The Last of the Angels

by Fadhil al-Azzawi

  The rose’s bed:

  Come let us seek the rose’s bed.

  I sought the rose’s bed

  But found thorns bedded there instead.

  This poem the poet intoned shocked those present because it contained an overt reference to the king, although only the members of the Kirkuk delegation, who were waiting for good news from the interview with the king, caught it. The members of the delegation felt even more uneasy. They wanted to know what the king had told the three men and had no time for cryptic poetry. Their eyes turned on Khidir Musa, encouraging him to speak. His head was bowed, however, as though he was brooding about the poet’s words. Dada Hijri, too, was lost inside himself, mulling over his unfinished poem about breakfasting with the king. For this reason he shook his shoulders in a theatrical fashion and mumbled some incoherent words. When he quit the mihrab, his eyes looked sad, but no one noticed besides Dervish Bahlul, who rose and headed toward the mihrab, where he delivered a short statement that left many squirming, as if simultaneously repulsed and attracted by the conflicting magnetic poles of what they knew and what they did not. Dervish Bahlul’s voice sounded like thunder on a rainy day. Khidir Musa looked up at him and smiled as if to encourage him to continue speaking. “Night and day follow each other in turn, but some people who know the night deny there is a day. Drink from the gushing spring and climb to the peak of the mountain. Then descend to meet me—I who have been awaiting you since you were born. Farewell! Until we meet again!” Dervish Bahlul looked away and departed, quitting the mosque without anyone understanding a word he had said. Moreover, the people there disapproved of his obscure language and his unexplained departure. It was true that Khidir Musa had recruited the dervish, insisting that he should be a member of the delegation, even though no one had ever heard of him before, but since chance had furnished him the opportunity to sit with the king, it was wrong for him to leave the gathering in this theatrical manner after mouthing a few obscure sentences that meant nothing.

  Thus Khidir Musa was forced to rise. Everyone was expecting him to say something straightforward now—unlike his two companions who had set fires blazing in the audience’s hearts, even without saying anything comprehensible. Khidir Musa, who was an experienced, persuasive speaker, was obliged to apologize for any appearance of obscurity in the words of Dada Hijri and Dervish Bahlul. He hinted that perhaps their meeting with His Majesty King Faisal II, may God preserve him, had affected them strongly. In an attempt to convey a new impression to his listeners he said that the king had been deeply moved by the danger threatening the tombs of the Muslims in Kirkuk and had said he would speak to his prime minister about the matter. Although this was less than his listeners had been expecting to hear, he attempted to close off any debate by pointing out that the matter was now in the king’s hands and that this was a major breakthrough, all by itself. So the gathering broke up, leaving the issue unresolved.

  Since there was nothing more for the men to do in Baghdad, most of them decided to return to Kirkuk the next day because homesickness had overwhelmed them. The group split up again. Khidir Musa, followed by the elders of the Chuqor community, headed for Souk al-Haraj, where they purchased clothing and shoes that were almost like new. Imported from Europe, these were offered at extremely low prices. The merchants among them took advantage of the opportunity to conclude some deals with merchants of al-Shurjah Market. Hameed Nylon and Salim Arab slipped away once more to the alleys where love is sold, before picking up—from a shop located in al-Iwadiya—a small Roneo printing machine concealed inside a wooden box. It had been smuggled across the desert from Damascus on the back of a camel and Faruq Shamil had asked Hameed Nylon to transport it to Kirkuk. Later, the delegation spread out to the nearby coffeehouses. The Turkmen went to the Parliament Coffeehouse, and the Kurds went to the Municipal Coffeehouse, where they were staying in rooms on the second floor. Others headed to the coffeehouse of Hasan Ajami. Meanwhile, Khidir Musa, Dada Hijri, and Dalli Ihsan sat in front of their hotel on chairs they placed on the sidewalk so they could watch the people with whom al-Rashid Street swarmed. All evening long Dada Hijri remained anxious about the disappearance of Dervish Bahlul—who had vanished without a trace—even though Khidir Musa reassured him more than once, suggesting that their friend had perhaps gone to the mosque of al-Hallaj in al-Karkh or to recite the opening prayer of the Holy Qur’an in al-A‘zamiya at the grave of the great Imam Abu Hanifa, and noting that Dervish Bahlul frequently disappeared, moving from country to country and town to town, as if charged with a mission to which only he was privy.

