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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Frankenstein in Baghdad, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Lies, and Storytelling
Good vs. Evil
Power, Authority, and Social Divisions
Family, Friendship, and Home
Superstition and Religion
Summary
Analysis
At Aziz the Egyptian’s coffee shop, Hadi tells animated stories, adding realistic details to make his tales more engaging. One day, he tells one of the stories he often recounts, this time for a special group of journalists, including young Mahmoud al-Sawadi. Hadi is in a disheveled state, smells of alcohol, and beings to ramble. After a while, one of the members of his audience leaves, realizing with frustration that his story is based on a Robert De Niro movie.
The Robert De Niro movie mentioned is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), which, like Frankenstein in Baghdad, tells the story of a supernatural creature made of dead people’s body parts. Comparing Hadi’s story to a movie blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, making it easy to believe that Hadi’s story is entirely fictional, and thus discrediting him as a reliable storyteller.
Themes
Undisturbed, Hadi pursues his story, which he left off at the moment of the explosion in Tayaran Square. Mahmoud listens carefully to this story, which he has heard before, only because he wants to see if Hadi will contradict himself. Hadi recalls running out of the coffee shop after the terrible explosion and being hit with the horrific smell of burned plastic and human flesh, which he finds impossible to forget.
Mahmoud’s desire to see if Hadi will contradict himself reveals a central ambiguity concerning Hadi: it is difficult to tell when he is telling the truth and whether he is intelligent enough to invent such a complex story from scratch. Hadi’s mention of the horrific smell after the explosion highlights his humanity: just like any other person, he, too, is vulnerable to the emotional brutality of vicious terrorist attacks.
Themes
In his story, Hadi then walked toward the location of the explosion. The people who were neither killed nor injured—for example because other people’s bodies served as a barrier between them and the bomb—noticed the damage around them: the cut electricity wires, dead birds, and cracked or collapsed buildings. Hadi watched the police arrive and block off the scene, in which injured people moaned and dead bodies, covered in blood, were piled up. At the square, Hadi was looking for a particular object. When he finally saw it, he hurried to seize it and put it in his canvas bag.
The contrast between the shocked survivors and the pile of dead bodies suggests that survival is primarily a matter of luck: some people were lucky enough to be shielded by random objects, whereas others simply happened to be more exposed. This horrific scene highlights the injustice and arbitrary nature of such deaths. People are in agony for absolutely no reason except for being at the wrong place at the wrong time; the people who died had done nothing wrong and those who survived are not morally or physically superior to them in any way.
Themes
Hadi then returned home, to a makeshift house with a single room in the back and holes in the roof. Three years earlier, Hadi and his colleague Nahem Abdaki used it as the center of their operations. They toured the city with a horse-drawn cart, buying old furniture from people. Together, they rebuilt this house, known as “the Jewish ruin,” despite displaying no concrete evidence of Jewish influence. Over time, the two men became full members of the neighborhood. No one knew what their origins were, but so many strangers had come to the neighborhood in the past years that no one was truly an authentic inhabitant.
Hadi’s relationship with Nahem reveals a stark contrast between his past and present life: although he used to have a stable work partner and friend, he is now seen as a lonely, alcoholic storyteller. In addition, the mystery of his house, the “Jewish ruin,” suggests that the neighborhood has retained a form of historical, collective knowledge: they know this house has something to do with the Jewish religion, even though traces of this affiliation are no longer visible. Both considerations suggest that present circumstances do not provide an accurate depiction of people’s identity: only by exploring the past can the true complexity of one’s identity come to life.
Themes
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Later, Nahem married and left the house, even though the two men still worked together. Nahem was in his 30s, 20 years younger than Hadi. The two of them were sometimes believed to be father and son. In stark contrast with Hadi, Nahem was strictly religious and did not drink, smoke, or have sexual relations before marriage. He was responsible for placing a framed copy of the Throne Verse of the Quran on the wall, in order to “baptize” the house.
Nahem and Hadi’s friendship suggests that, despite the sectarian conflict ravaging the city, religious divisions do not necessarily impact people’s individual behaviors. Despite adopting a strict attitude toward religious behavior, Nahem does not impose his views on Hadi but, rather, accepts his friend as he is, without trying to change him.
Themes
Nahem died many months before the explosion in Tayaran Square. He was killed by a car bomb targeting the office of a religious party, and both he and the horse drawing the cart were killed. After the event, his flesh could not easily be differentiated from the horse’s.
Nahem’s violent death is presented in an absurd light. Despite Nahem’s religious tolerance and pacifism, he is killed as a result of religious conflict in the city. In addition, the difficulty to differentiate his body from the horse’s suggests that, through such violence, people have been completely dehumanized. In death, their flesh is comparable to that of animals. This event highlights the injustice and senselessness of violence in the city.
Themes
This tragic event had a severe impact on Hadi, who grew aggressive whenever he saw vehicles belonging either to American forces or to the Iraqi police and National Guard. Afterwards, Hadi returned to his usual self, but his personality remained divided in two, as if he had “two faces”: despite his usual good cheer, he also experienced bouts of depression. This led him to drink more often and to neglect his appearance, letting his beard grow long and his clothes get dirty. Now, no one is allowed to mention Nahem Abdaki, because this leads Hadi to grow aggressive and to insult his interlocutor.
