The Commander’s been dead for over two decades, I reiterated.
Yes, Overbite confirmed.
But the house—
Active, I assure you, very active, folks were housed there long after the property deeds changed hands; people were moved maybe a month before the scheduled demolition. Also, the cellar held Displays.
Displays! Le Musée is a myth, I insisted, a rumor produced by war. Someone’s pulling another Shabab.
Yes, said Overbite, no evidence, no photographs. So. A myth. The Mid East’s Nessie. Until now Displays only existed in your mother’s novella—the one you inferred, Le Musée—and the late Shabab’s contested testimony in the Al Jazeera tell-all. But another live one got left behind, Ms. Sabeen.
Can’t be, I said. In Le Musée, in Amma’s novella, they all perished in the end, after living as reminders for many years. Anyway, why come here? You think—
Didn’t you hear me? Overbite interrupted again.
I did, I repeated.
They didn’t leave a dead body, Miss Sabeen. The man they left behind lives; he grew old in prison.
Can’t be, I said again, but less convincingly this time. So Shabab didn’t lie?
The man who was rescued knows you, wishes to speak to you, Miss Sabeen.
Me?
Sheikh Salman’s somewhat gaunt now, Miss Sabeen. Lived as a Display for two decades. In your Amma’s French, it sounds more sinister, no? Les Exposés! But Allah is merciful, the sheikh’s alive. He employed me to find you. Hello, Mouse, he wanted me to tell you, Ahlan Wa Sahlan.
Please, I begged Overbite, stop talking. The man killed my father.
II
On the plane, I dozed. Amma invaded my dreams. As did Uncle Salman. And Father. When I woke, I asked for some wine, then wondered why Sae Hoon had made such a fuss about my departure, why she implied I had intended to sabotage our planned trip to visit her little nephew, that I always did this when stuff mattered, that both of us were expected to be there.
Why go? she begged. Who is this man?
I am not sure, is what I said, answering both questions.
All this because of some mediocre tale your mother wrote, she spat.
Some mediocre tale? I asked Sae Hoon right back. She didn’t know; she refused to elaborate.
Amma published Le Musée in five parts, a decade or so after Father’s death, in a reputed Malayalam literary journal, the now defunct Gulf Vaartha. Originally published in French, which Amma began to learn during our stint in Pondicherry, she translated it into English quickly, after which it was translated into Malayalam by the much-praised writer and translator Sudha, because Amma’s written Malayalam was so-so.
While lauded in Paris, some Malayalee critics in India dubbed Le Musée a work of adolescent dystopia, a revenge-fantasy by “a mildly skilled tyro,” but they recognized its intent; “Beware,” noted critic Partha wrote in The Hindu, “because of what happened to this woman, the murder of her husband, the dislocation of self and child, what we have here is a warning, expressed as fictive literary revenge.” When the English version came out in paperback, Amma’s Parisian agent sent a copy to the Times. No one was interested.
In Le Musée, a disenchanted laborer leads a revolt against a village chief in a Francophone land Amma refuses to name. The chief is vanquished; his subjects are terrified. The culling is expected, but it is meticulous; every day, for a week, from noon to twilight, one hundred are put to death, then the extermination stops, and the forced assimilation begins.
But the laborer Ba, Chief now, wants this moment preserved for posterity, so he orders his soldiers to create, then manage, a readymade village within a village. Among the prisoners he has a trusted lieutenant handpick eleven based on gender and age. Ba gives his project a name: Le Musée, where inhabitants would be under 24/7 surveillance.
By Ba’s mandate, Le Musée residents would be provided provisions for six months, and seeds for crop; if the harvests were kind, these would keep them alive for years, enough time for the victors to observe the vanquished, to examine up close the people they had conquered, to watch them, to smell them, to notice how they spoke, how they baked bread, and to be there when they died. Ba named the people of Le Musée. He called them Les Exposés. In English, Amma clumsily translated this term to “The Shown.”
