The Corpse Washer (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (13 page)

I asked whether he was planning to visit again anytime soon.

“It’s very difficult to get time off from work and, to be honest, I was very happy to see you all, especially you, but my heart was broken. I used to follow the news about Iraq day by day on the radio, newspapers, TV, and recently on the Internet. I never missed a piece of news. I knew the embargo had destroyed the country, but it’s different when you see it with your own eyes. It’s shocking. The entire country and every one in it are tired. I mean even right here in Karrada. Wasn’t this the most beautiful neighborhood? Look at it now. Then you have all this garbage, dust, barbed wires, and tanks. There aren’t any women walking down the street anymore! This is not the Baghdad I’d imagined. Not just in terms of the people. Even the poor palm trees are tired and no one takes care of them. Believe me, these Americans, with their ignorance and racism, will make people long for Saddam’s days.”

The week went by very quickly. On the night before Uncle Sabri’s departure the family gathered to say goodbye. My sister, Shayma’, her husband, Sattar, and their two kids came over. Sattar chatted with my uncle but apologized, as usual, because he was busy with
work and stayed only half an hour. Shayma’ said that he was working with one of the Iraqi returnees in a new construction company which was about to get many reconstruction contracts. Upon hearing that, my mother said, “Why don’t they fix the electricity first?” Since there was none, we had lit candles before starting to eat dinner. My uncle joked that in Germany people would pay a lot of money to dine in such a romantic setting.

The next morning he insisted on buying us a satellite dish as a gift. He said that we had to “breathe a bit” and see all that we missed during those years of suffering under the embargo and Saddam. The technician was about to finish programming the satellite dish when the electricity was cut off again, so we agreed that I would pass by his store, which was close by, the next day when the electricity came back on. Eventually, the dish became our only window through which we could see the world and the extent of our own devastation, which multiplied day after day.

Our goodbyes that morning floated in tears as we drank our tea. My mother took Sabri to task for going everywhere around the city but not visiting his brother’s and nephew’s graves. He told her that he never visited graves and didn’t need to see them to remember the people buried there. He put his hand on his heart and said “Ammoury and Abu Ammoury are right here in my heart.”

He gave me an envelope with five hundred American dollars and insisted that I take it to help us get through until things improved. He was confident that we would see each other again in the near future. My mother cried as she hugged him and told him, “Don’t disappear for another twenty-five years!” She sprinkled water behind his car to make sure he returned.

A month after his departure he sent me a long sorrowful and pessimistic article about his visit that he had published online. It was entitled “A Lover Pauses before Iraq’s Ruins.” Its most beautiful section dealt with palm trees:

Iraqis and palm trees. Who resembles whom? There are millions of Iraqis and as many, or perhaps somewhat fewer, palm
trees. Some have had their fronds burned. Some have been beheaded. Some have had their backs broken by time, but are still trying to stand. Some have dried bunches of dates. Some have been uprooted, mutilated and exiled from their orchards. Some have allowed invaders to lean on their trunk. Some are combing the winds with their fronds. Some stand in silence. Some have fallen. Some stand tall and raise their heads high despite everything in this vast orchard: Iraq. When will the orchard return to its owners? Not to those who carry axes. Not even to the attendant who assassinates palm trees, no matter what the color of his knife.

When al-Ja’fari was chosen to be the prime minister, my uncle wrote to me: “Marx used to say that ‘history always repeats itself twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ And what we are witnessing now in Iraq is a farce. Who would’ve ever believed that Iraq’s prime minister would be from the Da’wa Party, spear-heading a backward sectarian list? When I left Iraq, the Da’wa Party was banned and later the Americans placed it on the list of terrorist organizations. Now Bush shakes hands with al-Ja’fari? It’s a bizarre world.”

