The Sayyid of Bagdad

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I

The word had been spreading since the ‘Asr prayer that a mass grave had been discovered on the outskirts of Karbala. The muezzin had announced the news from atop his minaret. Broadcast by loudspeaker, his voice had spread throughout the town, resonating more than usual; he, too, was the father of someone who had disappeared.

At his home, the Sayyid(*) appeared calm. After complet-ing his final prostration, he rolled up his prayer mat and placed it in a corner of the room, then took his turban and, putting it on his head, caught the eye of his daughter-in-law, Amina. She was anxious, waiting, like the others, for news of her husband. But her father-in-law's look induced her to stay home, and she did.

The Sayyid went down to the sandy street alone. He had no need to ask for directions. Dozens of people had heard the news and were hurrying, preoccupied with the idea of finally knowing what had happened to a loved one, someone who had been absent for years. As they approached the pit, the procession grew larger. Everyone walked with a muffled tread, their

(*) In the Islamic world, the title of Sayyid (Master) is given to all men descended from the Prophet. The female equivalent is Charifa. The two epithets have the same value: it is a religious title, but more importantly, it is a reverential once, since in Islam, all descendants of the Prophet have the right to a seigniorial title.

features unreadable and their expressions grave; the wails of the women, shrouded in their black abayas, punctuated the silence.

At the exit to the town, in a pit located several hundred meters from the outermost houses, some people were already bustling about, digging in the earth. The troops joined them. Some busied themselves clearing the ground with shovels, while others lifted up the sand with their bare hands. When the first piece of a skeleton appeared, the diggers became vis- ibly agitated. The Sayyid had kept himself apart, watching the gradual exhumation closely. Upon seeing the first remains, he urged the emotional crowd to stand back and let a few young people, who had more strength, take care of the digging. The identification of the bodies would not begin until all the sand had been removed from the pit.

The Sayyid’s suggestions were rarely up for discussion. The tone of his voice — warm and authoritative at the same time — demanded respect, so much so that men and wom- en obeyed, taking their places around the pit, watching, with distraught expressions, the motions of the five young people who continued to dig. Half an hour later, when the bodies, the uncountable bodies, were piling up on top of each other, the Sayyid, with a simple wave of his hand, authorized the crowd to go down and identify them.

It had been three weeks since the Americans had disembarked in Iraq to overthrow Saddam and free the country from the yoke of dictatorship. Once in Karbala, they had had the sense to not go into the city, and remained stationed on the outskirts, not far from the mass grave. They were the ones who had discovered it and given the alert. The Sayyid thought to himself that by calling attention to the presence of a great many grave pits, they were earning the gratitude of the Iraqis, and assuring that the people would have a lasting memory of the abuses of the deposed regime. He noted the skillful way in which they intervened, letting the townsfolk work alone, contenting themselves with providing hundreds of blue plastic bags to transport the bodies.

The first body was identified by a woman: it was her husband’s, of whom she had lost all trace for four years. She recognized him from the gold tooth implanted in his upper jawbone. Her voice faint, strangled by tears, she gave out a barely audible cry of distress. Then it was an old man’s turn to identify his son’s uniform. Teeth, clothing, everything was meticulously examined by those who were now scrutinizing the remains, one by one.

The Sayyid knew that it would be hard for him to identify his son. It had been too long since he had seen him. Standing aside, he waited, listening to the lamenting of some and the begging of others. The many that had not been able to find the remains of a loved one were leaving, disappointed, the bitter- ness visible on their faces. When the crowd dispersed, only four unidentified skeletons remained. It was then that the old man in a turban descended into the pit and began exploring the fabric, digging around in pockets with a steady hand, look- ing for the only clue that could enlighten him: the little black leather bag that his son always kept on his person. Made by his mother, who had charged him with never letting it go, the little bag had contained an amulet: the hijâb. The Sayyid had found nothing and was preparing to retrace his steps when he had the idea to look for the little piece of leather on the bodies themselves.

Working with delicacy, he opened the shirtfronts one after another, slipping his hand under collars and into sleeves. The last body, laid out on its back, had nothing around its neck, but lower down, the Sayyid felt his fingers touch leather, and found the amulet. This did not surprise him. He had always known that one day he would find his son’s remains.

Standing before his body, he felt an immense sensation of affection that could only be explained by faith. It seemed to him like he could see his son’s smile on this skull, and in a heartbeat, he forgot the years of dissent that had kept them apart. While he hadn’t been able to bring the boy to Allah while he was alive, he would do it now, scrupulously carrying out the Shia rituals for the dead.

He placed the talisman in the pocket of his soutane. Then, without losing his composure or calm, he carefully placed the remains of the young man into one of the blue plastic bags.

