The Dust of Promises

by Ahlem Mosteghanemi

  She asked about Murad, and I told her he was his usual scattered self.

  ‘He’s funny!’ she said with a laugh.

  For this man to be ‘funny’ and ‘nice’, as she put it, didn’t arouse my suspicions at the time. The fact was, all I could think about was how to set the most airtight traps for coincidence.

  Wanting to prepare her for the fact that she’d be seeing a lot more of me in the exhibition hall from then on out, I said, ‘Would you mind if I spent more time at the gallery over the next couple of days? I need to see the paintings and meet with the people visiting the exhibition so that I can write about Zayyan in a more lively way.’

  ‘Nice idea. Of course I wouldn’t mind. Carole thinks you’re sweet. She asked about you yesterday.’

  ‘Really? What was the occasion?’

  ‘I told her I might be going to the south of France this weekend to visit my mother. She asked me whether you’d be coming along, and I told her you probably wouldn’t be.’

  Even though I wouldn’t have gone with her even if she’d invited me, since that would have meant missing a chance to see Hayat, it hurt my feelings for her to convey the news to me in this particular way. Even so, I excused her. I’d only been staying with her for a few days, so I would have had no right to tag along and embarrass her in front of her mother.

  Françoise walked over to a corner table in the sitting room that held pictures of various sizes. She came back with a photo of a woman in her sixties. Showing it to me, she said, ‘This is Mama, my favourite person in all the world. I’ve been going to see her often to comfort her since she lost my dad last year.’

  I took the picture from her and gazed at it affectionately.

  ‘She’s too pretty for you to hem her smile in with this huge silver frame,’ I commented.

  ‘But I like it. It’s a valuable antique. I bought it a couple of years ago at the flea market.’

  ‘It may be valuable, but it doesn’t suit her. The people we love don’t need to have their pictures enclosed in expensive frames. It’s an insult to them for us to be so busy looking at the frame that we forget to look at them, and the frame becomes a barrier between us. A photo’s value isn’t increased by its frame, since it isn’t a painting – it’s a memento. A frame confuses our emotional relationship with our loved ones and tampers with our memory. It’s best for their images to stay the way they were when they were inside us: bare of anything but the transparency of glass.’

  Françoise remained silent for a while, taken by what I’d said. Then she remarked, ‘Maybe you’re right. But this is the kind of logic only a photographer would understand.’

  ‘Or somebody who loves somebody!’ I added.

  The fact that she’d been persuaded so easily by my arguments gave me the urge to make her a gesture of affection.

  ‘Would you allow me to give you a frameless cover for this picture? If she’s the person dearest to you in all the world, then honour her by not adding anything to her picture.’

  She wrapped her arms around me. Planting a kiss on my check, she said, ‘Do you know that I love you?’

  ‘Do you really?’ I asked in feigned amazement.

  How do you respond to a woman who wraps you about with a sweet confession in the form of a question – ‘Do you know that I love you?’ – except with another question – ‘Do you really?’ Otherwise, you may not be able to avoid other questions that could lead you to bed in broad daylight with a woman who’s ever aflame.

  ‘Postpone your questions till evening,’ I said flirtatiously. ‘Then I’ll answer them one by one. But quietly, and if possible, without any screaming!’

  ‘You wicked boy!’ she said, giggling. ‘I’ll try!’

  ‘I’ll be visiting Zayyan this afternoon. I haven’t checked on him for the past couple of days.’

  ‘All right. A good article’s been published on his exhibition, and I’m sure he’d be happy to see it. Take it to him when you go. Tell him also that three of his paintings were sold yesterday. It was a fruitful weekend for the gallery.’

  ‘I don’t know any more whether I’m supposed to be happy or sad when one of his paintings is sold. On the one hand, the proceeds go to charitable work, which is good, of course. On the other hand, though, I feel as though he’s doing violence to his works by clearing them all out in the course of two exhibitions less than a month apart. It’s the most bizarre artistic massacre I ever heard of.’

