by Simon Pare
“My stomach,” I managed to mumble. “I…”
“I thought your wife was a pretty good cook. Maybe she’s trying to get rid of an ancient relic like you, old boy?”
I tried to regain some of my composure.
“Excuse me, I was on my way to the toilet.”
“I don’t like it when you lose your sense of humour, Aziz. It’s a very serious sign with you. Go home, man, and let yourself be pampered. The Director will understand.”
I was already in the toilets, bent over the wash basin, when Lounes, who hadn’t laid off mocking me, called through the door to me: “I know a radical treatment if you’ve got stomach ache. I did a rectal examination on one of the lions the other day. Can you imagine sticking your finger up the king of the jungle’s arse? The fellow was asleep, of course. I can offer you the same examination, but without anaesthetic if you insist. What do you reckon, Aziz?”
“I think you’re a degenerate,” I groaned. Then as I washed my face, I started crying.
I went back up to my office to fetch the pile of press kits and prospectuses. Lounes stood in the doorway, signalling that the party from the ministry had arrived. I rushed out, almost tripping over Hajji Sadok in the process. I deduced from his overly broad smile that the old man was hopping mad and that he would be sure to make me pay for my attitude once the delegation had left. He was flanked by a group of men, all of them wearing the kind of solemn mask that senior officials are given when their appointment is announced.
The youngest of them had a beard that was trimmed in the ‘ambiguous’ fashion that was more and more common among pen-pushers taking care not to put all their eggs in one basket: thick enough whiskers on the chin as a signal to the Islamists, the country’s potential future leaders, that their heart was with them, yet smartly combed so as not to antagonize the current bosses, the sole dispensers – perhaps for some time yet – of rich administrative emoluments. My boss introduced me as his colleague ‘in charge of forecasting’. Even given my state, I was momentarily taken aback by this pompous title for my humble position. Taking the opportunity as the members of the delegation piled into the minibus, Hajji Sadok whispered furiously in my ear, “At least arrange your tie and your hair!”
No sooner had the director got into the minibus and made the customary greetings than he presented the zoo as if he’d swallowed one of the advertising prospectuses I had just handed out: 750 acres of land, a 10-mile perimeter, a miniature ‘Far West’ train to get around it, a safari park and a theme park, a collection of antelopes, addax, oryx, Barbary stags, birds of prey, wildcats, etc.
The man with the beard interrupted Hajji Sadok’s spiel with exaggerated politeness. Feigning embarrassment, he asked to see the new monkeys the press had written about. “It seems they have some… strange customs, ahem…”
“After a general tour of the facilities?”
“No, the monkeys first… unless my colleagues think differently.”
The bearded man’s tone had sharpened. His ‘colleagues’ remained impassive. Going bright red at this reprimand, the director called to me, “Here is our specialist on the subject. He will be delighted to say a few words about it.”
Having completely ignored me up to this point, the three members of the delegation turned to me as one, with the slightly faraway look one puts on for flunkeys.
“Aziz?”
I considered the group of officials squashed into the three front seats of the minibus. Ever since the phone call from the kidnapper, I had been watching myself move as though some hidden pilot had taken over the controls and was carrying out, in my stead, the basic gestures that made it possible to simulate active presence. The ‘real’ captain had sought refuge in the darkest corner of an inner cave, shivering with indescribable terror. I showed no more reaction when my boss, beside himself, insisted, “Aziz, tell them about this precious gift we received from the Republic of Congo – rare creatures that few zoos can profess to house!”
The automatic pilot was unable to relax my lips. Interpreting my silence as a confession of a breach of administrative rules, the official with the thin beard went back on the attack.
“You see, we in central management have received letters from citizens complaining about the… (He searched for his words before pronouncing them with a subtly disgusted grimace.) hardly respectable behaviour of your new residents.”
“But how have they had time to complain? We’ve only had these animals a few days!”
