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

up among us, without any fanfare, almost on tiptoe, hiding its hand. I was having a cup of tea at the blacksmith’s shop when his little daughter came running in and cried, “Sulayman! Sulayman!”
    “Has he run away again?” the blacksmith asked in alarm.
    “He cut his hand on the gate…. He doesn’t have anymore fingers,” the little girl said between sobs.
    The blacksmith leaped over the low table between us, kicking over the teapot as he passed, and ran to his house. His apprentice rushed out to overtake him, signaling to me that I should follow. A woman’s voice, crying out, reached us from the end of the street. A crowd of kids was already gathering in front of the wide-open patio gate. Sulayman held his wounded hand against his chest and laughed silently, fascinated by his own bleeding.
    The blacksmith commanded his wife to be quiet and to find him a piece of clean fabric. The cries stopped immediately.
    “There are his fingers,” the apprentice said, pointing at two bits of flesh on the ground near the gate.
    With amazing composure, the blacksmith gathered up the two severed phalanges, wiped them off, and placed them in a handkerchief, which he slipped into his pocket. Then he bent over his son’s wounds.
    “We have to get him to the health center,” he said. “If we don’t, the blood’s going to drain right out of him.” He turned to me. “I need a car.”
    I nodded and rushed over to Khaled’s house and burst in on him as he was fixing his little boy’s toy in the courtyard.
    “We need you,” I announced. “Sulayman cut off two of his fingers. We have to get him to the hospital.”
    “I’m awfully sorry, but I’m expecting guests at noon.”
    “It’s urgent. Sulayman’s losing a lot of blood.”
    “I can’t drive you. If you want, take my taxi. It’s in the garage. I can’t go with you. Some people are coming here in a few minutes to ask for my daughter’s hand.”
    “All right, give me the keys.”
    He abandoned the toy and invited me to follow him into the garage, where a battered old Ford was parked.
    “You know how to drive?”
    “Of course.”
    “Help me get this crate out into the street.”
    He opened the garage doors, whistled to the kids lounging in the sun, and asked them to come and give us a hand. “The car’s got an obstinate starter,” he explained to me. “Sit behind the wheel. We’re going to push you.”
    The kids rushed into the garage, amused and happy at having been called upon for assistance. I released the brake, put the gearshift in second, and let the enthusiasm of my bratty assistants propel me along. By the time we’d gone some fifty meters, the Ford had reached a negotiable speed. I released the clutch and, at the end of some quite impressive bucking, the engine roared to life with all its banged-up valves. Behind me, the kids raised a shout of joy identical to the one they used to greet the return of electric lights after a long power cut.
    When I reached the blacksmith’s patio, Sulayman’s hand was already completely bound up in a terry-cloth towel, and there was a tourniquet around his wrist; his face showed no sign of pain. I found this strange. I couldn’t believe that a person would show such insensibility after he’d just sliced off two of his fingers.
    The blacksmith put his son in the backseat and sat beside him. Disheveled and sweating, his wife arrived on the run, looking like a desperate madwoman; she handed her husband a stack of dog-eared pages held together by a rubber band.
    “It’s his medical record. Someone will surely ask you for it.”
    “Very good. Now go back inside and try to behave. It’s not the end of the world.”
    Tires squealing, we left the village, briefly escorted by an urchin band. Their shouts pursued us across the desert for a long time.
    It was about eleven o’clock, and the sun sprinkled false oases all over the plain. A couple of birds flapped their wings against the white-hot sky. The trail