  ‘I hope he knows what he’s doing!’ I echoed with a sigh.

  It was two in the afternoon when I went to see him. A nurse was on her way out of his room, and as we passed, I asked her about his condition.

  ‘It’s improving,’ she said.

  Then she added, ‘If you’re one of his relatives, try to convince him not to leave the hospital this week.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Is he insisting on that?’

  ‘Yes. He wants to visit his exhibition and gather up his paintings when it’s over. But the doctor is afraid it might cause him a relapse. Is he an artist?’

  ‘Yes, and quite a famous one.’

  I showed her the magazine I had in my hand, hoping this might give him a special place in her attentions.

  ‘He certainly seems to be,’ she conceded after seeing his picture and the title of the article. ‘In that case, he needs more care than he’s getting. Artists are hypersensitive.’

  When I came in to see him, a look of happy surprise lit his face. He got out of bed and greeted me warmly. Then he sat down across from me on a leather-upholstered chair.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he wanted to know. ‘I thought you’d forgotten me!’

  ‘Of course not! I just got busy with some things.’

  I didn’t want to tell him about Nasser’s being in Paris, and of course I wasn’t going to inform him that Hayat would be arriving with her mother that very day.

  ‘I see you’re better today,’ I continued. ‘Even the nurse says your health is improving.’

  ‘Maybe. But I’d be still better if I could visit the exhibition. I’d like to see the paintings that have been sold one last time, and the others I’d like to gather up personally.’

  Handing him the magazine, I said, ‘By the way, Françoise asked me to bring you an article on your exhibition that’s appeared in Arts magazine. I read it on my way over on the Metro. It’s good.’

  He glanced at the magazine, noting the title of the article. Then he set it aside, saying, ‘I’ll read it later.’

  Trying to think of something else that would make him happy, I said, ‘I also brought you the photo I won a prize for, and which you’d asked me to show you.’

  With a sudden rush of enthusiasm, he took it from me and stared at it for a while.

  ‘It’s quite moving. It shows death right up against life. Or it’s as if death is encroaching on what appears to be life, although the only thing representing it is a dog’s dead body.’

  I interrupted him momentarily to ask his permission to turn on the tape recorder so that I wouldn’t miss any of our conversation.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said, slightly startled. After a pause, he continued, ‘I can see why they awarded you a prize for this photo. In times of war, the death of an animal becomes as painful and tragic as the death of a human being. Suppose some criminals, in order to break into your house, killed a dog and bashed its head with a rock. That dog’s corpse would be a harbinger of your own death.

  ‘There’s an image that comes to mind now: during our attempts to cross the Morice Line along the Algerian–Tunisian border during the War of Independence, we would see animals that had been electrocuted, their dead bodies still caught in the barbed wire. Others had been blown apart while passing over a mine. Whenever I saw those animals’ bodies, I’d see a possible scenario of my own death or maiming. Then one day my feeling was on the mark: a mine went off and took my arm with it. All living creatures’ corpses are alike in some way. The people who are in a hurry to bury a dead dog or cat tend to b
e the ones who weren’t in a hurry to feed it when it was alive. They act this way because, in these animals’ corpses, they see their own remains.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear this is what you think. I’ve been tormented by all the interpretations of this picture, especially by the Algerian press, some of which say that by giving me this prize, France was honouring not Algeria’s dead, but its dogs.’

  Smiling, he commented, ‘This interpretation also has some validity to it. However, some people adopt only the interpretations that will hurt you, since they take pleasure in ruining whatever happiness you might derive from your success. This particular interpretation is based on the fact that Westerners have more compassion for animals than they do for other human beings. This is why, in the West, the homeless go out to beg accompanied by a dog or two. You see them sitting on the pavements with huge dogs sleeping beside them, since they realise that a dog will mediate for them with passersby. One time I heard a homeless person being interviewed on television. He said that people would give donations for his dog’s sake, nor for his, since their sympathy was directed not towards him, but towards his dog. He said that before he started bringing his dog out with him, he’d been starving to death.

