The Corpse Exhibition (12 page)

“When the war over Kuwait broke out, I was meant to join the army. My father and my uncle sat down to discuss the question of my military service. My uncle had never seen the horrors of the front in the Iran War. He was working in the security department in the city center. My father made up his mind: He would not give me up to die. ‘How can I let them kill my only son?' My uncle argued with him, trying to explain how it would affect him in his branch of security if his nephew avoided serving the flag (‘Do you want them to execute us all—us
and
the women?'). My father stuck to his position. My uncle threatened to arrest me in person if I didn't join the army, but my father threw him out of the house. ‘Listen,' he said, ‘it's true I'm a peaceful man, but this is my son, a piece of my flesh. If you persist in this, I'll slit your throat.' My uncle had been drunk that night and raging like a bull. He left shouting further insults. My father stood up, performed his prayers, and quickly calmed down. ‘God save me from the accursed devil,' he said. ‘He's my brother. It was just drunken talk. I know him. He has a good heart.'

“I was a prisoner in the house for three months. The streets were full of military police and all the security agencies. My father decided I shouldn't work by day in case the neighbors noticed me. At night I would slip out into the yard like a thief, with a lantern in my hand. I would sit next to the sacks of eggplants, cucumbers, and peppers, busy with my work and thinking about my life. I would mix arak with water in an empty milk can so as not to get caught by my father, then get drunk and snack on the many varieties of pickle this tank driver had to offer. The alcohol would flow in my blood, and I would crawl like a baby toward the septic tank, press my ear against the concrete cover, and listen. I could hear him laughing. I would shut my eyes and imagine the feel of his bare shoulder. His skin was hot from all the playing and exertion. I no longer remembered his face. My mother had the only photograph of him, and she wouldn't let anyone else go near it. She hid it in the wardrobe. She put the picture in a small wooden box decorated with a peacock.

“At the crack of dawn my father would get up. He would usually find me asleep in my place. He would put his hand on my forehead and I would wake up to his touch. ‘Go inside, son. Perform your prayers. May God prosper you.' He was well aware I was drinking arak, but religion to him didn't mean the words of any prophet, any holy law or prohibitions. Religion meant love of virtue, as he would put it to anyone with whom he was discussing questions of Islamic law.

“I will never forget the day he broke down in tears at the soccer field. He frightened the children, and I was embarrassed and disturbed that he was crying. The Baath party members had executed three young Kurds close to the soccer field. They tied them to wooden stakes and shot them dead in full view of the local people. Before they did it, they announced over loudspeakers, ‘These people are traitors and terrorists who do not deserve to eat from the bounty of this land or drink its water or breathe its air.' As usual, the Baathists took the bodies and left the stakes in place to remind everyone of what had happened. My father had come to the square to take me to the cinema. He was crazy about Indian films. When he saw that one goal was missing an upright he realized we had taken the stakes to make the goals. Traces of blood had dried on the wood. My father broke down when one of the children said, ‘We're still missing one goalpost. Maybe they'll execute another one and we can have the stake.'

“One summer evening we were invaded again. My uncle knocked frantically on the door. My mother was counting money and putting it in an empty tomato paste jar. My father and I were playing chess. He could beat me easily, but first he enjoyed giving me the pleasure of taking his pawns. He would sacrifice them and his other pieces without taking anything in return, keeping only his king and queen. Then he would start to destroy my pieces with his black queen until he had me in checkmate.

“My father went out to the yard to greet my uncle. My mother threw on her shawl and followed. They all stood near the septic tank in anxious discussion, but in low voices. I watched them from behind the windowpane. I was still dizzy from drinking the day before. I was waiting for night to come to get drunk again. My mother rushed to fetch something from under the stairs. My father and my uncle worked together to empty a barrel full of pickled cauliflower. My mother came back with a hammer and a nail. My father laid the barrel flat on the ground and started to punch holes in it at random with the nail. He didn't have his artificial leg on. He was hopping around the barrel on one leg as if he were playing or dancing. My uncle parked the pickup outside the front door and loaded it with the barrels of pickles. Then my father came into the living room sweating.

“‘Listen, son,' he said, ‘there's no time. Your uncle has information that the police and the party are going to search all the houses at dawn. Your uncle has loyal friends in the village of Awran. Stay there a few days till things calm down.' I climbed into the empty barrel and my mother closed the lid tight. My father and my uncle lifted me onto the pickup.

