The Sirens of Baghdad

Description

The third novel in Yasmina Khadra’s bestselling trilogy about Islamic fundamentalism has the most compelling backdrop of any of his novels: Iraq in the wake of the American invasion.

A young Iraqi student, unable to attend college because of the war, sees American soldiers leave a trail of humiliation and grief in his small village. Bent on revenge, he flees to the chaotic streets of Baghdad where insurgents soon realize they can make use of his anger. Eventually he is groomed for a secret terrorist mission meant to dwarf the attacks of September 11th, only to find himself struggling with moral qualms. The Sirens of Baghdad is a powerful look at the effects of violence on ordinary people, showing what can turn a decent human being into a weapon, and how the good in human nature can resist.

“Compelling. . . . Khadra brings us deep into the hearts and minds of people living in unspeakable mental anguish.” —Los Angeles Times

 

“Compelling. . . . Khadra brings us deep into the hearts and minds of people living in unspeakable mental anguish.” —Los Angeles Times

“Khadra’s work has been compared to that of his Algerian compatriot Albert Camus, and The Sirens of Baghdad has a similar blaze of heat, the same heavy, insoluble questions. . . . The novel builds to a startling and wrenching finish.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Nerve-wracking. . . . A blunt story line that has real passion behind it. The author’s ear for Iraqi despair, fury and violation is keen.” —The New York Times

YASMINA KHADRA is the pen name of the former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul. He adopted his wife’s name as a pseudonym to avoid military censorship. He is the author of more than 20 books, at least six of which have been published in English, among them The Swallows of Kabul and The Attack, both shortlisted for the IMPAC literary award. Khadra’s work has been published in 45 countries. He has twice been honored by the Académie française, winning both the Médaille de vermeil (2001) and Grand Prix de littérature (2012). His latest novel is The Angels Die (2016). He lives in France. The New York Times describes Khadra as, “a writer who can understand man wherever he is.”“Compelling. . . . Khadra brings us deep into the hearts and minds of people living in unspeakable mental anguish.”
—Los Angeles Times

The introduction, questions, and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to stimulate your group’s discussion of The Sirens of Baghdad, the crowning work in Yasmina Khadra’s trilogy of novels about Islamic fundamentalism and the war in the Middle East.

1. What does The Sirens of Baghdad reveal about the Iraq war and its effects on ordinary Iraqis that news reports do not fully convey? In what ways does it challenge, complicate, or confirm conventional narratives about the war?

2. As The Sirens of Baghdad opens, the narrator describes Beirut as a sleepwalker and says that “according to ancestral tradition, a somnambulist is not to be interfered with, not even when he’s headed for disaster” [p. 1]. Is the narrator himself a “somnambulist”? Is he “interfered with”? Does he awaken?

3. During a heated discussion about the war, Sayed tells Yaseen a story about an Egyptian strongman. He begins by saying, “When I was a child, my father told me a story I didn’t completely grasp. At that age, I didn’t know that stories had a moral” [p. 64]. What is the moral of the story Sayed tells? How does it relate to the larger story of The Sirens of Baghdad? Does the novel itself have a clear moral?

4. After they have been betrayed, Yaseen furiously interrogates the narrator, in order to find out who led the police to them. “It was the age-old story: When you can’t make sense of your misfortune, you invent a culprit for it” [p. 224]. What is the broader significance of this statement?

5. What are the major turning points that transform the narrator from an innocent young man with an aversion to violence to a fully committed jihadist, filled with rage and willing to give his life for the Cause?

6. Omar warns the narrator: “Fight for your country, not against the whole world…. If you want to avenge an offense, don’t commit one”
[p. 182–3]. What role does Omar play in the novel? Why is he so important, even though he is a minor character? What terrible ironies are involved in his murder?

7. How does Khadra build and sustain suspense throughout the novel?

8. During a heated discussion at the café in Kafr Karam, Doc Jabir says that “the world is run by the forces of international finance, for which peace is equivalent to layoffs” [p. 35]. Later, Omar tells the narrator that “all nations are victims of the avarice of a handful of multinational companies” [p. 182]. In what ways, and to what extent, do these assertions help explain the war in Iraq?

