Baghdad Fixer Read Online Free PDF Page A

the city and the rapid gunfire, which could be coming from anywhere.
     
    We fold ourselves back into the car, Baba and myself and two of my cousins from around the block who agreed to come along with us, because they are young and look intimidating in comparison to us. The graveyard where we left Noor gets smaller, until its new damp mounds, each brown knoll a mark of someone else who has just been buried without warning, without time to prepare, are like little molehills.
     
    We turn towards the 14th of Ramadan Street, a shopping high street, because we are going to pick up Mum and Amal before going back to Noor’s neighbourhood. But as we move closer we see a world convulsing. Waves of people running, stealing, destroying. They are shouting and laughing and carrying outside things that belong inside, moving about a whole animal kingdom of stolen goods. We see them circling wider like a slow-moving swarm, fleeing as beasts of burden in different directions, and when we realize the scope of what is happening, Baba curses and says we have to turn around. While he makes the U-turn, through the rear window the rest of us watch an airborne bazaar — men with televisions and stereos and ovens and typewriters and pots, moving through the atmosphere as though it were perfectly natural. Air conditioners are hoisted high with their wires trailing like tails. Coloured office chairs fly down the street like fish in a stream. Filing cabinets spit out fluttering papers like the feathers of a dying chicken. Clusters of men are carrying desks and water coolers, refrigerators and vases, computer screens and paintings. A man falls as the crowd passes him by without anyone stopping to help him.
     
    Cousin Khaled is twisting and lurching in his seat and he says we should go back to see what’s happening, but Baba clucks no so Khaled says, “Just to watch!” And then my father slams on his brakes and pulls over and turns around and asks Khaled if he wants to get out. And Munib, who is two years older, which puts him at about twenty and who has been silent the whole morning, glares at his younger brother like he might smack him and says, Y’alla, go ahead, get out and get yourself something. And Khaled says no, forget it, and turns his head away from us, either ashamed or annoyed.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    At Noor’s house, Baba pulls up and parks behind the other cars waiting outside. One of the neighbours points to Adnan’s house next door, indicating that the mourners are gathered there. I suppose Adnan’s house might be bigger but it just now occurs to me that this might be purposeful, an attempt at relief. To sit in the place where we sat only yesterday? I’m not sure how they can ever have a normal day in their own home again.
     
    I look at Baba, overweight and close to sixty, a time in his life when things should be getting easier. He sits behind the steering wheel with eyes shut. He puts his hand over his glasses as if to shield his sight, although we’re not even in the sun.
     
    Baba rubs his eyes beneath his glasses. “She might have been our daughter-in-law, right, Nabil? She might have been the mother of your children. What a waste.”
     
    I open the car door without answering him.
     
    We settle in to mourn with Noor’s family, and there is a lot of food on the tables put out by the women, though no one eats it. Soon after we arrive, my mother and Amal walk in, and my father is a little bit angry with them for taking a chance and travelling by taxi. My mother shakes her head at him and hisses, “What else could we do? Sit at home because you didn’t come back for us? We came for Noor, Allah yarhamha .”
     
    I sit on the floor of the salon with all the other men while the women sit in an inner room behind us, closer to the kitchen. I listen to the crying and I know it would be good if I could cry, too. It would please Noor’s family to see me cry, offer a tearful tribute to my would-be bride. But inside I feel only sad