The Attack

by Yasmina Khadra

  “Sabba,” Kim says, joining us and admonishing her grandfather.

  The old man lifts his arms like a little rascal caught with his finger in the jam jar. “I beg your pardon,” he says. “It’s stronger than I am. It does no good for me to promise not to probe the old wounds anymore. That’s exactly what I do, whenever I think I have something to say.”

  “That’s because you don’t look at the sea enough, Sabba, dear,” Kim tells him, gently massaging his neck.

  Old Yehuda considers his granddaughter’s words as though he were hearing them for the first time. His eyes cloud over, become dim and distant, haunted by tragic evocations. For a few moments, he seems not to know where he is, and it’s only with difficulty that he snaps out of his daze. Then, with his granddaughter’s hands supporting his neck, he recovers a little of his lucidity.

  “You’re right, Kim. I talk too much,” he says, and then, in a quavering voice: “I’ll never understand why the survivors of a tragedy feel compelled to make people believe they’re more to be pitied than the ones who didn’t make it.”

  His gaze runs over the sand on the beach, dives into the midst of the waves, and gets lost in the open sea, while his diaphanous hand moves slowly up to touch his granddaughter’s.

  The three of us, each paralyzed in his own silence, contemplate the horizon, which the dawn lights up with a thousand fires; and each of us knows for certain that the rising sun of this day, like all those that have gone before it, will be incapable of bringing sufficient light into the hearts of men.

  7.

  * * *

  Eventually, Kim took it upon herself to go and pick up my car at the hospital. She also brought back the latest news, which is that I’m persona non grata over there. Ilan Ros has succeeded in uniting the majority of the medical personnel against me. Some of the people who signed petitions opposing my return even suggested that I should be stripped of my Israeli citizenship.

  I don’t find Ilan Ros’s attitude particularly surprising. About ten years ago, he lost his younger brother, a sergeant with the border guards, in an ambush in southern Lebanon. He’s never been able to get over that. Although in the course of things he and I are often together, he never lets himself forget where I come from and what I am. In his eyes, despite my talents as a surgeon and my aptitude for getting on with people professionally as well as socially, I’m still the Arab: inseparable from the wog handyman and, to a lesser degree, from the potential enemy. In the beginning, I suspected him of flirting with some separationist movement; I was mistaken. He was simply jealous of my success. I didn’t hold it against him, but he wouldn’t be appeased. When my work was recognized and praised, he attributed my honors to a simple demagogic measure designed to advance the cause of the societal integration of which I was the most convincing specimen. The suicide attack in Hakirya came at just the right moment to justify the stirrings of his old demons.

  “Look at you. Alone and talking to yourself,” Kim says, surprising me.

  Her freshness surprises me, too. She looks like a fairy arising from a fountain of youth, with her black hair cascading down her back and her big eyes, emphasized by black eyeliner. She’s wearing flawlessly tailored white pants and a light blouse perfectly wedded to the voluptuous contours of her chest. Her face is serene and her smile radiant. I have the feeling that I’m noticing her at last, after all these many days and nights I’ve spent with her in a sort of trance. As recently as yesterday, she was only a shadow hovering around my introspections. I’m unable to remember how she was dressed or if she was wearing makeup or whether her hair was spread out on her shoulders or pinned up in a chignon.

  “One is never really alone, Kim.”

  She pushes a chair close to me and straddles it backward. Her perfume nearly intoxicates me. I see her translucent hands grow white around the joints when she grasps the back of the chair. Her mouth trembles and hesitates when she asks, “So who were you talking to?”

  “I wasn’t talking; I was thinking out loud.”

  The calmness of my tone emboldens her. She leans over the back of the chair to get a closer look at me and speaks in what’s supposed to be a confiding tone: “Well, in any case, you looked as though you were in good company. Sad, but somehow handsomer.”

  “It was probably my father. I’ve been thinking about him a lot recently.”

  She takes my hands to comfort me. Our eyes meet but turn aside at once, fearful of discovering a gleam that might upset them.

  “How’s your wrist?” she asks, by way of dispersing the awkward air that has suddenly settled over the room.

  “It keeps me awake. My hand, too. It feels like there’s a little stone planted in the middle of my palm, and I’ve got a tingling sensation in the joints.”

  Kim lightly touches the bandage on my hand and gently moves my fingers. “In my opinion, we ought to go back to the clinic and find out for sure what’s going on. The first X ray wasn’t good. You might have a fracture.”

  “I tried to drive this morning. I had trouble with the steering wheel.”

  This news flusters her. She asks, “Where did you want to go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She stands up, frowning. “Let’s go see about your wrist,” she says. “That seems more reasonable.”

  She drives me back to the clinic in her car. During the trip, she says not a word, no doubt preoccupied with trying to guess where I wanted to go this morning when I got behind my steering wheel. She must be wondering whether all the precautions she takes on my behalf are stifling me.

