Clash of Civilizations for an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio

by Amara Lakhous

  I see . . . I see my dhakar or the dhakar of my family grow until the moment of circumcision. I will see my blood flow and I’ll curse the zagharid that suffocate my sobs. I’ll remember the zagharid of birth again, and again see my blood falling, drop by drop, on the ground. Why did they cut the throat of the dhakar? They call it the festival of purification! For them singing, dancing, and joy; for me pain, tears, and suffering: what hurts me is the fact that I wasn’t consulted. But to whom does the dhakar belong, me or them? I’ll watch the dhakar grow, and its secret activities. And quickly the small red head will enter public life with marriage. So my dhakar gets married and I’m in trouble. On the wedding night my hatred for those who tricked me will increase.

  I see . . . I see myself alone before the wall of virginity. The Chinese wall! The mountains of the Himalayas! How I grieve for the lost years! They told me that adultery is punished with a hundred lashes. They fought me with all their weapons: God, the prophets, the saints, religion, custom, good behavior, people’s opinion, AIDS. So we went into the ring like two fighters at their first match. She is afraid and I am, too. The advice, the recommendations will remain outside our bedroom. But she is more afraid than I am. I screw up my courage with a glass or two and some cigarettes. What do I say to her? I won’t say anything. My words will encourage her and weaken me. Victim or executioner! There is no other choice. She won’t look up. She is more afraid than I am. Will I kiss her? Caress her? What is this hesitation? They’re all waiting outside the door. The mouths of the women are filled with zagharid. Goddam zagharid! The dhakar has to penetrate the wall. This is indisputable. It could betray me at the last minute, and I would pay a price that’s too high. I don’t trust it. I might fall under the spell of evil women who rob men of their virility. I would be struck by the curse of the marbout. But it’s not Mr. Dhakar who can save me from this folkloric night. Let’s go, onward! The zagharid won’t be heard if the sacred liquid doesn’t flow. The dhakar is the knife that cuts virginity. Onward! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood!

  “Yuuuuyuuuuuyuuuuuuuuuuu…”

  I see . . . I see myself coming out of the room covered with blood. My family, my wife’s family, and the guests assault me like wasps hovering pitilessly over carrion. After a while I feel teeth in my flesh, I see my blood on the ground, I struggle to open my eyes, and see wolves surrounding me on all sides. Auuuuuu . . .

  In the meantime an old man with a long white beard passes me without stopping.

  “Help me, grandfather.”

  “I’m not your grandfather.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “I’m Luqmanè.”[4]

  “Help me, Luqmanè, O wise man.”

  “Listen to my advice, learn it by heart. My son, if, as you walk, armed men stop you and force you to be the judge, asking you, ‘Who is right and who is wrong, Cain or Abel?’ woe to you if you answer, ‘Cain is right and Abel is wrong.’ The armed men might be Abel’s men and it will be the end of you. Oh my son, woe to you twice if you say that Cain is wrong and Abel is right, because the armed men might be Cain’s men, and it will be the end of you. Oh, my son, woe to you three times if you say that neither Cain nor Abel is wrong: it will be the end of you, because our time is very short, and there is no room for neutrality. My son, cut out your tongue and swallow it. Oh, my son, run away! Run away! Run away! Woe to strife, because it’s more dangerous than the teeth of wolves. Auuuuu…”

  On the crest of this nocturnal wail I woke trembling, I went quickly into the little bathroom and began recording the nightmare’s words.

  THE TRUTH ACCORDING

  TO MAURO BETTARINI

  I’ve learned from my job as a police inspector that the truth is like a coin: it has two faces. The first always completes the second.

  The Truth: The First Face

  For me the investigation is over. The murderer is Ahmed Salmi, whom everyone calls Amedeo. His sudden disappearance proves his involvement in the killing of young Lorenzo Manfredini, known as the Gladiator. Usually the perpetrator flees. Reality is very different from the movies. It’s only Lieutenant Columbo who doesn’t have to struggle to find the criminals and arrest them, for the simple reason that in the end they surrender without resistance. Unfortunately, I’m not Columbo, and I have to track down the criminals and then put them in jail.

  I was assigned to investigate this murder because I’m well acquainted with the area. I’ve spent many years at the police station on the Esquiline, and I’ve had the opportunity to get to know the problems of the residents of Piazza Vittorio. I met Ahmed Salmi or Amedeo when he offered to help resolve the problem with the pigeons in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore caused by his Iranian friend. I have no doubt, this Iranian is crazy. Once he said to me, “Why do you arrest me for no reason, while when it comes to those delinquents who bother people by eating pizza on the metro you leave them alone?” Shouldn’t a man who says something like that be locked up in a mental institution? The accused also asked me a year ago to help an Asian immigrant, I don’t remember where he was from, to correct some mistake on his residency permit.

