Baghdad Central (11 page)

But here he is, on a bright early morning, weeping at the sight of the home he'd once shared with her, weeping at the memory of the life they'd lived together. Why is it so jarring to see your old home just as you left it? Why is it so disturbing to see that nothing has changed after all these years? Because it means you are not necessary, Khafaji thinks. It means that things go on as they were, with you or without. As if you never lived, as if your life never happened.

Khafaji looks at the house and tries to take comfort in the fact that he still knows everything about it. He knows which windows stick. He knows how to find the children when they
hide in the crawl space under the stairs. He knows how to keep the bathroom faucet from dripping. He knows how to restart the air conditioners at the circuit breaker.

It takes Khafaji longer to notice the changes. The garlands of razor wire glittering along the tops of the walls and coiled around the front gate. The sandbags in the driveway. The black GMC in the driveway. The men drinking tea at the gate. The camouflage of their clothing. Their matching black boots. Their guns. The man at the window of the master bedroom on the second floor. The man who steps back into the shadows.

At this point, Khafaji knows he shouldn't have come. It's sad when you revisit a place you left behind. It's dangerous to revisit that place when someone else has come along and made it theirs.

Khafaji must have been glaring at the men sitting at the gate, because one by one they stand up and reach for their weapons. Khafaji doesn't wake up really until he hears the clatter of cups and a glass crashing to the ground – only then does he turn and start walking away, like an actor stumbling across the wrong stage. He walks and walks. And with each step, he manages to forget something.

He forgets and forgets until he remembers Mrouj.

Then he remembers his nine o'clock appointment at Checkpoint Three. He sticks his hand out until an old Peugeot station wagon pulls over. Then he walks over and opens the door.

Khafaji looks in skeptically, not sure if this is a taxi at all.

The man's voice booms like a cannon, “Where can I take you?”

He adjusts the mirror and turns to look at Khafaji. Khafaji is surprised to see an unmistakable twinkle in the man's
bloodshot eyes. His ragged beard is white, stained brown and yellow around the mouth. A pair of skinny legs and gnarled feet poke out from beneath an old
dishdasha
. A pair of old leather sandals nestles by the clutch.

“Tashree. I can get off at the Convention Center.”

“Tashree? The Convention Center. OK. Get in.”

The man jams the stick shift on the steering column and they begin to roll forward. He looks at Khafaji again. “I know you, don't I?”

“I don't think so.”

They careen down the road for a minute.

“Traffic's all fucked up on Jadariyya Bridge because of something that happened. We'll go the long way and cross on Ahrar. We'll get there faster, just you watch.”

Cafés glide by on the right and the river bends off to the left. With the window rolled down, the cool morning wind feels like aftershave. Khafaji sees a heron fishing along the bank. Still as statues, he remembers, they wait to pounce on unlucky fish. They wait for hours, never moving, and then strike so fast no one ever sees it. Not the fish, at least. The epitome of patience and survival. And death.

The man taps Khafaji's arm again, then swerves to miss a car in their lane. He sticks his arm out at the driver.

“Fucking bumpkins. They treat their Mercedes like their donkeys. Back in the village, you know, they fuck tailpipes when their wives are menstruating. Really, swear to God! I've seen it with my own eyes.” He laughs at his own joke, licks his lips and slaps the steering wheel.

A minute goes by, and Khafaji doesn't know what to say. The man sticks out his hand. “I'm Karl Abdelghaffar.”

Khafaji shakes his hand, but his eyes never leave the road in front of them.

“You don't remember meeting me? Did you ever meet someone else with my name? I know you never have. My father, God rest his soul, loved his teacher. Old Sheikh Marx, he called him. He was a commie back in the day when they existed. God have mercy on them! They were real men.”

Karl Abdelghaffar swerves around another car, then adjusts the rear-view mirror again. “My father was the smartest in his class. He could read the future. Knew what was going to happen before it did. I'll give you an example. When it came time for me to go to school, he sent me off to Cairo. Why? I'll tell you. He knew what was going to happen. By the time I graduated, he was arrested.”

The man rubs his beard and cries out, “God rest your soul, Father!” Khafaji nods and tries to look serious.

“He also knew that names aren't destiny. If they were, I'd be dead twenty times over by now. God have mercy on the old man. And God protect the Revolution.”

He stares so intensely that Khafaji begins to worry. Finally, he shakes his head. “I talk too much, I know. My kids tell me that all the time. If you don't like it, I can drop you off here.”

He licks his lips again before Khafaji finally laughs. Then he slaps the steering wheel.

While they move through the traffic, Karl Abdelghaffar goes on. Worked as a driver. Retired after the war. Married. Five children, three boys, two girls. Four grandchildren, all girls, thank God. Pictures taped to the dashboard.

“I took up taxi driving not for the money, but to stay out of the house. Thank God, we're all doing OK. Everyone lives nearby. Thank God. My sons didn't want me to drive. I told them: it's either this, or I take a second wife! And anyway, it's my right to see what's happening with my own eyes. You know what I'm talking about? I've seen some things you
won't believe. And they're getting weirder. Now everyone is gearing up for the war that never really happened. Even me. Even you.” He taps his chest and looks at Khafaji.

“You think you know me?”

“I used to work at the Directorate. I used to drive you jerks around.”

“That was a long time ago. You might be mistaken.”

“You're a lot older than you used to be. And balder. But it's you. You and I used to talk about poetry. I wouldn't forget that.”

Khafaji rubs his head and looks out the window.

