier Sorour Majid was in his grand office in the Tracking and Pursuit Department, standing in front of the air conditioner. He knew it wasn’t good for his health, but he was unbearably hot. Maybe he had high blood pressure. His staff had waited till he’d finished his siesta before confronting him with the latest issue of al-Haqiqa, which was edited by his childhood friend Ali Baher al-Saidi.
He had read Mahmoud’s article twice and thought it contained information that shouldn’t have been disclosed without approval from the Tracking and Pursuit Department, but what could he do about the freedom of the press that had suddenly descended on the country? Saidi had made a mistake with this article and should have discussed it with him before publishing it.
His plump cheeks were icy from the air conditioner, but Brigadier Majid still felt on fire. He threw the magazine onto his vast desk, picked up one of his cell phones, and called Saidi.
As usual, Saidi was laughing.
“What’s the problem, man?” Saidi asked.
“Did your journalist actually meet this criminal?”
“I don’t think so. He spoke to some local guy with a wild imagination. It’s a simple story, my friend. The guy’s a liar,” said Saidi.
“Yes, but maybe this is the criminal we’re looking for. What color was his skin? Did he have scars from bullet wounds or injuries that had been stitched up?”
“I have no idea. It’s all based on the fantasies of some lowlife, my friend.”
“This is not fantasy. Where can I find your journalist?”
“It’s Friday today, my friend. Aren’t you at home?”
“Where does this kid live?”
Brigadier Majid wrote down the address on a scrap of paper and hung up. He pressed the service bell, and a young muscular man came in, gave a military salute, and stood at attention.
“Call Ihsan for me,” the brigadier said.
About a minute later, a plump, close-shaven young man came in. He had short hair and was wearing a pink shirt and black linen trousers.
“Go right away to this
address and bring me this journalist, Mahmoud Riyadh Mohamed al-Sawadi,” said the brigadier.
CHAPTER TEN
THE WHATSITSNAME
1
“HELLO, HELLO, TEST, test, test.”
“I’ve started recording.”
“I know. Hello, hello, test, test.”
“Mind the battery.”
“Please be quiet. Hello, hello, yes.”
• • •
“I DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME. I might come to an end and my body might turn into liquid as I’m walking down the street one night, even before I accomplish the mission I’ve been assigned. I’m like the recorder that journalist gave to my father, the poor junk dealer. And as far as I’m concerned, time is like the charge in this battery—not much and not enough.
“Is that junk dealer really My father? Surely he’s just a conduit for the will of our Father in heaven, as my poor mother, Elishva, puts it. She’s a really poor old woman. They’re all poor, and I’m the answer to the call of the poor. I’m a savior, the one they were waiting for and hoped for in some sense. These unseen sinews, rusty from rare use, have finally stirred. The sinews of a law that isn’t always on the alert. The prayers of the victims and their families came together for once and gave those sinews a powerful impetus. The innards of the darkness moved and gave birth to me. I am the answer to their call for an end to injustice and for revenge on the guilty.
“With the help of God and of heaven, I will take revenge on all the criminals. I will finally bring about justice on earth, and there will no longer be a need to wait in agony for justice to come, in heaven or after death.
“Will I fulfill my mission? I don’t know, but I will at least try to set an example of vengeance—the vengeance of the innocent who have no protection other than the tremors of their souls as they pray to ward off death.
“When I’m alone, deep inside I’m not very interested in having humans listen to me or meet me, because I’m not here to be famous or to meet others. But in order to make sure that my mission isn’t misrepresented and doesn’t become more difficult, I find myself compelled to make this statement. They have turned me into a criminal and a monster, and in this way they have equated me with those I seek to exact revenge on. This is a grave injustice. In fact there is a moral and humanitarian obligation to back me, to bring about justice in this world, which has been totally ravaged by greed, ambition, megalomania, and insatiable bloodlust.
“I’m not asking anyone to take up arms with me or to take revenge on the criminals on my behalf. And please don’t panic when you see me. I’m saying this to good, peace-loving people. I ask you to pray and to pin the hopes in your hearts on my winning and accomplishing my mission before it is too late and everything is out of my hands and—”
“Look, the battery’s died.”
“Why are you interrupting me? What’s wrong with you?”
“The battery’s dead, my lord and master.”
“Yes, no problem. Leave the building and don’t come back till you have a big bag full of batteries.”
2
“I’m living in an unfinished building close to the Assyrian quarter in Dora, south of Baghdad. It’s an area that’s become a battleground between three forces: the Iraqi National Guard and the American army on one side, and the Sunni militias and the Shiite militias as the second and third sides. I could describe the building I live in as Area Zero because it and the buildings around, in an area about a half mile square, have never been under the full control of any of the three forces, and because it’s a war zone without any inhabitants. So it’s the right place for me.