Every evening, I would sit in front of the computer screen for three or four hours, oblivious to the passage of time. I was enchanted by this world—this universe—to which we had had no access during the embargo. Getting the Internet at home was still too expensive, and I didn’t even have a desktop computer, but the fees at the Internet café were reasonable. I would usually start with a quick tour of local and Arab newspaper sites to read what the world was saying about our ongoing disasters. I discovered an Iraqi site called Uruk. It resembled Iraq itself in its political topography and chaos. The administrators allowed anyone and everyone to publish (or at least did not prohibit it), irrespective of their background and leanings. So I would find some profound and penetrating analysis or satire right next to offensive, sectarian, and racist thoughts and never-ending conspiracy theories. Also posted were a lot of documents exposing the new politicians and the corruption, which had gotten out of hand. After reading some of these, I would begin my daily roaming—usually quite random. I started a Hotmail account to correspond with my uncle and try to locate Reem. I was hopeful that I would somehow reconnect with her.

I was proud to learn that some of my classmates who had emigrated years ago had become quite successful. Many had their own websites showcasing their works. But I couldn’t help feeling bitter and jealous when I saw that some who didn’t have a fourth of my talent had established their names in Amman and other places, thanks to good PR. I started to dream of the day when I, too, would have my own website, but I remembered that first I had to start producing art again.

He knocked at the door about a month after Father had passed away. He was in his late forties and short. His gray beard was neatly trimmed and edged with white. He wore round glasses with a silver frame. The bridge of his big nose left a space between his honey-colored eyes. The eyes sat under thick salt-and-pepper eyebrows. He was wearing a flowing black robe and a white turban. After greeting me, he extended his hand and offered his condolences. “May you have a long life, son. I am Sayyid Jamal al-Fartusi. Forgive me, but I heard only yesterday.” I thanked him and invited him in. He told a young man who was driving his car to wait for him. I opened the door to the guest room and showed him in. I gave him a seat and asked my mother to make coffee.

He said he’d known my father for years and had wanted to be at the funeral, but the war and the Americans had prevented him from doing so. A few minutes later my mother knocked at the door. I got up to open it and took the tray from her. I offered him the coffee. He took the cup and the saucer and put it on the table to the right of the chair. After a few sips he asked me about the circumstances of my father’s death. I told him Father had died in the very room we were sitting in while kneeling in prayer. He was moved and repeated twice, “May God be exalted.” Then he said, “May he welcome him in his vast paradise.”

After a heavy silence, he asked me: “Did you work with your father?”

“No.”

“How come? My son, the one you just saw waiting outside in the car, works with me and his two brothers as well.”

“God didn’t will it.”

He smiled. I asked him how he came to know my father. He said that for ten years he’d been in charge of collecting unclaimed, abandoned, and unidentified corpses from hospitals and from the morgue. He saw to it that they were washed, shrouded, and properly buried.

“Is it a governmental department or a charity?” I asked.

“No, it’s unofficial. Just a personal initiative I started myself, but I have an agreement with the Ministry of Health and Hospitals. This is how I came to know your father, God have mercy on his soul. He washed some of the bodies we found.”

“And how are things nowadays?”

“It’s very chaotic. I’m sure you know that most ministries were looted and destroyed, but the Ministry of Health wasn’t, as far as I know. I’m waiting for things to settle down, so I can continue. I’m trying to get permissions from the American army so they don’t attack my trucks and team when they go around the city. But even the Americans are disorganized. Each one sends me somewhere else. First they said I had to go to the Green Zone—you know, where the palace used to be——but then they wouldn’t let me go in. They said I had to get permission and forms from the Conference Center, but nothing materialized.”

“And who covers the expenses?”

“There are still a lot of good human beings in this world. I receive monthly donations.”

“God bless you and may there be more like you.”

“Well, why don’t you work with us then, like your father did? I’m sure you know how to wash.”

“Yes. I learned it from him and worked with him for a while, but that was years and years ago. Hammoudy, who used to work with my father, has taken over the place and will be working there. You can discuss it with him.”

“Oh, that’s great. I know Hammoudy.”

