The Tobacco Keeper

by Ali Bader

  On the same day, Kamal Medhat walked along the street with Pessoa’s Tobacco Shop in his hand. He entered a grocery shop near his house to buy cigarettes, or tobacco. The courtyard was almost completely dark because of the power cut. The calm was oppressive. He stood leaning on his ebony walking stick with the ivory handle, his mouth twitching and his gaze contemplative and profound. He saw his neighbour, an old engineer who’d once been a paragon of elegance. The man had always worn white, silk shirts with roomy collars, black velvet trousers with braces and English-style shoes with laces. That day, Kamal saw him wearing the traditional gown and his beard was long. He stopped at the entrance to the shop, smoking nervously and talking with great agitation about the Sunni and Shia question with another neighbour.

  The social rift was crystal clear. Kamal Medhat found the split reflected in the whole society, not excluding artists. Although people in general tried to downplay the significance of the division, they tacitly reinforced it. Kamal, who thought that the country had a single story, a single narrative and as a result a single identity, was now shocked to find three conflicting and contradictory narratives. Each faction wrote its own history and narrated its own existence in isolation from the others. He suddenly found that the Shia had a narrative, the Sunnis had a narrative and the Kurds had a narrative. These were not complementary, but were contradictory narratives that confronted each other.

  The final letter

  Kamal Medhat sent his final letter to Farida via his son Meir when Meir came to visit him at his house in Al-Mansour: ‘Death will be here soon. I’m not long for this life. It’s true that I’ll resist at the beginning, but I’ll surrender to it with love in the end. I burn for the final moment. My ecstasy will be indescribable, a moment of orgasmic pleasure.

  ‘I talked to you last time about the tobacco keeper, didn’t I? Today I’m thinking, why can’t death be the tobacco keeper? I don’t regard death as awful, but see him as an elegant gentleman. I will embrace him and call him brother …’

  Part Three

  IX

  Murder revealed, a life on the periphery and strange lands

  ‘I don’t know how many souls I have possessed, for I change at every moment.’

  Fernando Pessoa

  A dual existence

  In the Green Zone, I led a dual existence. Saddam’s small palace had been renovated by an American contractor and turned into the US Agency for International Development. The American army had destroyed it with several smart missiles. When I saw it immediately following the war, the ceilings had collapsed, the doors of the lifts had come off their hinges and the pillars had fallen. The marble staircase was covered with a thick layer of dust. There was twisted metal and crushed brick. But everything in it had been restored. The large palace, however, had become the US Embassy in Baghdad. All the statues of Saddam that had surrounded the palace had been torn down. Nermine invited me for a swim in the lake in front of the palace, which had become a public swimming pool. As we were taking off our clothes, two female soldiers also came for a swim. They took off their clothes and walked beside the pool in their bikinis, still carrying their machine guns. The pretty soldier with the tattoo, who we’d seen on the plane, was also having a swim. She had another tattoo on her left buttock.

  The British pub in the shape of a ship was not far from the pool and sold beer at three dollars a bottle. The only official US post office in the Green Zone, a somewhat small branch, was nearby. A US soldier stood at the entrance to the post office, inspecting the parcels going in. I wondered what he would do if there was anything dangerous in them, but it became clear to me later that the soldier was looking for fake DVDs. After inspecting the parcel, he stamped it. Postage was free.

  In the palace gardens there was the Country Club, an excellent pub inside the Green Zone. It stood a few steps from the final checkpoint. The pub was hot and crowded most of the time. Tasteless pop music was playing. Pool tables stood on the left of the circular bar. On the other side was an open area where customers could dance, and in the middle of the pub were a few tables and chairs.

  The Bunker, another pub, was always pumping out loud music. Its inner walls were made of concrete. The weird thing was that they were decorated with weapons: the walls were plastered with ornamental mortar bombs.

