Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Frankenstein in Baghdad, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Lies, and Storytelling
Good vs. Evil
Power, Authority, and Social Divisions
Family, Friendship, and Home
Superstition and Religion
Summary
Analysis
In his hotel room in the Dishad Hotel, Mahmoud listens to the Whatsitsname’s recordings multiple times. He is shocked by the tranquil tone in which the man recounts such a turbulent story. After copying the files on a flash drive, Mahmoud falls asleep in his hotel room, giving in to the intense August heat. He is woken up by the receptionist, who tells him that some visitors are waiting for him. Mahmoud goes down to the lobby, where he sees four men dressed in civilian clothing. One of them takes him aside and tells him that Brigadier Majid wants to see him urgently.
Mahmoud’s shock at hearing the Whatsitsname’s mirrors the Whatsitsname’s surprise at realizing that his followers are evil. Immersed in his own story, the Whatsitsname does not realize how abnormally brutal his own life is: in this sense, he is incapable of self-examination. Mahmoud, by contrast, understands that the Whatsitsname’s tranquility is potentially worrisome, in the sense that it indicates a lack of humane, emotional awareness.
Themes
Mahmoud wants to call Saidi to ask him about this strange invitation, but he realizes that he has left his phone and his identity card in his room. Giving him no time to do so, one of the men tells Mahmoud, in a threatening tone, that he must come with them immediately. Mahmoud tries to attract the receptionist’s attention, so that the man could remember this event if ever Mahmoud disappeared. However, the receptionist is distracted and Mahmoud realizes, despondently, that it is unlikely that the receptionist will remember this event.
Mahmoud’s fear of disappearing reveals how common it is for people to suddenly vanish in the current Iraqi political context. Authorities, in this sense, are not seen as protective forces, but as a repressive entity that harms people in seemingly arbitrary ways. Saidi’s absence from this scene reveals the editor’s unawareness of his role in these events, he is the one who gave Brigadier Majid Mahmoud’s contact information. This is a sign of Saidi’s possible unreliability, as he seems uninterested in what might happen to his journalist.
Themes
The men then enter a truck with government license plates. This does not reassure Mahmoud, who knows that this is no guarantee against an abduction. After driving through the city, they reach the Tracking and Pursuit Department headquarters, and Mahmoud is taken into Brigadier Majid’s office. There, he is served some weak tea. During the conversation, he soon realizes that Brigadier Majid’s friendship with Saidi will not protect him. The Brigadier, Mahmoud analyzes, will serve whoever is in power: Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government, the current American occupation forces, or the future Iraqi government.
Once again, Mahmoud’s fears show that citizens do not feel protected by their government: rather, they see it as an oppressive force that can harm them for no valid reason. Mahmoud’s reflections on the Brigadier’s shifting loyalties underlines the role of sheer power and authority in guiding the country: despite their elevated position, people like Brigadier Majid only care about securing their own professional advancement, not about stable moral or ideological principles.
Themes
Mahmoud realizes that Brigadier Majid wants to scare him into revealing information, as though he were a criminal. Indeed, the Brigadier tells Mahmoud that this tea is a special concoction made with different animals’ tongues. It is meant to “loosen” tongues, so that people reveal their secrets. The Brigadier notes that he has also drunk it, in order to honor their friendship. Mahmoud does not understand how he should interpret Brigadier Majid’s alternatingly threatening and friendly attitudes.
The Brigadier’s mention of “friendship” mirrors Hadi’s own supposed “friendship” with the Whatsitsname. Both relationships signal that these are not true friendships but, rather, temporary alliances based on an imbalance of power. In this case, the Brigadier only mentions friendship in order to manipulate Mahmoud into trusting him, not because he feels a sincere desire to protect the journalist.
Themes
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In line with his decision to drink the weak tea, Brigadier Majid offers some secret information to Mahmoud. He tells the journalist that he knows about the complaint that an important man in Amara lodged against Mahmoud one year ago. Mahmoud is shocked to hear this but realizes that the Brigadier does not know any more about this event. Mahmoud recalls being accused of inciting murder because of a story he had written for a local newspaper in Amara. This had not led to any legal proceeding against the journalist.
Brigadier Majid’s secret mirrors another exchange of secrets that took place earlier in the book: the secret that Mahmoud shared with Hadi after hearing his story about the Whatsitsname. This signals that stories have true value—in this case, political and judiciary worth—and can be exchanged against other objects of value: more stories. In this case, the information the Brigadier shares serves as a kind of blackmail, meant to pretend that he already knows Mahmoud’s secrets.
