The Corpse Washer (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (20 page)

“God help you and may God have mercy on his soul,” was all I could say.

The young man urged his father to leave. “Let’s go, Dad.”

Mahdi helped them carry the coffin outside. We sat together in silence, neither of us wanting to say anything about the head. I added Habib’s name to the new notebook I had started after filling the last one. Next to his name I wrote, “severed head.”

I was standing in a long line at the passport office. I had been banned from traveling long before, because my uncle was a Communist, and I couldn’t believe that after all these years I was finally going to leave. I had finished everything, had paid the fees, and was waiting in front of the window to get the passport. There were scores of people ahead of me, but the pace was good. I felt guilty about leaving my mother alone and going off, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I noticed that the young man standing in front of me was wearing a coat, even though it was warm. He kept turning and looking back at the line as if looking for someone. He looked at his watch a number of times. A few minutes later he stepped aside and put his hand into his coat pocket and pulled something which triggered a huge explosion. I felt his blood on my face and his body parts striking my body. Some of the bodies of those waiting in line were scattered. Corpses scattered around and I saw people running and screaming, but all I could hear was a strange whistle. I touched my body and was astonished that it was intact. I ran to the exit and out to the street. I headed to the
mghaysil
and opened the faucet to wash myself. I lay down on the washing deck to die, but instead I awoke.

I was just about ready to lock the
mghaysil
and go home after a bloody day. I thought it was strange for Mahdi to have left without saying goodbye. Suddenly, five men carrying machine guns stormed the place and surrounded me. Two grabbed me, tied my wrists behind my back, and held me fast. The others began to search the entire place and scattered things on the floor. A hooded officer with stars on his shoulders appeared and ordered the two men holding me to force me on my knees. He stood right in front of me. His black boots were shining and he had a gun. His eyes glittered when he put the gun to my head and cocked the trigger.

“Are you the owner?” he asked.

I didn’t know how to answer and hesitated.

He pressed the gun to my forehead pushing my head back.

“Yes, I am the owner.”

“Do you have a license from the ministry?”

“No,” I said, “because—” but before I could finish telling him that the place had been operating for decades without a license, he slapped me with his gun and I fell down.

“Take him.” They held me and started dragging me and I woke up.

I was at the
mghaysil
making the most of a respite without bodies and reading a book about Mesopotamian creation myths when I heard on the radio that a suicide bomber had attacked al-Mutanabbi Street and the Shahbandar café, killing more than thirty people. I felt a pang in my heart. We had gotten used to car and suicide bombs, but I had a soft spot for al-Mutanabbi Street. I would often escape there to hunt for a book or two to keep me company. I had bought the book I was reading from a stall there the Friday before.

I had decided not to work on Fridays. If my father were alive, he would have thought it blasphemous. I wondered whether the young man who sold me the book was hurt in the attack. I wondered naïvely, as I often did upon hearing such news: Why this spot in particular? Why go after books and booksellers who are barely making it?

In the evening, I saw the scenes of the aftermath that we have become accustomed to after each attack: puddles of blood, human remains, scattered shoes and slippers, smoke, and people standing in shock, wiping their tears or covering their faces. This time there were also remains of books and bloodstained paper waiting for someone to collect them and bury them. Professor al-Janabi called to tell me that one of my colleagues from the academy, Adil Mhaybis, had been killed in the attack. Adil wasn’t a very close friend, but I knew him and we had chatted during our days at the academy. I’d seen him in recent years at the Hiwar gallery. He was very smart and ambitious and had started writing art reviews in newspapers. I asked
whether Adil was married. Professor al-Janabi said that he was, and had left three kids. He promised to call me with funeral details.

I went to the funeral. Adil’s father and brothers were sitting at the front of a tent pitched in front of the house. There was a huge picture of Adil, and a banner bore his name and the date of his martyrdom “during the cowardly terrorist attack on al-Mutanabbi Street.” I shook hands with the father and brothers and offered my condolences, then sat in a corner and recited the
Fatiha
for his soul. I drank a cup of coffee with cardamom.

Al-Janabi was supposed to come, but he called and said that he was delayed by traffic and checkpoints. I looked around for a face I might know. Verses of the Qur’an were reverberating through the loudspeakers. The famous Egyptian reciter al-Minshawi had just finished the Joseph chapter in his mesmerizing voice and started the Rahman chapter, which my father had loved. The waves in his voice would touch one’s soul gently at first and then pull it slowly until you found yourself suddenly at sea with nothing except the wind of the voice and the sails of the words.
“He created man from clay, like the potter”
caught my attention. So, we, too, are statues, but we never stop crushing one another in the name of the one who made us. We are statues whose permanent exhibition is dust.

“Which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny? Everyone on earth will perish … When the sky is rent asunder and becomes red.”

Perhaps it
is
high time for him to crush what he has fashioned. I thought about this man who blew himself up and killed Adil and so many others. Who was he?

I try to find a rational explanation for such acts. I know that humans can reach a stage of anger and despair in which their lives have no value, and no other life or soul has value either. But men have been slaughtering others and killing themselves for ideas and symbols since time immemorial; what is new are the numbers of bodies becoming bombs. Al-Minshawi’s arresting recitation began to weave through my thoughts.

“The guilty will be known by their marks and will be taken by their
forelocks and feet.”
Could that suicide bomber be there now, dragged by his hair and feet to a scorching fire?

“They go circling around between it and fierce, boiling water.” “This is the Hell which the guilty deny.” Will he be surprised by his fate and object to it, having thought that he was on his way to the two heavens? “Wherein is every kind of fruit in pairs.” “Is there any reward for Good other than Good?”