  There was also the bazaar where you could buy souvenirs, carpets and photographs. On the other side stood a number of small buildings: a barber’s shop, a car agency, a warehouse and a clothes store. There were also shops selling tape recorders, books, magazines, shoes and bikes, and there was a Burger King. Al-Rashid hotel, where Katrina Hassoun stayed wasn’t very far away. Every day, Nermine and I would visit her and spend an hour or two in her company, for there were quality shops selling foreign papers and magazines as well as a shop selling Rolex watches and another selling photographs, Persian rugs and DVDs. From outside, we watched the swimming pool, the casino and the gym. We sometimes spent the time in the corner of the lounge of a small pub. The barman was an emaciated man with sagging skin. He was always dressed in a high collar and red bow tie. He poured wine from a decanter into small glasses. Strangely, this bar had a permanent clientele; every time we went there we found the same crowd. They were four American strategy officers who sat at a round table near the window, playing cards. The winner always ordered beer for the four of them. A hulk of a man with a pink complexion and grey hair sat near them. He ordered full-strength rum and, as he stuffed tobacco into his pipe, watched the card players with eyes full of cunning.

  This was how we spent our time in the Green Zone. The Red Zone, however, was a very different matter.

  We went under cover of darkness, for armed gangs were everywhere. The map of the city that we had drawn rested on our knees. It was like a chessboard, with black squares for the Shia and yellow for the Sunni; one mistake would definitely mean a fatal checkmate. The car moved forward in the dark while the night cold enveloped the earth and the humidity increased the hardness of objects. The tree trunks were dry and the wind blew over Baghdad, carrying danger. People shut themselves indoors, seeking the protection of roofs and walls. They expected death at any moment. They stayed awake as though watching the night from above, listening to the murmurs of the dead and the kidnapped carried by the wind from afar. A chill, as if from deep underground, haunted the streets and bats hovered in the air, making savage sounds in the dark.

  Who killed Kamal Medhat?

  Who killed Kamal Medhat? Why? And how? These were the questions that I kept asking myself. They gave me a splitting headache and made me feel like a robot engaged in a long conversation with itself. At times the conversation was superficial and at others inspiring. When it was neither, it made me sick to my heart. When I was unable to explain anything, I started talking like a parrot whose repetitiveness prompts disgust. Nevertheless, I had to move on, even though it was only moving towards a mysterious void. Speaking about Kamal Medhat was like coloured smears on a white wall or a bell ringing to remind us that we had fallen into a bottomless pit. It was like going on a long journey on a war train full of skulls and screaming black masks. It was like arriving in our country for the first time and finding it overrun by black dread and boundless anarchy.

  Kidnapping

  It was clear that Kamal had been kidnapped from near the post office in Al-Mansour.

  He had gone to the engineers’ office near the post office. The office manager there said that Kamal had stayed for five minutes, and left without drinking his coffee.

  The worker standing near the door said that he’d seen hooded men get out of a black minivan holding revolvers with silencers. Another person standing nearby had additional firepower.

  Kamal Medhat went inside the post office and straight to the restroom. He left in a hurry and then went through the door next to the service office. From there he moved to a neglected part of the post office, walking through the back corridors and then to a hall at the back.

  Did he sense that he was being pursued? D
id he get the feeling that nobody would be able to help him?

  Did he anticipate who those men were?

  What is clear is that the armed gang wreaked havoc in their pursuit of him. A number of explosions destroyed the back area of the post office.

  But Kamal Medhat continued walking through the wreckage and climbed to the telephone centre on the second floor. He opened a side door in order to go down the outside staircase. But he turned back as soon as he saw one of the masked men standing by the stairs. So he climbed down an internal staircase and from a back door he ran, with his feet aching, jumping over a garden fence, hoping to escape through an adjacent house. Three shots were fired at him, holding him up.

  He reached a four-storey building, went in and headed to the lift. He decided to climb the stairs on foot because the lift was taking too long and he heard cars on the street. The moment he reached the second floor, the masked gang arrived with their guns and raced into the building.

