Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

Elishva not only rejected the offers from these two men, she also reserved a special hatred for them, consigning them to everlasting hell.

an inner courtyard surrounded by several rooms on two floors, with a basement under one of the rooms that opened onto the street.

but she believed she lived with three beings, or three ghosts, with so much power and presence that she didn’t feel lonely.

It had been hard to separate Nahem’s flesh from that of the horse.

he had to sew the nose in place.

The nose was all the corpse needed to be complete, so now Hadi was finishing the job. It was a horrible job, one he had done without anyone’s help,

The only good solution was to go home, take the corpse apart, and restore it to what it had been—just disconnected body parts.

Hadi kept saying he wouldn’t die—he

he had survived several other explosions.

Hasib’s young wife wrapped her arms around it, wept bitterly, and wailed at length.

his stunned little daughter was passed from arm to arm whenever the person holding her was overwhelmed by grief.

They all dreamed something about Hasib. Parts of one dream made up for parts missing in another. A little dream filled a gap in a big one, and the threads stitched together to re-create a dream body for Hasib, to go with his soul, which was still hovering over all their heads and seeking the rest it could not find. Where was the body to which it should return in order to take its place among those who live in a state of limbo?

He was looking at the flames, the smoke, and the flying pieces of metal from high in the air. He felt a strange calm.

“Go and find out what happened to your body. Don’t stay here.”

With his hand, which was made of primordial matter, he touched the pale, naked body and saw his spirit sink into it. His whole arm sank in, then his head and the rest of his body. Overwhelmed by a heaviness and torpor, he lodged inside the corpse, filling it from head to toe, because probably, he realized then, it didn’t have a soul, while he was a soul without a body.

positive. Be a positive force and you’ll survive. Be positive. Be a positive force and you’ll survive.” He repeated the words several times like someone obsessed, until he noticed that the batteries in the recorder were dead.

“The time to be sad is over. The Lord has finally heard my prayer.”

Hadi would later narrate these details several times, because he loved details that gave his story credibility and made it more vivid. He would just be telling people about his hard day’s work, but they would listen as though it were the best fable Hadi the liar had ever told.

She cursed him in her prayers and whenever she saw him on the street.

Some of the women had vowed that if the evil man died, they would slaughter a sheep to God Almighty.

Although he had clout in the neighborhood, he was still frightened by the Americans. He knew they operated with considerable independence and no one could hold them to account for what they did. As suddenly as the wind could shift, they could throw you down a dark hole.

death gives the dead an aura of dignity, so they say, and makes the living feel guilty in a way that compels them to forgive those who are gone.

She was fully entitled to seek revenge because it would strengthen her faith and give her ailing spirit the energy it needed to keep on living.

REALLLL QUEEN SHIT

The yellow light of the lantern struck the strange man’s face—a face with lines of stitches, a large nose, and a mouth like a gaping wound.

During other sessions in Umm Salim’s courtyard, the story became more coherent.

every character is this book is a grade A gossiper