It was surreal.
In the evenings, stretched out on my cot, I’d try to situate myself in relation to what was happening to me. The days filed past, and still nothing. My work for the Turk sometimes obliged me to shake infidels’ hands, to find myself alone with a scantily dressed woman who was screaming at me as if I were her hireling. I’d tell myself that it wasn’t my fault, that I needed a refuge until things cleared up again. I was angry at Lyès for abandoning me to my fate. I often thought about that wrong vest story and the conclusions I’d arrived at, and I even began, astaghfirullah, to feel that my return to live among the others—since my own had jilted me—had a semblance of legitimacy, of justification; I was starting to acquire a certain taste for transgression.
But the Lord wasn’t heedless of my erring ways.
His wrath didn’t take long to come down on me.
* * *
—
It was time for the lunch break. I’d bought a sandwich in a kebab shop and was just about to take the first bite when my phone started vibrating. My twin sister was on the other end of the line.
“What did you do to Yezza?” she asked me.
“Nothing. Why?”
“She’s in quite a state. She insists that you call her up right away.”
“Has something happened?”
“She just said that if you don’t call her immediately, you’re going to have big problems.”
“You have her cell phone number?”
“She hasn’t got one. Call her on her landline. She’s home. When you’re finished with her, call me back. I want to know what’s going on.”
I went out on the street to call Yezza. She picked up at the first ring. Her voice practically burst my eardrum: “Listen good, you. It’s one twenty-eight in the afternoon. I’m going to take my time and finish my lunch and then go back to work. When I come home, if that shit of yours is still where it is now, I’ll take it down to the police station myself and hand it to the chief in person, I swear on my mother’s life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this filthy goddamn thing you hid in the storage closet.”
“What filthy goddamn thing?”
“The only person who’s been in my house besides me is you.”
She hung up. In a rage.
Perspiration cold as death washed over me. I had to lean against the wall to keep myself from tottering.
The boss, who was looking at me through the glass window of his office, knit his brow. “Something wrong, Khalil?”
It took me a little while to regain my senses. My mouth was dry, my breathing frantic, I had trouble swallowing, and my legs were threatening to give way under me.
“Could you lend me your car? It’s an emergency.”
“I’m not finished paying for it.”
“Please, I’m begging you. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“I’m really sorry, I don’t even let my son drive my car. It cost me an arm and a leg. You want me to call you a taxi?”
I took my head in my hands. I had to find a solution, right away. Yezza wasn’t joking.
I called Rayan.
“I’m at the office,” he said. “I can’t just slip away.”
“It’s really serious.”
Silence on the line.
“Are you there?”
“I’m thinking.”
“I need you right away.”
“I’m going to see what I can do.”
“You have only one thing to do. Jump in that crate of yours and come get me at my boss’s place. It’s a matter of life and death.”
* * *
—
Rayan found me on the sidewalk, two seconds away from cardiac arrest.
I leaped into the car and begged him to drive off at once. What he saw on my face must have alarmed him. “So what’s this matter of life and death?”
“Please don’t ask me any questions. My brain’s on fire. We’re going to Mons.”
Getting out of Brussels required enduring one traffic jam after another. Every big intersection, every slowdown increased my anxiety. I grumbled at red lights, cursed aggressive drivers, and ranted against the old-timers puttering cautiously along. I didn’t achieve anything close to normal breathing until we entered the E19. Mons was about an hour away.
I didn’t realize it, but I was looking at my watch every two seconds. My fingers went numb from drumming on the dashboard.
“You’re stressing me out, Khalil. What’s going on?”
“It’s my older sister. She’s suffering from depression. She threatened to kill herself.”
“Good Lord!”
Rayan started passing vehicles one after the other, his hands gripping the steering wheel as though soldered to it. From time to time, he asked me to calm down. I didn’t pay attention to him and kept my eyes riveted to the dial of my watch.
We reached Mons in less than an hour. Rayan parked his car in front of the apartment building. In too much of a hurry to take the elevator, I bounded up the stairs four at a time until I reached the sixth floor. My sister wasn’t home. I hurried to the storage closet. My bomb belt wasn’t in the place where I’d hidden it. Fear and panic overcame me. I couldn’t see clearly anymore, and all I could hear was my heart booming in my chest. Had Yezza taken the vest to the police station? No, no, she wouldn’t do that to me. It was barely three thirty in the afternoon. I was on time. I searched the rooms and passed through the kitchen twice before spotting the belt in the sink. A stream of pure air flowed into me. I picked up the vest, stuffed it in a canvas bag I’d found in a drawer, and flew back down the stairs. In my haste, I forgot to close the door behind me.
Rayan was surprised to see me come out of the building so soon.
