Power, Authority, and Social Divisions Theme Analysis

The shock of Nahem’s death changed Hadi. He became aggressive. He swore and cursed and threw stones after the American Hummers or the vehicles of the police and the National Guard. He got into arguments with anyone who mentioned Nahem and what had happened to him. He kept to himself for a while, and then went back to his old self, laughing and telling extraordinary stories, but now he seemed to have two faces, or two masks—as soon as he was alone he was gloomy and despondent in a way he hadn’t been before.

If the argument was interrupted, Elishva would argue with herself instead or grab hold of one of the women in the church to listen to her fiery sermon about how she refused to leave her home and move to a place she knew nothing about. Father Josiah encouraged her to stay, because he saw it as a religious obligation. It wasn’t good that everyone should leave the country. Things had been just as bad for the Assyrians in previous centuries, but they had stayed in Iraq and had survived. None of us should think only of ourselves. That’s what he said in his sermon sometimes.

Although he had clout in the neighborhood, he was still frightened by the Americans. He knew they operated with considerable independence and no one could hold them to account for what they did. As suddenly as the wind could shift, they could throw you down a dark hole.

But there were two fronts now, Mahmoud said to himself— the Americans and the government on one side, the terrorists and the various antigovernment militias on the other. In fact “terrorist” was the term used for everyone who was against the government and the Americans.

Honestly, I think everyone was responsible in one way or another. I’d go further and say that all the security incidents and the tragedies we’re seeing stem from one thing—fear. The people on the bridge died because they were frightened of dying. Every day we’re dying from the same fear of dying. The groups that have given shelter and support to al-Qaeda have done so because they are frightened of another group, and this other group has created and mobilized militias to protect itself from al-Qaeda. It has created a death machine working in the other direction because it’s afraid of the Other. And we’re going to see more and more death because of fear. The government and the occupation forces have to eliminate fear. They must put a stop to it if they really want this cycle of killing to end.

“It was the Sudanese suicide bomber who caused his death,” Hadi said confidently, trying to exploit the situation to his own advantage.

“Yes, but he’s dead. How can I kill someone who’s already dead?”

“The hotel management, then. The company that ran the hotel.”

“Yes, maybe. But I have to find the real killer of Hasib Mohamed Jaafar so his soul can find rest,” said the Whatsitsname, pulling up a wooden crate and sitting on it.

The Whatsitsname talked about the night he met the drunk beggars. He said he tried to avoid them, but they were aggressive and charged toward him to kill him. His horrible face was an incentive for them to attack him. They didn’t know anything about him, but they were driven by that latent hatred that can suddenly come to the surface when people meet someone who doesn’t fit in.

The young madman thinks I’m the model citizen that the Iraqi State has failed to produce, at least since the days of King Faisal I.

Because I’m made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds—ethnicities, tribes, races, and social classes—I represent the impossible mix that never was achieved in the past. I’m the first true Iraqi citizen, he thinks.

He turned to Mahmoud and said, “Brigadier Majid is one of the people you’ll have to get used to dealing with.”

Mahmoud said nothing but waited for further explanation because he didn’t plan to see Brigadier Majid and would try as far as possible to make sure that kind of meeting didn’t happen again.

“There are people like him in our world,” said Saidi, “and we have to learn how to deal with them tactfully, how to get along with them, how to accept that they exist.”

Yes, for a year or more he’s been carrying out the policy of the American ambassador to create an equilibrium of violence on the streets between the Sunni and Shiite militias, so there’ll be a balance later at the negotiating table to make new political arrangements in Iraq. The American army is unable or unwilling to stop the violence, so at least a balance or an equivalence of violence has to be created. Without it, there won’t be a successful political process.

Anyway, the best way to protect yourself from evil is to keep close to it. I humor him so he doesn’t stand in the way of my political ambitions, and so he doesn’t put a bullet in the back of my head, fired by one of those fat guys with shaved heads, in response to an order from the Americans.

There were people who had returned from long journeys with new names and new identities […]. There were people who had survived many deaths in the time of the dictatorship only to find themselves face-to-face with a pointless death in the age of “democracy”—when, for example, a motorbike ran into them in the middle of the road. Believers lost their faith when those who had shared their beliefs and their struggles betrayed them and their principles. Nonbelievers had become believers when they saw the “merits” and benefits of faith. The strange things that had come to light in the past three years were too many to count. So that Daniel Tadros Moshe, the lanky guitarist, had come back to his old mother’s house wasn’t so hard to believe.

Some claimed it was part of the wall of Abbasid Baghdad and was the most important discovery in Islamic archaeology in Baghdad for many decades. Others ventured to speak, rather boldly, about the “advantages of terrorism,” which had enabled this important discovery. But the Baghdad city authorities ignored all this and took everyone by surprise by filling the large hole with soil. The spokesman for the city authorities said, “We do not take half measures. We’re going to preserve these remains for future generations, and they can judge for themselves how to deal with them. If they decide to demolish the whole Bataween district, that’s their business, but for now we have to repave the street.”

But what if one percent of his story were true? Isn’t life a blend of things that are plausible and others that are hard to believe? Isn’t it possible that Saidi reaching out to Mahmoud was one of those hard-to-believe things?

That’s why Mahmoud didn’t send a hostile response to Saidi’s message, or any other kind of response. He left things in a gray area, like the sky that day, trying to use Saidi’s own style against him, leaving him uncertain.