Book of Accounts (Installment #7)

VI

From the early days of the Ba’ath, the existence of al Amn al Khas, the Special Security, was known to the public. Of course, al Amn, was secret; secrecy is the blood of power. How can there exist any security or order without silence and hiding? Society would fall into anarchy. But even within secrets there lie hidden parts. An Iraqi family not touched by Ba’ath secret organs was rarer than bird’s milk, but no one knew all the various secret divisions and groups within Iraq. Even Abdul Rahman could not give a description of the responsibilities or activities of every secret department. And at the same time, other secret divisions would have found the activities of the unit Abdul Rahman had joined surprising. Jihaz Haneen was the fruit of the almond hidden beneath many outer skins. The public, of course, knew nothing of Jihaz Haneen but neither did countless others who themselves served the Ba’ath State in the countless secret organs.

For many years, until Zubeida was seven years old, Abdul Rahman remained officially assigned to the Finance Control Division of the Ministry of the Interior. His salary was paid by that division, and if anyone consulted the Ministry directory they would find him listed as a Senior Clerk. However, in actuality, three months after the meeting in the Party office, Abdul Rahman received an invitation from a man he’d never seen before. He used the name Latif and spoke with a stutter. In a shop next to the gate of the Ministry, he spoke for just two minutes but Abdul Rahman smelled sweet rum on his tongue. ‘On Thursday evening you will report to the P-p-p-party office at four p.m.. N-n-notify your family that you are being requested to undertake a special tr-tr-tr-tr-tr-training session in the south for three weeks. Your chief in the Financial C-c-c-control Section has been notified not to inquire into your absence. On Thursday you will file an of-f-f-f-ficial request for leave due to family emerg-g-g-g-ency. Understand?’ The moment Abdul Rahman nodded Latif disappeared into the street. This was the way of Haneen.

For the briefest of moments Abdul Rahman was stung by fear, but then he thought: Why should I fear the State? I have been selected for this task, not by Faris but by fate. Who would negotiate with Fate?

As instructed by Latif he arrived at the Party office on Thursday. Before he climbed the steps a soldier beckoned him to a bus and barked, ‘Sit. Wait.’ Abdul Rahman recognised some faces from the previous meeting, months before, but said nothing to any of them. Neither did they acknowledge him. They sat in the bus for three hours. Only after dark did they start making their way through the streets, past the university in the south, then, an hour later, by the racecourse and through al Azamiyah just near Abdul Rahman’s small flat in the north. Wathaba Square, near the centre of town where the journey had begun, was full of late-night shoppers. When the bus turned north at Rutbah early in the morning, Abdul Rahman knew the Syrian border was close by. Wherever they were, for the next three weeks he slept, ate and bathed with the thirty others from Tikrit and Samarra. Workers mostly. Only one or two had more education than Abdul Rahman. Major Walid and other army officers with starchy expressions and wrinkled green uniforms stayed with them throughout the three weeks. And near the end, Saddam’s half-brother Barazan visited and congratulated everyone for completing the training.

What a strange training! Not an eye was laid on a book or sheet of paper. Early the first morning they were shown to a room; everyone slept together on the floor with only a thin goat’s wool blanket over a grass mat. Immediately afterwards they were led to another room: no chairs, no tables, just more grass mats, where they were lectured for two days. For hours without rest, Major Walid spoke about the duty of the people of Tikrit to support the Revolution and the urgency of pledging their ‘superior’ loyalty to Iraq, the Ba’ath Party, and above all else, to Saddam Hussein.

Abdul Rahman signed the application for membership in the Ba’ath Party, but he never attended more than a half dozen meetings in his life. Membership was a formality. To refuse would have been not only foolish, but unthinkable. He had been brought to this place not to exercise his freedom of choice, but to learn and to be moulded. Major Walid and the man whom Faris had mentioned, Petros Zalil, told them a history of the Ba’ath Party and of Saddam’s role in making the Revolution a success. Petros Zalil explained the work of Jihaz Haneen, and by the second day the recruits had vowed upon their death never to betray its existence; they signed a document, each in front of the other, and photos were taken of the occasion. Abdul Rahman felt proud.

