Here is Baghdad, 2005. In the midst of US invasion, death is omnipresent now. Your death is literally a matter of which street you choose to take home on a particular day or which café you choose to spend your afternoon in. 

Bataween neighborhood residents are in a constant state of terror. Massive explosions take place here, leaving behind an arm, leg, and sometimes just red, guiltless blood.

In ‘Frankenstein in Baghdad’, the writer Ahmed Saadawi introduces us to the lives of regular Iraqis. We get to know their way of thinking, their intentions. Every character has something to say, and you cannot help but listen. 

The book wanders into the lives of journalists, realtors, hoteliers, street vendors, and cafe owners; you could hear the neighbors’ gossips. Astrologers, fortunetellers, and the occasional Jinn also make an appearance in the book. 

Translated lightly by Jonathan Wright, Ahmed Saadawi’s surreal ‘Frankenstein in Baghdad’ won the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, making the author the first Iraqi author to win such a prize. 

A victim made by other victims

No one had the idea of bringing the corpse back to life, except Hadi, a middle-aged junk dealer, who lost his best friend Nahem in an explosion caused by a suicide bomber, but never got a proper burial.  

Hadi needed only a nose. The perfect nose would be the finishing touches so that this body he is creating would be “respected like other dead people and given a proper burial.”

Hadi embarks on collecting the stray organs of the city’s many bomb victims, stitching them together into a whole creature (who was given the name of “Whatsisname”).

Hadi’s wish doesn’t come true, because as soon as he stitches the nose, the body’s dead flesh is brought to life by a Christian mother who lost her son in the Iran-Iraq war and by the wandering soul of a hotel security guard looking for a body to settle in.

A missing soul inside a missing body. This creature sets out to kill the people responsible for the deaths of those who make up his body. But like any war, it doesn’t stop here. 

The killing gets out of control. The monster is blamed for a series of murders. All the authorities know that he’s terrible to look at, so they begin rounding up people in Baghdad as suspects.

During the shifting of the characters, we discover that the “Whatsitsname”, ironically, is the eloquent individual in the entire novel, as he describes himself as “the first true Iraqi citizen.” 

Like the original Frankenstein’s Monster, “Whatsitsname” is both victim and villain.

If the novel had any flaws, it would have been in the ending chapters, where everything was moving too fast and the ending came underdeveloped. After staying at the edge of your seat for the whole novel, it wouldn’t be fair to fall off at the end. 

The illusion 

But wait a minute, maybe all of this didn’t even happen. Maybe Hadi was just an alcoholic liar and made all that up in one of his gatherings in the Egyptian coffee shop. 

Or maybe the “Whatsitsname” is a myth or a personification of people’s fears or their longing for justice. 

“I’d go further and say that all the security incidents and the tragedies we’re seeing stem from one thing—fear. The people on the bridge died because they were frightened of dying. Every day we’re dying from the same fear of dying.”

Maybe this creature works for the government, or the Americans; maybe the whole story was framed by the media. Who knows? 

Here lies the plot 

In a war-torn Baghdad, the whole society is exploding. Nothing is certain anymore. It becomes impossible to trust anyone or anything. To all the residents of Bataween, the monster Hadi created is as frightening as any American soldier.

It’s unclear when and how the innocent becomes a criminal and when and how the criminal becomes innocent. People are constantly trapped in a vicious circle of violence and revenge. 

‘Frankenstein in Baghdad’ offers a new and refreshing outlook for Arab readers and a new perspective about Iraq to the international audience. Saadawi’s book with an odd mixture of weird, violent and funny content will unlikely lose its relevancy.