'The Corpse Washer' by Sinan Antoon (Review - IFFP 2014, Number 10)

Stop number ten on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize magical mystery tour takes us back to Iraq, a country we last visited in encountering The Iraqi Christ.  Today's book also has a religious side as we meet a young man involved with sending people on their way to the afterlife - with a few bowls of water...

*****
The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon - Yale University Press
(translated by the author)
What's it all about?
Jawad, the son of an Iraqi mghassilchi (washer of corpses), is expected to follow in his father's footsteps, especially after his brother's death in the Iran-Iraq war.  The young man has other ideas though, having been inspired by one of his teachers to become an artist, later choosing to concentrate on sculpture.  Braving his father's disapproval, he decides to escape the cool, dark wash-house and dreams of studying abroad.

However, these dreams are dashed by the outbreak, and aftermath, of the Second Gulf War.  With Baghdad occupied by American troops, the idea of time at a European university seems light-years away, and when his father dies, Jawad is forced to rethink his decisions.  Money is scarce, but in a city rocked by sectarian violence, corpses are not...

The Corpse Washer was a surprise to most of the Shadow Panelists, perhaps the least-known of the books on the longlist.  It was definitely a nice surprise though, an elegant little book which gives a fascinating insight into a time and place which, while  known superficially from the news, is in reality almost completely alien.

The book begins by introducing the concept of the mghaysil, a place for Muslims to be ritually cleaned before being buried.  Jawad's father is a master of the art, and for decades he has been preparing the people of the city for their final resting place in a calm, professional, caring manner.  At this point, the writer describes the process masterfully, choosing to use short, simple unhurried sentences, dispensing with sequencing words; it all gives the impression of a well-rehearsed ritual, taking away any mixed feelings the reader may have on entering a house of the dead.

This life is not for Jawad, though.  Even on his first professional visit, there to help his father out during the summer holidays, we sense that this is not what he wants for himself.  On a later visit, the signs are even more ominoums

"I got to the mghaysil, the washhouse.  The door was ajar.  I crossed the walkway and saw the Qur'anic verse "Every soul shall taste death" in beautiful Diwani script hanging over the door.  The yellowish paint on the wall was peeling away because of the humidity from the washing.  Father was sitting in the left corner of the side room on a wooden chair listening to the radio.  Death's traces - its scents and memories - were present in every inch of that place.  As if death were the real owner and Father merely an employee working for it and not for God, as he liked to think."
p.11 (Yale University Press, 2013)

For Jawad, this is the realm of death, and for a young man bursting with life, escape is the only possible choice.

As much as The Corpse Washer is a story of Jawad's choices, it's also a picture of Iraq during the American occupation.  This is the period that Antoon focuses on, and the occupying forces, while only briefly shown, do not come off in a good light, being portrayed as uninterested in preventing the inevitable decay of Baghdad.  Of course, suicide bombers and power cuts don't help the situation any, and when Jawad's uncle returns from Europe for a visit, he's astounded by what he sees:

"Wasn't this the most beautiful neighborhood?  Look at it now.  Then you have all this garbage, dust, barbed wires, and tanks.  There aren't any women walking down the street anymore!  This is not the Baghdad I'd imagined.  Not just in terms of the people.  Even the poor palm trees are tired and no one takes care of them.  Believe me, these Americans, with their ignorance and racism, will make people long for Saddam's days." (p.96)

Baghdad was a city long known for tolerance and learning, but the American occupation, far from restoring the city to its former glories, unfortunately appears to have made things worse.

In the end, though, the reader always returns to Jawad and his journey.  Despite his best attempts to escape, through art, love and flight, he is destined to return to the mghaysil, unable to throw aside a rather weighty legacy.  Like the old pomegranate tree outside the wash-house, kept fresh by the water running from the body of corpses, Jawad's life is made possible by the wages of death, his whole existence financed by corpses.  The question we are left with is whether that's really such a bad thing...

Does it deserve to make the shortlist?
My initial feeling was not quite.  It's not that the book isn't very good - on the contrary, it's probably one of the finds of the longlist.  However, while there are few real stand-outs this year, the level of the top eight or so books is very high, and I'm not sure this one quite makes it into the top six. 

One reason for this is the way the American occupation is handled.  With the Iran-Iraq war and the brutality of the Saddam regime glossed over, it seems a little strange to focus purely on this period as a bad one.  No doubt this would not come across in the same way to an Iraqi reading the original Arabic text, but to me the style of the book as a whole was interrupted by some of these scenes.

