He pushed open the gate with his shoulder, holding his bloody hand to his chest, dizzy with the waves of pain now shuddering up his arm. As he went in through the front door, he heard gunfire and an explosion and thought for a split second it’s started, before he realized it was the TV in the living room and Arnold Schwarzenegger saying “Now daht’s a vake-up kahll!”
His aunt Thurayya called from the kitchen: “Is that you, Father?”
“No, Auntie,” Qasim said. “It’s me.”
He stumbled through the parlor into the back room where his cousins were watching TV, then into the bathroom. He put his hand in the sink and turned on the water. His dizziness swept in waves, now pain, now cold. His auntie came up behind him.
“Are you alright, Nephew? You sound upset.”
“I hurt myself,” he said, turning away.
“Let me see.” She grabbed at him.
“It’s fine,” he said, wrapping his hand in a towel. “I just need a bandage.”
Aunt Thurayya was quick for a middle-aged woman, and tenacious, but Qasim was tall enough and the bathroom cramped enough he could keep her out.
“Let me see, Nephew.”
“It’s fine. I just caught it on some metal.”
“You need the tetanus.”
“I had the tetanus.”
“It’s not a vaccine! You need it each time.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’ll do it wrong. Let me see if you need the tetanus.”
“I don’t need the tetanus!”
“You need the tetanus!”
Qasim swung on her and shouted, “Leave me alone, old woman!”
Thurayya backed up a step and stretched to her full height. “You will not speak to your uncle’s wife in such a tone.”
“Enough meddling! Go!”
“Mind your tongue, boy!”
“Woman, leave me be!”
Thurayya glared at him, then turned and swept into the living room, storming in front of the television and yelling at Maha, Nazahah, and Siraj. She shut off the movie and made them go do chores. Qasim was shaking again and could barely hold himself up. He went to the kitchen and found a bandage.
The bite was deep, jagged, inflamed. He couldn’t find any antibiotic cream, so he just put some cotton pads in the wound and wrapped it up. It was unwieldy work, but he managed to cover the gashes. Thurayya stood in the living room glowering. His cousins sulked at their chores, well aware who’d caused their misfortune.
“I won’t be having dinner,” Qasim said, taking a piece of flatbread in his good hand. “I need to work.”
Upstairs, he sat at his desk and looked out the window. His mind had gone remarkably clear, and though his hand ached wretchedly, he felt crisp, even refreshed. He munched his flatbread, for a few minutes blessedly free of thought, enjoying the brilliant coruscations of the streetlights through the palms.
When he’d finished eating, he put on his headphones and pulled out his dissertation. Against a background of chirps and beeps, riding a delicate synthesized wave, David Bowie moaned out, “Nothing remains…” Qasim let the music ease him into the pure spaces, the gently shimmering universe of thought called mathematics. He flipped through his notes with his good hand, recovering lines and curves, weaving arcane connections, coming back after an exile too long to his comfort, his true home, his love.
Salman drove up over the Al-Jumariyah Bridge, catching the outdoor fires from the masgouf restaurants along Abu Nuwas Park flickering orange in the black waters of the Dijlah, and descended into the subdued hustle of Yafa Street, passing the Parliament building and the Assassins’ Gate. Aziz liked Salman to meet him in a particular shisha café in Mansour, to which he was now driving in an unusual mood, enjoying the easy feel of nighttime Baghdad yet planning, calmly and just below conscious thought, his tactics for dealing with Aziz. He was almost certain he was going to have do something unsavory and probably dangerous, but he just hoped it didn’t involve his notional status as a reservist.
Salman couldn’t remember the last time he went to drill, but even he knew the situation was bleak. Maintenance didn’t happen, training was a joke, and morale wretched. The Sunni officers despised the almost wholly Shi’a ranks, and vice versa, and everything was infiltrated by the Mukhabarat. No camaraderie, no sense of unity: each man looking out for himself, which means you’re always looking over your own shoulder. Not that it would have mattered much even if they did all work together. The armored corps were still devastated from the last war, the air force nonexistent, the artillery bombed to pieces—even after Iran, things had been better. The troops were digging in as they’d been told, but no one had any illusions about what would happen when the shooting started.
As he turned along Zawra Park and passed the Baghdad Zoo, noting soldiers setting up antiaircraft guns under the lights of the Dream Park’s Ferris wheel, Salman realized he couldn’t care less who won. Someone would always be on top, and the guy on top has to step on everyone else in order to stay there, so what’s the point in getting worked up over who it is? There has to be a sheikh. Sheikh Hussein or Sheikh Bush, it didn’t matter. Power flowed the same no matter who wielded it. And if you weren’t on the side of power, you got out of the way.
He parked around the corner from the café and walked up. Rubbing misbaha beads between his fingers, he wished he’d changed from shirt and slacks to a dishdasha. The robe would have been so much more comfortable. Most important, he had to keep from being put in a fight Iraq was bound to lose. Salman definitely didn’t want to ride around Baghdad in the back of a Toyota pointing a machine gun at curfew breakers. Maybe if he told Aziz he was investigating somebody—something vague and hard to check up on. He could say he needed to collect evidence, do some surveillance.
The café had a grand entrance that always pleased Salman’s eye: high and wide, dark wood hung with scimitars, shelves and tables busy with archaic-seeming bronze lamps and ornate, multicolored shishas. Peer too hard and you’d see how chintzy it all was, but in the dim light and thick, fruit-scented smoke you could pretend, imagining yourself in some Abbasid harem—sticky dates and slippery olives, the lingering odor of spiced tobacco, veils and low-lit lamps half-concealing firm and youthful flesh. Salman found Aziz sitting alone in a corner in the back, drinking chai and smoking—not a shisha, but a Marlboro. The red and white pack lay ostentatiously on the table. The two men exchanged greetings, shaking hands softly and touching their hearts, and when the server came, Salman ordered chai.
“Still they haven’t voted on the resolution,” said Aziz, flicking ash. Salman noticed, as he always did, that the two smallest fingers on Aziz’s left hand were missing. They’d been lost to shrapnel in the Iran War, but even crippled, the man’s hands were powerful, brutal hands that knew a lot about killing, and Salman watched them to keep from getting caught in the operator’s deep, hooded eyes. “There’s talk of a veto, Russia, China, France. The world may yet stand with us against the Zionist aggression.”
“The Americans won’t be happy until they’ve got all Islam under the lash. It’s always been that way, they’re just using their own guns now. We’ll have to fight them sooner or later.”
“We’ve struggled a long time against the Zionists.”