The Last of the Angels

by Fadhil al-Azzawi

  At that point, the police chief said confrontationally, “Fine! We’ve yielded enough to the rebels. If they don’t release my men and return the weapons they’ve seized, I’ll make them see bloody hell.”

  That was a clear threat, rife with hostility, but Khidir Musa chose to ignore it. He asserted, “Have no fear. Everything will be sorted out.” Then he added as though pressuring the police chief, “But at the same time, the killer policeman must be punished. I certainly hope he will not be rewarded for his deed.” Then he rose, excusing himself to rejoin the delegation’s members who had been detained in the headquarters of the second brigade.

  As he left the club, the commander of the second brigade joined him, trailed by his guards. He led him once more to the stone fortress where he indicated his intentions to Khidir Musa in a veiled manner, “You can count on me. The army will never disappoint the people.”

  Khidir Musa had remarked that Adnan al-Dabbagh had remained silent throughout the meeting, and grasped that the man was made of a different metal. The commander shook hands with the notables of Kirkuk, one after the other, and apologized for inconveniencing them. When he bade farewell to Khidir Musa at the outer gate, pressing his hand firmly, he said, “Don’t forget to visit me. I would like that.” Khidir Musa replied respectfully, “I certainly will.”

  After eating some kebab in the restaurant of Uthman Kebabchi, which was not very far from the second brigade’s headquarters, the notables headed in an awe-inspiring motorcade to al-Musalla’s cemetery, which the insurgents still occupied, cutting through both the police’s and the insurgents’ barricades. Many of them shook their heads in sorrow over the chaos to which the city had reverted. They felt as if a portentous wave from some unknown time had slammed into it, filling its heart with tears.

  “Not everything has been lost, so long as hope lingers here.” So thought Khidir Musa as he gazed through his prescription lenses at the collapsing houses on which dust and time lay heavy. Dada Hijri, who grasped nothing but his own dreams, was overcome by longing so bitter that it seemed to be the colocynth he sipped each time poetry transported him to the cavern of madness. This longing—as dark as a blot of China-ink and dotted with glowing, luminous spots of white and red—was for Dervish Bahlul, who had vanished in Baghdad. The man’s face had reminded him of the ancient Torah prophets, whose portraits were sold on the other side of the city on dirt pathways for ten cents apiece along with pictures of the Imam Ali seated on his horse spearing the viper-like wild beast attacking him and of Shim’r holding al-Husayn’s head, which is dripping blood as his eyes stare at death. Hameed Nylon had preceded them and joined the insurgents, who had been waiting for him perhaps more than for anyone else, for Hameed Nylon’s presence among them made them feel they could thumb their noses at the entire world. Hameed Nylon sensed that he had missed something big. He wished he had been with his brothers from the community in their battle against the enemy but comforted himself with the thought, “Perhaps there will be more to come. Our struggle is greater than a fight to protect the dead.” He was so distracted by these hopes that he neglected to deliver the Roneo press entrusted to him in Baghdad, oblivious even to the danger of having the police discover it in his vehicle—an offense that could lead to his spending long years in prison. A man like Hameed Nylon, however, could not brood about such things, for it was danger itself that liberated him from fear. Surging deep within him, a dreamy intoxication, comparable to what he felt when he was with women, possessed him.

  When Kirkuk’s notables reached the cemetery, vast numbers of women swathed in black suddenly emerged from among the tombs, wailing and slapping their faces in grief, as if they were part of a theatrical performance. Khidir Musa shouted at them, “What are you doing?” Since none of them answered, he brushed past them and headed for the area where the men were congregated. He called out to Abbas Bahlawan and to the Chuqor community’s young men, who were standing there with the others, “For the love of God, make those women be quiet. What’s all this wailing about?” Then Khidir Musa climbed on the remnants of a ruined wall and delivered a speech he had been composing on the way. In it he said, “Noble sons of Kirkuk, God has annihilated the iniquity. The travesty has been destroyed.” He announced that the cemetery would not be touched, that a wall would be built around it, that the tombs of the saints would be restored, that two guards for the cemetery would be appointed, and that the family of the martyr Qara Qul Mansur would be compensated. He also communicated to them King Faisal II’s personal greetings. Once Khidir Musa had reported all this heartwarming news to them, applause immediately resounded everywhere throughout the cemetery along with the women’s trilling ululation. A voice from the crowd protested, however, “We want the killer policeman executed publicly here and his body displayed for people to see.” Another man declared that the police chief should himself be punished. A Communist student, whose face was covered to conceal his identity, demanded that the English imperialists be thrown out of Kirkuk and the oil company nationalized so that its profits could be distributed to the workers and the poor.

