Road From Baghdad

Another busy morning. So many people to see in this bustling city, so much business to complete.  I was thankful at least that I hadn’t been assigned a battlefield. Those days were really tiring.

Baghdad was too hot for my taste, but I was destined to do my business in this part of the world on this day. The sky was cloudless, and soon it would be an intense heavenly blue, the heat unforgiving. In the pre-dawn chill, there was some respite, but this wouldn’t last. Sand from the desert seemed to permeate everything, hair, eyes, the very air that people breathed. It would be in the very water they drank, and if it were spice, their food would be very spicy indeed. I was glad that this part of the world was not my home.

I sighed, thought about the people I had to see today. I had my list, but I had memorised them all. It gave the wrong impression if it looked like you didn’t know who you were dealing with.

I went to the small house. The wife was being quietly solicitous, busy, the husband praying. As I stood next to him, he got up, needing to see his mother. The old woman was in her bed, old, sick, in pain, hanging on as only someone who does not know how to let go can.

“Quick, quick,” he called his wife. “I think it’s time.” A son is sent off to get uncles and aunts from nearby. I hope they come soon. I cannot wait long. I’ve a busy day ahead.

They begin to come in, those that live the closest, and the old woman opens her eyes and looks round as her family gathers, those that she has cared for when they were young, those who now care for her in her ancient years. Finally, her eyes settle on me. She sees me, recognises me, smiles. She is ready. So even as others crowd into the small airless room where she lays, I bend down as she reaches for me and I kiss her, taking her last breath and placing it in a pink velvet pouch which will be a lasting testament to her life.

They start to cry then, for the loss of a much-loved mother, for the relief that her pain is over, for the gladness that she is now with her husband. I let myself out, slowly, quietly, not wishing to intrude on their grief.

I must visit a child, one that was trampled by a horse three days ago. She remains in the hospital, unconscious, her parents at her side. Every hour the husband leaves to pray for his daughter’s recovery, but the doctors have said there is nothing they can do. So sometimes he prays that if the gods are to take her, they take her soon. He prays for forgiveness for all the sins he imagines he has committed in his good life, the way he admired a pair of shapely hips as they swayed through the market, the way he laughed with friends when a drunk fell in the water trough. He is not a sinful man, just an unfortunate one in that his daughter was where she was when the horse bolted.

I don’t like ones like this. I don’t like the innocent child who has done no wrong in her life, the child of goodly parents. But it must be done. The father gets up to go and pray again, making way for me so that I can sit next to the child. She sees me, is afraid, so I hold her close, comforting her with kind words as I kiss the last breath. This one will be stored in a pure white blameless pouch.

I visit a tavern where the landlord, a man too fond of his own liquor and his own food, is starting off the day by moving barrels. It’s hard work for a man like him, for someone who usually gets others to do the hard work, who usually only makes an effort if there’s a deal to be done, a girl to be chased, a wife to be avoided.

Today he rants and hollers at the injustice of doing work when he should be enjoying the fruits of other people’s labours. And as the barrel of a man attempts to order the barrels in his cellar in readiness for the day, he sees me looking at him.

“You could give me a hand instead of just standing there,” he says, somehow believing that I cannot have better things to do. I move towards him, but when I make no effort to assist, he takes a closer look. And in that second look, he recognises me for who I am and stops what he is doing. “Oh no,” he pleads.

“Oh yes,” I reply as he clutches at his chest, his face reddened with the sudden pain.

Needs must, and I kiss the final breath, place it in a muddy brown pouch. He wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t a particularly good man either.

And as the day comes alive and I walk through the busy market, I see a man whose appearance takes me by surprise. I know him as Akram, a wealthy merchant. But I thought him dead. He sees me looking at him with puzzlement, walks towards me, smiling. He knows many people, mistakes this one that looks at him for one of those, one of those many who he has known and forgotten in his busy prosperous life. But as he draws close, he recognises me and stops. He does not want to be seen with me, does not want my touch. He turns, disappearing in the market crowd, down a side street. I follow, but soon I lose him.

I consult my list then, checking to see if Akram appears on there. He does not. I check yesterday’s list and he is not there either. Of course not, because if I had failed to claim him yesterday, then my list would not have been complete. And my list is always complete, my pouches always filled.

Then why do I think Akram dead? If he is on a list, and I know he is on a list, it is not mine.

I continue with my work. A beggar who starves to death is shuffled into a small, grey pouch. A builder who falls from a high roof he is mending rises from his broken body and rolls into a strong, reddish-brown pouch. A man who is stabbed because he will not pay for what favours he has just bought from a woman is dragged kicking and screaming into his slimy black pouch. And tomorrow the woman will be gathered in for killing a man who mistook her favours for free. I know not what pouch she will inhabit yet. I suspect it will be the colour of the sadness in her life. There’s so many more. In each case I kiss the last breath, placing it in an appropriate pouch. 

As darkness falls, as taverns open, those with landlords and barrels in the correct place, liquor is drunk, fights break out, and I wait round for the last of my quota for the day. There’s usually one or two at such times.

Once this is done I return to the halls of reckoning, delivering the days pouches, waiting for the next list. I speak to one of my brothers, tell him about Akram, how I thought the man dead, and how he had noticed me when most people see through me, how he had been surprised by the sight of me, of my confusion when I thought him already dead.

My brother laughed. “Well that explains why he was so shocked when I came upon him,” he said. “I’ve been working Samarra today, and the man said he’d ridden his best horse from Baghdad to escape me. But Samarra was exactly where I was expecting him.”

My brothers and I are equal, we all appear the same, and we are legion. When it’s your time, there is no escape.