“I have safe corridors in the form of big gaps in the walls of the houses that have been damaged and deserted. I use them to go out on my nightly missions, alert for the moment when I come face-to-face with a group of armed men from one of the three groups I mentioned. All of us use a complicated network of routes that is like a labyrinth in daytime and even more complicated at night. We try to avoid meeting one another, although we are moving around in search of one another.
“I have a number of assistants who live with me. They have banded together around me over the past three months. The most important one is an old man called the Magician.
“The Magician used to live in an apartment in Abu Nuwas, just west of Bataween, and he says he was part of the team of magicians that worked for the president of the old regime and that he cast spells to keep the Americans away from Baghdad and to prevent the city from falling into their hands. But the Americans, besides their arsenal of advanced military hardware, possessed a formidable army of djinn, which was able to destroy the djinn that this magician and his assistants had mobilized.
“When I met him, he was in deep grief and pain, not because the former regime had fallen but because he had failed the biggest test he had ever faced. As far as he was concerned, his magic has now useless.
“But one of the djinn that had survived the massacre that took place during the battle for Baghdad airport continued to hover around him to console him in his loneliness. The djinn told him that he had one important mission left. He told him about me and gave him a description of my appearance.
“The Magician told me that he had been thrown out of his apartment because of accusations related to crimes committed under the old regime, and that there was someone following him wherever he went. Even the djinn that served him couldn’t help, and now he hardly ever left our base in the damaged building. His role is now to make sure it’s safe for me to move around inside Dora and out into other parts of Baghdad. He does this with dedication and selflessness because he says that I represent vengeance against anyone who has wronged him.
“The second most important of my assistants is the Sophist, as he calls himself. He’s good at explaining ideas, promoting the good ones, polishing them, and making them more powerful. He’s good at doing the same for bad ideas too, so he’s a man who’s as dangerous as dynamite. I’ve often sought his help to understand the mission I’m now carrying out, and I consult him when I have doubts about some course of action. He makes everyone feel reassured and strengthens their faith—because he doesn’t fully believe in anything himself. I ran into him one evening when he was sitting drunk on the sidewalk in Saadoun Street, and he told me that although he had no respect for belief, he was prepared to believe in me—for one reason: that others had no faith in me and didn’t even believe I existed.
“The third most important person is the one I call the Enemy—because he’s an officer in the counterterrorism unit. He provides me with a living example of what the enemy looks like and how the enemy thinks and behaves. Because he’s so well placed, he also leaks important information to me that helps me on my difficult excursions. He has taken refuge with me because of his strict morality: after working in the government’s security agency for two years, he became convinced that the justice he was looking for wasn’t being achieved on the ground at all.
“Now he’s with me, offering his valuable services because it’s the only way, he thinks, to bring about the justice that he longs for.
“There are three other people who are less important: the young madman, the old madman, and the eldest madman. It was the young madman who kept interrupting me when I started recording this. I made him go buy some batteries from a shop a few miles from our base. To get there you have to go through several dangerous intersections.
“The young madman thinks I’m the model citizen that the Iraqi state has failed to produce, at least since the days of King Faisal I.
“Because I’m made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds—ethnicities, tribes, races, and social classes—I represent the impossible mix that never was achieved in the past. I’m the first true Iraqi citizen, he thinks.
“The old madman thinks I’m an instrument of mass destruction that presages the coming of the savior that all the world’s religions have predic
ted. I’m the one who will annihilate people who have lost their way and gone astray. By helping me in my mission, he is accelerating the arrival of the long-awaited savior.
“The eldest madman thinks I am the savior and that in the coming days he will acquire some aspects of my immortality and his name will be engraved next to mine in any chronicle of this difficult and decisive phase in the history of this country and the world.
“When I consulted the Sophist, he told me that this eldest madman, because he is completely mad, is a blank page that can assimilate wisdom that transcends the bounds of reason and that, without knowing it, he speaks with the tongue of pure truth.”
3
“I go out at night, an hour or two after sunset. I keep my head down because of the constant crossfire. I’m the only person walking down long streets where even stray cats and dogs dare not venture. In the short interludes of silence between the bursts of gunfire, which grow more and more intense as midnight approaches, there is nothing but the sound of my footsteps. I’m equipped with everything I might need—identity cards and documents provided to me by the Enemy, so well made that they are impossible to distinguish from the real thing, and a detailed map of the best route through the residential areas, the streets, and the lanes, provided by the Magician. The route enables me to avoid running into people I don’t need to see and who don’t need to see me.
“My preparations include dressing in clothes appropriate to the place I’m heading to, always provided to me by the three madmen, and applying makeup to hide the scars and bruises and stitches on my face. The Sophist usually does the makeup, and he gives me a mirror so I can see the results before I go out.
“I’m getting close to accomplishing my mission. There’s a man from al-Qaeda living in a house in Abu Ghraib, on the edges of the capital, and a Venezuelan officer who’s a mercenary with a security company operating in Baghdad. Once I’ve taken revenge on them, everything will be over. Except that things haven’t been moving to a close in the way I had assumed they would.
Frankenstein in Baghdad Page 13