The Sirens of Baghdad

by Yasmina Khadra

  Kadem was only partly right. It’s not that the world’s grown base; it’s that men wallow in baseness. I’ve come to Beirut because I refuse to be like that tramp. I refuse to be one of the living dead. Either live like a man or die as a martyr—there’s no other alternative for one who wants to be free. I’m not comfortable in the role of the defeated. Ever since that night when the American soldiers burst into our house, overturning our ancestral values and the order of things, I’ve been waiting! I’m waiting for the moment when I’ll recover my self-esteem, without which a man is nothing but a stain. I think of myself as poised on the verge of everything and nothing. What I’ve gone through, lived through, been subjected to so far—none of that counts. That night was like a freeze-frame. That was when the earth stopped turning for me. I’m not in Lebanon; I’m not in a hotel; I’m in a coma. And whether I emerge from it and go on or stay in it and rot is up to me.

  Sayed has personally seen to it that I want for nothing. He’s lodged me in one of the most expensive suites in the hotel and put at my disposal Imad and Shakir, two charming young men who treat me most respectfully and stand ready day or night, alert to the merest sign, poised to carry out my most extravagant wishes. I will not let any of this go to my head. I’m still the shy, retiring boy from Kafr Karam. Even though I know the importance I’ve assumed, I haven’t broken any of the rules that formed my character in simplicity and propriety. My only caprice was to request that the television, the radio, and all the pictures on the walls be removed from the suite; I wanted to be left with the strict minimum—namely, the furniture and a few bottles of mineral water in the minibar. Had it been up to me, I would have chosen a cave in the desert, far from the laughable vanities of people who lead pampered lives. I wanted to be my own focus, my own reference point; I wanted to spend the remainder of my stay in Lebanon preparing myself mentally, so that I’d be equal to the task my people have entrusted to me.

  I’m no longer afraid of being alone in the dark.

  I’ve filled my lungs with the mustiness of the tomb.

  I’m ready!

  I’ve tamed my thoughts and brought my doubts to heel. I’m keeping my spirits under firm control. My agonies, my hesitations, my blackouts are all ancient history. I’m the master of what goes on in my head. Nothing escapes me; nothing resists me. Dr. Jalal has smoothed my path and filled in my gaps. As for my former fears, now I summon them of my own accord; I line them up and inspect them. The great brown blotch that hid a portion of my memories when I was in Baghdad has faded away. I can return to Kafr Karam whenever I feel like it, enter any door, step into any patio, invade anyone’s privacy. My mother, my sisters, my friends and relatives all come back to me, one after the other, and I remain calm. My room is inhabited by ghosts, by those who are absent. Omar shares my bed; Sulayman blows through like a gust of wind; the wedding guests immolated in the Haitems’ orchards parade around me. Even my father is here. He prostrates himself at my feet, balls in the air. I don’t turn away or cover my face. And when a blow from a rifle butt knocks him down, I don’t help him up. I remain upright; my sphinxlike inflexibility prevents me from bending, even over my father.

  In a few days, it will be the world that prostrates itself at my feet.

  The most important revolutionary mission undertaken since man learned to stiffen his spine! And I’m the one who’s been chosen to accomplish it. What a way of getting even with destiny! The practice of death has never seemed so euphoric, so cosmic.

  At night, when I lie on the sofa facing the window, I remember the painful events of my life, and they all reinforce my commitment. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do or what will be the nature of my mission. “Something that’ll make September eleventh seem like a noisy recess in an elementary school,” Sayed said. One thing’s for certain: I won’t shrink from it!

  There’s a knock at my door. It’s Dr. Jalal. He’s wearing the same tracksuit he had on yesterday evening, and he still hasn’t bothered to tie his shoelaces.

  It’s the first time he’s ever crossed my threshold. His alcoholic breath spreads out like smoke. “I was wasting away in my room,” he says. “Would it disturb you if I came in for a couple of minutes?”

