I had seen Sarheed several times, standing in front of his cart with his red kaffiyeh, his thin mustache and narrow eyes, scorched red by the sun. I would hear him cry out in his weak and rasping voice: “Red! Red tomatoes! The best you can find!”
He sold small cucumbers as well—so I would envision the blood dripping from him while he held his sister’s plump hand. Was this short, skinny, poor man really capable of committing such a carefully plotted, clandestine crime that any traces of it completely vanished?
I started to gaze at his features every time I saw him, until I began to arouse his suspicions and annoyance, since I wasn’t buying anything from him. Maybe he figured I was a police informant, so he grudgingly put up with my glances. But was there anyone who had examined the hand closely and thus recognized whose it was? And who could say unequivocally that the murdered woman was actually his sister? He may have gone into a state of desperation after the long years spent searching the streets and dusty alleyways of al-Thawra City for his next victim—so he decided to pounce on a woman who wanted to sell him empty bottles!
* * *
I finally summoned up my courage and decided to confront Sarheed the killer face-to-face. I prepared myself well for this mission, taking into account any movement he might make, and told myself that I had to arrive at some solution before I left Baghdad and Iraq forever. This time, I really tried to adopt the personality of an investigator in charge of a criminal inquiry. I headed to Bab al-Mu’azzam Square, where Sarheed stood with his wooden cart, calling out in a feeble voice, worn out by dust and the scorching sun: “Red! Red tomatoes!”
I approached him but maintained a short distance, extremely wary of the sudden stab of a dagger; I saw the long knife that he had put on top of a pile of tomatoes and cucumbers. Yet in spite of my moving near him, he did not seem to pay any heed and continued calling out, as if he were addressing someone other than me. Right away I asked him: “Are you Sarheed the used-bottle seller?” I wanted to cut off any possible paths of escape.
He ceased his shouting, grabbed his knife mechanically, and glared at me with a look in his eyes that simultaneously carried anxiety and curiosity. “Who? Sar—? I’ve never heard this name before.” He narrowed his small eyes, feigning surprise, and added: “My name is Hameed al-Shaalan, and I am a vegetable seller, as you see.”
Before he could say anything else, I asked: “Didn’t you used to buy empty bottles in al-Thawra City?”
Instead of replying, he tried to laugh, but it evaporated between the lines on his sharply furrowed face, which had been browned by the noonday sun, becoming a yellowish gray. “What do you want from me?” he asked. “Do I have something that you’ve lost?”
“I saw you some years ago roaming through the streets of al-Thawra City, looking for a missing woman. Did you ever find her?”
The man fell silent, his eyes darted away from me, and he started to shake his head in bewilderment. Then a customer in military fatigues approached, possibly having just come out of the Ministry of Defense building; he bought a few tomatoes and cucumbers, so I found myself compelled to do the same, and now thought that I might have accused the man wrongly and unjustly, just as my uncle had predicted. Perhaps I was suffering from some sort of psychosis! For more than ten years had passed since the incident took place, and all I had seen of the killer at the time was his red kaffiyeh, the glitter in his eyes, his dagger, and the severed hand.
The man calling himself Hameed silently put the tomatoes into a paper bag, then glared again—I could sense a kind of challenge. I thought maybe he himself had become a secret informant. For who was this man who dared to station his cart in front of the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad during the years of the Iran-Iraq War, when even pedestrians were not allowed to walk next to it? This Sarheed—or Hameed al-Shaalan—must have instinctively realized that working as an informant not only cleared him of suspicion but acquitted him of the murder charge.
Hameed lifted the bag and tossed it to the side of the cart. “Take your bag and go—I don’t want to see your face again!” he growled. He waved his knife, the blade glinting in the sunlight. I moved to leave, but then turned around and saw him following me with his fiery gaze; I glimpsed the sudden brightness in his strained eyes. I nearly threw the bag of tomatoes into the street when I imagined that it was smeared with blood.
* * *
Before leaving al-Thawra City and Iraq completely, I headed to Bab al-Moatham Square several more times. I looked at the vegetable carts and their owners, but I saw no trace of Sarheed the seller of empty bottles. And every time I now recall Saleema’s death, I have the impression that people were all colluding together back then, or were even accomplices to a crime that had become a mundane family matter—a crime that didn’t arouse anyone’s interest.
That incident happened more than fifty years ago, and I was a witness to it, perhaps even an indirect victim of its savagery—yet still, at this moment I do not want to believe that the murder actually took place.
Translated from Arabic by Suneela Mubayi
Getting to Abu Nuwas Street
by Dheya al-Khalidi
Bab al-Moatham
I come to in the morning, and see that I’m in an abandoned metal shop. Tied up. My head is pounding as an oppressive calm tightens its grip on everything in this place: dusty tables with hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools; grubby men’s clothes on a nail in the wall by a broken window; and paper bags and old newspapers begrimed with veggies and other leftovers litter the floor. Mulberry branches rustle behind the window nearest me, when out of nowhere, the barking of neighborhood dogs breaks the silence. Perhaps I’m in the countryside, far enough away that I can’t get help.