The official made do with a tap on his briefcase as if it contained some proof of our turpitude. Hajji Sadok once more went red at what was increasingly turning into an indictment. He rolled his eyes at me, his incomprehension of my unbelievable inertia switching to panic.
“Aziz, can you bring yourself to speak?”
And, turning to the others in bad-tempered justification, he said, “Please excuse him. He has not been feeling well since yesterday.”
With a forced snigger, he added, “His wife cooked him something that didn’t agree with him. Too much chilli, perhaps.”
The members of the delegation let out a little chuckle, which was nonetheless too polite to relax the atmosphere. I thrust my hand into my pocket the moment the phone rang.
“Yes?”
“It’s me, dear friend. Hold on, I’ll pass you someone dear to you.”
“Aziz,” Hajji Sadok castigated me in my free ear, “you’ll wait until the break to telephone. Turn off your mobile!”
I pushed him brusquely aside. He squawked, “Are you going mad? Being disrespectful to your superior in front of…? Well… what…” I don’t know how the other passengers reacted to this because I completely lost touch with what was going on inside the minibus when I heard my daughter’s voice. I believe I simply jumped out of the vehicle after the driver had already put it in gear.
“Dad, I’m scared…”
“No, my baby, don’t be scared. I’m here, nothing can happen to you!” I answered Shehera stupidly.
My daughter screamed, “Dad, he wants to cut off my fingers… I’m tied up… Dad, save me, please… Help, Mum… He…”
I heard a muffled sound like a punch and then a cry of pain.
“There you go. Now you know I’m not joking. I’m holding a dagger, an unbelievably sharp one. If you don’t answer “Yes, I am ready to fulfil my part of the bargain right now, then…”
He sniggered.
“I’m not nasty – I always start with the least useful finger of the less important hand. Your daughter is right-handed, right?”
“…”
“Do you confirm that?”
“Yes,” I spluttered.
“Tell me, I can hear all sorts of noise again. What’s going on?”
“Hey? What are you talking about?”
“Someone’s shouting next to you. That’s your boss, isn’t it? I’m sorry to put you in a spot of bother. But let me remind you: total secrecy or else…”
I looked up. The scene might have been taking place on a different planet. A middle-aged man was standing by the door of a minibus yelling at me. Meaningless snatches of word-noises reached my ears: “Suspended… warning…You’re crazy…”
The voice on the telephone started talking again cheerfully. “Make sure you’re well away from any people. When you’re sure nobody else can hear you, you will repeat clearly the words I dictate to you. Clearly, my friend, for I shall be recording you. Do you agree?”
The delegation minibus had driven off without me. A walker and two children were coming towards me. Without any hesitation, I plunged into the vegetation by the side of the path. A bendy branch covered in thorns lashed my neck.
“I’m ready.”
The kidnapper took a deep breath.
“OK, listen. ‘I, Aziz Merad, declare that I am going to commit the murder of an innocent person. I do not yet know the identity of my victim, but I am intent on taking his life before 8 o’clock tomorrow. I am of sound mind, I am speaking calmly and I am ready
to assume every consequence of this premeditated assassination…’”
Changing intonation:
“… Now, give the date, your address and your identity card number… which you have on you, I hope?”
I hazarded one last plea, adopting, without realising it, the inflexion of a parent reasoning with a temperamental child.
“You can’t be serious about this… This is impossible… How am I to kill someone I don’t know? There must be a less absurd way of dealing with this… Islamists don’t do this kind of thing… Religion doesn’t permit…”
“Ah,” was all he replied in a sincerely surprised voice, “you still don’t take me seriously… But I’m not joking…”
There was a brief silence, followed by a series of noises, then a terrified “What… what… what’s going on? Please, sir…” from my daughter.
Then I heard a scream that was such an adult expression of pain that at first my ears refused to believe that it came from the mouth of a fourteen-year-old girl.
I too screamed, “What’s going on? What’s he done? Shehera? Shehera?”