After the signing ceremony Petros Zalil explained that, ‘Jihaz Haneen is the most sequestered and precious organ of the state. The Ba’ath party is the head, Saddam Hussein the heart, but you, Jihaz Haneen, are the eyes. It is to you, the vision of the Iraqi nation, that responsibility for the ultimate and ongoing success of the Ba’ath revolution and society falls. Within the nation and all of its multifarious institutions, the military, the diplomatic corps, the universities and the courts, even within the Party, there are those who wish to sabotage the aims of Comrade Michel Aflaq and the Ba’ath. But in those same institutions are core cadres and persons similar to yourselves, selected for their loyalty, and perspicacity, and Arabness, who have been charged with vigilantly uprooting these weeds.’

Petros Zalil impressed Abdul Rahman by the strong, unusual, and long words he used. So long, in fact, that at times Abdul Rahman didn’t follow the speech. But though his words were unique, Zalil was a man of unremarkable appearance except for a hawkish nose and a small black mole just below his right temple. Not a Muslim, his family had migrated from Lebanon during the Turkish times and settled in Tikrit.

‘Within the secret organisations we are constructing secret organisations.’ He was young but his words would have perplexed even the most experienced man. ‘Of these, the most clandestine and most covert is Jihaz Haneen, the Instrument of Yearning. From today you will have but one yearning and one aspiration: the protection of the heart of Iraq, Saddam Hussein al Tikriti. The revolutionary role of Jihaz Haneen is to observe without blinking, across the horizon and beyond, those closest, and therefore most dangerous to the eminent leader of the redoubtable Arab nation, Comrade Saddam Hussein. No one, no matter how beloved can be shown mercy. And no event, however trifling, can be connived at if it threatens our dear nation’s heart.’

Early on the third morning, while it was still dark, Abdul Rahman and four others were taken from their sleeping mats to an unknown place in the desert. There was no moon, and the clouds covered even the stars. They wore only their bedclothes; the sharpness of the cold air numbed their toes and fingers. Some unseen men dragged them from the jeep and without warning began beating them with sticks and heavy rubber pipes. Kicking and slapping and beating. For more than one hour. So intense was their fury, that Abdul Rahman’s face was black and bloody. While beating them, the men, Abdul Rahman didn’t know who they were, called them ‘dogs’ and ‘pigs’ and so on. Naturally, Abdul Rahman tried to fight back, but this only heated their anger. Two of them held him in the sand as another man — Abdul Rahman could see his crooked farmer’s fingers — was dragged in front of him. The man’s right eye was closed with blood. He shivered like the rest of the men. ‘Kick the dog!’ one of the men holding him yelled. The bleeding man didn’t respond. He was frozen in fear. Someone kicked him from behind and he fell on to Abdul Rahman like he was trying to catch a frog. Abruptly, he was yanked to his feet. ‘Kick the dog, shithead!’

This time he did.

He landed a heavy boot in Abdul Rahman’s side. Again and again. Then he stopped.

‘Who told you to stop, swine? Eh? Speak up! A donkey that doesn’t like to kick? Kick the fucking dog!’

They were screaming at him, but the man stood like wood. He was weak. Abdul Rahman felt his own anger grow against the man. No one expected to be attacked like this, but Abdul Rahman understood quickly that the real training had begun. He wanted this weakling to kick him with all his energy and to not stop, but instead the farmer fell to his knees and wept.

Whoever was holding Abdul Rahman let go, and pounced on the crying man. From behind, a thick bamboo stick struck Abdul Rahman’s head. ‘Get up, mangy dog. On your feet!’ He did so.

‘Give the donkey a drink. He must be thirsty. Is that why the donkey has stopped kicking, eh?’ Abdul Rahman didn’t understand the order. Four burly men took turns slapping the weak farmer who was no longer shameful of his tears and sobbed like a woman. Abdul Rahman looked around. He, too, was slapped.

