"I KILLED HER BECAUSE I LOVED HER"
Muhsin Al-Ramli, translated by Jonathan Wright
The following short story, “I Killed Her Because I Loved Her,” by Muhsin
Al-Ramli, is an exclusive excerpt from the new anthology Baghdad Noir. Edited by Samuel Shimon, this collection has
been 10 years in the making, and demonstrates the power of crime fiction as a
method of processing ongoing trauma, as well as past experience.
We found Qamar’s body in the courtyard—it was half past five in the morning, and her mother’s screams echoed throughout the old Baghdad house in the Fadhil District. Qamar had been the most beautiful girl in our neighborhood. Now her arms were still and lifeless, her legs splayed open, and her luxuriant hair framed her face like the dark moon suspended in the sky above us. From the second-floor balcony where I stood, Qamar looked like she’d been crucified. The old landlord approached the body. When he saw that there was no blood he took her pulse at the wrist and neck, then announced that she was indeed dead. He pulled a slip of paper from her fingers. It said: I killed her because I loved her. He adjusted his glasses and read it again, then went to the main gate of the building to inspect the padlocks and bars that had been installed after the Americans came. He found them all firmly locked—just as he secured them at ten every evening when the curfew came into effect. Then he went to his room to call the police.
__________________________________
The short story “I
Killed Her Because I Loved Her” by Muhsin Al-Ramli is excerpted from Baghdad
Noir, edited by Samuel
Shimon. Used with permission of the publisher, Akashic Books. Copyright © 2018
by by Muhsin Al-Ramli, translation copyright © 2018 by Jonathan
Wright.
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