Stitching Iraq’s story together

Rob Kidd reviews Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, published by Allen & Unwin/Oneworld.

It is audacity in the highest to use the name of one of literature’s greatest figures in your book’s title.

It is something else entirely when you create a work that rivals that predecessor’s timeless quality.

Ahmed Saadawi has created a genre-defying modern classic.

At times Frankenstein in Baghdad is darkly comical, there is the inevitable yet subtle political analysis, elements of science fiction and ultimately a compelling tale of modern Iraq in the wake of the US intervention.

Like the monster — or "The Whatsitsname" as he is dubbed — the various parts of the novel, sewn together, should not work in theory; but they just do.

Drunk junk dealer Hadi assembles various body parts of the victims of suicide bombers in a shed beside his ramshackle property.

When the soul of one such victim is displaced, it finds the composite corpse and becomes a vengeance-seeking killing machine.

His acts become the subject of political scrutiny and the stuff of instant urban myth.At first the Whatsitsname’s quest is simple — to kill those responsible for the deaths of those who make up his body.

"... People have been giving me a bad reputation," he tells his creator.

"They’re accusing me of committing crimes, but what they don’t understand is that I’m the only justice there is in this country."

Like the various national, political and paramilitary groups pitted against each other in Baghdad, he is flooded with a sense of righteousness and inadvertently picks up a fervent band of followers.

They elevate him to God-like status but the reality of the situation is cheekily revealed by Saadawi through a snippet of a talk show overheard in one scene."All the security incidents and the tragedies we’re seeing stem from one thing — fear," a TV analyst says.

"Every day we’re dying from the same fear of dying. The groups that have given shelter and support to al-Qaeda have done so because they are frightened of another group, and this group has created and mobilized militias to protect itself from al-Qaeda. It has created a death machine working in the other direction because it’s afraid of the Other."

The Whatsitsname, while believing its cause is pure, has unwittingly become part of that machine.

But as body parts begin putrefying and falling off, he needs new ones to replace them and gradually becomes the evil he has sought to destroy.It is a powerful metaphor for the power struggle in Iraq.

As the Whatsitsname has an ever-growing list of vendettas to fulfil, he reaches an existential crisis point.

"... Maybe he would wake up one day to discover that there was no-one left to kill, because the criminals and the victims were entangled in a way that was more complicated than before," Saadawi writes.

Later comes the poignant realisation: "There are no innocents who are completely innocent or criminals who are completely criminal."

Even without outlining in detail the political power struggles in Iraq’s capital, Saadawi succinctly portrays the futility of the multi-dimensional conflict.

Winner of the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, I would not bet against Frankenstein in Baghdad picking up another accolade.

- Rob Kidd is an ODT court reporter and books editor.

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