‘Go on! Piss! Donkey’s crying for a drink.’ The man who had been kicking Abdul Rahman was now lying with his eyes closed and the terror beneath his skin made his hairs stiffen. Abdul Rahman pulled aside his nightclothes and urinated on to the teary face.

The men laughed. ‘Good doggie!’

Abdul Rahman’s body, in pain until he pulled out his dick, turned numb. He fell into the sand, someone tied his hands behind his back and he watched as his three companions were made to do similar things as he had just done to the crying farmer. His bedclothes were torn and bloody. The attackers left as the sun rose, but before they sped off in the jeep, a man Abdul Rahman had seen in the Party office (he remembered his limp) addressed them calmly, ‘You are dogs of the Republic. Nothing more worthless exists on this earth. Only Saddam and the Ba’ath will give you food to eat and treat your wounds.’

Without transport, they sat on the desert floor blinking at each other like starving vultures, but unable to speak or move. The fellow with the crooked fingers died soon after the jeep left. The others discussed whether to dig a grave for him, but in the end they just threw some sand over his wet, bloody face. Who had strength to dig? To find the camp was no difficult task, although their bodies, especially their feet and heads, hurt with each step. The tracks of the jeep were visible in the sand so they hobbled along, a disgusting sight, until the tracks came to a dirt road. The camp was only a few kilometres away, but because of their wounds, the day was nearly over by the time they returned. They were given a bowl of rice with salt and one glass of water for their meal.

For the remainder of the training this type of behaviour was alternated with luxury. The following day they were left alone. Food, plentiful with meat and fruit, was abundant. They listened to the radio and read magazines. Then followed two or three days of deprivation and abuse. From early morning to late in the evening Abdul Rahman and his fellows were shouted at, insulted, and beaten like toy drums. By the time he returned to Baghdad he hardly knew his name; he had become accustomed to ‘fool’, ‘dirty villager’, ‘cock-lover’, ‘mother’s cunt’. Some nights they were not permitted to sleep more than fifteen minutes. Each time the torment stopped they were shown a photo of Saddam and made to bow. Or they were forced to recite a passage from Aflaq’s books about Arab national character over and over again, out loud, as if they were cheering on their favourite football team. At last on the twentieth day, all mistreatment ended. Saddam’s half-brother, younger than Abdul Rahman, ‘rescued’ them from their tormentors. He congratulated them on their loyalty and Arab strength. ‘Saddam is not only your brother and leader he is your father and mother. He has sent his personal best wishes and congratulations to each of you.’

Before they returned to Baghdad Abdul Rahman was given his new assignment: Interrogator with an office at Qasr al Nihayah, the Palace of the End. It is closed now, but in those days it was the worst dungeon in Iraq. Abdul Rahman never returned to the Finance Control Division.

 VII

The shed was a vacuum. It seemed as if wind had never blown across this desert, which stretched to a horizon of tired hills near Afghanistan. Abdul Rahman hadn’t seen the fat man for five days. A guard with a moustache that covered nearly half his face filled the water container once a day and twice a day handed Abdul Rahman his rations. Things had improved in that way. Three chapatis, half an onion, potato curry most nights, but with the heat Abdul Rahman’s appetite had disappeared. He hadn’t slept for three nights but his mind was irritatingly active.

He wondered of the others in the lockup. Still there? At least I have this place to myself. He thought of the boy with glasses and of him being in Norway. Abdul Rahman could not recall ever having seen a picture of Norway, and the idea of the boy in a land full of white people, some place strange as another planet, made him smile.

He had a narrow view of the world beyond the bars of his window. Two buses pointed in opposite directions, like lumps of sugar covered with ants; people pushed big round bedding rolls, brass pots, and string beds through the windows. After storing their belongings men clambered on to the roof and waited for the journey to begin. Where were they going? A vague feeling of wanting to move on passed through Abdul Rahman. Where will I go?

