by Hisham Matar
‘Exactly.’
Unlike Mama and Moosa, he answered my questions. He didn’t treat me like a child.
‘Where’s Baba?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ he said, digging in his pocket. ‘He asked me to give you this.’ He handed me one of Baba’s English fiery mints. I took a step towards him. Then, on the seat beside him, black and fat, I saw a gun. I stepped back.
‘Come, come,’ Sharief said calmly in his thin, coarse voice. And I did. I walked to him. He handed me the gun, handle first, and said, ‘Here, touch it.’ As I extended my hand, he said, ‘Men are never afraid. And you are a man, aren’t you?’ The gun metal felt as cold as a dead fish. He placed it on the seat beside him and said, ‘Here, take the candy, it’s from Baba.’ My head was practically inside the car now, and the smell of old socks and cigarettes made me dizzy. The weight of the stench struck me as a sign of manhood, and so there was some excitement in being so close to it. Perhaps to be a man was to be heavy, I thought. The V of his safari jacket revealed the beginning of his chest. His skin was brown-red from the sun, glazed in sweat. Anyone seeing us like this would have thought us friends. I took the mint. Kareem was gone. Did he leave in disgust when he saw how close I and the man who had taken his father were becoming, I wondered.
‘You know, it is very bad what your mother is drinking,’ Sharief said, looking at me with half a smile, his eyes almost regretful. ‘She could go to jail.’
He could see from my expression that I understood. I wanted to beg him not to tell.
‘Her secret is safe with me.’
I was so grateful I could have kissed his hand.
‘But you, Suleiman, will have to help me.’
‘Anything, anything.’
He looked ahead, smiling. ‘I require a list of Baba’s friends, as many names as possible, to vouch for him.’
My mind raced to remember. ‘Can’t I vouch for him?’
He laughed. ‘No.’
‘Why?’
For a moment I thought he was annoyed, then he smiled again. ‘We need men, adults,’ he said and the smile vanished. ‘Come on, Slooma, you must know at least one name.’
I nodded in the way people do when they are busy searching their memory but wish to offer you a silent assurance that they are close to arresting whatever it is that was now clinging to the tip of their tongue. At that moment if a name was unlucky enough to be remembered it would have been spoken, given up. I thought of the book below my mattress. ‘I can’t remember any names,’ I said.
‘What do you mean, you can’t remember? Try.’ He was irritated. His breath was hot and smelled of rust.
My body trembled. I was surprised at how close to tears I was. ‘I have a book,’ I heard myself say. ‘I saved it from the fire.’
Then I heard my name being yelled. It was Mama. I saw her pale face inside the shade of our house, standing in the hallway. I ran to her. As soon as I was inside she slammed the door shut. She went down on her knees and gripped my arms hard. ‘What were you doing with that man? I saw you, don’t lie.’ She tightened her grip. I never saw her so frightened. ‘What has he been telling you? Is this the first time?’ I pushed her and ran. The moment I pushed her I heard her give a gasp, the sound of it made me see a small red balloon ebb in the sea’s deep blue. When I entered my room I recalled it several times, and every time it made my heart ache. I wished she would come after me. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to show her what the man had given me, the English fiery mint that Baba bought on his travels; it had to be his because it couldn’t be found in our country.
12
I found her sitting at the table, smoking. I sat opposite her. I wanted her to say something, to even repeat, ‘I saw you, don’t lie,’ but she ignored me. I watched the garden through the glass door, its floor brushed long with shadows. We can go up to the roof and see how the sea changed today, I thought. Or I could set up her drawing table in the garden where she liked to draw an orange, a plum, a twisted leaf. I never had the patience to sit for her, but now I was willing to try.
‘He had a gun, you know. He let me touch it.’ Her eyes looked up at me. ‘I wonder what Ustath Rashid did? Do you think he’s a traitor, do you think Um Masoud is right? I know she gossips a lot, but I’ve been thinking about it and I think it’s true: there is no smoke without fire. Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Can you have smoke without there being a fire? You can have steam, but that’s different, isn’t it?’ She didn’t say anything. She looked at me, then took a quick, nervous drag from her cigarette. Her fingers trembled slightly. Smoke spilled from her nostrils. ‘He said he was a friend of Baba. He even called me Slooma and gave me this.’ I put Baba’s English fiery mint on the table. Mama’s face began to change. The moments before we cry the face tries to fold away, hide itself from the world. ‘He said Baba will be home soon. Please don’t be sad.’