Hammoudy had approached me a week after my father died about taking over the
mghaysil.
He suggested paying us half of the income as rent. I agreed without much thought, because we desperately needed the money. The housepainting market was dead, and I was looking hard for any type of work, without success. Instead of Iraq becoming a new Hong Kong, as the Americans had promised, there was chaos and massive unemployment. I said goodbye to the man, never imagining that he would come back into my life.

“So you think painting or making statues is better than my honorable and rewarding profession?”

Father had often wounded me with this question when I told him of my desire to become a sculptor. I was burning to tell him now. They are stealing statues these days, Father. They stole Abdilmuhsin al-Sa’doun’s statue, melted it, and sold it. Those who don’t steal statues pull them down because they want to rewrite history. Ironically, they are imitating their sworn enemy, who himself tried to rewrite history from a Ba’thist perspective, destroying many statues and putting up new ones in their place.

History is a struggle of statues and monuments, Father. I will not have a share in all of this, because I have yet to sculpt anything important. Even Saddam’s huge statue in Firdaws Square was brought down right after your death. I thought I would be happy since I detested him so much, but I felt I’d been robbed of the happiness. That was not the end I had imagined. Those who brought him down were the ones who put him there in the first place. They armed him to the teeth in the war that killed Ammoury, your favorite son. Now some want to sever the head of Abu Ja’far al-Mansour, the founder of Baghdad, and bring down the statue of the poet al-Mutanabbi. Even the statues are too terrified to sleep at night lest they wake up as ruins.

I thought I had succeeded in distancing myself from death and its rituals during the two years following Father’s death. But I discovered that even though I wasn’t dealing directly with it with my own hands, death’s fingers were crawling everywhere around me. I couldn’t shake the notion that death was providing my sustenance. For a time I leaned on a rationalization:
What has really changed? Weren’t things the same when my father was the provider? Didn’t I eat and drink what death earned for us, one way or another? I used to contribute a bit to the household expenses. The only difference now is that death is more generous, thanks to the Americans.

Hammoudy stopped by at the end of every month to give me half of the earnings. Whenever I asked him how things were at the
mghaysil,
he said that there were more and more corpses. I knew that already, because the amount he gave me was increasing month by month. I asked about the men he washed. He said most had been killed by the Americans, but there were also many victims of the unprecedented wave of crime, as well as those blown up by car bombs and other explosions.

All my attempts to find a job failed. I started to spend most of my time reading and browsing the Internet. Ufuq café on al-Zahra Street near our house became a daily stop for me. I was naïve when I chose “giacometti” for a username for my e-mail account. Hundreds of others had chosen it too. After several variations were rejected, I settled for his name together with the year I was born. I looked for Reem the first few days, but to no avail. I had been seriously thinking of continuing to study sculpture abroad. I realized that getting a
scholarship was not easy and that not only would it be expensive to travel and live abroad, but it would be almost impossible to transcend the language barrier. My English amounted to the little I had learned at school and a few sentences I had picked up from films. Nevertheless, I started to gather information and wrote to a few institutes and arts colleges. Their answers were usually formulaic: they thanked me for my interest, advised me to read the prerequisites and requirements, and stressed the issue of the visa.

I asked Professor al-Janabi for advice. He was encouraging and promised to write a letter of recommendation, but reminded me of the importance of having a strong portfolio to increase my chances of acceptance. I had not participated in any exhibitions since graduation. He told me straight up that I had to get serious again about producing art. I bought a small digital camera to take photographs of some of my old works.

Three months after the invasion, Professor al-Janabi called me on my new cell phone. He said that the French Cultural Center was organizing an exhibition of young and marginalized artists and encouraged me to participate. I could submit only one work, so I chose one that had caused some trouble back when I was still studying. It was a strange-looking iron chair I had found thrown out on the street while wandering around with Reem near the academy. It was old and had some rust on it. I decided to carry it off. Reem laughed coquettishly: “Are you already furnishing the nest?” “You know I’m against the idea of marriage,” I said. “I just got an idea for a piece.” When I took it to the academy to put it in our shop, the security guard ridiculed me, saying, “What’s this? Are you selling scrap now?”