Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

The government and the occupation forces have to eliminate fear. They must put a stop to it if they really want this cycle of killing to end.”

This man who could take bullets without dying or bleeding, how horribly ugly would he be? How would he be arrested if he wasn’t afraid of death or of gunfire? Did he really have extraordinary powers? Would he breathe fire at his men and burn them to ashes? Or did he have hidden wings to take off and fly away from his pursuers? Would he suddenly disappear before their eyes as if he had never existed?

He was eager to convince Mahmoud that his story was true. His manner was different from his usual one, when he had an audience. Typically he’d seem relaxed and cheerful while knowing deep down that others didn’t believe what he was saying, the fact that they didn’t believe him seemingly part of the ritual he enjoyed while telling the story. When he was telling Mahmoud the story of the Whatsitsname, he wasn’t enjoying it. It was more like he was fulfilling an obligation or conveying a message.

The Whatsitsname had visited Hadi on the very night that several murders took place in the Bataween area, after Aziz had warned him to stop telling his story about the body he had sewn together.

The first sentence the Whatsitsname spoke confirmed Hadi’s fears: he really was visiting him that night in order to kill him. “You’re responsible for the death of the guard at the hotel, Hasib Mohamed Jaafar,” the Whatsitsname said.

Hadi argued with him, plucking up all his courage to defend himself. In a sense Hadi was his father; he had brought him into the world, hadn’t he?

“You were just a conduit, Hadi,” the Whatsitsname replied. “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.”

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?”

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.

The Whatsitsname talked about the night he met the drunk beggars. He said he tried to avoid them, but they were aggressive and charged toward him to kill him. His horrible face was an incentive for them to attack him. They didn’t know anything about him, but they were driven by that latent hatred that can suddenly come to the surface when people meet someone who doesn’t fit in.

The Whatsitsname had been planning something completely different, instead of getting involved in fights with people who weren’t his enemies in the first place.

He was on a noble mission and had to carry it out with as few complications as possible, so after the incident with the four beggars and another incident in which a police vehicle accidentally hit him in the street near the Liberty Monument, he decided not to move around in the open and to avoid people as much as possible.

He had killed Abu Zaidoun to avenge Daniel Tadros, and he had killed the officer in the brothel because he was responsible for the death of someone whose fingers Hadi had taken for the Whatsitsname’s body. He would keep on doing his work till the end.

“He’s killing them all, all the criminals who committed crimes against him.” “And what will he do after that?” “He’ll collapse and go back to how he was before. He’ll decompose and die.”

Hadi himself was on the Whatsitsname’s list. But the Whatsitsname’s time wasn’t unlimited, and he had to complete his mission quickly.

“Leave me till the end,” he said. “I don’t want to live anyway. What’s living to someone like me? I’m nothing, whether I live or die. I’m nothing. Kill me, but at the end. Make me the last one.”

He had found out, for example, that each piece of dead flesh that made up his body fell off if he didn’t avenge the person it came from within a certain amount of time. But if he did avenge someone, then that person’s piece would fall off anyway, as if it was no longer needed.

The Whatsitsname said he needed to replace the parts that were falling off, so he needed new flesh from new victims. Hadi said he would try to help, starting the next day, but in fact he had other ideas. It would be good, he thought, if the Whatsitsname’s body fell to pieces quickly so that he could be done with him and with the terror he inspired.

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.”

“He’s going to interview himself,” he said. Mahmoud now knew for sure that Hadi had lost his recorder, which was worth a hundred dollars. Laughing and cheerful, Hadi seemed like the liar and con artist everyone described him as. But ten days later, Hadi did in fact return the recorder.

The Whatsitsname came across as a physical presence—a real person made of flesh and blood, like Mahmoud or Hadi or Abu Anmar. He wasn’t as Hadi had described him with his fanciful talk.

