The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  On his way to the office that morning he walks by the mosque and the government buildings that are wrapped in barbed wire, guarded by nervous young police officers and soldiers in helmets and riot shields. Something’s afoot, of that there’s no doubt.

  *

  He avoids the government district that evening, even though he can feel the vibration of the demonstrations all the way to his balcony on the other side of the city. He doesn’t avoid it because they told him to, but because he’s waiting for Yassim to come back.

  But Saturday goes by without a word from him, and Jacob reads the text from last weekend over and over again, weighing every possible scenario. Maybe it wasn’t even Yassim who sent that text. Why did he take that for granted? It was from an anonymous number. When he analyzes it more closely he realizes it doesn’t say it’s from Yassim anywhere.

  He can’t believe he’s been so stupid, so terribly naive that he allowed such empty hope to dictate how he lives his life. At half past seven he feels completely dejected. He drinks half a bottle of wine on the balcony with disappointment pounding inside him. He considers taking a taxi, but by this time it’s just as fast to walk. If he can’t have Yassim, at least he can have the uprising.

  *

  He’s almost to Martyrs’ Square when the extent of the protests, the extent of the rally, becomes clear to him. Thousands of people pouring into the square in front of the mosque: students, families with children, masked men with their upper bodies bare and stones in their hands. And everywhere armed police officers dressed in black. Barbed wire and smoke. He moves towards it, feeling as if nothing matters now, and he just wants to be part of something, feel something, finally see something.

  He walks straight into the crowd, moving with them across the square. Notices families with children becoming more rare, until finally the crowd consists of only young people with angry faces chanting slogans. The masked faces become more frequent, as do the hands holding rocks. He feels his pulse start to race, but he wants to follow through, wants to see what this is, what it will lead to. So he lets the crowd sweep him towards the government district; he can feel himself becoming a part of it, can feel the sweat running down his neck and mixing with other people’s sweat. Everywhere are flags, posters, slogans, songs, drums. It’s so deafening that he doesn’t hear his phone ringing in his pocket. But he feels it vibrating. And he manages to free an arm despite the press of people, gets a hand into his pocket, takes out the phone and pushes it to his ear.

  ‘Where are you?’

  He can barely hear, but it’s a voice he’d recognize anywhere. Yassim.

  ‘At the demonstration!’ he screams into the phone. ‘You didn’t call. I didn’t know. Where are you?’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Yassim says. ‘Get out of there. I’m taking a taxi to the Four Seasons on Cornichen, the boardwalk, in about twenty minutes. Repeat what I just said.’

  ‘Four Seasons!’ Jacob shouts. ‘In twenty minutes.’

  And with that Yassim is gone. And everything else too. Jacob stops in the middle of the crowd, which is flowing like a river around him. He doesn’t notice it at all.

  *

  Later the two of them are walking westwards along Charles Helou, past the Four Seasons and the new skyscrapers, and the darkness around them feels gentle and alive, full of holes, not even darkness really. The traffic is sparse here, when they get away from the protests and chaos down near the border between East and West Beirut.

  Jacob coughs; his throat is dry like always after a day spent breathing in the smog and the stench of trash. It’s hard to really take in that he’s actually walking beside Yassim again; it feels more like a memory. He glances at his friend, who smiles at him, amused.

  ‘You didn’t think you’d hear from me again,’ Yassim says. ‘You thought I’d disappeared?’

  Jacob shrugs and turns his eyes to the blackness above the ocean. ‘Where were you?’ he says, too quietly. His voice is drowned out by a motorcycle weaving in and out of traffic. ‘Your trip?’ he says again, more loudly now. ‘Where were you?’

  Yassim turns to him and says nothing at first, just looks at him with those sad, curious eyes. ‘Syria,’ he says finally. ‘Near Aleppo.’

  Jacob stops, gets goosebumps on his arms. ‘What?’ he says. ‘Aleppo? What… Oh my God, what were you doing there? How did you even get there? I don’t know what to say.’

