Baghdad Noir

by Samuel Shimon

  “She didn’t trust anyone . . . She could have given us a key, or left one with her neighbor,” Anissa said plaintively, before bursting into tears. “If only I had come to visit on Saturday . . . she might still be alive.”

  It was time for everyone to leave the apartment. The investigator was the last to emerge, but upon reaching the door, he had the sudden sense that he had forgotten something, so he went back into the kitchen to take another look. The body was gone, but everything else appeared just the way it had when he’d first walked in—yet he just couldn’t shake the sensation that he’d forgotten something. He took two steps out of the kitchen and then turned around again, and this time he saw more clearly what it was that he had overlooked. A small mound of cigarette ash sat just outside the pool of blood in which the head had lain. The mound still held together, as if it had only just fallen. This discovery unsettled his earlier hypothesis that an eighty-year-old woman living alone had struck her head against the edge of the cupboard because of a simple stumble.

  * * *

  When Naji got to work the following day, the autopsy report was waiting for him on his desk. The cause of death was extensive hemorrhaging due to a head injury produced by impact with a hard, sharp object. The time of death was placed at four days earlier.

  Even though this was in keeping with Naji’s initial evaluation of the incident and he could have declared the case closed, he realized that he would not be at peace until he was truly sure the death was as it appeared. He needed to visit Anissa’s house to ask her some questions.

  Upon arriving there, he first informed her about the results of the autopsy. It added to her distress to learn that her aunt had died on Saturday—the very day she had not turned up for her usual visit—which then released a tide of self-reproach for her failure to go see her on that day. After he had managed to calm her down, the investigator began with his questions.

  “Did your aunt receive many guests at home?”

  “No,” Anissa answered. “Her neighbor used to give her a helping hand here and there, as often happens among neighbors.”

  “Did your aunt smoke?”

  “Whatever put it into your head that she smoked?” Anissa asked a bit defensively.

  “I need a clear answer: yes or no?”

  “Certainly not,” Anissa proclaimed. “She never picked up a cigarette in her life.”

  “And her neighbor? Did she smoke?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Does the neighbor live on her own?”

  “No, she lives with her daughter and granddaughter. Her daughter’s husband died in a car accident a couple of years ago. The daughter works as a teacher. They are good people.”

  “Were there any other neighbors who helped her out?”

  “The young man living with his family on the ground floor—he’d help her carry up the gas cylinder to the third floor.”

  “Would he go into the apartment to change the cylinder?”

  “No, he’d bring it up and leave it at the front door. When I would go see her, I would carry it into the kitchen.”

  “When was the gas container last changed?”

  “Maybe three months ago. My aunt didn’t use a lot of gas.”

  “When did you last visit your aunt?”

  “Last Wednesday. I’d planned to visit her on Saturday as well, but I felt ill.”

  “Did you clean the house on Wednesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which rooms did you clean?”

  “The bedroom didn’t need any cleaning, so I started with the living room, I cleaned the kitchen next, and then I did the bathroom.”

  “What did you clean in the kitchen?”

  “There were a few dirty dishes, so I washed those first, then I dusted the top of the fridge and the cupboard, and I mopped the floor.”

  “Do you always do that when you clean the kitchen?”

  “Do what?”

  “Mop the floor.”

  “Always—the floor gets wet and dirty and I find that annoying.”

  “What do you know about the neighbor who lives on the ground floor?”

  Anissa paused for a second, taking the time to think through what she knew about Red Adel. “He’s a young man of about thirty . . . He lives with his mother, his brother, and his brother’s wife . . . I don’t know much about the family, but I’d bump into him from time to time when visiting my aunt. And I’d have a chat with his mother whenever I bumped into her outside her house.”

  “What kinds of things did you talk about?”

  “Oh, about the weather, the traffic, my aunt’s health—nothing important.”

  It crossed Naji’s mind to ask Anissa if she ever smoked, but at the last moment he checked himself and pretended to be fumbling for something in the pockets of his jacket. “I must have forgotten my cigarettes in the office,” he said.

  “I can’t offer you one, unfortunately,” Anissa replied, “since nobody smokes in this house.”

  The investigator was happy that he had obtained the answer he had wished for without having to pose a question that might have sounded intrusive. He was also interested in knowing whether the young man living on the ground floor smoked, but he decided to defer his question for the moment, since this woman might not be the best person to answer it.

  When he returned to his office, he pulled out the pictures that had been taken of the scene. The deceased was lying facedown, more than half a meter away from the cupboard, and her head was positioned at least twenty centimeters from the corner of the cupboard that had caused the injury. There were several more questions he would have to answer to confirm his suspicion that a murder had taken place, despite all the evidence that suggested otherwise.

  It was possible she had stumbled, fallen down, and struck her head on the corner of the cupboard, but he couldn’t see anything that might have caused her to trip. Very well then, perhaps she had simply felt dizzy or weak all of a sudden, and this had caused her to fall. This kind of thing could easily happen to someone her age. What he needed to do next was get in touch with the doctor who had examined the body, in the hope that he might pick up on something that went beyond what he had mentioned in the autopsy report.

