Baghdad Noir

by Samuel Shimon

  “Yes, her nephew died.”

  When Youssef asked how it happened, his neighbor said: “What can I tell you, my dear neighbor? He was just a young man . . . he died in a car accident.”

  “May God rest his soul, Abu Ahmad. What a shocking piece of news.” Hearing this after Hala’s murder made Youssef anxious, but it also made him feel like he wasn’t the only one in the world subject to misfortune.

  “I hadn’t heard about your nephew,” Youssef told Umm Ahmad as she brought them more tea. “May God’s mercy be upon him.”

  “We did not want to upset you, dear Youssef. You have troubles of your own. It breaks my heart—Mahmoud was a lovely young man, an ambitious pilot who worked hard to make something of himself. I wish he had never come back!” she cried.

  As Youssef finished his tea that evening, a cool breeze started to blow gently. He called for the children and went back home to put them to bed before nightfall. Sorrow weighed down upon him all night, but something else was troubling him. Then, just as he was drifting off to sleep, he remembered the name of Umm Ahmad’s nephew: Mahmoud! The same name as Hala’s “killer”! Was it a coincidence?

  * * *

  At ten o’clock the next morning, Youssef went back to Abu Ahmad’s house.

  “Good morning, Youssef! Is everything okay?” his neighbor asked.

  “I need to speak with you. Will you come over to my place for coffee?”

  “Of course, my friend. Just give me a few minutes to get ready.”

  Youssef soon sat down with Abu Ahmad. “Umm Ahmad said her nephew Mahmoud was living abroad—but then you said he died in a car accident. Tell me the truth, Abu Ahmad.”

  His neighbor became flustered and started to stammer: “No, not at all . . . He was returning from the airport after a trip abroad . . . and died in an accident . . .”

  “I have known you for years—you are not telling the truth.”

  Abu Ahmad shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to know the truth.”

  “Okay, my friend,” Abu Ahmad replied. “No one knows the truth. He was a pilot in the Iraqi Air Force, but had escaped to Havana and had been there for a few years after receiving asylum. He married a Cuban woman but began to yearn for Iraq, so he came back under a false passport and brought his wife with him. But he was recognized and taken in by state security, and they executed him and deported his wife back to Cuba. That is the truth. We were afraid to say he was executed. But why are you even questioning me about this?”

  “It’s not that . . . I just want to know what happened because maybe the Baathists who killed Mahmoud are the same ones who killed Hala,” Youssef said, his voice beginning to crack.

  “Unfortunately, we all know they’re killers, my friend,” Abu Ahmad said as he lit a cigarette.

  “I was their target that day when they murdered Hala,” Youssef explained. “They know I oppose their regime and that I wouldn’t do business with them, so they wanted to kill me. Instead, they killed my wife to humiliate me.”

  “You have to save yourself and escape. You are lucky; you have the financial means to leave the country.”

  “Leave? Where would I go, Abu Ahmad?”

  Yet Youssef knew exactly what he would do.

  * * *

  That evening, he took the children to their grandmother’s in al-Baladiyyat, then drove to the house of Hasmik the fortune-teller. Hasmik’s young daughter offered him a cup of coffee. She tried to show him how to swirl it, but he reminded her that he had been there before and knew the ritual well. He drank the coffee, swirled the cup, turned it over, then waited for it to cool. After a little while, Hasmik entered and sat down next to him.

  She looked at him, remembering his previous visit. She murmured some prayers. There was compassion in her eyes as she read the coffee grounds with great deliberation.

  This time he fully believed her. He paid Hasmik the fee she asked for and left her house. He went to the travel agency on Saadoun Street and bought three tickets to London.

  Translated from Arabic by Suneela Mubayi

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Salar Abdoh was born in Iran, and splits his time between Tehran and New York City. He is codirector of the Creative Writing MFA Program at the City College of New York. His essays and short stories have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, Guernica, BOMB, and Callaloo. He is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts award and a NYFA Prize. He is the editor of Tehran Noir and the author of Tehran at Twilight.

  Sinan Antoon was born in Baghdad in 1967. He has published two collections of poetry and four novels. His translation of his own novel, The Corpse Washer, won the 2014 Saif Ghobash Prize. His novel Ya Maryam was short-listed for the Arabic Booker and was translated to Spanish, French, and English. His novel Fihris was short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He codirected the documentary film About Baghdad. He is an associate professor at New York University.

  Ali Bader was born in Baghdad and studied Western philosophy at Baghdad University before working as a journalist for Arab newspapers and magazines. He has written fourteen works of fiction. His Arabic novel Papa Sartre was awarded the State Prize for Literature in Baghdad in 2002, and his novel The Tobacco Keeper was long-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2009.

  Nassif Falak was born in Baghdad in 1954. He is a poet, playwright, novelist, and journalist. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Baghdad, in 1979. In the early 1980s, he fled Iraq. When he returned home, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment—but was released after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In 2003, he published a collection of short stories, and since 2006, three novels. His first novel was serialized in Baghdad’s daily newspaper, Alsabaah.