  Yassim holds up the camera hanging across his chest. ‘Taking photos,’ he says. ‘That’s what I do. I’m a photographer.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Jacob says.

  He’s speculated about what Yassim does for a living, imagined a thousand scenarios for why he disappeared, trying to avoid the suspicion that Yassim just didn’t want to be with him.

  ‘How could you know?’ Yassim says. ‘We barely spoke last time.’

  Jacob blushes, and they slowly start walking again. Yassim guides them away from Charles Helou and the sea and in between the new skyscrapers, in towards the chaos, towards the city.

  ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Jacob says.

  Yassim laughs again. ‘There’s not much to know. I’m a photographer. And right now, you know, with the war, there’s a lot of work in Syria. That’s the only good thing you can say about it. A lot of work in the area.’

  It doesn’t sound cynical when he says it, more resigned, like a reflection.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ Jacob asks. ‘I mean… My God.’

  Yassim shrugs and leads them further into the city, towards the financial district, where it’s calm and quiet this time of the day. Here there are only glass facades and building cranes, Persian Gulf money and black BMWs.

  ‘You get used to it,’ he says. ‘Don’t think about it much.’

  They’ve arrived at a newly built high-rise that shoots upwards for at least twenty irregular floors, with white terraces and glass windows from floor to ceiling. It doesn’t look like it has any exterior walls, and you can see straight into the apartments on the lower floors wherever they’re lit up. It’s a completely transparent building and Jacob wonders where the bedrooms are, if they too are fully open to the city.

  To his surprise Yassim goes to the entrance, where a bored security guard stands smoking, a machine gun leaning against his chair. Yassim greets the guard and walks past him towards the entrance, then turns to Jacob. ‘Are you coming?’

  They ride upwards in a sleek elevator of gleaming steel. It’s like travelling through water: silent and almost no resistance. Finally, the elevator stops gently, and Yassim smiles at him and carefully pushes past him out onto the eighth floor. Three doors, three apartments, no names on any of them, only numbers. Yassim goes over to number 801, the left door, holds a small card against the handle and opens it.

  ‘Like a hotel,’ Jacob says.

  It’s the first thing he’s said since they entered the building, but Yassim doesn’t answer, maybe he didn’t even hear, he just goes inside.

  The apartment is large – over 100 square metres – and sits in one corner of the building with two glass walls facing the city. Concrete floors, a kitchen island in an open floor plan, it looks completely unused, like a set, like a showroom. In the middle of the floor there’s a large table and a laptop. Two chairs, one on each side. No paper, no clothes, nothing.

  Yassim stops and turns to Jacob, his eyes now somewhat nervous and apologetic. ‘I would love to offer you something,’ he says. ‘But I only have water at home.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jacob says. He doesn’t want to drink anything. The images from the protest he was just in the middle of linger, and he can feel his legs start to tremble; a wave of exhaustion rolls over him.

  He goes to the window and looks out over the other newly built skyscrapers, the empty lots between them, the cranes and the traffic. You can’t even hear the cars up here.

  Yassim walks over to an almost invisible door in the glass wall and opens it. ‘There’s a terrace,’ he says.

  T
he warm, humid night tumbles into the dry, air-conditioned apartment as they head out onto the terrace. Outside it still feels like Beirut, the trash and exhaust and the traffic, albeit muted. It feels safe and Jacob leans over the railing and stares down onto the streets below.

  ‘Do you live here?’ he says. ‘You don’t have much furniture.’

  Yassim is standing next to him now, close enough to catch a whiff of his fragrance and some kind of crackling, leaping electricity. But not close enough to touch him.

  ‘I don’t need much,’ Yassim says. ‘I’m not here very often.’

  ‘How…’ Jacob begins, but he’s unsure what’s allowed, what he’s entitled to ask.

  ‘What?’ Yassim says.

  ‘Well,’ Jacob begins. ‘How can you afford to live here? I heard that only Dubai businessmen live in these newly built condos.’

  Yassim says nothing at first. Then he turns around, takes Jacob by the hand, and leads him back into the apartment.

  ‘How do you know I’m not from Dubai?’ he says quietly.

