The Iraqi Christ

The Dung Beetle

Doctor, there are stories for children and very short stories for sick people who no longer have much time. There are stories for the beach, that is to say, summer stories for women reclining in the sun topless, lazy stories about the excrement of reality, stories for the elite, for boring times, for pregnant mothers, for prisoners. I can’t write a story but I can tell a story. I crave incessant talk… I have a flock of sparrows inside me… ha!

The doctor had been driving to his mother’s house in a small town close to the capital. The road was slippery, because the previous day the sun had suddenly emerged from the great tent of gloom pitched above Helsinki and had melted the snow, which then turned to ice. The newspapers carried photographs of the smashed car after it had collided with the front of a school bus in which nine children were burned to death and others seriously injured. The doctor was also killed. His body had been cut in half, as if by a chainsaw. He was a good man of a sober disposition. He had been my psychiatrist for more than a year and a half.

The dung beetle, which lives in the deserts of Africa, makes small balls of dung, lays eggs in them and buries them underground. It takes care of them till they hatch. I’m reading about insects in a thick encyclopaedia and grieving over the state of humanity. I sometimes dream I’ve turned into a dung beetle foetus buried underground and that I’m now inside an egg. I imagine that the pain is a giant, warm-hearted beetle that has become my mother.

This morning, along with the pizza adverts and the free newspapers that come through the letter box, I received a letter from the hospital. A fine of 27 euros because I missed an appointment with the new doctor two weeks ago. Well, do I deserve such punishment? After that, something else bugged me: I realised it has been ten years since I picked up the telephone to ask after my mother and brothers, when I know very well what hell they’re going through. Other bugs of every shape and form trap the air in my head.

The man began to examine his chunky heart from every angle, and ask why from an early age he had started wrapping it in a thick layer of cement and iron. He didn’t find the answer, just mysterious feelings that didn’t help him explain why his heart was so hard and why he was constantly running away from the past. But didn’t he want to choose his life for himself and to be his own master? Here he is now, living in a beautiful flat in Helsinki, and in one year little Mariam will go off to school. His wife has savings from her work in the pizza restaurant and is now thinking of opening a restaurant that serves Iraqi dishes. She had given it serious thought: the waitresses would wear a hybrid uniform, combining elements of traditional Iraqi dress with the type of clothing worn by Oriental dancers. The décor would be traditional. If a permit could be secured, a real stuffed camel would stand or kneel in one of the corners. The food would be accompanied by interludes of oriental music. The floor would be covered with carpets with pictures of Sindbad on them. The incense would come out of an old lamp like Aladdin’s. She had thought of everything that would play into the fantasies that Finns and Western customers in general would have about the land of A Thousand and One Nights. A young Finnish novelist once asked me, with a genuine look of astonishment and curiosity, ‘How did you read Kafka? Did you read him in Arabic? How could you discover Kafka that way?’ I felt as I were a suspect in a crime and the Finnish novelist was the detective, and that Kafka was a Western treasure that Ali Baba, the Iraqi, had stolen. In the same way, I might have asked, ‘Did you read Kafka in Finnish?’

Doctor, we’ve been monitoring the planet DULL WINTER EARTH for several centuries and we’ve established that there’s no one there but the six beings that the space observation cameras have detected. What’s striking is that the six haven’t left the confines of their village on the banks of the red river. This is, in fact, a frozen river but we still don’t know what it’s made of. It looks to us like a river of frozen blood. And from the results of our observations, it seems that one of the six beings is the leader of the group. His house is set apart on the bluff and is shaped like a cup, while the other houses are glass rooms like water bubbles. The houses are close together on a curved line. For years, all we’ve observed of their way of life is the strict routine they perform every day. The five stay at home all the time, while the sixth sits motionless on the edge of the red river. Then the five come out together and head towards the sixth. They surround him and present him with something we can’t see. When they move away to go back to their rooms, the sixth one goes back to his room too. He stays there some time, then goes out and throws something into the river, then goes back to where he sits. We finally decided to wipe them out with laser beams, and we didn’t risk getting in touch with them. I think the time for adventures is over. They belonged to that time that had caused the disappearance of our old Earth. What’s laughable is that among us there’s an old eccentric astronaut who still writes poetry. As you know, our early forefathers on Earth used to engage in this retarded behaviour. The astronaut would say, ‘Those six are God!’ Can you imagine! After so many aeons of existence, after mankind has achieved complete immortality in its triumph over death, there are still people who believe in God. The astronaut must be punished and subjected to prolonged psychiatric treatment. He’s suffering from the belief disease, which is otherwise extinct in this age of ours — the age of eternal voyaging, the second eternal age that lacks any purpose or direction.