“Be quiet,” the man’s voice ordered, quavering. “No one must hear you or else it’s her throat I’ll cut, right here and now.”
With one fist thrust into my mouth, I was weeping uncontrollably when I spoke to Shehera again. She too was choking on her sobs.
“Daddy, it… it hurts… it hurts… cut off my finger… My finger… There’s blood everywhere… Daddy, I’m scared… my… my finger… finger… Mummy… it hurts… Daddy please… Daddy… da…
Her speech was disrupted by the chattering of her teeth. She didn’t manage to finish her sentence. Her flawed pronunciation, which she could usually more or less control, made it even harder to understand her.
“… Daddy… he’s got a die… a die… knife… Do… to…”
She let out another scream, every bit as heart-wrenching as the first.
“Daddy, he’s about to… help… to cut off another finger… Daddy, if you love me, to… do what he says…”
I couldn’t stop myself asking her, “You know what he wants me to do?”
“Yes, Daddy… I heard… but I’m too scared… and it hurts too much… Daddy, I don’t want to die… for pity’s sake, Daddy…”
I leaned against a tree trunk. I heard an elephant trumpeting in strange modulations in the distance. A stupid corner of my drifting mind had the cheek to speculate: “That poor animal must have diarrhoea. Let’s hope the vet’s there…”
“My beloved girl, tell him I agree, tell him not to hurt you anymore… I’ll get you out of there, I promise… Tell him I accept…”
“Yes, Daddy… yes, Daddy… I’ll tell him… Daddy, Daddy, what do I do with my finger?… The finger on the floor?”
I didn’t have time to reply. The kidnapper’s sugary voice continued, “Well, now you’ve seen sense. Don’t worry about your daughter; they’re tough at that age. I’ll put a bandage with some tincture of iodine on it and everything will be just fine… Just don’t make me angry again, that’s all. OK… let’s record… I’ll count to five, then you start…”
I ended my proclamation with the date, my address and my identity card number. Around me the sky had not changed, there had been no eclipse of the sun, the park had not been swept away by a storm. On the other end of the phone there was a muffled click, the button of a recording device maybe, then a satisfied “hmm hmm’.
“Those aren’t the exact words I dictated to you, but it’ll do. I’m not one to quibble.”
“Listen…”
“Yes?”
“If I do what you told me to, what guarantee do I have that you’ll release my daughter… unharmed?”
“None… Except that I’ve got some reasons for you to be satisfied with that none; I can even count them. Ten… er, no, nine now… Have you changed your mind?”
“No, no… But why… why us? Did you choose us by chance?”
“Chance, chance… You’re going a bit far if you think I’d go to such lengths by chance! On the other hand, what is chance, my friend, if not necessity disguised as incomprehension? Only the innocent and the feeble-minded talk of chance. And, quite honestly, very few creatures turn out to be truly innocent on this earth. Even the child who whistles as he walks along a path, watched for years by an old tree that chooses to fall specifically on him…”
The voice gave an almost embarrassed sigh.
“The universe, God, the whole lot of it – don’t you think that we’re victims of a whole bundle of mysteries anyway? But knowing that is of no consolation to either you or me. So then, tomorrow, eight o’clock sharp. Prepare some persuasive photos of your feat. You’ll give me the name and address of your corpse so I can check. If I have the slightest doubt, I will send you a photo of your decapitated daughter. Most importantly, don’t forget…”
The mad beast allowed a pregnant silence to expand slowly through my ear – to the point where I thought the call had been cut off.
“…Amazing as it may sound, my lad, don’t forget that I exist!”
The kidnapper repeated solemnly, with a touch of vanity, “I exist. And I have just proved that by making you my slave. Don’t be startled: the Arab world, the whole fucking Arab world, is made up of masters and slaves. Think hard: have you ever been free, truly free, in this country? You’d be lying if you answered yes. So don’t lie! If you are an Arab, you are already something of a slave. Don’t worry: everyone’s turn comes round in this shit-hole world of ours. Formerly, I used to be – how should I put this? – enslaved for life by certain events, and it lasted a long time, believe you me!”