And poor Adil, is he sitting in the shade under a palm tree or
“Reclining upon couches lined with silk brocade, the fruits of both gardens near to hand.”
Will Adil see his killer dragged to hell and will he spit on him, or will he just look at him abhorrently? Will the two converse or argue in a neutral zone between heaven and hell? Or will they fight over getting into heaven?

“Which is it of the favors of your Lord that ye deny?”

Before getting a satisfying answer about Adil’s fate, I saw one of the artists I had met at the exhibition at the French Cultural Center a few years before. I waved and he recognized me. He offered his condolences to Adil’s family, then came and sat next to me. After reciting the
Fatiha,
we started chatting as we drank coffee. I was on my third cup. I asked whether Adil was a close friend of his. He said he was just an acquaintance, but he felt compelled to come. He looked weary and stressed out.

When I asked why, he said that he was leaving for Syria in two days because he had received death threats.

“Who is threatening you, and why?”

“Man. It’s really absurd. I’m Shiite, but my son’s name is Omar. I named him after my best friend, who happened to be Sunni. They left a note in front of the door threatening me and telling me to leave the neighborhood. They thought I was Sunni.”

I asked him, “Who are ‘they’?”

“I don’t know really,” he said. “Armed men who control the neighborhood and are killing left and right. I asked and looked around. I wanted someone to get the word to them that Abu Omar is not Sunni, but it was no use. Then I got another letter saying, ‘This
is the last warning. The next letter will not be written on paper and will pierce your head.’ A week after that two bullets broke our bedroom window. Thank God, we weren’t at home. They have forced a lot of Sunnis to leave. So we are living with my in-laws and we’ve decided to go to Syria until things calm down. Can you believe this? These four letters of a name. I just want to tell them, face to face, that I’m supposed to be one of their own. If they want me to change his name, I will, but just leave us alone.”

When he finished his story, al-Minshawi was in the chapter of Abraham: “Lo, man is verily given up to injustice and ingratitude. And then Abraham said: Lord, make this city one of peace and preserve me and my sons from worshiping idols.”

“I’m thinking of leaving too,” I said. “Things are intolerable.”

He nodded. “It’s nice chatting with you, but I have a lot of errands to run and have to go.”

We hugged outside the tent and I wished him luck in Syria.

I saw you at the
mghaysil,
Father.

It was my first time at work with you. Hammoudy was not with us and it was pitch dark. You had a candle in your hand.

I asked you, “Why don’t we wait until it’s morning and then start work?”

You smiled and said, “There is nothing but night here.”

I was surprised and asked, “Why?”

You said, “Have you forgotten that we are in the underworld, my son, and the sun doesn’t rise here?”

I felt a lump in my throat and a tear found its way to my cheek.

You wiped it and hugged me saying in an unusually loving tone: “Don’t worry, dear. Candles are enough for us to do our work and live a good life. You’ll get used to their light.”

It was the first time you ever called me “dear.” You asked me to follow you and showed me the bench and said, “This is where we put together the body parts al-Fartusi brings every day.” I was surprised that al-Fartusi was here as well.

You pointed to the cupboards, which I couldn’t see clearly, and said, “The needles, threads and glue are all there.” Then you pointed to wooden boxes which were stacked on the floor and said, “The feathers we use to cover the bodies are all in there.”

I asked, “Why do we have to cover their bodies with feathers?”

You smiled and said, “Do you still ask too many questions, son? This is what our ancestors did before and what our grandchildren will keep doing.”

You moved toward one of the cupboards and opened it. You took
out a candle and lit it with the flame in your candle and handed it to me. I held it in my hand. Its flame illuminated more of the place. I saw legs and arms stacked in the corner and asked you about them.

“We will find a place for them in the bodies that come every day.”

“What about Ammoury and Hammoudy and the others? Are they here too?”

You didn’t answer. I saw an eye hanging on the wall by a thread and shedding tears. When I asked you about it you said, “It longs for another eye or perhaps it is crying for the sun.”

I asked you: “Are we alive or dead, father?”

You didn’t answer and blew out your candle and mine died too. I stayed alone in the dark listening to the tears falling from the eye on the wall until I woke up. The candle next to my head was choking and about to give out.

My mother put on her black abaya and said: “Jawad, I’m going to the shrine of al-Kazim. Today is the anniversary of his death, and Basim al-Karbala’i is coming to chant.”

“Wait and we’ll go together.”

“Really?”

She was pleasantly surprised by my decision and her face lit up. She probably doesn’t remember, just as I don’t, the last time I visited the shrine. I used to go with her a lot when I was a child and would hold onto the window overlooking the tomb inside the shrine as the others did. Later I went often with my father, but I stopped in high school, when I became disenchanted with all the rituals and lost my faith.

She sat on the couch and said, “OK, I’ll wait for you then.”

I went up to my bedroom and changed. When I was coming down she asked me: “How come? Did you really remember al-Kazim, or is it just because al-Karbala’i is going to chant?”

“Can’t it be both?”

“Yes, of course. A visit to al-Kazim is always a good thing.”

I should have told her that I was seriously thinking of leaving the
mghaysil
for good and going to Jordan and then anywhere far away, but I never found the right words and time. I knew that I might not come back for a very long time, if ever. This might be the very last time I visited al-Kazim. I also wanted to listen to Basim al-Karbala’i’s voice, which Mother herself had introduced me to by listening to him at home.