  ‘So, in countries where people are better to animals than they are to each other, it’s only logical that they might honour a picture of a dead dog, not the wretched little boy next to him!’

  His arguments made me feel even sadder. At the same time, they made me admire him all the more. I was impressed by the soundness of his analysis.

  Then, as though he’d made a new discovery, he said suddenly, ‘There is, unfortunately, another possible reason this photograph of yours won the prize: it bears witness to the death of the Algerian revolution, a death that can be seen in the fact that, after seven years of holding the French army at bay and forty years of independence, human beings in Algeria meet the same fate as dogs. Awarding a prize to this photograph sets the French conscience at rest, and slakes an unspoken thirst for revenge.’

  Cutting short a heavy silence that had suddenly descended upon us, I said sadly, ‘It doesn’t matter to me to know any more about this picture. All that matters to me now is to dispose of the prize money in a way that will help victims of terrorism.’

  ‘By the way,’ I added as an afterthought, ‘three of your paintings were sold yesterday.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ he said happily. ‘I don’t know which ones they were. But that doesn’t matter. I suppose all of them will sell in the end.’

  After a brief silence I said, ‘I don’t understand how an artist could give up all his paintings in one fell swoop. This kind of complete, sudden forfeiture seems to presage tragedy. It’s as if he wants to lose everything he has.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ he said.

  He then fell silent for such a long time that I didn’t think he was going to say anything else. At length, however, he started talking again, this time in an extended monologue, and with the mournful monotony of a telephone that rings and rings without anyone to pick up the receiver. He said, ‘Tragedy is for things to give you up because you didn’t have the courage to give them up. You shouldn’t try to avoid your losses, since you’ll never be enriched by things unless you’ve also lost things. As a friend of mine used to say, “My only possessions are my losses. As for my profits, they’re nothing but rubbish.” I prefer big losses over small gains. I like the kind of glory that one loses all at once. If only you knew all the bizarre things I’ve been witness to. If you knew, you’d enter deep into the womb of wisdom.’

  He was quiet for a bit. Then he continued, ‘On 16 November last year, a fire broke out at night in the gallery where Moroccan artist Mehdi Qotbi was showing his works in the city of Lille. I don’t know the man. But when I read in the newspapers that this exhibition of his had represented twenty-five years’ worth of artistic production, he became my comrade in tragedy.

  ‘He’d spent thirty years in Paris, working assiduously to produce paintings that consumed the best years of his life. During those years he’d deprived himself of everything in order to prepare for an exhibition which, rather than being visited by art lovers, was visited by fire instead.

  ‘In a case like this, you might say: If only thieves had shown up instead of a fire! There might be some consolation in knowing that the paintings still existed, at least. This is the way we’re taught to think by the news agencies that report from time to time on thefts of world-famous paintings. But, like fires, thefts are a matter of destiny. They aren’t determined by the fate of the paintings but rather by the fate and standing of those who produced them. Consequently, you’ll never hear about a fire that consumed the works of Picasso or Van Gogh, just as you’ll never hear about a thief stealing my paintings!’

  ‘Strange!’ I murmured.

  ‘You think this is strange?’ he asked derisively. ‘Sometimes paintings give themselves to their enemies and to those who stole them! Listen: I have an Iraqi friend who’s lived in Europe for twenty years. The man is as obsessed with Basra as I am with Constantine. His city is the only thing he paints, the only thing he talks about. Well, he was so well regarded that many people had offered to buy his paintings. However, even though he needed the money, he refused their offers, saying, “I’m keeping them until Iraq is liberated from its oppressors. When that day comes, I’ll give them to the Basra Museum, which is where they belong.”

  ‘Then one day he received a visit from a wealthy Kuwaiti lady known for her passion for art acquisitions and her interest in helping Arab artists in exile. She tried in vain to persuade him to let her buy his paintings. Instead, worried that his works would be scattered after he died and confident of the woman’s appreciation for art, he agreed to let her keep them for him until Basra was “liberated”, at which time she would donate them personally to the city’s museum.

