Free The Last of the Angels by Fadhil al-Azzawi Page A

“Let’s go have tea at the union.” He led Hameed to the room where Faruq Shamil lived with his wife Gulbahar, right next to his own house. Hameed Nylon burst out laughing and ruffled the evening calm of the Chuqor neighborhood, exclaiming, “What an ass I am!”
    Thus Hameed Nylon found his way to the trade union, for although Faruq Shamil did not work for the oil company, he was a member of the cell that directed the work of the city’s unions. At this session, Faruq Shamil told him to attempt—circumspectly—to interest working men in the Chuqor neighborhood in joining the unions and to put them in contact with the leadership of the workers’ movement in the city. Hameed Nylon disappeared then for a full week. When he returned, he brought with him a list of the names of twenty-one individuals in the Chuqor community—including four oil workers—who wished to join a union. Hameed Nylon apologized that he had not had enough time to contact more people. The men admittedly belonged to diverse professions and included an officer at the rank of second lieutenant, a policeman, three soldiers, and a dervish known in the neighborhood for sticking skewers through his cheeks and swallowing glass. He was a member of the Qadiriya Brotherhood and affiliated with a Sufi lodge located in the Kurdish regions of the city. Faruq Shamil was puzzled to find the name of the thief Mahmud al-Arabi on Hameed Nylon’s roster as well. He asked Hameed gravely, “What did you say to get a person like the thief Mahmud al-Arabi to side with the union?” Hameed Nylon replied, laughing, “Oh, it was easy with Mahmud. I suggested that he should head a union that would embrace all the thieves of Kirkuk, and that was exactly what he wanted.”
    Hameed Nylon had scarcely joined the union and contacted the oil workers when a marked difference was observed in their relationship with the firm, which they held responsible for the injustices they felt, especially after it sacked several employees whom it considered saboteurs. These men eventually fell into the hands of the police, who tortured them with special German-made, nail-pulling pincers that the minister of the interior had purchased himself during his annual holiday in Turkey. This gross attack led the workers to call a strike, since they felt their personal honor had been impugned.
    During the week preceding the oil workers’ strike, neighborhood men, who as a matter of course met each afternoon in front of their homes, noticed a stranger in a dishdasha riding into the community on a bicycle. He traversed the community several times, going back and forth, before stopping in front of the mosque to watch the young men gathering. They had spotted him: “Look! He’s an undercover agent come to spy on us.” Hameed Nylon wanted to challenge and beat the stranger, but Faruq Shamil stopped him: “That’s not how it’s done, Hameed. Wait just a moment.” Faruq Shamil went home. He was gone a few minutes and then returned, laughing. He did not even look at the man, who had taken a seat on the mosque’s bench, withdrawing from his pocket a dark loaf of military-issue bread, which he proceeded to gnaw on greedily.
    A few moments later, the men standing there heard Gulbahar’s voice screaming at the man with the bike, “Dog, scamp, for days now you’ve been annoying women in our community. Don’t you have an ounce of shame or honor?” Before the man could swallow the morsel he was chewing, she pulled off her sandals to beat him. Suddenly the women who had been sitting in front of their homes burst out screaming. Other women left their chores indoors to attack the man, who cried as he fled, “No, by God, I’ve done nothing.” Blows landed on his head from every direction, and the children took part in the screaming and drubbing too. One even caught the man off guard from behind and