War Porn

by Roy Scranton

  Salman doubted Qasim’s interest in Anouf had anything to do with her brother. Frankly, it was a miracle Qasim managed to get out of bed every morning without cracking his head open. He certainly wasn’t tough enough to hang with the likes of Hamadaya. Perhaps he needed something, though, some paperwork, a visa, or maybe with the war coming . . . what? Maybe it went the other way: he worked as an accountant for his uncle, so maybe Anouf’s brother was having trouble with his books? Most likely, it was just school drama. Qasim had a crush on Anouf or vice versa. Al-Zabadi wasn’t handsome, manly, or distinguished, he wore glasses, he had a crooked nose and a ratty mustache, he was unkempt and awkward, but for some baffling reason, his female students were always having crushes on him. Pity, Salman suspected—the same gush of emotion they’d feel for a sick cat.

  So maybe they’re flirting. Maybe Anouf has a crush. Maybe Qasim has finally grown tired of living apart from his wife. Maybe he’s more of a man than he seems. Whatever it is, we’ll see. We’ll see what it’s good for.

  •••

  Qasim barely caught Luqman as the rotund physics professor blew out the door for home. His wife had called, said the Hizbis were digging a trench right next to their house, and demanded he do something. She said they’d even threatened to lock her up. Lock her up! Luqman didn’t know what he could possibly say, but he hoped when he got home, somebody would listen to reason. It was too bad the Hizbis had picked his house to set up next to, but what could he do? They had guns! They were Hizbis!

  “I will be glad, nephew, when the Americans have freed us from this plague.” Luqman turned down the radio, which was playing a patriotic song from the war with Iran.

  “You really think it’ll work?” Qasim asked, staring out the window at the city streaming by in a blurred mosaic of brown and gray.

  “Nephew! Look at MTV. Look at CNN. We’ll vote, we’ll have a constitution, we’ll elect our president. Think of it! No more Hizbis! No more secret police! No more Abu Ghraib! It’ll be like it was in the seventies, before the Mother of All Morons attacked Iran. I’m telling you, everybody had a new car and nice clothes. Not this shit I wear now, but good stuff from Egypt.”

  “You don’t think they just want our oil?”

  “Of course they want our oil! But they don’t want to steal it, they want us to sell it to them, just like the Saudis. They just want to make sure we’re loyal. Okay, then. We’ll be loyal. We’ll be good, loyal friends, and with the US behind us, we can stand up to the Zionists, we can stand up to the Persians, we can stand up to those pricks in Kuwait. And we’ll all have satellite TV. Freedom, Qasim. Freedom! And satellite TV! We won’t have to hide anymore!”

  Qasim loved how Luqman was, outside of work, willing to say anything. One day he cursed Humam Abd al-Khaliq Abd al-Ghafur, the minister of education—or, as Luqman called him, “the rancid curd of a faggot sheep’s syphilitic foreskin”—for twenty minutes nonstop. Yet despite Luqman’s hopeful levity, Qasim’s mind kept returning to the coming bombs, his problems with Lateefah, and his strange conversation with Salman. Why had Salman asked him about Anouf? And could it be true what he’d said, that her brother was a gangster?

  He’d noticed her the first day of class. As beautiful as she was, there was no way he couldn’t have. He was shy, though, and considered himself a professional, so he tried to put her out of his mind. When she started making cow eyes at him and laughing at all his dumb jokes, he thought it was just because he was her teacher. He remained stony, unresponsive—for the first few assignments, at least, until she proved she could do the maths and wasn’t baiting him for a grade. After that . . . well . . . She must know I’m married, he thought, so he never told her. He assumed she was single and available, so he never inquired.

  Anouf would wait after class, hovering at his desk to ask him about some knotty algebraic conundrum, her skin rich and luminous, her eyes quick like oil in the sun, her face delicate and open. One time their hands had brushed, and a terrific shock lit through Qasim’s belly. It took everything he had to keep from grabbing her wrists and pulling her across his desk.