  * * *

  Naji received confirmation from the doctor that the old woman’s death was most likely from a fall. “If she fell down quickly, she would have tried to clutch at the cupboard and slid down near it,” the doctor had told him. “But we don’t know whether she lost consciousness immediately, as a result of the concussion. She could have moved away from the cupboard before stumbling to the floor.”

  Given the doctor’s opinion, the only thing still left to raise doubts in his mind was the small mound of ash; if he could find a way to account for that, he would declare the case closed.

  He returned to the scene of the incident in the company of the photographer, who was tasked this time with taking close-up shots of the cigarette ash. When he was done, the investigator carefully transferred the ash to a small sheet of paper and placed it in a small transparent bag. Now his job was to establish where it had come from.

  When Naji arrived at the building in al-Ghadeer the next morning, he found a group of young children clustered around a pickup truck parked outside. As he approached, one of the kids offered an unsolicited explanation: “Red Adel bought new sofas!” The new sofas held no interest to him, but he did want to meet Red Adel. He waited for a moment and saw two young men emerge from the building, open the back door of the vehicle, and lift a cover that revealed a set of brown sofas underneath. The reddish hair immediately identified one of them as Red Adel. Naji offered to help them carry the sofas into the house, and after that, the two young men made for the front of the truck. Red Adel paused for a moment, lit a cigarette, and then climbed into the driver’s seat. Hearing the engine start up, Naji realized it wasn’t the right time to try to talk to him, but he had at least gotten an answer to one of the questions that had been preoccupying him. Perhaps the
young man had visited the old lady before she died; perhaps his remaining inquiries were about to be brought to an end.

  As soon as the truck had driven off, the kids thronged around him. At that instant, it occurred to him that they might be able to offer him something valuable—after all, they had helped him identify Red Adel without his even having to go to the trouble of asking—so he didn’t rush to leave.

  “Are you a relative of the old lady?” one child asked.

  “Did you know her?”

  “Everyone knew her around here,” the kid said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “She used to tell us off when we tried to help her. She was cranky. My mom would say she’s at the vilest age.”

  “What’s the vilest age?” another kid asked.

  “It’s when a person has grown so old they can’t live without other people’s help,” Naji volunteered. And becoming skeptical that he could turn the conversation in the direction he wanted, he decided to leave. The children followed him with their eyes and then dispersed.

  When he returned to his office, he called Anissa and told her he would like to have another look around the apartment—they agreed to meet there at five o’clock.

  When she arrived, he was waiting by the door, as the lock the police had broken had been replaced with a new one. She was wearing a black dress with long sleeves, and her face was very pale. He apologized for having to put her through the trouble of coming over.

  “I had to come here anyway to look for some papers,” Anissa replied.

  She opened the door and walked in ahead of him; he was astonished to find that the place had been entirely stripped down, with nothing remaining but piles of leftover odds and ends and scattered papers.

  “The neighbors divided the furniture and everything else among themselves,” Anissa said, before he could ask a question. “They left me all the junk. And now they’re asking me to clean up, even though I offered them the furniture in return for taking care of that.”

  There was nothing in her explanation that intrigued Naji, so he turned toward the kitchen. The shards of a freshly broken glass were scattered around the sink, and the shelves were empty. The bloodstain had turned brown and the spot from the ash had faded into the tile floor, so there wasn’t any remaining evidence to further his investigation.

  “I’ll bring someone in to clean up tomorrow,” Anissa said. “They’re putting pressure on me because of the smell.” They went down the stairs together and Anissa left the building, while the investigator headed for Red Adel’s place on the ground floor.

  Naji rang the bell and a moment later a woman who looked to be in her fifties opened the door. He introduced himself and explained that he needed to ask a few questions regarding the old woman on the third floor. He told her it was simply a matter of routine. When someone in their eighties dies in their bed, matters are clear. But when they die in an accident, there has to be a formal report, and testimonies must be gathered. She invited him to come in, then called for her son Red Adel, who was in the kitchen. Naji noticed that the sofas from the morning were now sitting at the far end of the living room, a set of clean white sheets draped over them; an older sofa and a couple of large armchairs stood alongside the window.

  Naji sat down on one of the armchairs, while Red Adel took a seat at the end of the sofa. The investigator repeated his earlier remarks about routine procedure and needing to file a formal report before closing the case.

  “I’ve been told you used to help the old lady with some day-to-day things,” Naji said.

  “Yes, I did. When these buildings were constructed, it didn’t occur to anyone that the people living in them would grow old one day and no longer be able to carry their gas cylinders up to their homes, so they built them without elevators. I used to bring the old lady’s gas cylinder up the stairs for her, and I’d sometimes find her trying to lug stuff, shopping bags and other things, and offer to help.”

  “When was the last time you brought up a gas cylinder for her?”

  A faint look of irritation appeared on Red Adel’s face, but he responded without hesitation: “I’m not sure exactly. It must have been two months ago, maybe a little longer.”