9. What different points of view about the war are represented in the novel? Look at the arguments put forth by Doc Jabir, Yaseem, Omar, Dr. Jalal, the writer Mohammed Seen, and the narrator himself. Which of these views seems, finally, to predominate? Which of them seems most convincing or most accurate?

10. What is the effect on the narrator-and on the reader-of the violence described in The Sirens of Baghdad? How is the narrator changed by the violence he witnesses? In what ways do cultural differences, and American ignorance of Islamic customs, contribute to the brutality occurring in Iraq?

11. When Shakir asks the narrator why he didn’t board the plane to carry out his attack, he replies: “I have no idea” [p. 304]. How can his failure to act be best understood? What might have caused him to refrain? Is this a satisfying way to end the novel?

12. In what ways does The Sirens of Baghdad offer a more complex and nuanced understanding of the terrorist violence in Iraq than news reports have offered? What does the novel reveal about the emotional, psychological, and cultural motivations for acts of terror?

13. Is The Sirens of Baghdad ultimately a frightening or reassuring novel? To what extent is it both frightening and reassuring, terrifying and hopeful?

1

Every morning, my twin sister, Bahia, brought me breakfast in bed. “Up and at ’em,” she’d call out as she opened the door to my room. “You’re going to swell up like a wad of dough.” She’d place the tray on a low table at the foot of the bed, open the window, and come back to pull my toes. Her brusque, authoritative movements contrasted sharply with the sweetness of her voice. Since she was my elder, if only by a few minutes, she treated me like a child and failed to notice that I’d grown up.

She was a frail young woman, a bit of a fussbudget, a real stickler for order and hygiene. When I was little, she was the one who dressed me before we went to school. Since we weren’t in the same class, I wouldn’t see her again until recess. In the schoolyard, she’d observe me from a distance, and woe to me if I did anything that might “shame the family.” Later, when I was a sickly teenager and the first few scattered hairs began to appear on my pimply face, she took personal charge of keeping my adolescent crisis in check, scolding me whenever I raised my voice in front of my other sisters or spurned a meal. Although I wasn’t a difficult boy, she found my methods of negotiating puberty boorish and unacceptable. On a few occasions, my mother lost patience with her and put her in her place; Bahia would keep quiet for a week or two, and then I’d do something wrong and she’d pounce.

I never rebelled against her attempts to control me, however excessive. On the contrary, they amused me—most of the time anyway.

“You’ll wear your white pants and your checked shirt,” she ordered, showing me a pile of folded clothes on the Formica table that served as my desk. “I washed and ironed them last night. You ought to think about buying yourself a new pair of shoes,” she added, nudging my musty old pair with the tip of her toe. “These hardly have any soles left, and they stink.”

She plunged her hand into her blouse and extracted some banknotes. “There’s enough here for you to get something better than vulgar sandals. Buy yourself some cologne, too. Because if you keep on smelling so bad, we won’t need any more insecticide for the cockroaches.”

Before I had time to prop myself up on my elbow, she put the money on my pillow and left the room.

My sister didn’t work. Obliged to quit school at sixteen in order to become betrothed to a cousin who ultimately died of tuberculosis six months before the wedding, she was fading away at home, waiting for another suitor. My other sisters, all of them older than Bahia and I, didn’t have a lot of luck, either. The eldest, Aisha, had married a rich chicken farmer and gone to live in a neighboring village, in a big house she shared with her in–laws. This cohabitation deteriorated a little more each season, until finally, refusing to bear any more abuse and humiliation, she gathered up her four children and returned to her parental home. We thought her husband would turn up and take her back, but he never appeared, not even to see his children on holidays. The next sister, Afaf, was thirty–three years old and had not a single hair on her head. A childhood disease had left her bald. Because my father was afraid her classmates would make fun of her, he’d decided it would be wise not to send her to school. Afaf lived like an invalid, shut up inside a single room; at first, she mended old clothes, and later she made dresses my mother sold all over town. When my father lost his job after suffering an accident, Afaf took charge of the family. In those days, there were times when her sewing machine was the only sound for miles around. As for Farah, who was two years younger than Afaf, she was the only one who pursued her studies at the university, despite the disapproval of the tribe, which didn’t look kindly on the idea of a young girl living far from her parents and thus in proximity to temptations. Farah held out and received her diploma with flying colors. My great–uncle wanted to marry her to one of his offspring, a pious, considerate farmer; Farah categorically refused his offer and chose to work at a hospital. Her attitude caused the tribe deep consternation, and the humiliated son, followed by his mother and father, cut the lot of us. Today, Farah practices in a private clinic in Baghdad and earns a good living. It was her money that my twin sister put on my pillow from time to time.