“My father was right. They were brothers, after all, and they could read each other's minds. My uncle drove through the streets like a madman to save my life. He managed to reach the outskirts of the city safely, but all the roads to the provincial towns and villages had military checkpoints. His only option was to take the back roads. He chose a road through the wheat fields to the east of the city. Maybe in his panic he mistook the road. Even the city children knew the chain of rugged and rocky hills that lay beyond the wheat fields. Maybe images of the people tortured in his department had unhinged his brain. Maybe he imagined his colleagues dissolving him in tanks of sulphuric acid and the headline
SECURITY OFFICER HELPS NEPHEW ESCAPE IN PICKLE BARREL
. As he drove through the wheat fields, he was barely in control of the steering wheel. The bumps were about to break my ribs, and only dust kicked up by the truck crept in through the holes in the barrel. The barrel stank like the dead cats on the neighborhood trash heap. Did my uncle pull out fingernails, gouge out people's eyes, and singe their skin with branding irons in the vaults of the security department? Maybe it was the souls of his victims that drove him into the ravine, maybe it was my own evil soul, or maybe it was the soul that preordained everything that is ephemeral and mysterious in this transitory world.

“Seven barrels lay in the darkness at the bottom of the cliff like sleeping animals. The pickup had overturned after my uncle tried to take a second rocky bend in the hill. The barrels rolled down into the ravine with the truck. I spent the night unconscious inside the barrel. In the first hours of morning the rays of sunlight pierced the holes in the barrel, like lifelines extended to a drowning man. My mouth was full of blood and my hands were trembling. I was in pain and frightened. I started to observe the rays of the sun as they crisscrossed confusingly in the barrel. I wanted to escape the chaos that had played havoc with my consciousness. I felt as if I had smoked a ton of marijuana: a fish coming to its senses in a sardine tin, a dead worm in an abandoned well, a putrid fetus with crushed bones in a womb the shape of a barrel. Then my mind fixed on another image: my brother sinking to the bottom of the septic tank and me diving after him.

“The bleating sounded faint at first, as though a choir was practicing. One goat started and then another joined in, then all the goats together, as if they had found the right key. The rays of the sun moved and fell right in my eye. I pissed in my pants inside that barrel, appalled at the cruelty of the world to which I was returning. The goatherd called out to his flock, and one of the goats butted the barrel.”

E
VERYONE STAYING AT THE REFUGEE RECEPTION
center has two stories—the real one and the one for the record. The stories for the record are the ones the new refugees tell to obtain the right to humanitarian asylum, written down in the immigration department and preserved in their private files. The real stories remain locked in the hearts of the refugees, for them to mull over in complete secrecy. That's not to say it's easy to tell the two stories apart. They merge and it becomes impossible to distinguish between them. Two days ago a new Iraqi refugee arrived in Malmö, in southern Sweden. He was in his late thirties. They took him to the reception center and did some medical tests on him. Then they gave him a room, a bed, a towel, a bedsheet, a bar of soap, a knife, fork, and spoon, and a cooking pot. Today the man is sitting in front of the immigration officer telling his story at amazing speed, while the immigration officer asks him to slow down as much as possible.

———

They told me they had sold me to another group; they were very cheerful. They stayed up all night drinking whiskey and laughing. They even invited me to join them in a drink, but I declined and told them I was a religious man. They bought me new clothes, and that night they cooked me a chicken and served me fruit and sweets. It seems I fetched a good price. The leader of the group even shed real tears when he said good-bye. He embraced me like a brother.

“You're a very good man. I wish you all the best, and good luck in your life,” said the man with one eye.

I think I stayed with the first group just three months. They had kidnapped me on that cold accursed night. That was in the early winter of 2006. We had orders to go to the Tigris; it was the first time we had received instructions directly from the head of the emergency department in the hospital. At the bank of the river the policemen were standing around six headless bodies. The heads had been put in an empty flour sack in front of the bodies. The police guessed they were the bodies of some clerics. We had arrived late because of the heavy rain. The police piled the bodies onto the ambulance driven by my colleague Abu Salim, and I carried the sack of heads to my ambulance. The streets were empty; the only sounds to break the forlorn silence of the Baghdad night were some gunshots in the distance and the noise of an American helicopter patrolling over the Green Zone. We set off along Abu Nawas Street toward Rashid Street, driving at medium speed because of the rain. I remembered the words the director of the emergency department in the hospital often used to say: “When you're carrying an injured person or a patient close to death, the speed of the ambulance shows how humane and responsible you are. But when you are carrying severed heads in an ambulance, you needn't go faster than a hearse drawn by mules in a dark medieval forest.”