At his home, his daughter-in-law was sitting in the dîwân, waiting impatiently. Once again, there was no need for words. The sight of the bag and a glance sufficed to tell her that the story had come to its conclusion, a sad end. Not a single tear fell from her eyes; after so much crying, they had been dried up for a long time. The Sayyid could read an immense helplessness there, as if the anguish that had suddenly disappeared had now given way to emptiness.

The muezzin’s call to the Mahgrib prayer came at the mo-ment he was laying the body gently on the bed. Between two prayers, the Sayyid had found his son and received an answer to the question that had been haunting him all these years: what had become of him?

He went back to the patio, where he found Amina crouching in a corner. The young woman had forgotten to fill up the water bucket for his ablutions, for which the compassionate Sayyid forgave her. A few hours earlier, had she not still hoped to see her husband safe and sound once more? When the discovery of the mass grave had been announced, she had been frightened, but she had not prepared herself for this news, which now left her mind and body sluggish and dazed.

While the old man was praying, Amina found the strength to enter the room. She opened the plastic wrapped around the body and, without even realizing she was concealing the sad truth from herself, believed that by touching the corpse she could bring back a moment of impossible closeness, feel the warmth of a body reduced to a mass of bones. She thought she could see her husband again, forever hold on to the image of a living, smiling man. Making contact with the skeleton brought her back to reality. She recoiled and shuddered, before pulling herself together. She grabbed the bone she had just brushed against and held it tightly. It was a femur, on the point of snap- ping under the strength of her grip. While the Sayyid was saying the Tarawih that followed the evening prayer, as was his custom, she arranged the skeleton. She had the time and the strength to do so.

The object lessons taught at high school had given her the basics of human anatomy, and, she believed, she was able to identify each body part. So she began, removing the bones from the shreds of the shirt and from the trousers. He wasn’t wearing underwear, and she deduced that the assassination must have occurred in summertime, since her husband had never worn undergarments during the country’s annual ex- tended heat waves. She set the skull straight, then attacked the spinal column, arranging the vertebrae one by one. She didn’t dwell on the pelvis; all she wanted to do was give the whole thing the height and approximate dimensions to suggest a hu- man body. However, once reconstituted, the skeleton revealed a flagrant asymmetry, due to the unequal length of the two legs. Her husband had been tall and thin; the shorter, right leg could not be his.

He will be buried tomorrow in Najafabad, stated her father-in-law, who had come in unexpectedly while Amina was wondering how to solve her anatomical dilemma.

Without looking over at him, she nodded, then asked him to judge her discovery for himself. The old man approached the bed and, in turn, was able to confirm that the right leg could not be his son’s.

He turned away, as if to avoid seeing the macabre aber- ration any longer, undoubtedly wondering who, in that rabble, could have taken the leg.

Amina carefully placed the shreds of clothing in an ar- moire, from which she then took the three bracelets that con- stituted the majority of her dowry. She had sworn that if she picked up the trail of her husband, she would bestow them upon the imam Hussein, whose tomb lay in one of Karbala’s two mausoleums. She replaced the plastic on the body and left the room. In the dîwân, her father-in-law was sitting cross- legged, his back against the wall, with his Quran lying open on his knees. In his warm, vibrant voice, he was chanting long verses for the occasion. Not wanting to interrupt him, she put on her long black abaya and left on her tiptoes.

Located just three hundred meters from one another, Karbala’s two sacred mosques had witnessed an increase in activity since the arrival of the Americans, one that would have been impossible before. Despite the omnipresence of Saddam’s men, who continued to monitor the actions and events of the population, the Shia-faithful to their doctrinal ritual-began to return there en masse to ask for Allah’s blessing. One of the two housed the tomb of al-Hussein, the other, that of his half-brother, al-Abbas. Both men were sons of Ali, descendant of the Prophet and fourth caliph of Islam, whose assassination had caused the great schism in the Muslim world.

Beating a path through the crowd gathered on the espla- nade in front of the mosque, Amina wove through the people praying to reach the interior of the building and with difficulty, made her way to al-Hussein’s tomb. It was protected by a large, gold-plated cage, and the spaces between the bars were large enough for nuzûrs — the gifts given by the faithful when they prayed for something or gave thanks for a prayer answered — to pass through. She placed the bracelets there, as she had promised to do, praying and imploring Allah to show her husband his mercy. it wasn’t until she had accomplished this ritual that she began to make her way back towards the exit.

Once outside, she took the main path to al-Abbas’ tomb: when she had made her promise, she had committed to making the journey between the two sanctuaries ten times a day, in ad- dition to giving up her jewelry. She prayed incessantly as she walked, and once she finally reached the tomb, she touched the bars and kissed them, as she had done at Hussein’s tomb.