Sharief didn’t say that Baba will be home soon, nor did he say, ‘Don’t be sad.’ Those were my own words that I put in his mouth, like Moosa adding in his own bits to the articles he read aloud.
She mumbled something. It wasn’t until she cried again that she repeated it: ‘Stupid Faraj.’
I thought of saying, ‘Baba isn’t stupid,’ or, ‘Don’t call Baba stupid,’ but she left the kitchen. I heard her bedroom door slam shut and the key in it turn. Then the telephone rang in the sitting room. She unlocked her door and ran to answer it.
‘Hello? Hello? Who is it?’ she said rapidly, then her eyes fixed on a spot on the wall and I guessed someone was talking at the other end. ‘Yes, Bu Nasser, I am Um Suleiman.’ She turned around herself. ‘Bu Suleiman isn’t here.’ She looked at me, pursing her lips and shaking her head slowly. ‘With all due respect …’ she said and was interrupted. ‘With all … With all due respect, Bu Nasser, this has nothing to do with me.’ Then after a moment she added, ‘Nasser is old enough to make up his own mind. You ought to take this up with him.’ She looked at me again, raising her eyebrows, shaking her head. ‘But I have just told you, Bu Suleiman isn’t here. I have no idea where he is. Listen, I am sure Nasser will be fine,’ she said and quoted from the Quran: ‘“Say: Naught befalleth us save that which Allah hath decreed for us.”’ Then she listened to Nasser’s father. ‘Well, Bu Nasser, if you feel this way you should tell your son. No one is forcing him to work for my husband.’ When she put the receiver down she kept her hand on it, then telephoned Moosa. ‘Can you hear an echo? Good, neither can I. Listen, Nasser’s father has just called. He’s worried. He wants to know how involved his son has become. Says if anything happens to him he will hold Bu Suleiman personally responsible.’ She looked in my direction, turned around and began secretly whispering. ‘And there was an echo in the line. Yes, of course I know what that means. Call Nasser and tell him what his father said and tell him that I am upset: his father threatening us, holding us responsible for his son’s fate …’
I suddenly remembered what Judge Yaseen had said to Baba after Moosa quit university: ‘You have ruined my son.’
‘OK, goodbye,’ Mama said and hung up. She went to her room.
A little while later the telephone rang again and she came out, not running this time but walking with confidence and the air of authority possessed by those who believe they are innocent and right. She almost answered it, but something stopped her. She snapped her fingers and, as if the person calling could hear us, whispered, ‘You answer.’
I picked up the receiver and looked up at her. ‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Slooma.’ It was Nasser. There was an echo; it was a bad line. ‘It’s Nasser here.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘How are you, young man? How’s your mother? Can I speak to her?’
I handed the receiver to Mama. She pressed her hand against the speaker, curled her eyebrows and whispered, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Nasser,’ I said and began walking away.
‘Listen,’ she whispered. ‘Was there an echo in the line?’
‘Yes.’
She snapped her fingers again and said, ‘Tell him I am not here, then hang up, don’t chat.’ She walked back to her bedroom.
I picked up the receiver and said, ‘She’s not here.’
‘Why did you hang up on me?’ Nasser said. He sounded hurt; his voice, trembling slightly, was made strange by the echo in the line. After what seemed an endless pause he said, ‘When she returns tell her I called, OK? And … And tell her also that I am sorry about my father, about what he said.’
I never understood why I had taken a dislike to Nasser from the moment I had met him. Why was I always short when he was always nice? When he called on Eid to wish us good health and happiness he always insisted on talking to each one of us. Baba would hand Mama the receiver, smiling as if he were embarrassed or proud, as if this Nasser was his creation, as if he was responsible for everything Nasser said. When it was my turn I always tried to get out of it, but Baba wouldn’t agree to tell him I was in the bathroom or out playing in the street. He would tense his eyebrows and motion for me to take the receiver from Mama. Nasser always spoke in the same way, calling out, ‘Slooma!’ as if I were on the opposite side of the road, then, ‘How are you, young man?’ I answered all of his questions as briefly as I could, and when he wished me good health and happiness I wished him the same, and when he said, ‘I am your friend, Slooma,’ or, ‘If you need anything, think of me as your older brother,’ I didn’t know what to say and so said nothing but, handing the receiver back to Baba, I always felt a strange rush of anger burn my cheeks. And hadn’t I many times wished for an older brother, an older brother like Kareem or even like Nasser?
