Yes, my cousin owns the Salam shirt shop.

  I guessed that from your features. He looks very much like you. He has a mask that looks like the ‘modest writer’ face you’re using with me now. Go away and don’t come back to this hellish country!

  Thank you very much.

  Goodbye and good luck.

  Goodbye.

  I’m hungry. I cross the street to the other side and walk towards the statue of Kahramana. Baghdad’s landmarks haven’t changed much since I fled seventeen years earlier. All that has happened is that they’ve aged. Their colours have faded, the city now bristles with weapons and its eyes have dark rings of fear and pain. Some of the shops have changed. In Zawiya, there used to be an unpretentious local coffee shop that has now turned into a fancy shoe shop. A kiosk that used to sell flowers has become the base for police patrols. I long for kebabs with onion and grilled tomato, with a jug of cold ayran. I cross the street to a crowded restaurant and share a table with a young man. He is eating a whole grilled chicken with rice and three kinds of stewed vegetables – okra, green beans and aubergine. ‘Are you a foreigner?’ he asks me.

  ‘To some extent, I left Baghdad twenty years ago,’ I reply.

  ‘You expats come back to the country and you’re like foreign orientalists, always carrying around with you a bottle of mineral water and a rucksack, looking at everything in surprise, as if you’ve never been here before.’

  I agree with him. I have no intention of being drawn into a sterile debate between Iraqis who stayed and suffered and those who escaped and suffered in exile, just as I don't want to get into any other kind of debate: Shi'ites against Sunnis; Kurds against Arabs; the religious against the secular; Iranians against Saudis; traitors against patriots; Arab nationalists against Islamists; or, for that matter, God the greatest against God the smallest. I steer the conversation in another direction: ‘This restaurant seems to be well-known and highly-rated,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, it is. They blew the place up three times in one year,’ the young man says, removing the skin from the chicken meat. ‘What? Are you nervous now?’ he adds, smiling at me with contempt.

  I sprinkle some sumac and squeeze some lemon on my shish kebab, and ignore the young man. I can’t get what he said out of my mind. I don’t know if I’m frightened. It is more sadness and anger that I feel. I’ve seen many horrors in my life. and death has almost caught me several times. It’s only by chance that I’m still alive. I think about the moments when the customers were enjoying the taste of their grilled meat, just before the suicide bomber enjoyed the taste of grilling them with his explosive belt. I might die here eating kebabs and my face might be disfigured, I think. The mask-maker might make a mask of my face and say, ‘What brings you back to the theatre of disfigured faces, you wretched actor?’ I pay the bill and go back to the statue of Kahramana. In my teenage years, the statue had a powerful hold on me. I pull out my iPhone and take pictures of her from various angles. Today Kahramana is a fountain. She stands in the middle of 40 jars and carries a large jar from which water pours into the other jars. The Kahramana of A Thousand and One Nights poured oil. She was a smart, brave girl. Her father owned an inn where travellers could stay, the equivalent of a hotel in our times. Kahramana’s father sold oil in jars in the market. One cold winter’s night, Kahramana woke up to some suspicious noises and saw a group of men hiding in the empty jars. The men started sticking their heads out of the jars to watch out for the policemen who were chasing them and who had surrounded the inn. Kahramana told her father about the thieves. The two of them agreed to make a noise to frighten the thieves. The thieves ducked down into the jars and kept still. At that point, Kahramana filled another jar with oil and started to pour it into the jars. When the jars were almost full, the thieves popped up and screamed, and the policemen caught them.

  I put out my hand and a taxi stopped.

  ‘In you get, sir,’ says the driver, opening the door for me.