  Yet he restrained himself. He had as yet dishonored neither himself nor Miss Hamadaya and had no intention of so doing. With the war coming, though, sometimes things just happened. Maybe he and Anouf would be caught in a bombing raid. She’d come to him for help . . . rescue . . . trapped in a dark basement, alone, while bombs fell above, her hands sliding down his shirt to his belt, her heaving bosom crushed against his chest, her breath slow and warm on his neck—

  But Salman said she was leaving. Why, then, did she say that she’s staying? And why would she tell me to call her and let her know I was safe? Why would she smile so happily when I told her I was staying, too? Was it all some trick? Or was Salman lying? One of them was, that’s for sure. And what was that about Munir Muhanned, the gangster Salman said her brother worked for? Cheating on your wife, that’s one thing; besmirching a gangster’s sister was something else entirely. Salman must be lying—but why?

  Qasim interrupted Luqman’s monologue. “You ever heard of Munir Muhanned?”

  “The gangster?”

  Qasim’s heart sank. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, some. You know. They say he’s like Abu Alich from Wolves of the Night. I heard one story about him, about some cop who wouldn’t take his payoff and started locking up his men, putting the squeeze on him, so Munir Muhanned paid off the cop’s boss, then just killed him.”

  “The boss?”

  “No, the cop.”

  “And they didn’t do anything?”

  “There was a stink, but Muhanned greased all the right palms and they left him alone. The best part is, they took the cop out into the desert and buried him up to his neck. Left him for three days. When they came back, he was still alive. He’d almost dug himself out. So they tied him to the bumper of their truck and drove home to Baghdad. By the time they hit Firdos Square, all that was left was the rope.”

  In Qasim’s mind, he became the cop and Anouf’s brother was Munir Muhanned—Qasim pictured a cross between Saddam and Al Pacino. “I ain’t gonna kill you,” he said, slapping a wrench in his open palm, “because that wouldn’t hurt enough. But you’re gonna pay for what you did to my sister.”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Qasim hissed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m gonna drop you here because I gotta run,” Luqman said, pulling off across from the Yarmouk gas station. Traffic was sparse: the Ba’athists had set up checkpoints all over, discouraging people from going out. “The wife is having fits about these Hizbis. God keep you safe, Nephew.”

  Qasim watched Luqman pull away into the dusk and turned heavily toward home. He walked slowly across Jordan Street, dodging a truck full of sheep, two taxis, and a passenger bus with no lights on, then went around the far side of the gas station to avoid the long line of cars waiting to fill up. Aside from the gas station, the neighborhood was quiet. Lights were coming on in the upper stories of the houses, glowing warmly through latticework window screens and ugly taped Xs, but nobody was out, nothing seemed to be happening. It felt as if the city had curled in on itself, waiting, afraid. It wasn’t far to his uncle’s, only a few short blocks along some old railroad tracks and through a vacant lot, but it seemed that night as if he were crossing a vast cavity, an eternal lostness.

  What would happen to his city, his country? Every farewell stuck in his throat, each goodbye seeming, in some way, the last, because in a week nothing would ever be the same again, even if, God willing, Luqman and Anouf and Lateefah and his uncle Mohammed and everybody important to him survived. It was as if the calendar went up to the deadline and stopped: everything after, blank.

  Except it won’t be blank. It’ll be terror and death and fire from the sky. It’ll be like before, with power outages and burst water mains and no food and police crackdowns. The UN will come in wit
h their humiliating aid and we’ll stand and beg for a bag of rice.

  Something snarled, so close he seemed to feel it more than hear it, and he spun hard, his pulse banging in his temples. Maybe six meters away—two dogs fighting over a pile of trash. One was much smaller than the other, and sicklier too, but appeared that much more vicious.

  Qasim watched as they growled, circling, then the little one pounced. The big one went low and came up under the other, tearing at its chest with his teeth. The little one bit at the bigger one’s ear, his shoulder, then leapt back bloodied. The big one stepped forward and the little one ducked right and went for the neck. The big one met him jaw to jaw and the two merged in a tumble of fur and teeth, standing on their hind legs, snarling furiously and pawing like boxers. Qasim’s heart pounded in his hands.

  The dogs came apart again, the little one jumping back limping. Both were bleeding, but the little one was clearly getting the worst of it. Their tongues lolled between their shiny white teeth, their eyes flashing like stainless steel.