  He was on the move through a doctor’s clinic and noticed that the men pursuing him had entered the corridor. But then they vanished, probably having gone upstairs. While he was looking out of the window of the clinic, he saw the black cars on the street and the masked men carrying weapons.

  He opened the door to the next room. He was worried they might attack him from the other end of the corridor. How could he shake them off and escape? He continued through the offices, but instead of going right and facing the masked men, he turned left towards the solitary office at the far end of the room. He wanted a car to help him get away.

  He saw them behind him, so he entered another building. The lift was open, so he got in and went up. The lift door opened on the fourth floor. He looked right and found a flight of stairs. He went up. After the hot pursuit, he found himself on an open, flat roof. Looking down, he saw dozens of people had gathered near a rundown restaurant to watch the chase.

  Perhaps he thought of jumping off the roof.

  He was eighty. Feeling short of breath, he placed his hand on his heart. He tripped over a wire and almost fell. He was still panting and sat down. They led him down and took him to a freshly watered field that was full of wild bushes, leafy plants and some mature trees. They led him across the vast green area and put him in the back of a car, which sped away.

  Information

  All the information on this period was obtained from Mustafa Shaker. We met him in a faded building near Al-Saadoun Street about a week after our arrival in Baghdad. What was this meeting like?

  I went to Al-Saadoun Street, where Faris was waiting for me in a grey, decaying building. This was a real Babel of languages and dialects, where journalists of all types and from all places co-existed and which they never left. The neighbourhood was completely sealed by concrete walls and guarded at certain points. Inside were laundries, shops and barbers, and bars filled with Americans and Africans. At the entrances of the buildings and on the street corners were soldiers and Filipino workers. Women sat on balconies and clothes were hung on lines that stretched from windowsills and balconies. Faris Hassan’s apartment was smaller than ours in the Green Zone, or so it seemed to me because the tiny living room was filled with clutter, chairs and tables. There was also a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom. Though small, the apartment was full of books and CDs. But it wasn’t really claustrophobic because its windows had a view of the street and allowed Baghdad’s vibrant light to enter. There was also a balcony where journalists could place a table and enjoy supper under Baghdad’s stars.

  We shook hands with Mustafa Shaker.

  He was considered to be the most important journalist in the Middle East. In his long career, he’d written great reports, managed several newspapers and travelled to more than thirty countries. His language was unbelievably eloquent and he was a gifted conversationalist, although he was often forgetful, sometimes even forgetting the names of his friends.

  Mustafa Shaker was a short, stout man who was far from elegant. His feet were tiny and his shoes looked like a child’s, being ridiculously small. He had fuzzy grey hair and in the middle of his bald head were a few spiky tufts. Because he slept little, his eyes always looked tired. He worked like a machine and his movements were rapid. His hair was dishevelled and he shaved only once or twice a week, which gave his face the white stubble of an old man. Whenever he went to clubs, cafés, theatres, cinemas or galleries, as he frequently did, he was either taken for someone who worked there or as a nonentity. It’s impossible to convey how easy writing was for him or his legendary skill in generating ideas and elegant phrases. He was the best journalist I came across in my ‘hoopoe’ job, a description he would often use in reference to journalism and which he borrowed from the story of Prophet Solomon and his hoopoe. Everybody was aware of his talent, but most people ignored him out of jealousy and envy. None of his generation could stand him. As for our generation, we loved him in spite of his many failings, which included his excessive shyness and courtesy, his greed in monopolizing conversations, and his infantile attitude and competitiveness, which often made him coarse or foolish. But all his flaws were forgiven because of his ability to use language so beautifully and elegantly. He had a winning tone and it was great fun to listen to his anecdotes, political memories or journalistic adventures from various places of the world. I was fascinated by this genius with a mischievous personality and spent hours in discussions with him. I realized that he loved devious, evasive talk, a skill I had mastered, so he grew fond of me and whenever we had a business meeting, we’d stay together and chat for a long time.

