The Last Testament

CHAPTER TWELVE

B AGHDAD , A PRIL 2003

Salam had headed to school that morning more out of habit than expectation. He didn’t really believe that his classes would go ahead as normal, but he had gone along anyway, just in case. Under Saddam, truancy from school was, like any other act of disobedience, a risk no one who valued their safety would ever take. Saddam might have been on the run, his statue in Paradise Square toppled for the world’s TV cameras, but amongst most Baghdadis, the caution bred over the course of twenty-four years endured. Salam was not the only one who had dreamed of the dictator rising like Poseidon from the Tigris, drenched and angry, demanding that his subjects fall to their knees.

So he went to school. Clearly others had suffered the same fear: half of Salam’s classmates were milling around outside, kicking a ball, trading gossip. They made no outward show of exhilaration: too many of their teachers were Baathists, apparatchik supporters of the regime, to risk that. Even so, Salam sensed a nervous energy, an electrical charge that seemed to pulse through all of them. It was a new sensation, one none of them would have been able to articulate. Had they known the words, and had they been free of the fear that was bred into them, they would have said that they were, for the first time, excited by the idea of the future.

Ahmed, the class bigmouth, sauntered over, with a quick glance over his shoulder. ‘Where were you last night?’

‘I was nowhere. At home.’ The reflex of fear.

‘Guess where I was?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Guess.’

‘At Salima’s?’

‘No, you dumb ape! Guess again.’

‘I don’t know. Give me a clue.’

‘I was making a fortune for myself, man.’

‘You were working?’

‘You could call it that. Oh, I was hard at work last night. Made more money than you’ll ever see in your whole lifetime.’

‘How?’ Salam whispered it, even though Ahmed was happily broadcasting at full volume.

Ahmed beamed, showing his teeth. ‘At a store packed with the most priceless treasures in the world. They had a special offer on last night: take as much as you want, free of charge!’

‘You were at the museum!’

‘I was.’ The proud smile of the young businessman. Salam noticed the fluff on Ahmed’s chin, and realized his friend was trying to style it into a beard.

‘What did you get?’

‘Ah, now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? But, as the Prophet, peace be upon him, says, “The hoarded treasures of gold and silver seem fair to men”-and they certainly seem fair to me.’

‘You got gold and silver?’

‘And much else that will seem fair to men.’

‘How long were you there for?’

‘I was there all night. I went back five times. For the last four trips I took a wheelbarrow.’

Salam took in Ahmed’s wide smile and made a decision. He would not let on that he too had been at the museum last night, not because he feared the law-there was no law now-or any Baathist punishment, but because he was ashamed. What had he taken from the National Museum but a single useless lump of clay? He wanted to curse God for making him such a coward. For, as always, he had been too meek, holding back from danger and allowing others to barge past him to glory. It was the same on the football field, where Salam never plunged into a tackle, but kept his distance, gingerly avoiding trouble. Well, now that habit had cost him his fortune. Ahmed would make it, he would be a millionaire, he might even escape Iraq and live like a prince in Dubai or, who knows, America.

That evening Salam looked under his bed with none of the fever he had felt when he had checked there that morning. His booty was still in place but now as he pulled it out he saw it as drab and worthless. He imagined Ahmed’s stash of rubied goblets and gold-encrusted figurines and damned himself. Why had he not found those treasures? What had sent him poking around in a dark basement when the dazzling glories of Babylon were there for the taking? Fate was to blame. Or destiny. Or both of them, for ensuring that, no matter what, Salam al-Askari would be a loser.

‘What’s that?’

Salam instinctively doubled over the clay tablet, as if he had been winded. But it was no good: his nine-year-old sister had seen it.

‘What’s what?’

‘That thing. On your lap.’

‘Oh this. It’s nothing. Just something I got at school today.’

‘You said there was no school.’

‘There wasn’t. But I got this outside-’

Leila was already out of the room, skipping down the corridor to the kitchen: ‘Daddy! Daddy! Salam has something he shouldn’t have, Salam has something he shouldn’t have!’

Salam stared at the ceiling: he was finished. Now he would take a beating and for nothing, for some worthless piece of dust. He held the tablet, stood on the chair by his bed and began fiddling with the window. He would chuck this chunk of clay out of the window and be done with it.

‘Salam!’

He turned around to find his father in the doorway, one hand already moving to the buckle of his belt. He moved back to the window, working harder now, his fingers trembling. But it was jammed, it would open no more than an inch wide. No matter how hard he pushed, it was stuck.

Suddenly he felt a hand gripping his wrist, pulling his arm back. He could feel his father’s breath. The two of them were wrestling, Salam determined to get that window open so that he could hurl this damned lump to the ground.

The chair beneath him began to wobble; his father was pushing against him too hard. He could feel himself toppling over, falling backwards.

He landed hard on his backside. He let out a cry of pain at the impact on the base of his spine. But that, he realized, was the only sound. There had been no crash, no shattering onto the stone floor. And yet the clay tablet was no longer in his hands. He looked up to see his father calmly pick it up from the bed where it had fallen.

‘Dad, it’s-’

‘Quiet!’

‘I got it from the-’

‘Shut it!’

What a mistake this had been from beginning to end; how he wished he had never set foot in that museum. He began to explain: how he had got swept up in the fervour of last night, how he had been carried in there with the mob, how he had stumbled on this tablet, how everyone had taken something, so why shouldn’t he?

His father was not listening. He was studying the object, turning it over in his hands. He paid close attention to the clay ‘envelope’ that held the tablet within.

‘What is it, Father?’

The man looked up and fixed his son with a glare. ‘Don’t speak.’ Then he headed out of Salam’s bedroom, walking slowly and with extreme care, his eyes on the object in his hands. A moment later the boy could hear the muffled voice of his father on the telephone.

Not daring to venture out of the bedroom, lest he provoke his father’s anger anew, Salam perched on the end of his bed, thanking Allah that he had been spared a beating, at least for now. He stayed there like that until, a few minutes later, he heard his father open the apartment door and step out into the night. Salam pictured the ancient tablet that had been his for less than a day and knew, in that instant, that he would never see it again.