  ‘What happened next is so wild, even a screenwriter couldn’t have come up with it. A year after the woman had taken my friend’s paintings into her possession, Kuwait was invaded. Soldiers occupying her mansion seized the paintings as war loot and took them to Iraq, where they vanished along with the missing and the kidnapped. For all anybody knew, they’d been executed in place of their creator, who’d been sentenced to death twenty years earlier! Or they might have been used to decorate tyrants’ palaces, or sold dirt cheap on the scrap market. That’s what the Nazis used to do. Whenever they wanted to humiliate some famous artist, they would confiscate his works and sell them for a pittance – sometimes for as little as thirty marks!

  ‘As you can see, there’s a kind of wisdom you only attain when you’ve reached the height of loneliness and alienation, when you’ve chalked up enough losses to make you an old, old man. You need big losses in order to realise the value of what you still have, and to see that your little tragedies aren’t as big as they seem. That’s when you realise that happiness lies in mastering the art of reduction. It’s when you learn to sort through your possessions and decide which of them you can do without and which of them you need for the rest of the journey. At that point you discover that most of the things you surround yourself with aren’t necessary; in fact, they’re a load that weighs you down. It’s because I’ve made this discovery myself that I’ve decided to sell all my paintings. Even the one that’s dearest to my heart. However, I’ve got a “reserved” sign on it. The fact is, I’ve reserved it myself for fear that it might be bought by somebody who isn’t worthy of it. I need to know who its owner will be, and whether it will be hung on the wall of a house, or on the wall of a heart.

  ‘In the end, when you start to simplify, you discover that your entire lifetime might be reducible to a single achievement, which is painful. But what’s even more painful is to leave your lifetime achievement to a relative who doesn’t appreciate its value, and who will inherit it from you not by virtue of artistic ties but by virtue of blood ties alone. Would it be acceptable for me to leave my work to my terrorist nephew, who for all I know might be respon
sible for the deaths of artists and writers? Somebody who kills other human beings can’t be entrusted with anything.’

  Suddenly he fell silent, and the silence that fell was the type that has a greater impact on you than any words could.

  My thoughts carried me somewhere far away for a few moments before I mustered the courage to say, ‘I’d like to buy that painting from you. Would you sell it to me?’

  My question took him by surprise. With the shrewdness of someone who’s just discovered a way out of a predicament, he said, ‘But you don’t know which one it is! How can I be sure of your love for a painting you don’t recognise?’

  ‘I love all your paintings,’ I told him, ‘but I love this one the most. I stood looking at it for a long time, wondering how you could have sold it!’

  He shifted position. Then, in a tone of amazement he asked, ‘You know it, then? How could you? There are seventeen paintings in the exhibition with red “sold” tags on them!’

  With a pleasant sort of stubbornness I replied, ‘Doesn’t the fact that I recognised it out of a total of seventeen paintings say anything for me?’

  Seeing that he was cornered, he said resignedly, ‘If you can actually identify it for me, it’s yours!’

  He paused. Then, as if to show himself a good loser, he added, ‘I mean . . . it’s yours free of charge!’

  ‘Rather, it will be mine in return for all the prize money I have left.’

  In a further attempt to persuade him to accept my offer, I continued, ‘It would be a good deal: I have money I want to give away in charity, and you have a painting that you don’t know who to leave to. So, by selling it to me you’ll bring happiness to three parties: to me, to yourself, and to the people who’ll benefit from its proceeds.’

  Then, in response to a crazy idea that flashed through my mind at that moment, I blurted out, ‘And you might just bring happiness to a fourth party as well.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The woman I might give it to!’

  Then, fearing that this might prompt him to change his mind, I added quickly, ‘But don’t worry about your painting. Like all Constantine’s women, the one I’m thinking of is a bridge lady!’