  Khidir Musa listened to all this with calm self-confidence. “None of these requests seems out of reach, since the king himself stands beside us.” Then he added, “Now I think it is our duty to recite the opening prayer of the Holy Qur’an by the grave of our martyr Qara Qul.” Thus he left no room for further protest. The grave was still there, even though many of those who had witnessed the miraculous ascent to paradise of Qara Qul on Buraq’s back believed they would find the grave empty. Some of these dismayed observers muttered, “We saw him with our own eyes ascend to heaven.” Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who stepped forward to lead the throng in a recitation of the Fatiha and then delivered a special prayer for the martyr, proclaimed in a thunderous voice, which was heard by all those standing behind him, that what Muslims had seen ascending to heaven had been Qara Qul Mansur’s spirit on its way to paradise. His body, the spirit’s temporary abode, would decay with time, like any other edifice. What need did a spirit that has been freed of its fetters have for them? He announced that the favor bestowed on Qara Qul Mansur by God’s angels, who bore him to the sky up the shaft of light, was a rare one that would permit him to join the ranks of immortal saints. Actually, people who had known Qara Qul Mansur personally harbored many reservations in their hearts about the matter because the man had been a deceitful and malicious alcoholic. Since God had chosen him in the manner that people had witnessed, however, His choice must have been based on some wisdom that escaped people. Those who had quarreled with him during his lifetime regretted that they had not recognized his true worth, which had been displayed by his death.

  Then emotion seized hold of people till they lost control of themselves, along with all their sense of right and wrong. They attacked the grave, men and women, and began groveling in its dirt. The blind washed out their eyes with its soil till they could see the light. Cripples crawled across it so strength would return to their legs and hands. Barren women, enveloped in their wraps, stuffed handfuls of dirt from the grave up their vaginas so they would bear children. Those afflicted with tuberculosis, syphilis, hemorrhoids, typhoid, and cancer swallowed some of the dirt to cure themselves of their maladies and pains. Young men seized this opportunity to throw themselves upon the women, squeezing against their soft buttocks or grasping their quivering breasts. This human offensive swelled ever greater as thousands of people from every direction shoved past each other toward the grave, struggling to reach it. Everyone who had heard the news pushed forward as stories and miracles were devised, detailing feats that not even the Messiah had ever performed. Country folk crowded in from nearby villages till it seemed that Judgment Day, which had been predicted by some leaflets distributed in Kirkuk a few days before, had dawned. The advancing swarms crushed underfoot those who fell, and thus some pregnant women suffered miscarriages and children were suffocated. The young athletes from the Chuqor community initially tried to take charge of the situat
ion and fired into the air to frighten people back from the grave, but the crowds, whose consciences had been knocked out of kilter by Qara Qul Mansur’s miracle, swept them away. So they yielded to the waves of people surging from everywhere. Only because Kirkuk’s community leaders retreated in the nick of time did they escape death by asphyxiation. This was thanks to the courage of Chuqor’s youth, who forcibly cleared a path for them to quit the cemetery, saving their lives from imminent danger.

