The Miracle of Yousef: Historical and political thriller

by Gonçalo Coelho

  “How is it possible for you to say you loved someone when, by what you’ve just confirmed to me, you were a man capable of such heinous acts, moved solely by hatred and violence?”

  “It doesn’t start out as hatred and violence, but rather as an excess of passion. For a particular political cause, for a fanatical vision of the world. If our passion is strong enough and blind enough, we are led to believe that anything is worth doing for it, we forget about such things as innocent bystanders or collateral victims because, in a distorted way, in our minds, everyone could be considered guilty. I believed it was necessary to bring to bear any weapons available to achieve an end to the pernicious influence and political and military presence of the United States and Israel in the Arab world. What’s more, this extended to all western powers with a military presence in the Arab world. The presence of American troops in my country, on sacred soil, for five straight years after the Gulf War, fed my hatred all the more. Then, I believed it was necessary to kill because they also kill in the all the wars they get into and provoke all over the world. I believed it was the Middle East’s destiny to have one great, glorious caliphate in the image of the earliest days of Islam. To me, the western world as a whole, as well as various developments within the Islamic world itself, had befouled our Muslim society and the world in general in which we lived, transforming it into a place where gradually all that is spiritual dies at the hands of materialism, financial greed and exact science, which are the actual religions of today’s western world. I believed that God was being neglected and that the Muslim world would be punished unless it changed drastically. Incredible as it seems, all of this used to make perfect sense in my mind, and I know it still does in the mind of Sheik Omar, for one.”

  “Used to make sense? And what you’re telling me doesn’t make sense anymore?”

  Yousef gets up and begins to pace around the room.

  “Nefise, first you must keep in mind that I saw the enormous poverty of Africa and Asia contrasting with the enormous wealth of America and Europe. I saw how wars are driven by interests, such as the Americans, the Russians, the English, the French, or whoever else, how they support any global regime that affords them geopolitical or economic advantage, without caring in the slightest about the harm it does to each country and its people. They also frequently disregard concepts such as innocent bystanders and collateral victims. They’re just political bargaining chips in most cases. I felt I was on the right side in fighting all of this, do you see? And it was only after meeting you, after feeling Islam as I felt it with your family that I began to glimpse a new path. Later, during all those years of torture and imprisonment at Guantánamo, I was able to reflect on my own, often in the darkness of solitary confinement. The punishments and tortures were harsh, yet in a strange way, they purified my soul. I took everything I believed into consideration, and little by little I found out who I was and what I truly believed. Locked up in there, there was no one to influence the direction my mind took, and I could let it run loose. Slowly, day by day, I began to realize that the path I had walked in the past could not be right. I had fought one evil with another evil, and each had simply fed the other, in an endless spiral that only led to greater and greater destruction, the growing loss of innocent lives and the progressive disappearance of spirituality, of the clear separation between good and evil that dwells within all of us, whether we like it or not. Ultimately a relativization of all values. War feeds war, hatred feeds hatred, violence feeds violence, greed feeds greed. The only way to foster peace is though peace itself, and justice through justice itself. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but rather a greater and more dangerous wrong. I had tremendous doubts during all those years I was at Guantánamo, that American nightmare where justice is completely non-existent and arbitrary, but in the midst of my doubts, there was light, I discovered many true things, I came to know myself, and so it was that one day, I began to write my memoirs for you. Just for you. And you can do whatever you want with them.”

  “Pretty words. I see that at least you’ve fully recovered your memory, but none of that undoes the fact that I’m held captive here against my will, evidently because of you. That is, if I trust what you say, because I don’t even know if you were the one who set me up, and if this pretty speech is not just meant to trick me.”

  “And why would I do that? Look at me, look me right in the eye and you can see that I’m the same person.” Yousef knelt before her as she sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you remember our horseback ride across Gokçeada? Do you remember our first kiss? Our walks on the beach? When I asked you to marry me? Nefise, I was without any memory... isn’t that the purest state in which you can feel love for someone else? The purest state that any man can aspire to? Do you actually think that a single word or a single kiss was born of some sort of sinister premeditation?”

  Nefise made no reply. At times her look became sweeter, her expression less fraught, as though she had finally let down her guard and could no longer resist all these arguments. Until she realized that it was all too much to process in such a short space of time, particularly in such physically and emotionally precarious circumstances. She no longer knew what to think. She wanted to get away from the thrust of this whole conversation and explode.

  “Stop it, stop it! You come back into my life after disappearing for six years, after I discover you are a ... a terrorist, one of those ruthless Islamic extremists, and you’re hoping that I’ll forgive you?”