Themes
Brigadier Majid then tells Mahmoud that the real problem he wishes to address is the current issue of al-Haqiqa. He interrogates Mahmoud about the story of the Whatsitsname. Mahmoud explains that it is nothing but a fictional tale. The Brigadier, however, does not want to reveal that he has actually been pursuing this mysterious criminal for months. To satisfy the Brigadier’s requests for information, Mahmoud tells him that he can find Hadi at the “Jewish ruin” in Bataween. In order to secure the Brigadier’s trust, he hands him his digital recorder, which contains the entire story of the Whatsitsname.
The casualness with which Mahmoud shares Hadi’s private information mirrors Saidi’s own decision to share Mahmoud’s address with Brigadier Majid. In Mahmoud’s case, this gesture violates common understandings of journalistic ethics, which require journalists to protect their witnesses. This betrayal thus signals Mahmoud’s lack of concern about the possible dangers to which he is exposing the junk dealer.
Themes
Satisfied with this outcome, the Brigadier asks an assistant to make a copy of the files on the recorder and chats amiably with Mahmoud. The journalist, however, no longer pays much attention to the Brigadier’s words. He is not troubled by his own decision to reveal Hadi’s location. Rather, he reflects to himself that the Brigadier is evil and cannot be trusted.
Although Mahmoud is worried about the Brigadier’s unreliability, he does not realize that his own actions concerning Hadi also define him in a negative way: he is more focused on saving himself—specifically, on escaping the Brigadier’s interrogation—than in protecting a vulnerable witness.
Themes
Then, the Brigadier gets up to dismiss Mahmoud, making jokes in order to restore a friendly atmosphere. He tells Mahmoud that the weak tea was not actually a “tongue loosener”: it contains a special ingredient meant to prevent heart attacks, which sometimes occur when people are interrogated. This protects the department from the accusation of killing suspects. Although the two men laugh, Mahmoud understands that the Brigadier has just admitted to treating him as a suspect. Suspicious of the man’s intentions, he concludes that this comment about preventing heart attacks must also be a joke.
The ambiguity concerning the actual ingredients in the weak tea Mahmoud was served reflects a greater ambiguity: the difficulty of determining Brigadier Majid’s true intentions. It is possible that the tea contains nothing but tea: in this case, the Brigadier’s descriptions of the tea simply serve to manipulate Mahmoud’s emotions. The mention of suspects who have heart attacks during interrogations serves as a veiled threat, suggesting that Mahmoud was lucky not to be subjected to harsh treatment.
Themes
After this event, Mahmoud reflects on the episode in Amara that Brigadier Majid mentioned. When Mahmoud was living in his hometown of Amara, the police arrested leader of a criminal gang. Mirroring the people’s enthusiasm, Mahmoud wrote an article celebrating this arrest. He theorized about three types of justice: “legal justice, divine justice, and street justice,” which, he believed, caught up with criminals sooner or later. This article demonstrated Mahmoud’s commitment to courageous journalism, meant to serve the common good. However, to Mahmoud’s profound shock, the criminal was released a few days later.
The population’s vulnerability to criminal activity is, as this anecdote suggests, partially the fault of the legal system: the law failed to punish a well-known criminal adequately. This makes Mahmoud’s job as a journalist particularly dangerous, as he risks provoking the anger of the criminal in question. In this sense, Mahmoud’s commitment to his profession can be seen as a noble task, participating in democracy and the defense of elevated values, such as justice.
Themes
A couple of days after that, two masked men killed the criminal outside of his house. Surprisingly, this new event confirmed Mahmoud’s theory concerning one type of justice: street justice. In the meantime, Mahmoud learned that a tall man nicknamed the Mantis, the brother of this murdered criminal, was accusing him of inciting violence against his brother. Mahmoud’s theory concerning the three types of justice, the Mantis argued, implicitly justified his brother’s murder. Given the threats against him, Mahmoud promised that he would stop working as a journalist in the area. However, the Mantis accused Mahmoud of being a Baathist and threatened him personally. This ultimately forced Mahmoud to leave the province.
The need for Mahmoud to leave Amara due to a criminal’s threats signals the inadequacy of the justice system, which fails to protect journalists. This underlines the difficult reality that so many Iraqis face in this period of political instability: the absence of an effective rule of law, which leads criminal groups to rule a given territory. This episode also highlights the dangers of journalism in such a context, where writing an article can be perceived as a threat to those currently in power and, therefore, can have violent consequences.