  “And did you happen to carry up her shopping bags during this past week?”

  “No, I haven’t had to do that for quite some time now—ever since her niece started coming in and bringing her whatever she needed.”

  “Did she ever invite you inside after you carried up her gas cylinder for her?”

  “She’d sometimes invite me to have a cup of tea with her.”

  “Did you accept these invitations?”

  “I’d usually tell her I was busy. Her place felt grubby and I didn’t like that. Maybe that’s not quite right . . . Her niece cleaned the apartment whenever she visited. Maybe it was the smell of old age. I would just stand at the door while she chatted away. She needed people to talk to. She’d sometimes wait at the entrance of the building to exchange a few words with passing neighbors.”

  “Did you see her on the day of the accident?”

  “No, I wasn’t home on Saturday. I had to head out early in the morning to transport a batch of oil heaters across the region. I only came back this morning.”

  Naji hadn’t made any reference to Saturday, so how did Red Adel know that the accident had taken place that day? The medical report hadn’t mentioned that either; it had only said that the death must have taken place four days earlier, judging from the body’s state of decomposition and the distension it had suffered as a result of the hot weather.

  The investigator left Red Adel’s home with his mind in a whirl; one moment he felt sure he was about to piece together clues that revealed the presence of a crime, and the next he doubted what had struck him as clear evidence of wrongdoing.

  Back at the office, he ran through the details of the accident once again, as if vocalizing his suspicions gave them a new solidity and power to convince: 1) a woman in her eighties had been found dead in her kitchen; 2) the door of the apartment was closed and there were no signs of forced entry; 3) there were no other means of gaining entry to the apartment—but that didn’t mean somebody hadn’t entered the place that day; 4) someone she knew and trusted may have knocked on the door to offer their help or to simply make sure she was all right; she invited this person to come in; they followed her to the kitchen, grabbed her from behind, hit her head against the side of the cupboard, and threw her on the floor; then closed the apartment door and left.

  But the most important question remained unanswered: why would anyone want to do such a thing? There were no signs of anything having been stolen, and Red Adel knew the old lady had very little money. So how did the cigarette ash find its way to the kitchen? No one else who smoked had entered the old lady’s place.

  “You’re agonizing over this case far more than it’s worth,” said Naji’s colleague, after Naji had voiced all his concerns and suspicions. “A woman in her eighties with no enemies and no money has no reason to be murdered. If she hadn’t died now, she would have died in a year or two. There are people meeting far more brutal ends in this city every day—people in the prime of their life. If I were you, I would close this case immediately.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Naji muttered.

  Yet the investigator decided to undertake one last visit to the scene of the incident the following day. When he arrived at the building in al-Ghadeer, he met Huda coming down the stairs. “They’ve cleaned and disinfected the apartment,” she told him. “The old lady was a good neighbor. We’ll have to see who the blushing bride is that’ll take her place now.”

  “Bride?” Naji asked without thinking.

  “I believe Red Adel’s mother has spoken to Anissa about the apartment?” Naji shook his head, and could only stare at her as she went on: “Red Adel’s brother got married a few months ago, and he’s renting a place over in the next district. Their mother decided to buy the old lady’s apartment because she doesn’t w
ant her sons to live too far away from her . . .”

  The inspector sighed. Just another day in Baghdad.

  Translated from Arabic by Sophia Vasalou

  Empty Bottles

  by Hussain al-Mozany

  al-Thawra City

  The crime occurred at dawn, in a small, dusty alleyway branching off from 60th Street, which was part of Sector 55 in al-Thawra City, today known as Sadr City—about seven kilometers from the center of Baghdad. At the time, I was either twelve or thirteen years old, and I was lying in the cement courtyard next to my three younger siblings. Our house had two low-ceilinged rooms and was right next to the site of the incident—not too different from the house in which our neighbor was killed. I almost woke up at dawn, after the call to prayer hissed from a defective speaker that hung from the wall of a small mosque nearby. The muezzin would usually begin by awakening his sleeping friends as if he were playing the role of an alarm clock. In that age, when most residents of al-Thawra did not even know of alarm clocks, they relied upon the timings of the call to prayer, and the sunrise and sunset.

  Suddenly, I heard the iron door open and then shut with force, making a noise that truly jolted me from my slumber. The light was seeping languidly from the cloudy, distant sky, and the air was delicate. I could see my mother; she hadn’t yet finished her prayers, since the muezzin had stopped speaking just a few moments before. I saw her rush directly toward me, and in a low, choked voice, as if she wanted to let me in on a dangerous secret, she whispered: “Her brother killed her and escaped.”

  I shuddered as I grasped what my agitated mother was saying, without knowing exactly who this killer was or who it was that had fallen victim to him that early morning. I rubbed my eyes and went to the tap in the courtyard for a little drink of water, then I looked again at my mother, who began to circle around my siblings, examining them.

  “I saw him carrying a dagger in one hand and the dead woman’s hand in the other,” my mother muttered under her breath as she left the house.