Black trees shimmer against the setting sun. The home is a two-storey assembly in the shape of a large X, eighty by eighty metres, surrounded by acres of trees and snow-covered lawns. The path up to where I am now has only a mild incline for someone of my physical strength.
My hearing aid contains my entire archive of music, from childhood to my forthcoming grave, forthcoming. Semi-classical Indian music, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, blends with the Kurdish woodwinds in the spruces and the rustling of my ultra lightweight black down coat.
The door to the institution’s kitchen has been left open. A phone rings, pots rubbing against large metal sinks, the sound of cutlery hitting a water-filled plastic bucket, the voices of two young kitchen helpers, and a woman with a deep voice. I can hear the sound of a chemical-loaded steel-wool pad rubbing against pots; the sound of a swirling water galaxy, I can visualize bits of broccoli and water-soaked Uncle Ben’s rice flowing down the drain in a taut spiral. Pills for hearing. Broccoli for farting.
I stop, stoop, and look at the lower branches of one of the trees near me. I single out one branch for staring — to look at the pine needles, the deep green. I shut my eyes and I hear the sounds of the kitchen again. Through the double glass doors I walk into the home and head to my room. The tungsten bulbs fill the rooms with a yellowish light. It becomes black and silent for a few hours, then the orchestra warms up: the rumble of an early morning landing place awakens me. We’re in their path. A woman is vomiting feculently. What’s her name? She can’t be the woman in the airport, can she? That woman I knew? No. This is someone different. Is her name Jennifer? She is connected with us. She comes and goes. Today, she is shouting with a dry voice, catches her breath and then the dark liquid leaves her mouth. She pants, refills her lungs, makes more dry sounds. I know her. I’ll invite her to my birthday party. If she gets better. She has vascular diseases, diabetes, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, mild cognitive impairment, a caloric intake of one thousand per day, cancer. But no memory loss. Pleasant ending she’ll have. The flesh pads on the soles of her feet are non-existent because she doesn’t eat. A nurse calms her. Someone is cleaning a bathroom. I remember someone in my life who cleaned washrooms. Another phone rings in the distance. A guilt-ridden son or daughter?
The central nurse’s station is situated at the confluence of these halls. There is an elevator at the end of the north-south hallway that takes us one floor up for X-rays and small operations such as brain transplants. I’m not going there today. I’m sitting on the lawn, or rather on the lawn chair, which itself is sitting on the lawn. I know I have a visitor today.
Faintly, in the background, I hear Bobby Darin’s hit “Dream Lover.” I’ve never gotten used to dealing with criminal investigating types. Why? I’ve never been questioned. I’ve been wondering what that would be like.
Divinely, we’ve spun into a sunny late morning between breakfast and lunch. I’m sitting at the end of the hall with a window looking out over the lawn and the river. A police detective approaches me in a humble European walking style. Thank you for the call. You’re here about the London story? I ask myself, he did call today, didn’t he? And was it about the London story or am I just suffering from narcissism?
They say my memory is now hyperthymestic. My nurse, Linda, leans toward my ear: “Dr. Macleod, good morning, a man is here to see you. He said that he’d already spoken with you on the phone. Do you remember I told you yesterday?”
“Please tell him I’ll meet him inside.” A tall man with a moustache who is trying to look like a police detective approaches me at a table on the sunny lawn. Or is it Anver dressed up? Interesting to have visitors. I can see and faintly hear the bowling balls clink each other in the background, behind the glass. I sip at white institutional china cups of tea with milk.
“Hello, Dr. Macleod, thanks for making the time to see me, please don’t get up.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, thanks for your call. Have a seat.”
“This is a lovely place.” He’s looking softly yet directly at my eyes, then glances over at the elderly hands slowly rolling balls on green grass.
Joseph Macleod was the organizational brains behind it all. I keep him entertained with mannered panic.
“Diaries? Who wrote these diaries? I’ve haven’t heard of them before. I was the brains behind the events — proof? Sounds like I’ll have to defend myself in court. Who’s reopened the case? I ask as I look out at the rheumatoid bowlers. Is the word Diaries a code for something? I don’t sense cop, I really don’t sense cop. Why would they try to contact me now after all these years of silence?”
