The Sirens of Baghdad Read Online Free PDF

the Party informed him that he was forbidden to work as a teacher anywhere in Iraq and that the Mukhabarat had him in their sights. Realizing that his life was in danger, Doc returned to his natal village and played dead until the statues of the Rais were removed from the public squares. Doc was tall and looked rather lordly, even hieratic, in his immaculately clean blue djellaba. Next to him, hunched on a bench, Bashir the Falcon was holding forth at some length. He was a former highway robber who had scoured the region at the head of an elusive band before taking refuge in Kafr Karam, where his booty made him respectable. He wasn’t a member of the tribe, but the elders preferred giving him hospitality to suffering his raids. Facing him were the Issam brothers, two formidable old fellows, who were trying to destroy everyone else’s arguments; they had contradiction in their blood and were capable of totally rejecting an idea they’d advanced twenty-four hours previously should an undesirable ally adopt it. Beyond them, immovable in his corner, sat the eldest of the tribe; his distance from the others was a demonstration of his prominence. The wicker chair he occupied was carried by his supporters wherever he went, while he fingered his imposing beads with one hand and with the other grasped the pipe of his narghile. He never intervened in debates, preferring to voice his opinions only at the end, unwilling to let anyone usurp his right to the last word.
    “They got rid of Saddam for us, all the same,” protested Issam two.
    “We never asked them to,” the Falcon grumbled.
    “Who could have done that?” asked Issam one.
    “Exactly right,” his brother added. “Who could even spit without risking his hide? Without being arrested on the spot for an affront to the Rais and hanged from a crane?”
    “If Saddam tyrannized us, it was because of our cowardice, large and small,” the Falcon insisted contemptuously. “People have the kings they deserve.”
    “I can’t agree with you,” said a quavering voice. The speaker was an old man sitting on the Falcon’s right.
    “You can’t even agree with yourself.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because it’s the truth. One day you’re on one side, and the next day you’re on the other. Always. I’ve never heard you defend the same opinion two days in a row. The truth is, you don’t have an opinion. You climb on the bandwagon, and when another bandwagon shows up, you jump on that one without knowing where it’s going.”
    The old man took refuge behind a look of grim outrage.
    “I don’t mean to offend you, my friend,” the Falcon said in a conciliatory tone. “If I were disrespectful to you, I wouldn’t forgive myself. But I can’t let you unload our faults onto Saddam’s shoulders. He was a monster, yes, but he was our monster. He came from among us, he shared our blood, and we all contributed to consolidating his megalomania. Do you prefer infidels from the other side of the world, troops sent here to roll over us? The GIs are nothing but brutes and wild beasts; they drive their big machines past our widows and orphans and have no qualms about dropping their bombs on our health clinics. Look at what they’ve made of our country: hell on earth.”
    “Saddam made it a mass grave,” Issam two reminded him.
    “It wasn’t Saddam; it was our fear. If we had shown a minimum of courage and solidarity, that cur would never have dared become such a tyrant.”
    “You’re right,” said the man under the barber’s clippers, addressing the Falcon in the mirror. “We let ourselves be pushed around, and he took advantage of the situation. But you won’t make me change my mind: The Americans freed us from an ogre who threatened to devour us raw, all of us, one after the other.”
    “Why do you think they’re here, the Americans?” the Falcon went on obstinately. “Is it Christian charity? They’re businessmen, we’re commodities, and they’re ready to