The director saw himself as a philosopher and an artist, but “born in the wrong country,” as he would say. He took his work seriously nonetheless and considered it a sacred duty, because to him running the ambulance section of the emergency department meant managing the dividing line between life and death. We called him the Professor; my other colleagues hated him and called him mad. I know why they hated him, because the enigmatic and aggressive way he spoke made him seem screwed up in the eyes of others. But I retained much respect and affection for him because of the beautiful and fascinating things he said. Once he said to me, “Spilled blood and superstition are the basis of the world. Man is not the only creature who kills for bread, or love, or power, because animals in the jungle do that in various ways, but he is the only creature who kills because of faith.” He would usually wrap up his speeches by pointing to the sky and declaiming theatrically, “The question of humanity can be solved only by constant dread.” My colleague Abu Salim had a notion that the Professor had links with the terrorist groups because of the violent language he used, but I would loyally defend the man, because they did not understand that he was a philosopher who refused to make foolish jokes, as the stupid ambulance drivers did all day. I remembered every sentence and every word he said, for I was captivated by my affection and admiration for him.

Let me get back to that wretched night. When we turned toward the Martyrs Bridge I noticed that the ambulance driven by Abu Salim had disappeared. Then in the side mirror I caught sight of a police car gaining on us at high speed. I pulled over to the side in the middle of the bridge. Four young men in masks and special police uniforms got out of the police car. The leader of the group pointed his pistol in my face and told me to get out of the vehicle, while his colleagues unloaded the sack of heads from the ambulance.

“I've been kidnapped and they are going to cut off my head.” That was my first thought when they tied me up and stuffed me in the trunk of the police car. It took me only ten minutes to realize what was awaiting me. I recited the Throne Verse from the Quran three times in the darkness of the trunk, and I felt that my skin was starting to peel off. For some reason in those dark moments I thought about my body weight, maybe 155 pounds. The slower the car went, or the more it turned, the more frightened I was, and when it picked up speed again a strange blend of tranquility and anxiety would pulse through me. Perhaps I thought at those moments of what the Professor had said about the correlation between speed and the imminence of death. I didn't understand exactly what he meant, but he would say that someone about to die in the forest would be more afraid than someone about to die in a speeding ambulance, because the first one feels that fate has singled him out, while the second imagines there are others sticking with him. I also remember that he once announced with a smile, “I would like to have my death in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light.”

I imagined that all the unidentified and mutilated bodies I had carried in the ambulance since the fall of Baghdad lay before me, and that in the darkness surrounding me I then saw the Professor picking my severed head from a pile of trash, while my colleagues made dirty jokes about my liking for the Professor. I don't think the police car drove very far before it came to a halt. At least they did not leave the city. I tried to remember the Rahman Verse of the Quran, but they got me out of the car and escorted me into a house that smelled of grilled fish. I could hear a child crying. They undid my blindfold, and I found myself in a cold, unfurnished room. Then three madmen laid into me and beat me to a pulp, until a darkness again descended.

I thought I heard a cock crow at first. I shut my eyes, but I couldn't sleep. I felt a sharp pain in my left ear. With difficulty I turned over onto my back and pushed myself toward the window, which had recently been blocked up. I was very thirsty. It was easy to work out that I was in a house in one of Baghdad's old neighborhoods. That was clear from the build of the room and particularly the old wooden door.

In fact I don't know exactly what details of my story matter to you for me to get the right of asylum in your country. I find it very hard to describe those days of terror, but I want to mention also some of the things that matter to me. I felt that God, and behind him the Professor, would never abandon me throughout my ordeal. I felt the presence of God intensely in my heart, nurturing my peace of mind and calling me to patience. The Professor kept my mind busy and alleviated the loneliness of my captivity. He was my solace and my comfort.

Throughout those arduous months I would recall what the Professor had said about his friend, Dawoud the engineer. What did he mean by saying that the world is all interconnected? And where do the power and the will of God stand in such matters? We were drinking tea at the hospital door when the Professor said, “While my friend Dawoud was driving the family car through the streets of Baghdad, an Iraqi poet in London was writing a fiery article in praise of the resistance, with a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him to help harden his heart. Because the world is all interconnected, through feelings, words, nightmares, and other secret channels, out of the poet's article jumped three masked men. They stopped the family car and killed Dawoud, his wife, his child, and his father. His mother was waiting for them at home. Dawoud's mother doesn't know the Iraqi poet nor the masked men. She knows how to cook the fish that was awaiting them. The Iraqi poet fell asleep on the sofa in London in a drunken stupor, while Dawoud's mother's fish went cold and the sun set in Baghdad.”