  It is indeed a shame when we’re unaware of time, and also when we’re aware of it in a negative way. I hope you find a solution to your problems of making a living, and earning that bread that is the real opium, as Hemingway once said. I tried the link you sent me to Cioran. There are many valuable things there. Unfortunately, I don’t browse much on the internet. If I didn’t absolutely have to sometimes, I would never use it. How I wish that time would stop squeezing my day so brutally, and a large part of the night. For the last few years I’ve been doing everything as fast as possible. I even seem to be saving as many things as possible before they’re devoured by fire. I get angry very easily when I’m forced to do routine tasks. Ideas and plans proliferate in my head, but there’s no coming to terms with time. I don’t think, my friend, that all Arab readers will consider what Cioran wrote to be a precious gift, as you say. Because those same readers are already offered alternative gifts in the form of endless nonsense: small talk about their pathetic banalities; small talk to allay their fears on the cheap when they get confused by their immersion in making a living rather than living a life. In my last short story, I didn’t hide the fact that I was fascinated by the philosophy of the camera-pen, of which the brilliant writer John Dos Passos was one of the great pioneers. As you know, none of us are completely satisfied with what we write. For a long time, I’ve had a particular worry: that all I do is create a collage of techniques picked up here and there. There’s nothing new but the details. In any case, all this doesn’t mean giving up and feeling frustrated, because by practice, manic practice, we discover everything: the self, the world, the Other. And the act of discovery may be half of all art. Thank you for your intelligent and sensitive observations on what I write and translate. I’m really delighted to have such a reader, one who counts for more than all the other readers, no matter how many there are of them.

  All the best.

  *

  Dear Hassan,

  My plan was that this letter and the attachments would reach you two hours ago when I finished translating a short text by Cioran. But I couldn’t escape the world of Greek myth, where I was looking for more information about Sisyphus. I laughed a little when I found myself here like a stamp or butterfly collector. There are still many texts by Cioran, the eternally tormented. His cross will certainly not be any lighter in heaven, because the law of gravity will operate there as well. I always feel a strange sense of fullness when I go back to him. Maybe it’s because of the serpentine crawling of time.

  *

  Daily life now consumes almost all my time. I haven’t done anything but read and translate another text by Cioran, which now awaits trimming. I’ll send it soon. The crimes in Iraq right now, i.e. the massacres, don’t allow us to think properly about ‘our worlds’, which Cioran says are the real and final ones.

  It was the Greeks who said that the best habit a man can have is not to have any habits. But I discovered long ago that although habit is second nature to humans, it is one of the most precious things that they leave behind them in this world (besides their other deeds, of course). I mean here precisely the correspondence between us.

  All the best.

  Mr Palomar

  Naked in bed, I think about the heart of my friend, Alia. Maria hasn’t reached orgasm yet. I have ejaculated twice. I scroll through Facebook on my iPhone. Pictures of drowned refugees in Greece. My brother in Baghdad has written an angry comment about government corruption. A friend in northern Finland has posted a picture of a cat looking at itself in a mirror in surprise. Maria comes back from the bathroom, naked, slim and as cold as a fish in the freezer. How enticing she is! She lies down beside me, my fingertips play in her coarse pubic hair and I smell her lips. The picture of the cat looking at itself in the mirror is stuck in my mind. Maria plants a gentle kiss on my lips and turns her back on me. She opens her laptop and watches a Danish serial, one of those clever Scandinavian crime shows. I write a quick email to check that Alia is OK.

  I kiss Maria on her hair and tell her I’m going to the bar.

  ‘It’s one o’clock,’ she says, without turning towards me, so as to not miss a moment of her programme.

  I pick up my underwear from beside the bed and go into the bathroom. A long piss pours from my cock as I examine the small shelf of books that Maria has put up next to the toilet. A comic book, a small book of photos of big breasts, many old issues of Donald Duck piled up on a thick volume about the civil war in the city of Tampere. I leaf through the war book. Pictures of white soldiers executing red soldiers on a carpet of snow. In the album of my own childhood memories: images of troops executing Kurdish peshmerga one scorching midday in July.

  I get dressed and take a can of beer from the fridge.

  ‘Good night, Maria.’

  ‘Take the key if you’re going to come back.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ll go back to my place.’

  I shut the apartment door and leave.

