The Last of the Angels (27 page)

The police arrived, put them on a bus, and drove them to the guesthouse, where Erbil's governor was waiting for them by the door. They had scarcely entered when he ordered the door locked. He glared at each of them in turn, without uttering a word. When he finally opened his mouth, he told them, as if affirming something he had just discovered, “I wasn't expecting this from you. You have defiled my honor and your city's.” The coach, who was a physical education instructor, replied, “We've worked really hard. It boils down to luck.” These words, which the coach had hoped would excuse his team's defeat to Erbil's governor, whose heart was filled with shame, enraged the governor even more than the preceding events. So he raised his hand and slapped the coach, who stepped back, asking involuntarily, “What have I done, Your Excellency the Governor?” The governor called him back, gesturing with his hand, “Come!” Trembling with terror, the coach obeyed the order and took two or three steps forward. Then the governor slapped him again, prompting the coach to step back. The governor followed him, intending to kick him from behind, but his foot plunged into one of the garden's irrigation ditches, and he slipped and fell on his back in the mud. At that, the governor ordered his guards, who rushed to help him rise, to teach some manners to these men, who had defiled his city's honor.

The policemen, who had also watched the match, had been waiting impatiently for this type of order. They attacked the squad members with the batons they carried till the players were bloodied. They chased them around the garden until its roses were trampled under foot. Blood gushed from the coach's head after a Kurdish sergeant who had trained as a boxer assumed responsibility for beating him. Finally they handcuffed the players and led them to a truck that transported them back to Erbil, where they were booked in the prison on charges of harming the city's reputation.

This incident, which was the first of its kind, was repeated frequently in later years, especially during the republic that followed the monarchy. These heads of state, most of whom were afire with patriotism, considered their soccer team's defeat a deliberate offense and an attempt to cast aspersions on their own domestic policies. If the team returned with the trophy, then a new automobile would be waiting for each player at the door of the airport terminal, a gift from the government, which was not stingy in honoring its heroes. Once players had collected a sufficient number of automobiles—so that some even opened transport offices and taxi services—the government decided to give each of them a mansion for every victorious match, especially if they defeated a rival or hostile Arab state.

A loss also had a price. Men from the secret police—most of whom were boxers, wrestlers, and reformed criminals—climbed aboard the plane as soon as it touched down at Baghdad International Airport and tossed the team members out of the emergency exit onto the asphalt below. There they pummeled and kicked them, accompanied by screams from the soccer fans who wanted to break their bones. The faces of many were blood-covered by the time they were incarcerated. Behind bars, they were beaten again by fellow inmates, who were no less patriotic than the prison guards. They stayed in prison for a week or two, or even a month, and could not be released until the president himself ordered that, and he was generally preoccupied by more important matters. He would forget about the team members, and no one would dare remind him to pardon these men, whom the strong hand of justice had touched. Eventually the minister of youth and an official of the Olympic Committee would have recourse to the seamstress who made clothes for the wife and daughters of the president, to the private cook who excelled at preparing stuffed vegetables and cabbage leaves, or even to the companion who was closest to the president's heart, the man who bore the title of “Chief Taster.” The president would not eat from a dish unless this man had tasted it first. One of these individuals would intervene at an appropriate moment to remind the First Lady, who normally was on the plump side, or the president himself, with a passing word or a sentence that sounded off-the-cuff, about the members of Iraq's national team. Such a hint would suffice to prompt the president to order their release and to invite them to have lunch or supper with him at his residence in the presence of his wife and daughters because he was as eager to display his affection for them as to administer severe discipline to them from time to time. He acted in precisely the same way with his children and his subjects. Occasionally he would forget that he had set them free and again order them freed, causing the head of the police some discomfort because he was forced to arrest them for an hour or two before releasing them and transporting them to the palace, where they would dine with the president.

The beautiful match that Kirkuk's soccer team experienced so fascinated the young Burhan Abdallah that it was etched in his memory for a long time. What interested him more than anything else was the masterful knowledge of the small angels that were owned by the family of Shaykh Yazid. These angels were polite and much more certain about things than the three angels whom he saw from time to time—those tired old men who carried on their shoulders sacks that they said were filled with spring. These small creatures, perhaps even without being aware of it, played a decisive role in creating the forthcoming history not only of the Chuqor community and Kirkuk, but of all of Iraq.

After Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri was buried, the government established a committee to search for the fortune of Qara Qul's shrine, but found nothing, even though there was no place they did not look for the treasure that Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri had hidden from the hands and eyes of thieves. Everyone dreamt of discovering this treasure, the location of which the mullah had not even disclosed to his wife and children. If the government wished to recover what it considered its due, the widow of Qara Qul, who resorted to black magic, thought that if she found the treasure she would be spared going to court to demand what she considered her personal right and that of no one else. The mullah's wife, who denied any knowledge of the treasure's hiding place, certainly experienced a great deal of verbal abuse from her children, who kept searching in vain for the hidden wealth. The story preoccupied all of the Chuqor community. Many even sought to entice the madman Dalli Ihsan to search for the treasure with them, relying on his well-known ties to the jinn, but he never agreed.

This fever affecting the inhabitants of the Chuqor community petered out after two or three weeks, when it became obvious to them that Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri had taken the treasure's secret with him to the grave, together with that other secret that had cost him his life. They stopped pursuing this interest once despair entered their hearts. Government officials contented themselves with laying hands on all the shrine's possessions that were in plain sight, and Qara Qul's widow began to hope the court would award her title to all the new gifts that were presented to her spouse's shrine.

