The Disoriented

by Amin Maalouf

  With a nod and a smile Ramez confirmed this, shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyebrows to make it clear he didn’t believe in the evil eye. Oblivious to his reaction, Dunia carried on:

  “Ramez and Ramzi made their fortunes together, neither is a penny richer than the other. But Ramzi’s wealth is less ostentatious, he always was discreet and restrained. In itself that’s a virtue. But for his wife, it felt like a punishment. Ramez was always more extravagant, more demonstrative, more of a show-off …”

  Her husband’s eyes grew wide.

  “A show-off? Me?”

  With maternal tenderness, Dunia ran her fingers through her husband’s hair.

  “Yes, my darling, you like to show off your house, your private jet, your Mercedes.”

  “Can you imagine what people would say if a man as rich as I am dressed like a beggar and drove around in an old banger?”

  “I’m not criticizing you, darling, I love you just the way you are, if I’d married a miser, I would have been miserable. But it’s a simple fact that you never hid your wealth, while your partner preferred people to think ‘He’s rich, but it hasn’t changed him a bit.’ Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “What Dunia says is absolutely true,” her husband admitted. “Ramzi was happy for people to say that he’d worked hard to become a success, but he was wary when people called him rich. He was almost ashamed of his wealth. That’s probably why his wife behaved the way she did. I’m sure she wanted to spend the money, but that he stopped her.”

  “Deep down, the boys we all called ‘the inseparables’ were very different from each other,” Adam said softly, as though to himself. “You both became rich, but the lessons you each drew from that were very different. You felt as though Heaven was rewarding you; he felt as though Heaven was putting him to the test.”

  His host nodded vigorously.

  “Good point! That’s exactly what Ramzi thought. In fact, he used to say that God had given oilfields to the Arabs, not to reward them, but to test them, perhaps even to punish them. And on that score, I have to say I think he was right. Oil is a curse.”

  “But it’s thanks to petrodollars that the two of you got rich.”

  “Yes, that’s true. For Ramzi and me, it was a blessing, but for most Arabs, oil has been a curse. And not just for the Arabs. Can you think of a single country that oil has made happier? Just think about it for a minute. In every country, oil money has triggered civil wars and bloody upheaval, it has favoured leaders who are impulsive megalomaniacs.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Because, overnight, people suddenly had lots of money, without having to work to earn it. The upshot has been a culture of idleness. Why wear yourself out if you can pay someone else to work their fingers to the bone for you? It creates entire populations of indolent people with private means who are attended by whole populations of servants, not to say slaves. Do you really think that is the stuff of nation-building?”

  “Have you ever felt like a slave?” Dunia said, slightly offended.

  “Yes, every time I’m in the presence of an emir, I feel a little like a slave. A highly paid, well-fed slave, but a slave nonetheless.”

  He trailed off, trying to call up specific examples, then continued:

  “The man who founded OPEC, a Venezuelan, said that hydrocarbons were the ‘devil’s excrement’ … He was right. I’m sure that those who write the histories a hundred years from now will say oil enriched the Arabs the better to destroy them.”

  In the garden, the birds had begun to sing. Hosts and guest fell silent so that they could listen and soak up some of their serenity, their apparent joy.

  Then Ramez said to his friend:

  “Tell Dunia about the reunion you’re thinking of organizing.”

  Adam explained the origins of the plan. He listed the people he was considering inviting and said a few words about each. Then he spoke briefly about the circle of friends at university, their arguments, their ideals, their vain promises to always keep in touch. Then he added:

  “On the flight over, I was telling Ramez that I’d like our partners to join us, but that I was worried they’d be bored listening to the stories of old comrades in arms. But after our conversation this morning, I’m convinced that there are at least two additional people who have to be there: my partner, Dolores, and you, Dunia, if you’d like to come.”

  “It would be a pleasure. Ramez has talked to me a lot about the period of his life before I knew him, and I’d love to hear your stories, I wouldn’t be bored at all. When is it?”

  “The date hasn’t been set yet. I was thinking …”

  “It doesn’t matter, I’m a meek, submissive oriental wife, I make no engagements without my husband. If he’s free that day, I’ll be free too.”

  The aforesaid husband rolled his eyes to heaven, then kissed Dunia’s hand and said:

  “Before I forget, Sémiramis phoned last night. She was worried when you didn’t come back to the hotel, and when I told her you’d come to Amman with me, she said a few choice words I won’t repeat.”

  “It’s my fault,” Adam said. “I meant to call her but then I dozed off. She must be furious …”

  “You’ll find out when you get back to the hotel. Personally, I think you’d be better off staying in Amman, I can grant you asylum.”

  His guest smiled.

  “No, I must go and face the punishment I so richly deserve. What time do you think we could set off?”

  “I told the crew to be ready to take off at about 11:00 a.m. Does that suit?”

  Adam checked his watch. It was eight thirty.

  “Perfect. We have more than enough time to get ready.”

  “My meek, submissive spouse has decided to take me to see her mother. We’ll be spending the day up in the mountains with her, then we’ll come back to Amman in the evening and bring our daughter back with us.”