Two days later Mahmoud gave Saidi an article headlined “Urban Legends from the Streets of Iraq.” Saidi liked it immediately. When Mahmoud did the layout for the magazine, he illustrated the article with a large photo of Robert De Niro from the film of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Mahmoud wasn’t happy when he got a copy of the issue, especially when he saw that his headline had been changed. “Frankenstein in Baghdad,” Saidi shouted, a big smile on his face.

But he kept staring at the cover of the magazine, with Robert De Niro’s grim face looking out at a world that turned on him, and he wondered what the Whatsitsname, if he really existed, would make of the article. Would he see it as another misunderstanding of his prophetic mission?

He spoke to some local guy with a wild imagination. It’s a simple story, my friend. The guy’s a liar,” said Saidi.

THE BOYS A LIAR!

“I DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME. I might come to an end and my body might turn into liquid as I’m walking down the street one night, even before I accomplish the mission I’ve been assigned. I’m like the recorder that journalist gave to my father, the poor junk dealer. And as far as I’m concerned, time is like the charge in this battery—not much and not enough.

“Is that junk dealer really My father? Surely he’s just a conduit for the will of our Father in heaven, as my poor mother, Elishva, puts it.

She’s a really poor old woman. They’re all poor, and I’m the answer to...

I am the answer to their call for an end to injustice and for revenge on the guilty.

“When I’m alone, deep inside I’m not very interested in having humans listen to me or meet me, because I’m not here to be famous or to meet others.

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.

“Look, the battery’s died.” “Why are you interrupting me? What’s wrong with you?” “The battery’s dead, my lord and master.” “Yes, no problem. Leave the building and don’t come back till you have a big bag full of batteries.”

The djinn told him that he had one important mission left. He told him about me and gave him a description of my appearance.

His role is now to make sure it’s safe for me to move around inside Dora and out into other parts of Baghdad. He does this with dedication and selflessness because he says that I represent vengeance against anyone who has wronged him.

“There are three other people who are less important: the young madman, the old madman, and the eldest madman.

It was the young madman who kept interrupting me when I started recording this.

“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.

“The old madman thinks I’m an instrument of mass destruction that presages the coming of the savior that all the world’s religions have predicted.

“My preparations include dressing in clothes appropriate to the place I’m heading to, always provided to me by the three madmen, and applying makeup to hide the scars and bruises and stitches on my face. The Sophist usually does the makeup, and he gives me a mirror so I can see the results before I go out.

“When I got up the next day, I found that many parts of my body were on the ground, and there was a strong smell of rot. None of my assistants was nearby—they’d gone up to the roof to escape the smell.

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.

‘You’re just trying to frighten us. The savior doesn’t die.’

Sticky fluids were oozing from my wounds and from the fissures where the stitches were coming apart. I needed a complete overhaul. In fact—and this was a conclusion that took me by surprise—I needed new spare parts.

“I looked at my assistants. All looked horrified except for the Magician, who said: ‘Nice young men. What a waste!’ Then he added, ‘Aren’t they victims too?’ “‘I don’t know. Ask the Sophist,’ I replied. “‘They’re all victims, as far as I can see,’ said the Magician.

“The eldest madman cut out the rotten parts of my body, and the other two madmen—the young one and the elder one—stitched in the new parts.

“I killed the Venezuelan mercenary in charge of the security company responsible for recruiting suicide bombers who had killed many civilians, including the guard at the Sadeer Novotel, Hasib Mohamed Jaafar.

I killed the al-Qaeda leader who lived in Abu Ghraib and who was responsible for the massive truck bomb in Tayaran Square that killed many people, including the person whose nose Hadi picked up off the pavement and used to fix my face.

“My list of people to seek revenge on grew longer as my old body parts fell off and my assistants added parts from my new victims, until one night I realized that under these circumstances I would face an open-ended list of targets that would never end.

“Time was my enemy, because there was never enough of it to accomplish my mission, and I started hoping that the killing in the streets would stop, cutting off my supply of victims and allowing me to melt away. “But the killing had only begun.