Baghdad Noir

by Samuel Shimon

  * * *

  On the final day of his Baghdad posting, as he was returning to the hotel after work, George heard footsteps behind him. The street by the Shahrazad Hotel was deserted except for drunk woman standing by the streetlamp. A man holding a cigarette approached her. George walked past a gloomy bar with a brawl going on outside. The street was growing darker. Then he sensed that a car was following him, and his heart skipped a beat. He turned, and found two men behind him. One asked him for a light. George pulled his lighter from his pocket and lit that man’s cigarette. Then a large knife, held by a firm hand, stabbed George from behind. He slid to the ground, gasping for breath, and looked up to see the stars slowly dim.

  Translated from Arabic by William M. Hutchins

  Tuesday of Sorrows

  by Layla Qasrany

  al-Andalus District

  Baghdad, Summer of 1978

  “You have a long journey coming up, with many obstacles,” said Hasmik, the Armenian fortune-teller, as she swirled the coffee grounds in Youssef’s cup. “All the doors will close to you. There is evil in your path,” she added in clumsy Arabic, before murmuring a few prayers in Armenian.

  He was not happy about her prediction, given the nature of his upcoming plans. He paid the woman her fee and left her house with his mind in a state of confusion.

  Youssef did not want to believe everything that the fortune-teller read in the coffee grounds, since he was a man of science and didn’t subscribe to what he called khurafat, or superstitions. He was a successful engineer and contractor for the country’s largest air-conditioner company, and much of Baghdad knew him. But he had sought out this soothsayer because he wanted some sign about the journey he had planned for himself and his family.

  * * *

  That night, Youssef’s wife Hala was waiting for him at the Mashriq Club for dinner with some friends, after which they would play bingo. This was their summer ritual: every Thursday they would leave the little ones to be babysat by the housekeeper and spend the evening with friends at the same club where Hala took the children every Monday morning for swimming lessons.

  “Baghdad is no longer a safe place . . .” said Youssef, stopping himself before he mentioned to his friend Fouad that he was planning to move to London with his family within the next two weeks.

  Youssef and his friend would often use code words and insinuations to refer to the dictatorial Baathist regime, fearing that someone from the secret police was planted among them, eavesdropping at the neighboring table.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” his friend agreed. “We used to sleep with our house unlocked, but now we’ve started securing our doors with a dozen chains.”

  Despite her attachment to her family and to Baghdad, Hala did not mind the idea of suddenly leaving. She loved her husband to the point of agreeing with almost all of his careful decisions. She loved him so much that she could not hide it from her friends, who envied her when she spoke about him. Once she said to two of her closest friends: “My two kids, Nadir and Dalia, look like their father because I love him so much.” Youssef laughed at this theory of hers.

  Hala had met Youssef in their third year at the Polytechnic and they had married after graduation at Mar Gorgis Church in Baghdad al-Jadida. They baptized their children there as well. And now she would follow her husband to London.

  * * *

  Hala always believed that Tuesday was a day on which evil spirits emerged from the earth to abduct people’s souls. “I don’t want to travel on a Tuesday—I hate Tuesdays! My uncle and grandfather both died on that day.”

  “My darling, I cannot change the tickets now,” Youssef replied, sounding remorseful. “I have paid for them and it’s all settled.”

  He then opened the drawer of the study table and took out a folder holding the four tickets and the green passports. He showed her one of the tickets. “Look, the departure is for five minutes after midnight, which means that it will be Wednesday morning. For now, we have more important things to worry about.” He put the folder back in the drawer. “We have to think about how to smuggle the jewelry out with us—you know the rules. Maybe we can split it up among the four of us.”

  “You wear the thick necklaces and the crosses under your clothes, and I’ll wear the rings and bracelets,” she said. “And I will attach some of the other rings to the necklaces.”

  That night, riddled with fear, Youssef could not sleep. What if the secret police and airport security prevented him from leaving? What if they were blacklisted or if the jewelry was confiscated from them? Furthermore, he had sold the factory and transferred large amounts of money to England by way of a friend who worked in the British consulate; he would only recover those funds upon his arrival in London.

  * * *

  The day before their scheduled departure, Youssef suggested to Hala that they take the children out one last time, to eat burgers at Abu Yunan’s in the heart of the capital, and from there they could go say goodbye to her parents, who lived in the al-Baladiyyat District.

  As they passed by one of the security service headquarters, Youssef’s stomach tightened. “It is because of these butchers that there is no place left for us in Iraq,” he told his wife. “This regime does not want to see anyone have a successful career unless they can profit from it.”

  Hala did not know about Youssef’s problems at work; he did not want her to worry about his tension with the Baathists, who had been paying him visits at the factory, asking him why he was late responding to the interior minister’s order to install air conditioners in one of his houses in the Mansour District. Youssef always tried to evade their questions by saying that the factory was busy with contracts or tourism companies in Erbil or something similar, but answers like these did not appease the regime. Youssef complained about this to his older brother: “The Baathists want me to play the game with them, and they won’t let me be if I don’t become one of them. Emigrating is the only way out.”

