The proprietor began to record his name in a large ledger with overt condescension, which swiftly swept over the other four men’s faces, making them look arrogant as well. He felt totally isolated in the middle of the lobby; he wondered whether his name was responsible for this communal display of pomposity. He would have quickly set aside this notion, which he attributed to his mission here, if the proprietor’s lugubrious voice had not asked: “How are the sheikhs of al-Saidiya?”
He jumped as if he had been stung and then froze like a statue; his features went immobile, even as he attempted to fake a smile—a smile that refused to materialize on his face. So he merely inclined his head in a nod.
“Good. Here,” the proprietor said, handing him the room key with a smile.
He took the key, but before he could rise, the proprietor moved toward him, attempting to take the small briefcase: “Let me help you carry this.”
He declined the offer vehemently, and then they walked along a hall that led to a short flight of stairs. The proprietor led him to a door with the number 22 on it. So it seemed the matter had been settled in advance. The proprietor opened the old wooden door, entered first, turned on the light, and then clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I want you to tell everyone in al-Saidiya that I gave you a warm welcome, was hospitable to you, and satisfied all your requests.”
He thought he would be suffocated by the proprietor’s foul breath. Yet he survived this assault and reflected that Mullah Hassan’s link to the affair was now confirmed. “Certainly,” he replied.
The proprietor laughed and added almost in a whisper: “I hope you enjoy your stay in this room. You may have a nap or spend some time strolling the streets till Mr. Tariq arrives.”
He was bewildered by this reference to Tariq, Mullah Hassan’s son. At the same time, he was surprised that he had not yet received a call from his brother-in-law, who he had asked to watch the mullah’s house and the mosque next to it. He had wanted to know the mullah’s movements and actions on the day specified for trading the money for the child. Would he come in person to receive the cash or send someone else? So the mullah is sending Tariq, he said to himself.
The proprietor withdrew quietly; the smile had not left his face since he handed over the key.
He wondered whether the proprietor and the four other men were tied to the crime. If not, why had he been led in such a ceremonial fashion to room 22? And though he was surprised that his brother-in-law hadn’t telephoned him, he dismissed that concern.
He closed the door, hoping the crisis that began when the child was kidnapped would soon end and that his sister and her husband would stop their bawling; he had wept along with them, imagining the fear his nephew was experiencing in the hands of strangers. He hid the briefcase under the bed and studied the room, which resembled a torture room in a movie. A single bed was pushed against a window that overlooked the concrete walls of adjacent buildings. Near the metal bed was a stand that held many tin-framed mirrors. Light reflected off them, and a plethora of images appeared, overlapping and intertwining on the mirrors’ surfaces. He gazed at the face in the silent silver sea of one mirror; the unity of its image set it apart from the others. He did a double take, though, as he stared at the face before him. That’s definitely not me! His telephone rang and roused him from this nightmare. The same commanding voice scolded him, brutally this time: “Didn’t we warn you not to contact the police? Do you want the child to die?”
He replied plaintively that he had not contacted the police. To prove it, he almost said he knew he was speaking to Mullah Hassan and had not mentioned that to the police. But he managed to set aside the inane musings that his lethal anxiety had provoked.
The voice asked him to remain in the hotel for two days. “Then you will be informed of the new plan. You and your damn officer are responsible for all this delay!”
They told him to search al-Saadoun Street for a small coffeehouse right next door to the Tajiran Restaurant. He should wait there or loiter nearby till their next call. He almost cursed the police officer, who made him wear disguises when they met at locations far from al-Saidiya or in congested areas of Baghdad, never addressing each other in public. They had chosen places that absolutely no one could discover. For example, the officer would contact him and he’d ask the officer to go to the home of one of his friends. When he arrived, he would find the officer seated there. They had absolutely never met in the police station. So how do they know that I contacted the police, unless one of my friends is a member of the gang?
In his mind, he pictured the houses where they had met. He knew most of the people and felt sure they could not be kidnappers. He tried to find a link between the voice, which was burned into his mind, and those of the men he was reviewing. None of them aroused his suspicions or doubts—except for a guy the officer had chosen. He remembered his name, which the policeman had mentioned—it was Said or possibly Saad. The man had seemed troubled and angry with the officer. At the time, he had attributed the man’s ill temper to some misunderstanding between the two men. He was compelled now to assume the gang knew everything about him and the actions he took.
But as he wandered the streets near the hotel, his stress increased in response to the dark vapors their call had fomented. He realized that his situation was worsening, and he felt increasingly isolated. He understood, moreover, that his circumstances were perilous. At first, the rhythm of developments had seemed slow to him, but now they had begun to speed up in a way he could no longer control.
Mean streets, he said to himself. He returned to his room, taking a different route than the one by which he had come. He tried to continue his deliberations, beginning with the hotel proprietor’s questions and the appearance of the intolerable strangers in the lobby. He thought he might try to strike up a relationship with one of them, though that seemed almost impossible—even just chatting, given the emotional storm in his chest, which was beginning to billow out like a windblown sail.
