In the Country of Men

by Hisham Matar

  ‘Enchant us, maestro,’ Moosa said, then pulled out the cushion-seats and beat them together in pairs as if he were clapping. He stacked the tea glasses on top of one another, placed them on the tray and carried it all to the kitchen. He returned with the vacuum cleaner and began hunting all the scattered bread crumbs.

  I found Mama in the kitchen, washing dishes.

  ‘Um Suleiman,’ Moosa yelled above the hum of the vacuum cleaner, ‘leave those for tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said softly to herself. ‘They won’t take a minute.’ She knew he couldn’t hear her. Why speak if no one can hear you? I felt my cheeks burn with an anger that seemed to come from nowhere. She tilted her head and mumbled a few more words to herself, words that were impossible to hear, wasted words, like food thrown away, like the ripened mulberries in the dirt, good only for ants, like the bread used to wipe mouths and hands, like the few good olives that were soiled with olive-stones that had been scraped with teeth, had tongues curled round them, sucking them dry. Her back shuddered. Mama was crying. I felt my anger doubling. I slapped the table. She jumped, her soapy hand on her chest. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, turned off the running water, and sat beside me. She placed her hand on my knee. ‘What’s the matter, habibi?’ she whispered. She held my hand and shook it gently as if to wake me up, to remind me of something, and asked again in a whisper, ‘What’s the matter, habibi, light of my eyes?’ She looked older. I longed for how things had been.

  We would by now still be sitting on the floor in the sitting room, playing cards, drinking tea. Moosa would take the newspapers and read out loud his favourite articles of the day. Mama would comment and tell him off every time he skipped or added in his own words, and I would roll on the floor laughing as they argued. Baba would arrive, take off his tie and shoes and talk to us for a few minutes before going in to shower and pray. He would reappear comfortable in his white jallabia, smelling of French cologne. Moosa would reread the day’s articles to him and Baba never minded Moosa’s skipping or adding. Baba listened to him in a way that always pleased Moosa, and so he read louder and for longer stretches of time.

  Baba never spoke about it, but Moosa had told me how special their friendship was, and when he talked about it you could hear in his voice how much he loved Baba. He looked up to him like an older brother, you could see it in his eyes when they were together.

  When Moosa’s father, Judge Yaseen, tried to force his eldest son to complete his law degree, Baba stepped in in Moosa’s defence. A prominent Egyptian judge who was invited personally by King Idris to help reform Libya’s courts, Judge Yaseen wasn’t a man who was easily crossed. He was tall and solemn, always dressed formally in jacket and tie even on Fridays. His hair was always slicked back and gave off a weak shine. I had never met anyone like him before. For a long time I believed he knew everything there was to know in the world. It was his reserve, the stubborn cloud of earnestness that seemed to follow him wherever he went, that intimidated me. Later, when I discovered that reserve and earnestness weren’t necessarily traits of wisdom, I feared him less and began to see his manner as affected and later still came to forgive him for it and only then did I love him. Because, as fate would have it, Judge Yaseen was to become my guardian. If I had known this as an intimidated child, I might have run away into the sea to escape my fate.

  Whenever the judge was present people talked less. He almost never asked a question. His eyes were brown and deeply set and a little too small for his head; when they fixed on you they made your skin itch. Every time we met he would simply declare, ‘You are well,’ or, ‘You will pass your exams,’ and, when it was time to part, ‘You will be careful.’ And although I felt the urge to say, ‘No I am not well, and no I won’t pass my exams or be careful,’ my head always betrayed me and I would nod. His whole demeanour was hypnotic.

  After Qaddafi’s September Revolution overthrew King Idris, Judge Yaseen didn’t return to Cairo. He opened his own practice in Tripoli and dreamed of the day his eldest son, Moosa, would join it.

  Moosa fulfilled all of what was required of him. He accompanied his father to funerals and on formal visits, and when the judge couldn’t attend Moosa put on a jacket and tie and bore his father’s condolences or compliments. But when he was one year short of completing his law degree – it took him five years to pass the first three – Moosa decided to quit. Judge Yaseen refused even to discuss it.