I'm also on the fence a little about the self-translation decision.  It's definitely not a bad translation, and you sense that the writer has been able to give the book a flavour that an outsider might not have been able to recreate.  However, there were a few inconsistencies and odd phrasings which I felt that a more accomplished translator would have ironed out.  Of course, the main problem with translating the book yourself is that everyone knows you did it - and is waiting to pounce on errors ;)

Coming back to the question, I'm starting to change my mind a little.  It's been about a week since I finished The Corpse Washer, and its stocks have continued to rise.  Hmm - I think I'll reserve judgement here ;)

Will it make the shortlist?
I think it'll go close :)  I wonder which book will impress the judges more - the calm, elegant prose of The Corpse Washer or the horrifying, heart-breaking violence of Ma Jian's The Dark Road.  If they decide to go down the literary path, I think Antoon's book may have a shot, but this is the IFFP, and you never know what those judges are thinking...

*****
Time to wrap things up in Iraq then and get moving.  No need to hurry though, as our next destination isn't too far away - I'll meet you all in Jerusalem for the next leg of our IFFP journey :)

'The Iraqi Christ' by Hassan Blasim (Review)

A new Comma Press publication of translated fiction is always exciting, and another collection has just been released.  It is a second group of stories from Iraqi-in-exile Hassan Blasim, whose first collection (The Madman of Freedom Square) was longlisted for the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (and, apparently, banned in Jordan...).  It will be interesting to see how this one goes - both critically and politically...

*****
The Iraqi Christ (translated by Jonathan Wright, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a series of tales set both in Iraq and overseas.  It is a collection set against the chaos of life in a country where normal rules seldom apply and people get on with matters as best they can - easier said than done when money, jobs, electricity and water are in short supply.  A mixture of realistic and slightly-more fantastic tales allows Blasim to paint a vivid picture of his mother country.

From the very start, we know we are in dangerous territory:

"People were waiting in queues to tell their stories.  The police intervened to marshal the crowd and the main street opposite the radio station was closed to traffic.  Pickpockets and itinerant cigarette vendors circulated among them.  People were terrified a terrorist would infiltrate the crowd and turn all these stories into a pulp of flesh and fire."
p.1, 'The Song of the Goats' (2013, Comma Press)

It is a stunning start to the collection, one which sets the scene for much of what is to follow in later stories.

This start to the collection introduces two concepts which the writer will expand upon throughout the book: the importance of stories and the constant presence of death.  The first story, 'The Song of the Goats', has a radio station set up a competition to tell the best story about life in the war-torn country (hence the long queues...).  This is closely followed by 'The Fifth-Floor Window', in which a group of sick men tell stories to pass the time as they see the chaos unfolding from the window of their room.

From here, the stories increase in intensity, with the writer painting images of violence and madness, with the crudeness of the language at times matching the events depicted.  Many of the stories abound in sex, drinking and (very) black humour, whatever it takes to make the pain go away.  In 'The Killers and the Compass', a psychopath roams the suburbs of what could be described as post-apocalyptic Iraq.  There is certainly more than a hint of Mad Max here (this is a man who is definitely dangerous to know).  'The Iraqi Christ', the title story of the collection, then introduces us to an ex-soldier with a sixth sense for danger - on the very day his luck is about to run out...
 
There is more to The Iraqi Christ than news from Iraq though.  Blasim, who now lives in Finland, also looks at what happens to people who leave their homeland behind.  'Dear Beto' chronicles a tale of depression in Finland, narrated by an emigrant (albeit a rather unusual one...) while 'Why Don't You Write a Novel, Instead of Talking About All These Characters?' is centred on refugees in Hungary and the ordeals they face in getting to their new home.  It also features a certain writer, who appears to be travelling under a pseudonym...

...and in fact this slice of meta-fiction is just one of a series of excursions out of realism and into something more akin to Magical Realism.  Many of the stories are slightly more fantastical than you would imagine, again perhaps an attempt to escape the disappointments of everyday life.  In 'The Hole', a soldier falls down a hole and makes the acquaintance of a 'Djinni' (not something that occurs on a daily basis, even in Baghdad), and 'A Wolf' is a tall tale about cruising bars for sex, Jehovah's witnesses, mosquitoes... oh, and a wolf ;)  For fans of Kafka or Murakami (like yours truly), these stories are actually some of the most entertaining in the collection.

The Iraqi Christ then is a mix of different styles of stories, all trying to make sense of a chaotic society where the past has been thrown out of the window and where the future is uncertain, a world of madness and constant noise:

"Applause at the Peace Prize award ceremony at a time when new wars are breaking out in new hotspots,the sound of cars crashing, car bombs exploding, the cars of thieves, an ambulance, a bank truck loaded with bundles of banknotes, a fire engine.  The sounds of mosques and churches, of Friday sermons and homilies, of group sex and glass breaking, sounds coming in the right ear and sounds going out the left ear."
p.73, 'Dear Beto'

What can you do in the face of a reality like this except drink, sleep around, surrender to the madness - and tell stories...