I threw my bag into the trunk of the car before climbing in.
“Well?”
“She’s not home. The neighbor says she was brought to the hospital about an hour ago.”
“The hospital. Where’s that?”
“Going there’s not worth the trouble. My sister’s in good hands. And besides, she must be in intensive care. Let’s go back to Brussels. I have to reassure my family.”
“They can be reassured by phone. I think you should go and see your sister, inquire about the state of her health, talk to her doctor, something, I don’t know. You haven’t come all this way for nothing.”
“I assure you, it’s not worth it. Now that she’s in the hospital, I feel relieved. The doctors won’t tell me anything more than I already know. It’s not the first time that Yezza’s pulled something like this.”
Rayan spread his arms helplessly and started the car. My attitude dumbfounded him.
* * *
—
He hadn’t spoken a word since we left Mons. He was driving slowly, his thoughts elsewhere. From time to time, he’d shake his head, looking stunned, and then he’d straighten his chin and stare directly ahead.
Finally, when we were about forty kilometers from Brussels, he turned toward me. “Would you mind if I dropped in on a client? He owes me some money.”
“Not at all.”
He thanked me and took the next exit off the expressway. We skirted a village on the national highway, drove halfway across a large, open plain, and stopped at a crossroads. Rayan hesitated before taking a local road, a narrow ribbon of asphalt that ran along a river whose banks were bristling with wild grasses. Except for a farm in the distance, the area was deserted. Not a living soul for miles around.
Rayan parked on the shoulder of the road.
“Where does your client live? I don’t see anything that looks like a house anywhere.”
“I think there’s a problem with one of the rear wheels. The back of the car’s pulling to the left like it’s about to
skid out, you haven’t noticed that?”
“No.”
“Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
He got out of the car.
I heard him open the trunk.
When a few moments had passed and he didn’t show himself, I turned around to see what he was up to. Rayan was standing behind the car. All I could see of him was the tip of one shoulder.
“Is it serious?”
He didn’t answer.
A little puzzled, I put one foot on the ground.
Rayan, stunned and pale, was slouching against the trunk of his car. He raised his eyes to me, eyes whose expression mingled horror, disgust, and incredulity.
“Son of a whore,” he spat out, his throat crisscrossed with swollen veins.
It was the first time in my life that I’d heard Rayan use obscene language.
“A matter of life and death, huh?”
My bag was open at his feet, and part of the bomb belt was lying on the asphalt.
Oddly enough, I didn’t react. Maybe the fright my sister had given me a few hours earlier had consumed all my emotions.
“It’s been bothering me since you came out of that apartment building. Any fool could see that your motive for all this urgent dashing around was the recovery of your bag, not the rescue of your sister. What could be in that bag? I wondered. Drugs? Money? Some stolen precious objects? I was ready for anything, but not for that.”
“Rayan, it’s not what you think.”
“What I see is enough for me.”
“Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” He waved a jack at me. “If you take a single step in my direction, I’ll pound your face into pulp. Back off, back off…”
I raised my hands to the level of my shoulders as a sign of surrender.
“Why?” he howled. “For Paradise? It’s around you, for real. Look at how beautiful the countryside is. There are birds in the trees, and you can run in the fields until you pass out. If you’re not happy now, wait until spring. What’s going on in your head?”
“I’m telling you, you’re making a mistake, Rayan.”
“Up until five minutes ago, yes, I was still mistaken about you. Not anymore. You were in Paris to stop Driss from being an idiot, wasn’t that it? I believed you. Because that’s what I would have done, I would have done that too, if I had been in your place. Except that you weren’t in Paris to defuse an imbecile packed with explosives, you were there to blow yourself up with him.”
“That’s true, but I couldn’t go through with it. You can touch me, I’m flesh and blood. I’m alive. I haven’t killed anyone.”
“That’s what you say.”
“I swear to you it’s the truth. I haven’t killed anyone.”
“Yes, you have killed someone, Khalil: yourself! You killed yourself the moment you joined a group of benighted fools who want to send us all into the dark.”
“Why won’t you listen to me? I had a knife to my throat. I swear, I didn’t want to go to Paris. If I’m standing here in front of you now, it’s not because I lost my nerve, but because I refused to slaughter innocent people…I’m not a murderer. Please, please don’t write me off too fast. I need you. Don’t let me fall. My life’s in danger. They’re looking for me.”
He considered me scornfully and nodded, suffocating with disgust. “You’re a monster, a prick, and an imbecile. How did you let yourself get taken in by those bastards? I can’t believe it. I was harboring a terrorist in my house, a fucking terrorist who takes himself for a hero.” He spat on the ground and slapped himself. “How could I have been so blind? I feel so pathetic, so shitty.”