Light floods in from the dilapidated windows. The shop door opens with a commotion that doesn’t match the pint-size bodies coming into sight. Children between ten and fourteen years old, looks of glee on their faces. Eating potato chips and chocolate, they’re dressed in colorful clothing, like they’re on a holiday outing or a school trip. The spectacle escalates when one kid goes over to the metal lockers propped in the corner and opens several latches. The kids throw their food aside then look at me with a weird kind of enthusiasm.
A tall kid hands out an array of revolvers to his friends, and then they spread themselves throughout the shop—near the windows, the big door, behind the huge aluminum-cutting machine. Then another kid comes up to me, his eyes full of rage. I don’t really know what’s behind his gaze. He’s wearing a T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front, pants with suspenders, and sneakers. Grinning, he stands there pointing his six-shooter at my face. “Do you want to die?” he asks.
“No.”
“You want to live?”
“Of course. Who are you?’
“We’re armed!”
* * *
I remember. Just before midnight yesterday, I decided once and for all to leave the hotel, no matter the consequences. I wanted to smash the clock; I thought I could ignore the curfew and get over to Abu Nuwas Street. I also remember the bottle of J&B whiskey that came along for the ride. A hotel employee had tried and failed to keep me from going out. Didn’t make much difference to me when he told me to take care in one breath, and then threaten to throw me out in the next.
Baghdad’s streets are desolate after midnight. The dark gathers in front of shops and alleyways. Wooden stalls for selling produce are set up and intertwined, as though they are broken-down trains at a station. I always watch the cats chase each other, hiss, and fight by the butcher’s shop. But odd that there weren’t any stray dogs around, since I used to hear them bark in the capital every day. Maybe they sensed something grave that night, so they were hiding, putting off the hunt for another time.
I kept on, walked out of the alley of a popular market. The booze wore off. One bottle clearly didn’t do the trick for a lifelong drinker.
My nostalgia took me back two or three decades to those nights in Baghdad: the lovely Abu Nuwas Park, masgouf roasti
ng over dancing flames, friends singing. Dreams would soar with clinking glasses of whiskey and local arak. At that time, anything seemed possible. At least that’s what we believed. Those were the years. We had to be strong, daring, and rash. So now I had to get back what had been laid to waste, if only a small part of it—a scrap of an old dream. For most of what we did have was lost, forever. Like my beloved Sama—lost to a marriage she didn’t choose. But today she has four loves—her teenage sons.
I kept to the sidewalk along al-Jumhuriyah Street, as I got farther away from my hotel, the popular market, and Bab al-Moatham. Could I have gone on to Bab al-Sharqi to get to Abu Nuwas Street, humming that old seventies song like I used to? Blackness shrouded Maidan Square and the nearby alleyways. The square had a glorious history. It used to be a lair for red metal creatures—the double-decker buses that were the backdrop for many of our memories. In the eighties, I got drunk in one. The 77 bus ran between Maidan and Nafaq al-Shorta. I fell asleep in the upper deck of one back then. I felt nothing, only heard the driver yelling at me as he slapped my cheek. He might have done that a few times, until I jumped out of my skin at the sight of a thick mustache on a pissed-off face.
I was worried that a soldier on guard duty would see me, so I stuck beside the walls of tall buildings. With each step I was closer to bliss—back to those bygone nights. Now I really wanted to smash the door bolted shut by life’s losses. Night in Baghdad, night that set me apart; it didn’t make me feel like some apparition gliding along, but rather a person seeking the utmost heights of a delayed ecstasy.
Would the guard know I wasn’t a monster with its sights set on dearest Baghdad’s face?
The sky flashed, and the smell of the rain washed the stench out of my capital. The droplets played an amazing melody as they fell. Far off, images upon images. Moments that flowed away like water on a sidewalk. I stopped at a squalid wall and scanned through the dark—when I heard the loudspeaker of a police car.
* * *
I’m trying to piece together what went down between last night’s booze and these thoughtless children. It’s like clay tablets with certain places scratched up and unreadable—I can’t for the life of me fill in those gaps right now to figure out what’s behind my blinding headache. It seems like there was a point in which I came upon the capital in the subtlest moments of its vulnerability.
American soldiers used to command Baghdad’s nights—their Humvees roaring, keeping us awake and afraid. Then the night’s custody switched over to our Iraqi brownness—bullets flying freely—even for a riled cat or a hungry dog.
My new buddy leaves me after a few minutes and goes over to another kid by the window. I need to know what they’re talking about, so I eavesdrop and what I hear surprises me. They’re busy discussing the latest episode of some cartoon on TV, how a dastardly wizard transformed the trees into hunks of concrete, the river into ice, and the animals into garbage. They couldn’t wait for the brave prince to hurry up and come rescue everyone.
Their chatter isn’t even beginning to broach my confinement. But it’s odd as well. How can they long for the prince to come slay the wizard while they carry real-life six-shooters, just like the rest of their pals in the shop? I think about last night, whether I did something I should be ashamed of. Am I guilty like the evil sorcerer? Did I wreak havoc on the capital?
