by Hisham Matar
‘Now, Suleiman,’ Mama said, ‘you must be careful of the sun. It’s OK in the garden, under the trees, but on the naked roof it can kill you, habibi.’
My mouth was full so I nodded.
Moosa broke a big piece of bread, held it in between three fingers and scooped up a chunk of tuna; he then dipped it in the harissa and, before a drop could fall, threw it all into his mouth. He too nodded at what Mama had said then sipped noisily at his tea. ‘The sun!’ he finally said. ‘Oh, the sun my boy could kill you.’ His head swayed with his words and his finger, made red by the harissa, pointed towards the sky, and his big eyes stuck on me like two magnets until I could do nothing but look back into them. He suddenly picked up the small plate of olives and offered it to me. I took one. Then the doorbell rang. It was like a small explosion, for a moment it silenced everything.
Mama looked at Moosa. ‘God willing it’s him,’ she said, stood up and ran to the door.
‘Didn’t I tell you, Um Suleiman?’ Moosa yelled after her, ‘God never forgets the faithful.’
6
My ears followed Mama. The doorbell rang repeatedly and in senseless spasms. Still, a mild hope flickered in my chest that it might be Baba. I imagined him leaning with one arm against the door, sweating, bleeding beautifully from one eyebrow and panting – exactly like the heroes I saw in films – waiting for the door to open, to fall into the arms of his wife.
‘Coming,’ Mama said, her voice breathless.
I heard the door open, then a strange man’s voice. I was sure he wasn’t Baba, but still I asked Moosa, ‘Is that Baba?’
‘Shush,’ he snapped, straining to hear.
‘Yes. Yes,’ Mama said formally. ‘This is his home. He’s not here … But I tell you he’s not home.’
The man seemed to read his words to her now, delivering them as if they were a line of marching tanks on Revolution Day. Moosa was looking up into nothing, the way people do when they are trying to hear something barely audible, something not meant for their ears.
‘You are not coming in,’ Mama shouted.
Moosa stood up. ‘Don’t leave the room,’ he whispered and left. I felt a cold shiver pass through me.
Now there was a flurry of voices. I could barely hear Mama. A man shouted, ‘Get out of my way.’ How many of them were there, hundreds, thousands? Then amid the noise and the shouting I heard Mama’s voice. She sounded like a small nervous fish alone in the deep. ‘I saw you following me yesterday,’ she said. ‘Shame on you following a woman and her son like that. Don’t you have anything better to do?’
So they were the same men who had followed us yesterday from Martyrs’ Square. The same ones who beat Ustath Rashid and made him vanish. ‘Vanished like a grain of salt in water,’ was how Auntie Salma put it, when, after running between police stations and Revolutionary Committee offices, she returned slapping one hand over the other and murmuring, ‘Vanished like a grain of salt in water.’ Who have they come to take this time, I wondered: Mama, Moosa, me? How can any one of us prove that he or she is not, and never was, a traitor? How can you prove something that hasn’t happened? I bit on my lip to keep my teeth from chattering. I remembered Baba’s words, what he whispered in my ear every time he left us: ‘Take care of your mother, you are the man of the house now.’ I buried my hands in my armpits, trying to stop trembling.
Moosa attempted to speak in a calm tone, trying to pierce through the chaos. I never felt more grateful for him. But then one of the strangers yelled at him. His voice sounded like an old woman’s voice, but you knew he was a young man.
‘Who are you?’ he shouted.
Moosa tried to reply in the same gentle voice.
‘Do you know who we are?’ the man shouted again. ‘Do you? Answer me!’
Everyone else was quiet now.
‘Before you speak you must know first who you are addressing,’ the man shouted.
‘He doesn’t live here,’ Mama said.
‘Write his name down,’ the stranger ordered one of his men.
I heard Moosa say his own name with such regret, it reminded me of times when I had no other choice but to admit to my teacher, in front of the whole class, that I hadn’t done my homework.
‘What’s your address? Yes, yes. You live there alone? What are their names? Full names. Isn’t he the Egyptian judge? You are his son? Are you related to these people? Then you have no business in this. Step aside,’ he said, then at the top of his voice he repeated, ‘I said step aside.’
