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Authors: Hassan Blasim
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had his arm round Angelina Jolie’s waist and was talking about his chances of winning an award. I decided to go back to the forest and try to stand up to the mosquitoes, instead of seeing them as crocodiles. Fuck that. This is the last glass I’ll drink with you. You really are a strange man – perhaps you’re rather like me. You have a suspicious capacity for listening. I think you are... Okay. Perhaps another glass before I go. Fuck that. I didn’t catch your name... I’m Salman.’
‘Hassan Blasim, pleased to meet you.’
Crosswords
In memory of my friends:
Dawoud the engineer, 2003
Kouresh the poet and doctor, 2006
Bassem the sculptor and photographer, 2007
He wakes up.
It’s a mess of a morning.
He hears the words: ‘For God’s sake, I’m going to die of thirst!’
He sits on the edge of the bed. He feels a numbness in his limbs. He pours himself a glass of water. He looks around the ward in a daze. He sees a bird hitting the window pane. A plump nurse is giving an injection to a man with an arm missing.
‘Aha! Cold water! Thank you,’ says the policeman somewhere deep inside him...
My lifelong friend Marwan used to say, ‘Across: mankind; down: the sea. The highest mountain peak in the world. A three-letter word. An unfamiliar reality.’
They published a picture of him smiling on the cover of the magazine!
It was a picture taken two years ago during the ceremony at which he received the prize for being the best crossword writer. The prize was funded by a billionaire member of parliament who came back to the country after the change in regime. They say the great passion he acquired for crosswords during his long exile was behind his decision to finance the prize. It was worth 15,000 dollars. The prize aroused much envy among certain journalists and writers who criticized it severely and at length. Marwan won it on merit; I think Marwan could be awarded the title ‘Poet Laureate of Crosswords’.
I found some of his old crossword puzzles at the farm once. They contained strange expressions such as ‘half a moon’, ‘a semi-mythical animal’, ‘a vertical tunnel’, ‘a poisonous grass’, and ‘a half-truth’.
In the olden days, when our eyes were like magnifying glasses, the moon was a giant that rose above the rooftops, and we wanted to break it with a stone. In those days Marwan and I were like a single spirit. One autumn evening we lit a fire in a barrel of rubbish and swore an oath to be forever loyal to each other. We played often, and invented our own secrets, built our own world out of the strangeness of the world around us. We watched the adults’ wars on television and saw how the front ate up our elders. Our mothers baked bread in clay ovens and sat down in the sunset hour, afraid and with tears in their eyes. We would steal sweets from shops, climb trees and break our legs and arms. Life and death was a game of running, climbing and jumping, of watching, of secret dirty words, of sleep and nightmares.
I remember you both well. I felt like a third wheel when we all started secondary school. I was jealous of you!
Marwan and I would chase the coffins. We would wait for them to reach the turning off the main road. The war was in its fourth year by this point. The coffins were wrapped in the flag and tied firmly to the tops of cars that came from the front. We wanted to be like grown-ups who, when a coffin passed by, would stand and raise their hands solemnly and sadly. We would salute the dead like them. But when the death car turned a corner, we would race after it down the muddy lanes. The driver would have to slow down so that the coffin didn’t fall off. Then the car would choose the door of a sleeping house, and stop in front of it. When the women of the house came out they would scream and throw themselves in the pools of mud and spatter their hair with it. We would hurry to tell our mothers whose house the death car had stopped outside. My
‘Hassan Blasim, pleased to meet you.’
Crosswords
In memory of my friends:
Dawoud the engineer, 2003
Kouresh the poet and doctor, 2006
Bassem the sculptor and photographer, 2007
He wakes up.
It’s a mess of a morning.
He hears the words: ‘For God’s sake, I’m going to die of thirst!’
He sits on the edge of the bed. He feels a numbness in his limbs. He pours himself a glass of water. He looks around the ward in a daze. He sees a bird hitting the window pane. A plump nurse is giving an injection to a man with an arm missing.
‘Aha! Cold water! Thank you,’ says the policeman somewhere deep inside him...
My lifelong friend Marwan used to say, ‘Across: mankind; down: the sea. The highest mountain peak in the world. A three-letter word. An unfamiliar reality.’
They published a picture of him smiling on the cover of the magazine!
It was a picture taken two years ago during the ceremony at which he received the prize for being the best crossword writer. The prize was funded by a billionaire member of parliament who came back to the country after the change in regime. They say the great passion he acquired for crosswords during his long exile was behind his decision to finance the prize. It was worth 15,000 dollars. The prize aroused much envy among certain journalists and writers who criticized it severely and at length. Marwan won it on merit; I think Marwan could be awarded the title ‘Poet Laureate of Crosswords’.
I found some of his old crossword puzzles at the farm once. They contained strange expressions such as ‘half a moon’, ‘a semi-mythical animal’, ‘a vertical tunnel’, ‘a poisonous grass’, and ‘a half-truth’.
In the olden days, when our eyes were like magnifying glasses, the moon was a giant that rose above the rooftops, and we wanted to break it with a stone. In those days Marwan and I were like a single spirit. One autumn evening we lit a fire in a barrel of rubbish and swore an oath to be forever loyal to each other. We played often, and invented our own secrets, built our own world out of the strangeness of the world around us. We watched the adults’ wars on television and saw how the front ate up our elders. Our mothers baked bread in clay ovens and sat down in the sunset hour, afraid and with tears in their eyes. We would steal sweets from shops, climb trees and break our legs and arms. Life and death was a game of running, climbing and jumping, of watching, of secret dirty words, of sleep and nightmares.
I remember you both well. I felt like a third wheel when we all started secondary school. I was jealous of you!
Marwan and I would chase the coffins. We would wait for them to reach the turning off the main road. The war was in its fourth year by this point. The coffins were wrapped in the flag and tied firmly to the tops of cars that came from the front. We wanted to be like grown-ups who, when a coffin passed by, would stand and raise their hands solemnly and sadly. We would salute the dead like them. But when the death car turned a corner, we would race after it down the muddy lanes. The driver would have to slow down so that the coffin didn’t fall off. Then the car would choose the door of a sleeping house, and stop in front of it. When the women of the house came out they would scream and throw themselves in the pools of mud and spatter their hair with it. We would hurry to tell our mothers whose house the death car had stopped outside. My
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