I call them over to ask them why I’m tied up and kept here. The other kids hear the question too and come over. They stare at me and smile.
An older one steps forward and plays with my hair. “You’re nice and pretty,” he says.
Then another kid with cotton skin, who looks like he attends one of those rich-boy boarding schools, tells me: “We won’t kill you. We’re nice, like you.”
“Fine . . . then let me go?” I suggest.
I don’t get an answer, and after a few minutes of their indifference, I bang my skull against the wall. That freaks them out and they get visibly upset.
“Untie me!” I yell. So shameful! I can’t move at all because of these children; they didn’t even exist during the eighties, when I was running under bombs and missiles in the war.
The knot is so tight—the kids couldn’t have tied it. I realize this when a boy with a brown, slender face says, “The rope is tied too tight.”
“Then who tied me up?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
We hear shots nearby. The kids hide under the tables and machines, telling each other to get away from the windows. I can’t know what’s going on outside when there are gaps still left on the tablet in my mind. Specific areas are worn down but hold a secret. Maybe the children’s minds went blank as well and that’s why they’re frightened, as if they’ve moved beyond the rules of the game.
A quarter-hour and then silence—the kids come out from hiding and set their guns on the tables. They haven’t even fired a single bullet. They’re calm, as though they are used to hearing the sounds of gunfire. So calm, in fact, that the skinny kid takes out chocolate from a black bag and begins handing it around. One of them comes up to me and tries to shove a piece in my mouth. I turn away. Bondage and sweets don’t go together. I’ve long left childhood to a faraway place of empty booze bottles, gray hair, shabby clothes, and oblivion. Those things riddle every memory of mine.
* * *
I remember. At ease, I hid like a rat in the post office rubble, under the rain, stronger now. A storm was brewing. Moments went by and wind swept through the capital—sounds of slamming doors and windows, falling metal utensils. Bags and paper scraps flew through the streets and over the shops and buildings, while I was gaining a sort of unique warmth, wrapped in my coat and old tales.
Security barriers, rumors, and truths behind the dreadful curfew fell away, and my life flashed before my eyes: a small child among the streams and barley and cornfields; a young boy who longed to get away from his parents to see the capital; an audacious young man who made it out of his sleepy village; cheap hotels, wars, hookers, booze; and settling down as a street vendor in the Maidan market in the nineties. I unearthed precious items from piles of junk—old audio cassettes, tacky shoes, schoolbooks, switchblades, and other things nobody cared about except for poor people—happiness and intoxication, like the morning of a big sale. I even bought Bab al-Moatham PO boxes from two drunks who stole them during the events of April 2003. I wanted to own the mailboxes because of my obsession with keeping them from the drunk and needy. I’ll never forget their wonder, as the boxes stood in front of me at the second-floor post office in the eighties. I’ll never forget where my little box 754 was; it carried my family’s pleas to go back home to the village. I’ll never forget meeting my dear Sama in front of the mailboxes that winter day—that moment was a breath of fresh air in the isolating suffocation of the war. I loved Sama. I sent her rose-colored letters from over there—from a war whose secrets we haven’t unearthed until now.
We have to hold on to the things we cherish even if we’re poor. I needed money, but I wouldn’t sell the memory boxes. So many letters passed through them to me and to Baghdad’s people; sorrows, tears, and heartache; the elation that comes from secret love letters. Then there were the messages bringing good news.
Unfortunately, an American rocket blew the post office apart. So, to keep it in my head, I had to throw a guy out—he was ratty-clothed and looked like he could have been Indian. Get out of here! I’m not selling you the boxes! At the time, he said he’d break them apart and sell them individually, or sell the metal to an aluminum shop. Anything can be sold in my country, for cheap too—our memories, our streets, even the green leaves in our trees. Everything.
My box number 754 was back at the hotel. I tried to convince myself that some future morning I’d get a letter from Sama, or Mom or Dad, both now in heaven. Of course, they’ll be different from past letters. Will Dad invite me once again to join them in a much quieter village? Or will Sama?
Hey, boy. I know you came by the alley after all these years, and saw
me, Sama the mother . . . Sama the mother of four grown boys . . . my hair gray from constantly worrying about them in the streets of Baghdad. It won’t ever be enough, even when my husband dies, for you to get close to me. My sons have grown up. Hey, boy from the post office building! We’re old now!
Meaning: there were no more letters to wait for. We were alone now, withered by the moisture and mold. We could hardly remember the beauties, which had gone gray. The miniskirts strolling around the corniches of the capital were now just fragmented details. Tales of blissful lust at its peak—now a crushed Sumerian clay tablet.
The rain stopped, so I left my hiding place with hopes of getting to Bab al-Sharqi and Abu Nuwas that night. My right foot sank into a puddle. There was this kind of darkness that made you expect everything to go wrong. I had to get out of the post office rubble, cut through Maidan Square, so I could get to the wall of the Islamic Bank. But that’d be as dicey as it gets. I wished Bab al-Moatham were connected to al-Sharqi by a tall, never-ending wall. If that were the case, I’d have clung to it like a lizard and passed through to my final destination.
Baghdad Noir Page 18