His mind settled on a memory of her again. But it was a feeble hope. Why then do I stare into every woman’s face as if it were hers? He hadn’t stopped his search even now. Two years had passed, but his eyes still rose involuntarily to gaze with anxious trepidation into the faces of strangers.

Just a few weeks ago he’d been at the gardens around the big tomb in Isfahan. What a fool I was. It was just like her. Exactly her height, and the way she walked was perfect, even though the chador interfered with the movement. He saw her, alone. No Islamic beard and jacket around. She carried a bag, which he thought he recognised, and under her arm was a book. That was so typical of her. Never without something to read. She moved away into the sun which was setting against the minaret. He followed slightly behind on the path to the right of the rosebushes that ran in straight pink lines all around the geometric garden. I should not have hesitated but I was sure that man coming towards me wanted to ask me something. He was a Republican Guard in plainclothes. I was sure. But the man passed by without even a glance. She was too far ahead then. I should not have run after her. Indeed, he should not have. That was what caught the attention of the boy. Abdul Rahman had made an awkward jump over the rose hedge and was reaching out to grab the woman’s arm, when a boy with strong arms and thick weightlifter legs ran between them and gave Abdul Rahman a threatening shove. When she turned around I felt a fool. It wasn’t her and she quickened her steps. She thought I was after her purse.He turned away from the boy, who watched Abdul Rahman until he was sure that he had left the tomb’s garden.

*

The buses were gone. Abdul Rahman watched the moustachioed guard sitting on a bench against the wall of the petrol station. Bank notes flicked in his fingers. A good wad. The man put them into a tattered envelope and then reached beneath his uniform to deposit the envelope in an inner pocket. Three goats, a mother and two bleating kids, marched stiffly across the road and into the sand in search of scrubs. Heat waves made the middle distance seem watery and unstable. The hairy guard was nodding his head in conversation with someone else who was hidden from Abdul Rahman’s view.

The UN will decide who is a refugee and who is on holiday.

UN are not the police. They will ask you simple questions. To help you.

The UN will give you papers. And money. For you the UN is freedom to breathe free.

The UN was a concept as strange as Norway. Like that country, it existed on the edges of Abdul Rahman’s consciousness but only as a word. The UN had offices in Baghdad. The UN made statements against Iraq. Saddam distrusted the UN. And as he sat praying for a breeze to diminish the heat, so did Abdul Rahman. Why should I wait like the goat on Eid, for the knife to slit my throat? Maybe for the boy who wants to go to Norway the UN is not dangerous. For me it is poison. Who is UN to demand answers from me? I am not a criminal.

But he needed protection. He needed the card Fu’ad had mentioned. Why? I have travelled from Baghdad to this place without any such card. Only my wits have kept me alive.

That was true but then he had also had money. Not much but enough to keep the wheels turning and the buses moving forward. But now he was stuck. Even if he was out of the shed and a free man with his wits in top condition, without some money he’d be dead within days. I can’t deny it. I need some notes. But is UN the only source of money? There must be others.

*

Outside the shed door, the guard called out Abdul Rahman’s name as if he was a tiger who needed to be reassured that a human was approaching. Keys jangled against the lock. The mountains were just becoming visible in the early morning light. Breakfast time.

The door creaked open and the guard called out again into the darkness, ‘Abdul Rahman. Get up! Take your food.’

Bread, sliced tomato, and radish fell to the ground with a dull sound. The guard’s head twisted up, and in his confusion he lost his footing. Abdul Rahman’s hand covered the guard’s mouth. His unruly growth of facial hair tickled Abdul Rahman’s palm. The guard watched the Arab with wide frightened eyes. He was taking out a knife. Abdul Rahman removed his hand from the guard’s mouth and clutched the knife. With his other hand he groped inside the guard’s uniform until he felt the wad of notes, which he yanked out as if he were uprooting nasty weeds. The guard started to say something but he reconsidered when he felt the sharpness of the blade against his neck.

