War Porn (16 page)

“‘Carpenters and ironsmiths, hungry and burned under the autumn sky, all forcibly led to slaughter, killed by invaders, alien and homegrown . . .' My friend, the same man who runs Abu Ghraib, who gassed the Kurds, who disappeared your own brother-in-law. How can you stand by this dictator as if he stood by you? He cares only about al-Tikriti. He cares only about Hussein. For all his strength, he has no more honor than a dog. And his sons! Think of them. You know the stories.”

“Rumors. Your tribe sit around the Writers Union like Scheherazade, making up gruesome fables to shock each other.”

“Not fables. You see the disco boats. You know what happens to the women—the daughters they take. Scheherazade's not far off.”

“Listen, Othman, sometimes the powerful must be cruel. If we have to torture people to save lives, so be it. If we have to spy on people, so be it. If my grandsons are to know a peaceful and democratic Iraq, unified not by force but by law and honor, it will only be because we built strong foundations to secure that future. Is Hussein perfect? No. Is the party perfect? No. There are excesses. There are lies and evils. But the choice, Othman, is not between perfection and imperfection. We must choose, as always, between the lesser of two evils: a powerful leader or anarchy. And if you choose the Americans, you choose anarchy.”

“Maybe Bush will be strong,” Qasim said from his bricked-up window.

“What?” Mohammed turned, incredulous.

“Maybe Bush will be a strong leader. Maybe
he
will keep Iraq strong.”

Othman chuckled. “Your nephew sees things differently, brother.”

Mohammed stood up, spitting and stomping his foot. “Fuck Bush,” he said.

“But if Bush can beat Saddam, doesn't that mean he
is
stronger? And maybe he'll make Iraq strong again. Then we can build our democracy.”

“You see, Mohammed,” Othman said. “The young have hope. They're not frightened of the future like you are.”

“Bush—strong! You heard about the protests. Against Bush. In his own country. He can't even unify his own nation, and they have it easy. They're rich. Fat. Decadent. Not only that, their women
. . . 
You see how it was with this Hillary Clinton and now that Condoleezza Rice
. . . 
Their women practically run the country.”

“Mohammed, surely you wouldn't oppose a woman's rule . . .” Othman said with a grin.

“At home. At home. There is a very strict line.”

“I see. So because Thurayya hasn't yet made an assault on your office, you consider it well defended,” Othman said.

“True enough,” Mohammed said, wiping his hands and holding up his palms. “And she won't ever try, God willing. Now, if you two are done vexing me with your daydreams, let's finish up and get out of here.”

Qasim wiped his trowel on a brick and dropped it in his tool bucket. Mohammed tied up the last pile of contracts and set them on a corner of the desk. Othman closed up the last empty cabinets. Mohammed sent Othman to check on the other workers, then turned to Qasim. “Nephew, a word.”

Qasim faced Mohammed. His bad hand ached, and he felt feverish and dizzy. “Uncle, I know I was short with Aunt Thurayya.”

“Yes.”

“It's just that
. . . 
It's not just her. I can't take all this feminine meddling. My mother, Lateefah, Aunt Thurayya
. . . 
I have to make important decisions, and all their fussing is
. . . 
they don't understand. They have no right to question me. They're just women.”

Mohammed rubbed his mustache. “It's true, nephew, that women are women. And it's true that you must be firm with them. You can't let them treat you like a boy. But a man's wife
. . . 
Well, things aren't always so simple.”

“My wife is my Fatimah, Uncle. She's my servant.”

“No, Nephew, you are hers. Lateefah is the one who will bear your children. She's the one who carries your family in her hands. In her belly. You must protect and cherish her. You must stand by her.”

Qasim winced. “Now
you
are meddling!” he shouted.

Mohammed stepped across the room and slapped Qasim hard, knocking him back against the bricks, sending his glasses clattering to the floor. Qasim cried out, tears leaping to his eyes.

Mohammed exhaled through his nose with a snort. “I've nearly had my patience with you, boy,” he said. “Indeed, were it not for my obligation to your father, I'd have sent you from my house a long time ago. You
blacken your father's face. If you want to stay, if you want
to curl your tail and hide in my home, then I will suffer it because your father was my brother. But don't think you get to call yourself a man in my home. I know what you are, and I know a man who abandons his wife out of fear and pride is nothing but a dog. When we get back home, you'll beg your aunt's forgiveness, or you'll leave. Now clean yourself up and meet me outside.”

Some hours later, Qasim sat at his desk fuming, trying to puzzle out a particularly knotty equation, unable to focus. He'd called Baqubah earlier to talk to Lateefah and it had gone disastrously. His mother wouldn't speak to him, and when his wife picked up the phone, she wouldn't answer. Qasim was solicitous at first, gently asking questions, but each time Lateefah refused, his anger redoubled. When he finally asked, “What's wrong with you? Why are you silent?” she said, “I'm grieving because my husband has abandoned me.” Qasim exploded, screaming into the phone, berating her faithlessness, and calling her names until she finally hung up on him.