His feelings about the plot seemed naive and meaningless now. He headed down streets that looked alien to him, even though he had wandered them frequently. He walked along al-Saadoun Street from its start near Abd al-Muhsin al-Saadoun Square, all the way to the Sheraton Hotel. This current version of the street did not correspond to the hoard of images crammed into his memory. He sensed that his situation’s new realities were filling him with a mixture of bitterness and fear.
He was sinking beneath the pressure of his own existence when he traversed the hotel’s lobby, carrying the briefcase, attracting everyone’s attention. He realized that he was construing every movement, gesture, and word as directed at him, personally. He couldn’t bear spending any more time in the lobby, so he hastened to the small coffeehouse near the Tajiran Restaurant overlooking the end of al-Saadoun Street. Through its dusty window, he frantically watched the passersby.
When I entered this place, the atmosphere felt familiar, but I don’t have a clue when I was last here. The coffeehouse’s small room only had six benches, which were arranged in opposing pairs; some chairs were propped in the corners. He found himself drawn to the glass, which provided him a glimpse of the world outside—a world far removed from the nightmare of the hotel lobby. Although the window was filthy, through it he could see facades glinting in the sunlight on the far side of the street. Bookstores and shops were scattered along it, drawing larger crowds than his side of the street. In front of a small restaurant on the far side, he saw clouds of smoke rising. Even though his view offered him a luminous expanse, he felt like a prisoner of the room, the walls of which were decorated with dark images that contained murky splotches of red, blue, and yellow. They depicted cavalrymen thrusting spears at one another. On the wall opposite him hung the portrait of a solitary woman; her era was far from clear. He did not know why, but he believed she was just as alien as he was in this rowdy coffeehouse. He tried to avoid reading too much into her expression when he examined her face, although it exuded femininity.
As he returned to the hotel, the portrait of the solitary woman mounted on the wall never left his mind. The hotel’s large lobby was decorated with pictures and many Koranic verses, and he found the same four men by the proprietor’s table. Before greeting them, he noticed their distrustful glances; they appeared to be threatening him rather overtly now. He had a strong desire to bolt from the hotel and its terrifying lobby, but the ringtone of his phone prevented him.
“We will contact you when you get to your room.” It was the same voice.
He took the key and went to his room. He was not surprised to find that his mattress had been thrown on the floor. He might have been caught off guard if he had not just seen those pompous faces in the lobby.
This is intolerable!
His phone rang . . . a voice, again. But not the voice he had heard before.
“We will free the child. Your sister will contact you. She will tell you she has the child. You will set the briefcase down in the room and depart quickly, leaving the door open. Do not look back or loiter in the hotel. Continue speaking to your sister on your phone. She will tell you when the business is concluded. Then you will return quickly to al-Saidiya.”
He stood there motionless while waiting for his sister’s call. But this new voice puzzled him; he almost recognized it, just as he had recognized Mullah Hassan’s voice. His ringtone sounded once more and then his sister’s voice captured his attention. “I have him!” she cried.
She was quite emotional, and he did not understand much of what she said. He grasped that she had heard a knock on the door, opened it, and found her son there—the boy seemed sleepy and stood there with his eyes closed.
He wept for joy with his sister, then placed the briefcase on the bed. The key was still in the door. He opened it and rushed out.
Something, however, prompted him to lurk by the huge concrete column that rose from a corner of the hotel’s courtyard. He froze there. From this vantage he could see his room’s doorway, even though it was dark. He waited, his senses on full alert, for Mullah Hassan’s son or someone else to enter the room.
The strapping body that shot past his eyes into the room looked really familiar—and when the officer passed through the open door again, he saw him put the briefcase into a large sack. It truly was the officer—although not in uniform—with large dark glasses covering half his face. He wanted to call out to the officer, but instead—and he didn’t know why—he remained frozen by the column. At the same speed with which he’d arrived, the rugged body dashed out of the hotel.
He peered at the room, saw that its door was now closed, and then found his way to al-Nahdha Garage. He called the officer and told him what had happened . . . Did he know? Suddenly, in the background, he heard the familiar new voice that had told him precisely how to leave the hotel room. This voice informed the policeman that the case was now closed and that the child had been returned to his family.
The officer brought his attention back to the call, breathlessly asking: “What did you do? Did you see or recognize anyone?”
“I suspected Mullah Hassan from the beginning,” he told the officer. “But today I saw a stocky man who reminded me of someone I know. He took the money and then vanished.”
He heard more heavy breathing and some panting. Then he turned off his phone and just stared in the direction the stocky man had disappeared.
Translated from Arabic by William M. Hutchins
PART III
Wake Me Up
The Apartment
by Salima Salih
al-Ghadeer District
That Saturday didn’t begin the way Anissa al-Mukhtar had hoped. The first thing she noticed when she opened her eyes in the morning was an overcast sky that augured a rainy day. No sooner had she sat up than she became aware of a headache, which she recognized as the harbinger of a bad cold, turning her plans for that day on their head. She slumped back into bed and didn’t get up for another hour. By that time, the commotion in the house had died down; three of her sons had left for work, while the fourth was still having breakfast in the kitchen. The moment he heard her enter the bathroom, he got up, placed the teapot on the stove, brought out a clean plate, and sat down to wait for her. When she came into the kitchen and took her place across the breakfast table, she said: “I won’t be needing you today. I have a terrible headache.”