Abdul Rahman pulled up the guard’s shirt and cut a long piece of cloth. Then another. One piece of cloth went into the man’s mouth and the other tightly around his wrists. It wasn’t much of a fix, Abdul Rahman knew that. But maybe just enough to do the trick. Fifteen minutes is all I need. And some good fortune. Another cut of the dark blue shirt and the guard’s mouth was covered. Abdul Rahman removed the man’s belt and trussed his legs together.

Within three minutes the tiger was out and the cage locked.

Abdul Rahman ran across the road after an early morning bus that had been parked outside all night. With the bundle under one arm he couldn’t run as quickly as he had hoped, but he managed to jump up on to the back steps of the bus just as it was picking up speed. The conductor looked at him without any surprise and asked where he was going. But of course Abdul Rahman couldn’t say. He tried to remember the town where there was a saint’s tomb. ‘Peshawar,’ he said to the conductor who was shouting at the passengers and shoving them aside as he made his way towards the front of the bus.

The conductor stopped and turned towards Abdul Rahman. Then he laughed. ‘Peshawar?’ He laughed again. He disappeared into the forest of turbans and guns. Where are the women?Only men and odd shaped belongings that didn’t fit under the seats. The conductor’s voice could still be heard, but Abdul Rahman had lost sight of the man.

Two heavily bearded men who didn’t seem to be travelling companions sat on the back bench; Abdul Rahman squeezed into a tiny space between them. After twenty minutes the conductor was back with a grin. ‘Peshawar? No. No.’ His head was shaking back and forth. ‘Quetta.’

Abdul Rahman nodded in recognition and reached for the wad of money in his pocket. Ten dinars in Iraq is enough for most journeys. He peeled off two tenners and handed them to the conductor. The man held up five fingers. Does he want fifty or just five? Abdul Rahman hesitated and looked around for help but the conductor reached in and plucked out one more note. A fiver. He scrawled on a bright pink piece of paper and threw it at Abdul Rahman. ‘Peshawar!’ He still found it funny.

The terrain was rocky and dry. The bus barely crawled as it made its way through hilly passes. Nothing green. Only white heat and brown dirty earth. Camels and rock lizards frozen against the boulders were the only sign of life.

10.15 a.m. Abdul Rahman read the time on the thick, dirty-faced watch of one of the turbans who had fallen asleep next to him. The man snored energetically but the sound was buried under the desperate whine of the bus engine as it moved bitterly up a dry valley wall.

Suddenly, a checkpoint. Three vehicles and a tent and lots of men in blue uniforms with guns. Some sat on a string bed picking their teeth. Others jumped into the bus and began pushing their fingers into the passengers’ belongings. One of the blue uniforms tapped Abdul Rahman’s knee to make way. Abdul Rahman ignored the man and continued to look out into the desert. The man tapped again and gave the knee a slight push. Abdul Rahman stiffened his leg in resistance. The policeman grunted at Abdul Rahman and told him to stand up and when he didn’t, he pulled Abdul Rahman up by his jacket and dragged him from the bus.

Another blue shirt sauntered over and reached for the bundle under Abdul Rahman’s arm but he refused to relinquish the ledger. The bus had jumped into gear and was pulling away. Abdul Rahman stepped forward to get on but the blue shirts held him back and signalled for the bus to keep moving. The one who had pulled him off led him to a rickety table outside a faded white canvas tent and indicated that Abdul Rahman should sit on the ground. Abdul Rahman stayed standing. The bus was out of sight. He was alone with the police. Again.

