Free Papa Sartre: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) by Ali Bader Page B

exhaustion and fatigue.
    A rusty iron wire encased a lamp hanging from the ceiling of the khan. It swayed above the head of the Kurdish carrier who was responsible for lighting and extinguishing it. Three other Kurds from Irbil and two from Basra worked as gutter cleaners. They often fought over this miserable lamp before falling off to sleep and filling the room with their moans and snores. Their moaning was sometimes interrupted by the sound of cracking bones, insults, and swearing. When they came back to this place at night shivering, coughing, and spitting, they would sit in a corner and smoke their cheap cigarettes. They usually hunched on their legs, like balls, their teeth crackling from the cold and their behinds numb from the humidity. Sometimes they brought a prostitute, who was even more miserable than they, paler and smellier, and with her hair all stuck together. She’d often be cross-eyed, stammering, lame, or crazy. They’d sleep with her in the same dirty bed, one at a time, laughing like mad, shaking their hands and their pale faces. Once done, they’d shout and jump like monkeys around her, give her money, then one after another go to take a piss.
    At dawn Ismail would leave the khan with those failed, broken creatures, exiting from the mangled wooden door of the hotel. They’d all move watchfully, a pack of people who had known nothing but hardship, grief, and moral depravity, swearing, fighting, and stealing. If the police arrested Ismail—for theft or drunkenness or skipping out on his restaurant bill, teasing a girl, or fighting with a prostitute—he would spend the night at the police station, but the inhabitants of the khan would do their duty toward him. They’d treat him with great kindness and generosity, give him money, and bring him food and drink. When he returned to the khan they’d steal his food, drink, and money, and return to their usual selves—dirty, shabbily dressed, hungry, poor, nasty, and most often unemployed. As soon as one of them found work he’d disappear for a while only to return when he lost his job.
    Ismail appeared one day in Mahallet al-Sadriya selling pornographic photographs and pictures of Turkish strippers after having lost his municipal job. He went to Mahallet al-Sadriya every day, in fact, for a particular client who was addicted to this type of photograph. No one paid more money for those photographs than Shaul, though the transactions were never straightforward and were concluded only after lengthy haggling and aggravating delays. Still, he always ended up paying the price Ismail was asking. Lately Ismail had been paying more frequent visits to Shaul’s shop and was spending more time there. He even received money for some photographs he’d brought from one of the Kurds in the khan. The Kurd was a baggage handler at one of Baghdad’s western stations, where he carried the bags of travelers going to Mosul, Basra, or Turkey. Some travelers gave him money, others food, and others gave him dirty photographs to sell. This Kurd was the wealthiest man in the khan. He brought woolen clothes and rare and unique merchandise from Dahuk. He smuggled hash that Ismail ended up getting most ofthe time, either by raiding his stash at night with Abboud’s help, or by buying it for resale to Shaul.
    One day Shaul threw his assistant Salim out of his shop. Salim was a Jew who wore his glasses low on his nose and looked over them at people like a hedgehog. He also spoke through his nose. Salim did not like Ismail. He thought he was a swindler who wanted to take his employer’s money in exchange for worthless paper photographs. This Saturday morning Salim was thrown from the shop and fell on his face in the street. His glasses fell off his nose. Shaul came out behind him steaming with anger. “You betrayed me, Salim! I made you into a human being. Why did you betray me?”
    A couple of days later Shaul was wondering who would replace Salim in the shop. He needed another