  Mohammed Alwan Jabr was born in Baghdad in 1952. He has published short stories and literary essays in Iraqi and pan-Arab newspapers and magazines since 1975. His first collection of short stories, Statues Depart and Statues Return, was published in 2000. His debut novel, The Memory of Aranja, was published in 2013, and has been followed by three more. He currently lives in Baghdad, where he works as a legal expert in the fields of real estate and taxation.

  Dheya al-Khalidi was born in Baghdad in 1975 and began publishing his work in literary magazines in 1992. His first novel was published in Baghdad in 2006, and the second, entitled Killers, was published in Beirut in 2012. He has worked as an editor for several magazines, and has written more than one hundred episodes of documentary programs for television. He has been living in Turkey since 2013.

  Hussain al-Mozany (1954–2016) was born in al-Amarah, Iraq, in 1954. He grew up in Baghdad, but left the country in 1978 for Lebanon. He later moved to Germany, where he studied German literature. He has published two collections of short stories, two novels, and a book of essays. He was awarded the Albert von Chamisso Prize for his second novel, Mansur oder Der Duft des Abendlandes (Mansour, or the Scent of the West).

  Layla Qasrany was born in the Anbar Province of Iraq and studied French literature in Baghdad. After the Gulf War in 1991, she left Iraq for the US, where she currently resides. Her first novel, Sahdoutha, was published in 2011, and her second, Blind Birds, was published in 2016 by al-Mutawassit. She writes frequently about travel, visual art, and music for newspapers and online.

  Hayet Raies is a Tunisian writer who has published three collections of short stories. She received an MA in philosophy from Baghdad University, and a PhD in French language and literature from the Sorbonne in Paris. Raies is currently president of the League of Tunisian Women Writers. The president of Tunisia awarded her with a medal for cultural achievement in 2001 and 2006. Her stories have been translated into English, French, German, Danish, and Spanish.

  Muhsin al-Ramli was born in northern Iraq. He has lived in Madrid since 1995, and earned a PhD in philosophy and Spanish literature in 2003. He has translated several Spanish classics into Arabic, including Cervantes’s Don Quixo
te. He has published eleven works of his own in various genres. He is the cofounder of Alwah literary magazine. The original Arabic edition of his novel The President’s Gardens was long-listed for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

  Ahmed Saadawi is an Iraqi novelist, poet, and screenwriter. He is the author of a collection of poetry and four novels. His third novel, Frankenstein in Baghdad, won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014. In 2010, he was selected for the Hay Festival Beirut39 project, as one of the thirty-nine best Arab writers below the age of forty. In 2016, he published his fourth novel, al-Tabasheer (The Chalk).

  Hadia Said is a Lebanese writer who was born in Beirut. She has worked at Sayidaty (My Lady) magazine for many years as an editorial manager. In London, she was a weekly panelist on the BBC Arabic cultural program Papers from 1998 to 2005, discussing short stories by emerging authors. She has published several best-selling novels, including Artist and Transparent Hijab, as well as short stories, and has written scripts for TV, radio, and documentaries.

  Salima Salih was born in Mosul in northern Iraq. She studied law at Baghdad University and journalism at the University of Leipzig where she obtained her doctorate. She worked in the Iraqi press, publishing articles defending women’s rights. She has published five short story collections and four novels, and she has translated the works of Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Wolf, Angela Grünert, Christa Wichterich, and others, from German to Arabic.

  Roy Scranton is the author the essay collection We’re Doomed. Now What?, the novel War Porn, and the philosophical essay Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. His writing has been published in the New York Times, Prairie Schooner, Boston Review, Rolling Stone, the Nation, LIT, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at the University of Notre Dame. Roy lived in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004 as an occupier, and visited the city again in 2014 as a journalist.

  Samuel Shimon was born in Iraq, into an Assyrian family, and settled in Paris as a refugee in 1985. He cofounded Banipal, an international magazine of contemporary Arab literature. In 2000, he and Margaret Obank edited A Crack in the Wall, poems by sixty contemporary Arab poets. In 2005, he published a best-selling autobiographical novel, An Iraqi in Paris. In 2008, he chaired the judges for the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my wife Margaret Obank for always being there when I need her. A special thanks to my friend Alenka Suhadolnik, who lent me her cottage in the Slovenian countryside so I could wrap up the editing of this volume. And big thanks to my friend and editor at Akashic Books, Ibrahim Ahmad, for his patience and support. Finally, my deepest appreciation to all the authors for this wonderful collaboration.

  —S.S.

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Excerpt from USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series

  Also available in the Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  INTRODUCTION

  WRITERS ON THE RUN

  From USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple

  In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments later, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.

  It may not have been appropriate, but it sure was noir.

  From the start, the heart and soul of Akashic Books has been dark, provocative, well-crafted tales from the disenfranchised. I learned early on that writings from outside the mainstream almost necessarily coincide with a mood and spirit of noir, and are composed by authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime.

