Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

Yet I ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands. —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

c. Through an examination of the computers used in the department, it was discovered that documents had been sent by e-mail to someone referred to as “the author.”

“The author” was found to be in possession of the text of a story he had written drawing on material contained in documents belonging to the Tracking and Pursuit Department.

d. The story is about 250 pages long, divided into seventeen chapters. Experts from the committee examined the text and concluded that it does not violate any provisions of the law, but for precautionary reasons they recommended that the information in it should not be published under any circumstances and that the story should not be rewritten.

Elishva, the old woman known as Umm Daniel, or Daniel’s mother,

Sitting on the bus, minding her own business, as if she were deaf or not even there, Elishva didn’t hear the massive explosion about two hundred yards behind her.

Elishva’s neighbor Umm Salim believed strongly, unlike many others, that Elishva had special powers and that God’s hand was on her shoulder wherever she was.

She saw her son, Daniel, or imagined she did. There was Danny, as she had always called him when he was young—at last her patron saint’s prophecy had come true. She called him, and he came over to her.

“He’s stolen his story from a Robert De Niro film.” “Yes, it looks like he watches lots of movies. He’s well known in the area.” “Then he should have gone to Hollywood,” she said with a laugh as she got into the translator’s car.

Hadi wasn’t bothered. Some people walk out in the middle of movies. It’s quite normal.

On his way out of the shop he collided with people running from the explosion. The smell suddenly hit his nostrils—the smoke, the burning of plastic and seat cushions, the roasting of human flesh. You wouldn’t have smelled anything like it in your life and would never forget it.

No one saw it coming; it all happened in a fraction of a second.

The rest of the shed was dominated by a massive corpse—the body of a naked man, with viscous liquids, light in color, oozing from parts of it. There was only a little blood—some small dried patches on the arms and legs, and some grazes and bruises around the shoulders and neck. It was hard to say what color the skin was—it didn’t have a uniform color.

The area where the nose should have been was badly disfigured, as if a wild animal had bitten a chunk out of it.

It was a fresh nose, still coated in congealed, dark red blood. His hand trembling, he positioned it in the black hole in the corpse’s face. It was a perfect fit, as if the corpse had its own nose back.

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, and somehow it didn’t seem to make any sense despite all the arguments he used when trying to explain himself to his listeners.

“I made it complete so it wouldn’t be treated as trash, so it would be respected like other dead people and given a proper burial,” Hadi explained. “What happened next?” “To me, or the Whatsitsname?”

What was he going to do? He had accomplished the task he had set himself. Should he hire a car to take the body to the forensics department? Should he take it out one night and leave it in some square or on the street and let the police come and finish the job?

The only good solution was to go home, take the corpse apart, and restore it to what it had been—just disconnected body parts. Then he should scatter the parts throughout the streets, where he had found them.

he pushed open the heavy wooden door but forgot to close it behind him. When he looked in the distance at the door to his room, he felt it was much farther than usual.

When he looked closer, he discovered that many other things had disappeared. The corpse, too, was gone. He turned everything upside down, then went back to his room and looked in there.

“And then?” “That’s it. That’s the end.”

There was little left of Hasib Mohamed Jaafar; the coffin that was taken to the cemetery in Najaf was more of a token.

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 well aware of the strict orders about protecting the hotel. There were security companies and important people and maybe Americans in it.

He could see the river too, deep and black in the darkness. He wanted to touch it. He had never touched the river. He had lived all his life far from it. He had driven over it, seen it from a distance, and seen pictures of it on television. But he had never felt the coldness of the water or tasted it.

“Maybe you haven’t really died and you’re dreaming. Or your soul has left your body to go for a stroll and will come back later,” the boy said.

In a house in Bataween he saw a naked man asleep. He went up to him and checked to see if he was dead. It wasn’t anyone in particular; the man looked strange and horrible.

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.

So things didn’t happen for no reason? The two of them were made for each other.

Now he only had to wait for the family of the naked man to take the body to the cemetery, bury it in a grave, and cover it with soil. He didn’t care what name they had inscribed on the gravestone.

Nawal al-Wazir was a film director, or so she claimed. She was about forty, light-skinned with jet-black hair, plump with a double chin that gave a touch of oriental beauty to her face, which was always covered with a thin layer of slightly tacky makeup.

“She’s the boss’s fuck buddy,” Farid Shawwaf, his colleague at the magazine, once said. Mahmoud quarreled with him because he had no evidence. Later he accepted Farid’s assessment, because what else but sex could have brought this woman and Ali Baher al-Saidi together?

If he had crossed to the other side of the street at that moment, he would have met a certain death: an orange garbage truck loaded with dozens of kilograms of dynamite turned off the main street and slammed into the metal gate of the hotel, setting off an explosion the likes of which these four journalists had never seen.

On the asphalt beyond the median they saw a body. They went up to it, and Mahmoud touched it with his hand. The body suddenly moved. They lifted the man to his feet, and Mahmoud recognized him at once. It was Hadi the junk dealer, Hadi the liar, as the customers in Aziz’s coffee shop called him.

“You could be dead now. You were eager to keep chatting. Your wonderful stories saved you, my friend,” said Mahmoud,

“Be positive. Be a positive force and you’ll survive. Be positive. Be a positive force and you’ll survive.”

She didn’t ask him anything—she had promised her patron saint that she wouldn’t ask too many questions.

All this time she had left her thick glasses dangling from her neck, but she still knew this man didn’t look much like Daniel. No matter. Not many people came back looking the same as when they left.

She had heard enough stories to explain the differences and the changes—stories told by a succession of women ravaged by the effects of time and by the realization that they would never a...

Daniel moved closer to this picture. It must have been taken twenty years earlier. He noticed the reflection of his own face in the glass. It rather surprised him—this was the first time he had recognized himself. He ran his finger over the stitches on his face and neck. He looked very ugly. How come the old woman didn’t seem startled by his dreadful appearance?

Apart from the crude stitches on his face and neck, he looked almost like him. The old woman had had that in mind.

Given that her sight was definitely weak, when she came back into the sitting room she would see only what she wanted to see.

“You have to be careful,” it said. The saint’s lips really were moving. “She’s a hapless old woman. If you harm her or make her sad, I swear I’ll plunge this lance in your throat.”

Hadi went outside and looked up and down the lane for a sign that something strange had happened, but he wasn’t willing to stop any of his neighbors to ask, “Excuse me, have you seen a naked corpse walking down the street?”

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.

Having removed her widow’s mourning headband, she was wearing a red headscarf with white flowers, like a young woman. Umm Salim wondered what had happened to her.

When Umm Salim asked about her striking red headscarf, Elishva looked down at the street and said quietly, “The time to be sad is over. The Lord has finally heard my prayer.”

Elishva couldn’t help but drop her bombshell, telling Umm Salim straight out that her son had come home. Umm Salim just walked on in stunned silence. What was this old woman talking about, she wondered.

Umm Salim curled her lips like someone deep in thought, but she didn’t go into the house to check, a major mistake that she would later regret.