Hadi’s aggressive behavior toward the authorities in power reveals the local population’s helplessness before the violence perpetrated in their city. Hadi’s anger does not suggest that he supports one group over the other, but rather that he is indignant about the violence that the country’s current administration has failed to curb—and maybe even fosters. Hadi’s emotional reaction also reveals a vulnerable side of his personality: although he presents himself as a carefree, joking storyteller, he, too, is profoundly affected by the human devastation taking place in the city.
Themes
Hadi resumes his story about the nose in his canvas bag. Mahmoud is disappointed to note that Hadi has remained consistent, not once contradicting previous versions of the story. In the story, Hadi walked from Tayaran Square to the shed at the back of his house, where a large corpse lay. Blood and various liquids leaked from the body, whose skin did not have a homogeneous color. With shaking hands, Hadi placed the blood-covered nose, freshly removed from the scene of the explosion, onto the corpse’s face, which was missing a nose. The new nose fit perfectly, as if it had always belonged there. Hadi knew that he now had to sew the nose onto the face, a task he found horrifying.
Mahmoud’s conclusion that Hadi’s story has not changed suggests that the junk dealer’s story is probably true: had Hadi invented it, he would have been inclined to forget or modify certain details. The absolute horror of the scene Hadi describes makes the storyteller seem deranged: why, if not through madness, would anyone take part in such an activity? At the same time, this disturbing scene mirrors a variety of disturbing events in the novel, such as the effects of terrorist bombings. This suggests that Hadi’s actions might be somehow related to the violence in the city: collecting body parts might be a way for him to cope with traumatic events, such as the death of his friend Nahem.
Themes
Hadi explains that he intended to bring the corpse to the forensics department. His goal, he argues, was to show that human beings should not be treated as trash. Out of separate body parts, he created a full corpse, which he called the Whatsitsname, to prove that these victims deserve a respectful burial. After sewing the nose onto the face, Hadi left to negotiate a business transaction. He hoped to buy furniture from an old man in the Karrada neighborhood who was planning on leaving the country to join his girlfriend in Russia. Although the man wanted to sell his house, he found it difficult to separate himself from his furniture, which had sentimental value.
Despite the revolting and seemingly unexplainable task Hadi has taken part in, the junk dealer’s motives are surprisingly noble: he wants the Whatsitsname to serve as a political symbol, meant to honor the victims of terrorist attacks and to denounce the violence that the state has failed to contain. Hadi’s indignation, from the margins of society, suggests that everyone—regardless of religion, ethnicity, or social class—handles grief and trauma in different ways, but that it can profoundly affect any member of the population.
Themes
After receiving no answer at the old man’s house, Hadi he decided to return home by foot, collecting empty cans on the way, which he could later sell. He passed in front of the Sadeer Novotel hotel and collected empty cans from the restaurant’s trash. On the restaurant’s television, Hadi saw a government representative announce that terrorists had planned 100 car bombings that day, but that the government succeeded in avoiding all but 15 of them. The 16th explosion, however, would soon take place.
The government’s claim to have avoided dozens of car bombings is impossible to verify, given that those attacks never took place. In the context of so much political manipulation and uncertainty, the government’s boasting can be seen as a strategy to instill trust in the population, so that they might stay hopeful about the fact that the government is actually succeeding at containing the violence.
Themes
Hadi usually tried to avoid passing in front of this hotel, because the guards yelled at him. However, he was preoccupied about the corpse at home, and concluded that, instead of keeping the corpse whole, he would separate the body parts and disperse them throughout the city.
Hadi’s decision to undo his past actions shows that he is aware of how repulsive—and, to a certain degree, senseless—his corpse-building enterprise is. This suggests that he is not as crazy as people believe him to be, but also that he knows that his actions are unlikely to have any positive effect on putting an end to the violence in the city.
Themes
When Hadi passed in front of the hotel, the guard approached him, to make sure this man with a bag full of aluminum cans was not dangerous. While telling his story, Hadi then turns to Mahmoud, in his audience, so that the young journalist can confirm this episode: a garbage truck was driving toward the hotel gate. The truck soon exploded, lifting Hadi into the air and causing him to land farther away. Mahmoud, present on the scene, helped Hadi get up but Hadi, too shocked to know how to react, started running away.
Despite his reputation as a liar, Hadi knows when aspects of some stories are difficult to believe: for this reason, he seeks confirmation from a reliable person in his audience, Mahmoud the journalist. This suggests that Hadi was indeed close to two explosions that day. Instead of making Hadi’s story less believable, this event highlights the frequency of terrorist attacks in Baghdad.
Themes
Having survived other explosions, Hadi knew that, despite feeling pain all over his body, his injuries were minor, because he had not been hit by shrapnel. When he reached his home, he fell asleep on his bed, perhaps sinking into a temporary coma. The next day, after waking up at noon, he realized that the corpse was gone. Confused and panicked, he searched for it everywhere. To his impatient audience, he admits that he does not know where the corpse went.
Hadi’s past experience with explosions once again emphasizes that what might appear unthinkable in other parts of the world—witnessing not one, but a large variety of terrorist attacks—is part of Baghdad residents’ everyday reality. The disappearance of the corpse symbolizes the unpredictable consequences of violence, whose trauma—or further violence—lie largely beyond human control.
Themes