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.

I started attending the university in Baghdad a few months before the American invasion. I was in heaven. My status as a university student gave my father back his pride. He was illiterate, a raggedy old well digger, but he was also the father of a physician and of a future doctor of letters! Wasn’t that a fine revenge for all his setbacks? I’d promised myself not to disappoint him. Had I ever disappointed him in my life? I wanted to succeed for his sake; I wanted to read in his dust–ravaged eyes what his face concealed: the happiness of seeing the seed he’d sown flourishing in body and mind. While the other fathers were hastening to yoke their progeny to the same laborious tasks that had made their own lives a torment, like those of their ancestors, my father tightened his belt to the last notch so I could pursue my studies. It wasn’t a sure thing that this process would lead to social success for either of us, but he was convinced that a poor educated person was less lamentable than a poor blockhead. If a man could read his own letters and fill out his own forms, he thought, a good part of his dignity was safe and secure.

The first time I set foot on the university campus, I chose to wear spectacles, even though I’ve always had excellent vision. I think they were the reason why Nawal noticed me in the first place; her face turned as red as a beet whenever our paths crossed after classes were over. Even though I had never dared address a word to her, the least of her smiles was enough to make me happy. I was just on the point of declaring myself and unveiling to her the prospect of a bright future, when strange fireworks lit up the sky over Baghdad. The sirens echoed in the silence of the night, buildings started to explode in smoke, and from one day to the next, the most passionate love affairs dissolved in tears and blood. The university was abandoned to vandals, and my dreams were destroyed, too. I went back to Kafr Karam, wild–eyed and distraught, and I didn’t return to Baghdad.

I had nothing to complain about in my parents’ house. I could be satisfied with little. I lived on the roof, in a remodeled laundry room. My furniture consisted of some old crates, and I put my bed together from an assortment of lumber I salvaged here and there. I was content with the little universe I’d constructed around my privacy. I didn’t have a television yet, but there was a tinny radio to keep my solitude warm.

On the courtyard side of the upper floor, my parents occupied a room with a balcony; on the garden side, at the end of the hall, my sisters shared two large rooms filled with old stuff, including religious pictures picked up from traveling souks. Some of these pictures showed labyrinthine calligraphy, while others portrayed Sidna Ali manhandling demons or thrashing enemy troops, his legendary double–bladed scimitar whirling like a tornado above their impious heads. Similar pictures were all over the house—in the other rooms, in the entrance hall, above doorways and windows. They were displayed not for decorative reasons, but for their talismanic powers; they preserved the house from the evil eye. One day, I kicked a soccer ball and knocked one of them off the wall. It was a lovely picture, verses from the Qur’an embroidered in yellow thread on a black background. It shattered like a mirror. My mother almost had a stroke. I can still see her, one hand against her chest, her eyes bulging, her face as white as a block of chalk. The prospect of seven years of bad luck would not have turned her so thoroughly pale.

The kitchen was on the ground floor, across from a closetlike space that served Afaf as a workshop, two larger rooms for guests, and a huge living room with French windows opening onto a vegetable garden.

As soon as I had put my things away, I went downstairs to say hello to my mother, a sturdy, open–faced woman whom neither household chores nor the weight of the passing years could ever discourage. A kiss on her cheek transferred a good dose of her energy to me. We understood each other completely.

