by Nihad Sirees
But let’s return to the hundred and fifty people being led by the carrier and the man on top, because the march was on the move again as that noisy human mass started pulling away from my resting spot on the pharmacy steps. A large group of secondary school students approached, all dressed in matching pseudo-military uniforms that we call khaki. They roared even louder than the first group and were led by another man being carried on the shoulders of a volunteer, or perhaps his carrier was an athletic coach, as I’m inclined to believe. The organizer was shouting slogans into a battery-powered handheld megaphone. They were repeating the same slogans but in a more distinct manner, which might have had something to do with the fact that they were educated students, pronouncing the slogan correctly, without mumbling its words, “One, two, three, four, we love the Leader more and more.” I would like to describe this roar for you, if that is even possible for me because the megaphone the student leader shouted through was but one of a total of three assorted noisemakers that were blasting my eardrums at that moment. There were two loudspeakers suspended high above us that I had heard from my house, but now one of them was broadcasting inspirational songs while an announcer with a loud and decisive voice that inspires enthusiasm and affection for the Leader in the hearts of the masses was speaking through the second.
That voice addressed the masses—“O citizens, O citizens”—and then proceeded to describe the affection the masses have for the Leader—also known as the Boss—and the affection the Leader has for his people. In his opinion, the masses were merely a small fraction of this world that adores the Leader because there are also trees and birds and clouds and … by God, even the stones and the dirt tremble as the Leader’s feet tread upon them. The announcer also declared that the Leader would guide the people to divine victory.
Now I’d like to make a comparison here between the loud speech the announcer made through the megaphone during the march and the sports commentary during football matches that are broadcast on television. Both commentators talk for the sake of talking, just to say something to the audience, to get them riled up to the point of zealotry. Even if the difference between the two may seem substantial, the similarity lies in stirring up the enthusiasm of the masses. While the sportscaster describes what he is actually seeing on the field, our marchcaster describes something that isn’t there at all but strives to make the masses believe in it. The sports announcer must take into account the existence of two competing teams, while there is only one perfectly united team present at our marches, a consummate team that must eliminate all traces of individuality in the crowd and turn all those individuals into droplets in a raging human flood. Any hint of individuality is a threat directed at the Leader’s supremacy—what else would be the point of bringing together those crowds if not the elimination of every trace of individuality? Besides, the formation of these marching torrents of humanity is not merely the aggregation of specks in order to make them flow in a particular direction; no, the megaphone announcer is rather meant to help bring together the psychological and intellectual flow of the crowd. When he says that human beings and stones and trees all love the Leader, he is addressing every single speck in that crowd; making each and every one of them believe what they are hearing in that moment, without the use of any logic whatsoever; eliminating any judgment about thought or personality or love among the individuals in this human stream; and corralling the raging emotional flood toward the Leader.
The roar produced by the chants and the megaphones eliminates thought. Thought is retribution, a crime, treason against the Leader. And insofar as calm and tranquillity can incite a person to think, it is essential to drag out the masses to these roaring marches every once in a while to brainwash them and keep them from committing the crime of thought. What else could be the point of all that noise? Love for the Leader requires no thought; it’s axiomatic. And the Leader doesn’t ask you to enumerate the reasons driving you to love him so. You must love him for who he is, simply because he is, and any thought given to the reason why might cause you to—God forbid—stop loving him one day because you might find, by chance, for example, that his eyes blink continuously whenever he speaks and that you have disliked that habit ever since you were young, and your love for him may start to diminish, which is, after all, a very grave sin indeed.
Even though I mentioned a reason for these marches, getting the masses out into the streets requires no special occasion. The justifications are always there: the Leader likes marches and can designate any given day for the people to descend into the streets in some particular city so he can sit back and watch it all on TV. This doesn’t have to take place on the same day in every city. If the occasion happens to be, as it was in this case, the twentieth anniversary of the Leader’s coming to power, the marches must begin a week before the anniversary and end one week afterward. Every city has to come out on a certain day so the television crews can film the marches, air them live and then archive them. Some people say that a copy of the recording is sent to an archive in the Leader’s palace so he can watch them in his spare time.
So we were in the season of celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the Leader coming to power, nothing more. While I stood on the steps outside a pharmacy, under an awning that protected me from the scorching sunshine, the march went on and the noise climbed to a crescendo as pictures of the Leader were hoisted higher above the heads of the masses.
