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February 17, 2008
Another reluctant fundamentalist
The Sirens of Baghdad
By Yasmina Khadra
Doubleday. Available with
Liberty Books, Karachi
ISBN 0-385-52174-X
307pp. Rs995
Reviewed by David Maine
Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of a former Algerian army officer who has come to international attention for his hard-hitting novels set in political and military hotspots. The Attack, reviewed in Dawn last year, was a grim, gritty tale of an Arab Israeli who learns that his wife, a doctor, has killed herself in a suicide bombing. It was one of the best books of 2007. Now Khadra is back with his latest offering which is set in American-occupied Iraq. If anything, it is an even angrier book than his last.
Khadra’s nameless narrator is a native of Kafr Karam, a dusty Iraqi village. When the American bombing forces him home from Baghdad, where he had been attending university, the narrator spends his time listening to the elders debate the merits of the US occupation. Opinion is mixed; nobody is sad to see the back of Saddam Hussein, yet the presence and behaviour of the occupiers is reprehensible. The shooting death of one of the villagers at the hands of the Americans is just the first of a series of events that sends our narrator on a journey of hate and murder. The specifics of his ultimate mission as well as its potential success or failure, makes for painful, riveting — and all too believable — reading. As the details of the narrator’s mission become clear, so does the scale of the potential destruction he will wreak, and the reader can only press on breathlessly, wondering what will come of this plan.
Khadra’s language is always compelling, in part because his narrator is such a bundle of edgy nerves. Describing an encounter with a US soldier: ‘His orders exploded like bursts of gunfire and left me paralysed… two more GIs appeared behind the Ford, harnessed like draft horses, wearing thick sand goggles over their helmets and bulging bulletproof vests… the black soldier was hollering loudly enough to rupture a vocal chord.’ Later, he meets for coffee with a companion in the feyadeen: ‘His face was quivering, and his nostrils made me think of a fish suffocating in the open air… I was neither anxious nor galvanised; I was in another dimension, where the only reference point I had was the certainty that I would carry out to the fullest extent the oath my ancestors had sealed in blood and sorrow when they placed honour above their own lives.’
A book such as this could easily have fallen into the trap of oversimplification, populated by bestial US soldiers, noble Iraqis, brave resistance fighters and so on. To Khadra’s credit, he avoids these traps and therefore writes a more interesting book. True, the narrator is a Bedouin who prizes family honour above all and yes, the few American soldiers on offer are trigger-happy animals. But not all the Iraqis are against the occupation, and of those who are, not all choose to join the resistance; of those who do, not all resist in the same way. In the novel, as in life, there is much argument, debate, and questioning of motives; some of the resistance fighters are sinister or even downright scary. And the narrator’s ultimate mission, when it is finally revealed, is breathtaking in its ruthlessness. But is it justice? Khadra’s characters recognise that, if successful, they will end up destroying a huge number of innocent lives, including those of many westerners who opposed the war. Collateral damage? Not everyone is comfort- able with this.
Khadra’s characters recognise that, if successful, they will end up destroying a huge number of innocent lives, including those of many westerners who opposed the war. Collateral damage?
As in Khadra’s earlier book, The Sirens of Baghdad follows an individual’s story as he copes with the aftermath of violent, traumatic events. In both stories, the setting is one of conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims. But the response of the two protagonists is very different. The narrator of The Attack goes in search of the reasons for his wife’s involvement in militancy after she kills herself in a suicide bombing; in this latest book it is the narrator himself who becomes militant. He does this with genuine reluctance: ‘War wasn’t my line,’ he declares early on. ‘I wasn’t born to commit violence — I considered myself a thousand times likelier to suffer it than to practice it one day.’ Ironically, the series of events suffered at the hands of American forces are what turn him from passive observer to active participant. The tragedy of this story lies in its convincing depiction that suffering will indeed, sooner or later, lead inevitably to violence.
In Kafr Karam, young men of my age had stopped pretending to be horrified when a sister or mother discreetly slipped them a few dinars. At first, they were a little embarrassed, and to save face they promised to repay the ‘loan’ as quickly as possible. They all dreamed of finding a job that would allow them to hold their heads high. But times were hard; wars and the embargo had brought the country to its knees, and the young people of our village were too pious to venture into the big cities, where their ancestral blessing had no jurisdiction, and where the devil was at work, nimbly perverting souls. In Kafr Karam, we had nothing to do with that sort of thing. Our people think it’s better to die than to sink into vice or thievery. The call of the Ancients drowns out the sirens’ song, no matter how loud. We’re honest by vocation. — excerpt from the book
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