Iraq + 100 by Hassan Blasim

Author:Hassan Blasim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

OPERATION DANIEL

KHALID KAKI

TRANSLATED BY ADAM TALIB

District: Kirkuk (Gao’s Flame), 2103.

It was still early when the SMS bracelet around Rashid’s wrist vibrated, waking him. The message was brief and precise.

Dear Beneficiary no. RBS89:

Good Benefit.

Today, the first Saturday of the month, is dedicated to ‘eradicating the remnants of evil.’ The Beloved Units will be mobilised throughout the city between the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Anyone in possession of audio or audio-visual recordings of the reclassified languages (laser on titanium or carbon fibre) should turn these in to the officially designated droids patrolling immediately. Anyone failing to comply with these instructions will be arrested and promptly archived.

Gao Dong, The Beloved, Loves You.

There was nothing unusual about these messages, not since the Venerable Benefactor, Gao Dong, who currently preferred the title ‘The Beloved’, had made the Memory Office his priority department. For those who don’t follow state politics, the Memory Office is both a security and social service. It functions as a security service by virtue of its core mission: to protect the state’s present from the threat of the past. But what makes it a social service, you ask. This stems from the intimate relationship the government has with its followers, trainees, and admirers—not exactly the relationship between superior and subordinates, rather benefactor and beneficiaries. That was the touch of genius the Venerable Benefactor had brought to all areas of life in the black-gold state of Kirkuk, thirty-five years ago. What he did to protect them all from the threat of the past was itself a service. For instance, he had reclassified all the city’s older languages, the most ancient of which dated back five thousand years, as ‘prohibited’. As beneficiaries, the people were forbidden from speaking Syriac, Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen, or any language other than Chinese. The punishment for speaking those languages, or reading about history, literature, or art in them was merciless: you were archived. This involved being incinerated in a special device—resembling one of those UV tanning beds that were all the rage in the late twentieth century—your ashes would then be removed to a facility that produced synthetic diamonds, where, just a few hours later, all that had been left of you would re-emerge as a tiny, glittering stone. It was called ‘archiving’ because a crystal can store an infinite library of information locked in its chambers—more secrets than the House of Wisdom—even a traitor’s personal history could be preserved in them. (It was something to do with electrons and vibrations.) Once polished, these crystals would be sent to another factory where they would come to adorn one of the Benefactor Gao Dong’s shoes, or one of his many hats.

Rashid didn’t possess any recordings in any of the languages Gao Dong wanted to strip Kirkuk of, but he spoke three of them fluently. This he couldn’t deny. He’d learnt them from his parents, and he knew something in his bones would compel him to teach them, in turn, to his own children one day, if he had any.

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