Escape from Baghdad!

by Saad Hossain

  “Like the Mukhabarat,” Behruse cut in. “Like Al Qaeda.”

  “Like the other famous society, the Hashisheen of Alamut of Hassan ibn Sabah,” Avicenna said. “The principles of covert action, my friend, are ever the same. The Druze went one further. In 1043, they closed their ranks completely. Proselytizing was forbidden. No more new members since then. For almost a thousand years now, you have to be born to full blood Druze parents to be considered Druze.”

  “But are these Druze dangerous?” Hoffman asked. “What do they want?”

  “They want the return of their Mahdi, of course,” Avicenna said. “A return to pre-eminence, perhaps. Certainly, they want their vengeance against Sunni and Shi’a alike. The rest is conjecture, really. Who knows what their mandate is after so many years.”

  “And the watch?” Hoffman sniffed at the air. A lot of time seemed to pass before he could shake himself awake: “What the hell is up with this watch?”

  “Ah the watch,” Avicenna leaned forward. “The watch, I believe is a kind of map. It is a cipher to help the Druze preserve their knowledge.”

  “What knowledge?” Hoffman asked. “Do they have any weapons of mass destruction?”

  “Conjecture, again.”

  “Well your guess is certainly better than mine,” Hoffman drawled tiredly.

  “I firmly believe the watch hides the knowledge of finding the one thing the Druze have yearned for all these years.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Nothing less than the old dream of the alchemists, the secret to—”

  But Hoffman was slumping, losing the thread.

  “Cool, man,” he muttered, “You think you could alchemize a sandwich or something for me? I’m starving.”

  11: LOST IN SPACE

  ON SUNDAY, DAGR WAS INVITED FOR TEA TO THE VISITING ROOM of Mother Davala, where she regularly held court with a surprising number of visitors. Having spent the past two days in relative boredom, enduring the paranoid ravings of Hamid and the dark chafing impatience of Kinza, he was glad for the respite. Sweet mint tea was on offer this time, and as Mother Davala had dispensed with her silent, veiled companions, they were able to occupy the two wing back chairs in the alcove by the window, and thus bathed in the filtered light of the late afternoon sun, enjoy a repast complete with sweet fig cake and some aged baklava.

  Over the past three days, Dagr had been the victim of highly irregular meal times. The kitchen was ruled by a mute tyrant, an emaciated man with a drooping mustache, who, far from taking requests, declined to even speak to any of his fellows. His helper was a pasty-faced sneak, a half urchin caught in some mysterious warp of growth, who appeared twelve one day and sixteen the next. In return for certain deposits to the kitchen fund, these two miscreants bought and prepared the barely edible fare of hummus and lamb, which was served to the rooms at almost any peculiar hour except for mealtimes. Neither bribes nor threats had so far had any impact on these men.

  Dagr brought this issue up delicately with his hostess and was promptly rebuffed. She declared that the chef had been in her family for generations, that he had cooked for fallen princes and deposed kings in his time, had catered to heads of state on the run, and was the possessor of 71 bona fide secret recipes, including the all famous ageless baklava they were eating at the very moment. Thus, taking the risk of offending him was out of the question.

  Dagr, who had been about to eat this brick-like dessert, now held it up to the sunlight to appreciate it further. The corners of the pastry were translucent, where the honey had hardened into a fine knife’s edge. In this pale yellow sap, he could discern the thousand layers of dough, finer than tracing paper, folded and refolded in secret almond paste. He was about to eat it, when his hostess informed him that this very batch had been prepared at her last wedding feast, over four decades ago.

  “We have had little reason to celebrate since then,” Mother Davala said. “Besides, sugar from middle age onwards is deadly.”

  “You say last wedding feast,” Dagr said, astonished.

  “Oh I’ve put more than one husband into the grave,” the crone grinned. “You do, you know, when you get to live as long as I have.”

  “Well,” Dagr said, “women seem to live much longer than men.”

  “Particularly Iraqi men,” Mother Davala said. “It’s the temper of the blood. Leads to apoplexy. Like your friend Kinza. He won’t be dying in bed, I’d say.”