  Hala cried on the way to her mother’s house in al-Baladiyyat; the children in the backseat were silent, but they could not understand why she was upset. Hala had only ever left Baghdad on short trips to Beirut and Istanbul. She wished she could say goodbye to their kind neighbors, but their departure had been kept secret for reasons even she didn’t know.

  The family sat for a while with Hala’s parents. “You must come visit us in London,” Hala said, crying in her mother’s arms during their final goodbyes. After they left the house, her mother poured a bucket of water on the ground behind them for good luck.

  * * *

  The next morning was a scorcher. While Hala busied herself packing the last of the children’s clothes, Youssef told her that he was taking Nadir for a haircut, and that they’d be back shortly.

  “Don’t be late, Youssef. I won’t start lunch without you.” Hala was very wound up, especially since she was so attached to their house in al-Andalus District. It was her whole life. She loved its furniture—she had picked out each piece carefully. All her memories with her husband and children were here, and leaving was a huge loss for her.

  The housekeeper, Maryam, was the only one outside the family who knew of their plans. She was the only one Hala trusted, as she had been living with them since Nadir’s birth. A woman of few words, she had devoted her life to serving her mistress and running the house, having taken a vow never to marry.

  Maryam was fixing lunch when Dalia, the younger child, became sleepy and started crying. “Madame Hala, I’ll put Dalia to sleep in my bed one last time before you leave,” Maryam said as she lifted Dalia into her arms. “Oh, my darling, I’ll miss you so much,” she whispered to the child, as she took her to her room off the kitchen.

  Maryam returned to the kitchen to finish preparing a final lunch, per Hala’s request: okra with garlic, lemon, and fresh tomatoes. She had also prepared a pot of amber rice on the side, the smell wafting out into the street.

  While Maryam was cooking, she heard a knock on the kitchen door. She op
ened it, thinking it was the gardener. Instead, a masked man appeared with an ax in his hand. He struck her with it and she fell to the ground. The man made his way into the house and up the stairs.

  * * *

  Hala heard a sharp yell followed by hurried footsteps, but it was too late for her to escape. She found herself face-to-face with a tall man, and was unable to defend herself. The man struck her on the shoulder with the ax. She fell, letting out a scream, but he caught her by the neck and struck her again on the head. Then he went to another room to look for Youssef. Unable to find him, the killer ran off after a few minutes.

  * * *

  When Youssef approached his house two hours later, he immediately smelled the smoke from the burned rice. He rushed in and found Maryam lying in a pool of blood. Nadir tried to scream, but Youssef put his hand over his son’s mouth.

  Youssef grabbed a knife from the kitchen and, believing the attacker was still inside, went cautiously up the stairs. He called out to his wife. She did not reply. He discovered her body in the bedroom, bathed in blood. But then he heard his daughter’s cries coming from Maryam’s room downstairs; he rushed down and took her into his arms, while his son pounded on the kitchen door in a panic.

  He brought both children outside and then returned to the house, quickly climbing the stairs to the top floor, where he found the door to the roof open. Youssef realized that the killer must have fled this way. He did not know what to do. He sat down and sobbed next to his wife’s body. Soon he heard the voices of neighbors gathering outside the house. He went down to find them gathering around Maryam’s body.

  “Look!” Abu Ahmad yelled. “My God, she’s not dead, she’s moving. Let me take her to the hospital.”

  The other neighbors helped him carry Maryam to his car, and he and his wife, Umm Ahmad, drove off to the nearby hospital.

  Meanwhile, Youssef went back upstairs, where Hala’s body remained. A few of the other men from the neighborhood went up with him. He hugged his wife’s body, still hoping she was alive, but she did not stir.

  “There is no God but God. Let me call the police. They will be here very quickly,” said one neighbor.

  Youssef asked him about Nadir and Dalia; he was told that one of the neighbors had taken them to her house.

  * * *

  Maryam lost a lot of blood and remained comatose in the hospital for weeks while undergoing several operations. The doctors said that she would live, but would never be as she had been prior to the assault.

  Youssef buried his wife in the Mohammed Sakran Cemetery outside Baghdad—along the old road to Kirkuk. He and the children went to his brother’s place to grieve and stayed there for a few weeks.

  As for Maryam, once her condition improved, the Baathists questioned her and recorded her statement. On one of their visits to the hospital, the investigator explained what the next step was: “Listen, we want to hear your testimony at headquarters. We will arrange a lineup of suspects and tell you what you have to do, got it? The party will also give you some money as compensation for this incident.”

  Maryam, shaking in fear at the intimidating police officer, only managed to nod her head while clutching the cross hanging on her chest and praying silently, as if beseeching it to rescue her from herself, from the party, and from this awful predicament.

  * * *

  After being discharged, Maryam had to follow up with the security service. She took a taxi to the headquarters, where they led her to a room to wait alone. An officer and his aide came in after a while. “I will take you to see the perpetrator,” the officer said, “and I want you to sign this document after you identify him for us. We think the second man from the right is probably the one who committed the crime.”

