War Porn (18 page)

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The sandstorm came later that afternoon, choking the city with oily grit, turning the world beyond the windows to a howling red void. It lasted until after well after nightfall. As soon as it had blown over, Othman went up on the roof to replace the satellite dish, but now there was no signal. Ratib thought the storm might have knocked out the local retransmitter, but Othman was sure it was Saddam and his flunkies, the stupid bastards, he muttered, blinding us in our moment of darkness.

They attached the aerial to the TV and tuned in to the local station replaying the same programs from earlier in the day, the same state demonstrators cheering, ministers pontificating, Saddam speechifying. “Shut it off,” Othman said.

“Nothing to do but wait,” said Ratib, slumping into an armchair.

“I can't believe it's happening again.”

“I was in the south last time.”

“You could feel it. The air would hum and you could feel it in the back of your neck. You could feel them coming.”

“It was fast in the south. Everything was fast. You'd be sitting there for hours, bored out of your mind, and all at once the earth would explode. There'd be a whistling, you wouldn't hear it until later, after the explosion you'd remember—
I heard whistling
. But before, nothing. They hit us with jets and artillery. Those rockets they shoot.”

“I helped dig people out of the rubble. After every raid, as soon as the explosions finished, we went down to the mosque—this was when I lived off Asmai Street, in Adhamiyah. When I worked for the Iraqi Film Commission. Anyway, after a raid, we'd meet down at the Abu Hanifa. We had boys, some of the men's sons, and if we didn't know where the damage was, we sent them out as runners. Then we'd go dig. It was awful.”

“There wasn't any rubble in the south. Just wrecked tracks and bodies. Men's helmets burned onto their heads because of the webbing inside and the coating, the laminate on the inside of the helmet. It just melted onto their skin.”

Othman sat on the couch. He watched the TV's blank screen while Ratib got up and scanned the DVD rack.

“I need a drink,” Othman said to himself. “Mohammed!”

Mohammed shuffled in from the kitchen. “Stop yelling, pig. If I'd known you had the habits of a Jew, I'd never have brought you into my home.”

“Where's your bottle?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The good stuff, the Johnnie Walker, not the arak you give your clients. It's time for a real drink. We could all be dead tomorrow.”

“I should see my God with liquor on my breath?”

“As if your God cared,” said Othman.

“He cares,” said Ratib.

Othman waved him off. “Go get your bottle.”

“You'll order me now, like I'm your little woman?”

Othman leaned back and gazed soulfully into Mohammed's eyes: “‘Your yearning shows, whether you restrain it or not, and likewise your weeping, whether or not your tears flow. How many times your composed smile deluded a companion, while between your hips—what was invisible. The heart commanded its tongue and its eyelids and they concealed it, but your body is an informer.'”

Mohammed laughed and rubbed Othman's shoulders. “Sad bachelor. If you want to drink so bad, why don't you go down to the Writers Union?”

“I want to drink with my old friend Mohammed and his son-in-law Ratib.”

“I don't drink,” Ratib said.

“There is a time for your God, and there is a time for your heart,” Othman said. “You'll have one drink.”

“Alas, my friend,” Mohammed said, throwing up his hands. “I already drank it all.”

Othman closed his eyes and covered them with the fingers of one hand. “‘Father of every perfume,'” he recited, “‘not of musk only, and of every cloud—I do not single out the morning clouds—every man of glory boasts of only one quality, whereas the All-Merciful has joined in you all. While other men are esteemed for their generosity, in your generosity you bestow esteem.'” His eyes opened, peering into Mohammed's. “‘It is not much that a man should visit you on foot, and return as king of the two Iraqs. For sometimes you give the army that has come raiding to the lonely petitioner who has come begging, and you despise this world as one who has proved it all and seen everything in it—except yourself—perish.'”

Mohammed smiled, but not Othman. There was a sadness in his voice that slowly dissolved his friend's smile, and brought Ratib back to the stretches of silence that followed the bombs in the south, after the wounded had been trucked away and the dead buried, when they waited for more death to come. The feeling of relief at having survived lent the dread a cutting edge, laced the bitterness with painful sweetness. “Please, beloved and righteous Mohammed, name of the prophet, by the grace of God and by the mercy of God and by the infinite compassion of God, go get your bottle. This may be our last night. The last night for Iraq.”

“There will always be Iraq.”

“Like there will always be Akkadians or Abbasids or Ottomans. A country is a day. Come. Let's drink like men.”

“Ratib,” Mohammed said, “go upstairs to my office and in the filing cabinet, the tall gray one, open the bottom drawer. There, back behind some blueprints, you will find a bottle of oil to light our lamp tonight. The Johnnie Walker Black.”

“It's not permitted that . . .”

“Ratib,” Mohammed snapped. “Your piety is commendable. Go get my bottle.”