  “He doesn’t even want to, the fool,” Dagr said glumly.

  “I received a message from that boy Xervish,” Mother Davala said. “He wants to speak with you privately.”

  “With me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “I imagine he felt you were the most reasonable man in your little party,” Mother Davala said.

  “The most cowardly, you mean,” Dagr said.

  “The world is upside down, professor,” Mother Davala said. “You, who had a family, a respected profession, a bright future, are now worthless dross. Men like Kinza, petty criminals destined for imprisonment, are now the only ones with the skill to survive.”

  “What do you know of my family?” He put down his cup with a rattle, spilling tea over his pants.

  “Nothing,” Mother Davala said. “Merely that you once had one and now evidently do not.”

  “I once had one,” Dagr said mechanically. I still have them. Do you think they just go away?

  He stared down blindly, loaded down by the weight of ancient baklava in his hand. Its faint perfume of honey and butter wafted out, settling a miasma over him, letting his mind drift back unmoored, back to his old kitchen. He remembered his wife’s dark curls spilling out of her scarf as she bent over the wooden counter, kneading dough with butter. The little blue ashtray in which she always deposited her two rings, one from him, a dull gold one from her father; his own ineffectual motion around the small, heated space, dancing around with his daughter, taking turns trying to crush nuts in the stone mortar, spilling things, and getting scolded.

  It had been her fifth birthday, her last birthday. They were making baklava from scratch, an ambitious project, for neither of them cooked very well. Dagr tended to burn everything, and Zenere tried to follow recipes with mathematical exactitude, causing her to take hours over the simplest task. They had failed in the undertaking of course, and she finally stopped folding the dough when Dagr pretended to faint with hunger, his body twitching comically on the kitchen floor, while their daughter giggled hysterically. In the end, he had gotten out the store-bought cake he had stashed away, chocolate with orange peel inside and dark icing, and five candles, and Zenere had scowled at him, muttering threats of never ever baking for them again.

  Threats that came oddly true, for they had never baked again, and bit by bit the pastry sheets, the rolling pins, the cookie cutters had faded away, until they existed now only in his mind. It had been a good birthday. The power went off but they ate cake in the candlelight, and Zenere had played the guitar, and they had all danced together.

  The physical sweetness of this memory swept everything away so that he sat lost in his armchair until his tea was cold, and even Mother Davala’s conversation had run dry. His reverie was broken by the entrance of Xervish. The past few days had not been kind to him, Dagr immediately saw. Circles shaded his eyes, his hair hung down in greasy locks, melding into a heavy four-day beard. He dragged a chair over to them at the behest of Davala and sank into it heavily.

  “Xervish, dear, you look awful.” Mother Davala handed him the tea things.

  “You don’t know what it’s like out there,” Xervish said. Exhaustion framed every line of his body, from his shaking knees to the ticking muscle in the side of his neck.

  “You wanted to speak most particularly to the professor,” Mother Davala said. “I suggest you take this opportunity for I do not know how long Kinza will stay distracted.”

  “The Americans are looking for you. They know your names. The
y know about Hamid,” Xervish said. “Hassan Salemi is looking for you. His people are everywhere. Now there are whispers in the alleys that some old Mukhabarat is asking for information too. Every informant rat walking the streets is looking for you.”

  “Mukhabarat? Why?” Dagr asked, confused, his brain still scrambled by the smell of half-baked baklava, in a kitchen which no longer existed.

  “I don’t know,” Xervish grabbed his arm feverishly. “But they’re bad news. You think they’re finished? They’re not. They’ll kill everybody. Or Hassan Salemi will.” He laughed. “You guys are fucked. We’re all fucked. They’ll find this house. They’ll burn it to the ground.”

  “What did you want to say to me, then?” Dagr asked, suddenly irritated. “I never wanted Kinza to call you. We should have just stayed on our own.”

  “On your own?” Xervish said. “You wouldn’t get ten yards down the street on your own. I can help you. I can help Kinza. I have to help him. I have a way.”

  “So?”