  “You’re not disturbing me.”

  “Thanks.”

  He totters over to the sofa, scratching his butt with a hand thrust down inside his drawers. I’ll bet he hasn’t bathed for a good long time. He casts admiring glances around the room. “Wow!” he says. “Are you some mogul’s son?”

  “My father was a well digger.”

  “Mine wasn’t anything.”

  He realizes he’s said something outlandish and waves it away with one hand. Then, crossing his legs, he leans against the back of the sofa and squints at the ceiling. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night,” he complains. “These days, I can hardly fall asleep at all.”

  “You work too much.”

  He waggles his chin. “I have no doubt you’re right. These lecture tours are wearing me out.”

  I’d heard talk of Dr. Jalal—none of it good—while I was still in high school. I’d also read two or three of his books, including a treatise on jihadist fundamentalism entitled Why Are Muslims Angry?—a work that aroused a great deal of indignation among the clergy. At the time, he was a very controversial figure in Arab intellectual circles, and many of his adversaries sought to hold him up to public contempt. His theories about the dysfunctions of contemporary Muslim thought were veritable indictments; the imams rejected his writings in toto, even going so far as to predict hellfire for anyone who dared to read them. For the ordinary devout Muslim, Dr. Jalal was nothing but a mountebank, a Western lackey in the pay of factions hostile to Islam in general and to Arabs in particular. I myself detested him; I thought his learning perverted, exhibitionistic, and conventional, and his contempt for his people seemed obvious to me. In my eyes, he offered one of the most repulsive examples of those traitors who proliferated like rats in European media and academic circles, fully prepared to exchange their souls for the privilege of seeing their photographs in a newspaper and hearing themselves talked about. I didn’t disapprove of the fatwas that condemned him to death; the imams hoped to put an end to his incendiary rants, which he published at length in the Western press and delivered with offensive zeal in television studios. I was, therefore, amazed—and also, I must admit, rather relieved—when I learned that he’d made an about-face.

  The first time I saw Dr. Jalal in the flesh was the second day after my arrival in Beirut. Sayed had insisted that I attend the doctor’s talk. “He’s magnificent!” Sayed declared.

  The event took place in an auditorium not far from the university. There was a huge crowd, hundreds of people standing beside and behind the rows of chairs that had been taken by storm hours before the doctor was scheduled to appear. Students, women, girls, family men, government workers packed the immense room. Their hubbub sounded like a seething volcano. When the doctor appeared on the platform, escorted by militiamen, the shouts of welcome shook the walls and rattled the windows. After the applause died down, he delivered a magisterial lecture on imperialist hegemony and the disinformation campaigns behind the demonization of Muslims.

  I adored the man that day. It’s true that his looks are unprepossessing, that he drags his feet and dresses carelessly, that his exhalations are disconcerting and his alcoholic’s laziness incorrigible, but when he starts to speak—my God, when he merely adjusts the microphone and looks at his audience!—he exalts everyone in the hall. Better than anyone, he knows how to express our anguish and the insults we suffer and the necessity of breaking our silence and rising up. “Today, we’re the West’s flunkies; tomorrow, our children will be its slaves!” he cried, stressing the final clause. And the audience erupted, experiencing en masse a kind of delirium. If some plausible joker had sicced the crowd on the enemy at that moment, all the Western embassies in Beirut would have been reduced to ashes. Dr. Jalal has a knack for mobilizing everyone. The accur
acy of his analyses and the effectiveness of his arguments are a joy to consider. No imam can match him; no speaker is better at turning a murmur into a cry. He’s hypersensitive and exceptionally intelligent, a mentor of rare charisma.

