Voices of the Lost

by Hoda Barakat

  I went to prison to defend her honour – that was more or less what it was about. I wanted to accumulate some money, in any way I could, in order to keep her from the muck of the streets, and from the humiliations of service. Otherwise, what does family mean? I’m her brother, and it was up to me to keep her respectable. To defend her honour. Her honour, which turned into a stain, a mark of shame and disgrace.

  My father died of exhaustion. From fatigue and keeping his head bowed low. His heart stopped suddenly one night. The whole world turned to me and said, ‘Now you’re the man of the house.’ My mother said, ‘Your sister is divorced and she’s come back home with her girl. You’re her father now. Do something.’ I did something. I picked up the suitcase they’d prepared for me, and I took it to the destination they named. It was easy. Until God decreed what would be, and the dogs sniffed out what was in the case.

  My sister robbed me. News of it reached me while I was in prison. She forged some papers and sold the house. Who would have believed it? And she stole from the woman she was working for, after killing her. They accused the husband.

  Who would have believed any of it? My God, what devil invaded her body? Where did she get these ideas, this talent for bluffing? How did she learn how to build such perfect traps? And she destroyed my mother. I’m ready to say that. My mother, who was an invalid, and she killed her. She killed her own mother.

  What turned her into this sick, twisted thing?

  And then, on top of all that, I learned that she was going around with men in public. People don’t say to you openly that your sister is working as a whore. She was working as a whore. This woman is not my sister. By God, I swear I don’t know her!

  There’s no doubt that she’s fled. She must have left this country for ‘an unknown location’, as they say. I haven’t found a single trace of her. She vanished and no one has any idea where she is. But I will find out everything. Back there, where we’re from. I’ll find traces of her there. She can’t disappear completely like this when she still has a daughter there. Even that criminal murdering whore will return for the sake of her daughter, now that my mother has died. The girl doesn’t have a father to go to. Her father remarried, and long ago he stopped wanting the girl.

  I will put everything right once I’m there, beginning with getting the house back. After that, I will start searching for her and I’ll go on until I find her, and then I’ll kill her. I will slit her throat the minute I find her.

  Yaah!

  She sentenced me to this. She left me no choice. When we were little, she was my gentle, loving, pretty sister. She gave me food, taking it out of her share. She went out to face the older boys in the street whenever she heard the sound of my crying. She took me by the hand and led me to the shop and let me choose whatever I wanted, and she paid for it out of the few coins in her pocket. When the cane swung, she was the one who shielded me from the blows, and she cried when my father punished me. She would take me in her stubby little arms, wash my face and get me to laugh. I would go to curl up by her side, close to her heart, while she told me stories, repeating them as many times as I wanted, letting me play with her braided hair until I dropped off to sleep.

  Oh my God… God, tell me where this little girl went? Where did she go, my sister? Where is she? How can I run from this horror into which she has sunk me? And where would I go anyway? Where can I go, now that I’ve borrowed the money I need for the ticket?

  Where?

  Have you received a telegram addressed to me?

  No? Thank you.

  Has a plane ticket been sent in my name?

  No? OK, thank you.

  Did a telegram come for me?

  Could it have been sent to another post office in the airport?

  No? Thank you.

  Have you got a plane ticket with my name on it?

  Could it have been sent by mistake to another company office somewhere else, other than the airport?

  No? Thank you.

  ‌Part Three

  Those Who are Left Behind

  The dogs in those villages always used to chase me, coming as far as the village graveyards. I was especially careful around some of them, like the wild strays, who were always hungry. I began carrying items in my bicycle basket that I could use to distract them from chasing and biting me, because eventually my legs couldn’t take any more bites. I’d got older, and being older, dodging the dogs was not the fun and games it had been when I was very young.

  But I still loved my job. I was certain that when I was forced to retire I would become a sad and miserable old man forgotten by all the people I had served. They would no longer remember my rounds, how I always came by at the same time of day; no one would be waiting for me any more. People always used to appear in their doorways, standing on the threshold when they heard the high-pitched screech of my bike, tireeng-tireeng-tireeng! Still a good distance away, I could see them raising their hands, signalling to me: ‘Any letters today?’ The families of young men who had emigrated, newly wed lovers – I mean, the brides left at home when their new husbands travelled to the Gulf – these were always the first to come out of their homes. My delight at handing them letters was as great as theirs at taking them. Recorded cassettes only needed to be slipped into players; but when it came to written letters, I would stay to read them out loud – not always, but when I knew that the letter’s recipient couldn’t read.

  I drank coffee at home with them. They knew I preferred it ‘sugar light’. When the envelopes or parcels included a couple of gifts or some sweet treats, there was always a share for me. My postal round ended at the shop, and from start to finish it was always a happy outing. Except when I was bringing news of death. Although even then I was welcomed, for what responsibility does the bearer of news have for its contents?

  In our remote district I was treated like a prince. Wherever my bicycle stopped, there was a warm welcome to be had: people invited me in to share their meal, or if not that, they practically forced their home baking on me. The best was fresh loaves of bread still hot from the oven.