In the original story, the laborer Ba tells the handpicked lot if they refused to comply, he would order his men to find the most beautiful boy and girl in the village, then slice away one body part with a butcher’s blade daily. They decide to test his bluff. The boy loses his nose, the girl, a breast, but when the blade begins slicing their tongues on the second day, the assembled eleven cease being obstreperous. They comply.
The publication of Le Musée did not bring Amma fame, but respect filtered through. She never wrote another work of fiction. However, back in the Emirates, as the conflict between the defense forces and the rebels grew, the death tolls on both sides getting worse, the rebels began abducting Emiratis/Locals and expats in order to use them as leverage. Then the abductions became quite frequent—almost out of control.
Folks started hiring bodyguards. In the beginning, it was thought people were being held ransom for money, but then one February when the rains were unusually harsh, an abductee escaped. His story made the papers. There was a television interview. What he said disturbed everybody, but I was especially troubled by Amma’s reaction. Finally, she said, about time.
*
To protect the escapee’s identity, the papers gave the man an alias: Shabab. On TV, Al Jazeera doctored everything—his face, voice, shape.
In Shabab’s words, the rebels began by bartering the hostages for ransom, even buying negotiation time. However, it soon became evident the abductions were a show of strength or intent. And by the time Shabab was kidnapped along with his sister in the late aughts, the kidnappings fulfilled a particular clause in the rebels’ manifesto.
At this point in the televised interview, the interviewer leaned forward. Clause? he said. The camera panned towards Shabab’s pixelated face.
Clause? the interviewer said again.
A sigh escaped pixelated lips. Shabab began.
The rebels, Shabab insisted, were now busy collecting living evidence. The Commander, Shabab said, was convinced victory was close, so he wanted keepsakes: Locals. Living war trophies. But he also wanted to do something to these people, Shabab warned the camera, right before the interview took a break to make way for ads.
The Commander wanted his trophies to perform for him, Shabab said a guard told him, to perform for future generations.
Many years ago, the guard had told Shabab, a wealthy benefactor gifted The Commander a copy of Firdose Moosa’s Le Musée. The work became an inspiration, and the fictional Ba a kindred spirit.
Shabab’s testimony, at the time, appeared quite credible. For over two months, reporters called Amma every day. No comment, she muttered, no comment. Smiled as she hung up.
The rebels, under The Commander’s directive, Shabab had said, butchered sacred ties when they abducted entire families.
They separated husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, roomed one stranger (a man) with another stranger (a woman) and spouses with acquaintances, and then waited. Years, in fact. As strangers interacted, turning into friends, enemies, and others, the perils of being human, of needing physical contact or any contact at all, intervened. New bonds formed.
No contact, visual or otherwise, was permitted or provided between groups. Parents and siblings never saw each other again, so the only constants for the abducted Locals were their roommates.
Over time, habits were known. They could identify each other’s smells, they looked for each other in the morning, reached for each other at night. There were consequences. Some friends became lovers or stand-ins for missing spouses. Sleeping “arrangements” turned into pregnancies and teens became fathers and mothers. The newborns were raised behind bars, but also in open court.
Th
e rebels, Shabab insisted, were permitted to watch, to come whenever they pleased.
In The Commander’s eyes, the abducted Emiratis/Locals would symbolize a difficult past and why war had been necessary. When victory became imminent, The Commander would borrow Amma’s idea. First, he would inform the prisoners they wouldn’t be released as a sign of goodwill. Then, copying Le Musée, he would provide provisions for six months and wait.
In The Commander’s vision of the future nation of Mallu Landoo, if residents wished to explore how the imprisoned Emiratis/Locals behaved, they could rent surveillance tapes, or come in person to observe how Emiratis/Locals walked, prayed, talked, sat, ate, shat.
Like Amma, The Commander named these people; he stole the Malayalee word the translator Sudha used in the Malayalam version of the novella.