  “There’s too many of you!” Xervish cried. “I told Kinza this, but he never listens. I told him, but he just never does the easy thing. I came to you because you seemed reasonable. Please, just listen to me. I have a setup with some Blackwater truck drivers. They’re taking a convoy out to Mosul in a few days. That’s where you want to go, right? The trucks are going to be empty. They’ll smuggle you out.”

  “Empty?”

  “Yeah, they get hazard pay for every mile they drive,” Xervish said. “So they make extra runs every month, just drive out and back, whether anyone needs anything or not. They got armed escorts, man. They got helicopter support. It’s safe.”

  “And they’ll take us?”

  “The driver is a friend of a friend,” Xervish said. “He doesn’t care about politics. He just wants to get paid. I set it up already. But he won’t take all three of you. There’s no room in his rig. There’s a little hollow space under the seats. It fits one person, maybe two. No way three will fit.”

  “So that’s the problem.”

  “I know Kinza,” Xervish said bitterly. “He won’t go. He’s a stubborn fool. He always was, even as a child.”

  “And you want me to tell him what?” Dagr asked, knowing already why Xervish was staring at him with those pleading eyes.

  “I would think that was obvious, professor,” Mother Davala said mockingly. “One of you is surplus.”

  “Hassan Salemi only wants Kinza, really. And the Americans want Hamid and Kinza, mostly,” Xervish said. “They don’t really want you. No one really wants you…I mean no one wants to specifically kill you. If they got out of town, you could just lay low for awhile.”

  “I understand,” Dagr said, feeling cold. And he did understand, of course. Xervish was sticking his neck out, had already risked everything to set this up. He owed Kinza from before, was still clearly terrified of him, but how far could that bond stretch? In these times, who did favors for strangers? But Kinza had made his wishes plain, had stated in cold fact that he wouldn’t go alone, and perhaps on some level he did not want to go at all. He was manic about words once uttered and would never, could never, back down from a declaration like that.

  No, Kinza would send Xervish away and, after brooding for days, would quite possibly decide to take the fight to Salemi himself. He was not a man who accepted higher authority, or force for that matter; it had been Dagr who had kept them going before, Dagr backing down, negotiating, finding ways, staying low. And now those dynamics had changed. Now they had Hamid, stuck to Kinza like a piece of lint, whispering poison in his ear every day, encouraging that brutal side of him, trying to use him like a weapon, perhaps, and Dagr wondered what would happen to his friend, eventually.

  “He’ll listen to you!” Xervish said. “You have to convince him. It’s the only way. They have to leave now!”

  “He might listen.” Dagr hesitated. Kinza might, if Dagr convinced him he wanted to stay back, that it was time to part ways. But Kinza was not stupid, was eerily smart at reading people and assessing situations, and he would possibly see through the charade. And if it came to a contest of wills, there was no doubt in Dagr’s mind who would win.

  “You will try?”

  “And what happens to me?” Dagr asked. He saw Xervish’s head droop, the eyes swiveling furtively, and knew that there was no plan for him, that he would be left behind, cast away like the rubbish of so many other lives. Oddly, this did not upset him too much. It was a sort of relief, almost. He wanted to put his hands up and say, it’s ok, you tried. I tried. It’s over now. Whatever happens now can just happen.

  “I’ll hide you somewhere else,” Xervish babbled. “I’ll move you around until they make the next run to Mosul. One month wait, maybe, the heat should die way down by then.”

  “Or maybe Hassan Salemi will be satisfied with just me,” Dagr said. “Whatever. I don’t care. I’ll try to get to Mosul somehow on my own.” He couldn’t resist that last jibe, couldn’t trust Xervish at all, this man who so blithely demanded his sacrifice.

  “You think I’ll sell you to them,” Xervish stared darkly at him and then shuddered. “Trust me. No one deals with Hassan Salemi and wins. There’s death, and there’s painful death. That’s all he knows. Do you think a man like me could stand in front of him and negotiate? They know about me. They’ll know I helped Kinza escape.” He looked at Dagr with big bruised eyes, an appeal full of weakness. A man who would try to do the right thing and invariably fail, yet he was believable all the same, at least in the terror folded into every crease of his eyelids, the cable-taut muscle that pulled compulsively in his jaw. Dagr believed that much, that it wasn’t a deliberate trap, and it gave him some relief, some hope that he might be able to slip through the cracks.