Then there was confusion. Moosa said something. Mama tried to come in. I heard the door shut and the voices grow louder. Mama’s voice was coming closer, she was walking to where I was in the sitting room. ‘Please,’ she pleaded. ‘I told you he’s not here.’
‘Then why are you worried?’ said the man with the old woman’s voice.
‘My son, you’ll frighten him.’
My eyes were fixed on the entrance to the sitting room, expecting his figure to appear at any moment. Then there he was, the man in the car, whose dark, pockmarked cheek I could have touched. He stood in the doorway, blocking the only way out. I heard Mama say, ‘That’s him.’ His suspicious eyes fixed on me. I thought of how, if I had to, I could prove that I was her son.
‘Where is your father, boy?’ he said.
‘He doesn’t know,’ Mama told him.
‘Shut up,’ he snapped, still facing me. His authority was so absolute and sudden it seemed instantly acceptable. ‘I said, where is your father?’
I shook my head, brought my hand to my chest and waved it as if to say, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ or, ‘It’s not me, I swear, it’s not me.’
He slapped one side of the doorway and went deeper into our house. Mama followed him. After a few seconds I saw him walk by again. At first I didn’t believe it: he was holding in one hand, by the neck, Mama’s medicine bottle. Mama stood before him, hunched in despair.
‘I beg you,’ she said, ‘conceal my shame.’
‘This is not only forbidden by God and tradition, it is also illegal.’ He seemed to relish the silence that followed. Then he pushed the bottle into her stomach and said, ‘But I have other, more important matters to attend to,’ and with that he walked off. ‘We will search the place,’ I heard him say. Mama didn’t protest.
During this time Moosa must have come to know the men because now he was laughing with them. Then I heard him say, ‘Um Suleiman, tea please.’
‘Did you search the house?’ the Revolutionary Committee man who was looking for Baba asked his men. ‘We don’t have all night.’
‘No no no, we insist,’ Moosa said as if they were friends. ‘Have tea first, then you can search the house. Gentlemen, please, this way.’ I imagined him leading them into the reception room, perhaps opening one of the windows to let in the fresh sea breeze, doing everything he could to make them comfortable.
I was still glued to my place. I was wet beneath my clothes and realized what I had done. The pee felt warm and cold and sticky on my skin. I could detect the sullen smell of mulberries, rotten and heavy. It turned my stomach. I pressed my thighs tighter together. Then I heard Mama in the kitchen preparing things for them to eat with the tea: because ‘you must always be generous to those in your home.’
I went to the hallway swing-doors and held one open to hear what Moosa and the men were talking about.
‘A cigarette?’ Moosa said. ‘Cigarette? Would you like one? Have a cigarette, please, go on. Have one, I insist.’
‘It’s not my brand,’ one voice said.
‘What’s your brand, Rothmans?’
‘Yes,’ the voice answered, then suspiciously asked, ‘How did you know?’
‘Experience,’ Moosa said and laughed. ‘These are just as good. In fact, they are even better. Go on.’
‘Why?’ the man asked suspiciously again. ‘Is it because they are American?’
‘No – Rothmans are American too – but because these are stronger.’
/> ‘They are all bad for you,’ another voice came in. ‘I gave them up eighteen months ago and, believe me, they are nothing but a waste of money and health.’
‘Exactly,’ Moosa agreed. ‘That’s why these are better; they are stronger and more expensive, and therefore more devastating.’ He gave them one of his big laughs that seemed to shake the house, but no one joined him. He fell silent, cleared his throat and said, ‘Welcome, you have honoured us.’
I returned to the sitting room. After a few minutes Mama called Moosa. I could hear in her voice how she tried to sound normal. But I could also hear in it a tremor, like during the final moments when the heroine, holding on for dear life, attempts to deliver her last words, something straight and simple, to the one person who is reaching for her hand, the one person who, because of the situation, has been suddenly elevated to the closest soul on earth, her heir, the one to carry her precious last words, and an infinite intimacy is born, a trust unbound and unhindered by the possibility of betrayal – there is no time for betrayal – reaching for his hand and knowing he will not succeed in bringing her back on solid ground, but certain he will remain forever faithful to the moment. I felt the desperate need to go to the reception room, to be that one reaching for her hand.