But one beautiful calm night the astronaut left his room to go for a space walk. He put on his suit, jumped into space and began to swim slowly, looking at the distant stars. A while later all the astronaut did was rearrange the letters in the planet’s name in his mind and read them as DEATH WILL RETURN.

After this minor linguistic discovery, which some of his colleagues saw as pure hocus pocus, alarm spread among the inhabitants of the galaxy and many conferences were held to look into the possible dangers.

Doctor, that’s why the stories had to be rewritten. Because the word death had stirred up sensations again.

I don’t want to look on serenely and quietly. I’m tired. I want to scream. I’m like any one of you, a mass of schizoid monkeys living in one body. I’m a fish that burns in an oven while it’s pouring with rain outside. Yet another image, and yet more poisons pouring out of my mouth. Smile, Mother, so that the dates ripen. Good, I thought the world was just a coded dream and that I was a symbol hunter who needs a hunting net and a laboratory. The books tricked me before the encyclopaedia of human insects could trick me. And finally the dream for which I had wrecked my life collapsed. I now have two wrecks: my life and the dream. I love you, Mother, and I pray that God will stop tormenting you with vulgar black sadness and that the country will be ruled by an angel with a beautiful bottom. Before he set fire to the children’s bus, the doctor was treating my depression some of the time, and at other times my aggressive and trouble-making mentality. I can’t sleep, Mother. They want to force me to sleep. And you, my brothers, I tell you I’m one of those terrified patients, one of those Kafkaesque mice, a breed that’s chased forever. We eat fast and in fear, we sleep with eyes half-closed. The characters in our nightmares are evil cats and barbed wire traps. By the way, this disease isn’t contagious, but genetic. Before Kafka appeared they used to call our ancestors the sources of evil. They sent them to the temples to exorcise the demons from their heads. As for now, how can we describe our wretched political life?

My wife, my friends and the head of the Association for the Defence of the Unfortunate are all praying for me to sleep and to receive my due in life. They’re right when they feel they are privileged, because those who sleep are kings who are born by day, quietly and in good health, outside the hospital, and they do not know the screams of childbirth. I envy them this peace of mind and graciousness. As for me, you can label me ‘distrustful’, as well as ‘disreputable’, because I can’t submit my spirit to daybreak stealthily and without protection. I’m also faithless, and I intend to announce a new battle with the pharmacy. That’s why I won’t visit the doctor from now on. The trouble is that they stop you drinking alcohol when you’re taking their pills — those insecticides they offer you with a broad grin. The nurse also gave me the telephone number of a ‘suicide paramedic’. Do you think I’m joking? Haven’t you heard of this job? The nurse said, word for word: ‘You can call this number if you feel you’re about to do something dangerous. They’ll come straight away.’ I didn’t believe it when I heard there was an ambulance specially dedicated to the suicidal. But is it to rescue them, or just to satisfy their curiosity, to witness failed attempts at suicide? And what kind of loser would put his head in the noose and then take his mobile phone out of his pocket and call for an ambulance? Okay, okay, okay, I agree to visit the doctor, but on certain conditions: he has to come up with other answers, not the ones I already know. I want convincing answers about my crisis when I wander round the streets at dawn. I want to ask the doctor about that mysterious religious desire that jolts me at such an ungodly hour in the morning.

Thank you, madam. Give me the phone number of your association. Your eyes are beautiful, and this beautiful flower — I mean the earring — is it a daffodil?

