Set in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2005, Ahmed Saadawi’s novel Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) tells the story of a supernatural monster, the Whatsitsname, who commits a series of murders in a country already torn apart by terrorist attacks and sectarian violence (conflict between different religious groups). After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which caused the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, the country finds itself in a state of transition. During this period, three groups vie for territorial control and political power: the Iraqi government, allied with the U.S. military, and the opposing Sunni and Shiite militias. It is in this atmosphere of intense political tension that the Whatsitsname appears, questioning the possibility to achieve justice and peace in a violence-ridden country.
One day, Hadi Hassani Aidros, known as Hadi the junk dealer, tells the story of the creation of the Whatsitsname. Hadi is a man in his 50s known for constantly smelling of alcohol and telling cheerful, yet unreliable stories, which have earned him the nickname of “Hadi the liar.” He lives in a half-destroyed, one-room house known as the “Jewish ruin” in the neighborhood of Bataween, and repairs broken furniture for a living.
To his audience in the coffee shop of his friend Aziz the Egyptian, Hadi describes stitching together a corpse made of different body parts: the remains of victims of terrorist attacks. Hadi explains that his goal was to creates a human-like body that would denounce the government’s inability to curb violence in the city. Partially moved by the memory of his friend Nahem’s death in a car bombing, Hadi wants to prove that the victims of terrorist attacks are real people who deserve a dignified burial, not a mere set of disjoined body parts.
After finishing the corpse, Hadi passed in front of the Sadeer Novotel Hotel. There, Hasib Mohamed Jaafar, a young hotel guard, left his sentry box to observe this suspicious passerby. At the very same moment, a garbage truck, manned by a suicide bomber, exploded in front of the hotel gate, instantly killing the hotel guard. Although Hadi was thrown off the ground and superficially wounded, he quickly ran home, in a state of shock. The next day, upon waking up, he realized that the corpse—which he called the Whatsitsname—had disappeared from his house.
After the anguished spirit of Hasib the hotel guard inhabited the corpse’s body, the Whatsitsname came alive, and decided to enter Hadi’s neighbor Elishva’s house. Elishva is an old lady who lives alone with her cat Nabu and who believes that her son, Daniel Tadros Moshe, who died 20 years ago in the Iran-Iraq War, is still alive and will one day come back to her. When she sees the Whatsitsname enter her house, she believes that the picture of Saint George the Martyr, which she believes has spiritual powers, has fulfilled her wish: this human-like creature, she concludes, must be her son.
Buoyed by Elishva’s affection, the Whatsitsname later leaves her house and takes part in a series of murders. His first victims are the four beggars: drunk beggars who attacked him in the street after seeing his deformed face. Later, the Whatsitsname kills Abu Zaidoun, a cruel, former Baathist responsible for sending many young men to war, including Elishva’s son. The Whatsitsname’s goal is to bring justice to the city by killing those who have committed crimes in the past—and, in particular, the people responsible for the brutal deaths of the victims that compose his body.
In the meantime, as the Whatsitsname murders people across the city, two people become interested in his story: Mahmoud Riyadh al-Sawadi and Brigadier Sorour Mohamed Majid. Mahmoud is a young, ambitious journalist who becomes the protagonist of this story. Intrigued by Hadi the junk dealer’s unusually serious tone when recounting the story of the Whatsitsname, Mahmoud concludes that this disturbing story must be true. The journalist lends Hadi his digital recorder so that the junk dealer can record concrete evidence of the Whatsitsname’s existence.
To Mahmoud’s surprise, Hadi later returns him the digital recorder, through which the Whatsitsname has interviewed his own self. Mahmoud listens to this recording, in which a calm, collected voice—at odds with Hadi’s description of an extravagant monster—tells horrifying stories. The Whatsitsname explains that he has been living in a destroyed building along with an extensive team of assistants and followers. His followers are divided into three groups, each following the doctrine of a given “madman.” If the old madman and the eldest madman believe that the Whatsitsname plays a prophet-like, religious role on earth, the young madman trusts that this creature serves a political function: given its heterogeneous mix of body parts, the Whatsitsname represents the first true “Iraqi citizen,” the product of cultural, religious, and ethnic mixing.
In the meantime, Brigadier Majid is part of a mysterious institution, the Tracking and Pursuit Department, which seeks to prevent violent “security incidents” in the city. With an eccentric team of astrologers and fortune-tellers, Brigadier Majid is busy desperately pursuing a mysterious criminal they call “the One Who Has No Name.” Although his team succeeds in determining the Whatsitsname’s whereabouts, they are later forced to disband due to internal conflict between two astrologers: the senior astrologer and the junior astrologer, whose rivalry has kept them from successfully catching the criminal.
Over time, the Whatsitsname realizes that his body parts rot if he does not avenge them in time. Therefore, he collects the body parts of new victims in the streets, sometimes going so far as to kill other human beings in order to protect his own body. The Whatsitsname thus realizes that he is now killing people out of self-interest, not to promote a given notion of justice.
In parallel, he also realizes that no one is ever entirely innocent or entirely criminal, and, therefore, that his strategy of brutal vengeance is not necessarily valid. After violent conflict erupts among his followers, the Whatsitsname concludes that he is responsible for bringing even more brutality and social divisions to the city, instead of achieving peace and justice. As a result, he decides to temporarily halt his activities, in order to understand how best to proceed from there.
During this period, Mahmoud discovers that his editor, Ali Baher al-Saidi, is accused of stealing millions of dollars in U.S. aid. This is a deeply distressing event for Mahmoud, who is interrogated by secret services and loses trust in his boss, a man he has always admired—Saidi is a fascinating, well-connected man who has served as a mentor figure for the young journalist. This catastrophe motivates Mahmoud to leave Baghdad. Before doing so, he sells his digital recorder—which contains the story of the Whatsitsname—to a mysterious man known as “the writer.” Fascinated by Mahmoud’s story, the writer begins to compose a novel about the Whatsitsname. Due to the sensitive nature of this story, which contains confidential information about government activities, the government arrests the writer, considering him a potential security threat. However, instead of giving in to intimidation, the writer resolves to continue writing his story.
Due to escalating violence in the city, many characters leave Baghdad for safer parts of the world. Elishva agrees to join her daughters Hilda and Matilda in Melbourne after meeting her grandson Daniel, who looks just like the son she lost. Having lost his job, Mahmoud returns to his hometown of Amara. There, after witnessing so much chaos in Baghdad, he concludes that the violence in Iraq is senseless: it is futile, he realizes, to hope for order and justice in the midst of total anarchy.
At the end of the novel, the government arrests Hadi, whom they accuse of being the Whatsitsname. Mahmoud concludes that the government has failed to capture the mysterious criminal and wants to reassure the population by claiming that the innocent junk dealer is the culprit. The novel’s final scene confirms Mahmoud’s intuition: while the population celebrates Hadi’s arrest, a mysterious figure—whom the reader is encouraged to understand as the Whatsitsname—watches the scene ominously, while petting Elishva’s cat, Nabu, his new friend.