After pausing, I continue: “By the way, you’re not a journalist. What are you? You’re a mystery man, a writer? So much excitement in the winter of my uric boredom, who would have thought.” He appreciates my sense of humour.
“I’m just a freelance journalist, nothing more exotic than that, I’m afraid.” We both know why he’s here, so we continue playing.
“Journalist. Right. What else do you want to ask me?”
Someone is trying to prove me guilty or should I say consult me on the affair after so many years. “Tell me, what’s the importance of it all now?”
“I need some points in the story fleshed out. On the surface, it looks like a simple act carried out by the same people who did subsequent flash-and-bangs. Or was it someone else? Many governments are thought to have cooperated.”
“Supposition. I don’t think you’re writing a book . . . Governments, plots? Old-fashioned all that. I think it was an act of generalized Islamic guidance. All I’ve ever done, and I maintain it to this day, is play a flaccid literary critic of western imperialism. Now, if you have proof to the contrary, tell me or the courts. I’m enjoying our conversation.”
My visitor leaves. Or is it Anver playing a trick on me? A trick yes, but one with my agreement? Testing for leaks. Is this trick a dry run-through in case someone comes asking questions? We almost had a release of information from our Irish helper. But somehow she died before she could talk. Some of us, when we get older, feel bad about what we did and want to talk about it. I’m here to die as well as to make sure that there is no flow-out.
The man says he’ll come back, and I say: “Please do — it’s really been a pleasure to have been stimulated in this way. Otherwise, my mind could become one of the balls on the green. You’ve saved my mind from becoming a ball with holes in it. Thank you very much.”
He hands me his card. I notice his name on the card, Jamal Masoume — a son of one of our partners. He does not notice the joyous shudder that goes through me. Why is the son of a past project manager coming to see me? Anver with a wig? Anver becomes Jamal. This happens when I’m in between cycles of taking my modern pills. Sequences of events go awry. Dress rehearsal. Canadian authorities. You see this is what happens in old age: one person becomes another and when they become another they get to wear all this intellectual decoration that can make them into Dimitris or Mohammads. All Dimitris evolve from Charlemagne.
In old age they can become Jamal Masoumes from the world over — they can become Anver playing detective, making sure there are no leaks. They can become dancers at the Lincoln Centre who don’t point their toes like in the old days in Moscow. All’s possible in the old age that terrorists live through. The anti-aging mental drugs make us alert.
I walk along a hall. I see Nurse Linda in the background. Gladly, she’s within earshot of this memorable rendezvous which, I’m calculating, will draw us closer together. Closer, but no cigar. I’ve no illusions. The Man says: “Thanks, yes, I’d like more tea.”
“Looks like a planned event with a heavy government subsidy,” I say, then pause for drama. The Man-who-looks-like-a-police-detective-but-isn’t fills my afternoon with questions that take practically no thought to answer. I get up and mimic his European walk down the East-West hall past a series of windows that open onto a lawn that merges with the water. I live in fear of deathbed confessions from my tribe.
&n
bsp; 5
Diary
I’m thinking about a woman I met here in the home. Was she my wife? Did my wife die in Paris, London or Pierrefonds? Did she die in a hospital — near rue de Tombe-Issoire? But this is not about her. I hear my past. I say: “Taxi, taxi.” I notice the young Algerian driver. In Arabic, I respectfully ask: “Can you take me to Sailkot?” The taxi driver thinks for a moment, smiles, and says: “Bien sûr, Monsieur, avec plaisir, Monsieur.” He respects me because I’m older. We’ve a long drive ahead of us. His name wanders out — Salah — from Wilaya quatre or cinq, Alger.
I start to talk without being asked. “They didn’t drive me out, I left of my own free will — s’dit immigration. Left where? Doesn’t matter where; I remember details: who came; why they came; who left; when they left; when the cobbler’s son died; the invasions.”
