The Last of the Angels

by Fadhil al-Azzawi

  In his long years of exile he had learned the humor of vision, or what he called “the self-contradictory nature of meaning,” seeing all of life as a drop of condensation on his spread fingers, which had knobs like the fingers of a robot in an exhibition. It is, however, a life heading toward death. Over the course of generations, people have been born and then died. In a hundred years at the most, no one we now know will be left alive. “There will be others whom we will never know at all: workers, prostitutes, writers, painters, commanders, rulers, and soldiers, but what interest are they to me, when I no longer exist? None at all, although I might linger on as a memory or a secret gesture in this comical celebration called life.”

  Burhan Abdallah’s heart had been numbed, although he had survived because he never ceased for a moment to hope for a return to his city, which he had fled. For forty-six years he had sat, day after day, in a room in a remote city, listening to news bulletins, thinking he might hear something about his city. There were many things to make him anxious, for over the expanse of these years many upheavals had occurred in succession. One dictator had followed another. Finally, human beings had disappeared from the cities and streets after the dead emerged from their hiding places to occupy everything.

  For forty-six years, wars had flared between them or against the others. The ancient dead hated the more recently deceased. The nineteenth-century dead hated the eighteenth-century dead. A new order developed and pushed many of them to resort to violence. The dead who considered themselves civilized refused to associate with the dead of the first human epochs, even those from the stone and bronze ages, on the grounds that their skeletons more closely resembled apes’ than humans’. Indeed, there were some who did consider them apes and unrelated to human beings. On account of this struggle, which led to many crimes, the dead from the two factions attacked each other with jerry cans of kerosene or gasoline, which they lit. This was the only way to kill the dead.

  The dead originated sects that advocated the absolute equality of all the dead because the deceased possessed no distinctive characteristic save that of being deceased. This in and of itself should suffice to guarantee the solidarity of the dead and their brotherhood. Actually, these dead people displayed some wisdom too by allowing the continued existence of many of the living, so that they would not cut off the stream that provided them with renewed powers every day. Unfortunately for the dead, they could not procreate. For that reason, they were forced to depend upon the living, who bred, gave birth, matured, and then died, thus joining mankind’s greatest army: the eternal dead.

  All the same, Burhan Abdallah never abandoned his hope that he would one day return to his city to meet the last of the living, who had never lost their appetite for life. He was not afraid of death but of becoming one of the dead. For this reason, he directed that his body should be cremated and the ashes scattered in the Tigris River. He also realized, however, that a man does not die until he loses hope in life. He had not lost this hope and was incapable of losing it. He would awake each morning in exile, where he had spent forty-six years, and gaze out the window of his room at the white snow piled in the streets and on buildings’ roofs. Everything was pure and white, affording a glittering light. Black crows would soar here and there, rising high into the air, and then descending to peck at the snow in search of a nonexistent morsel of bread or grain of wheat. He paid attention to each morning and evening throughout the forty-six years, as he moved from city to city, from street to street, and from coffeehouse to coffeehouse. He saw all the cities of the world.

  In South Africa he fought for Zulu rights. In Zanzibar he lived for years on spices. In Yemen he joined a Sufi dhikr circle in the Great Mosque in San‘a. He became a guide for explorers crossing the Empty Quarter by camel. He worked as a chef on a German steamship. He transported tea from Ceylon. He led the student revolution in Paris, even without anyone calling attention to him by name. In London he worked as an escort for rich people from the Gulf Region, accompanying them from the hospitals to the dancehalls of Soho. Then he was a secretary for an astrological scholar, who read horoscopes, conducted spiritual séances over the telephone, and investigated the supernatural. In Mecca he organized an international gang of pickpockets to prey on pilgrims. Then he fled with a forged Saudi passport to New York, where he resided for a year or part of a year in one of the tunnels of the Statue of Liberty. At his wits’ end, he returned once more to Europe, where he chose to work as a translator paid by the word for an establishment that owned a building almost next to the Berlin Wall.