  I’m dying to put my hand on hers as a sign of how lucky I feel to have her at my side, but no matter where I look, I can’t find the strength that would make such a gesture possible. I’m afraid that she’ll take her hand away, that the words won’t come, that my clumsiness may botch up my honorable intentions—I think I’m losing confidence in myself.

  A fat nurse takes charge of me. She dislikes my appearance at first sight and in a peremptory tone suggests that I should change my diet in favor of grilled steaks and raw vegetables, because, she whispers in my ear, I look like someone on a hunger strike. The physician examines my first X ray, declares it perfectly legible, and balks for a while before consenting to x-ray me a second time. The new picture confirms the preceding diagnosis: no detectable fracture, no crack of any kind, just a huge trauma at the base of my index finger and another, less extensive one centered on my wrist. He prescribes an ointment, some anti-inflammatory pills, and some pills to help me sleep, and then he sends me back to the nurse.

  As we leave the clinic, I catch sight of Navid Ronnen. He’s sitting in an automobile in the medical building’s parking lot, one foot propped on the open door, his hands behind his head, patiently staring at the top of the streetlight.

  “Is he tailing me, or what?” I say, surprised to find him here.

  “Don’t be a dummy,” Kim scolds me, offended by the question. “He called me on my mobile phone, asking for news of you, and I told him to meet us here.”

  I realize how boorish my question was; I don’t apologize.

  “Don’t let your grief spoil your good manners, Amin.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask her testily.

  “It’s no use being disagreeable,” she replies, looking unflinchingly into my eyes.

  Navid gets out of his car. He’s wearing a tracksuit stamped with the colors of the national soccer team, a pair of new running shoes, and a black beret. His endless aerobics classes and workout sessions, which he puts himself through with religious rigor, don’t seem capable of reversing his increasingly burdensome corpulence. Navid’s not proud of this bearish bulk, which magnifies the difficulties of his shortened leg and turns his gait into an awkward shuffle, thus compromising the seriousness and authority he’d like to project.

  “I was jogging nearby,” he declares, as though trying to justify himself.

  “There’s no law against that,” I retort.

  I realize as
I speak that my allusion’s aggressive and out of place, but, strangely enough, I don’t feel any need to soften it. You might even say I’m deriving a certain amount of pleasure from my surly attitude, a pleasure as dark as the shadow covering my soul. I don’t recognize this gratuitous nastiness of mine, nor do I see how I can control it.

  Kim pinches my underarm, a gesture that doesn’t escape Navid. “Well,” he growls, deeply disappointed, “if I’m bothering you . . .”

  “Why would you say such a thing?” I exclaim, trying to redeem myself.

  He gives me a withering look, so forceful, it makes his facial muscles quiver. My question gets to him more than my pathetic allusion. He comes closer and stares at me in a way that prevents my eyes from turning aside. He’s very angry.

  “You’re asking me that, Amin?” he says in a furious voice. “Am I the one who’s avoiding you? Isn’t it you who skulks away every time you think I might be anywhere around? What’s wrong with you? Have I done you some wrong without realizing it, or are you just acting like an asshole?”

  “It’s not that at all. I’m glad to see you.”

  He squints at me. “That’s strange, because it’s not what I read in your eyes.”

  “But it’s the truth.”

  “Suppose we go have a drink,” Kim suggests. “On me. You pick the place, Navid.”

  Navid agrees to forget about my boorish behavior, but he’s still hurt. He takes a deep breath, looks over his shoulder to ponder his choice, and then proposes Chez Zion, a quiet little bar not far from the clinic, where they serve the best cocktail snacks around.

  While Kim follows Navid’s car, I try to pinpoint the reasons for my aggressiveness toward a person who stood by me when others were systematically making me an object of public contempt. Is it because of what he represents, because of his cop’s badge? If so, I must admit, it can’t be easy for a cop to continue to be friends with the husband of a suicide bomber. I build up theories and then tear them down, hoping I won’t let myself go too far, hoping to refrain from considerations that could strip me bare and isolate me more completely in my torment. Curiously, at the same moment when I resolve to guard against losing control, I feel an irrepressible (and, it seems to me, appropriate) urge to be offensive. Is it my refusal to dissociate myself from Sihem’s offense that’s pushing me toward hostility? If so, then what am I becoming? What am I trying to prove, or to justify? And what do we really know about what’s just and what isn’t? There are the things that suit us; there are the things that don’t. Whether we’re right or wrong, we lack discernment in equal measure. That’s how men live: When they’re at their worst, they do their best, and when they’re at their best, it doesn’t mean very much. . . . My thoughts drive me into a corner; they make light of my qualms, feed on my fragility, exploit my grief. I’m aware of how they’re sapping me and I let them do it anyway, like an overconfident watchman abandoning himself to drowsiness. My tears may well have drowned a little of my sorrow, but my rage is still there, like a tumor buried deep inside me, or like a monster of the abyss, crouched in the darkness of its lair, waiting for the right moment to rise to the surface and terrify its world. Kim can feel it, too. She knows I’m trying to externalize the horror wallowing around in my guts; she sees that my aggressiveness is only a symptom of the extreme violence laboriously welling up in me, waiting to gather together the propelling charges of its eruption. If she doesn’t want me out of her sight for a second, it’s because she hopes to limit the damage. But my inexplicable conduct stymies her; she’s beginning to doubt.