  At the end of his lecture, responding to a student’s remarks, Dr. Jalal said, “The Pentagon is out to catch the devil in his own trap. Those people are convinced they’re several steps ahead of God. They were planning their war on Iraq for years before it started. September eleventh wasn’t the trigger; it was the pretext. The idea of destroying Iraq goes back to the moment when Saddam laid the very first stone for the foundation of his nuclear site. The Pentagon’s target was neither the despot himself nor his country’s oil; it was Iraqi genius. Nevertheless, mixing business with pleasure is perfectly acceptable; you can bring a country to its knees and pump out its lifeblood at the same time. Americans love to kill two birds with one stone. What they were aiming at in Iraq was the perfect crime. But they went that one better: They made their motive for the crime the guarantee of their impunity. Let me explain. Why attack Iraq? Because Iraq is believed to possess weapons of mass destruction. How can you attack Iraq without running too great a risk yourself? By first making sure that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Is this not the height of combinative genius? The rest came of its own accord, like saliva to the mouth. The Americans manipulated the planet by scaring everybody. Then, to be sure their troops wouldn’t be at risk, they obliged the UN experts to do the dirty job for them, and at no cost to themselves. Once they were certain there were no nuclear firecrackers in Iraq, they unleashed their military might upon a population already and deliberately beaten down by embargoes and psychological harassment. And the deal was done.”

  I had an offense to wash away in blood; to a Bedouin, that duty was as sacred as prayer to the faithful. And with Dr. Jalal’s words, the offense was grafted onto the Cause.

  “Are you sick?” he asks me, gesturing toward the array of medications on my night table.

  This catches me off guard. Since I’ve never imagined entertaining him in my suite, I don’t have a cover story ready. I curse myself. Why have I left all those medicine boxes and bottles lying around in plain sight, instead of putting them in the bathroom cabinet, where they belong? Sayed’s instructions were strict: “Don’t leave anything to chance. Distrust everyone.”

  Intrigued, Dr. Jalal heaves himself to his feet and walks over to the night table. “Well, well,” he says. “There’s enough stuff here to medicate an entire tribe.”

  “I have some health problems,” I say stupidly.

  “Big ones, it seems. What are you suffering from that makes you have to take all this?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Dr. Jalal picks up a few boxes, turns them over in his hand, reads the names of the medications out loud, as though they were some unintelligible graffiti, and peruses one or two fact sheets. With furrowed brow, he ponders several bottles, shaking them and rattling the pills they contain. “Have you by any chance had a transplant?” he asks.

  “Exactly,” I say, saved by his guess.

  “Kidney or liver?”

  “Please, I’d rather not talk about it.”

  To my great relief, he puts the bottles back in their place and returns to the sofa. “In any case,” he remarks, “you seem to be in good shape.”

  “That’s because I follow the prescriptions rigorously. I’m going to have to take those medications for the rest of my life.”

  “I know.”

  To change the subject, I say, “May I ask you an indiscreet question?”

  “Is it about my mother’s…activities?”

  “I wouldn’t think of such a thing.”

  “I discussed her escapades at length in an autobiographical work. She was a whore, no different from whores everywhere. My father knew it and kept quiet. I felt more contempt for him than for her.”

  I’m embarrassed.

  At last, he asks, “So what’s your ‘indiscreet’ question?”

  “It’s one you’ve probably been asked hundreds of times.”

  “Yes?”

  “You used to be the scourge of the jihadis. Now you’re their spokesman. How did that happen?”

  He bursts out laughing and relaxes. Obviously, he doesn’t mind addressing this subject. He clasps his hands behind his neck and stretches grossly; then he licks his lips, his face suddenly turns serious, and he begins his tale. “Sometimes things dawn on you when you least expect them. Like a revelation. All of a sudden, you can see clearly, and the little details you hadn’t figured into your calculations take on an extraordinary dimension…. I was in a bubble. No doubt, my hatred for my mother blinded me to such a degree that everything connecting me to her repulsed me, even my blood, my country, my family. The truth is, I was the West’s ‘nigger,’ nothing more. They had spotted my flaws. The honors and requests they flooded me with were the instruments of my subjugation. I was asked to speak on every television panel imaginable. If a bomb went off somewhere, pretty soon I was up in front of the microphones and the footlights. My words conformed to Westerners’ expectations. I was a comfort to them. I said what they wanted to hear, what they would have said themselves had I not been there to relieve them of that task and the hassles that went with it. I fit them, so to speak, like a glove. Then, one day, I arrived in Amsterdam, a few weeks after a Muslim had murdered a Dutch filmmaker because of a blasphemous documentary that showed a naked woman covered with verses from the Qur’an. You must have heard about this affair.”