  Each time he moved, he lost his books and furniture. He would leave them and never return. All the same he never relinquished his transistor radio, which he carried with him. It was a black, German-made, Siemens radio with eight shortwave bands. Day after day he would sit searching for broadcasts with news that would restore life to his snuffed-out heart. In his homeland, each war was followed by another. Wars overlapped occasionally so that it was difficult for a person to distinguish between one war and another. There were wars between the dead and wars between the living, wars in the mountains and wars in the cities, wars in the marshes and wars in the deserts.

  During these conflicts, each new commander seized the one before him and slew him, feeding his flesh to his courtiers, who ate even the crotch, oblivious to the difficulty they had digesting this. From time to time, festivals were held to immortalize the accomplishments of the new ruler. Each had his own idiom, which differed from the others’. Thus it became customary to compose books about the genius that this ruler or that displayed in his use of language. Each had his special habits. One would eat boiled lettuce and another would sprinkle sugar on his food. One’s taste was so depraved that he smoked a cigar while sleeping, and this became the people’s compulsion too. They were all demigods. This was more or less understood until someone came along who disdained these pagan practices and proclaimed that there was no god but God. Naturally he was God.

  Burhan Abdallah went almost every day to the coffeehouse, where he had a cup of coffee and smoked, waiting for someone who might chance to come and bring him some news from his distant city. He occasionally met another exile like himself and listened to his words, which he knew by heart. Even words lost their meaning with time. When he spoke, he addressed only himself, as he always had done. He existed in his past. His memories weighed him down, but he did not want to become a narrator of his memories, like some old man who is the laughingstock of his community. At times he would ask, “Is there any new information about our homeland?” The other person would reply a bit anxiously, “You must have heard the news. They’ve resorted once again to striking each other with atomic bombs. This is the second bomb to explode in a week.” He would say, “Yes, I heard that. Basra was hit, isn’t that so?” He was not very interested in learning the answer because he knew that death was everywhere in his distant country. Years ago, they used to strike each other with chemical weapons, but now they had changed over to atomic bombs. He would ask himself, “Is there any difference between a man dying of a bullet, cannon fire, a chemical rocket, or an atomic bomb?” He would repeat to himself a fragment of poetry: “The causes have multiplied, but death remains one.”

  Emotion frequently overpowered him and brought him to the verge of tears, but he would turn his face and flirt with the German waitress Cornelia, “Connie, would you bring your lover another cup of coffee?” She would reprimand him, “You know I only like young men, you fugitive from the cemetery.” Was he dead too without knowing it? Not at all. Never. He would tell her, “If you allow me to visit you once, I will compress a whole lifetime into a single night.” She answered pensively, “I might do that some day. You really tempt me.”

  But all that was finished now, like a curse whose magic was exhausted. He awoke one morning to hear the stunning news that he received so coolly it might as well not have been true. For a long time he had lost the ability to feel delight because he had waited so long, like a man no longer interested
even in losses. For the first time, however, he felt that he had liberated himself from a nightmare that had consumed his entire life. He listened once again to the broadcasts that carried news and lengthy reports about the dead, who had finally surrendered to the living, who had built crematories for the dead—who were no longer able to die—in every community and city. They stood in long lines in front of the crematories and leapt into the blazing fire. Life had finally triumphed over death. During a single week, every trace of the deceased was eliminated from his country.

  In his coffeehouse, located in the Alexanderplatz square in Berlin, for the first time in forty-six years, he saw his angels, the three old men coming from eternity, carrying spring inside hemp sacks on their shoulders. This time they were traveling across the rolling steppes that stretched to the outlying communities of Kirkuk. They smiled at him affectionately and scolded him, “You shouldn’t have deserted us for all this time.”

  Burhan opened his mouth with difficulty, “I didn’t think there was a spring in store for Kirkuk. It seemed to me that all you were just a fantasy I had created for myself.”