He closed the trunk brusquely and got back in his car.
“You’re not going to ditch me here.”
“Fuck off, asshole.”
“Do you intend to turn me in?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
He pulled away. I ran after the car; Rayan accelerated, and I had to give up.
When he disappeared at the end of the road, I retraced my steps, picked up my bag, and slipped down into the roadside ditch, looking for a hole to bury my bomb belt in.
II
–
Concerto in C Minor for a Suicide Bomber
And when it is said unto them: Make not mischief on the earth, they say: We are peacemakers only. Yet it is surely they who are the mischief-makers.
—Quran, surah Al-Baqarah (2:11–12)
9
The sky was starting to darken, while a glacial wind as sharp as a razor was slashing at my face.
I’d walked through fields to avoid the road, fearful that my unusual presence in those parts might arouse suspicion. I walked on randomly, with rage in my belly and my head full of terrifying hypotheses. Should I go back to Brussels or flee the country? I didn’t know which way to turn.
A largish village appeared in the distance.
I started running, hoping I might find some means of transportation there.
Night had fallen when the bus dropped me off at the Saint-Gilles station. I jumped in a taxi, got out on rue Heyvaert, and took up a position at the corner of an adjacent alley, from which I could keep an eye on the furniture store and stay alert for a siren or a rotating light. The Turk was standing impatiently in the doorway of his place of business. Of the eight missed calls displayed on my cell phone screen, five were from him—the other three were from Zahra.
The metal shutter was usually lowered at seven o’clock in the evening; now it was past eight. Could Rayan have alerted the police? Was an ambush waiting for me?
People were going about their business. Above me, a man was standing on his balcony and smoking a cigarette. When the butt landed on the ground at my feet, the smoker apologized with a wave of his hand.
The Turk pulled out his telephone; mine vibrated in my pocket. Receiving no reply, the Turk turned off the lights in his store and walked across the parking area to his car.
I remained skulking in my corner until nine o’clock. Not a police van in sight. Nor any routine patrol. A thin rain began to speckle my jacket. I realized that I was freezing.
I took a streetcar to the Koekelberg basilica. No suspicious agitation around rue Herkoliers or the chaussée de Jette. The apartment where my parents lived was enveloped in the muffled sounds of evening. Old Philippe, our ground-floor neighbor, was walking his dog; a group of teenagers chattered away under the shelter of a closed kiosk; two men leaned over the engine of an old jalopy—I could hear the clicking of their monkey wrenches; the Bardin brothers’ greasy spoon put out a reek of beer and fries that permeated the air.
Our apartment’s shutters were open, but no family member cast any shadow on the curtains.
I got on a bus to go to the disused workshop. The closest stop was some distance from that refuge, and the air had grown distinctly colder. While I was walking up an alleyway, I came by chance upon Moka. The sexagenarian was sitting at the foot of a streetlight with one trouser leg rolled up above his knee. He was bleeding a little from a wide scrape on his calf.
“A guy on a bicycle knocked me down,” he said. “Not only did he not bother to stop, he also called me a meathead. Do I look like a meathead to you?”
I squatted down to inspect his wounded leg. “That doesn’t look so bad.”
“Maybe not, but it sure hurts.”
“Can you walk?”
I helped him get up. He hopped around, shaking his leg in all directions.
“Is it okay?”
“I can move my toes, so nothing’s broken.”
“You want me to walk you home?”
“Yes, that would be good.”
Moka holed up in a hovel at the foot of a nondescript building. The space used to be a shop where people came to have their clothes altered. The tailor was an emaciated old gentl
eman, stooped like a weeping willow, with dense tufts of hair growing out of his ears. He wore spectacles so thick that his eyes seemed to look out at you from different levels. He was a strange man, furtive and taciturn. A ghost, one might have said, so thoroughly did he become one with the darkness of his shop. I always used to wonder how he managed to sew in his shadowy work area. If he looked as though he didn’t get enough to eat, it was doubtless because he extended credit to his most destitute customers and didn’t keep his ledgers up to date. I often went to his place with Zahra when our father’s suits needed patching up. There was a bowl of candy near the entrance, and I’d always thrust a bold hand into the bowl as soon as the old tailor had his back turned. My sister would give me a disapproving look and threaten to tell our father, which she never did; I’d shrug my shoulders and fill my pockets with sour candies, which I’d hasten to offer to Mansurah, a little ten-year-old pest I was madly in love with. Then the old tailor started having problems with a group of creepy boys who’d set up their headquarters in a blind alley nearby. One day, he packed up his measuring tape and his scissors and disappeared.
Khalil Page 9