The wooden door of the room opened and a young man, tall with a pale and haggard face, came in carrying breakfast. He smiled at me as he put the food down in front of me. At first I was uncertain what I could say or do. But then I threw myself at his feet and implored him tearfully, “I am the father of three children. . . . I'm a religious man who fears God. . . . I have nothing to do with politics or religious denominations. . . . God protect you . . . I'm just an ambulance driver . . . before the invasion, and since the invasion. . . . I swear by God and his noble Prophet.” The young man put a finger to his lips and rushed out. I felt that my end had come. I drank the cup of tea and performed my prayers in hopes that God would forgive my sins. At the second prostration I felt that a layer of ice was forming across my body and I almost cried out in fear, but the young man opened the door, carrying a small lighting device attached to a stand, and accompanied by a boy carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. The boy stood next to me, pointing the gun at my head, and from then on he did not leave his place. A fat man in his forties came in, taking no notice of me. On the wall he hung a black cloth banner inscribed with a Quranic verse urging Muslims to fight jihad. Then a masked man came in with a video camera and a small computer. Then a boy came in with a small wooden table. The masked man joked with the boy, tweaked his nose, and thanked him, then put the computer on the table and busied himself with setting up the camera in front of the black banner. The thin young man tried out the lighting system three times and then left.

“Abu Jihad, Abu Jihad!” the fat man shouted.

The young man's voice came from outside the room: “Wait a minute. Right you are, Abu Arkan.”

This time the young man came back carrying the sack of heads they had taken from the ambulance. Everyone blocked their nose because of the stink from the sack. The fat man asked me to sit in front of the black banner. I felt that my legs were paralyzed, but the fat man pulled me roughly by my shirt collar. At that point another man came in, thick-set with one eye, and ordered the fat man to let me be. This man had in his hand an army uniform. The man with one eye sat close to me, with his arm across my shoulders like a friend, and asked me to calm down. He told me they wouldn't slaughter me if I was cooperative and kindhearted. I didn't understand fully what he meant by this “kindhearted.” He told me it would only take a few minutes. The one-eyed man took a small piece of paper from his pocket and asked me to read it. Meanwhile the fat man was taking the decomposing heads out of the sack and lining them up in front of me. It said on the piece of paper that I was an officer in the Iraqi army and these were the heads of other officers, and that accompanied by my fellow officers I had raided houses, raped women, and tortured innocent civilians; that we had received orders to kill from a senior officer in the U.S. Army, in return for large financial rewards. The man with one eye asked me to put on the army uniform, and the cameraman asked everyone to pull back behind the camera. Then he came up to me and started adjusting my head, as a hairdresser does. After that he adjusted the line of heads, then went back behind the camera and called out, “Off you go.”

The cameraman's voice was very familiar. Perhaps it resembled the voice of a famous actor, or it might have been like the voice of the Professor when he was making an exaggerated effort to talk softly. After they filmed the videotape, I didn't meet the members of the group again, other than the young man who brought me food, and he prevented me from asking any questions. Every time he brought food he would tell me a new joke about politicians and men of religion. My only wish was that he would let me contact my wife, because I had hidden some money for a rainy day in a place where even the jinn would never think of looking, but they vehemently rejected my request. The one-eyed leader of the group told me that everything depended on the success of the videotape, and in fact the tape was such a success so quickly that everyone was surprised. Al Jazeera broadcast the videotape. They allowed me to watch television, and on that day they were jumping for joy, so much so that the fat man kissed me on the head and said I was a great actor. What made me angry was the Al Jazeera news anchor, who assured viewers that the channel had established through reliable sources that the tape was authentic and that the Ministry of Defense had admitted that the officers had gone missing. After the success of the broadcast they started treating me in a manner that was better than good. They took trouble over my food and bedding and allowed me to take a bath. Their kindness culminated on the night they sold me to the second group. Then three masked men from that group came into the room, and after the man with one eye had given me a warm farewell, the new men laid into me with their fists, tied me up and gagged me, then shoved me into the trunk of a car that drove off at a terrifying speed.

The second group's car traveled far this time. Perhaps we reached the outskirts of Baghdad. They took me out in a desolate village where dogs roamed and barked all over the place. They held me in a cattle pen; there were two men who took turns guarding the pen night and day. I don't know why, but they proceeded to starve me and humiliate me. They were completely different from the first group. They wore their masks all the time and never spoke a word with me. They would communicate with each other through gestures. In fact there was not a human voice to be heard from the village, just the barking of dogs the whole month I spent in the cow pen.