He coughed, as if he’d been overcome by sudden emotion.
“One last thing: avoid being caught by the police. If your incompetence lands you in prison, your daughter is lost. But before that she’ll go through hell on earth. And so will you, by the way; our cops aren’t particularly gentle souls and they’ll beat you till you can’t take it anymore. The judges will back them up by giving you life at least, and your cellmates, frustrated yokels who could make a goat pregnant, will be happy to enlarge your arsehole until you can shit watermelons. Listen to your beloved daughter…”
He must have held the microphone closer to Shehera because I heard, for a short while and very clearly, her moans of pain that sounded like a tortured puppy’s. Then the line went dead and I stood frozen to the spot, with my ear stuck to the phone for several long seconds trying to plumb the futile mystery of the tone. I put the mobile back in my pocket, slipped my identity card into my wallet, and ran my hand over my face, maybe to check whether the life of an individual like me fell within the bounds of possibility – a father who had just listened to his daughter being tortured over the telephone!
Suddenly I vomited; my breakfast first, followed by a liquid that was milky to begin with and then a yellowy colour. I carried on vomiting even when there was no more liquid left to throw up.
I only stopped because cramp had sunk its teeth into my oesophagus, forcing me to my knees with pain. While I was struggling to my feet, a corkscrew of an idea bored its way into my skull: Why hadn’t I dared to ask my daughter if she was blindfolded? Did she see her kidnapper as he was cutting off her finger?
An inner sentinel whispered that this question wasn’t a mere detail, of course, but that it would be better not to go into it for the time being, since too detailed a reply would have crucified me on the spot.
Shehera… My little Shehera…
I shut my eyelids, then opened them again immediately: I still had the impossible image of that bit of finger lying in a pool of blood on the floor in my mind’s unseeing eye.
In an additional blow to my reason, I remembered the delight that had filled my soul when, so few years ago, I would bend over my daughter’s cot and play with her little fingers in mine.
Once more, I felt my fear spreading like an awful disease through every organ in my body.
“How do Arabs kill?”
The words had slipped out, but I could hardly believe they were mine. I put my hand to my mouth as if the words might have left a wound. I didn’t move, unable to tear myself away from the flimsy cover of the bushes. An insect dropped off a branch above me onto my jacket. It immediately took to crawling laboriously up the sleeve. I contemplated its uncomfortable progress across the checked fabric in a sort of waking unconsciousness.
“You are going to kill someone.”
My mouth had once more pronounced these words without asking my leave. I moaned in the horrified certainty that the kidnapper had just cast me into hell. I dreamed: “And this time, it’s real hell, not an image or a turn of phrase.”
In stupefied admiration, I also noted: God really is economical in his means. No need for any ridiculous special effects or afterlife to create a place for destroying souls at a knockdown price.
I wanted to call for help. And did nothing – Shehera’s little fingers.
“Meriem, yes, phone Meriem…”
“Then what? What are you going to tell her?”
That the madman has cut off one of our daughter’s fingers and that I have to murder someone before dawn?
I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped my face; there was a little blood on the material from the scratches. I emerged from the bushes, scaring a passer-by. The person looked at me with accusing eyes before walking on. I made for the car park. The man thought I was following him and speeded up. A thought crossed my mind, sharp as an arrow: If I killed you, someone I don’t know, perhaps my daughter’s suffering would be over, all it would take…
“…would be for me to… what – strangle you, stab you, drown you?… And where would I throw your corpse, you bastard?”
The man had disappeared out of sight. Maybe he’d started running just around the corner? I laughed. And I shuddered because I’d laughed.
I flexed the muscles of my soul – because soon I would have to make a decision.
And I realised that I loved my daughter too much to refuse the awful proposition.