  The three men responded, “You shouldn’t have done that, Burhan. Don’t you see that we’ve finally drawn near to the Chuqor community? We want you to be our guide when we arrive.”

  He heard Cornelia say as she placed another cup of coffee in front of him, “It seems you didn’t sleep very well last night.”

  He opened his eyes once more, “It’s true; that’s always the way it is.”

  Through the glass façade of the coffeehouse, he cast a look at the street, where people were descending to the subway tunnels, which traversed the city, and climbing out of them. “I wonder where they’re going.” It did not matter to him whether he discovered the answer to his question. He said, “They’re coming from everywhere and going everywhere. As for me, should I follow my three angels, who have never reached Kirkuk?”

  Now he was on his way to Kirkuk in the front seat of a taxi. When they were within walking distance of the city, he stopped the vehicle and got out. He was afraid of the surprise and felt self-conscious. He thought he was returning to his roots again, but saw the city stretching into the distance before him in the sunset, spread out like a legendary bird. He climbed a nearby hill and sat down on its red dirt, from which grass sprouted. He filled his chest with this ancient scent that he had smelled throughout his childhood. He was choked up with sorrow over his long absence: “Burhan, why was it necessary for you to leave for all these years? No one banished you, but you were afraid of death and fled, abandoning your pearls to the dogs. But that’s all over now. The life that you squandered in the world’s hermetic cities has ended. Everything has ended. Here you return, carrying your old age in your heart to a city that knew you only as a child.” He was not even able to weep.

  In the gloom that descended over the distant city, Burhan Abdallah left the hill, heading toward the minarets as their crescents glowed in the red sky. His steps were heavy, but his eyes remained fixed on the distant, blazing fire. He waded through a grassy creek and crossed through two orchards he had not seen before. Step by step, he listened to the wind as it rustled through the leaves of the trees. It was a city that had piled up on itself, an unknown conglomeration that breathed with life, sounding almost like a storm heard from the bottom of a well. So this was his ancient city. Invaders had passed through it, leaving their mark on the stones of its houses. Do you suppose it had died and ended, like everything else? His steps took him through darkness unlike any he had ever seen before. This darkness united with the sky, which was almost blue but smudged with red clouds. It descended upon the earth as if it were a transparent crystal.

  For forty-six years he had never written a letter to anyone in his city or received one. He had wanted to be as absent as anything else, hidden, leaving no trace behind him. He was almost certain that everyone who knew him had died. Who could defy death for forty-six years? Who could freeze time? He cut his way through the night with his cane, the way Moses cleft the sea with his staff. For the first time he noticed the barking of dogs coming from the heart of the black conglomeration. He listened to the saddening silence, one he recognized from sleeping outdoors on the roof of his family’s house in the Chuqor community. “There’s no one left in my city. So what will I do in the streets and houses?” He thought he would retrace his steps. “I shouldn’t have returned and dredged up all this pain.” Then he composed himself: “All there is to the matter is that I listened to my destiny forty-six years ago and here I am listening to it again.” He realized that there was nothing more that he could lose, after losing his entire life. His body began to shake and tremble as he kicked at the gloom with his two heavy feet. “No one’s waiting for you there. Only your memories. No one will even know your name.” He felt dizzy, sat down on the ground, and burst into tears, filled with a happiness that flowed from giving vent to sorrow.

  He sat there, staring at the arc of fog and smoke, wrapped up in himself, until he felt fatigue close his eyelids. So he fell asleep, resting his head on his small carry-on bag, into which he had stuffed a shirt or two, pajamas, a toothbrush, shaving supplies, and a diary. He awoke to find the dawn’s cold stinging him. That was more like a dream he had seen somewhere else, but could not remember. He felt he was experiencing this for the second time. In a certain sense, he knew what was awaiting him. Was he truly here? Had he also returned before now to this city that lay in the distance? Had he walked along this very road? Had he entered it like a thief in the night? That did not make sense, but he knew he had been here. He felt a lump in his throat. He tasted a bitterness on his tongue each time. So it was spring then. Early-rising sparrows were soaring from one place to another, chirping with the first rays of sunshine. “My God, it’s the spring I’ve dreamt of for so long and which I’ve never found anywhere else in the world.”

