The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North by Sjón

Author:Sjón [Sjon and Ted Hodgkinson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782273837
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2017-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

His wife Karima didn’t know what kind of work he’d been doing in those years. He’d excused his absences by saying he had to travel to other cities to buy and sell used cars. When the police got on his trail, the Tiger and his family fled to Iran, and from there to Turkey, where he applied to the United Nations for refugee status after forging some documents and claiming that he was an opponent of the dictatorial regime then in power. Finally, through the United Nations, he reached Finland.

That night, the night of the pomegranate orchard, the Tiger was driving the car, accompanied by another killer. The mission was to go to a posh house in the pomegranate orchards on the outskirts of Baghdad. The owner of the house was a boss in a gang that controlled a small river that flowed in from a neighbouring country. The gang owned special tankers for carrying water, which they would sell in areas hit by drought. The government had lost control, overwhelmed by problems: rebels, groups of religious extremists and then the drought, which disrupted a bureaucracy that was already corrupt. The government started bartering oil for water from neighbouring countries. Most of the gangs that had been dealing in arms and counterfeit banknotes expanded their operations and started trading water. Some of them controlled wells and began to impose taxes on the farmers. The mission of the Tiger and his companion was clear: to eliminate everyone in the posh house in the pomegranate orchards. There was intense rivalry between the gangs to win control of the water market. The Tiger and his companion crept through the fence into the grounds of the posh house. They burst into the building, where there were five men sitting at a table, eating and talking. The Tiger and his companion killed everyone in the room. Then he rushed into the kitchen while his companion started looking for some documents in another room. The Tiger found a servant girl cowering in the corner of the kitchen. At the far side of the room, there was an open window. He realized that someone else had been in the kitchen and had escaped. He caught sight of the man’s shadow heading deep into the orchards. The Tiger killed the servant girl, jumped out of the window and started running after the man who had escaped. The Tiger was soon out of breath; he couldn’t see the man, but could hear him stepping on dry twigs somewhere. There wasn’t much time. After running some distance further in the pitch black, the Tiger pulled back some branches and found a man kneeling close to the base of a pomegranate tree. The Tiger couldn’t make out the man’s features. He heard him saying that it was his tree and begging him not to kill him. The Tiger aimed his pistol and fired several shots.

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