I suddenly felt a warm glow of affection for the first time towards Nasser. I felt bad that I had lied to him, so I said, ‘It was Mama who told me to tell you she isn’t here.’
I thought I heard him chuckle, try to restrain a laugh. But then he shouted, ‘Who’s laughing? Are you laughing at me?’
‘I am not laughing at you,’ I said, but whoever was laughing was now laughing even louder so Nasser couldn’t hear me.
Through the laughter I heard him shout again, ‘Who’s laughing, I said?’
‘What’s your family name, boy?’
‘Suleiman Faraj el-Dewani.’
‘Not you,’ the voice interrupted. ‘You, the one called Nasser. What’s your family name? Speak?’
This was not unusual. Many times it happened that I was speaking to someone on the telephone and a third person would come in. And sometimes I was that third person, hearing two people having a conversation, one voice always further away than the other, and sometimes I couldn’t resist listening in, and once or twice I made background noises of stormy winds and explosions, and once I played them songs by Boney M. What was unusual about this was how, even though everything said was succeeded by an echo, both Nasser’s and the stranger’s voices were equal in volume. And because in life – as Baba had told me – you can’t listen and speak at the same time, the echo of my voice returned strange and new, and I realized that I had never heard myself before.
‘Don’t speak to him, Suleiman,’ Nasser ordered. ‘Hang up, hang up now.’ He sounded desperate.
‘This Nasser character isn’t very friendly, is he, Suleiman,’ the voice said calmly. I laughed because what he said sounded funny in contrast to Nasser’s desperation. The returning echo of my laughter sounded sinister.
‘Don’t listen to what he tells you. Hang up, I said,’ Nasser shouted.
I heard the other voice say to himself or to someone else beside him or maybe to me, ‘This Nasser character likes to play games.’
‘Hang up!’
‘No, I am not hanging up, you hang up if you want.’ My words travelled between them like an arrow, uninterrupted.
The voice exploded in laughter again. Nasser’s line went dead. The voice stopped laughing and listened with me to the unending dial tone. After a couple of seconds, just when I was about to hang up, he said, ‘You are wonderful, boy.’ I didn’t know how to respond. ‘Tell me,’ he said in a way as if we were old friends. ‘How’s your mother? You have such a beautiful mother, you know.’ I felt my neck stiffen. Then he laughed and repeated what I had said to Nasser, It was Mama who told me to tell you she isn’t …, and laughed again. My heart quickened and time seemed to slow down. ‘Ah yes,’ he said, catching his breath, ‘what a beautiful mother you have. Great tea she makes, wonderful harissa. There’s nothing like home-made harissa.’ I suddenly recalled how on the day she minced the red chilli peppers Mama would bar me from entering the kitchen because of how the heat, she said, could burn my eyes. She wore gloves and wrapped a scarf round her mouth and nose like a robber. ‘You should be thankful for a mother like that. Are you thankful, Suleiman?’ I nodded twice. ‘Tell her that if she ever needs drinking company, to call on me. Tell her I too get my medicine from that scoundrel, Majdi. Thank God for Majdi.’
I threw the receiver down. My heart raced like a mouse trapped in a wheel. I stood stiff by the telephone, unable to move. It rang again.
‘Hello,’ I said, hearing the tremor in my voice repeated by the echo.
‘Slooma?’ It was Nasser. He was whispering.
‘Nasser. Thank God it’s you. Who was that man? How come he knew us? He knew things nobody knows. Who is he?’ We were brothers now.
‘Did you hang up on him like I told you to?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good boy. Now listen, there isn’t much time, I need you to give a message to your mother.’ He was still whispering. I didn’t like him calling me ‘Good boy’ but I had never felt such affection for Nasser as I did now. ‘Tell her that we are doing all we can to find Ustath Faraj, we don’t know where he is, he hasn’t turned up here.’ I imagined him speaking from the flat on Martyrs’ Square. ‘We have been expecting him … do you know where he is?’