  The judge was Baba’s friend and lawyer. They met after a shipment of oak that Baba had purchased ‘in good faith’ never arrived. Out of all the men in the judge’s domino circle, Baba was the youngest and the only one who wasn’t a judge. They gathered every Thursday afternoon, just when the sun was softening, to play dominoes and enjoy the uninterrupted view of the sea from Judge Yaseen’s second-floor balcony. The judge and his family, including Moosa, also lived in Gergarish, but of course the judge didn’t call it that; he called it by its other, fancier name that made you think it was a place in Italy, not Tripoli: Gorgi Populi. This is what it was called when Libya was an Italian colony. ‘We reside in Gorgi Populi,’ he used to say. Moosa always looked embarrassed.

  When I used to cycle by with the boys, happy the school week had ended, I would see the old men and Baba sitting around their dominoes. Baba would ask urgently, ‘What? Is anything the matter?’ leaning over the railing. After I had reassured him, waving at him 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 would ask me to come up and say hello. The urgency with which he greeted me then whenever we met outside our home makes me wonder now, as I reflect on those distant days, whether he was totally ignorant of his wife’s ‘illness’.

  I always went to him first and kissed his hand in the way he taught me – I only had to kiss it once in the morning and once at night, but it pleased him when I did it in front of his friends. I preferred to shake hands with the old judges, but there were always one or two who pulled me and kissed me on both cheeks. Because they were old, their lips were soft and wet. It took a lot to stop myself wiping my face in disgust. They always said the same things: ‘Mashaa Allah. A man now, our young Suleiman. How old is he today? What year at school?’ This attention brought a big smile to Baba’s face. Then, in a very earnest voice, he would ask, ‘What have you been up to, young man?’ He only called me ‘young man’ at such occasions. Something about this strange way he spoke made some of the old judges smile, and so I believed he did it to amuse them. ‘OK, enough playing now,’ he would finally say, even though I wasn’t playing, I had come up on his request to say hello to his friends. ‘It’s time you were home, young man.’ As soon as I left the balcony I would wipe my cheeks clean. Once, when I was running down the staircase, Baba called me back. I found him standing outside the front door. ‘What?’ I said. He kissed me on the head and gave me ten dinars, the same amount of money I found beneath my pillow on birthday mornings.

  Out of all of his father’s friends, Moosa picked Baba to convince the judge of his plan to quit university. They met several times in our house, closing the door to Baba’s study behind them as if they were planning a revolt, and talked for hours.

  Baba convinced the judge to allow Moosa to take a year out by offering to employ him. But before the year ended Moosa was confident that he wasn’t going to resume his law degree at Garyounis University, which was in Benghazi, twelve hours’ drive from Tripoli. Judge Yaseen was furious when he heard of his son’s decision, Baba was responsible, and Moosa was independent.

  This history had brought Moosa closer to our family and allowed the judge to blame Baba for every misfortune that Moosa encountered. ‘You have ruined my son, Bu Suleiman,’ the judge would loudly let slip to Baba in front of the others during a domino game. ‘Don’t add salt to the wound by beating me in the game I love in my own house.’ And I once heard Baba tell Mama, ‘He can’t be upset at me for ever. At least in his house I am guaranteed his wrath will be limited.’

>   Relations between the three men didn’t get easier after all of Moosa’s business projects failed. He had a chicken farm, but the chickens got too hot by day, too cold by night and so died one after the other. It was a catastrophe: one thousand chickens in less than one week! But even though he had lost all of his money – which he had borrowed from Baba – Moosa insisted on giving them a proper burial. ‘Why punish them in life and in death?’ were his words. He hired a big yellow tractor with the letters ‘JCB’ written on its sides. He carved a big mass grave for his one thousand dead chickens, buried them, then got me to sit on his lap and drive the tractor several times over the earth. It was a kind of ceremony for his dead chickens. I remember, after we were done, a few feathers that had survived the burial clinging to the yellow metal of the tractor.

  Another time he imported tyres from Poland. For days all he spoke about was how Polish car tyres were destined to be world-famous. ‘Mark my words, as we now know China for silk, Japan for televisions, New Zealand for sheep, Poland too will become known for car tyres. You will see, this will be the most successful import into Libya since JCBs.’