  They took her to another room guarded by two policemen. One of them opened the door and Maryam entered along with the officer, not daring to raise her head. She murmured a few simple words and pointed to the second man from the right. He was a tall young man with a dark complexion. He stood rigid as a palm tree, even though his eyes were red, and he did not seem afraid of Maryam’s false testimony.

  Before leaving the building, Maryam signed a document that read: Mahmoud Kadhim Musa, 28 years old, criminal with prior convictions. On July 25, in a cowardly act, he broke into the home of an Iraqi family, killing the mistress of the house, Mrs. Hala Habib, and injuring Ms. Maryam Toubia, but God kept her alive to witness the crime of this degenerate culprit.

  After signing the document, Maryam cried bitterly. Outside, her nephew was waiting for her in a taxi. When they reached her sister’s home, Youssef was there drinking coffee, unable to conceal his shaking leg. Her sister brought her a glass of cold water. She drank it and sat down opposite Youssef. He asked her how the interrogation went and whether she had seen the perpetrator. Maryam did not answer him directly. “They asked me so many questions, as if I weren’t unconscious that day,” she muttered.

  Youssef leaned forward and asked her, “Were you able to recognize the killer?”

  She did not have the courage to tell him that she had given false testimony. Instead, she said: “It was easy to identify him—I remembered his face.”

  “Are you certain it was him?”

  “It couldn’t be anyone else,” she lied. “His face was the last thing I saw before I lost consciousness on that terrible day.”

  “What I mean is, could you recognize him the moment your eyes came upon him without the help of anyone else?” Youssef pressed.

  “Yes, he has a distinctive face. He has bushy eyebrows and—”

  “But you told me when you came out of the coma that he was wearing a mask,” Youssef challenged. “And now you’re saying this about his eyebrows. You’re talking nonsense!”

  Maryam excused herself, saying she was tired and needed to take a nap. “Please, I have a headache . . . let me rest a little,” she begged, putting her hands on her temples.

  “Tell me, what’s his name?” Youssef said.

  “Whose name?”

  “The man, the killer, what’s his name?”

  “I’m not sure . . . I think his name is . . . Mahmoud Musa,” she said, and then left the room.

  Maryam’s sister tried to console Youssef. “We cannot argue with the will of God in these matters of life and death. Death is unavoidable, and we will all walk on this path,” she told him. “Your loss has been great, but you are a man of faith and you cannot keep mourning your wife forever. You must be strong, for the sake of your two little children. They need you. God, not us, will avenge this heinous crime.”

  * * *

  Youssef left enraged with Maryam—with himself, with Iraq, with God. He didn’t really need to know who the killer was because he was certain that the Baathists were the ones who had murdered his wife. He returned to his brother’s house, where the children awaited him. He took them to a nearby shop and bought them ice cream.

  Every night he cried, asking himself: How can my children grow up without Hala? How badly will they miss her? How can I raise them alone?

  “I lost everything in a single day. If I leave now, people will say that I am not mourning my wife. But should I listen to what people say?” Youssef wondered aloud. “People talk, then they go silent, but no one except me can guarantee my children’s future. I have to take them abroad or else the Baathists will kill me too, and my children will become orphans.”

  He knew that he was the one the Baathists wanted dead on that ill-fated Tuesday.

  He reminisced about when he had gone with Hala after their wedding to the jewelers’ market on al-Nahr Street to have their names engraved on each other’s rings—by the same Mandean jeweler from whom he’d bought the gold for her, including the necklaces with gold coins and the bracelets that were twisted into thick chains.

  That day, he’d told her: “Hala, choose whatever pieces of gold you like. Let them be my first wedding gift to you.”

  “Darling, you are everything I could ever want,” she had replied. “What will I do wi
th this metal, when I have everything I could wish for in you?”

  That day, he had realized how much she meant to him and thanked the Lord for bringing them together.

  * * *

  A few days later, Youssef decided to take the children back home.

  “I don’t want to be a burden on your wife,” he told his brother.

  “Don’t talk like that, Youssef,” his brother said. “Your children are my own.”

  Youssef thanked him again but headed back home with the kids. It was the first time they had entered the house since Hala’s murder—desolation and gloom filled the space. The children ran up to their rooms while Youssef stood at the bottom of the stairs and recalled how he had found his wife on that summer day, drenched in a pool of blood, her face bloated. He could sense her spirit was still in the house, but he was quickly distracted by his children’s voices. He bathed them and then tucked them into bed. He slept out in the living room after checking all the locks on all the doors multiple times.

  The next day, Youssef went to visit Abu Ahmad. He did not give his neighbor a chance to ask questions about the incident, and tried to make him believe it was just a burglary gone wrong. The children played and ran around in the garden while the two men sat outside drinking tea. There was sorrow written all over Abu Ahmad’s face. At first, Youssef thought that he was putting on such a serious face out of politeness and formality. Then he noticed that Umm Ahmad was wearing black.

  “Why is your wife wearing black? Is everything okay?” Youssef asked. “Is she mourning someone?”