Themes
Mahmoud does not like to recall these events, because they remind him that he has acted foolishly in the past. Reflecting on this episode in his life, he calls his brother Abdullah, with whom he chats from time to time. Abdullah reveals to Mahmoud that the Mantis has become an important local politician. Mahmoud is shocked to hear that the Mantis has not forgotten about his brother’s death: in fact, he wants to build a statue in his honor. Abdullah tells his brother to stay in Baghdad, for his own safety. He adds that the Mantis has now appropriated the journalist’s concept of the three types of justice, and frequently mentions this theory in his speeches.
Mahmoud’s regret at writing this article signals that, although he once wrote in defense of noble ideals, he is no longer sure whether such ideals warrant self-sacrifice: he might no longer want to put himself in danger in order to defend the truth. In turn, the Mantis’s use of Mahmoud’s concept of justice shows that ideas can be instrumentalized and used to support one’s own interests: although Mahmoud meant to denounce criminal activity, powerful people such as the Mantis can use it as a form of threat, meant to intimidate possible rivals.
Themes
Later in the day, when Mahmoud recounts his meeting with Brigadier Majid to Saidi, the editor laughs it off. He finds the story about the weak tea particularly hilarious. More seriously, then, Saidi later tells Mahmoud that they must all learn to interact with people like Brigadier Majid. He provides new, shocking information: he claims that the Brigadier is part of an assassination squad organized by the American Coalition Provisional Authority. The Brigadier’s goal, according to Saidi, is to follow the Americans’ strategy of creating an “equilibrium of violence” between the Sunni and Shiite factions. Violent tensions in the streets help Americans maintain enough military and political clout to take part in negotiating Iraq’s political future.
In the same way that Mahmoud no longer knows whether to trust Brigadier Majid, it becomes unclear whether Mahmoud should also trust Saidi. After all, Saidi was responsible for giving the journalist’s information to the Brigadier, and who seems unfazed by Mahmoud’s fear. Saidi’s argument concerning this “equilibrium of violence” suggests that no authorities or armed groups actually care about the well-being of the population: what they are focused on is maintaining a certain level of power and authority, regardless of the violent consequences this may have.
Themes
Mahmoud is shocked to think of Brigadier Majid as a criminal, but Saidi says that staying close to evil is the best way to be protected from it. Collaborating with the Brigadier, Saidi notes, allows him to pursue his political objectives and keeps the Brigadier from following some American order to kill the editor. Although worried about his boss’s confession, Mahmoud nevertheless realizes that he does not fully believe Saidi. This story, Mahmoud believes, could be meant to challenge or scare him, following secret intentions that only Saidi knows. An elegant woman then enters Saidi’s office, interrupting this conversation. She kisses Saidi on both cheeks and the two of them leave the office together.
Mahmoud’s suspicions about his boss’s true intentions shows that he is becoming aware of the power of personal stories. Saidi might be manipulating the truth—telling a possibly fanciful version of the story—in order to have a certain impact on Mahmoud and thus manipulate his employee’s reactions. At the same time, Saidi’s mention of the importance of staying close to evil could justify Mahmoud’s own actions: however unreliable Saidi might be, he is an invaluable resource in the political and journalistic world, capable of shaping Mahmoud’s career in positive ways.
Themes
The next week, Saidi goes to Beirut for a conference, and Mahmoud supposes he is with one of his lovers. Despite being overwhelmed with work and suspicious of the true nature of the relationship between Saidi and Brigadier Majid, Mahmoud still admires his boss immensely. In fact, the young journalist has begun to physically resemble his editor. He now pays much attention to his appearance. Although he used to make fun of men in suits, which he associated with civil servants or militiamen who abduct people in the street, he now wears suits himself.
Mahmoud realizes that Saidi probably has relationships with other women besides Nawal—which consequently raises questions about the nature of the relationship between Saidi and Nawal. Mahmoud’s transformation into a suit-wearing journalist symbolizes his social and professional ascent. Although this is a positive development in Mahmoud’s life, it also signals his closeness to potentially harmful circles of power: other suit-wearing people who can take part in criminal deeds.
Themes
One day, Mahmoud sees the number 666 appear on Saidi’s phone. When Mahmoud answers the phone, Nawal al-Wazir tells him that she knows who he is, and that his boss is currently in Beirut.
Nawal’s knowledge about the fact that Mahmoud is answering his editor’s phone suggests that she might be aware of Mahmoud’s feelings toward her. It is unclear what she intends to do with this information.
Themes