My father was sitting cross–legged in the courtyard, in the shade of an indefinable tree. After the Fajr prayer, which he dutifully performed at the mosque each morning, he would return home to finger his beads in the patio, one arm hanging useless under the folds of his long robe; the collapse of a well he was scraping out had crippled him. My father had suddenly turned into an old man. His village–elder aura had vanished; his look of command had no more vigor and no more range. In days gone by, he’d sometimes join a group of relatives and friends and exchange views on some subject or other. Then, when malicious gossip started overtaking good manners, he’d withdraw. Now, he left the mosque right after the morning prayer, and before the town was fully awake, he was already installed under his tree, a cup of coffee within reach of his hand, listening intently to the ambient sounds, as though he hoped to decipher their meaning. My dad was a decent man, a Bedouin of modest means who didn’t always have enough to eat, but he was nonetheless my father, and he remained the object of my greatest respect. Every time I saw him at the foot of his tree, I couldn’t help feeling enormous compassion for him. He was certainly a brave and worthy person, but his unhappiness torpedoed the appearances he tried so hard to keep up. I think he’d never gotten over the loss of his arm, and the thought that he was living off his daughters was driving him further down.

I don’t remember having been close to him or ever nestling against his chest; nevertheless, I was convinced that if I should make the first move, he wouldn’t push me away. But how could I take such a risk? Immutable as a totem, my father let none of his emotions show. When I was a child, he was a sort of ghost to me. I’d hear him at dawn, tying up the bundle he carried to his workplace, but before I could reach him, he’d already left the house, and he wouldn’t be back until late at night. I don’t know whether or not he was a good father. Too reserved or too poor to give us toys, he seemed to attach little importance either to our childish tumults or to our sudden lulls. I wondered if he were capable of love, if his stature as begetter wasn’t going to transform him into a pillar of salt. In Kafr Karam, fathers were convinced that familiarity would detract from their authority, and so they had to keep their distance from their progeny. On occasion, I thought I caught a glimpse of a sparkle in my father’s austere eyes; then, suddenly, he’d pull himself together and clear his throat, signaling me to get lost.

That morning, although my father, sitting under his tree, cleared his throat when I solemnly placed my lips on the crown of his head, he didn’t pull his hand back when I seized and kissed it, so I understood that my company wouldn’t annoy him. But we couldn’t even look each other in the face. Once, some time previously, I had sat down beside him, but during the course of two hours, neither of us had managed to pronounce a syllable. He contented himself with fingering his beads; I couldn’t stop fiddling with a corner of his mat. Had my mother not come to send me on an errand, we would have stayed like that until nightfall.

I said, “I’m going out for a bit. Do you need anything?”

He shook his head.

I seized the chance to take my leave.

***

Kafr Karam was always a well–ordered little town. We didn’t have to go elsewhere to provide for our basic needs. We had our parade ground, our playgrounds (vacant lots, for the most part), our mosque (you had to get up early on Friday morning if you wanted a choice spot), our grocery stores, two cafes (the Safir, frequented by the young, and El Hilal), a fabulous automobile mechanic capable of fixing any engine, provided it was a diesel, a master blacksmith who occasionally doubled as a plumber, a tooth–puller (an herbalist by vocation and a bone–setter in his spare time), a placid, distracted barber who looked like a carnival strong man and took longer to shave someone’s head than a drunk trying to thread a needle, a photographer as somber as his studio, and a postal worker. At one time, we also had a cheap eating place, but seeing that no pilgrim ever deigned to stop in Kafr Karam, the restaurateur transformed himself into a cobbler.

For many people, our village was nothing but a hamlet sprawled beside the road like roadkill—by the time they caught a glimpse of it, it had already disappeared—but we were proud of it. We’d always been wary of strangers. As long as they made wide detours to avoid us, we were safe, and if sandstorms occasionally obliged them to take refuge in Kafr Karam, we received them in accordance with the recommendations of the Prophet, but we never tried to hold them back when they started packing their bags. We had too many bad memories.US

Additional information

Weight	8.4 oz
Dimensions	0.6400 × 5.1400 × 7.9700 in
Imprint	Anchor
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780307386168
ISBN-10	0307386163
Author	John Cullen, Yasmina Khadra
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC031060, FIC032000
Subjects	mysteries and thrillers, suspense fiction, thriller books, suspense books, suspense thriller books, FIC032000, military fiction, political books, mystery thriller suspense, fiction books, literary fiction, books fiction, mystery and thriller, realistic fiction books, war books, political thrillers, baghdad, bedouin, gifts for older men, islamic fundamentalism, revenge, politics, war, radicalization, thriller, military, fiction, suspense, middle east, novels, Literature, islam, september 11, trilogy, iraq, thrillers, terrorism, FIC031060, military books