  I thought that Amedeo was an Italian volunteer who helped the immigrants with some of their applications regarding health care and jobs. I don’t understand why certain Italians make such an effort to help the immigrants. Many others are demanding that criminal immigrants be expelled, since half the prisoners in Italian jails are foreigners. We’re between the fire on the right and the fire on the left: the press on the right criticizes us because we are not inflexible toward the immigrants, while the left accuses us of brutality. It’s not easy to expel immigrants who commit crimes, because we don’t know their real countries or their real names, and, besides, they’re used to changing their names and falsifying their identities.

  I say we should forbid the showing of police films and TV shows, because they’ve become a school for training criminals. There are endless formulas for how to go about killing a husband or lover or boss and disposing of the body, and for how to deceive the investigators and avoid falling into the traps of police interrogators. I admit that our job has become arduous and demanding, because the secrets of the work are available to anyone. We’ve reached the point of bankruptcy. TV be damned! A few days ago a young Dutch fellow came looking for me at headquarters. I agreed to see him, thinking he had some important information on the elevator murder, and I was astonished when he said to me, “Inspector, I am happy to invite you to participate in my new film.” I got up like a shot, making an enormous effort to control myself, and began shouting, “Get out! Get out! Get out!” If I had got hold of him at that moment, I would have killed him.

  There’s a connection between the murder, the sudden disappearance of Amedeo, and the finding of the boy’s body in the elevator. We began the investigation first by looking into the disappearance, or rather the flight, of Amedeo, the accused. The question we posed is the following: if Amedeo is innocent, as his neighbors maintain, then why doesn’t he show up and defend his innocence? The evidence we gathered from sources, and witnesses increased our suspicions and led us to focus on his guilt. A short time afterward we discovered that he is an immigrant and that his real name is Ahmed Salmi. As I told you, criminals and other lowlives frequently falsify personal details. So we found ourselves, as investigators, facing a double challenge: to gather evidence confirming that Amedeo is an immigrant and evidence that attests to his involvement in the murder.

  We thought about his name for a long time; we didn’t find the name Amedeo on his official documents: passport, marriage license, residency permit, and so forth. The law doesn’t forbid citizens to change their names, on condition that they leave official documents untouched. Ahmed Salmi known as Amedeo didn’t falsify any documents. Why did he disappear? Is it simply a coincidence or is he fleeing the law? There are eyewitnesses who saw him quarrel with the victim the day before the murder. No one knows why. They heard him yell at the victim, “I’ll kill you if you do it again!” For me the
investigation is over. Amedeo is the murderer, and this makes him a wanted man. I hope for his sake that he surrenders as soon as possible.

  The Truth: The Second Face

  No, the investigation is not over, and Ahmed Salmi nicknamed Amedeo is not the murderer of Lorenzo Manfredini, the Gladiator. After the publication of an interview accompanied by my photograph and Amedeo’s in a daily paper, I was contacted by Dr. Simonetti at San Camillo hospital, and she asked me to come immediately. I got there quickly, and she took me to the intensive care unit, where I saw Amedeo lying on a bed. The doctor reported to me that on the morning of March 21st, the day Lorenzo Manfredini was murdered, the patient was in an accident while he was crossing a street near the Coliseum, and was rushed to the hospital. Ahmed Salmi has been unconscious since then, having suffered severe brain trauma, as a result of which he may lose his memory. I asked her what time the accident happened, and it turns out that the ambulance got there around eight-thirty. So the accident must have happened about ten minutes earlier. Amedeo is not the murderer, then, because the coroner said that the crime occurred after 1 P.M. Furthermore, eyewitnesses stated that they had seen Manfredini that morning between nine and noon. So there is not the least doubt: Ahmed Salmi known as Amedeo is innocent.

  After that, we reviewed the investigation up to that point, leaving aside the question “Who is Amedeo?” to concentrate instead on the Gladiator and the life he led. Within a short time we picked up valuable information about Lorenzo Manfredini. We discovered, for example, that he was hated by all the residents of the building. He came home drunk, he peed in the elevator, he often quarreled with Sandro Dandini and with Antonio Marini. Further, he more than once raped the domestic worker Maria Cristina. The woman didn’t dare to report him for fear of being expelled, because she doesn’t have a residency permit, and she asked Amedeo to help her; he didn’t hesitate to warn Manfredini and even threaten him. This was the reason for the quarrel between Amedeo and Manfredini the night before the murder. Who killed Lorenzo Manfredini? The murderer left no trace at the scene of the crime, and this led us to consider him a professional. Then, there is no doubt that the nickname Gladiator helped us greatly in coming up with the guilty party’s name.