  -

  2

  Back at the Auberge Sémiramis, Adam crept quietly up to his room. But no sooner had he opened the door than the phone rang. His “chatelaine” had clearly asked to be advised the moment he arrived. But there were no reproaches, no reprimands. She simply wanted to let him know that she would be out all day, and would call when she got back so they could have dinner together.

  He began taking a few notes about the conversations he had had with Ramez and his wife, especially what they had said about Ramzi, which might prove useful when he went to visit the monastery. Then he opened his laptop to check his email. He had received a long message in his absence.

  Dearest Adam,

  Reading your last email, and rereading the one I sent you, I realize there’s been a small misunderstanding, one I’d like to clear up.

  I did say that I had left the country “reluctantly,” and you inferred that I was forced to by my parents. I owe it to the memory of my father to set the record straight: he didn’t force me, he persuaded me, during a long “man-to-man” conversation that I will never forget.

  We had had a number of heated discussions in the weeks leading up to it. Every time he mentioned leaving, I’d make my displeasure very clear, he’d tell me off, I’d become touchy, voices would be raised and my mother would start crying. The atmosphere at home was unbearable for everyone. One day, he summoned me to the little room that served as his office. He asked me to sit down, he closed the door, then—and this was unusual—he took a pack of Yenindji from his pocket and offered me one. It was the moral equivalent of a peace pipe. He lit my cigarette, then his, and pushed the ashtray so that it was between the two of us.

  I remember the scene as if it happened last week, when in fact it’s been more than twenty-five years! It wasn’t a big room, I’m sure you remember; there was just room for the two armchairs where we were sitting. The walls were lined with books in various languages, there was a woo
den escritoire inlaid with mother-of-pearl with numerous little drawers. The only light came from the window overlooking the building’s communal gardens. It was cold that day, but my father had left it half-open because of the smoke.

  I remember the words he used to begin his appeal: “When I was your age, I, too, had worthy friends, honest, educated, talented young men from every community, each of them with noble ambitions. They were more important to me than my family. Together, we dreamed of a country whose citizens would no longer be primarily defined by the religious affiliation. We wanted to shake up people’s attitudes, change old habits.”

  One of their main concerns, he said, was names. Why did Christians, Muslims, and Jews necessarily have to have Christian, Muslim, and Jewish first names? Why was it necessary for people’s first names to be the battle flag of their religions? Instead of naming Christians “Michel” or “Georges” and Muslims “Mahmoud” or “Abdurrahman,” and Jews “Solomon” and “Moses,” why not give children neutral names—Sélim, Fouad, Amin, Sami, Ramzi, or Naïm.

  “That’s where your name comes from,” my father explained. “A lot of my friends had serious arguments with their families about it. Some gave in; I stood my ground. Your grandfather wanted me to name you Ezra, after him. To justify myself, I explained that for centuries, Jews had been forced to wear distinctive clothes so that goyim could recognize them at a glance, so they could avoid us, or be on their guard; names, I argued, played a similar role. I’m not sure I really convinced him, but he let me do as I saw fit.

  “The reason I’m telling you all this is to show you that, when I was young, I had the same ideals you have, the same dreams of peaceful coexistence between communities, so it is reluctantly and with a heavy heart that I and my family are leaving the country where my ancestors have lived for five hundred years. But it has already become impossible for us to go on living here, and everything I see tells me it will be worse tomorrow.

  “Don’t delude yourself, very soon there will be no Jewish communities left in the Arab world. None. The Jewish communities in Cairo and Alexandria, in Baghdad, Algiers, and Tripoli are already dying out … And now ours is too. Soon, there will no longer be even ten men in the city to pray together. It is a deeply sad, profoundly depressing shift, but there is nothing we can do about it, Naïm, not you, not me.

  “What is to blame? The foundation of the state of Israel? I know that’s what you think, you and your friends. And it is partly true. But only partly. Because discrimination and bigotry of all sorts have existed for centuries, since long before the founding of the state of Israel, long before there existed a territory dispute between Jews and Arabs. Has there been a single moment in the history of the Arab world when Jews were treated as full citizens?

  “No more than anywhere else, you might say. And that’s true. In Europe things were worse, a thousand times worse. I know that. It took the full horror of Nazi atrocities for attitudes to begin to change, for antisemitism to begin to be considered a degrading practice, a shameful sickness.

  “I believe this change in attitudes might have spread to the Arab world. If the Nazi horrors had not immediately been followed by the conflict over Palestine, might the lot of Jews in Arab countries have got better rather than worse? I think so, in fact I’m sure of it. But that is not what happened. The opposite happened. Elsewhere, the situation for Jews has improved, it is only here that it has got worse. Elsewhere, pogroms have been consigned to the ashcan of history; here they have begun again. Elsewhere, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has vanished from the shelves of respectable libraries, while here copies are churned out by the thousand.