  “They’ll come for me sooner or later. Don’t you understand that?” Xervish said, “You think Imam Salemi’s just going to let it go? I’m finished, like you, like Kinza…my whole life here…gone. Kinza doesn’t know what he asked for. You don’t mess with these people. They don’t let things go…”

  “I know that,” Dagr said. “But Kinza doesn’t accept consequences like normal men. He won’t bend, you see. People like us get crushed in his wake.” Sympathy for you? Yes, because we’re probably both dead, unless one of us shops the other first, and even then, you’re absolutely right. There is no winning with people like Salemi.

  “I’ll come to Mosul with you!” Xervish said, grabbing his arm. “I swear, you and I will take the next empty run to Mosul. I told you, they do it every month. We’ll go together, get out of this damn city.”

  Dagr looked at him with pity. “Sure we will.”

  12: REPRISALS

  THE STREET TOUGH CALLED YAKIN, WHO HAD ONCE ESCORTED Kinza to the home of the Lion, was now an important man in his small patch of Shulla. In the chaos following the death of Ali Salemi, there had been a power vacuum of sorts, which he had been able to adroitly fill, given his proximity to all the action.

  The neighborhood did not know the details of the fatal occurrences of that night, and his quick thinking had given birth to a new truth. He, Yakin, had chased away the Lion of Akkad, that Druze criminal who had been plaguing them with impunity. His gun had ensured the safety of the people. After the midday prayers, he had taken everyone to see the Lion’s hideout, pointing out the various places where they had fought. The people had seen the blood stains, the remnants of that pitiful hoard of loot, and taken note of Yakin as a man to watch.

  In the following days, as it became apparent to Yakin that neither the Lion of Akkad, nor Kinza, nor Ali Salemi’s lieutenants were going to return, he began to remember additional truths. He, Yakin, had sensed that Kinza was a criminal. He had alerted Ali Salemi of this fact. When Kinza had ruthlessly shot the poor imam’s son in the street, he, Yakin, had shot at him and chased him off, probably killed him outright, because he certainly remembered winging him. Oh yes. The other two men who had been with Kinza were also dangerous criminals. The man called the pro
fessor had been a bomb maker, some kind of technical wizard. And the other man, that Hamid, had been one of the high ups of Saddam’s regime, a most dangerous secret service type, who had murdered hundreds of Shi’a in the night.

  In his feral youth, Yakin had learned that power was ethereal; in a vacuum, if the skin of power was donned quickly enough, if those first few rivals were put down fast, if those first adherents did not falter, then it all became real.

  Already, people in the street were greeting him differently, offering the salaam first, with the bowed head, and lately, he had stopped paying for all food and drink in return for making his rounds. Important for the first time in his life, his one anxiety was Amal. Day after day, he waited for the hammer to drop, for that grizzled shopkeeper to show up his lies.

  He took to visiting Amal day and night, giving him the eye, making sure he had at least two or three thugs with him at all times. Amal, however, had trouble meeting his gaze. At first, with a gratifying flush of power, Yakin thought it was out of genuine fear. Later, upon reflection, he decided that this was unlikely. Amal had guns, after all. He had lived through loss and heartache and the worst of the war. Moreover, Amal knew exactly what had occurred that night, who had shot at whom. Drawn by fear, he took to hanging on Amal’s doorstep, trying to elicit a reaction, to figure out how far Amal would let this play.

  In the end, he learned another valuable lesson about the weakness of man. Amal, he realized, was actually ashamed. He had some kind of antiquated moral code. He believed in useless things like honor and debt—frivolous, intangible things—that possibly mattered once but no longer. The truth of the New Baghdad was far different. Freedom had a price, as the Americans loved saying. In the balance book of Yakin’s mental list, it was evident that it was this fallibility of other men that was his primary asset, for other men couldn’t commit to the primacy of self, to damn the world for a dollar in his pocket, to fuck all the tomorrows for one hour today. He was, he knew, a hyena on two legs, but no part of him regretted this.