  The big one leapt, going for the kill. The little one dodged left, but the big one was faster, clamping down on his neck and shaking him by the throat. Qasim picked up a rock and threw it, hitting the big dog on the flank.

  “Hey,” he yelled.

  He picked up another rock and threw, this time nailing the big dog in the head. The dog’s jaw opened and his victim fell free.

  “Hey! Piss off!”

  He let fly another rock, which the big dog ducked, then another and another. The dog turned and loped a few meters away, then stopped and growled at Qasim, who threw again, hitting the dog square in the side and sending him fleeing.

  The little one lay in the garbage, panting heavily, bleeding from its side, throat, and muzzle, one eye slashed and oozing, paw twitching. Qasim crept up, rock in hand, closer and closer to the wounded dog. It seemed oblivious, its good eye unfocused. Qasim thought it must be dying.

  He crouched above the tiny beast, his nostrils full of blood and trash and dog scent. The dog’s body heaved with breath, moist and red, its fur darkly matted. Qasim reached out his left hand toward the gaping wound on the dog’s neck, toward its head.

  The dog jerked up and snapped down. Qasim flinched and screamed. The dog bit harder, and Qasim stumbled back, lifting the bloody dog in the air. He shrieked and shook his arm, but the dog hung on, legs wriggling. Then Qasim swung and smashed the dog to the earth, knocking it loose. It pushed unsteadily to its feet, snarling and wheezing at him. Qasim stumbled back and kicked. The dog limped out of the way. Holding his bleeding hand, backing up staring at the dog, Qasim cursed wildly. The dog growled and barked. Qasim watched it as he backed away, both of them now silent, and when he was far enough, turned and walked off, checking twice over his shoulder, down the street and around the corner to his uncle’s.

  He pushed open the gate with his shoulder, holding his bloody hand to his chest, dizzy with the waves of pain now shuddering up his arm. As he went in through the front door, he heard gunfire and an explosion and thought for a split second it’s started, before he realized it was the TV in the living room and Arnold Schwarzenegger saying “Now daht’s a vake-up kahll!”

  His aunt Thurayya called from the kitchen: “Is that you, Father?”

  “No, Auntie,” Qasim said. “It’s me.”

  He stumbled through the parlor into the back room where his cousins were watching TV, then into the bathroom. He put his hand in the sink and turned on the water. His dizziness swept in waves, now pain, now cold. His auntie came up behind him.

  “Are you alright, Nephew? You sound upset.”

  “I hurt myself,” he said, turning away.

  “Let me see.” She grabbed at him.

  “It’s fine,” he said, wrapping his hand in a towel. “I just need a bandage.”

  Aunt Thurayya was quick for a middle-aged woman, and tenacious, but Qasim was tall enough and the bathroom cramped enough he could keep her out.

  “Let me see, Nephew.”

  “It’s fine. I just caught it on some metal.”

  “You need the tetanus.”

  “I had the tetanus.”

  “It’s not a vaccine! You need it each time.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You’ll do it wrong. Let me see if you need the tetanus.”

  “I don’t need the tetanus!”

  “You need the tetanus!”

  Qasim swung on her and shouted, “Leave me alone, old woman!”

  Thurayya backed up a step and stretched to her full height. “You will not speak to your uncle’s wife in such a tone.”

  “Enough meddling! Go!”

  “Mind your tongue, boy!”

  “Woman, leave me be!”

  Thurayya glared at him, then turned and swept into the living room, storming in front of the television and yelling at Maha, Nazahah, and Siraj. She shut off the movie and made them go do chores. Qasim was shaking again and could barely hold himself up. He went to the kitchen and found a bandage.

  The bite was deep, jagged, inflamed. He couldn’t find any antibiotic cream, so he just put some cotton pads in the wound and wrapped it up. It was unwieldy work, but he managed to cover the gashes. Thurayya stood in the living room glowering. His cousins sulked at their chores, well aware who’d caused their misfortune.

  “I won’t be having dinner,” Qasim said, taking a piece of flatbread in his good hand. “I need to work.”