But a problem arose. Somehow two reporters, a lady from The Guardian and a man from Der Spiegel got wind of The Commander’s scheme and requested a meeting. He wouldn’t oblige. Then they tried contacting the rebel’s press secretary, and he told them both that yes, people had been abducted, yes, they were safe, and would be released once the war had ended, but no, they weren’t being treated like animals in a zoo. But do you have a special name for these people? the Der Spiegel man probed. No, said the press secretary, they are just prisoners of war. It was a lie. The Commander knew all about the power of media attention, and he was prepared to acknowledge the existence of such a project to convey the seriousness of his intentions. But he anticipated a problem. The Western press consistently mispronounced foreign names, which infuriated The Commander, but he didn’t want to borrow the term favored by Amma in her English translation. Instead, he decided the Locals that his rebels had begun abducting/collecting deserved a more Anglicized, press-friendly name. Thus was born The Displayed, or Displays.
When Shabab disclosed on live television what he had lived as for many years—a Display!— The Commander’s notion was proven right. The name, in the press’ hands, became a sensation.
Then something happened. Shabab’s kidnapped sister was discovered at a bus station a month later a few hundred kilometers from Petra. In recovery, Fatima (her real name) insisted Shabab had lied. They had been kidnapped, though not by rebels, and they certainly weren’t called anything or put on display. But yes, her brother was obsessed with Firdose Moosa’s book. He needed help, she said, help him please!
Fatima’s testimony exposed Shabab’s real name. The reaction was mixed. Protests erupted outside his residence. Trauma put ideas in Shabab’s head, some said. Many called him a liar. The conspiracy theorists stood by him. Others didn’t give a shit.
Shabab refused to retract his claims. Sister’s lying. She’s frightened, he added.
Six months after his sister’s public testimony, Shabab wrote a letter to his wife, then took some pills. His suicide note has never been made public. The family shared but a phrase. He said sorry, his tearful baba informed the press, sorry. Fatima jumped off her apartment’s balcony the following year.
III
We were at Uncle Salman’s house, in the city where I was raised. In two decades, the city was transformed. Nothing I remembered remained.
We sat across from each other. Indian incense made the room smell of Mysore. Imprisoned, once-charismatic Uncle Salman’s physique resembled a dry tea biscuit’s. Almost hairless on top. Fidgety. The dates stayed untouched. Jaffa oranges shone like the sun. I sipped black tea. Just talk, I said finally.
As Displays, Uncle Salman confessed, the rebels forced him to share a cell with his brother’s wife. I begged them, he said, begged them to have us switch partners.
One bed, he recalled. Slept on the floor. Days, maybe weeks. I respected Souad, never touched her, undressed with my back turned. One room, you see. Until—
I listened. Polite. Disgusted. Curious. Uncle Salman betrayed Father, but I was obliged to hear him out. And to ask about Father, the last days.
You don’t see it coming, he said.
Of course you don’t, I replied. The phrase dripping with acid.
Souad got pregnant, Uncle Salman whispered. Tried to kill the baby. Almost succeeded.
A child, why? I asked.
It is important to live, Uncle Salman snapped, running his palm across wisps of hair. Believe me, Sabeen, we loved each other when we made that baby.
You stuck your cock in your brother’s woman, I reminded him.
Uncle Salman watched me. Sneered. One night, he said, a guard came up to my cell and played me a recording.
BBC Radio? I laughed dryly.
Lovemaking, Sabeen. I recognized my wife. We had been abducted together. It was OK. We had all moved on.
Uncle Salman lit a cigarette.
You fucked your brother’s wife, I said.
He slapped me. I slapped him back.
And my wife fucked her cousin, he retorted.
I refused to respond.
Look, he continued, Souad woke one night and began hitting her belly. I stopped her, consoled her. We had the child. But she couldn’t look at the baby. I begged her to breastfeed the boy. She refused. The morning I caught her trying to smother him, I—
It’s easy to kill, isn’t it?