  We take a table on the terrace of the little café, which sits in the middle of a paved square. There are other customers around us, some in good company, others alone, staring pensively at their glass or cup. The café’s proprietor is a tall, strapping fellow with an unruly mane blending into his Viking’s beard. He’s blond as a bale of hay, his arms covered with hair from his wrists to his shoulders. He looks as though he’s suffocating under his sailor’s shirt. He comes to our table to say hello to Navid, whom he apparently knows, then takes our order and withdraws.

  When Navid sees me pull out a pack of cigarettes, he asks, “You smoke? Since when?”

  “Ever since my dreams went up in smoke.”

  My reply causes Kim some consternation, but she limits herself to clenching her fists. Navid considers it calmly, his lower lip drawn down. For a moment, I think he’s just about to put me in my place, but then he leans back in his chair and folds his hands on the mound of his belly.

  The proprietor returns with a tray and serves Navid a frothy beer, Kim a glass of tomato juice, and me a cup of coffee. He says something agreeably amusing to the police commander and again withdraws. Kim’s the first to pick up her drink and takes three quick sips in a row. She’s quite disappointed in me, and she’s keeping quiet to avoid blowing up in my face.

  “How’s Margaret?” I ask Navid.

  He doesn’t answer right away. On his guard, he gives himself the time to take a swallow of his beer before risking a reply. “She’s fine, thanks.”

  “And the children?”

  “You know how they are. Sometimes they get along; sometimes they’re not talking to one another.”

  “You’re still thinking about marrying Edeet to that mechanic?”

  “She’s the one who wants it. He’s her choice.”

  “You think he’s a good match for her?”

  “In such matters, you don’t think; you pray.”

  I nod. “You’re right. Marriage is always a gamble. It obeys its own logic. Making calculations or taking precautions is useless.”

  Navid sees that my words aren’t hiding any traps. He relaxes a little, savors a mouthful of beer, smacks his lips, and gives me a look of immense consideration. “And your wrist?” he says.

  “A nasty bruise, but nothing broken.”

  Kim fishes a cigarette out of my pack. I hold out my lighter to her. She leans forward, draws on the cigarette voraciously, and sits back up, exhaling a great cloud through her nostrils.

  “How’s the investigation going?” I ask straight out.

  Kim chokes on a half-inhaled mouthful of smoke.

  Navid, once again on his guard, stares at me intensely.

  “I don’t want to argue with you, Amin.”

  “I don’t want to argue, either. I just have a right to know.”

  “Know what, exactly? What you refuse to accept?”

  “Not anymore. I know it was her.”

  Kim puts her face quite close to mine and gazes at me, squinting through the smoke from the cigarette in the corner of her mouth; she can’t see what I’m getting at.

  Navid gently pushes away his beer mug, as if clearing the surrounding area so he can have me all to himself. “You know what was her?”

  “I know it was her who blew herself up in that restaurant.”

  “You do? Since when?”

  “Is this an interrogation, Navid?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “In that case, why not just tell me how the investigation’s going?”

  Navid lets himself fall against the back of his chair. “We’re at a standstill. Spinning our wheels.”

  “What about the old cream-colored Mercedes?”

  “My father-in-law has one like that.”

  “With all the tools you’ve got, with all your networks of snitches, you still haven’t—”

  “It’s not a question of tools or snitches, Amin,” he says, interrupting me. “What we’re dealing with is a woman who was above all suspicion, a woman who hid her tracks so completely that our best investigator, our supersleuth, keeps running into the same impasse no matter what trail he follows. But in cases of this nature, it’s reassuring to realize that all we need is a clue, a single clue, and the machine will start purring again. Do you think you have such a clue?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Navid wiggles around in his chair—heavily—puts his elbows on the table, and reaches for the
beer mug he pushed aside a minute ago. He runs his finger around the edge of the glass, wiping away flecks of foam. An implacable silence settles over the terrace.

  “At least you know who the suicide bomber was,” Navid says. “That’s a step forward.”

  “How about me?”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me. Have I been cleared, or am I still a suspect?”

  “You wouldn’t be here sipping your coffee if anyone could blame you for anything, Amin.”

  “So why did I get beaten up in front of my own house?”

  “That didn’t have anything to do with the police. That was an angry mob, and anger’s like marriage: It doesn’t always obey its own logic. You could have filed a complaint, but you didn’t.”

  I stub out my cigarette in the ashtray, light another one, and find its taste suddenly disgusting. “Tell me, Navid,” I say. “You’ve seen a lot of criminals, both repentant and unrepentant, and a lot of plain psychopaths, too. How can a person, just like that—how can a person just strap on a load of explosives and go blow herself up in the middle of a party?”

  Visibly uncomfortable, Navid shrugs his shoulders. “That’s what I ask myself every night. I can never even make sense of the question, much less come up with an answer.”