  Well, he imported the Polish tyres and, as with the chickens, he didn’t order a few to try out first, he bought a whole shipload. ‘When the market demands, Slooma, you must be in a position to respond,’ he said, walking me through the warehouse where they were stored. It was strange and wonderful to be surrounded by columns and columns of black rubber tyres piled on top of one another. Moosa’s lips were moist, and he had a big proud smile on his face.

  The tyres sold very well, but, as soon as August came, Moosa’s Polish tyres melted. It was a big problem – and it definitely wasn’t funny – because his customers, feeling cheated, returned to him furious, demanding their money back. On one occasion the tyres melted completely, gluing the car to the road. In a fit of rage, its owner threatened to teach Moosa a ‘good lesson’. On more than one occasion Baba had to intervene to rescue Moosa from an angry customer. He would pay them back their money, apologizing repeatedly, unable to completely lose his smile. And to the man who wanted to teach Moosa a good lesson, Baba paid more money, apologized harder and, after the man was gone, burst out laughing.

  Moosa refused to talk about this venture. The only explanation I ever remember him giving for his mistake was, ‘It doesn’t get very hot in Poland.’ Mama and Baba didn’t allow him a grieving period, they immediately started teasing him about the episode: ‘Moosa, how’s the weather in Poland today?’ ‘Listen, do you think we can have another set of those world-famous tyres for next winter?’ ‘For God’s sake, Moosa, if you marry a Polish girl, remember to take her home during the summer.’

  And there we could have all been, talking, reading and laughing. Instead Mama was now sitting in front of me at the kitchen table, her eyes like a bird’s, dark and full of grief. Moosa was still vacuuming the reception room. And Baba … I hadn’t seen him since I came in from the garden, when Mama ran and frantically shook him to wake up. ‘Where’s Baba?’ I finally said. ‘Why isn’t he home yet? What time is it?’

  Mama didn’t reply, she seemed to be thinking about my questions: why I was asking them and what the thoughts were behind them. Then she broke out, ‘Why are you asking about your father now? What’s the matter, am I not good enough for you? Why don’t you speak up and explain to me what’s going on?’

  I heard the vacuum cleaner’s loud hum fall to nothing. Moosa must have heard her shouting and was now coming to my rescue, I thought.

  ‘I want to know where Baba is. Why isn’t he home?’ I yelled at her.

  Moosa walked in, he tried to say something, but Mama told him to mind his own business. I began to cry.

  ‘Now you listen,’ she said. ‘I have enough to deal with here, don’t drive me crazy. And … And … What’s this smell?’ she said and began searching with her nose. ‘Piss!’

  ‘No, it can’t be,’ Moosa said.

  ‘I smell piss,’ she said, her eyes wide open.

  I squeezed my thighs together and pressed my mulberry-stained palms on my wet lap. She pulled my hands away, I struggled against her but she was stronger than me. She rubbed the wet fabric of my jallabia and smelled her fingers.

  ‘What’s going on with you?’ she shouted. She faced Moosa, slapped her own thigh then pointed at me and said, ‘He peed himself.’ She pulled me up on my feet and shouted, ‘You are no longer a baby. Why didn’t you go to the toilet? Talk!’

  ‘Where is Baba?’ I cried.

  ‘What were you up to in the garden? Why did you flood the entire place? Why are your hands stained red? Why did you pee yourself?’ she said, shaking me with each question, then she fell into her chair and began to cry. ‘What do you all want from me? Do you want me to lose my mind?’ She buried her face in her hands and, not moving, not making a sound, sat like this.

  ‘I am sorry, Mama,’ I said into the cold silence. ‘I promise I will never do it again, please don’t cry.’

  A low, strangled sound came muffled through her hands. Her crying was not normal. Mama’s ill again, I thought. I looked at Moosa. She began speaking, but I could hardly make out the words, things about her bad luck and how since childhood she had been cursed with bad luck, bad luck bad luck bad luck, calling for her dead Baba to come back and help her, pleading with him to return and save her because it was too soon, she said, all too much and too soon. She wept. Then she spoke to Baba, blaming him for his dreams, his crazy dreams that put the whole world at risk. ‘Who do you think you are?’ she said, as if there was a small version of him standing on the breakfast table in front of her, ‘Saying, “We must inspire the young. We must open their eyes to other ways, other possibilities.” Well, there you have gone and opened their eyes all right. Happy now? Now they have been inspired. Inspired to madness, inspired to craziness. What have you done, you crazy fool? What have you done?’ she cried, holding her head.

