Free The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra, John Cullen Page A

paths were to cross again later on. He would be the one to raise me in my own esteem, to train me in the basics of guerrilla warfare, and to open wide for me the gates of the supreme sacrifice.
    Soon after Sayed’s departure, Yaseen and his band reoccupied the square. Sullen and aggressive, they were the reason why Omar the Corporal dropped out of sight. Since the incident in the café, the deserter had become a shadow of his former self and spent most of his time shut up in his little house. When he was forced to show his face outside, he crossed the village like the wind and went to drown his shame far from provocations, only to return—generally on all fours—when the night was well advanced. Often, some kids would spot him getting sloshed in the back of the cemetery or find him in an alcoholic coma, his arms crossed and his shirt open on his giant belly. Then one day, without a sound, he slipped away and was seen no more.
    After Sulayman’s funeral, which I didn’t attend, I stayed in my room. Memories of the awful scene tormented me without letup. As soon as I fell asleep, the black GI’s screams would assail me. I dreamed of Sulayman running, his stiff spine, his dangling arms, his body leaning sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other. A multitude of minuscule geysers spurted from his back. At the moment when his head exploded, I woke up screaming. Bahia was at my bedside with a potful of wet compresses. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a nightmare. I’m here….”
    One afternoon, my cousin Kadem paid me a visit. He’d finally made up his mind to detach himself from his rock, and he brought me some cassette tapes. At first, he was embarrassed—he didn’t want to disturb me in my condition. By way of breaking the ice, he asked me if the shoes he’d given me were my size. I told him they were still in the box.
    “They’re new, you know.”
    “I do,” I said. “And more than that, I know what they mean to you. I’m deeply touched. Thanks.”
    If I wanted to get back to normal, he said, I shouldn’t stay shut up in my room. Bahia agreed with him. I had to overcome the shock and resume a normal life. But I wasn’t very eager to go out into the street; I was afraid someone would ask me for the details of what had happened at the checkpoint, and I dreaded the thought of the knife twisting in my wound. Kadem rejected this notion. “All you have to do is tell them to buzz off,” he said.
    He continued to visit me, and we spent hours talking about everything and nothing. It was thanks to him that one evening I screwed up my courage and agreed to leave my lair. Kadem proposed taking a walk far from the village. Halfway between Kafr Karam and the Haitems’ orchards, the plateau made a sudden descent, and a vast dry riverbed strewn with little sandstone mounds and thorny bushes split the valley for several kilometers. The wind sang in that spot like a baritone.
    It was a fine day, and in spite of a veil of dust hanging over the horizon, we enjoyed a superb sunset. Kadem handed me the headphones attached to his Walkman. I recognized the voice of Fairuz, the Lebanese singing star.
    “Have I told you I’ve taken up my lute again?” he asked.
    “That’s excellent news.”
    “I’m composing something at this very moment. I’ll let you hear it when it’s finished.”
    “A love song?”
    “All Arab songs are love songs,” he said. “If the West could only understand our music, if it could even just listen to us sing, if it could hear our soul in the voices of Sabah Fakhri and Wadi es-Safi and Abdelwaheb and Asmahan and Umm Kulthum—if it could commune with our world—I think it would renounce its cutting-edge technology, its satellites, and its armies and follow us to the end of our art….”
    I enjoyed Kadem’s company. He knew how to find soothing words, and his inspired voice helped me lift up my head. I was happy to see him revived. He was a magnificent fellow, one who didn’t deserve