When she got back home, she found her father-in-law as she had left him: sitting reading the Quran. He raised his head to tell her that while she had been gone, he had contacted one of their neighbors, a taxi driver, to ask him to transport the body to Najafabad, where it would be buried. And then he went back to his reading, apparently determined to spend the night in this manner, he who would normally be sleeping at this late hour. She considered asking him if he would like to take a short break, thinking that the next day would be long and painful and that the funeral could cause him pain. But she renounced this idea, out of respect for the old man’s suffering.

She understood that suffering all the better since she her- self was incapable of facing up to it. Until now, she had lived in hope of finding her husband safe and sound. This hope had doubtless been in vain, but it had given her the strength to en- dure the pain of the wait. Today, she had nothing before her but her untimely widowhood, and this unfamiliar pain with which she was going to have to live.

She sat in the patio, on a divan, and tried to organize her thoughts. Every now and then she looked over at her father- in-law, feeling as sorry for him as she did for herself, and occasionally she cast a quick glance at the bones that lay on the other side of the wide-open window. Walking between the two sanctuaries had exhausted her, so she went into her room and lay down on the bed, hoping that she would be able to sleep. The stifling heat made it hard for her to breathe. It wasn’t summer, and there was even a light wind to make the climate more bearable; yet her agitated body could not tolerate even the slightest breeze.

She got up and went back to sit in the patio, where she didn’t dare disturb the old man, still absorbed in his reading. She really needed to talk, to sing her woes, to say something to somebody. Going back into the bedroom, she lay down beside her husband without giving it a second thought. It was like before, when, lying next to one another, they could share warmth, soft words, and caresses. Staring fixedly at the ceiling, evoking those happy memories, she finally managed to find some relief.

Time slipped by without her realizing it, and it was her father-in-law who came to interrupt her daydreams with his request that she get ready for prayer and for their departure. A man of habit, the Sayyid was planning to go to the al-Hussein Mosque for the Fajr prayer. As soon as he set foot outside, the muzzein’s call rang out. The precision the faithful had acquired over years of religious practice was a source of fascination for Amina.

When the Sayyid returned, the taxi driver was standing in front of the door, a long wooden chest resting at his feet, directly on the ground. After the two men had carried the coffin into the dîwân, the driver handed a white shroud to the Sayyid who, under the haggard gaze of his daughter-in-law, began filling it with the bones, one by one. When he picked up the intruder, his hand wavered for an instant before adding it to the skeleton. Then he folded up the cloth and, gently, placed the remains in the coffin, which he then closed with great care.

Having fastened the coffin to the roof of the car, the driver got behind the wheel. The Sayyid took his place beside him, while Amina sat in the back. Her hand, reaching through the open window, rested spontaneously on the coffin, as if to support it.

Following Islamic funeral rites to the letter, the man put on a recording of the chanting of Quranic verses, as he did every time he drove a body to the hallowed ground of Najafabad for burial. When the car left at dawn, the voice’s words escaped from its open windows, drowning out the silence of the town.

When the convoy reached the main road to Najafabad, the sun was rising over the sand dunes on either side. The Sayyid murmured a few prayers upon seeing it, thanking Allah for having kept them alive another day and asking for His grace on the day that now began. Then, resigned to the will of the omnipotent, he begged Him to accept his son into Paradise.

The rising sun revealed the extraordinary number of faithful making their way to the sanctuary of Ali by foot. The crowd grew larger as they approached the city. The women were wearing their black abayas, the men, most of them in their bare feet, were of all ages. They were walking in scattered groups, coming from all over, particularly the traditionally Shia south. They beat their chests, chanting as they invoked the martyrdom of Hussein, all of them shouting the name of Haydar, which was one of the names for Ali.

At the first American checkpoint, all went without a problem. A long line of cars waited for identities to be verified, while those on foot were searched with a fine-toothed comb. The second checkpoint was more difficult to get through, since the curfew that prevented anyone from entering the holy city before sunrise had caused the crowd to build up. The new day had not managed to dissipate the human traffic jam that had formed during the night.

The sun was finally at its zenith when the Sayyid’s convoy arrived at the entrance to the city. It had taken them over five hours to cover the seventy-five odd kilometers separating Najafabad from Karbala. The heat, while not as bad as it was in the summer, was oppressive nonetheless. The Sayyid removed his turban often to wipe his forehead with a hand- kerchief. Amina kept adjusting her Abaya; as it covered her from head to foot it was becoming progressively more soaked in sweat.

At the last checkpoint, one of the few Iraqis to have a rudimentary knowledge of English was serving as an interpreter to the Americans. The taxi in front of them was carrying five people, middle-aged men with moustaches who were obviously indignant about such a long wait on their own soil — something, in their view, that no identity check could justify.