Baghdad Noir

by Samuel Shimon

  “What? Yes, yes, you wept! But didn’t lose your child!” the man shouted. “He didn’t die. He didn’t disintegrate like strands of wool. I looked for his hand. A finger. An eyebrow. Even for a single hair. Do you know what a hair would’ve meant? A fingernail? They said the fire consumed everything. It consumed him but spared me and that cheating bitch who awaits my judgment, while I’m in this crazed state that you see!”

  He fell silent and I grew increasingly apprehensive. A dead infant; a faithless wife; a fire. What was my relationship to all this? Did I dare ask?

  “Brother, may God have mercy on you. I would like to understand, just for my peace of mind,” I pleaded.

  “What do you want to understand? This is your house. That woman and I spent a year here. We paid more than half a million in rent because they said the place had an unusual spirit in it that helped women get pregnant,” the man explained. “We don’t know why people in the neighborhood have passed down this story. They say this has been true for . . . for more than twenty years. They say a virtuous woman—a hajjiya—died here. The lease included a special clause if she was slow to conceive, but she became pregnant after only a few months in this house. The hajjiya died, and the neighbors handed down the story. I came to Qadisiya about two years ago. I lived with my in-laws in al-Dora. I made up my mind to round up the money to pay for the rental once I heard the story about the house in Qadisiya. The agent gave me a little room, which he said was the most expensive because the hajjiya’s spirit had risen from it. For your information, he locked all the other rooms and rented that one—occasionally by the day. My point is . . . he rented the room only to one person or family at a time; he did not use the house as a pension. I was lucky, and my wife became pregnant after we spent a number of months there. Before that, I had been away for an entire year doing military service. When I returned, we sat like you—at night beneath this pomegranate tree, and sang, wept, and prayed. We also went to the shrine of saintly al-Kadhim, and made a vow to him.”

  He paused for moment, then continued: “What do you want me to tell you? I was overjoyed when I learned she was pregnant. She gave birth in Yarmouk Hospital. Then we returned to al-Dora, assuming the infant would spend three more days in the hospital—they said there had been some complications in the delivery. What’s important is that there was a fire, and we lost the boy. But even more significant is that he should have been in the preemie ward, where all the babies survived the fire. After we heard this news, I was sure he was safe. I laughed, as I remembered her saying that the hajjiya’s spirit had blessed us, since she became pregnant the first time we had sex. I could not have touched her till after I returned from the army—exactly seven months before she delivered. How come the boy wasn’t in the preemie room?”

  He started to pace, emotion inciting his memories: “A mistake! She said they had made a mistake! She didn’t say she had made a mistake. Later, I realized that must have meant she got pregnant while I was away, when she stayed with her family in al-Dora. I had heard talk about a man who came and met her beneath this pomegranate tree. That idea evolved in my mind when a guy told me that he thought I had returned from my trip because he had seen a car parked here—and she had been sitting in the garden with a man who looked like me. But I know no one who should have been visiting my wife. I know too that her family was thinking of marrying her to a relative after she said it was my fault that she hadn’t gotten pregnant, even though the doctor confirmed that my sperm were fine but few in number, and that there was no consensus about me being sterile.”

  He paused once again, gathering the rest of his thoughts: “Fine . . . great! How was my son the only preemie in the room for healthy newborns? Why was there a cover-up? Was that boy my son or a bastard? I don’t know. It’s almost driven me crazy. Were you the guy who used to visit my wife while I was away? Doubt is killing me. I know you have gray hair. If you weren’t the one, find that agent for me; he disappeared. Why did he vanish? Should I believe sperm are blessed in this house; that more than one baby has been conceived here through the years; that every child born here is protected by the hajjiya’s spirit, as people say? She still hovers here and appears at times in the garden—beneath this very tree. At times, she reveals herself as an attractive and extremely seductive girl in the garden of some house in Qadisiya, al-Harithiya, or al-Mansour—but only beneath a pomegranate tree.”

  He sighed, and continued as if to himself: “That would mean the hajjiya was responsible for the pregnancies of all those women. Are all those other kids safe, but not my son? My son, who I suspect to be a bastard? What can I do but weep for him?”