I heard Moosa excuse himself. His keys shook in his pocket as he walked deeper into the house, bringing with him the odours of the gathering, the stink of smoke heavy with sweat and old stale breath, breath like the breath of fasting men.
‘Why this?’ she snapped in a whisper. ‘I don’t want those rats in my house. And offering them tea …’
‘They can put him behind the sun. Better try to win them over. Besides, it might distract them from searching the house.’
Moosa’s keys shook more furiously now as he carried the tray back to the reception. It must have been very heavy, laden with food, like one of those trays King Shahryar dipped into as he lay listening with lazy eyes to a secretly trembling Scheherazade mill finer and finer the thread of her tales to last a thousand and one nights. How did she do it? How did Scheherazade keep her nerve?
Once I caught my Uncle Khaled writing, composing a poem in the garden. He sat in a padded wicker chair, one knee over the other, peering into the sky like someone trying to solve a mathematical problem. Writing required a great deal of concentration. How well would he, Uncle Khaled, the ‘great poet’, as Baba called him, write under Shahryar’s sword? What would come out? Could he make music, could he sing? Scheherazade did, night after night, unable to look up into a sky or rest in the silence and solitude of her own garden, hearing a wicker chair creak with the comfort of her own weight. She, I am certain now, was one of the bravest people that had ever lived. It’s one thing not to fear death, another to sing under its sword.
Moosa insisted the strangers eat. Whenever one of them declined he pressed them harder, raising his voice and, even though he was a bachelor, threatening to divorce his wife if they didn’t eat. This happened several times with gaps of quiet save for the ringing of a teaspoon stirring sugar.
I went looking for Mama. She wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in her bedroom either. The bathroom door was closed, but a slice of light came from beneath it. ‘Mama?’ I asked. The silence before she answered seemed endless.
‘Yes, habibi.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I asked, ‘Do you need anything?’
The door opened. Her face wasn’t crying. She placed her hand over my forehead again. Her hand was cold.
‘Thanks be to God, you are fine. The fever is completely gone.’
‘I am sorry, Mama,’ I said, not sure what exactly I was apologizing for. But I was sorry, I felt my throat tighten as I said it.
‘You are well, that’s what matters, that’s all that matters,’ she said.
Tears blurred my vision. Then we heard the men by the front door.
‘But we are here,’ the man with the old woman’s voice said irritably.
‘Listen,’ another one told him. ‘We came to find Faraj, not search the house.’
I heard one yawn then say, ‘It’s getting late.’
‘We should search the house now,’ the pockmarked man insisted.
‘Come on, don’t be so stubborn.’
‘Tomorrow’s another day,’ another one said benevolently.
Then we heard Moosa close the door, drive home the bolt.
I looked up at Mama. She was soundlessly mouthing words to God.
Moosa came through the hallway swing-doors and went straight into the sitting room. He sat down, speaking to himself, reciting verses from the Holy Quran and adding in his own bits. ‘Concealer, conceal our faults, protect this house and rid it of all evil, keep away from it all who don’t wish it well.’ Then he quickly repeated, ‘Concealer, conceal our faults. Concealer, conceal our faults.’ Mama and I watched him. He stood up, walked around the room, adjusting the curtains, opening some windows. He collected the tray of food that we were sitting around before the men interrupted us, and took it to the kitchen. He returned, sat down and lit a cigarette. He dragged on it hard and when he exhaled he made a whistling sound.
‘What did they tell you?’ Mama asked him.
He sat on the edge of his seat, his eyes fixed on the space between him and the floor. He looked like he was never going to speak again.
‘What did they say?’ she asked again, raising her voice. He looked at her. ‘Have you gone deaf ?’
He jiggled his leg and exhaled another whistling tunnel of smoke. He brought his finger to his lips and looked quickly in my direction.
‘Suleiman,’ Mama said. ‘Go and practise your scales.’
