Escape from Baghdad! Read Online Free Page A

Beset by random acts of destruction, outlandish claims, impossible force majeure, they had done the only sensible thing and filed for bankruptcy. The directors had subsequently fled to their villas in Beirut. And so went the bulk of Amal’s stock portfolio. In the end, the man had been reduced to this single shop, which was, incidentally, the one he had first started out with, a piece of circular fate that drove Amal to despair often enough. He lived upstairs in a one bedroom flat with his son. The room at the back of the store had been converted into his office, where he still kept accounts of his many assets, now mainly fictional, a wistful passing of the time, a fiscal fantasy train set providing both employment and misery.
    All of this Dagr soaked up as he sat with Amal, cramped in the back room in a haze of stale smoke, plotting and drinking coffee. Kinza sat in the far corner, half asleep, watching football on a tiny set. There was a static tension in the air, the unease of too many strangemen in a small place, desultory conversation, the memories of guns and grenades a palpable white elephant, neither side quite believing they are now allies. Hamid was a sullen, oozing wound in the middle of the office, a black hole that swallowed up all normal forms of bonding, the swapping of war stories and misfortunes, sympathies, and secrets.
    â€œYou men are young,” Amal was saying, after a paltry lunch. “You two can start again, make something of yourselves.”
    Dagr shrugged. His stomach churned slightly with hunger, and he considered breaking out some chocolate, but he did not want to embarrass his host.
    â€œMy life is almost over,” Amal continued. “What can I do now, but endure and hope to die in peace? My entire fortune, my whole history, erased. You know the worst thing? I dream about food every night, the scraps I used to throw away from my table. Never did I think I would go hungry again.”
    â€œSurely you have savings?”
    â€œSavings, yes,” Amal lowered his voice. “But I also have a father with Parkinson’s. He used to be in a great nursing home. Fully paid for. Very exclusive. But it went bankrupt after the invasion, and the Americans converted it into a triage. Now I have to keep him in the hospital ward most of the time, not even a private room, and it’s still too expensive,” Amal grasped Dagr’s forearm. “Every day they threaten to throw him out. What can I do? Me and my son live upstairs in one measly room. We eat the rotten stuff that doesn’t get sold. Every penny I have, I give for medicine. Now this Lion of Akkad haunts us every day. How can we live?”
    â€œHow does anyone live?” Dagr said. “Badly.”
    â€œToo right,” Amal said. “In days like these, who helps a stranger, eh? Who asks help from a stranger?”
    â€œOnly the desperate,” Dagr said.
    â€œThe bastards are all the same,” Amal shook his head. “Every bastard with a gun walks the same. We used to have lives before, you know? All that taken away…for what?”
    â€œI used to teach economics, at the university,” Dagr said. “My wife taught mathematics. We met there. I had friends, students—hundreds of students. I don’t even know what happened to any of them.”
    â€œThere’s no place for people like us,” Amal said. “No place safe. This city belongs to them now.” He lowered his voice. “Men like your friend.”
    â€œHe does what he must,” Dagr said softly. “Same as you or I.”
    â€œNot the same,” Amal said. “Not the same. In the alley last night, I believed. I saw his finger on the pin, and I believed, more than in any bastard god, that he would kill us all; that he would rather die than take one step back.”
    â€œKinza is not suicidal,” Dagr said. “He just wants to see the world end.”
    â€œThen maybe he will be a hero