  These words wound him deeply, and it is as though they have generated an invisible force field between them. He can’t argue anymore. It is as though at that moment, at the word terrorist, he has lost the battle. It’s the word that he knows journalists used and threw around like plastic food, the same word that politicians used as a weapon for this or that geopolitical purpose, the same word that, as a result, most citizens also used arbitrarily in cafés. This is what passes through his mind. To her he is a terrorist, which means he is an abject, repulsive, criminal specimen. He gets up, turns his back on Nefise and goes to the door. But before opening it, he says to her:

  “I was an Islamic extremist, I was a murderer, a kidnapper, a terrorist, if that’s what you want to call me. That’s what I was. Keep looking at my past and all you will see is what I was and never what I am. If one day you should ever manage to see what I am now, I hope you will be able to forgive me.”

  He reaches for the doorknob, but just then he is startled by her voice.

  “Prove it.”

  A clear light shines forth within his mind. The living flash of hope reborn. He turns to Nefise, approaches her and, kneeling, tells her resolutely,

  “That’s what I intend to do. I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “Have you got a plan?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get one.”

  They hear steps in the corridor.

  “Our time is up.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says.

  “Argun, remember well the name of this place.”

  She tells him the name of Luiz Gonzalez’ gym.

  “You cannot imagine how sweet it is to hear you call me Argun again… wait – you said ‘Luiz’ … Luiz Gonzalez, the Caribbean Hurricane?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yes…”

  Steps approach the door.

  “Listen carefully to what I tell you: all you have to do is send someone there to give him a message from me, and he will come. I’m sure of it.”

  Just then an armed man bursts into the room.

  “Time’s up,” says the man, very grim, waving an automatic weapon in his hand.

  “Prove it,” Nefise says once again, as Yousef walks out the door.

  2

  The cell phone is ringing insistently. Luiz Gonzalez grabs it nervously out of his pocket, looks at the screen and places it to his ear.

  “Juan.”

  “Hello Luiz. Can you tell me why it is that you still have not gone back to training? Have you
given up once and for all?”

  “I’m still with the police. They want to ask me some more questions. I’ll be having lunch right here.”

  “I might even have believed that if I hadn’t just spoken to Inspector Turkoglu a few minutes ago. Don’t think of doing anything crazy…”

  “Such as?”

  “Going after the people who kidnapped Nefise on your own.”

  “I don’t have the slightest clue so I can’t do a thing. The Inspector must have told you that there was a huge mess at the Great Bazaar. We got there too late.”

  “Yes, he also spoke about that. He said that Nefise almost escaped, there was a wild chase, shots fired, and he mentioned some Saudi who followed her in a taxi from Taksim Square and ended up getting captured with her.”

  “He also spoke about that?”

  “Yes, he also spoke about the Saudi.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You said, he also spoke about that, he also spoke about those subjects, which means that he called you for some other reason.”

  “He called me to ask questions about you.”

  “Does he suspect me?”

  “I don’t know but, among other things, he asked me if I knew where you’d gone now, and why the hell weren’t you training here right now.”

  “And why the hell doesn’t he call me to ask these things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well this Inspector can go to hell. What did you say to him?”

  “That this was a normal ritual of yours. To disappear before the big fights.”

  “I’m sure he believed that.”

  “I didn’t say it quite like that, of course. I added that you usually disappear before the big fights to concentrate, to put your thoughts in order because in fights of this magnitude having your mind unsettled can be a boxer’s worse enemy. I wasn’t lying about this last part, as you very well know. All the big victories in your career were built on this strong mental structure, that is, total concentration on your opponent, on your boxing and on winning. That requires cleanliness of spirit. If you don’t have it today you’re going to lose.”

  A heavy silence weighs on the phone line.

  “That’s why I can’t go back there today. There’s something very important I’ve got to do. Something that can’t wait. I thank you for your concern.”

  Saying this, Luiz ends the call abruptly and stares out the windshield at the receding traffic sweeping the shore of the Bosporus. His driver has just parked in front of Istanbul’s Kurucesme Arena, in Mualim Naci Caddesi, whose entrance Luiz can see on the far side of the avenue behind the stream of cars. The Arena is an open air venue for events on the European shore of the Bosporus which has already hosted some of the most famous stars in the world of music, such as Pink Floyd, Lenny Kravitz, Shakira and Bjork, whose music has resounded over the waters of the Straits in this limbo between Europe and Asia. Adorning each concert as a backdrop is the night view of the suspension bridge towering over the Bosporus, and on the far shore, the mosques and sparkling skyline, quintessential image of the Asian mysteries and eccentricity of Istanbul. But all of this only happens at night, and at the moment, it’s daytime, broad daylight. High in the sky the midday sun shines down, though with the softened light of autumn. Today it will be Mercedes Soler’s turn to put on a show at the Kurucesme Arena for her Turkish admirers. This is how the event is announced at the entrance for that very night at nine-thirty, although as everyone knows, such events rarely start on time. Inside by the stage preparations are under way for the show. A security guard stands at the entrance as an elderly man wanders by, bent over, with a long gray mustache covering his upper lip, chatting with a group of three dark young women around twenty years old, according to Luiz’ instant appraisal as he watches them from his car. One of the women has just reached into her purse and paid the man. He gives her a bunch of papers clearly the size of Turkish bank notes. A few more tickets bought to watch her performance. Her. Mercedes’ image is engraved on Luiz’ soul. He sets her aside, opens the car door and steps out into the bustle of the street.