  I was shocked. What had reduced this young man to this state? As my aversion to him increased, I whispered: “But how does this relate to me? You’re telling me old wives’ tales, brother—like the ones about the hajjiya who—”

  Threatening me with the iron bar, he growled: “Don’t pretend! Either you know the lover with whom she betrayed me, or you work for the realtor who disappeared when I demanded that he return the rent money I paid him in advance for the year, or you belong to the gang that set fire to the hospital and made off with a billion dinars. What was your cut? They say you’re a small band. So fork over my rent money with some sugar on top or admit your role in the disaster that the Qadisiya house has caused me. You and the spirit of your wife, the hajjiya, have brought me to this sorry state of affairs.”

  The Third Day

  “The hajjiya’s spirit, the hajjiya’s spirit, the hajjiya’s spirit,” I muttered, deliriously grasping the key, heading with faltering steps to the rear walk—which led to the opening of the small secret path hidden behind the cactus. No one knew this entry was here. Residents of Qadisiya hated cactus plants, and disliked seeing them. It reminded them that the structures they’ve built, the American bluegrass plugs they’ve imported, the flowering dahlias and roses from Basra and Kurdistan they’ve planted, and the saplings of Baqubah orange trees have never suppressed the cactus. The cactus was self-propagating, either at the entrances to elegant houses or along the streets. This was true at the bus stop, and on dirt paths created by hands or feet pounding the earth—which formed a lane behind the houses in the neighborhood that allowed residents to move back and forth between their kitchen doors and the barrels storing kerosene or refuse, showing their harmony and solidarity with the community. This was especially true for homes like ours and those of Umm Layla, Abu Awf, and the house of the Sabian family—which were the final ring in the chain of houses in our small, quiet neighborhood before Qadisiya grew larger and expanded—before its geography changed and it became Qadisiya 1, Qadisiya 2, and Qadisiya 3. Now I no longer knew which Qadisiya our house was located in. All I knew and wished to know was that I was here in my original space, where I was devising a new time for myself. Would this be another rebirth like those Reem, the children, and I experienced over the last thirty years? Or another form of death, which would afflict me over the next five days?

  The man with the iron rod departed. I learned that his name was Qasim, but did not dare ask if he was a son of my lifelong friend Fakhry. He threatened to return tomorrow with members of his gang. He explained that everyone here had a gang—big or small—to protect themselves. He didn’t believe I’d come alone—a solitary soul separate from the mangled and bloody age. He said that what mattered was for me not to betray him. He expected me to cooperate; otherwise I should write my will. He didn’t care about the punishment he might receive for killing me, because he had, as he pointed out, already lost his son and wife. He shocked me by asking: “Did she really cheat on me?” He spoke as if he were a child interrogating me. “Perhaps I’m being unfair to her. But . . . how could that be? How?”

  If I allowed him to stay in the house, even if only for the next six months, would he ask her to return? Perhaps. Perhaps the hajjiya’s spirit would bless them, and his wife would become pregnant again. Nothing is too difficult for God the Mighty and Exalted to accomplish.

  “
Brother, since you submit to God’s will, why do you need the hajjiya’s spirit?” I asked him.

  Did I really ask him that? Did I confront him? Did I curse him? Did I throw him out? I don’t actually know, because I still felt dazed. I opened the door and experienced a quick flashback—like in a film—of the man with the iron bar, but instead I was confronted by another surprise.

  The Fourth Day

  My respectable daughter said I was crazy. She accused me of being a victim of my genes. Since the previous night, since the moment I opened the secret door to the pantry off the Qadisiya house’s kitchen, I had experienced a series of mishaps and surprises. I didn’t know if these were manifestations of the insanity my daughter attributed to me, or whether my misadventures were responsible for my incredible discovery.

