Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

In other words, the soul is like the fuel in a car. It takes a spark to ignite it.”

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

Father Josiah encouraged her to stay, because he saw it as a religious obligation. It wasn’t good that everyone should leave the country. Things had been just as bad for the Assyrians in previous centuries, but they had stayed in Iraq and had survived. None of us should think only of ourselves. That’s what he said in his sermon sometimes.

That’s how everyone wanted to remember him; 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.

“Think how many stupid mothers and fathers have produced geniuses and great men in history. The credit isn’t due to them but to circumstances and other things beyond their control. You’re just an instrument, or a surgical glove that Fate put on its hand to move pawns on the chessboard of life.”

People are deluded and never admit their ignorance.

“What’s worse is that people have been giving me a bad reputation. They’re accusing me of committing crimes, but what they don’t understand is that I’m the only justice there is in this country.”

“Frankenstein in Baghdad,”

The innards of the darkness moved and gave birth to me. I am the answer to their call for an end to injustice and for revenge on the guilty.

They have turned me into a criminal and a monster, and in this way they have equated me with those I seek to exact revenge on. This is a grave injustice. In fact there is a moral and humanitarian obligation to back me, to bring about justice in this world, which has been totally ravaged by greed, ambition, megalomania, and insatiable bloodlust.

he was prepared to believe in me—for one reason: that others had no faith in me and didn’t even believe I existed.

“Because I’m made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds—ethnicities, tribes, races, and social classes—I represent the impossible mix that never was achieved in the past. I’m the first true Iraqi citizen, he thinks.

Whenever you kill someone, that account is closed,’ the Magician said. ‘In other words, the person who was seeking revenge has had his wish fulfilled, and the body part that came from him starts to melt. It looks like there’s a time factor. If you exact revenge for all the victims ahead of the deadline, then your body will hold together for a while and start to dissolve only later, but if you take too long, when you come to your last assignment you’ll have only the body part of the last person to be avenged.’

Anyone who puts on a crown, even if only as an experiment, will end up looking for a kingdom.”

The whole country’s starting to look like the Jewish ruin next door.”

Fear not those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.’”

“There are no innocents who are completely innocent or criminals who are completely criminal.”