  “The other day, when we were talking about the Six-Day War, you compared the Israeli air attack on Arabic military airfields to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. I find the comparison extreme, but there is a sliver of truth to it—if not in the historical facts, then in the perception of those facts. It’s true that many of our compatriots now see us as citizens of an enemy power, a little like the Japanese-Americans interned in concentration camps after Pearl Harbour, who were not released until after V-J day. What would have happened if Japan had won the war, if it had held on to its conquered territories in Asia and the Pacific—China, Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and the rest—if it had forced the United States to accept a humiliating armistice, to give up Hawaii and pay heavy reparations?

  “From that point of view you might say that the Six-Day War was like a brilliantly successful Pearl Harbour. While the Israelis gloat, the Arabs are seething with rage, and we become their scapegoats. To attack defenceless civilians is despicable, but it is futile to expect a humiliated mob to be magnanimous and chivalrous. We are marked out as enemies, and we will be treated as such, even you, Naïm, regardless of your opinions. That’s what it has come to. Whether we like it or not, there is no way out.”

  This is the first time I’ve set down what my father said. Thanks to you, Adam. Thanks to the questions you asked and the memories you rekindled. And thanks to the detailed explanation you gave me about Mourad’s activities. As I read it, it occurred to me that the history of our families and our group of friends, of our illusions and our failings is worth recounting, because it is part of the history of our time, of its illusions, and also of its failings.

  But to come back to that twilight conversation with my father on the eve of our departure, our little exodus—my mother prefers to say our “leave-taking.” Actually, it was not really a conversation, it was an appeal, as I said at the beginning of this email, an appeal he had spent a long time preparing, not only to persuade me, but first and foremost to persuade himself so that he could make his decision.

  I let him talk. He seemed so emotional, so sincere, so respectful of my ideas that I did not want to argue with him. It’s true that, despite the bitter arguments we had in those days, I admired him, I loved him deeply, and I never doubted his moral integrity or his intellectual acuity for an instant.

  Nor was I the only one who admired him. The whole community listened to his opinions with respect and looked to him for guidance. This is why we were one of the last families to leave the country. My father knew that if he were to leave, it would send a signal, and this was not something he was prepared to do lightly. For as long as there was some hope, he wanted to explore it.

  At some point in the conversation I asked whether we would have been condemned to exile even if Israel had lost the war. He laid a consoling hand on my arm. “Don’t think about it, Naïm, there’s no point, there is no solution, I have gone over it a thousand times in my mind. Our fate was sealed long ago, long before you were born, even before I was born. If Israel had lost the last war, things would have been worse, we would have been persecuted and despised.

  “In any case, you will never hear me wish for Israel’s defeat, which would mean its destruction. For our little community, the founding of the State has proved disastrous; for the Jewish people as a whole, it is a dangerous enterprise; everyone has the right to their opinion—favourable or otherwise—but we can’t talk about it as though it were some vague project by Monsieur Herzl. Israel is now a reality, a venture that we are all caught up in, whether or not we approve. It’s as if you took my money, Naïm, took every last piastre this family has, and bet it on a horse; I’d call you every name under the sun, I’d tell you you’d bankrupted us, I might even curse the day you were born. But would I pray for your horse to lose the race? No, of course not. Despite everything, I’d pray for your horse to win.

  “If Israel were to lose the next war, it would be a cataclysmic tragedy for all Jews. We have suffered enough tragedy as it is, don’t you think?”

  At this point in the conversation, I asked him whether, in his opinion, our family’s ultimate destination was Israel. He took a few seconds to answer: “No, it’s Brazil.” There was a quiver in his voice that made me think his decision was not set in stone. But it was, and he held to it for the rest of
his life. He visited Israel many times, but he never considered settling there. My mother felt otherwise. Two of her sisters lived in Tel Aviv, and she would have liked to be close to them. But she is old-fashioned, a wife who does not question her husband’s decisions. When she had doubts, she kept them to herself. In any case, her doubts were based on emotional ties that could not compete with my father’s solidly constructed arguments. Whenever she heard him criticizing Israel, she was unhappy, but she expressed it in sighs or tried to change the subject rather than contradict him.

  One day, years after we left, Colette, one of my mother’s sisters, came to visit us in São Paulo. She was a plump, intelligent, funny woman, and my father was very fond of her. As a result, she felt entitled to tease him at the dinner table. “So, tell me Moïse, when are you going to pack up and bring your little family to Israel so we can all live next door to one other?” My father simply smiled. So, my aunt upped the ante: “Brazil is all very well, but Israel is our home, don’t you agree?” My father didn’t answer, and did not say another word during dinner. My mother quickly changed the subject, all the while watching her husband out of the corner of her eye, since she knew what he was like. However much he was goaded, or even provoked, he never reacted impulsively. Whatever the circumstances, he took his time, he considered things, weighed them up.

  After dinner, we went out and sat on the veranda. It was as coffee was being served that my father finally decided to respond to my aunt. He didn’t look at her, but stared into his coffee cup as though it was a teleprompter, and said, “We have the right to refer to Palestine as ‘Eretz Yisrael,’ and we have as much right to live there as anyone, perhaps a little more. But nothing gives us the right to say to Arabs: ‘Go on, get out, this land is ours and has always been, you have no business being here!’ That, to me, is intolerable, regardless of how we interpret the scriptures and regardless of the sufferings we have endured.”