‘Why don’t you stuff this telephone up your arse, fucker,’ the voice returned again.
‘Hang up, Suleiman,’ Nasser shouted, and this time I hung up immediately. But as soon as I did, the telephone rang in an odd continuous ring. Fearing it would disturb Mama, I picked it up. It was the same man. His voice was clear, the echo now gone. ‘Listen, boy. Do you know Nasser’s family name?’ I said nothing, but then he shouted, ‘Speak up.’
‘No,’ I said, remembering Ustath Rashid’s interrogation on television.
‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘No.’ Then, fearing what he might say next, I said, ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ the man said and I thought it was over, but then he said, ‘Look, Suleiman, this is how this works. You will tell me where Nasser lives, and I will write it down. OK?’ I felt my head nod, then, as if he could see me, he said, ‘OK.’
After a short silence he shouted, ‘Speak, boy.’
‘You know where Martyrs’ Square is?’
‘Yes,’ he said so softly it astonished me.
‘He lives in one of the buildings there.’ Then in a lame attempt at retreating I said, ‘I think. I am not sure.’
‘But of course you are … sure,’ he said with confidence. I was confused. The pause before the word ‘sure’ seemed so deliberate I wondered whether he meant of course I was not sure, or of course I was sure. ‘And which building on Martyrs’ Square are you not sure he lives in?’ he said.
‘The one right on the square.’ His silence was heavy, so empty I felt I had to say more. ‘It has green shutters. His is on the top floor, with a red towel on the clothesline in front of the window.’
‘Good,’ the man said. Then he added, and again I didn’t know whether he was speaking to me or to someone else beside him or even to himself, ‘The red towel, that’s the code, the bastards.’
‘Nasser is a very nice person,’ I added. But he had hung up.
13
The af
ternoon was lending itself to evening. Mama lay in her room dozing. I lay in my bed and, although I couldn’t see him, I knew that Sharief was still there, loyal, waiting in his white car, the sun dimming around him, hoping I would remember names or bring the book I had mentioned and place it in his hands, the book that was still beneath my mattress, beneath the place where I slept and dreamed. The book had begun to annoy me like a stone in my shoe, and I felt I couldn’t rest until I gave it to him or got rid of it somehow.
The window in my room was open. From where I lay I could see the sky blue and solid above the white garden wall made golden by the sun, the line where they met red and black, a trick of the light. Staring into the sky often made me thirsty; now it was causing a place in my chest to tickle. I wondered how it would be to fly, to be inside the solid blue. One day Baba will take me with him on a business trip, I was certain. I will dress in a suit and tie and walk beside him like a shadow, his ‘right hand’. When we board the plane I won’t be impressed because flying will be normal to me by then. We will sit and not even look out of the window, busy with more important matters written in long slim columns in newspapers. I will then be a man, heavy with the world. I imagined my life without Baba, I imagined doing all of these things alone, and the tickling in my chest stopped. I hardly ever did something alone with Baba, and to give up this one fantasy saddened me. He was away so often, and when home he was usually distracted by a book or a newspaper. I was perplexed whenever I caught him looking at me with longing.
The only activity Baba and I did alone was the walk together to the mosque on Fridays. Although Mama never herself prayed or insisted that I did, she was still proud to see me dressed in my white jallabia and cap, holding Baba’s hand, musked and ready for prayer: a miniature replica of Baba. I didn’t look forward to Friday prayer and was always happy when it was over, but I did like the walk with him. I remember holding his hand and squinting against the bright noon sun, our white jallabias glowing in the heat. He was always silent during these walks, no doubt refraining from speech in order to listen to the Quran as it blared off the minaret speaker, recited by Sheikh Mustafa, too loud to be understood. Many times during the prayer I remained standing while all the worshipers bowed. Watching the entire place change colour, I felt frightened to be the only one in the world seeing them like this: a carpet of hunched white backs like seagulls grooming their chests. After the prayer Baba enjoyed introducing me to his friends. They thought it sweet that I was dressed like him. I never went to prayer when Baba was away.