Off to my left I detected an unusual movement and saw three Comrades in khaki uniforms rushing inside a building, shoving everyone they bumped into out of their way. As soon as they went in some secondary school students came running out. They were frightened and easily managed to melt back into the stream of the masses. Some people stopped to watch what was going on inside the building and I moved in to have a closer look. The glare from the sun blinded me at first. I couldn’t make out anything more than the anguished cries of someone being subjected to a violent beating. As I drew closer the scene came into focus. All three men were pummeling one of those students even as he tried to deflect their punches and protect his body. He knew how dearly it would cost him if he tried to defend himself by actually fighting back. The young man collapsed onto the ground and they proceeded to stomp on him with their heavy boots. After a moment, once the film had completely evaporated from his eyes, I found him staring up at me with tortured and beseeching eyes. How can I describe that gaze? He was imploring me to step in and save him because he wasn’t sure that his friends or the soldiers were going to do anything. He had already lost a tooth. Blood was gushing out of his mouth, staining his face and his neck, then his clothes and the ground they dragged him across. Unmoved, he continued staring up at me even as he was kicked all over his body.
I had spent twenty years trying not to get involved in affairs involving the Comrades, purposefully avoiding them, but the sight of that young man’s beseeching eyes pressed me to do something. Drawing closer, I grabbed the arm of one of the Comrades until he and the other two stopped their stomping. The young man writhed in pain and spat up blood.
“What did this young man do?” I asked the one whose arm I was clutching.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I want to know what he did!”
My big mistake at that moment was to let go of the Comrade’s arm. The three of them quickly tried to figure out my rank to know how they should treat me. I should have held on to his arm. I should have squeezed harder instead of letting go. They left the young man there flailing around on the ground and surrounded me instead. Trying to correct my mistake, I held my ground and didn’t back away. One of them asked to see my identification but I ignored him. In my country you have to create as much ambiguity as you can to get out of situations such as this one, and if you’re bold enough you can even conjure some kind of imaginary rank to protect yourself. I tried to surround myself with ambiguity even though it’s my custom not to pretend to be something I’m not.
“You better have a convincing explanation
for what’s going on here.”
“You want an explanation?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I want a convincing explanation.”
“He’s a traitor, he tried to get out of the march,” said the same Comrade, who appeared to be the others’ superior. “Is that convincing enough for you?”
“You could have just written him up instead of beating him like this.”
“And just who might you be, sir?” the third one interjected. Up until that point they still hadn’t been able to crack my riddle. They had been dealing with me cautiously.
“A citizen,” I said.
At that moment their uncertainty dissipated and one of them smiled sarcastically. They returned to their natural disposition.
“A citizen?” asked the second, getting ready to pounce on me.
“ID,” the boss said, reaching out his hand.
I took out my identification and handed it over. He snatched it from me and then motioned for the other two to join him as he walked away.
“Where are you going?” I asked. “My ID.”
“Come on down to the station and pick it up,” he said, without turning around.
They left. I was furious at myself for getting mixed up with them, but the young man was still there, writhing, bleeding. I crouched down next to him and examined his face. He looked up at me again, this time in gratitude. I tried to pick him up and could tell that he needed an ambulance. Two young men who were part of his group had congregated by the door and now came over, thanked me and then took him away. I received one more look of gratitude before they disappeared. A young woman alerted me that there was blood on my collar but I walked away unconcerned.
I backed into the side streets, fleeing the crowds and the noise. The shops were all shuttered and there were only a few people around who had managed to slip away from the march, but they were holding pictures of the Leader in their hands. The next day they would have to return them to the organizers. I wandered aimlessly for a long time because I hadn’t decided whether I was going to my mother’s or to Lama’s yet, bearing in mind that it wouldn’t do me any good to go down to the station right away to pick up my ID because the one who took it wouldn’t get back there before nightfall. Besides, I hadn’t even asked him which station he meant, the Party building or the mukhabarat headquarters, and if it was the mukhabarat, which branch of the security services? I tried not to get too obsessed with figuring out the answer to that question because all I wanted to do at that moment was run away from everything connected to the march and everything that had just happened.
I decided to go see my mother because her house is on the outskirts of town. Going to Lama’s would mean heading back in the direction I had just come from, crossing over to the other side of the city by passing through those crowd-clogged streets, the very thing I had been trying to avoid in the first place.
CHAPTER TWO
MY FATHER PASSED AWAY five years ago, leaving behind a gentle and beloved fifty-something widow, a son and a daughter. I am that son. My name is Fathi and I turned thirty-one three months ago. Rather than telling you about me, though, this chapter is about my mother Ratiba Hanim and my sister Samira, who is five years younger than me. Because I’m on my way over to her house at this very moment, I may as well tell you all about my mother before you get to meet her.
My father was a young lawyer when he proposed to Ratiba, who had been spoiled rotten by her family. More than five years had gone by since he graduated from university and still he had not managed to find a suitable wife. He was politically combative and a capable lawyer, well known for being simultaneously antagonistic toward the government and the opposition. As a clever lawyer he would come up with bizarre descriptions for his bitterest enemies: the government of monkeys; the government bureaucrats who consume more than they produce; the government that rules through the negation of hearts; the government bureaucrats who walk on all fours; and other descriptions that would make the ministers laugh and outrage them at the same time. Because he was a liberal he used milder language to criticize the members of the opposition: the chivalrous knights in shining armor; the opposition for sale; spit on me but put me in power; the opposition that depends on God; the opposition op-posing in a fashion show; and so forth.