  My own interest in noir fiction grew from my early exposure to urban crime, which I absorbed from various perspectives. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and have lived in Brooklyn since 1990. In the 1970s and ’80s, when violent, drug-fueled crime in DC was rampant, my mother hung out with cops she’d befriended through her work as a nearly unbeatable public defender. She also grew close to some of her clients, most notably legendary DC bank robber Lester “LT” Irby (a contributor to DC Noir), who has been one of my closest friends since I was fifteen, though he was incarcerated from the early 1970s until just recently. Complicating my family’s relationship with the criminal justice system, my dad sued the police stridently in his work as legal director of DC’s American Civil Liberties Union.

  Both of my parents worked overtime. By the time my sister Kathy was nine and I was seven, we were latchkey kids prone to roam, explore, and occasionally break laws. Though an arrest for shoplifting helped curb my delinquent tendencies, the interest in crime remained. After college I worked with adolescents and completed a master’s degree in social work; my focus was on teen delinquency.

  Throughout the 1990s, my relationship with the urban underbelly expanded as I spent a great deal of time in dank nightclubs populated by degenerates and outcasts. I played bass guitar in Girls Against Boys, a rock and roll group that toured extensively in the US and Europe. The long hours on the road not spent on stage gave way to book publishing, which began as a hobby in 1996 with my friends Bobby and Mark Sullivan.

  The first book we published was The Fuck-Up, by Arthur Nersesian—a dark, provocative, well-crafted tale from the disenfranchised. A few years later Heart of the Old Country by Tim McLoughlin became one of our early commercial successes. The book was widely praised both for its classic noir voice and its homage to the people of South Brooklyn. While Brooklyn is chock-full of published authors these days, Tim is one of the few who was actually born and bred here. In his five decades, Tim has never left the borough for more than five weeks at a stretch and he knows the place, through and through, better than anyone I’ve met.

  In 2003, inspired by Brooklyn’s unique and glorious mix of cultures, Tim and I set out to explore New York City’s largest borough in book form, in a way that would ring true to local residents. Tim loves his home borough despite its flagrant flaws, and was easily seduced by the concept of working with Akashic to try and portray its full human breadth.

  He first proposed a series of books, each one set in a different neighborhood, whether it be Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, or Canarsie. It was an exciting idea, but it’s hard enough to publish a single book, let alone commit to a full series. After we considered various other possibilities, Tim came upon the idea of a fiction anthology organized by neighborhood, each one represented by a different author. We were looking for stylistic diversity, so we focused on “noir,” and defined it in the broadest sense: we wanted stories of tragic, soulful struggle against all odds, characters slipping, no redemption in sight.

  Conventional wisdom dictates that literary anthologies don’t sell well, but this idea was too good to resist—it seemed the perfect form for exploring the whole borough, and we got to work soliciting stories. We batted around book titles, including Under the Hood, before settling on Brooklyn Noir. The volume came together beautifully and was a surprise hit for Akashic, quickly selling through multiple printings and winning awards. (See pages 548–550 for a full list of prizes garnered by stories originally published in the Noir Series.)

  Having seen nearly every American city, large and small, through the windows of a van or tour bus, I have developed a deep fondness for their idiosyncrasies. So for me it was easy logic to take the model of Broo
klyn Noir—sketching out dark urban corners through neighborhood-based short fiction—and extend it to other cities. Soon came Chicago Noir, San Francisco Noir, and London Noir (our first of many overseas locations). Selecting the right editor to curate each book has been the most important decision we make before assembling it. It’s a welcome challenge because writers are often enamored of their hometowns, and many are seduced by the urban landscape’s rough edges. The generous support of literary superheroes like George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom have edited series volumes, has been critical.

  There are now fifty-nine books in the Noir Series. Forty of them are from American locales. As of this writing, a total of 787 authors have contributed 917 stories to the series and helped Akashic to stay afloat during perilous economic times. By publishing six to eight new volumes in the Noir Series every year, we have provided a steady venue for short stories, which have in recent times struggled with diminishing popularity. Akashic’s commitment to the short story has been rewarded by the many authors—of both great stature and great obscurity—who have allowed us to publish their work in the series for a nominal fee.

  I am particularly indebted to all sixty-seven editors who have cumulatively upheld a high editorial standard across the series. The series would never have gotten this far without rigorous quality control. There also couldn’t be a Noir Series without my devoted and tireless (if occasionally irreverent) staff led by Johanna Ingalls, Ibrahim Ahmad, and Aaron Petrovich.

  * * *

  This volume serves up a top-shelf selection of stories from the series set in the United States. USA Noir only scratches the surface, however, and every single volume has more gems on offer.

  When I set out to compile USA Noir, I was delighted by the immediate positive responses from nearly every author I contacted. The only author on my initial invitation list who isn’t included here is one I couldn’t track down: the publisher explained to me that the writer was “literally on the run.” While I’m disappointed that we can’t include the story, the circumstance is true to the Noir Series spirit.