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

valleys in the distance. On the arid plateau that fled breathlessly southward, the dirt road recalled a dried-up riverbed. A group of youngsters was returning from the orchards, empty-handed and unsteady on their feet; apparently, the little marauders’ expedition had come to a sudden end.
    “Here’s a package for you,” my twin sister, Bahia, announced, placing a plastic bag at my feet. “I’ll bring you your dinner in half an hour. Can you hold out that long?”
    “No problem.”
    She flicked some dust off my collar. “You didn’t go to town?”
    “I couldn’t get anyone to drive me there.”
    “Try again tomorrow, and be more persuasive.”
    “I promise. What’s this package?”
    “Kadem’s little brother dropped it off for you a minute ago.”
    She went into my room to check that everything was in order and then returned to her cooking.
    I opened the plastic bag and drew out a cardboard box held together with adhesive tape. Inside the box was a superb pair of brand-new black shoes and a piece of paper with a few lines written on it: “I wore them twice, once on each wedding night. They’re yours. No hard feelings. Kadem.”

3

    A hostage to its own emptiness, Kafr Karam was unraveling a little more with each passing day.
    At the barbershop, in the café, by the walls, people chewed over the same subjects. They talked a lot and did nothing at all. Their indignation grew less and less spectacular; temperamental outbursts cut some arguments short, while other debates were prolonged by soporific speeches. Little by little, people stopped listening to one another, but something unusual was nevertheless taking place. For the older villagers, the hierarchy remained inflexible, but among the young, it appeared to be undergoing a curious change. After the dressing-down Yaseen had inflicted on Omar the Corporal, the privileges of primogeniture started looking rather shaky. Of course, most people decried what had happened at the Safir, but it inspired a minority made up of hotheads and rebels-in-waiting to assert themselves.
    The elders pretended to know nothing about this incident, which—even though it was not bruited about on the public thoroughfares—nonetheless made the rounds of the village. Otherwise, things followed their usual course with pathetic lethargy. The sun continued to rise when it felt like it and go down as it wished. We remained candied in our little autistic happiness, gaping wide-eyed into space or twiddling our thumbs. It seemed as though we were vegetating on another planet, cut off from the tragic events that were eroding the country. Our mornings featured trivial, routine sounds, our nights unsatisfactory sleep; dreams serve no purpose when all horizons are bare. For a long time, the shadows of our walls had held us captive. We had known the most abominable regimes and survived them, just as our livestock had survived epidemics. Sometimes, when one tyrant had been cast out by another, the new tyrant’s henchmen had descended on us like hunting dogs flushing out game, hoping to get their hands on some prey that could be sacrificed in the public square as a way of bringing the rest of us back into line. Very quickly, however, they grew disenchanted and returned to their kennels, a little shamefaced, but delighted not to have to set foot again in a godforsaken hole where it was hard to distinguish the living from the ghosts that kept them company.
    But as the ancestral proverb says, If you close your door on your neighbors’ cries, they’ll come through your windows. Likewise, when bad luck is roaming around, no one is safe. It’s no use trying to avoid mentioning it, no use believing it happens only to others or thinking all you’ve got to do to keep it away is to stay very still in your corner; too much restraint will eventually set it off anyway, and one morning, there it is, standing on your threshold and having a look around….
    And what had to happen happened. Bad luck turned