The Attack

by Yasmina Khadra

“Have you ever met any of . . . these people?”

  “Plenty.”

  “So how do they explain what they’ve done? How do they explain their lunacy?”

  “They don’t explain it. They accept it.”

  “You can’t imagine what it does to me to think about those cases. How the hell is it possible for an ordinary human being, sound in body and mind, to make that choice? Does he have a fantasy or a hallucination that convinces him he’s been given a divine mission? How can he give up his plans, his dreams, his ambitions, and decide to die an atrocious death in the midst of the worst kind of barbarism?”

  I believe tears of rage cloud my vision at the same rate as my words choke and splutter in my throat. Kim agitates her thighs feverishly under the table. By now, her cigarette’s just a twig of ashes suspended in the air.

  Navid sighs, giving himself time to choose his words. He perceives the pain I’m in, and it seems to cause him to suffer, too.

  “What can I tell you, Amin? I think even the most seasoned terrorists really have no idea what has happened to them. And it can happen to anyone. Something clicks somewhere in their subconscious, and they’re off. Their motives aren’t all equally solid, but generally, whatever it is, it comes over them like that,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Either it falls on your head like a roof tile or it attaches itself to your insides like a tapeworm. Afterward, you no longer see the world in the same way. You’ve got only one thing on your mind: the thing that has taken you over, body and soul. You want to lift it so you can see what’s under it. And from that point on, you can never turn back. Besides, you’re no longer giving the orders. You think you’re in control, doing what you want to do, but it’s not true. You’ve nothing but the instrument of your own frustrations. For you, death and life come down to the same thing. Somewhere, you must have renounced everything that could have given you a chance of returning to earth, to the real world. You float. You hover. You’re an extraterrestrial. You live in a kind of limbo, stalking houris and unicorns. As for this world, you don’t even want to hear about it anymore. You’re just waiting for the right moment to cross the threshold. The only way to get back what you’ve lost or to fix what you’ve screwed up—in other words, the only way to make something of your life—is to end it with a flourish: turn yourself into a giant firecracker in the middle of a school bus, or launch yourself like a torpedo against an enemy tank. Ka-boom! The big bang, with a special bonus prize—full martyr status. The way you see it, the day of your funeral procession will be the day when you’re exalted in other people’s eyes. The rest—the day before, the day after—that’s not your problem; as far as you’re concerned, it doesn’t exist.”

  “Sihem was so happy,” I remind him.

  “That’s what we all thought. Apparently, we were all wrong.”

  We stay at that café until late in the night. Our evening out allows me to let off steam and get rid of the stale thoughts polluting my mind. My aggressiveness dissipates as our conversation evokes more and more memories. Several times, I’m surprised to feel my eyes brimming with tears, but I stop them from going any farther. Every time my voice starts to crack, Kim’s hand seeks out mine to comfort me. Navid’s very patient. He puts up with my discourtesies and promises to keep me informed of the investigation’s progress. By the time we say good night, we’re reconciled, bonded more closely than ever before.

  Kim drives me back to her house. We eat sandwiches in the kitchen, chain-smoke in the living room, talk at length about everything and nothing, and then go to our rooms. A little later, Kim comes in to see if I need anything. Before turning out the light, she asks me point-blank why I didn’t say anything to Navid about the letter.

  I spread out my arms and confess: “I have no idea.”

  8.

  * * *

  According to Kim, the Ministry of Health has received an enormous amount of mail from my former patients and their relatives, in whose opinion I’m as much a victim as those who died in the restaurant my wife blew up. The hospital is divided; passions have cooled a bit, and a good many of my detractors are wondering if the petitions they signed were reasonable. Given the complexity of the situation, the hospital hierarchy has asserted that my case is beyond its purview and declared its readiness to accept the decision of higher authorities.