He listens comme un initié. I have the taxi driver in my world. “I’ve lived here for twenty-five years. My daughters are married, except one . . . except one, look here she’s at the pyramids at Giza. I think we had twins. They were good at cricket — that’s what someone told me.” We move south-west along the river. His hands move in circles over the steering wheel; the river, bright with sodium lights, disappears as we round a corner. He falls into my story because he’s too young to have one of his own. A traffic light blares green. Olive groves; roasting lamb at a noisy wedding; the ‘67 borders; the behaviour of Jewish Canadian tourists in Jerusalem.
Salah, the taxi driver, gently brakes in front of a police station. I worked for Banque Oussman, Misr, L’egypte, yannie. My driver knows there isn’t a village called Sailkot near here. Sailkot isn’t a village anymore.
“Monsieur, your kids might be looking for you. Please enter and tell the police who you are so your family can come and pick you up, s’il vous plaît.” Smiles of a lost son. In a hushed voice, I say: “Take me to the airport. I can’t die here.”
Sailkot touches him. I step out of the cab and enter the glass doors and walk into the airport: but there is hush in this airport. I don’t see flights and departure screens; I see trays with medicines arranged in rows. I see strange airline stewards — they look more like nurses. And the only pilots I can spot are ones with green overalls and large plastic tags hanging from their necks. Where am I? In an old folks home or at a friend’s highrise in downtown Montreal? We’re surrounded by offwhite walls with paintings. A large seascape hangs on the wall facing a window that gives a complete view over the mountain rising in the centre of Montreal. I lift up a cup of tea in the home, in my room, in front of the river, and put it down in Linda’s apartment in front of the mountain covered with summer trees. Mount Royal Park in the clear blue air. On the wall a poster of a Franz Kline painting called Elizabeth or something like that.
In my room, two burgundy Persian carpets with dark green borders hang on either side of a large picture window. The snow outside is framed by black Arabic calligraphy. But am I in my room in the old folks home or am I visiting Linda at her house in the Plateau-Mont-Royal? Linda looks after us in this section of the home. It’s my job to be needy. I’m listening to the radio. 13:00 hours Greenwich Mean Time. Welcome to Books and their Meanings . . . Linda keeps asking me questions. We’ve become friends. Sometimes, she says she knows what I’m thinking. Here’s what I am thinking now: Did the announcer’s voice grow up in County Tyrone reading Joyce and the lesser Catholics? Did the voice have a blue-eyed mother from Zimbabwe and a black father from Hackney? Or did our newscaster grow up in southern Alberta with contemplative mountains? Obviously, the newsreader’s accent is geo-linguistically unclear yet understandable. These words are new to her. She’s paid to tolerate class imbalance. I bring my old shortwave radio nearer my ear, a thin blue antenna wire trailing on the carpet. A little distance away, the others continue in humble, diminutive conversation. To the best of our abilities, we all know each other. We all live in separate rooms. Every week someone dies. Every week one of us connected with the events dies.
I’m wearing a blue blazer, open collar, and stiff black jeans to impress the girls. Everyone plays cards. Complacent grey fools in computerized luxury wheelchairs, playing cards. I can hear the cards falling on the table. I can shower with my hearing aid in. Nothing happens, no sudden bursts of lightning in the brain. Water is an excellent conductor of electricity, but this is the twenty-first century and for all I know water may no longer conduct electricity. Anything can happen. My eyesight is as sharp as a bird’s, no floaters.
In a corner, beside a rubber plant that has a graft attached to one of its branches, Abgail Connolly or Usha — can’t remember who — speaks into the phone and then hangs up. I know about grafts. A few seconds later, it rings. Must be a guilty son. Linda watches me put the radio on the small table beside the green sofa.
I leave for a wee walk but am back with the old folks again listening to old shortwave radio. The static-filled BBC broadcast lingers in my mind like Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Was it fair to calibrate all assassins in such a manner? Could the powers that be be doing all this again? Imagine Europe without the injection of Islamic civility — perennially dank caves without any knowledge of the Greek or African worlds. Most of the population of Europe is now over seventy years of age. Immigration has slowed down to a trickle. The Grey Race dominates Europe. Fascist Grey and the Grey of the Magna Carta, a grey whose face we kicked in. Imagine France without hairy Islamic football players. No World Cups. Even the Micronesians could beat them.