  Snow covers the melancholy of the sleeping city. The pure cold air bores into me and stings. I feel I’m about to cry. I put my headphones in my ears and listen to 'November' by Max Richter. The past wakes up and goes to sleep inside me. With a dose of apathy, I curb my desire to cry: ‘Shit on the world. It’s only a hallucination, this ephemeral life.’

  There’s no one in the bar but Azad, the Kurdish barman. I give him a friendly hug. He fetches me a beer and sits down close to me. On his iPad he shows me a video clip of Islamist groups cutting the throat of a Kurdish fighter in Syria. We hand out insults to everyone we can think of. We curse Islam, God, dictators, America, capitalism, and European racism. Then Azad tells me about what he calls the cunt religion and its demons. He explains to me the difference between Turkish, Russian and Finnish cunts, based on his own personal experience. Turkish cunts are hungry and stubborn, Russian ones are beautiful and pretentious, Finnish ones are honest and cold.

  ‘What do you think of Arab cunts?’ I ask.

  Azad sighs and says, ‘Arab cunts are sealed in the name of God, condemned to life imprisonment.’

  We laugh together and a thin man in his forties comes in, so drunk he can hardly stand. Azad curses life and whoever designed it, and gets up to deal with the drunk. I say goodbye to Azad and go to look for another bar.

  I order a Jaloviina and a beer. The Hole Bar is packed with customers. A pungent smell of urine seeps from under the toilet door. I catch sight of Kajsa talking to a tall young man. She turns to me with a smile. Will November give me Kajsa, I wonder? The barman breaks a 20-euro note for me and I go over to the gambling machine. I play a game called Emma and mumble an old Finnish song:

  Oh, Emma, do you still remember

  That moonlit night

  When we came back from the dance together

  You gave me your heart

  And you vowed your vows

  And promised you’d be mine forever?

  I dream of winning at Emma by getting five lanterns in a line. Lanterns in Baghdad light up nights of war and fear. Lanterns in Finland are a gambling game. Kajsa comes up to me. I give her a hug and save her the embarrassment of taking the initiative in greeting others. Hugs do not appear in the rulebook for Finnish intimacy, of course, and the few who practise hugging deserve medals for bravery. Kajsa sits down at the gambling machine next to me and plays Mermaid.

  Over the last three years, the dark Finnish November has repeatedly brought me its sexual gifts in an amusing and surprising manner. I have never had so much random sex before. All my adventures have taken place in November. It has been the month of sexual abundance par excellence. Constantly hanging out in bars to escape loneliness and the depressing darkness outside has helped me reap the fruit of the November bars. Bitter fruit, sweet fruit, and some that have no taste.

  Kajsa asks about the God 99 blog and wins with five octopuses. ‘Yes!’ she yells.

  I tell her about my recent visit to Iraq and how I’m finishing off the interviews I did there. Kajsa laughs when I tell her that the money to finance the project might end up in bars and God 99 might drown itself in alcohol. I don’t know Kajsa well. We’ve had a few brief conversations before. What I know is that her flat is right above the Hole Bar. She works as assistant to a professor at the university and is trying to finish her first novel. She’s nice and quiet, smart and morose, slightly plump, with fine features and deep eyes that you want to look into as you embrace her naked body.

  I lose the last 20 cents in the machine while Kajsa wins fifteen euros.

  The barman flashes a light as a sign that the bar is closing.

  She invites you to drink red wine in her flat.

  Thank you, dear November, you haven’t let me down! Kajsa plays an Amy Winehouse song on her laptop on low volume so as not to disturb the neighbours. We sit on the sofa and drink the wine. Kajsa is a little confusing. In an almost inaudible voice, she says she likes me, that I’m nice and quiet and smart. ‘How do you feel when you write?’ she asks.

  ‘I feel horny,’ I reply.

  Kajsa laughs and says, ‘Thank God you’re not writing now – I have my period.’

  ‘I write by day,’ I declaim dramatically, ‘and by night, even in my dreams, I write.’

  ‘Are you dating Maria?’ Kajsa asks.