  ‘Praise the Prophet, Um Suleiman, and bid away evil spirits,’ Moosa said from behind me.

  This is a good trick. Whenever someone is very upset or angry, ask them to praise the Prophet and they have to stop yelling or crying and praise.

  After a long silence she sighed deeply and said, ‘Peace and blessings be upon him.’

  I was still standing beside her, facing her, waiting for something, something she would say or do to make everything different. She looked at me and smiled, but quickly her smile collapsed into a frown. She held her arms out and tilted her head like a girl wanting to hide. She hugged me. I could feel her wet lips on my neck, her breath warm and irregular. ‘I am sorry, habibi,’ she mumbled. ‘You were frightened. Forgive me.’ I patted her back and whispered what I sometimes said when she was ill, when I had nothing to say but couldn’t remain silent: ‘Everything is going to be fine.’ She dried her tears, took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Did you know how hard the angels worked and how they risked everything to give us mulberries?’ I said to make her better, to make her cheeks rosy again. ‘And all because they knew how hard life was going to be for us here on earth. I wish you were there with me, to taste them. You know how you say that everything we know will be more beautiful in Paradise? Well, everything except mulberries, they taste just as good here, they are the angels’ way of making us patient. I think they are the only thing here from Paradise. I wish I had saved some for you. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll find some more, I’ll see.’ She held my cheeks in her hands and kissed my forehead. ‘You are my prince. My beautiful prince,’ she said and smiled.

  After I had showered and gone to bed, Moosa came in and switched on the light. ‘How about a rub before you slumber, you prince you,’ he said, hoping to make me laugh. I said nothing. I was upset at him for doing nothing, for standing there watching it all, and now for switching on the light just when my eyes had become used to the dark. I was lying on my stomach, I didn’t even turn to face him. He sat beside me and began digging his big fingers into my shoulders, running them like giant forks up and down my back, sideways t
oo. I heard him sigh with the effort. Apart from that he was silent.

  I never liked being upset at Moosa, but I couldn’t stop, didn’t know how to be normal again, to laugh and play with him. He didn’t finish, didn’t give me one of his mammoth rubs where every limb, every finger and knuckle was squeezed and twisted and pulled. He quickly kissed the back of my head, switched off the lights and left.

  I heard them talk, then the front door shut. Moosa had left. Walking into the night. His car dark and cold, I imagined. I heard the engine not start until the third or fourth time, then gaining speed, leaving us, vanishing into the silence.

  8

  That night I dreamed of Baba floating on the sea. The water was unsettled, moving as it does in the deep, rising and falling in hills. He lay on his back. He looked like a small fishing boat trying to surrender to the sea. I was there too, working hard to keep my shoulders above water, to not lose sight of him, but the sea rose, and he vanished from view. I kept swimming. I knew I was close. Then I saw him, wooden and stiff. When I reached out to touch him he turned into a fish, agile and shy. He plunged with a splash down and away. I could see his silver spine flicker below the water. I turned around and saw no shore to return to.

  When I woke up I found myself in his place, in Mama’s bed. I buried my face in his pillow and smelled the salt of his neck. Beneath the pillow my hands met his leather notebook. He always hid it there in case he had a dream. A slim golden pen was fixed on its spine and acted as a lock. I pulled it out and opened the notebook. Baba’s handwriting filled the pages from edge to edge and from top to bottom. There was only one blank page left at the end. He could barely record one more dream here. I watched his curling blue writing interrupted only by the straightness of an alif or a laam, like the lampposts and palm trees that line Tripoli’s sea front. His dots were more like small dashes flying in the same direction, like birds or confetti scurrying above the speed of his writing, chasing a dream before it could escape his memory. I recalled his form – many mornings I had seen him like this – sitting in bed, the gentle and modest slope of his bare back hunched over this small book that wasn’t longer than his index finger, recording a dream he had just woken from. When he heard me enter the room, he would lift his other arm in the air like a football referee. I locked his book with the golden pen and placed it back beneath his pillow.