Before the doctor was cut in half and burnt the children with his car, I said to him: ‘Doctor, did you know that when I leave the house and the cold air touches my face, I feel this desire? Warm water wells up into my head from unknown springs. I feel lighter and then it’s like I’ve turned into a Buddhist cloud. How can I explain it to you? Look, there’s a seagull snatching a small piece of bread from that group of sparrows and taking it up to the roof of the train station.’

Doctor, I can identify my feeling at that moment as a desire to kiss, to stand in front of the station gate like the people who give out free newspapers and adverts, to stand in the way of people in a hurry and to stop them to kiss their hands, their shoes, their knees, their bags. And if they allowed me to bare their arses for a few minutes, to kiss them too. Excuse me, madam, can I kiss the sleeve of your coat? Please, sir, accept from me this kiss on your necktie. Kisses for free; sad, sincere kisses. And very often, doctor, I don’t just want to kiss people, I want to kiss the vestiges they leave on the pavements: kisses for cigarette butts, for a key that an old woman lost, for the beer bottles the drunks left behind last night, for the numbers on discarded receipts; kisses that combine the maternal instinct with lust, as day and night are combined in my head.

Then suddenly, doctor, these desires evaporate completely, as happens when a clear sky is invaded by a gang of fat and insolent clouds. Something like torture occurs as if a brutal jailor were pulling out my fingernails. Doctor, I feel as if my jaw has turned into an animal’s jaw and a tail has sprouted out of my arse. Doctor, fear runs riot in my throat, which dries up and seeks out a drop of water at any cost, even at the cost of human dignity. Thirst and hatred are mixed up in my head, which turns into a trumpet playing sadistic anthems. So now, all of a sudden, I want to take back those free kisses of mine. I want to cut the balls off that man in a hurry who lights his cigarette at the station gate. I want to dig my nails into the face of that child whose mother is pushing him towards the station. A child to whom they’re teaching travel and fear. Another child, doctor. Another sleepless hiatus between night and day.

Doctor, I was born in Baghdad. My grandfather was a peasant farmer who moved to the city. My grandfather thought the streets were like the waterways in the southern marshes. A car hit him and he was killed. My father was a soldier until he passed away from a stroke. My mother couldn’t read or write. My mother mourned in war and in peacetime. I was sitting one midday in July reading Badr Shakir al-Sayyab’s Rain Song. My brothers had become policemen, jailors and people who pray. So by the rules of authenticity I should write a realistic novel about the life of water, about lamentation and the grandchildren of Ali ibn Abi Talib. I should devote my time to studying tradition in order to understand the endeavours of the lice that make my scalp itch. My grandfather came to the city to carry a picture of the leader. My grandfather who ran away from hunger and mosquitoes.

Doctor, you know there are two types of poison — natural and synthetic — and they are classified according to where they come from or their chemical properties. There are caustic poisons, inflammatory poisons, neural poisons and haematic poisons. The caustic ones damage the tissues directly, the inflammatory ones burn the mucous membranes, and the haematic ones prevent oxygen reaching the blood. I also know that poisons usually reach the body through ingestion, inhalation, stings or sucking. Oleander, jequirity, castor beans, datura, colchicum and hemlock are examples of poisonous plants. Venomous stings and bites are the speciality of scorpions, snakes, stinging fish, and salamanders. The most important symptoms of poisoning, which differ according to how long the poison stays in the body, include the emission of breath with a smell that resembles that of alcohol. You know best, doctor, but let me finish speaking. I was born with this defect — my breath has smelled since I was a child, and the smell is this rotten, vicious tongue. The other symptoms my life has brought me are: dilation and contraction of the pupils, a burning in the throat, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions, delirium, cyanosis of the skin, a defect in feelings of love, fainting or narcolepsy, as well as drowsiness. If someone is poisoned with medicine, you can grill an apple and give it to the victim while he gets to hospital. But cider vinegar is used as an antidote in cases of poisoning with rotten fish or salted mullet or tinned sardines. It is drunk after the stomach has been evacuated through vomiting. There’s no need to panic over bee stings or mosquito bites. We take out the sting and rub the spot with garlic, leek leaves or basil. As for when one human stings another, fellow human, it’s definitely an unfortunate end and we console the victim at the point of death. By that stage not much is needed, just to light a small candle to drive away the demons that might try to tear at the body of the dead, or to blow quickly into the mouth of the dying person, which helps him in those moments to uncover the vast accumulation of delusions by which he lived.