  He crosses the street between several passing cars zipping along the river drive and heads towards the security guard at the door to the Arena. By the entrance is a poster of Mercedes Soler that catches his attention. She is on stage, wearing a dress that reveals the contours of her body, contours he once knew in detail, and of which he now inadvertently fantasizes. In front of the stage is an enthusiastic audience that could be from anywhere in the world, maybe Paris, London, New York, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Bogotá, with Mercedes, as always, dressed in seductive clothes, imparting both her sensuality as well as the heat of her Caribbean sound. Her attire and exuberant make-up, however, are not who she really is, a fact only known by those who know the woman offstage, beyond her glamour. Only those who know her well enough to know, for example, that she is actually a sensitive and modest woman, with the strict family background that forced her, starting in childhood, to study the piano and singing. The probability of her evolving towards the musical career she has today was miniscule, although nowadays the biographies on sale in bookstores have it that it was all foreordained, that everything had to turn out exactly as it did, owing to her enormous talent and perseverance. They fail to mention the difficulty her parents had in accepting that it was that kind of sensual, pulsing dance music that she most enjoyed, that it was that type of musical career that she most wanted to pursue, rather than something of a more classical or sophisticated posture. Perhaps one day her biographies would reflect this, and perhaps, as Luiz secretly wished, they would reflect that in those days he encouraged her to pursue the career she wanted, and wouldn’t let anyone compel her to do anything she didn’t like, or steer her life towards frustration. In this photo on the poster, there was not so much as a trace of the eternally affectionate and intimate Mercedes, the woman who dwelt in the depths of Luiz’ memory, ever insistent on surfacing to remind him of the pleasures and joys of their past. This Mercedes on the poster is the one who belongs to her audience, who belongs to the world.

  Luiz approaches the security guard at the Arena entrance who, standing straight up with a stiff and arrogant bearing, immediately tells him that entry is forbidden.

  “I just want some information.”

  The guard doesn’t answer, simply raises his chin slightly and stares into the void, as though he has now used up his entire allotment of words for the day.

  “If you have any knowledge of sports, surely you know who I am.”

  “That doesn’t concern me. Orders are orders. You cannot enter here.” He raises his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “If you try to make trouble, I’ll summon my fellow officers instantly.”

  “I don’t want to make trouble,” Luiz says, and examines the guard’s name tag. “Listen, Murat, talk brings understanding. All I want to know is whether there’s going to be a rehearsal inside just before the show. A rehearsal with today’s headliner.” Luiz strikes a theatrical pose, raising his arms and pointing his fingers at the poster announcing Mercedes’ show.

  The guard shoots him a suspicious look.

  “She’s a very old friend, and I really have to see her. Call it crazy if you want,” he explains.

  “I’m not authorized to give out that kind of information.”

  “Does that mean you have the information? Haven’t you ever really wanted to see a certain woman? I assure you that I can be very generous in exchange for that simple piece of information.”

  “I told you I’m not authorized to give out that information.”

  Luiz took his wallet from his pocket and removed a wad of bills.

  “Would a little piece of information perhaps be worth this much?” Luis asks, his eyes full of mischief.

  The guard glances at the ticket scalper nearby. Then, judging himself safe, he takes the notes from Luiz’ hand.

  “Guess you don’t read many magazines or celebrity columns in the newspaper, huh? If you did, you’d know that Mercedes Sol
er is staying at the Hilton. And that’s where the fans are who want to see her, and I heard that she appears on her balcony every now and then to blow kisses to the crowd, and they go wild. Pretty poetic, huh? Why don’t you go there? Maybe you’ll get lucky and one of those kisses will land right in your face.”

  “Very good, Murat! That’s what I wanted to hear! I just don’t get how come you know so much about celebrities and don’t know who I am.”

  “I don’t keep track of men. I just look at the magazines every now and then for the women they cover.”

  “I’m sure we’d agree that what you just told me is information in the public domain, and therefore not all that deserving of my generosity… But as for what I specifically asked you?”

  “I haven’t got the slightest idea if there’s going to be any rehearsal here, or what time she’s planning to get here. In any case, I think I’ve helped you quite a lot, haven’t I? It’s not my fault you don’t read the gossip mags.”