  I’ve only known Maria for two months. We meet up from time to time. She’s a clever and unusual woman. She prefers us to have an open relationship. She’s right. Aren’t people composed of a set of different relationships – with time and place, the sky, death and nature? All our relationships are open to ambiguity and risk. A love affair between two people doesn’t need to be rigid and walled in by the illusion of committed love. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I also look for a ‘safe’ love on most occasions. Kajsa puts her head on my shoulder and we sink into silence for more than five minutes. I play with her hair and she holds my hand and brings it to her lips. I gently lift her head off my shoulder and kiss her. We exchange long kisses mixed with tobacco and alcohol. We feel hot and strip off. Kajsa is down to her panties, which are bulging because of the sanitary pad. She lies down on the sofa. I stand up, arch my back and put my cock in her mouth while she plays with her clitoris with her finger inside her panties. Kajsa reaches orgasm within thirty seconds and I ejaculate into her mouth. She gets up right away and goes to the bathroom. I stretch out on the sofa and hear her spit out the semen, then turn on the water tap and start to brush her teeth. I shut my eyes and fall asleep.

  You open your eyes and it’s five past nine in the morning.

  The first thing I do is browse through Facebook. I discover that yesterday I mistakenly clicked on the heart button under pictures of dead bodies in Baghdad. I meant to express solidarity with the dead by using the angry face. Kajsa has left a note on the dining table: ‘There’s a clean towel in the bathroom. You can stay in the house till I come back. Lots of food in the fridge.’ I drink two glasses of water, open the fridge and pour myself an orange juice. I examine her bedroom. I feel the texture of the blue bedsheet with my fingers. Above the bed there’s a large picture of a monkey’s head. A miserable monkey that looks as if it’s about to commit a crime. I go into the bathroom, have a piss, examine the panties and socks she has left to dry on the clothes rack. In the sitting room, there’s a really massive bookcase. I look at the book titles and come across a copy of Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees. Does she have Mr Palomar? I come across another Calvino book, Italian Folktales. Where are you, Mr Palomar? Kajsa seems to be a fan of Calvino. I look in all the bookshelves but there’s no trace of it.

  On the bus, you feel sick from drinking too much.

  I delete the pages that have gathered on my iPhone to save the battery. The teenage girl sitting opposite me is bent over her mobile phone. Okay. Most of the passengers have their heads in their smartphones, except for an old woman who’s looking out of the window like a dead person. The scene reminds me of mosques, where the worshippers sit in the courtyard with their heads bowed and recite the Quran silently to themselves. I often feel that I’ve got myself in a fix with the God 99 project. Should I look for some other financing? Shit, half the financing will end up in bars straight away. I feel dizzy and tired, with a bitter taste in my mouth and with my mind racing: my imminent trip to Iceland to interview Salma Hayek, my overindulgence in alcohol, random sex and the November darkness. I google ‘Finnish edition of Mr Palomar’.

  I get off the bus at the shops near my flat. I buy six bottles of Karhu beer, cheese, bread, tomatoes and cucumber. I open a can of beer at the door of the supermarket and light a cigarette.

  ‘Good morning, Hassan.’

  I turn.

  ‘You’re drinking early. You’ve become Finnish,’ says Mama Anna, smiling at me with maternal affection.

  I tell her a story from my first month in Finland. By chance I met a young Moroccan and we chatted about being refugees in Finland. I asked him what he thought about Finnish society. He said, ‘It’s shit. They drink too much and they’re miserable and they don’t talk.’

  ‘Shit,’ I replied, ‘That’s like me when I was in Iraq. I drank too much, I was miserable and I didn’t talk.’

  Mama Anna laughs. ‘So you’re at home here in Finland,’ she says. ‘You’re welcome.’

  She’s a large woman in her fifties. She says goodbye after pressing my head firmly against her chest. I feel embarrassed because her breasts are so big. She’s married to a man who had political ambitions and lives in the building next to my flat. I met her in the Rock Café. She said she wanted to be a mother to me, because in Finland I must miss my mother. So I started calling her Mama Anna.

 

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