  Jacob sits on one of the chairs at the table in the big room, and Yassim asks him to wait there while he takes care of something further into the apartment. The lights from the surrounding buildings glitter outside, and it occurs to Jacob that he’s completely unprotected here, anyone can see inside. He looks around, and it’s hard to imagine anyone living in such an open and clean and completely transparent way.

  He spins around in his chair, clicks restlessly and curiously at the computer, which quietly wakes up, the screen turning on. He doesn’t know anything about Yassim. Just that he speaks English with an American accent and that the little he’s heard of his Arabic doesn’t sound like he’s from the Gulf. More like he’s from Lebanon or Syria. Should he suggest that they speak Arabic instead? He’d like to get better at Arabic, but it takes so much goddamn effort, and it makes him tired just thinking about it.

  The computer is password-protected, but he can just make out a blurry background image behind the dialogue box. Jacob squints. It’s a picture of a big family, ten, maybe twelve people. Adults and children dressed in nice clothes. Suits with colourful shirts and ties. Shimmering silk dresses and a lot of make-up. One of the women has red flowers in her arms, a veil, a white dress. It’s a bride, and this is a wedding photo with her entire family. Is it Yassim’s family?

  Jacob looks up and sees Yassim on the other side of the room with a large, framed painting in one hand. He puts it down with its subject against the wall.

  ‘Come here,’ he says.

  *

  They end up on the bed, of course, and he doesn’t even know how it happens, how all of a sudden he doesn’t have a shirt on, how Yassim’s warm, dry hands are caressing his chest. He feels Yassim’s hand in his hair; the other one is on his cock, unbuttoning his jeans, eager, searching and unruly. And so Jacob puts his own hand down there to help with the buttons, pulls off his trousers, and suddenly he’s naked.

  He’s panting and pressing himself against Yassim’s hand, which is around him now, steady, almost firm, and it feels so unbelievably good that Jacob thinks it might already be over for him, but Yassim just holds on, doesn’t move his hand, even with Jacob pressing against it.

  Instead, Yassim pushes him back on the bed and lets go, gets up on his knees. He’s still dressed, and Jacob is completely naked, completely at his mercy, and it’s so exciting he can barely contain himself. He would do anything right now, anything to feel Yassim on him, in him.

  Yassim laughs and pulls his T-shirt over his head, throws it on the floor behind him. He slowly unbuttons his trousers and stands up.

  ‘Do you want this?’ he says.

  ‘There’s nothing I want more,’ Jacob says.

  His voice is hoarse, almost unrecognizable. This is unlike anything he’s experienced before. Not like his tense and predictable nights with Simon in Uppsala after a bottle of wine. Definitely not like the dirty and frightening thing that happened at the bathhouse. This room, the sight of Yassim, his scent, the very thought of his skin, his hands, his mouth, gives Jacob goosebumps.

  Yassim has his trousers off now, and he’s standing on the floor in front of him. He’s bigger than Jacob imagined, and when he lies down on top of him, when he pushes Jacob’s thighs up towards his chest and pushes inside him without any warning, without asking for permission, it’s as if nothing in the world exists other than this.

  It hurts, but it’s a pain he never wants to end, a pain he’d stop time for if he could. Yassim covers his mouth as he sobs. Holds it hard and moves deep and sure inside of him, pushing Jacob’s hand above his head and pressing it down towards the mattress. Jacob is held tight beneath Yassim’s body, couldn’t move if he wanted to.

  He can feel his eyes filling with tears from the pain, but he doesn’t want to close them. He has to see Yassim, has to look into his eyes. And when he does, it’s as if he can see straight into him, as if he forgets he doesn’t know anything about him, that they just met, that he disappeared for over two weeks and then just as suddenly came back. None of that matters, because he sees something in Yassim’s eyes, feels it in the desperation with which he’s being forced down onto the mattress, knows this is more than sex, it’s something elemental, something that’s more than lust, so much bigger, infinitely more risky. Something you can’t resist, no matter how much you might want to.