Qasim told himself he'd called to entreat her, to comfort her, to promise her he'd send for her, and that it was her unrelenting selfishness that had provoked him. Sitting in his room, going through the same handful of variables over and over, his mind raced along the well-worn track of his indignation, chronicling the story of how put-upon he was, how beleaguered by fate, how neglected and how beaten down. His pained hand, his headache, and the fever in his ears made it all that much worse. From the Gulf War to his exile in Edinburgh to his father's death, from his meddling aunt to his bullying uncle to his thankless wife, his life appeared to him as a succession of struggles against a despotic fate that had unfairly singled him out among all the others, he, Qasim, son of Faruq, for tribulation.

There was a knock at the door.

“I'm working,” Qasim shouted.

The door opened and Qasim turned to glare at Nazahah, who meekly watched at the floor.

“Cousin . . .”

“What? What do you want?”

“There are men here to see you, Cousin.”

“What men?”

“They say they're from the university.”

“From the university?”

“Yes, Cousin.”

Qasim stood. “I'll come down.”

“They said they'd see you here. They'd like to speak to you privately.”

“Well, alright. Send them up.”

Nazahah bowed and left, closing the door behind her.
Qasim faced his chair into the center of the room. Two?
He supposed both could sit on the bed, or one at the desk. He
smoothed his blanket and arranged his papers and pencils.

There was a new knock at the door and as he turned, it opened. One man scanned the room and sat easily on the bed, the other closed the door behind him and stood in the corner. Qasim knew at once they weren't from the university.

“I . . .” Qasim began, but was interrupted by the sitting man, who waved his hand and clicked his tongue. He
looked around the room again, taking in Qasim's modest furnishings, his many books on his few shelves, his bureau, the picture of Lateefah he kept near his bed, his handful of shirts and trousers hanging in the open closet. Eventually the man turned and looked at Qasim like he was measuring the size of the hole he'd need to bury him in. Qasim realized he was trembling, his skin turning clammy, his mouth going dry.

The man looked away, past Qasim, through the window to the darkened city outside, the distant lights of the Um Al-Tobool Mosque. “Nice view,” he said. Qasim jerked back over his shoulder, looking in surprise at the same view he looked at every day, then turned again to face the man.

“You . . .”

The man waved, clicking his tongue. He turned to Qasim's nightstand and picked up the photo of Lateefah.

“That's . . .”

“Shut up,” said the man by the door.

“Professor al-Zabadi,” the sitting man said, still holding the photo of Lateefah.

“Speak when you're spoken to,” said the other.

“Uh
. . . 
yes, sir.”

“Professor Qasim al-Zabadi.”

“Yes, sir.” Qasim thought he might throw up.

“Please sit down,” the man said, turning to Qasim, who sat, looking from one man to the other. “This is your wife Lateefah?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She's not here?”

“No, sir.”

“She's in Baqubah?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know, Professor al-Zabadi, we're not from the university.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know where we're from?”

“I think so, sir.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you're from the police.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you seem fearless.”

“Is that it? Or is it because of what you know?”

Qasim's ears began to ring. The air seemed to be leaking out of the room. “What I
. . . 
I don't know what I know.”

“Professor,” the man said, “you have not joined the Party, is that correct?”

“I
. . . 
no. Not yet, sir.”

“Why is that?”

“I wanted
. . . 
I needed to finish my dissertation. I'm not
. . . 
I'm not one for politics, for all those political
. . . 
things. I'm just
. . . 
a mathematician. Just maths. So, I thought, what do politics and maths have to do with each other? I'll join later, of course, but I didn't.”

“Just maths.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see. And who do you do maths for?”

“I don't understand.”

“
Who
do you do maths for?”

Was this about his uncle? Was this about the accounts—the bribery, black-market deals, shady negotiations with officials? It was all run-of-the-mill stuff, the only way to get things done. He couldn't believe they'd be here about that. Had his uncle made enemies? Was he going to have to
. . . 
? Qasim blinked. The room dimmed and blurred.

“Just
. . . 
just my uncle Mohammed
. . . 
he's down
. . . 
stairs
. . . 
”

“We spoke with him. He's a very honorable man. But there are so many questions.”

Qasim choked back a belch of vomit. He sweated cold sweat, his good hand clenched in a fist and his bad hand throbbing. The man stared, watching and measuring. Qasim said nothing. With a great internal wrenching, he decided to answer only direct questions and speak as little as possible. He couldn't lie, that was beyond his strength, but he could keep himself from giving away anything more than what they forced from him.

“Your uncle is very honorable,” the man said. “He takes care of his family. He takes care of you.”

Qasim coughed.

“It would be a pity if something happened to him.”

Qasim looked from the one man to the other.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?” the one asked.

“I
. . . 
think so.”

“What I'm saying is that we're interested in certain kinds of information. But we're very busy men, you know. We have only so much time. So if we're looking over here, maybe we don't have time to look over there. Or vice versa. You see?”

Qasim looked at the man, confused.

The man sighed and stood up. He stepped over to the desk, leaned over Qasim, and flipped through his papers. Qasim felt him at his shoulder, a menacing blur in his peripheral vision.

“What is this?”

“My dissertation, sir.”

“What's it about?”

“Harmonic analysis. It
. . . 
it has to do with permutations of Fourier series. Fourier transforms.”