  Mustafa Shaker spent most of his life managing a magazine almost singlehandedly. After the downfall of Saddam’s regime, several newspapers and magazines as well as media institutions had competed for his services, but he wouldn’t accept a permanent position. He moved from one place to another until I saw him at the offices of a new newspaper near Faris’s apartment on Al-Saadoun Street. I was really happy to see him. We embraced and went into his office.

  ‘How’s the hoopoe work going?’ he asked in reference to my reporting assignments.

  Mustafa Shaker talked to me about the general situation in Baghdad. His unusual expressions always amazed me. It was he who provided me with a letter to the forensic physician at the morgue, indicating that the dead man was my father and allowing me to bury him. He also provided us with the name of a person who possessed a complete set of security and intelligence files and who could provide information in return for a fee.

  Finding the documents

  Mustafa Shaker gave us a letter for the person with the files from the security and intelligence services. His name was Jabbar Hussein and he lived in an apartment in a poor part of Al-Rusafa neighbourhood in Baghdad. The building was very old and stood near a mosque that had been almost completely demolished by an artillery shell. The minaret had fallen to the ground in one piece. We stopped to buy some cigarettes, and the shopkeeper told us that some months earlier, the mosque had been under the control of a group of armed men. There had been a ferocious firefight with the Marines that had destroyed many of the adjacent buildings, houses and shops. Jabbar’s building was dark and tilted to the side. Its façade was destroyed and its staircase had no banisters. Nearby was a spot full of rubbish and dead cats, where rats scurried from one place to another in the darkness.

  We arrived at noon. When we entered Jabbar’s room, we were absolutely dumbfounded. It was a complete archive, catalogued and systematically arranged. Once you gave the name you were looking for, he would search and bring you the papers, all for a price, of course.

  We sat in wicker chairs. An old rug covered the yellow-tiled floor. Jabbar was a handsome young man of medium height who spoke with a hint of sarcasm. He sat at a wooden desk stolen from some government office, on top of which was a small Iraqi flag. On the wall behind, instead of the president’s picture, hung a photograph of his father. The caption beneath it read: ‘Photograph of my father. May God preserve and protect him’. Funnily enough, this was the
same dedication as the one on Saddam’s photographs. This was just a small office in Baghdad that sold documents. Because of frequent power cuts, the windows and curtains were kept open. On the right he’d placed a lantern on a piece of black vinyl, and on a small low table he’d placed his hookah, filled with aromatic tobacco and from which he inhaled and then slowly blew out the smoke.

  We asked him about the file of Kamal Medhat.

  He was well organized, and had a list of all the names for which he possessed files. He looked at the index, then got up and went to the files stacked behind him. He picked up a file, flipped through it and returned it to its place. Then he took hold of another one, nodded and handed it to me.

  I took the file and flipped through its pages. I read his name. I scanned the official notes and the security-service observations about his character. I could have jumped for joy. Faris Hassan began to haggle over the price. I had no wish to listen to Faris bargaining about a price that was no more than the cost of a pair of trousers or a shirt. I asked him to pay the man so that I could get on with my work.

  We went down two or three steps and walked through the street’s rubbish dump. We stepped on dead cats, an appalling stench filling our nostrils.

  We got into the minivan and went straight to Kamal Medhat’s house in Al-Mansour.

  Most of the material in the file consisted of reports or summaries of reports, some of which were general in nature while others were personal. Only one report really shocked me. Iraqi intelligence had known that he was one of those Iraqis who’d been expelled as an Iranian subject and that he’d gone to Damascus and married Nadia al-Amiry. It was on the record that he’d then arrived in Baghdad and worked with the National Symphony Orchestra. The most important aspect of the report was the security responses given in support of his arrest or interrogation. Some of the documents recommended keeping him under constant surveillance. One important report discussed his relationship with Widad and other private matters. There was also a report on his affair with Janet, for the reports weren’t limited to his political attitudes, which categorized him as a free liberal. The word ‘free’ meant that he had no political affiliations nor any connections with religious movements. Among all the reports was one written by Widad, which had been submitted to a security investigation. She’d recommended him highly and defended him staunchly.