  The Yarmouk Hospital man departed, leaving behind the iron bar as his calling card. Yes. I would tell Reem and my daughter that. I would keep it to show them that I wasn’t demented or hanging out with my old friend Majid—that crazy artist who restored art’s genuine dignity to Baghdad’s squares, museums, and exhibitions. No one believed that a contractor like me could be a friend to an artist like him. Yes, daughter, believe it. In fact, I acted as his trusted agent in deals with companies that furnished materials he used for the monuments and statues that adorned our city. I smoothed the way for him with small contractors who pocketed modest sums surreptitiously from major contractors, heads of government agencies, and their goons who worked for the government’s whales.

  Never mind. These were all sordid tales, and the time for them had passed, although my daughter wanted to revive it. “Against your will and that of your cronies!” she screamed.

  How could her scream reach me in this house in Qadisiya, when she was at the far edge of another continent? Sitting in Hyde Park in London, she clutched her marvelous smartphone and her face shook on my own phone, which she wanted me to upgrade. “You need to download Skype and Viber,” she declared, insisting that I only cared about updating my wardrobe.

  She didn’t believe me when I told her about the iron-bar man. “By God, daughter, I’m not lying!”

  She also denied that this happened: When I entered the house the day before, I had expected to find it empty of everything but our scents and memories. But then laughter began to ring out beneath the stairs leading to the upper floor. That happened the moment I left the guest bath to the right of the kitchen door to the garden. The Yarmouk Hospital man left me not a moment too soon. I almost wet my pants as I hurried there once he left, thanking God that I hadn’t disgraced myself. All the same, I was totally unprepared for the surprise that distracted me from my most essential task: to call Reem and tell her how it felt to enter the Qadisiya house after all these years away. But what feeling should I discuss, given what happened next? The sound of laughter started softly and then grew louder. Footsteps approached and hands grasped me, as if wanting to strangle me. A light flashed on some moments later, but failed to reassure me. Yes, I was fine. It was Majid, Ahmad, and Fakhry—childhood friends from our neighborhood and companions of my glory days, days when we announced our mutual loyalty—cursing any separation, flight, or travel abroad.

  “The jackal’s got you! We’ve caught you, you traitor!” Fakhry squealed. “Once the taxi dropped you off here, we slipped in behind you. Majid contacted us when he learned you were coming. Then we saw you had an important meeting beneath the pomegranate tree. We remembered the secret entrance from when we were kids. So we crept through it and got inside. Come on! Don’t waste your time or ours—let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I tried to cling to whatever wits I had left.

  “Open the new app and see.”

  “What app? Which one?”

  “Here! Here on your phone,” Fakhry said.

  I couldn’t believe this hick had a cell phone. He’d always been a bumpkin, from teenager to party leader to submissive secretary for some high-ranking bureaucrat in any regime—with a preference for floral shirts and pistachio-green trousers. The only thing that had changed about him was the white shag rug on his head.

  “What a loss you are!” Ahmad crowed next. “Even though you have white hair, you haven’t repented, you bastard!”

  Ahmad wouldn’t leave me alone. His cousin, who was also from our neighborhood, had opened a restaurant in the al-Mansour District. From life as a pathetic English teacher in our Qadisiya during the 1970s to that of a prince, God’s will be done. Now, he was in his seventies.

  “He deserves a statue,” I told Majid, who had remained silent throughout the ambush.

  Majid understood how to communicate silently with me in a language that only the two of us recognized, due to our contracting partnership right before I left Baghdad. All the same . . . never mind. None of this related to Reem or my daughter. What happened after our tempestuous surprise gathering was no one’s business but my own, apparently, because my daughter ignored my suggestion to try the app we opened and linked to, and Reem failed to reply to my attempts to contact her, even though she had promised to respond.