Doctor, I sit in the cafe for hours and hours until my arse hurts. The young woman who was leaning over her papers and writing has gone out to smoke a cigarette in the doorway. Her pen fell when she stood up. I fell in love with the pen, a pure, honest love for a pen lying angry next to the table leg. The pen of a beautiful young woman who’s gone to smoke a cigarette lies there alone, hating its short life. Every movement, doctor, every gesture, however simple or insignificant, gives me the love headache. So I try to look instinctively spiteful. But what does that mean? I don’t know. As you can see, I behave like an alcoholic for whom alcohol no longer holds any pleasure. Didn’t you notice? I’m embarrassed by the idea of these little love stories of mine leaking out to others. Once I told a friend that I thought about the shirt buttons of someone sitting in the cafe more than I did about the country’s wars. I wasn’t pretending to be poetic or mad. But the way he looked at me was like an insult.

Doctor, I’m sure you haven’t heard the story of the poisoned fish. Do you think I’m some madman talking to you about poisons for no reason? In the beginning of the siege years, in 1991, the story of the father and the fish spread across the country. He had bought a large fish, with some vegetables and some pickles. He grilled the fish himself and prepared the salads. Then he ate with his six daughters with tearful eyes and a troubled heart. Of course his daughters didn’t know that he had poisoned the fish. The man couldn’t see any other way to prevent his daughters from turning to prostitution. He sold plastic bags in the market and what he earned wasn’t enough to live on. He died in the certainty that his wife, who was buried in the Najaf cemetery, would understand. Many people didn’t want to call that a crime. But I was thinking about daydreams — the dreams of the man’s daughters as they ate their father’s delicious fish. I don’t know if other people have daydreams when they eat in silence. I know there’s no fixed time for such reveries. That’s what makes them different from ordinary dreams, which are part of a system, though not a democratic one. It’s one of the distinctions of the Daydream Republic. The story of the man was a warning that alarmed people in the early years of the siege. The fish tail on which flies gathered in the rubbish bin wasn’t poisoned. A fat cat took it and fed it to her kittens on the roof of the man’s house. How I wish there could really be such a cat. Any tragedy that isn’t permeated with details invented in an exaggerated and lachrymose way doesn’t deserve to appear in the great tragic theatre. Now do you understand what I mean, doctor? The fish tail is another comma. There’s a bony comma in my head that prevents me from sleeping. You’re right. It’s your turn to talk now, doctor. At the time, people didn’t talk about the kind of poison in the fish. Instead they talked at length about hunger and the honour of their daughters.

Doctor, you want to say that the world can be as white as your shirt. Okay, doctor. And that man is a comma between the words ‘birth’ and ‘death’. But on the honour of your humanitarian profession, doctor, promise to tell me what this empty blank sentence means, and whether the comma is actually necessary.

Doctor, another comma please. Let me go to the bathroom. When I come back, doctor, I’ll tell you about another comma called loneliness. But now let me empty my bowels. I feel as if I’ve drunk a barrel of mud.

Doctor, did you know there are types of mice that start gnawing their tails whenever they get hungry? And the most important mouse I know, which has helped me predict my destiny, is Kafka’s mouse. Have you read it in Finnish, doctor? How can I translate it for you? It’s one of Kafka’s short poisons and its title is ‘A Short Story’:

‘The mouse said, ‘Alas, the world gets smaller every day. It used to be so big that I was frightened. I would run and run and I was pleased when I finally saw the walls appear on the horizon in every direction, but these long walls run fast to meet each other, and here I am at the end of the room and in front of me I can see a trap that I must run into.’

‘You only have to change direction,’ said the cat, and tore the mouse up.

Thank you, doctor.

Now, doctor, please get me out of this dung ball. Please.