  As for me, my decision is taken: I’m not going back to my office, not even to collect my personal belongings. The cabal that Ilan Ros led against me has had a profound effect on my outlook. The thing is, I’ve never paraded my religious heritage anywhere. Ever since I left the university, I’ve tried to carry out my civic duties scrupulously. All too aware of the stereotypes that mark me out in the public square, I strive to overcome them, one by one, by doing the best I can do and putting up with the incivilities of my Jewish comrades. When I was still young, I realized that sitting between two chairs made no sense; I had to choose a side, and fast. I chose to be on the side of my ability, and I made my convictions my allies. With these, I was sure, I’d eventually force people to respect me. I don’t think I ever, not even once, broke the rules I set for myself. Those rules were like Ariadne’s thread for me, except it was sharp as a razor blade. For an Arab who stood out from the rest—and who gave himself the satisfaction of graduating first in his class—the least mistake could have been fatal. Especially when he was the son of a Bedouin, stumbling under the weight of the prejudices his ancestry entailed. I lugged the caricature of that ancestry around with me like a convict’s ball and chain; it frequently exposed me to general human meanness, sometimes turned me into an object; at other times, it demonized me, and, most often, it disqualified me. As early as my first year at the university, I measured the brutality of the course I proposed to follow and the titanic efforts I’d have to make in order to deserve my status as a full citizen. The diploma didn’t resolve everything; I had to be charming and reassuring, I had to take blows without returning them, and I had to hold my tongue until my jaws ached because I couldn’t afford to lose face. Thoroughly against my will, I found myself representing my community. To some extent, the community was the chief reason why I had to succeed. It hadn’t been necessary for my people to send me on this mission; I was automatically designated for the thankless, perfidious job by the way the others looked at me.

  I come from a poor but honest background, where salvation lay in keeping your word and living an upright life. My grandfather was the patriarch of our tribe. He possessed land but no ambition, and he didn’t know that longevity depends not so much on the firmness of your undertakings as on the permanent reexamination of your own certitudes. He died despoiled, his eyes wide open, his heart broken with amazement and outrage. My father had no wish to inherit his father’s blinkers. He had little enthusiasm for the peasant’s condition; he wanted to be an artist—which, in his ancestral glossary, was defined as “dropout” and “loiterer.” I can remember the monumental rows that took place whenever Grandfather caught my father painting a canvas in the shack he used as a makeshift studio while the other members of the family, young and old, were working themselves to exhaustion in the orchards. My father, with his Olympian calm, would declare that life was not only hoeing, pruning, watering, and picking; that it was painting, singing, and writing, as well; and teaching; and that the greatest of all vocations was healing. His dearest wish was for me to become a doctor. I’ve seldom seen anyone work so hard for his kid as he did for me. I was his only son. If he didn’t want any others, it was so he could give me a maximum number of opportunities. He gave everything he had so he could offer the tribe its first physician. When he saw me brandishing my diploma, he threw himself into my arms like a stream into the sea. That day was the one and only time I ever saw tears on his cheeks. When he died, he was lying on a hospital bed, stroking my stethoscope—which I’d brought with me because I knew it gave him pleasure—as though it were a holy relic.

  My father was a good person. He took things as they came and adjusted to them without artifice
and without fanfare. He wasn’t interested in taking the bull by the horns, and he didn’t go into crisis mode when things got tight. As far as he was concerned, spells of bad luck weren’t trials, just hitches. You had to go on past them, even if it meant a few minutes of suffering on the way through. His humility and his discernment were a gift. I wanted so much to be like him, to possess his frugality and his moderation! Thanks to him, even though I was growing up in a land that had been tormented since the dawn of time, I refused to consider the world as a battlefield. I could see that wars beget wars, that reprisals follow reprisals, but I forbade myself to give them any support of any kind. I didn’t believe in prophecies of discord, and I couldn’t bring myself to accept the notion that God could incite his subjects to take up arms against one another and reduce the exercise of faith to an absurd and frightening question of power relationships. And ever since then, I’ve trusted anyone who required a little of my blood to purify my soul about as much as I would trust a scorpion. I have no desire to believe in vales of tears or valleys of shadows—there are other more charming and less irrational features of the landscape all around me. My father said, “Anyone who tells you that a greater symphony exists than the breath in your body is lying. He wants to undermine your most beautiful possession: the chance to profit from every moment of your life. If you start from the principle that your worst enemy is the very person who tries to sow hatred in your heart, you’re halfway to happiness. All you have to do is reach out your hand and take the rest. And remember this: There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than your life. And your life isn’t more important than other people’s lives.”