  *

  Afterwards they lie on their backs in bed in the empty room. Jacob stares straight up at the ceiling, doesn’t dare glance at Yassim, afraid this fragile bubble of something like happiness might burst. Finally, Yassim breaks the silence.

  ‘I have no room for this,’ he says. His voice is thin, barely more than a whisper.

  ‘No room for what?’ Jacob asks as quietly as he can.

  Yassim takes a breath and turns his face towards him. ‘For what we just did,’ he says. ‘For you. I have no room for us.’

  ‘And yet you let it happen,’ Jacob says. ‘And yet you were the one who contacted me. You could have left me alone.’

  Yassim nods. ‘I should have,’ he says. ‘But I couldn’t. After that night in the garden, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.’ He sits up halfway, resting on his elbows. ‘But my life,’ he continues. ‘My life is not simple. I travel, take off on short notice. And what I do…’

  He falls silent for a moment, as if thinking of how to put this.

  ‘It’s necessary that I don’t draw any attention to myself,’ he says. ‘What I photograph and the contacts I need to maintain in order to do my work, if they knew this about me it would be over. This isn’t Europe. What we’re doing is a disadvantage, you know? A risk I can’t really afford to take.’

  Jacob nods. He knows how it is in Beirut. He’s heard the stories of sudden crackdowns on the bathhouses in Burj Hammoud, on doctors who perform anal exams, about the humiliation and harassment. And still Beirut is the most open place in the Middle East. He can only imagine what it must be like in Syria, in the war zones. He suddenly feels so selfish, that he didn’t think about this more, didn’t think about anything but himself.

  ‘I understand,’ Jacob says. ‘I really do.’

  Yassim nods. ‘I want us to meet again. But I’m going to Aleppo tomorrow for a couple of days and coming back in the middle of the week. And that’s how it will be. Just so you understand. You can’t talk about this. I can’t be your boyfriend; I have to be kind of like a ghost.’

  He smiles a little, and Jacob sits up and takes his face in his hands, kisses him gently.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I understand. You can be my ghost.’

  *

  Later, Jacob is sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to Yassim’s now heavy and rhythmic breathing, until Yassim rolls over onto his side, curls up like a child, all the while still holding Jacob’s hand.

  Cautiously, Jacob pulls his hand free and stands up. The room is silent as he tiptoes over the floor, except for the quiet buzz of the air conditioner.

  Th
e corridor and living room are just as empty as they were a couple of hours ago, and the light from the city falls through the huge windows. He looks for the door, momentarily disoriented. There’s the table with the computer, the open kitchen. His glance falls on the painting that’s leaning against one of the walls, still with its back side facing out.

  Why did Yassim come out of the bedroom with the painting? Why did he leave it here? Doesn’t he want Jacob to see it, or was he planning to show him later?

  He goes over to the painting, hesitates for a moment, listening for Yassim before turning it around.

  It’s an enlarged photograph, almost a metre wide and half as high. The light in the room is so dim that he has to lean the picture against the wall and hold up his cell phone with the flashlight on. The bright light falls onto the photograph, and he takes a step back to get an overview. But it takes a moment for him to make sense of what he’s looking at.

  The photo is taken from above, blurry and out of focus, not something you’d expect to see framed. Nor is its subject, he realizes as his eyes adjust to it.

  The photograph shows a courtyard at a large country house, a farm where some wealthy family probably lived for generations. But the inner courtyard and the buildings around it are in ruins, as if a bomb has exploded in the middle of it. As he leans closer and lets the light fall in different angles, he starts to understand that’s exactly what happened. In the gravel and the pits of the farm you can make out what could only be dead bodies, or parts of bodies.

  Jacob gasps. He can see a child on his back, apparently untouched, in dirty but fancy clothes and shiny shoes, his dead eyes staring straight up. He sees the upper body of a woman in a purple dress lying face down but he can’t see her legs. He sees something that might be an arm lying bloody and by itself in a crater in the middle of the picture.

  ‘I guess you understand why I didn’t want that on the bedroom wall tonight,’ Yassim says from somewhere behind him.