You didn’t think the only Occult Undergrounds were in the West, did you?

Do their sunglasses have X-ray vision? Of course they do. The Americans have all sorts of modern technology, they can do whatever they like, really. Heh, but so can I.

Back before the first Gulf War, I owned this little antiques shop in Baghdad. Didn’t make much business, but I had links to some rich eccentrics in Kuwait back then, and some stranger characters. Remember Mr Ibraham? He’d figured out some way of becoming one with the dead spirits of Babylon, he went out to the ruins every day and he’d come back with some serious power. He had a bit of influence back then, so he could protect me.

Yeah, he died in ’91, and so I was pretty vulnerable. Luckily the Baathists had a crackdown on wizards after that, and so my more obvious enemies just disappeared. No one really noticed they were targeting people with magick, after all most of the old wizards were Kurds and Shiites anyway.

But they left my shop alone, mostly. I fiddled around with my machines down below. There were enough old pieces of scrap metal left over from the bombing that I could make some pretty good robots down there, but I never used them outside of my own basement. Until I made little Hamed. Ever seen that old Disney movie, Pinnochio? It was just like that. I made a boy, and I called that boy my son.

I lived with him for almost six years, and I loved him. Until the Americans came back. They probably didn’t even mean to drop that bomb there. But when that marketplace went, so did my darling Hamed.

I couldn’t let my boy die unavenged.

So I began to make them. I would kidnap people. It was easy in the chaos and the looting. I would take them and take their skin. And then I’d cover my walking bombs with their skin. The ultimate jihad warrior. I’ve made so many, I can’t count. Most of them are still in Baghdad, dozens of them, walking around, waiting for the perfect moment. Then boom!

But my best work? Heh, heh. I’m building a robot which will house my soul. Then, I will use my mechanical spiders to capture a Yankee soldier, and take his skin. Then I’ll become one of them. I’ll blend in, they won’t notice me. I’ll be the perfect soldier. Faster, stronger. I’ll make my way up the ranks. And when I get to the top? Then Hamed will truly be avenged.