Ratib fetched it, and the two older men began to drink. Eventually, after much cajoling, Ratib did too. In the meantime, Thurayya and Warda had returned from putting the children to bed and, seeing the bottle on the coffee table,
went into the kitchen. The night passed slowly, the men drank slowly, sometimes going into the kitchen for water
or chai or to speak with the women, and sometimes Warda or
Thurayya would come into the living room to speak with the men. It was a quiet night, a night of conversations and
stories of other wars, quiet but quickened by an unheard buzz. The radio played a low babble behind their talk, old patriotic songs and bullshit state bulletins. Just after midnight, as the men were becoming drowsy, Othman sat up with a start. Then they heard it: the distant chug of antiaircraft fire.

It went on for a while. Othman sat back down. The shooting stopped. Started. Stopped. A distant machine turning off and on, throwing metal into the sky.

Thurayya and Warda told the men good night and went upstairs to bed. Shortly after that, Mohammed told Othman to wake him if anything happened, then went upstairs himself. Eventually Ratib fell asleep in his chair. Only Othman was left, listening alone in the darkness. He had another drink, then another.

He woke, later, to the walls' dull shaking. The world shuddered once, then again and again. Antiaircraft guns flacked in the distance. There were several more explosions, far but not that far, and more guns. Mohammed came downstairs and looked at Othman. The two men looked at Ratib, still asleep, and went swiftly upstairs to the roof. To the northeast, Baghdad was in flames.

A fireball lit the sky. Then came the boom.

“It's all in the Karkh.”

“They must be going after the government buildings.”

Tracers cut the sky in loping arcs of red.

“I didn't hear any planes.”

“No, you wouldn't. They're too high. Or stealth jets.”

Another fireball; they counted—one, two, three, boom. Red and yellow light flashed and shifted, the city danced with shadowed fire. They stayed and watched until the bombs then the AA guns stopped. In the east, the sky lightened to a smoky blue.

They went back downstairs and turned on the BBC. George W. Bush's voice filled the room.

“
My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign . . .

“
I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm
. . . 
Helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable, and free country will require our sustained commitment. We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization, and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people
. . . 

“
Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now
. . . 
so that we do not have to meet it later with
armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our
c
ities
. . . 
I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half-measures and we will accept no outcome but victory.

“
My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail.

“
May God bless our country and all who defend her
.”

He lay in bed thinking, why them again? The two men, standing over him, one slowly waving his hammer.

“He's not going to do what he said,” said one.

“He thinks he knows,” said the other.

A dull boom outside startled the men and they turned to the window. In the street, a line of Crusaders stood on guard, the blades of their swords flashing like needles, reflecting the fiery angels crossing the sky whose wings and hair burned gold, swooping and soaring. One broke off and shot jets of flame from his hands—a burst of white sparks, Crusaders tossed along the road like broken bottles, a crater. One of the iron men screamed, pointing his sword to the heavens, and leapt. An angel fell upon him, wrapping him in flames, but the leaping Crusader stabbed through the angel's heart and the two, pinned, plummeted writhing to the ground with a crash.

Staring down from atop a minaret, her face impassive white split with black, silver robes flowing in the maelstrom wind, she watched. She turned slowly, her eyes passing over the city, and he could feel her watching him huddled there in his bed. He tried to push himself to his feet, but saw his hand was crippled, broken blue, a twisted bird's claw.

He heard the dogs a moment before he saw them, a pack slavering down the alley at him. With his good hand he pushed himself up and fled, feeling her eyes on his neck.

He turned one corner, another, then another, through twisting streets of the old city, the dogs close behind, their shadows shuddering on the walls, another corner and another. He fell in through a bakery door.

“In the cow's belly, we're all milk,” the baker told him.

“I'm not milk, I'm water,” Qasim said back.

“We must pour milk into you.”

“No, no. I need water.”

“You'll drink pig's blood before you're through.”

“I'll drink dog's blood.”

“Oh, the dogs will drink
your
blood.”

“I'm not a man. They won't eat me.”

“They won't spare you either. They'll kill you and leave you.”

“I'll run forever.”

“Your hand is running. That's a runhand.”

Qasim clenched his blue birdhand in a fist.

“We must pour milk into you,” the baker said, hobbling around the counter and into the back. In the wall was a little door and the baker opened it and, bending over, entered. “Come, come,” he said, going into the darkness. Qasim followed.

He crouched in an endless tunnel of tearing wind.
Machinery chugged somewhere, loud, behind the wailing. Down, down he went, until finally the tunnel opened in a series of small caves spiraling one around another. The spirals became sines, tubes, a line of interwoven waves, a spinning weave of light and shadow, until translucent gold in the darkness shone upon a door: The House.

He opened the door with his good hand and went in. Qusay Hussein and Lateefah sat on the couch, holding hands. A goat bleated in the corner. Qusay had pulled up Lateefah's dress and was violating her from behind. Lateefah moaned with pleasure, sweat beading on her face, her hands grasping at the couch, her naked thighs trembling as she pushed back into Qusay.

“What are you looking at?” Qusay shouted. He pressed harder into Lateefah, his hands holding tight to her hips, and she gasped. “You think you know, but you have a dog's hand.”