Hours passed. With only his handkerchief on his head he squatted in the sun like a rock lizard. The police took turns checking all the vehicles going either way. When it wasn’t their turn to check they sat in the tent on the string bed paging through Abdul Rahman’s ledger as if it were a saucy magazine. Their friends came over and together they giggled at some of the pictures; they turned the pages quickly this way and that looking for something more interesting. But it soon bored them and after an hour one of the men wanted to sleep, and tossed the ledger into the dust below the bed. Abdul Rahman felt an urge to jump up and rescue the book, but they had already beaten him. Not much, but who knows what they would do next? Anyway, the sun had sucked every ounce of energy from him. If he couldn’t hold the ledger, at least he wouldn’t let his eyes stray from it and so he stayed where he could see it. Passengers on the other buses thought the man squatting there with a hanky on his head staring intensely into the tent was a complete madman.

More hours passed. The blue shirts had lost all interest in the ledger and in their strange Arab. Abdul Rahman had not spoken a word since being pulled off the bus and this irritated the police. They had discussed him among themselves and concluded he was a criminal but then, when he didn’t move, they decided that maybe he was just a mental case. His book proved it. All those newspapers clippings and writings. The collection of a deluded mind. As he sat in the sun, refusing to eat the oranges they offered him and hardly blinking, their attitude changed. They felt sympathy and one of the policemen tried to convince the others that he should take the Arab to the mental ward at Quetta Hospital himself. But while they were inclined to treat him more humanely they still believed someone with more authority should be told about this strange fish. Messages were passed by every means possible. Lorry drivers and conductors on vehicles going in both directions were given instructions to tell either the DC in Nushki or the Superintendent of Police in Quetta about the Arab, and to ask that someone send further instructions on how to proceed. Or better yet, send someone personally to handle the situation. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Who would respond first? Quetta or Nushki?

Around five in the evening a white jeep pulled up at the checkpoint. Abdul Rahman lay sleeping on the string bed. The blue shirts had taken him in as if he were a wounded and stray dog. His book was wrapped up and lay next to him. In his sleep Abdul Rahman had the feeling that his feet were made of iron and that he would never be able to get up to walk. He opened his eyes to see a man with a red beret shaking his foot. And behind the red beret, smiling like a fox, was the fat man in the baggy pyjamas.

*

The drive back to Nushki in the fat man’s jeep took no more than two hours. The sun was still bright when they pulled into the gates. But the sun had set and disappeared for many hours and was starting to rise again when Abdul Rahman was pushed back into the shed from which he’d escaped just twenty-four hours before. This time the leg irons were not removed. His hands were free, but for what reason he didn’t know because there was no water or jerry can to lift. The ledger had been taken from him the moment the fat man’s men had started to beat him. With thick bamboo poles. For an hour at a time. The man with the big moustache was especially vigorous, whirling the bamboo high over his head before landing it on the Arab’s back and stomach. The fat man disappeared. What did he care? If the UN asked what had become of the Arab asylum seeker, who would question that he had escaped and run back into Iran? This is the desert after all. You can’t patrol every square metre of it every minute of the day.

At the end of the first day, Abdul Rahman was given two cups of water and a soft black banana. One guard held the cup to Abdul Rahman’s swollen lips but left the rotting banana for him to figure out. All the while another guard held his rifle in Abdul Rahman’s face. The following morning he received the same ration, but no banana. The guards held their noses because the smell of urine was all over Abdul Rahman, but they still didn’t take him out to piss. He barely opened his mouth to take in the water, but the guards knew he was hungry. Why was his stomach growling so loudly then, if it didn’t crave food? When they locked him in for another night they twisted their moustaches and smirked.

If they had stayed in the shed with Abdul Rahman, the guards would have thought he was dead. His eyes lay partially open but showed no light. Flies buzzed around his head and sat on his lips, but he made no move to bat them away. In fact, the only sign of life was the irregular, ever-so-slight movements of the Arab’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed and gasped for moisture. But the body is only the outward manifestation of life. Inside, Abdul Rahman’s mind had become alive with the beatings and deprivation. Years of maintaining his ledger, hours of reading and memorising the pages, absorbing each detail of his relatives’ lives as if he were studying the lives of the saints, had sharpened and fired his imagination. Lying on the oily floor his body seemed to belong to another. His mind watched the broken man on the floor for a time, without any pity, and then soared into another realm.