7
I never asked to play the piano. It was one of those activities imposed upon me, like school, chess and the infinitely recurring, and therefore seemingly pointless, clipping of my toenails and fingernails. All of which, under the general disadvantage of being a boy, I had to carry out with the necessary degree of earnestness. But, walking to the piano, I felt completely exhausted. I wanted to go and wash and change out of my clothes before anyone discovered I had peed myself. But sometimes you are set on a course and, although you see no sense in it, you are still propelled forward towards it.
At the end of the long and dark hallway a light came from the reception room. Smoke hovered at its mouth. I took short steps and stopped to look behind me. When I reached the room I saw clouds floating in the centre; they were alive with bright silver edges, intertwining like snakes. Sitting on the floor in the sitting room, trying to make sense of what I was hearing, I had imagined Moosa opening the windows, but not even the curtains had been drawn. The room was like a smoke-filled box. The men’s places were stamped into the soft cushion-seats. I counted them: seven plus Moosa. Seven. They couldn’t have all fitted into one car. Only one car came for Ustath Rashid, but they sent two for Baba: four in one, and three in the other, with room for one more, reserved for Baba. In front of each a tea glass stood on the coffee table or, where that was beyond comfortable reach, on the floor or balanced precariously on an arm-rest. All were empty except for one. I went to it. I sat in the man’s place. His seat was still warm. This is where the rude one with the old woman’s voice must have sat, I imagined. Only he could be stupid enough to refuse Mama’s tea. I remembered his face, how close I was to it at the traffic light, the way he pushed Mama’s medicine bottle against her stomach. I recalled how he beat Ustath Rashid. I wondered what it would be like to slap a man, to kick him like that in the behind. I held his tea glass. Cooling, the hot milk had created a skin on the surface, at its centre the wrinkled form of a flower or a burn. I blew it carefully to one side and gulped the whole thing in one go. Only after I had emptied it did I realize it wasn’t sugared. The bitterness ran through me like a wave.
The bread basket was empty save for crumbs and some of the soft inside of the bread which, from its colour and the way it was rolled into small balls, had been used to wipe hands and mouths clean. I had seen men do this before a
nd once tried it, but Baba said it was vulgar and disrespectful to the bread, to God’s gift. Olive stones were strewn on the coffee table, some were even thrown in with the remaining olives, dirtying them. Cigarette butts stood leaning on one another in the empty tea glasses like dead crickets.
From where the men were sitting – from where I was now sitting – they would have been able to see the photograph of Baba on the wall. It was the size of a magazine cover and hung alone, too high up. In fact, it was so high you could easily miss it. In it Baba was dressed in a suit, and behind him there was another photograph of trees in sunlight. It was almost believable that he was standing among the trees and in the sunlight. He was smiling and his eyes looked up into the top left-hand corner of the frame. His cheeks looked too red to be natural, his lips too purple. The photographer painted over it to make Baba look more handsome, less dark. For a long time I believed that photograph: that on that day Baba was in fact standing among trees washed in warm sunlight, his face as pale and pink as an Englishman’s. And so, when I realized that the whole thing was a trick, I felt cheated and didn’t mind at all that it was hung too high where it could easily be forgotten.
Mama was the one who had insisted I take up an instrument. I was given a choice: the oud, the eighty-one-string qanun or the piano. I opted for the piano because it seemed to be the easiest one to play. I was quick to learn, and enjoyed playing for Mama. Sometimes when I came to the end of a piece Baba would clap from another room, shouting, ‘Bravo. Encore,’ and other times he remained silent.
I suddenly noticed a deep painful thumping in my head. I thought I had better start playing or else Mama might worry where I had gone. I lifted the piano lid, it seemed heavier than usual. My eyes felt hot in their sockets. I pressed my cold fingers against them. At this moment Moosa walked in. ‘It’s so stuffy in here,’ he said, and opened the windows. He walked across to the dining room on the opposite side of the hallway and opened the windows there too, and only then did the air move. The smoke disappeared and the breeze that came was a night breeze lightened by the sea. Breathing it seemed to wash my insides. The thumping in my head eased.