This young lawyer had created enemies all around him because he published articles packed with such characterizations in a local newspaper, most of whose subscribers were businessmen. The abundance of his enemies and the scarcity of his supporters made it difficult for him to get married, despite the fact that my grandmother was constantly on the prowl for a suitable bride for her combative lawyer of a son. Every time she found someone the prospective bride’s family would entertain the groom for one day, receive an “intervention” and advice from my father’s enemies on both sides, and then quickly distance themselves from him. Before he got bogged down with despair my grandmother came to him with one last candidate for marriage: Ratiba, the spoiled sister of an urban merchant whose father had passed away. In addition to having inherited a respectable amount of money from her late father, she was a very happy woman. Her most distinguishing features were mirthfulness, joviality, cheer and a marked lack of interest in the affairs of this topsy-turvy world—just what the combative bachelor had been looking for. This lawyer, Abd al-Hakim, immediately went to see her brother, introduced himself and informed him about his enemies in the government and in the opposition, hoping to pre-empt their “intervention” this time. That merchant, whom I would later call Uncle Mufid, asked this quarrelsome lawyer, the one who would become my father, to bring him newspaper clippings of his stinging articles. Mufid spent the night reading those pieces that were supposed to elicit his anxiety but the very next day he announced his consent. My uncle wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed quarreling with politicians. He was serious and rational—unlike his sister who was apt to laugh at anything—and this is what made people find his swift consent so strange. They viewed as even more bizarre the fact that he had stood steadfast against the sort of smear campaign that in our city we call an “intervention.” In my father, Uncle Mufid had found a man fit to become a husband to his sister, who never stopped laughing, not even in her sleep.
The couple were married and spent their honeymoon in a respectable hotel at a chic summer resort, overlooking a densely forested valley. It was there that my father discovered the amazing talents of his bride. When he first read his combative articles she would laugh a bit but eventually she stopped laughing at them altogether. Soon she found them banal and began coming up with new descriptions of her own for her husband’s political adversaries. He found these so valuable that he even started including them in his articles. This wasn’t hard work for my mother. She would come up with such descriptions while putting on makeup or remembering an old joke that would nearly cause my father to fall over from laughing so hard. Because it was so simple for her, my father’s articles seemed like a game to her and she encouraged him to caricature those politicians rather than criticizing them so antagonistically. And that’s just what he did. He became more and more infamous until the lawyers’ union consequently proposed several times that he should retire.
Although I was the first fruit of that humorous marriage, I was as serious as my uncle and as quarrelsome as my father. In her lack of interest in anything important and her perpetual proclivity to laugh, my sister was a carbon copy of my mother. Let me explain what I mean by this “lack of interest in anything important.” One day, a powerful earthquake jolted the city, causing buildings to shake intensely. The chandelier in the living room where my mother and my sister sat together for years vigorously swayed back and forth. Some valuable objets fell off the bookcase and shattered; the TV set nearly fell down too, as pots and pans clattered onto the floor in the kitchen. I hurried out of my room, trying to calm down my mother, my sister and myself, but I soon discovered that I was the only one in the house who was frightened. My mother simply carried on with what she was doing (r
eknitting a wool sweater for the third time), calmly watching the chandelier swing. The transistor radio was switched on and the announcer interrupted his broadcast in order to report in a panic that an earthquake had rocked the city. My mother noticed the quaver in his voice and burst out laughing. That was how I found her when I rushed into the living room, bolting from my room all yellow in the face as my sister went on with her homework.
But my father’s articles didn’t last much longer because the Leader, who had been a petty officer in the army, launched his military coup, liquidating all of my father’s enemies in the government and the opposition, and became the undisputed ruler of the country. The first thing the Leader did was shut down publication of all newspapers, permitting only one or two to write anything about the regime, on the condition that they always articulate its viewpoint. Even though the newspaper that used to run his articles stopped appearing, my quarrelsome father failed to grasp as fully as he should have what had just happened in the country. He wrote one more article in the same combative spirit, incorporating my mother’s caricatured images, only this time about the Leader himself, sending it to one of the government newspapers with a clear conscience. My mother had infected him with the scourge of fearlessness and peace of mind. He didn’t even wait for the article to be published before reading it aloud to his colleagues and friends, who all hung out at the same coffeehouse; all he got from them were uneasy smiles. They could sense the danger of such satirical articles that caricatured the Leader, and they were right to feel that way. Now the butt of the joke was the Leader himself, not merely politicians who wore white smoking jackets.