  “What can I say, daughter? I swear by you and Nabiha. See for yourself. Open your app and look with me: Fakhry carries a bottle of arak, Majid holds a hand over his scalp to conceal his bald head, and Ahmad swings a plastic bag filled with cherries and grapes. We rush to Umm Layla’s house, cross the lane by the Tel Kaif family house, reach the main road—no, not the main highway opposite the military police headquarters. It’s the Road of Water Blockage. There’s Majid’s car, his beat-up car with the number ten, because over the past thirty years he has bought ten cars, insisting on this old model for half a lifetime, as you know. He says it looks good. What matters is that we climbed into it and immediately shot off to our lair on Abu Nuwas Street. What I’m telling you is that Baghdad is coming back. Yes! We’ve resumed the necessary insanity. Yes, yes, by God. We removed our suits and stripped to T-shirts and shorts—just like the old days. Exactly like the old days. But what used to be a two-hour dip in the waters of the Tigris lasted only two minutes. I twisted my leg but swallowed my pain for fear that they would make fun of me. But I discovered that Majid had peed on himself, Ahmad’s shorts fell off, and Fakhry screeched like a woman. You won’t believe what I’m saying, but Abu Nuwas Street is still solid, daughter. You see the poet’s statue in the distance. Apparently, they only chopped off his head. The pedestal is still there, and the river is still beautiful. The riverbank is dirty, but the lush grass is growing. I watched it grow! Ajaj Café still has chairs scattered along the bank. Next to them is the fire pit for grilling masgouf. What am I saying? I’m sure Reem will agree to return. As for you—may God bless you! Are you punishing me or yourself for our estrangement?”

  The Fifth Day

  After I returned from the outing to Abu Nuwas Street, I was alone and abandoned. The three musketeers scattered after the last sip of arak and the last chickpea. I found myself inside the Qadisiya house—in the dark, because the power had been turned off. My daughter said that she knew the area, Baghdad, and our homeland better than I did. She contacted me this morning to check on me after our call was cut short yesterday. Her encouragement for me, though, was mainly criticism and reproof.

  I could only huff at her: “Enough blame already! What do you know about this area? You were young then. Young! You still are. You didn’t grow up here, unlike me and your aunts. You grew up in phony capital cities devoid of any spirit. They were civilized but lacked heart. Now you want to judge me for feeling homesick, weak, and full of yearning? Have I no right to recover my soul? Recover your mother? Recover our life together? What app were you talking about when I showed you the picture of us at the Tigris and Abu Nuwas? Do you remember the Zawra’a Garden, our loved ones, and the days of our prime? How about Uncle Majid and the way you slapped his cheek when he carried you around like a doll? Have you forgotten Uncle Ahmad, who taught you how to sing the birthday song in English with a proper accent, after all of us had been butchering
the pronunciation? Have you forgotten Uncle Fakhry? You ask: Who’s Uncle Fakhry?”

  I reminded her of the dishes he made so well—like pacha, kebab, and dolma. “He’s the person who helped your Uncle Ahmad open a restaurant in al-Mansour. Come see al-Mansour; its restaurants are a million times better than yours in Oxford. Have you forgotten him? Have you forgotten how we laughed at him?”

  “Fakhry, the hick?” she asked.

  She remembered me telling her that he would never be more than a follower or a gofer for important people. But she accused me of putting him down: “Papa, don’t forget you all mocked him while asking him to help you get clearances and approvals from government offices. That’s what you and your friends are like, Papa. You all see only what you care to see.”

  “How about you, Miss Daughter?” I inquired. “What do you see in your app that you want me to download?”

  “Yes, Papa, I’m looking at Qadisiya, al-Mansour, and al-Ma’mun now!” she professed angrily, in a way that reminded me of Nabiha and her mother. “Have a look yourself. You can see all of these from afar via virtual reality. I want you to see my school, Papa—the al-Hussari School that I attended daily. Like you, I want to smell it, sense it, touch it. I want to see my grandmother take me there. She holds my hand and leads me from the lane of the Tel Kaif family to the lane of the Armenian family, and then to the Kurdish family from Salah al-Din. I play with girls in front of the gardens of those houses. We use chalk to draw squares and play hopscotch. Look, Papa. By God, where’s the school? Where are the houses? Look at all the dirt. See all the trash. See all the cacti. See the dust. This is all very clear in my virtual reality app. I see skeletons, Papa. Where are the clean streets? Where’s the fragrance of night musk and jasmine? Please focus your phone’s camera on the sludge, the potholes in the streets, the aridity, and the reek of garbage that smells to high heavens and reaches us even here. Yes, Papa—here in Hyde Park, in London.”