Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

“That’s not a nice story, Hadi. Tell us another one.” “If you don’t believe it, that’s your choice. Okay, I’m off now. The teas are on you.”

Hadi was a liar, and everyone knew it. He would need witnesses to corroborate a claim of having had fried eggs for breakfast, let alone a story about a naked corpse made up of the body parts of people killed in explosions.

If she asked Father Josiah, he would tell her to ask for forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun—she never would. If she asked God or Saint George the Martyr or the ghost of her son, they would tell her she didn’t need to ask forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun. 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.

How would he be arrested if he wasn’t afraid of death or of gunfire? Did he really have extraordinary

The Whatsitsname turned to him and admitted he was confused, because the soul of Hasib Mohamed Jaafar was demanding revenge, and he had to kill the person who had caused Hasib’s death. “It was the Sudanese suicide bomber who caused his death,” Hadi said confidently, trying to exploit the situation to his own advantage. “Yes, but he’s dead. How can I kill someone who’s already dead?” “The hotel management, then. The company that ran the hotel.” “Yes, maybe. But I have to find the real killer of Hasib Mohamed Jaafar so his soul can find rest,” said the Whatsitsname, pulling up a wooden crate and sitting on it.

But Hadi adhered to a more imaginative formula—that the Whatsitsname was made up of the body parts of people who had been killed, plus the soul of another victim, and had been given the name of yet another victim. He was a composite of victims seeking to avenge their deaths so they could rest in peace. He was created to obtain revenge on their behalf.

“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.

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

This was the realization that would undermine his mission—because every criminal he had killed was also a victim.

“There are no innocents who are completely innocent or criminals who are completely criminal.” The sentence drilled its way into his head once again, and he stood there, clearly visible in the headlights of a car that had turned onto the side street. The driver stopped for long enough to recognize what he was seeing in the middle of the street, then turned slowly and went back the way he had come.

their hands doing the talking, passing messages between their souls like an electric wire.

Aziz explained that after the explosion, Hadi had gone to the mortuary to collect the body because Nahem didn’t have any family other than his wife and young daughter. Hadi was shocked to see that the bodies of explosion victims were all mixed up together and to hear the mortuary worker tell him to put a body together and carry it off—take this leg and this arm and so on. Hadi collected what he thought was Nahem’s body, then went to the Mohamed Sakran Cemetery with Nahem’s widow and some neighbors. But Hadi was changed after that. He didn’t speak for two weeks,

Believers lost their faith when those who had shared their beliefs and their struggles betrayed them and their principles. Nonbelievers had become believers

The definitive image of him was whatever lurked in people’s heads, fed by fear and despair. It was an image that had as many forms as there were people to conjure it.