  Although the government had no wish to intervene in this affair, which was none of their business, at first three helicopters went up and hovered over the human throngs that surrounded the grave, pouring cold water on people to alleviate the impact of the intense heat, which was causing people to faint. No one knew exactly what was happening at the tomb, for the human mass surrounding it extended for a long way in every direction. Khidir Musa was afraid of the consequences of allowing public access to the grave and contacted the governor to explain the necessity of intervening to bring the situation under control while that was still possible. The governor was forced to ask for assistance from the second brigade’s commander, who—with his officers—devised a plan to retake control of Qara Qul’s grave, dubbing it “Operation Holy Month of Sha‘ban.” Accordingly, parachutists were dropped on the grave and took possession of it after fighting off the people who surrounded it. At the same time, tanks were stationed at the ends of the streets that led to the cemetery to prevent more people from reaching it, but the soldiers who forced the crowds to withdraw found the grave empty. The corpse of Qara Qul Mansur had vanished. Someone had already made off with it.

  The officer in charge of the operation ordered his soldiers to fill the grave with dirt again in a desperate attempt to keep something secret that could not be. The governor was upset by the disappearance of the corpse and decided to get it back, no matter the cost. He declared, “A corpse can’t vanish into thin air.” Finally the director of public security contacted the governor to tell him that his men had discovered that residents of the nearby village of Tawuq were responsible for abducting the corpse in hopes of burying it in their village, which did not have the sepulcher of any saint to bring it blessings. Armored police units rushed off to the village, which lay no more than half an hour from the city and surrounded it from all sides, firing into the air. The abductors, who numbered more than twenty armed villagers, decided to resist and withdrew into nearby orchards and woods, dragging the corpse, which they had wrapped in a quilt fastened with ropes. The pursuing policemen traded shots with them. During the battle, which lasted more than an hour, two villagers were killed and three others wounded. One policeman took a direct hit to his heart and fell over on his back, dead. Another was wounded in the shoulder. As the abductors fled by a route that led through fields and orchards, the knot in the rope with which they had secured the quilt came undone, and the corpse, which was totally naked since people had plundered its shroud when it was taken from the grave, rolled down into an irrigation ditch. One of the villagers reached out, grabbed the corpse’s foot, and dragged it behind him during their retreat under police fire. The men took turns dragging the corpse, as its glossy black skin was lacerated and befouled with mud and grass. They were eventually forced to abandon the body when pressure from the police intensified. Then they hightailed it away and disappeared into thick woods where the police did not dare charge them.

  Thus the police rescued the body of Qara Qul Mansur, whose spirit had ascended to heaven on the back of Buraq the night before. They tossed the putrid cadaver in a Jeep and transported it back to the barracks. The government quickly printed leaflets, which they dropped by airplane over all the neighborhoods of Kirkuk, bringing people the good news that the corpse of the saint Qara Qul Mansur had been rescued from the wicked abductors and announcing that the next day would be an official holiday to allow people to pay their respects to the remains in a procession featuring both the people and the government.

  This gesture of good intentions by the government caused people to forget even the battles they had waged against the police. A rumor spread that the policeman who had killed Qara Qul Mansur would be executed immediately subsequent to the funeral procession. The young men, in response to Khidir Musa’s personal intercession, proceeded to release their hostages, who had been held in a room of the Chuqor community’s mosque, but the rifles the insurgents had seized from the police had vanished without a trace. The chief of police was forced to keep silent about this matter and to turn a blind eye to it, until some opportunity should present itself to reclaim the rifles that had been taken by force from his men.