  I’m not talking about a distant past, not at all! Neither the internet nor anything else could do away with the need for my rounds, not even after internet cafés were springing up everywhere like mushrooms. That was because people couldn’t obtain computers easily. They were very expensive and the connection was always dropping out. Plus, it was monitored by the government, who, I should add, were probably responsible themselves for cutting the internet connection. In any case, on a computer no one could afford to write anything that might not please certain people. Or perhaps it was just that they were afraid and so imagined that the government were watching everything. No doubt even the air that bore the currents of electricity was being monitored. But a letter or a cassette – those were almost never targets of surveillance, since the authorities had begun to assume that only backward people used such methods to communicate any more. People whose minds would never turn to terrorism anyway.

  And then suddenly I was just a post office bureaucrat, no rounds, no distributing anything. It was because of the wars, these conflicts and battles that dropped on us from the skies, or, more accurately, that rose from Hell; no one understands how any of it happened, or why. Daesh. ‘Daesh!’ they call out, and people start fleeing and dying in the road, or hiding themselves in enclosures meant for animals. Even the animals scatter into the deserts looking for food, or they’re eaten by people who find them already dead. I fled too, several times, but I came back to pick up my salary – that’s when salaries were still reaching the office, if not always quite on schedule.

  At that time, that’s all I was doing. Fleeing and coming back. Getting out, going from one place to the next and back again. The indignity of it all. Coming back here, listening to music whenever I could find batteries for the cassette player. The door to the office had been ripped off its hinges and there was no longer even a single employee left. Had I a wife or children I wouldn’t have been able to
go away and come back like this. I mean, imagine it, leaving them in camps or on the side of the road, and then never finding them again, anywhere, no matter where I looked in God’s wide world. Sometimes, turning it over in my mind, I think I won’t live to see the end of Daesh. Or whatever – Daesh or something else. The wrath of the Lord will not be pacified before I die. My life is over now.

  I often think about all the lost letters that haven’t reached the people they were meant for, letters that are piling up in corners here and there, while the senders have no idea what has happened to them. Like the piles of dead leaves spilling over the kerbs at the corners of deserted streets. Maybe they’ve started burning them now. People must have begun to realize there is no hope that letters they’ve written will reach their destinations. Maybe they are no longer even writing any letters. When scores of addresses have vanished in neighbourhoods that are destroyed now, and our empty villages are turning into desert, who do you write to? What address do you use? When the fighting finally comes to an end, they’ll have to search very hard to find the street names, or maybe they’ll give the streets new names, as victors always do after seizing control of a place.

  I’ve given serious thought to emigrating to where my brother is. That is, if he himself hasn’t left the address I have for him. But first I need a postman – hahaha! – to bring me my official papers. They might or might not still be in the house, I don’t know. At the moment, I’m living in the post office. I come and go from here. I can’t go anywhere near the neighbourhood where my house is. Most likely it has been burned to the ground anyway. But how long will I be able to stay here? These wars jump from place to place, and it’s impossible to tell which direction they’re going and where they’ll be next. The fighter who is a defeated man today will likely return fiercer and more destructive than anyone else tomorrow. He could come back and attack you just when you assume he is fleeing after his latest defeat. All the news I hear on the radio seems to be old news, and so it isn’t helpful at all. In fact, my ears tell me how wrong it is, since I pick up the roar of explosions and the drone of aircraft overhead just as the radio announcer is telling me that the war has moved elsewhere.

  That’s why I only listen to songs now. My attention is mainly taken up with making my meals, which gets harder by the day. The boredom is really getting to me too, now that I’ve finished reading and sorting all the letters I found abandoned here. I’ve made a sort of register listing all of them, and I’ve put the letters themselves together in files that are clearly labelled according to address and date. Someone might come back; the post office employees might return and want to get those letters to the people they’re addressed to. Every letter is stapled to its envelope, and the file indicates its level of importance, and whether it is urgent. I even decided to add notes, where an address might be too vague or unclear for anyone who hasn’t already worked the postal routes around here.

  Now I’m finishing my own letter – it’s for whoever might show up here. I’ll put it in plain sight, next to the register of letters I’ve made. Because I might die before anyone reaches this post office.

  Who knows?

  Author’s Acknowledgements

  Special thanks go to the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Central European University in Budapest, and to its director, Professor Nadia al-Baghdadi.

  Translator’s Acknowledgements

  Marilyn Booth wishes to thank Helen Szirtes for her sensitive and thoughtful copy-editing.

  A Oneworld Book

  First published in Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland and Australia by Oneworld Publications, 2021

  First published in Arabic as Barîd al layl by Dar al Adab, Beirut, Lebanon. Published by arrangement with The Raya Agency for Arabic Literature and Rocking Chair Books Ltd.

  This ebook edition published 2021

  Copyright © Hoda Barakat, 2017, 2021

  English translation copyright © Marilyn Booth, 2021

  The moral right of Hoda Barakat to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78607-722-6

  eISBN 978-1-78607-723-3

  Typesetting and eBooks by Tetragon, London

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Oneworld Publications

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