  He pulled a cigarette out of the pack he had placed in his pocket. He lit it and inhaled the smoke until he felt it touch the pit of his lungs before he exhaled again. He sensed a slight buzz in his body. The doctor had advised him, “At least don’t smoke until you’ve eaten breakfast.” But of what importance was that now? A man would die some day, whether he smoked or not. It was all the same to him whether he lived a hundred years more or died in only a hundred days. Here spring, which the three old men had brought after they had called to him for so long and spoken to him, was bursting forth again over his city. They certainly must have arrived now. They must have opened their sacks and let spring spill forth. He felt he had gained control of his city once more. The ending merged with the beginning in a way that made separating them difficult, just as day fades into night.

  He stood in front of a garden encircled by a fence coated with green paint, which was still wet. He smelled its scent and sat on a stone bench plopped among the trees to gather his strength. Then he saw two men walking in the street, each in a different direction. Their footsteps were almost in cadence. It truly was spring. Scents that mingled with each other roused him: the fragrances of familiar dew and of the still, cold air. There was nothing real about what he saw. Everything seemed a fantasy or perhaps mimicked his memories. Everything resembled images spilling from his imagination, almost as if he were in a dream.

  Two eyes saw trees. Two arms stretched toward an island over which awoke a dawn he recognized. Countless birds shot up, soared a little, and then settled back on the bank. A pole rose there. A woman was climbing a mountain that almost touched the sky. Fluttering over its right corner was a Turkish flag, and, before a cannon that had been left on a hill, soldiers sat eating canned food. On the far side, the desert began. Shepherds were playing reed double-flutes and children coming from the alleys followed them all the way to the water. Here was the city once more.

  A curtain went up and a naked woman on a gray horse looked down. She was traveling between Friedrichstrasse and al-Musalla community, from Unter Den Linden to the Chuqor community. Khidir Musa was standing in front of an assemb
ly of men and women in the Lustgarten opposite the Palace of the Republic in Berlin, talking about his two brothers who had gone to Mecca and not returned. His mother, Qadriya, was strolling in her black wrap through Saint Germain in Paris or sitting in the Milano café in Cyprus, gazing at the waiters, who always brought a glass of water with the coffee. The scent of intoxicating spring awakened him. “All this affection when you remember the Assyrian girls, coming out of one building heading for another, like an opening in a cloud.” Here is the student of Islamic jurisprudence on his donkey, with its frayed saddlebags, pouring drops of jasmine perfume on the meadows from a bottle in his hand as he travels from village to village. “Oh! Another day, another awakening! Everything is here. They are all here: dead friends and living ones, those I know and those I don’t. The trees, always the trees. The plastered houses always and the light that picks out their tops…and as usual, always, me.”

  He awoke from his slumber and wiped his face with his hands the way he habitually did. He wanted to rise, go to the kitchen, and put some water on to boil before he headed to the bathroom but stopped. “There’s no kitchen here.” He opened his drowsy eyes. Kirkuk stretched before him. He felt both terror and anxiety. He was seized by a feeling that had afflicted him during the past forty-six years as he moved between continents and cities with forged passports or real ones. Time had vanished—like a bubble that pops when you reach a finger toward it. It seemed as though he had never left his city.

  He went over to a water tap in the garden and put his head under the water the way he had done in the garden in al-Musalla whenever he passed by it. Raising his head, he found his three angels standing in front of him, smiling. He was so perturbed he did not know what to say. One of them, who was holding a towel of Aleppo velvet, offered it to him, saying, “Dry your face with this, Burhan.”