The Corpse Exhibition Read Free

problems in my life, and I know that one day I’ll run out of luck. You’re sixteen, and today I’m going to teach you how to be a lion. In this world you need to be street-smart. Whether you die today or in thirty years, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s today that matters and whether you can see the fear in people’s eyes. People who are frightened will give you everything. If someone tells you, ‘God forbids it’ or ‘That’s wrong,’ for example, give him a kick up the ass, because that god’s full of shit. That’s their god, not your god.
You
are your own god, and this is your day. There’s no god without followers or crybabies willing to die of hunger or suffer in his name. You have to learn how to make yourself God in this world, so that people lick your ass while you shit down their throats. Don’t open your mouth today, not a word. You come with me, dumb as a lamb. Understand, dickhead?”
    He thumped the arak bottle against the wall and aimed a friendly punch hard into my nose.
    We walked through the darkness of the muddy lanes. The wretched houses were catching their breath after receiving a whipping from the storm. Inside them the people were sleeping and dreaming. Everything was soaked and knocked out of place. The wind that had toyed with the labyrinth of lanes all evening picked up strength, then finally left with a bitter chill hanging over the place—this sodden neighborhood where I would live and die. Many times I imagined the neighborhood as if it were some offspring of my mother’s. It smelled that way and was just as miserable. I don’t recall ever seeing my mother as a human being. She would always be weeping and wailing in the corner of the kitchen like a dog tied up to be tormented. My father would assail her with a hail of insults, and when her endurance broke, she would whine aloud, “Why, good Lord? Why? Take me and save me.”
    Only then would my father stand up, take the cord out of his headdress, and whip her nonstop for half an hour, spitting at her throughout.
    My nose was bleeding profusely. I was holding my head back as I tried to keep pace with Abu Hadid. The smell of spiced fish wafted from the window of Majid the traffic policeman’s house. He must have been blind drunk to be frying fish in the middle of the night. We turned down a narrow, winding lane. Abu Hadid picked up a stone and threw it toward two cats that were fighting on top of a pile of rubbish. They jumped through the window of Abu Rihab’s abandoned house. The rubbish almost reached the roof of the place. The government had executed Abu Rihab and confiscated his house. They say his family went back to the country where their clan lived. Abu Rihab had been in contact with the banned Daawa party. After a year of torture and interrogation in the vaults of the security services, he was branded a traitor and shot. It was impossible to forget the physical presence of his beautiful daughter, Rihab. She was a carbon copy of Jennifer Lopez in
U Turn
. I’d seen the film at the home of Abbas, the poet who lived next door. He had films that wouldn’t be shown on state television for a hundred years. Most of the young men in the neighborhood had tried to court Rihab with love letters, but she was an idiot who understood nothing but washing the courtyard and pouring water over the hands of her Daawa party father before he prayed.
    Abu Hadid, my giant brother, stopped in front of the door to Umm Hanan’s house. She was the widow of Allawi Shukr, and people in the neighborhood made fun of her morals by calling her Hanan Aleena, which means something like “easy favors.” We went inside and sat on a wooden bench with an uncomfortable back. Umm Hanan asked one of her daughters to wash my face and take care of me. The girl blocked my nose with cotton wool. Umm Hanan had three beautiful daughters, all alike as nurses in uniform. My