Two stories, “Orient Tavern” and “The Hungarian Hut,” first published in Azher Jirjees’ short story collection, Sani‘ al-Halwa [The Candy Maker] (Milan: Al-Mutawassit Press, 2017), retrace trajectories of post-2003 Iraqi struggles.
Azher Jirjees
Translated from Arabic by Yasmeen Hanoosh
Orient Tavern
One day I lost my shadow. I don’t know how it happened. I was walking in the street and when I looked behind, I didn’t see a shadow following me. I roamed the streets of the city like a vagabond without a shadow, with a large bloodstain on my coat. I don’t know where it came from. On that cold December evening, the city looked deserted. The shattered glass of the taverns was scattered on the sidewalks and the streets were empty except for stray cats and dogs.
From a distance I watched a dog drag a corpse from underneath a smashed neon signboard. I approached, trying to drive the dog away, but he didn’t notice me. I screamed at him but it was pointless because my voice faded before reaching the dog. I felt then that my throat was letting out warm air instead of words, and that I was unable to get the dog’s attention, so I froze in my place as I watched what he was doing. He seemed familiar to me. I went closer to him, looked more intently, and remembered that I’d seen this dog approximately two hours earlier.
At the time I was sipping tea at Orient Tavern. I sat down with Uncle Ra’uf, who was bargaining with me over the price of a new neon sign for the tavern. That is when an old man who wore a shabby coat and a torn hat entered the tavern. He wreaked of alcohol. He greeted us and asked the server for a piece of meat and a bottle of wine. He poured the wine on the piece of meat and threw it to a dog that was waiting by the door, and left. The dog grabbed the piece of meat and began to tear it with his canines but he had to let go of it and escape when he heard shots fired in the distance.
A group of masked men were firing into the air and frightening passersby. They blocked the avenue that was lined with taverns and threw a sound grenade toward an adjacent bar, and then they opened fire on the customers and the liquor bottles that lined the shelf and praised the name of God. They recorded a great victory against the beer cans, arak bottles, and unarmed drunkards. No doubt their raid will be victorious tonight. After that they moved to Orient Tavern where I was hanging out with Uncle Ra’uf. When we heard the sound grenade, we dropped and took cover under the tables to await our fates. Someone kicked the door with his foot and then a barrage of bullets began to rain over our heads. Sons of bitches, they destroyed the tavern and everything in it, and riddled the walls with bullet holes.
From my hiding place under the table, I watched the scene in terror. The river of wine commixed with blood to create a terrifying surreal painting. Meanwhile the masked men combed the bodies huddled on the floor, repeating “God is great! God is great!” I closed my eyes awaiting the bullet of death, but it missed me and hit Uncle Ra’uf’s head.
The raiders left Orient Tavern and the rumble of the rifles receded. I felt safe enough so I decided to leave the pool of blood and alcohol. I shook off the glass smithereens from my clothes and moved Uncle Ra’uf’s body aside and went out. The dog was waiting in fear by the end of the road like a child watching an adult horror movie. The smell of dynamite filled the air, and the city lay in ruins. I looked left and right and then decided to leave but a bullet passed by my right ear and petrified me in my place.
“Stay where you are!” someone cried. I turned to find three masked men aiming their automatic rifles at me.
“Make your last prayer, drunkard!”
Oh my goodness! How do I convince these murderers that I was only drinking tea on a work meeting with the owner of the tavern?! And that, despite passing the threshold of my 32nd year, I still did not know the taste of alcohol?
I said, “I swear to God I’m not a drunkard.”
One of them shot my right leg and said, “Don’t swear by God, lecher.”
And then he shot my left thigh with another bullet, so I was rendered immobile.
Right then, I turned to the dog with a look that was closer to begging, but he couldn’t do anything save bark. He was barking nonstop, which led one of the masked men to fire a cartridge into the sky to scare him. He then pointed his automatic rifle at me and shot a bullet that rested in my forehead. I could sense cold water cascade over my eyes, followed by an iron block fall on my chest. The sonofabitch hit the neon signboard that fell over me as he left with his pals.
I was without a shadow as I watched the dog drag the corpse from beneath the neon sign. He was finally able to drag it out. It was the corpse of a young man in his thirties in a long, gray raincoat. It was shot in three places; the right leg, the left thigh, and the forehead. The dog dragged the corpse to the lawn. He barked loudly and then pushed it into a small ditch and started heaping dirt over me. He was a merciful dog. I wished I could wait to feed him his wine-soaked meat but I have to hurry to join my corpse.
See you in hell.