Anver is interested in my diary. I wonder if he’d be interested in reading this part? I’m not sure he’d get the sense of humour — sort of like that cab driver in Paris who took me to the police station instead of CDG — he had virtually no sense of humour. Anver moves beside me on the large couch. We are old and physically fit. We use computers, we drive cars, we take trains to downtown Montreal, and now, I split my virtual screen into two blocks and with my fingers move the screen in front of him and we start reading together. Anver says that it’s nice that technology brings us together. He politely asks: “Why is this bit called ‘Radius Islamicus’ and why did we, or should I say you, add the long line: ‘A submission to the Home Secretary?’”
Anver leans closer to my shoulder and peers into the screen. No one else is around so we tell the computer to voice it. We’ve selected English with a West Yorkshire accent — just so it sounds like our Mullah from the north country, and we’ve also selected a background sound to the reading — that crackly sound of a shortwave radio announcing that we had done some terrible things.
I, Joseph Macleod, QC, of an origin that could place my birth somewhere between the ancient city of Anchorage and Halabja, have been commissioned by the Home Office to submit to the public the narrative of events that led up to the attacks by four of us on London’s very public places, buses on such and such a date, which I can’t remember now. Perhaps I was off my memory pills for another two-week cycle. This investigation will be based on all of the evidence the government had, or is now currently compiling. I state unequivocally that I have neither consulted documents related to national security, nor files or documents related to international security. At the time of this writing, the events of London will not be brought before a public inquiry.
Anver asks: “This is what you spend your time on?”
One of our training mullahs had a poetic way with Arabic, Urdu or Dari, or Pushtu or some other language — not the aforementioned — spoken around Eastern Anatolia.
Terrorists are like seawater droplets from the Bay of Biscay. They lift upwards, forming clouds that float over the grape growing regions, past the Isles of Scilly, past the towns of Land’s End: Looe, Mevagissey, Mousehole, Newquay, Penzance, St. Ives and finally fall over Heathrow, drenching it with an embroidered water lace. A white plane loaded with 800 passengers was glistening in the drops of Atlantic water. Flight delayed. Inside, an old partner, arms akimbo says: “Imran, put this CD on the intercom.”
As I look back on this operation fr
om my old age, I remember Anver was a tall man. He was also an Islamic team player who liked geriatric music. He’s slightly shorter now. “Bus Stop” by The Hollies, I remember this song spreading through the fuselage’s cathedral-high ceiling. The song, once on “Top of the Pops,” now, decades later wafting among the stiff blue flight attendants who wear tops that flare out from their waists. Over The Hollies, someone with a Yorkshire accent states: “Due to H5N1 we won’t be serving chicken.” Some passengers laugh — maybe they didn’t laugh. Women, children and the old being slowly let out in groups of two after ten minute intervals. An old man says he was in Auschwitz. A fellow operative, with prodigal affection, leads him off the plane.
Anver, with his aged brown face and white hair, says: “What is this, stand up terrorism? Who’s going to think this is funny? You’re making fun of our operation. Perhaps you’re feeling guilty? I’m not. There is too much talk of planes in this story. You really want a plane on every page? Do you think we should invite Linda to come and listen to your diary? She might have fun with us?”
“Anver, listen.”
Michel Imran Aflaq and the others will escort you to the toilet and back, if you want to go. Leave the door open. We have twenty minutes before we get our turn to take off. The Northern Line from Finsbury Park was late. Holburn was a mess, the Piccadilly line to Heathrow was late; hence, you are being subjected to delayed terror.
Anver pretends he is snoring. Silently, I wag my finger at him and restart Radius Islamicus:
We had been asked by the Lahori mullahs to look at new and unusual targets, with detailed plans and photos.
“But they weren’t from Pakistan; they were something else,” Anver says.
Radius Islamicus Page 6