  The following day, the funeral cortège set out from the Palace of Government building. At the front of the procession were musicians playing monotonous funeral tunes on trumpets. They were followed by people carrying black flags at half-mast. A bouquet of artificial roses had been placed on the chest of Qara Qul Mansur’s corpse, which had been set in an open military vehicle that was surrounded by tanks as a precaution against a repeat of the previous attack and abduction. Behind the tanks marched a procession of government officials, prominent citizens, Kurdish feudal lords—invited by the government—and clerics representing Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. These were followed by a large military contingent marching slowly to the beat of the music. At the rear came the citizens, who were subdued this time. Many, among them women and children, preferred to stand on the sidewalks and watch this awe-inspiring spectacle. At al-Musalla Cemetery, builders and construction workers were waiting for the arrival of the funeral cortège. The moment the soldiers returned the body to its grave, they began building a marble and plaster tomb, which they surmounted with an extraordinary dome that had windows of interlacing iron rods and a green door, above which was placed a bronze plaque inscribed in Kufic script: “Do not think that those who are killed serving God are dead. Rather, they are alive, receiving sustenance from their Lord.” Beneath this was the phrase “Here rests the saintly martyr Qara Qul Mansur who ascended to the heavens.” The governor announced in a brief statement, delivered in front of the sepulcher, that His Majesty King Faisal II had decided to appoint a director general to oversee the sepulcher’s affairs and to allocate enough funds to rebuild the tombs in al-Musalla Cemetery of all the dead Muslims whose families could not afford to do so, as a way of honoring the martyr Qara Qul Mansur, whom he hoped God would honor too. He also said that a police detachment would guard the tomb night and day to prevent anyone from profaning the sanctity of the graves of saints.

  This was, in fact, more than people had been expecting, for the governor had displayed extravagant, almost incredible generosity. Even so, their hearts were still unsettled because they wanted revenge on the killer of their martyred saint. This was a matter that left the officials in a quandary. They knew that the people would be satisfied with no punishment short of hanging, but the police chief and the director of public security opposed that: “How can we expect our men to work if they know that acting in their own self-defense may get them hanged?” Finally the police chief proposed that the government limit its actions to whipping the man in a public square, thus leaving to the people the fate of the man, whom everyone expected they would kill. The next day the killer was taken to al-Musalla Square and stripped of his clothing. Then his chest was fastened to a post and the back of his head was covered by a red cloth that had been soaked in water. A huge sergeant stood behind him and struck him twenty times with a bamboo pole, which landed on the man’s butt or back. At first the killer tried to steel himself. After the third blow, however, he began to howl like a dog—provoking laughter among people who had come to watch the punishment of the policeman who had killed the saint Qara Qul Mansur. The flogger, whose bamboo staff as it cut through the air created a swishing sound that could be heard far away, began to sweat profusely. The victim now was splattered with blood and had even ceased to moan. The sergeant sighed with relief after delivering the final blow and proclaimed, “This is the punishment for those who k
ill a saint.” Then he untied the rope that bound the killer to the wooden post, and the men with him collected the ropes and the post and departed, after pushing the victim to the ground and spitting on him. Sensing the danger surrounding him, the man attempted to rise in a desperate effort to save himself, but his legs betrayed him and he fell on his face once more. At that, Qara Qul Mansur’s two black sons, who were ten and twelve years old, stepped forward. Each of them had in his hand a straight razor taken from their slain father’s barber shop. They flipped the exhausted man onto his side. One of the boys seized his hair and pulled his head back while the other one grasped his chin and tried to slaughter him. A mullah who emerged from the crowd of spectators cautioned them, “It’s not right to slaughter him this way, my son.” One of the brothers rebuffed him, saying, “Don’t interfere. Go ahead and step aside. He killed my father.” The agitated cleric responded, “I know that, my son. Point his head toward Mecca first and recite: ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate the Merciful,’ before you cut his throat, with God’s blessing.” Then he helped them point toward Mecca the head of the man who was kicking and pounding the dirt with his hands in awkward attempts to rise. The policeman, however, having heard their conversation and seeing the blade near his throat, suddenly shook himself. The two boys were startled but clung to him even tighter. Then the boys’ mother, a plump black lady, came forward and sat on the man, weighing down his chest, and he ceased resisting. She told her older son, “Slay him! What are you waiting for?” So the boy cut the man’s neck, severing his head from his body, and blood gushed out over the dirt like a fountain. The boy then rose, tossing the head, which had remained in his hand, to the ground. No sooner had the plump lady stood up, however, than the headless body quivered and rose to its feet. It began to run every which way, eventually colliding with a light pole. Then it fell once more to the ground, and moved no more, ever.