  I’ve never forgotten that.

  I’ve even made it my motto. I’m convinced that when men finally subscribe to that way of thinking, they will at last have reached maturity.

  My little skirmishes with Navid helped put me back on my feet. Although they haven’t restored me to complete clearheadedness, they’ve at least allowed me to look inside myself with some detachment. My anger’s still there, but it’s no longer stirring in my guts like a foreign body waiting to be retched up and spewed out. Occasionally, when I sit on the balcony, contemplating the traffic, I even find something appealing about it. Kim’s not watching what she says with the same excessive caution as she used three days ago. She invents silly comic routines to get me to smile, and after she leaves for the hospital in the morning, I no longer content myself with staying shut up in my room until she returns. I’ve taken to going out and strolling about the streets. I sit in cafés and smoke cigarettes, or I go to a square and pick out a bench and watch the little kids frolicking in the sun. I don’t yet have the nerve to get near a newspaper; however, if I hear a radio broadcasting news while I’m out strolling, I no longer dash to the other side of the street.

  Ezra Benhaim came to visit me at Kim’s place. Neither my hypothetical return to work nor Ilan Ros’s name was mentioned. Ezra wanted to know how I was doing, how far along I was in getting over what happened. He took me to a restaurant to prove to me that it didn’t bother him to be seen in my company. A dramatic gesture, but sincere. I insisted on paying for us both. After dinner—Kim was on duty—we went into a bar and got sloshed like two gods letting off steam after having used up all their anathemas.

  * * *

  “I have to go to Bethlehem.”

  The sound of clinking dishes in the kitchen comes to an abrupt stop. Kim waits a few seconds before showing her face in the doorway. She’s got one eyebrow higher than the other as she stares at me.

  I crush out my cigarette in the ashtray and get ready to light another one.

  Kim dries her hands on a dishcloth hanging on the wall and joins me in the living room. She says, “Are you joking?”

  “Do I look like I’m joking, Kim?”

  She gives a little start. “Of course you’re joking. What are you going to do in Bethlehem?”

  “Sihem’s letter was postmarked from there.”

  “So?”

  “So I want to know what she was up to in Bethlehem while I thought she was at her grandmother’s house in Kafr Kanna.”

  Kim drops into the wicker chair opposite me. She’s had enough of my unpredictable excursions. She takes deep breaths, as though forcing down her pique, chews her teeth in search of her words, finds none, and puts two fingers on each of her temples. “You’re not being realistic, Amin. I don’t know what’s going through your head, but this is too much. There’s no goddamned reason for you to go to Bethlehem.”

  “I’ve got a foster sister there. I’m positive Sihem went to her house before she carried out her insane mission. The letter’s postmarked Friday the twenty-seventh, the day before the . . . the tragedy. I want to know who indoctrinated my wife, who strapped explosives on her and sent her to her target. There’s no way I’m going to fold my arms or turn the page on something I can’t get my mind around.”

  Kim’s on the point of tearing out her hair. “Do you hear what you’re saying? Let me remind you, we’re talking about terrorists here. These are not people who bother with the niceties. You’re a surgeon, not a cop. You have to leave this job to the police. They’ve got the appropriate tools and the personnel qualified to carry out this sort of investigation. If you want to know what happened to your wife, go find Navid and tell him about the letter.”

  “This is a personal matter. . . .”