They had made plans the previous day: he would drive her to the al-Ghadeer District to see her aunt, the last surviving member of the older generation; but before that, she would have to prepare some food for her aunt, who lived alone in her apartment even though she was well past eighty. Anissa had suggested to her in the past that she come live with her family, or that she rent a place for her nearby so she could visit whenever she wished, but her aunt had refused all these offers. The only option for Anissa was to visit her once or twice a week, bringing her whatever food she was able to prepare. During those visits she would clean the house and collect the dirty towels, bedsheets, and clothes in a plastic bag to wash at home and bring back on her next visit.
Despite her advanced years, Anissa’s aunt would visit her niece from time to time. All she had to do was make her way down the street and flag a cab to drive her over. Occasionally, she would stop by for two or three days at a time, and then take another cab back to her place in al-Ghadeer. When the long summer days got to her, she would take a cab to the Blue Sky restaurant and have a light lunch while making chitchat with one of the waiters, or with the person seated at the neighboring table. The sole hardship in her life was climbing the three flights of stairs up to her apartment, but she endured this obstacle with heroic fortitude, as if she wished to prove to everyone that she was still at the peak of health. At times, she wouldn’t refuse the offer of Huda, a neighbor in her midforties, to pick up some supplies for her on one of her shopping trips; or the offer of Red Adel, the young man living with his mother in one of the ground-floor apartments, to replace her gas cylinder when it ran out. Red Adel drove a small truck and worked for a company that made oil heaters, and he would sometimes run into her as she was carrying up her shopping bags and offer to help. A certain familiarity developed between them as a result, and she would invite him to have tea with her whenever her niece had brought around a bit of cake.
Two days later, Anissa got in touch with Huda, to ask after the old lady and apologize for the late visit. She told the neighbor about her cold and asked her to inform her aunt that she’d be coming around as soon as she got better; she also expressed her frustration about the inconveniences of traveling between her aunt’s place and her own house in Baghdad’s al-Jadida District.
On Tuesday morning, Anissa rang up Red Adel’s house, and his mother informed her that he was out of town and that her aunt was fine. She said she had seen her two days before and that there was nothing to worry about.
As her sons sat down for breakfast that day, Anissa packed up the food she had prepared for her aunt, and she asked one of her sons to drive her to al-Ghadeer. Less than an hour later, they were on their way.
When they reached the al-Samarra’i mosque, there was a crowd of people blocking part of the street and slowing down the traffic. One of the bystanders noticed her inquisitive look and volunteered: “A minor car accident. Everything will be back to normal in a few minutes.”
The reassuring words failed to stop her from muttering: “Tuesday is never a lucky day for me. I would have preferred to visit on Wednesday, but I can’t put this off any longer.”
When she reached the apartment and rang the doorbell, she got no response. She began to feel sick in the pit of her stomach, and a terrible fear came over her. Had what she had always dreaded finally taken place? She rang the doorbell a second time, and then knocked on the door. She waited. She glued her ear to the door, but not a single sound reached her from within. Overhearing the knocking, Huda came out of her house to find Anissa standing at the old lady’s door. Both women realized that something was awry. Huda asked Anissa whether s
he had a spare key, and when Anissa replied in the negative, she offered to call the police.
Less than half an hour later, two police officers arrived and broke down the door. Entering the apartment apprehensively, they were met with an overpowering stench of rot. The officers backtracked and instructed the two women to remain outside; one of them hurried back to their vehicle and returned promptly with protective masks. Each of the officers placed a mask over his face, and after quizzing the two women about their relationship to the apartment’s occupant, they handed Anissa a third mask and gave her permission to follow them inside. A sense of disorder reigned in the living room, something that was in itself no cause for surprise. Crossing the threshold to the kitchen, however, they spotted a pair of naked legs and immediately rushed over. They found the old woman sprawled on the ground with her head lying in a pool of coagulated blood. Her body was so swollen that it was hard to make out her features. Anissa closed her eyes, and one of the officers took her by the shoulder and led her to the far end of the living room.
* * *
Shortly after, two more police officers arrived. One photographed the body and the lesion on the old lady’s head, as well as the broken dishes on the floor, the sink, and the cupboard. The other officer, who introduced himself as the criminal investigator Naji Nassar, started jotting something down in a notebook he was carrying.
Naji turned to Anissa and began to outline his assessment of the facts while the others were transporting the body out of the apartment: “It seems that your aunt stumbled, fell, and hit her head . . . She lost a lot of blood. Everything looks pretty straightforward, but it will still be necessary to send her body to the coroner for an autopsy and a forensic report about the cause of death.” He explained that he had to verify certain facts, and asked her about the age of the deceased, whether she had lived alone, and whether anyone else possessed a key to the apartment, even though these questions had been mostly answered when the officers broke down the door.
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