When a military convoy approaches on the other side of the road, Karl Abdelghaffar quickly turns right, then left again down a side street toward the river. Each time they encounter traffic, Karl turns and avoids it. At Rashid Street, near the taxi station, they hit a checkpoint before heading across the bridge. They pass the Mansour Melia, the Television Station, the Museum, the ministries, some wrecked, some intact.

Karl suddenly breaks into verse and Khafaji can't help smiling.

       
And thou awakest them, they slumber still

       
If thou arousest them, they sounder sleep

       
Praised be God, Who fashioned by His will

       
Mankind like stones, that they may ever keep

       
Like stones their beds, and drouse until their fill
.

It takes no effort for Khafaji to answer with the next stanza:

       
Begone and depart, Baghdad! Depart from me
,

       
In no way am I of thee, not mine art thou

       
Yet, though I suffered often and much of thee
,

       
Baghdad, it pains me to behold thee now

       
Upon the brink of great catastrophe!

Karl slaps the steering wheel and chuckles. “Mashallah! You remember Ma‘ruf al-Rusafi – I knew it was you. What a day, and it's not even noon yet!”

The intersection of 14th of July and Damascus is a vast expanse of concrete. Somehow it's comforting to see so much rubble and garbage here too. And hundreds of blue barrels, arranged in rows and clusters. Some abandoned on their side. Some wrapped in coils of razor wire that sparkle in the light. And all wrapped in crowds of people.

“I can't believe you said Tashree when you got in. Who were you trying to fool? It's called the Green Zone now. You work for them, huh? The servants' entrance is over there, if you want to get in line with the other donkeys. Word of advice: get here earlier if you want to get into the barn at all. If it doesn't work out, I'll be at my café across the way. Dijla Café.”

Khafaji pulls out his wallet.

Karl pushes his hand back and says, “No. I won't take it. You've already paid, far as I'm concerned.”

Khafaji tries to give him money, but Karl insists, “You can owe me a cup of tea. At my café, any time.” He reaches into his pocket and finds a tattered piece of paper. Then he scribbles out a phone number. “That's my home number. I don't have a cellular phone.”

“Neither do I, old man.” Khafaji smiles and they shake hands.

Crossing the road is not so simple. Khafaji picks his way through barrels and wires. He wends around cars and dodges
children playing on the abandoned vehicles. Khafaji draws a long arc around the intersection and arrives at a corridor of wire and concrete. And a billboard:
STOP HERE! SHOW IDENTIFICATION! TAKE INSTRUCTIONS FROM GUARDS
. Unconsciously, Khafaji's hand touches the documents in his pocket. For a moment, he imagines he'd forgotten them. Behind a wall of shimmering razor wire, a line of cars. Soldiers poke out from behind sandbags and concrete blast walls. And every five feet or so on every concrete wall, the Great Leader's monogram. Sad. Haa.

At the end of the corral begins the queue. Or rather, the wedge of men and women between concrete and coils of sharp wire. Shreds of plastic shopping bags flit in the air. Dozens of people crowd at the gate, waving papers and trying to get the attention of the soldiers at the gate. One by one, they turn back or disappear inside. A hundred or more others wait and lean against the wall and sit in the shade. Most hold ragged envelopes and folders in their hands.

Khafaji strides forward, waving his papers in front of him, but the others push him back.

“Excuse me, I'm here for —”

The man next to him pushes him back and shouts, “What do you think we're here for?”

Khafaji sits down against the wall. The stench of urine pushes him back to his feet. The woman next to him won't look anyone in the eye. At some point, she begins to sob softly. Then she begins to sing to herself, “God save us, God save us, God save us.” She is clutching two photos, one of a middle-aged man, the other of a teenage boy with faint moustache. The faded images could have been taken yesterday. Or decades ago. You can't tell. Eventually, her weeping becomes a wail. It is only when she begins to beat her breast
that other women step in. The sobbing doesn't stop, even as she begins telling stories about a husband and son who disappeared five years ago.

A photographer comes over and begins to take pictures of the woman and the crowd around her. Someone on the wall shouts at him, “Imshi minna! Imshi minna!” He holds up his camera and calls out, “Journalist! Press! It's OK!” He waves a badge hanging on his neck. Khafaji watches him walk off. He stops here and there to take a photograph. Of children playing on old parked cars. Of barbed wire. Of chaos.

When the woman's weeping exhausts everyone, she turns to Khafaji. By now he is sitting on the ground, feet stretched out, and leaning hard into the wall. He pretends to sleep. He keeps his eyes closed as long as he can. He focuses on the rumbling in his stomach. It helps him ignore everything around him. The crowd at the gate begins to thin as one by one people give up.

Khafaji thinks about poetry. He tries to recall a line, any line from Nazik. But he can't. Instead, Rusafi spills out, like it did in the taxi.

       
Though I spoke until I could scarcely express

       
Scoldings as sharp as the thrusting of swords

       
Those sleepers never stirred, my words useless

       
To move a people sleeping like children

       
Rocked in the cradle of foolishness
.

Like a dull blade in the shaking grip of an old man, the lines slash harmlessly at Khafaji's memory.

1955

“You're not adults, you're children.” That's all their father said when they walked in the front door. Muhsin went into the kitchen and asked his mother for a glass of water. She stared at the paint splatters all over his clothes. When he came back, he saw his brother sitting in the chair. Then he heard his father's voice. “You sit down, too, Muhsin.”

Muhsin sat there for a minute, afraid to look up.

“I don't need to tell you why I'm angry, do I?”

“No, Baba.”

“Which of you wants to tell me what you did wrong?”