  “Bullshit! Seventeen people were killed and dozens of others wounded. There’s nothing personal about this matter. It was a suicide attack, and suicide attacks come under the exclusive jurisdiction of the government. Leave the investigating to the proper authorities. In my opinion, you’re about to go off the rails, Amin. If you really want to do something useful, give the letter to Navid. It may be the very clue the police are waiting for to break the case.”

  “That’s out of the question. I don’t like other people meddling in my business. I want to go to Bethlehem, alone. I don’t need anyone else. I know people down there. I’ll talk to them and prod them until they let something slip. I’ll be able to force some of them to spill the beans.”

  “And afterward?”

  “After what?”

  “Let’s say you succeed in forcing some of them to spill the beans. What’s the next number on the program? Pulling their ears? Demanding payment, say damages and interest? Come on, you can’t be serious. Sihem surely had a whole network behind her. She had logistical support; she went through some kind of training. You don’t blow yourself up in a public place on a whim. That’s the final step in a long period of brainwashing, of meticulous psychological and material preparation. Enormous precautions are taken before someone is sent into action. The commanders need to protect their bases and cover their tracks. They don’t select their suicide bomber until they’re absolutely sure of his determination and reliability. Now, I want you to picture yourself invading their territory and sniffing around their hideouts. You think they’re going to wait politely until you make your way to where they are? They’ll do away with you so fast, you won’t even have time to realize what a boneheaded idea it was to play detective. I swear, I’m scared stiff at the mere prospect of imagining you crawling around that nest of vipers.”

  She grabs my hands, reviving the pain in my wrist.

  “It’s not a good idea, Amin.”

  “Maybe not, but I haven’t been able to think of anything else since I read the letter.”

  “I understand, but this sort of thing isn’t for you.”

  “Don’t wear yourself out, Kim. You know how hardheaded I am.”

  She raises her arms to calm things down. “All right. Let’s postpone the debate until this evening. I hope you’ll have regained the power of sober thought by then.”

  When evening comes, she invites me to dinner in a restaurant on the beach. We sit on a terrace with the sea breeze lashing our faces. The sea is thick; there’s something sententious in its sound. Kim perceives that she won’t be able to make me change my mind. Sh
e picks at her food like a weary bird.

  This is a pleasant place. It’s run by a French immigrant, who offers informal meals in an agreeable setting, with picture windows as big as horizons, plush chairs upholstered in wine-red leather, and tables with embroidered place mats. A candle of imposing size burns away in a crystalline cup. There aren’t many people here, but the other couples all seem to be regular customers. Their gestures are refined and their conversations discreet. Our host is a small, frail, lively fellow, immaculately dressed and exquisitely courteous. We’ve accepted his recommendations for the first course and the wine. Kim surely had something in mind when she invited me to this restaurant, but whatever that something was, she seems to have lost sight of it.

  “It looks like you get a kick out of manipulating my blood-sugar level.” She sighs, dropping her napkin as though throwing in the sponge.

  “Put yourself in my place, Kim. This isn’t just about what Sihem did. I’m in this, too. If my wife killed herself, that proves I wasn’t able to make her prefer to live. I must certainly bear some part of the responsibility.”

  Kim tries to protest; I raise a hand by way of asking her not to interrupt me.

  “It’s true, Kim. There’s no smoke without fire. I agree, she committed a crime, but laying the whole blame for it on her won’t salve my conscience.”

  “You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Yes, I did. I was her husband. My duty was to watch over her and protect her. I’m sure she tried to attract my attention to the great wave that was threatening to sweep her away. I’d bet anything she tried to give me a sign. And while she was trying to get out of the trap she was in . . . Damn it! What was I thinking?”

  “Did she really try to get out of it?”

  “Why wouldn’t she? You can’t go to your destruction the way you go to a ball. Inevitably, just when you’re preparing to take the fatal step, a seed of doubt sprouts in you. And it was that precise instant that I was incapable of detecting. Sihem surely wanted me to wake her up, to bring her back to herself, but my mind was elsewhere. And I’ll never forgive myself for that.”