  “Vaguely.”

  Dr. Jalal makes a face and goes on. “As a rule, there was standing room only, and not much of that, in the university hall where I spoke. This time, however, there were many empty seats, and the people who had made the effort to come were there to see the filthy beast up close. Their hatred was written on their faces. I was no longer Dr. Jalal, their ally, the man who defended their values and what they thought of as democracy. Forget about all that. In their eyes, I was only an Arab, the spitting image of the Arab who murdered the filmmaker. They had changed radically, those pioneers of modernity, the most tolerant and emancipated people in Europe. There they were, displaying their racism like a trophy. As far as they were concerned, from that point on, all Arabs were terrorists, and what was I? Dr. Jalal, the sworn enemy of the fundamentalists, the target of fatwas, who worked his ass off for them—what was I? In their eyes, I was a traitor to my nation, which made me doubly contemptible. And that’s when I experienced a kind of illumination. I realized what a dupe I’d been, and I especially realized where my true place was. And so I packed my bags and returned to my people.”

  Having got all that off his chest, he withdraws into somber silence. I’m afraid my indiscretion has touched a particularly sensitive spot and opened a wound he’d like to let heal.

  19

  After dozing off on the sofa, Dr. Jalal finally leaves, and I hasten to remove my medications from sight. I’m furious at myself. What was I thinking? Even a dimwit would have been astounded at the giant battery of medicine bottles crowded onto my night table. Did Dr. Jalal suspect anything? Why, contrary to all expectation, did he come to my room? I didn’t think he was in the habit of visiting other guests. Except for when he’s getting drunk by himself in the bar, he’s almost never to be seen in the corridors of the hotel. Moreover, he’s generally sullen and aloof and returns neither smiles nor greetings. The hotel staff avoids him, because he’s liable to fly into an awful rage over some triviality. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure he knows nothing about the purpose of my sojourn in Beirut. He’s in Lebanon to give his lectures; I’m here for reasons that are top secret. Why did he join me yesterday on the terrace, when he’s a man who abhors company?

  I intrigue him; there’s no doubt about it.

  I take a lot of medication. For three solid days after my arrival in Beirut, various physicians examined me, evaluated me, sounded my depths, and drew my blood, assiduously passing me
back and forth between scan machines and cardiographs. After being pronounced sound of body and mind, I was introduced to a certain Professor Ghany, the only person authorized to decide whether or not I would be sent on the mission. He’s a wiry old gentleman, dry as a cudgel, with a nimbus of thick, stringy hair surrounding his head. He subjected me to countless tests—some to determine what products I might be allergic to, others to prepare my body to resist possible rejection phenomena—and then he gave me my many prescriptions. Sayed informed me that Professor Ghany’s a virologist, but he’s also active in other scientific fields; a gray eminence without peer, Sayed says, almost a magician, who worked for decades in the most prestigious American research institutions before being kicked out because he was an Arab and a Muslim.

  Until yesterday, everything was proceeding normally. Shakir picked me up and took me to a private clinic north of the city. He waited for me in the car until the consultations were over, and then he drove me back to the hotel. No questions asked.

  Dr. Jalal’s intrusion troubles me. Ever since he left, I can’t stop going over our few encounters. Where did I make my mistake? When did I first arouse his curiosity? Did someone around me blow my cover? “I hope you’re going to give it to them good and hard, those bastards.” What was that supposed to mean? Who authorized him to address me in such a fashion?