  When the vehicles set off the next morning for Kirkuk, which they reached by noon, the delegation’s mission was over; all that was left for them to do was to wait for orders from on high, and these were expected at any moment. The surprise the men found waiting for them on their return to Kirkuk, however, was greater than anyone could have imagined, for first the Chuqor community had rebelled and then the other neighborhoods had followed suit, attacking the municipality’s backhoes and bulldozers with rocks. In response, the police had sent their forces into al-Musalla and had occupied the garden in the center of the district, firing many shots over the roof of the elementary school that overlooked the cemetery. The rebels attacked municipal vehicles with stones and liberated them, turning them into barricades against any possible counteroffensive the enemy might initiate. Had a police regiment not arrived, the municipal workers would not have escaped alive, for rocks flew from the roofs of nearby buildings as if it were raining stones. Even so, the police were only able to rescue the workers after they fired repeated rounds into the air. A police armored vehicle with loud speakers disseminated nonstop appeals for the insurgents to withdraw from the area and threats of punishment for anyone who defied the law or disrupted civil order. The insurgents responded to these appeals—delivered by a cereals-market broker who was known throughout the city for the purity of his language and the loudness of his voice and who had been forced against his will to accompany the police—with their own contradictory calls, which they broadcast from loudspeakers located on the minarets of mosques in the area. After the police had occupied the roof of their school, the pupils of al-Musalla Elementary School, accompanied by their principal and teachers, formed two orderly lines and sang the patriotic anthem “My Country!” The people applauded these young pupils, who had scarcely reached the end of the garden separating the two sides before they merged with the resistance forces, whose morale soared as they joined the pupils in their stirring anthem:

  My homeland…my country!

  Glory, beauty, splendor, and majesty thrive in your hills

  Life, success, bliss, and hope thrive in your fair weather.

  Will I see you

  Safe, blessed, successful, and honored?

  Will I see you,

  In your eminence, reach the sky?

  My homeland…my country!

  The Chuqor community proclaimed its rebellion the very same day that Khidir Musa met with King Faisal II. This happened as a result of an error committed by the municipality’s public works director. The police chief had ordered a halt to the grading that the municipality had started once he learned that a delegation was heading to Baghdad to see the king. This was a judicious decision on his part, for he wanted to stay ahead of events and thus to avoid any untoward incidents. The municipality’s public works director, who was supervising the road construction, however, did not withdraw the backhoes and bulldozers from the work site near the cemetery but ordered these moved to an area on the far side of the cemetery till the situation was sorted out. Thus, instead of asking his workers to retreat, he ordered them to advance.

  At that, the “Giants” gang, who were lurking in an alley that lay between the Arab neighborhood and the Jewish one, rushed out in a surprise attack against the municipal workers and the policemen guarding them. They were followed by children, women, and old men who carried sticks, knives, and stones. The Giants, lacking only Hameed Nylon, who had
gone to Baghdad, had armed themselves with brass knuckles. The attack, which was led by Abbas Bahlawan, began with cries of “God is most great,” women’s trilling ululation, and stones that rained down on the workers and the policemen, who took to their heels. Abbas Bahlawan caught up with the driver of one of the backhoes and—clinging to the door—threw him a punch, which the man dodged so that it hit his shoulder, causing him to throw himself to the ground on the far side. Then he fled, cursing and screaming in pain. The attackers rushed forward. At the forefront was the boy Burhan Abdallah, who carried the Iraqi flag. This surprise attack frightened the municipal workers, who fled toward the garden, where they shielded themselves behind its trees from the stones pelting them. Three policemen attempted a counterattack by firing their rifles into the air, but the members of the gang surrounded them and stripped them of their weapons after pummeling them liberally. Then they led the policemen to one of the abandoned trucks, where they bound their hands with ropes. The municipal public works director was added to this number when some women pursued him and captured him as he attempted to slip away down a side alley.