  We made inquiries about the origin of this nickname. It seems that Lorenzo took bets, organizing clandestine dog fights that always ended with the death of one of the contestants. In the time of the Romans, the gladiator was a prisoner or slave who fought against a wild beast, a lion or tiger, in front of thousands of spectators in the Coliseum. Lorenzo and his companions had invented a new game of death. You remember the disappearance of the dog Valentino a few weeks before the crime? Lorenzo was responsible for this operation. After exhaustive inquiries, Elisabetta Fabiani succeeded in finding out the perpetrator of the theft of her Valentino, and so, once she had ascertained the horrible torture inflicted on her dog before his death, she decided to take a cruel revenge.

  She came up with an extremely effective plan, making use of information gleaned from the police shows that she watched on TV every day. She chose the elevator, because it’s at the center of the conflicts among the building’s residents. Then, to avoid suspicion, she used a knife, because it’s considered a typically male weapon. And then she began to wander barefoot around Piazza Vittorio to indicate that she was going mad out of desperation because of the kidnapping of her beloved dog. She managed to carry out her plan with great mastery, apparently leaving no trace. The only mistake she made was not to get rid of the murder weapon, which she kept as a trophy. After a lengthy search, we found the knife, on which traces of the victim’s blood remained. The woman wanted to keep something to remind her that Valentino’s murderer had got the punishment he deserved. Or maybe she was so sure she had carried out the perfect crime that no one would ever suspect her. Now the investigation is over. Elisabetta Fabiani killed Lorenzo Manfredini known as the Gladiator.

  FINAL WAIL

  OR BEFORE THE ROOSTER CROWS

  Monday November 25, 10:36 P.M.

  The truth is bitter, like medicine. One must take it in small doses, not all in one gulp, because it can cause death. Truth doesn’t wound, as the French say—“la vérité blesse.” The truth kills. Whereas wailing is the eternal song of Orpheus. Auuuuuuuuuuuuu . . .

  Saturday December 7, 10:55 P.M.

  This morning I read a line by René Char: “Are we doomed to be alone at the origins of truth?” I said to myself that the word “truth” must always be accompanied by a question mark or an exclamation point or a parenthesis, or quotation marks, never a period. Auuuuu . . .

  Wednesday June 25, 10:19 P.M.

  I’m not in the mouth of the wolf, “la gueule du loup,” as the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine says. Here I am, in the wolf’s arms, so that I may suckle until I’m sated. Auuuuu . . .

  Sunday March 16, 11:38 P.M.

  Every so often doubt seizes me when I think that I pass for good in the eyes of all. But what do they know about it? Amedeo might be simply a mask! I am a wild animal who can’t abandon its primal nature. The truth is that my memory is a wild animal, just like a wolf: Auuuuuu . . .

  Thursday April 23, 11:27 P.M.

  Am I also Scheherazade? Scheherazade c’est moi? She tells stories and I wail. We’re both fleeing death, and the night takes us in. Is telling stories useful? We have to tell stories to survive. Damn memory! Memory is the rock of Sisyphus. Who am I? Ahmed or Amedeo? Ah, Bagia! Is there happiness away from your smile? Is there tranquility outside your arms? Could this be the moment of repose? How long will my exile last? How long will my wailing go on? Auuuuuuuuu . . .

  Saturday March 23, 11:55 P.M.

  Teach me, adored lady, the art of escaping death. Teach me, Scheherazade, how to avoid the rage and hatred of the sultan Shahryar. Teach me how to keep the sword of Shahryar from my neck. Teach me, Scheherazade, how to defeat the Shahryar that is inside me. My memory is Shahryar. Auuu . . . My memory is Shahryar. Auuu . . . My memory is Shahryar. Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu . . .

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amara Lakhous was born in Algiers in 1970. He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers and another in cultural anthropology from the University la Sapienza, Rome. He recently completed a PhD thesis entitled “Living Islam as a Minority.” His first novel, Le cimici e il pirata (Bedbugs and the Pirate), was published in 1999. Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, winner of Italy’s prestigious Flaiano prize for fiction and currently being made into a film, is his second novel. He lives in Italy.

  [1] Literally, “boy.”

  [2] In Arabic dhakar means both male and penis.

  [3] A sharp, typically female ululation that emphasizes particular moments of joy

  [4] Character cited in the Koran for his wisdom