Hassan Blasim - The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq

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THE CORPSE EXHIBITION

HASSAN BLASIM was born in Baghdad in 1973 and studied at the Baghdad Academy of Cinematic Arts. A critic of Saddam Husseins regime, he was persecuted and in 1998 fled Baghdad to Iraqi Kurdistan, where he made films and taught filmmaking under the pseudonym Ouazad Osman. In 2004, a year into the war, he fled to Finland, where he now lives. A filmmaker, poet, and fiction writer, he has published in various magazines and anthologies and is a coeditor of the Arabic literary website www.iraqstory.com. His fiction has twice won the English PEN Writers in Translation award and has been translated into Finnish, Polish, Spanish, and Italian. In 2012 a heavily edited version of his stories was finally published in Arabic and was immediately banned in Jordan.

JONATHAN WRIGHT (translator) studied Arabic at Oxford University and has spent much of the past three decades in the Arab world, mostly as a journalist with Reuters.

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First published in Penguin Books 2014

The Madman of Freedom Square

Copyright 2009 by Hassan Blasim

Translation copyright 2009 by Jonathan Wright

Collection copyright 2009 by Comma Press

The Iraqi Christ

Copyright 2013 by Hassan Blasim

Translation copyright 2013 by Jonathan Wright

Collection copyright 2013 by Comma Press

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The stories in The Corpse Exhibition appeared in Hassan Blasims The Madman of Freedom Square and The Iraqi Christ, both published in Great Britain by Comma Press. The following selections appeared in The Madman of Freedom Square: The Corpse Exhibition, An Army Newspaper, The Madman of Freedom Square, The Composer, The Reality and the Record, That Inauspicious Smile, and The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes. The following stories were published in The Iraqi Christ: The Killers and the Compass, The Green Zone Rabbit, Crosswords, The Hole, The Iraqi Christ, A Thousand and One Knives, and The Song of the Goats. The Reality and the Record was first published in Madinah: City Stories from the Middle East, edited by Joumana Haddad (Comma Press, 2008). The Green Zone Rabbit was first published by Words Without Borders.

Excerpt from The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths by Erich Fromm (New York: Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1951).

ISBN 978-0-14-312326-2

ISBN 9781101609392

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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B EFORE TAKING OUT HIS KNIFE HE SAID , After studying the clients file you must submit a brief note on how you propose to kill your first client and how you will display his body in the city. But that doesnt mean that what you propose in your note will be approved. One of our specialists will review the proposed method and either approve it or propose a different method. This system applies to professionals in all phases of their workeven after the training phase has ended and you have taken the test. In all phases you will receive your salary in full. I dont want to go into all the details now. Ill brief you on things gradually. After you receive the clients file you cannot ask questions as you could before. You have to submit your questions in writing. All your questions, proposals, and written submissions will be documented in your personal file. You absolutely may not write to me about work matters by e-mail or call me on the phone. You will write your questions on a special form that I will provide you with later. The important thing is that you now devote your time to studying the clients file carefully and patiently.

I want to reassure you that we wont stop dealing with you even if you fail in your first assignment. If you fail youll be transferred to work in another department at the same salary. But I must remind you once again: Giving up the job after you receive your first salary payment would be unacceptable and would not succeed. There are strict conditions for that, and if the management agrees to sever relations with you, you would have to undergo many tests, which could last a long time. In the archives we have files we preserve about volunteers and other agents who decided to terminate their contracts on their own initiative. If youre thinking of doing that, well show you some examples of the experiences of others. Im confident youll be able to persevere with the work and enjoy it. Youll see how your whole life will change.

This is your first present; dont open it now. Its your pay in full. As for the documentaries about the lives of predatory animals, you can buy them and well cover the expenses later. Pay particular attention to the images of the victims bones.

Always remember, dear friend, that we are not terrorists whose aim is to bring down as many victims as possible in order to intimidate others, nor even crazy killers working for the sake of money. We have nothing to do with the fanatical Islamist groups or the intelligence agency of some nefarious government or any of that kind of nonsense.

I know you now have some questions that are nagging you, but you will gradually discover that the world is built to have more than one level, and its unrealistic for everyone to reach all the levels and all the basements with ease. Dont forget the senior positions that await you in the hierarchy of the institution if you have an imagination that is fresh, fierce, and striking.

Every body you finish off is a work of art waiting for you to add the final touch, so that you can shine like a precious jewel amid the wreckage of this country. To display a corpse for others to see is the ultimate in the creativity we are seeking and that we are trying to study and benefit from. Personally I cant stand the agents who are unimaginative. We have, for example, an agent whose code name is Satans Knife, that I wish those in charge would get rid of as soon as possible. This guy thinks that cutting off the clients limbs and hanging them from the electrical wires in the slum neighborhoods is the height of creativity and inventiveness. Hes just a conceited fool. I hate his classical methods, although he talks about a new classicism. All this lightweight does is paint the clients body parts and hang them from invisible threads, the heart in dark blue, the intestines green, the liver and testicles yellow. He does this without understanding the poetry of simplicity.

When I tell you some of the details I see that puzzled look in your eyes. Calm down, breathe deep, listen to the rhythm of your secret spirit calmly and patiently. Let me explain some points to you more clearly to dispel some of the misapprehensions you may have. Let me waste some time with you. What I tell you may be just personal impressions, and another member of the group may have a quite different opinion.