  The quick and crushing victory achieved by the Chuqor community came at an unexpected price. When the Chuqor community launched its lightning raid against the municipal workers, an undercover policeman who had been sitting among the tombs drew his revolver and raced toward the attackers. Once he realized, however, that he was about to fall into a trap, he too fled, brandishing his revolver. A group of children, men, and women chased after him, calling out, “Thief! Seize him!” He raced away breathlessly with the screaming mob on his heels. Some other people terrified him when they threatened to block his escape route, so he lifted his revolver and fired three shots toward his pursuers, who were gaining on him. One of these shots hit a black barber who was seated on a chair outside his shop, which was located near the tomb of Imam Ahmad, slaying him. Even as blood gushed from the hole in his chest and his head tilted forward, his body remained seated, and thus it was some time before his two young children, who were watching the chase scene too, noticed the blood staining their father’s chest. Then they began to scream loudly enough that the pursuers stopped to look at the dead man. The undercover agent thus had a chance to escape by ducking into an alley that led to the leather market.

  The victim was descended from an immigrant to the city: a slave Captain Chesney, an English surveyor who had worked first for the East Asia Company and then for the Lench family, had brought with him from Africa. In April 1836, after they had endured a month of terrible discomforts aboard a steamboat called the Tigris, which had set out from Birejik, Chesney and his group were attacked by the lawless Khaza‘il tribe, which sank the ship in the swamps of Lamlum after plundering its contents. The slave and the woman with him escaped from the bloodbath on a craft made of inflated skins. This carried them as far as al-Qurnah, where a well-armed Turkish boat plucked them from the water. Then they joined the service of the governor Rashid Pasha al-Gozlikli, who a month later after they had both embraced Islam presented them to his son-in-law Ata Effendi in the sanjak of Kirkuk. That man—Qara Qul Mahmud—was the grandfather of the barber Qara Qul Mansur, who was killed by the undercover agent. The few residents of African heritage, whose number barely exceeded ten, were absorbed into the life of the city to such an extent that they capriciously began to call themselves black Turkmen. People would pretty much have forgotten their descent had their children not frequently accosted other children on their way to or from school, and had their visages, which they allegedly anointed with a special cream, not been so dark.

  Although Qara Qul Mansur died while seated on a chair in front of his barber shop, people considered him a martyr who fell in battle defending Islam and the Muslims. Many stories were repeated about his heroic death, and unrelated miracles were attributed to him. Some of these stories were certainly fabricated to stir people’s emotions, which are inflamed by this type of tale. Their authors were members of the city’s secret political organizations, which were interested in opposing the government by creating strife, agitation, and chaos. There were other stories that people told in the coffeehouses, though, without anyone being able to pin down the source or motivation behind them. These were imaginative tales that were scarcely credible. One mentioned that Qara Qul Mansur traced his genealogy to the Prophet’s companion Bilal the Ethiopian, who was the first muezzin in Islam to call people to prayer, thus defying the pagans and polytheists. Some of these stories went so far as to allege that Qara Qul Mansur actually was Bilal the Ethiopian incarnate and that the Prophet Muhammad had loaned him Buraq, his heavenly steed, which had carried him down from the seventh heaven to the earth so he could raise high the banner of Islam once more. Hand-written pronouncements appeared, declaring that Judgment Day would begin at 10:15 a.m. on the twenty-eighth of March—in other words, exactly seven days after Qara Qul Mansur’s slaying. The police chief attributed these flyers to those Jews who had remained in the city of Kirkuk, refusing to move to Israel. A number of Jews, whom the police arrested, actually confessed to drafting these declarations in order to stir up chaos and strife in the Muslim state, but the police released them two days later to avoid offending world public opinion.

  Qara Qul Mansur’s funeral evolved into an event unprecedented in the history of Kirkuk. People emerged from alleys and neighborhoods, sorrowfully striking their faces and wailing. They turned out in human waves, hoisting black flags, preceded by funereal drums, the beat of which could be heard throughout the whole city. Hung from the entries of roads, alleys, and streets were banners that read: “Glory and Eternal Life to the Martyr of the Insurrection Qara Qul Mansur” and “The Blood of the Martyr Qara Qul Mansur Will Not Have Been Shed in Vain.” Farmers from villages near Kirkuk came with their donkeys and horses. The nomadic Arabs who pitched their tents in the desert near al-Hawija arrived with their camels, which they allowed to graze on the grass that grew between the tombs on the plain of Yeddi Qizlar. Not even the Gypsies, who staged bawdy dance performances in their tents, which were erected in the city’s green plains, hesitated to descend to the streets, pulling behind them a she-bear they forced to dance in time to the funereal beat of the drums and a she-ape they had dressed in mourning clothes.