Uncle Salman steeled himself. I needed to protect my baby boy, he said.
You rape her, then want her to have the kid!
NO! I loved Souad. That night I calmed her down. She was crying. Then I held her for a long time. I used a shoelace, I put her out of her misery. The guards watched me do it. No one said a word.
Brute. I said it softly. Brute, I said again.
Perhaps, he concurred, but there are other things to address. The reason you came.
Your man said you would explain Father’s death—the truth, I told him.
Yes.
I paused. In return? I asked. In return, what do you want?
Uncle Salman pointed to a folder on the table. Look inside, he said.
I did, and saw an amateur hand-drawn portrait of a young boy. Early teens.
My boy Majid, Uncle Salman explained. I made that myself.
My role was still unclear, so I probed again.
I know your work, Sabeen, Uncle Salman shared. People respect it. More gifted than your Amma, I think. Write an op-ed, pitch a story. Anything. Everyone knows who you are. Tell the boy his father loves him. Urge them to give him back, or let me return.
Them? Return?
The Commander may be dead, he said, but the rebels aren’t finished. They chose to leave me behind. They took the others.
Why?
I don’t know, he said, maybe they figured I would only die in there. I don’t know. They took my boy, I raised him. Taught him to walk, speak. My world’s empty, Sabeen. I am in limbo. I am in a country I don’t know anymore.
Return? I reminded him.
If the boy’s too precious, maybe they could take me back.
I watched Uncle Salman. He seemed lucid. I watched him light another cigarette. Observed what the nicotine had done to his teeth, and realized I didn’t care what happened to his son, or what happened to him, or what he thought. He sensed it too, I think, so changed the topic. Became more business-like.
What do you know about your father, Moosa? he asked.
Worked in a produce firm, I said.
Uncle Salman nodded. Yes. Doing what, you know? Produce firms are complex places.
Father grew laborers, I said. Produce firms produce laborers. Satisfied?
That’s right, Uncle Salman confirmed. Moosa grew people out of the soil. He was the best, your father. All clandestine, of course. The UN wouldn’t have approved. It’s not like now, when growing workers is legal. Italy growing Punjabi farmers to make parmesan or New York State contracting the island of Trinidad to produce cabbies. Moosa was my time’s Doctor Frankenstein. But his creations walked, spoke, worked, obeyed like regular human beings, like you and me. When the whole stupid world was only interested in robots, your father made people. Trouble-free labor, your f
ather made. Better than the shit China hawks nowadays, I am told.
Amma said he tried to doctor the formula, I said, that he wanted to give the laborers autonomy.
Uncle Salman laughed. Moosa was many things, Sabeen, but he wasn’t noble.
Father got bored was what Amma told me, I said. Once he perfected the formula, he got bored overseeing the production of laborers, was what Amma said, I said.
Moosa was always a fucking scientist, Uncle Salman laughed, not a factory supervisor, Sabeen, so he started tinkering.
Amma said Father was interested in experiments, I told Uncle Salman, then secretly produced a series of special laborers, whatever that meant.
Uncle Salman put his legs on the coffee table, looking a bit grave. Then he chuckled again. Moosa realized, he said, that produce-firm labor followed orders well, but didn’t have a ringleader and rarely elected one. So he produced a batch of labor leaders, training them somehow. His goal was to improve efficiency; group leaders would do that. Then he became convinced increasing labor life span would save money.
They lived for how long normally?
Labor?
Yes.
Oh, eight, maybe ten years, Uncle Salman recalled.
Father changed that? Right?
Uncle Salman paused, ate a date. You know what he did, Sabeen? He advocated letting them die of old age. Like the rest of us.
I had started taking notes. Out of habit. So how did they die before? I queried.
Sabeen, Moosa programmed the laborers to follow orders. Every eight to ten years, factories would load these men in trucks. The trucks would drive to the desert. And that was that.
What was what?
They would leave them there, Sabeen.
Temporary People Page 7