No sooner had this fever that had gripped the Chuqor community died away than Hameed Nylon reappeared as if emerging from a void. He assured those who looked askance at his disappearance that he had been in Kuwait, where he had worked as a driver for its prince, who, he said, owned a gold toilet. As usual, no one believed him, since he showed no trace of the blessings of oil that had enriched Kuwait. As a matter of fact only a few knew that Hameed Nylon was returning from the revolution after lighting its fuse in the countryside around Kirkuk. He had granted himself a military rank and, following the custom of the leaders of world revolutions, had taken a nom de guerre—Lieutenant Colonel Anwar Mustafa—which increased his self-confidence. He had indeed even thought of growing his beard longer but had decided to postpone that till later, when the revolution would have spread to at least a few villages. He had plotted this out carefully ever since his selection as leader by the villagers who had made off with the corpse of Qara Qul and had then fled into the thickets and hills near the village of Tawuq.

In point of fact, the inhabitants of Tawuq had never once thought of opposing the government, about which they knew nothing. All they had wanted was to bury Qara Qul in their village so that their fields would be blessed and their flocks fertile. The attack that the police had launched against them, killing two of them, however, had turned them into rebels, if only to save their skins. These men, who were armed with rifles, were anxious about their future. They did not know what to do except to wait once Agha Mamand, whose influence covered tens of villages located between Kirkuk and Erbil, including Tawuq, refused to intervene to negotiate a settlement with the government, on the grounds that Tawuq was a dependency of Kirkuk and therefore fell within a region of special control by the Iraqi government, the affairs of which he felt it inappropriate to second-guess, even though he was a deputy in the parliament in Baghdad for this whole region, including the village of Tawuq.

For this reason, the arrival of Hameed Nylon in the village of Tawuq at the wheel of his car caused the children to race behind it, cheering and screaming in the dust that it stirred up. Women emerged from their houses, which were made of mud and stone and surrounded by walls at the tops of which had been planted broken bits of colored bottles to prevent thieves from other distant villages from scaling them. The men returned from the fields when they heard the continuous barking of the dogs that raced on both sides of the vehicle from the moment it entered the village.

Hameed Nylon stopped his car in front of an open hut. On either side of its wide entrance was a horseshoe-shaped, mud-brick bench, which was covered with dirty but colorful rugs of the type that Kurdish village women weave. It was obvious that this was the village's coffeehouse. The man who had been preparing tea in a corner of the hut came out and yelled at the dogs, which backed off a bit. When they saw the car door open and Hameed Nylon climb out and enter the coffeehouse, however, they lowered their heads and moved off to their former locations. Hameed Nylon greeted the three men who were sitting in the coffeehouse and ordered a tumbler of tea. He knew that curiosity would be consuming the hearts of these villagers, who would want to know the secret that brought this stranger to their village in his automobile, although they would not dare ask him. When they realized that he spoke Kurdish like them, they felt somewhat more at ease and drew him into a conversation about where he came from. One of the men said, “You must be from Kirkuk. The only people with pretty cars like this live in Kirkuk.”

Hameed Nylon smiled. “Oh, it's a car like any other.” Then he added, “I've come to help the village of Tawuq. I can't say any more than that. I hope you'll trust me.”

Anxiety was apparent on the faces of the villagers, who normally doubted everything. They kept silent. The man who was preparing the tea, however, said, “Fine, how can we assist you?”

Without beating around the bush, Hameed Nylon asked, “How can I contact the rebels who made off with Qara Qul's body?”

One of the men asked, “Are you from the government? What do you want with them?”

Hameed Nylon smiled once more. “I can only tell them that; I'm asking you to trust me.”

Hameed Nylon was forced to wait till evening, after he had placed his car in a shelter at the other end of the village, before he could make his way through fields, thickets, and valleys to the men, who had taken refuge in an orchard, which was packed with walnut, fig, pomegranate, and plum trees and grape vines and which lay between two valleys through which a small river ran. Hameed Nylon was accompanied by two armed young men who led him silently in the dark down rough paths, through thick groves, and along waterways. The only sound was their footsteps on the grass and leaves, which were wet with dew. They finally reached the hideout where the villagers who had fled from the police had taken refuge. Through the trees they saw the light of two lanterns placed in front of a large boulder before what seemed to be the entrance of a cave and specters collapsed on the ground. One of the two youths called out in a loud voice, “Peace upon you.”

The ghosts, which appeared to have been taken by surprise, jerked and rose, staring. The reply came: “Who are you?”

The youth said, “It's Mahmud. Everything's fine.”

Four or five of the rebels approached and greeted them, kissing the shoulders of some. They took the two bags the young men accompanying Hameed Nylon had been carrying. “We've brought you some bread, sugar, and tea,” said one of the young men.

Hameed Nylon shook hands with the men, who were prevented by good manners from even asking his name. The other young man, however, said, “The gentleman has come from Kirkuk and wishes to speak to you.”

The men waited for Hameed Nylon to say something, expecting that he was a government representative who had come to inform them of a pardon that would allow them to return once more to their fields and orchards because the word “gentleman,” which the youth Jalal had used when introducing Hameed Nylon, had made a good impression on these villagers, who believed that anyone who wore trousers was from the government. Those were Hameed Nylon's hardest moments. In fact, this was the most difficult time in the history of the armed revolution that spread from the countryside around Tawuq. On the basis of his experience, which rarely let him down, Hameed Nylon realized that everything depended on this moment. If these villagers were not satisfied with what he said now, they never would be.

Hameed Nylon took out a pack of cigarettes from a pocket, extracted one for himself, and threw the pack to the men. He said, as though affirming an established truth, “Excellent; I've come to you to be with you. It doesn't matter that I've used different names in the past; the name by which the world will know me and which was granted to me by the revolutionary command is Lieutenant Colonel Anwar Mustafa. The revolution will burst out from here to engulf Kirkuk and all the rest of Iraq. From here, we will liberate the nation, one village at a time, and teach the police who have been pursuing you lessons in courage and pluck.”