  Upstairs, he sat at his desk and looked out the window. His mind had gone remarkably clear, and though his hand ached wretchedly, he felt crisp, even refreshed. He munched his flatbread, for a few minutes blessedly free of thought, enjoying the brilliant coruscations of the streetlights through the palms.

  When he’d finished eating, he put on his headphones and pulled out his dissertation. Against a background of chirps and beeps, riding a delicate synthesized wave, David Bowie moaned out, “Nothing remains . . .” Qasim let the music ease him into the pure spaces, the gently shimmering universe of thought called mathematics. He flipped through his notes with his good hand, recovering lines and curves, weaving arcane connections, coming back after an exile too long to his comfort, his true home, his love.

  Salman drove up over the Al-Jumariyah Bridge, catching the outdoor fires from the masgouf restaurants along Abu Nuwas Park flickering orange in the black waters of the Dijlah, and descended into the subdued hustle of Yafa Street, passing the Parliament building and the Assassins’ Gate. Aziz liked Salman to meet him in a particular shisha café in Mansour, to which he was now driving in an unusual mood, enjoying the easy feel of nighttime Baghdad yet planning, calmly and just below conscious thought, his tactics for dealing with Aziz. He was almost certain he was going to have do something unsavory and probably dangerous, but he just hoped it didn’t involve his notional status as a reservist.

  Salman couldn’t remember the last time he went to drill, but even he knew the situation was bleak. Maintenance didn’t happen, training was a joke, and morale wretched. The Sunni officers despised the almost wholly Shi’a ranks, and vice versa, and everything was infiltrated by the Mukhabarat. No camaraderie, no sense of unity: each man looking out for himself, which means you’re always looking over your own shoulder. Not that it would have mattered much even if they did all work together. The armored corps were still devastated from the last war, the air force nonexistent, the artillery bombed to pieces—even after Iran, things had been better. The troops were digging in as they’d been told, but no one had any illusions about what would happen when the shooting started.

  As he turned along Zawra Park and passed the Baghdad Zoo, noting soldiers setting up antiaircraft guns under the lights of the Dream Park’s Ferris wheel, Salman realized he couldn’t care less who won. Someone would always be on top, and the guy on top has to step on everyone else in order to stay there, so what’s the point in getting w
orked up over who it is? There has to be a sheikh. Sheikh Hussein or Sheikh Bush, it didn’t matter. Power flowed the same no matter who wielded it. And if you weren’t on the side of power, you got out of the way.

  He parked around the corner from the café and walked up. Rubbing misbaha beads between his fingers, he wished he’d changed from shirt and slacks to a dishdasha. The robe would have been so much more comfortable. Most important, he had to keep from being put in a fight Iraq was bound to lose. Salman definitely didn’t want to ride around Baghdad in the back of a Toyota pointing a machine gun at curfew breakers. Maybe if he told Aziz he was investigating somebody—something vague and hard to check up on. He could say he needed to collect evidence, do some surveillance.

  The café had a grand entrance that always pleased Salman’s eye: high and wide, dark wood hung with scimitars, shelves and tables busy with archaic-seeming bronze lamps and ornate, multicolored shishas. Peer too hard and you’d see how chintzy it all was, but in the dim light and thick, fruit-scented smoke you could pretend, imagining yourself in some Abbasid harem—sticky dates and slippery olives, the lingering odor of spiced tobacco, veils and low-lit lamps half-concealing firm and youthful flesh. Salman found Aziz sitting alone in a corner in the back, drinking chai and smoking—not a shisha, but a Marlboro. The red and white pack lay ostentatiously on the table. The two men exchanged greetings, shaking hands softly and touching their hearts, and when the server came, Salman ordered chai.

  “Still they haven’t voted on the resolution,” said Aziz, flicking ash. Salman noticed, as he always did, that the two smallest fingers on Aziz’s left hand were missing. They’d been lost to shrapnel in the Iran War, but even crippled, the man’s hands were powerful, brutal hands that knew a lot about killing, and Salman watched them to keep from getting caught in the operator’s deep, hooded eyes. “There’s talk of a veto, Russia, China, France. The world may yet stand with us against the Zionist aggression.”