The Hungarian Hut
In fall 2006, I arrived in Hungary on foot. I walked alone without a compass in the woods until I saw the silhouette of an old hut in the distance. It was a lonely hut next to a barn for donkeys. A strange grilling smell issued from it. I approached the hut with the remaining strength I had. I heard shouting from a distance.
“Stop!”
I stopped and raised my arms up to signal surrender. A thin old lady approached me. She carried a hunting rifle. She spoke in Hungarian. I didn’t understand what she said. If it weren’t for the handful of English words that I’d memorized twenty years ago in high school I would’ve been among the dead by now. I told her I was lost and hungry, that I was running away from death. She lowered her rifle and said, “Follow me.”
She led me to the hut and served me chicken liver paté seasoned with ghee and oats. I ate voraciously while my eyes inspected the place. The hut was spacious from the inside and full of empty wine bottles. The walls emitted a sharp smell of urine. Mrs. Barbara told me, when she noticed I was puzzled, that she makes wine for a living, that she sells it to a bar owner in Budapest, and that she made a business deal over aged wine with someone fifty years ago, a deal that would make her a wealthy woman. And then she asked me to tell her my story.
I told her my story, which made her feel sorry for me. Her eyes filled with tears as she learned that I fled the war, and she asked me to stay. War refugees elicit pity. Work and accommodations. What more can a fugitive ask for?! I agreed without hesitation. We agreed that I would work for seven hours a day in the service of donkeys, picking up their dung in return for three meals of warm chicken liver paté and a place to sleep in the hut. All in all, it was not a bad deal.
One night, I heard a voice that came from the direction of the cellar. The wine barrels were shaking violently. Barbara had previously warned me against going to the wine cellar, but she was sleeping soundly now, so I removed the blanket and picked up the meat cleaver and went downstairs barefoot. I tiptoed repeating a protection spell that my grandmother had taught me. I lit the oil lamp downstairs and watched the barrels. They were still. No sound could be heard other than Barbara’s snoring, which came from upstairs. My heart eased so I put out the lamp and quietly went upstairs, but the shaking that restarted from one of the barrels made me go back downstairs to see what was happening! I lit the oil lamp once again and delved deeper into the cellar. As I approached closer, the shaking grew more violent until I arrived at the last barrel. It was shaking like a child having a seizure attack. I put the lamp aside and picked up a metal bar that was by the side of the barrel on the floor. I wedged it underneath the lid and opened it. There and then a naked dwarf jumped out.
O my goodness! A dwarf stuffed into a wine barrel?! The scene terrified me and I began reciting the protection spell in a loud voice but the dwarf interrupted me, “Don’t bother. It won’t help.”
“What won’t help?”
“The spell. Don’t bother. We tried it before and it didn’t do anything for us.”
I was shocked by what the dwarf said and almost lost my mind. Who is he talking on behalf of?
“Don’t panic, dear. Your fate will be like our fate,” he said with certainty. I asked him what he meant. He lowered the brightness of the lamp in my hand and sat on the barrel next to the one he’d jumped out of and started telling me the story. He said there was no wine in these barrels, but rather dwarfs marinated in donkey urine. Mrs. Barbara built this hut fifty years ago in order to trap those fleeing from wars to stuff them into these wooden wine barrels. She feeds them hedgehog liver in oil paté daily, which gradually transforms them into dwarfs. She then stuffs them into the barrels that are filled with donkey urine, and sells the solution as demons’ wine. It might take years for them to ferment and turn into wine but she receives half of the payment in advance from Mr. Mark for each war fugitive she catches.
“And who is this Mr. Mark?”
I asked. “The owner of a tavern demons frequent.”
He answered, and then added, “Did you have some of that food?”
“Yes, three meals a day. She said it was chicken liver in ghee and oats.”
“This is what she tells everyone, but it’s actually mountain hedgehog liver, not chicken liver.”
The story terrified me. I passed my hand over my body to make sure it was still in its normal size. I asked the dwarf about the secret behind all of this, and what would make an old woman soak war refugees in donkey urine in order to sell them as demons’ wine! He said that when his size shrank and the day arrived when Mrs. Barbara decided to stuff him into the urine barrel, he asked her about this. She laughed and answered in one sentence, “Listen, dwarf: when war erupts on one side of the globe, the entertainment market comes to life on the other side.”
I actually did not understand what that marinated dwarf was saying, but I asked him about the day that I would turn into wine for the demons. He laughed at me and said, “Oh, my dear! It’s too early. I was running from the October War in 1973 and I’m still not yet fermented. Please put me back in the barrel. I miss the taste of donkey urine.”
I immersed him into the donkey urine and tightly closed the lid, then I put out the lamp and went back to bed. In the morning, I woke up to the voice of old lady Barbara, “Salim, Salim. Wake up darling. It’s time for your meal.”