  The governor, who was flabbergasted by the whole affair, was afraid that matters would get out of control and declared a state of emergency in the city after a brief meeting that he held with the police chief and the commander of the second brigade. From Baghdad, the prime minister contacted the governor to reprimand him for the disorder in his city and to demand that he get in touch with Khidir Musa and the city’s other leading citizens to quell the disturbances. Khidir Musa, however, was in Baghdad with the other civic leaders. For that reason there was nothing to do but wait. Despite the proclamation of a state of emergency, the police chief withdrew his forces from the city, leaving behind only the policemen who were camped in al-Musalla Elementary School, overlooking the cemetery. The second brigade’s commander, who was an Arab from Mosul, positioned some of his troops at the city’s entry points but refused to send soldiers into the streets, which the insurgents controlled. The police chief and the commander of the second brigade went up in a helicopter, which continued to hover over the cemetery for reconnaissance of the thousands of people who had come to pay their final respects to their martyr, Qara Qul Mansur, who was buried near the tomb of a plump imam, whom people had eaten back in the days of the great famine that the city had suffered during the previous century. Once his bones began to speak, the deed had been revealed, and a judge had ordered the perpetrators slain, so people had eaten them to revenge the roasted imam.

  The matter did not end with Qara Qul Mansur’s burial, however, for the rebels, most of them from the Chuqor community, stayed on at the barricades they had constructed at the edge of the cemetery using backhoes and bulldozers behind which they had sought shelter. They torched tires and blocked the road to the cemetery as they confronted the policemen who continued to oc
cupy al-Musalla’s elementary school. Children from nearby communities spent the evening with the insurgents, listening with attentive interest to stories that their elders related about the days of World War I, when Turkish armies had retreated from the invading English forces, impounding everything they met on their way. Their native troops would force their way into houses and spear mattresses in their search for wheat and flour. They seized jars of lentils, pulling them from the flaming fires inside bake-ovens. Then they would extract the lentils, squat down on the ground, and devour them, preventing even the household’s hungry children and womenfolk from approaching the kettle. Now some women brought pots of stuffed grape leaves to the insurgents while other women were busy making tea to distribute to the rebels. The opposing police force adhered to the stern orders that had been issued and only opened fire two or three times. When, under cover of darkness and sheltering behind tree trunks, some individuals slipped into the garden separating the two sides and tossed at the police several Molotov cocktails that students from the technical secondary school had concocted, the insurgents responded to the enemy’s gunfire by shooting toward the school three rifles they had seized from the police at the beginning of the battle and some revolvers men had placed in their belts. Three men fetched the Ramadan cannon, which had been left in a space between the tombs, hoping to use it in some fashion even though they had no sulfur, perhaps to intimidate the enemy and raise the spirits of the insurgents, if nothing else.

  As a matter of fact, during the night that the Chuqor community—along with nearby communities—spent beside the cemetery by the light of lanterns placed on the marble tombs, things happened that caused the policemen, who had continued to watch developments from the school’s roof, to drop their weapons and flee under cover of darkness, terrified by what they witnessed. When the three men fetched the Ramadan cannon, everyone laughed, even Abbas Bahlawan, who was commanding the battle. He asked, “What will we do with a cannon that looks like a donkey?” The children clambered on top of it, and Burhan Abdallah even stuck his hand inside the cannon’s barrel and began to feel around as if searching for something. Gulbahar told him not to, for fear the cannon, about which she had no clear understanding, would explode. Then Burhan Abdallah said to Abbas Bahlawan, “It wouldn’t be hard to make some sulfur. We could use the chemicals from matches.” Abbas Bahlawan responded, “Do you know what you’re talking about, boy? I suspect the matter’s not as easy as you think.” A sergeant who had fought in Palestine, however, said, “We might need a little sulfur, but the most important thing is to get hold of a sufficient quantity of gunpowder.” Getting hold of the gunpowder was not a problem, for the quarrymen had plenty and they were not about to begrudge it to the insurgents. Once a bag of gunpowder reached the cemetery on the back of a donkey, which was accustomed to transporting gypsum by day, a group of former soldiers took charge of the cannon, shooing away the onlookers who had gathered around them, cautioning them about the danger of being too close. These soldiers succeeded in loading the cannon and then declared it ready to fire.