A magnetic current joined me to the sea, and I was aware of nothing but the roar of the waves. The beach, the hill, the sky faded away around me. All I had eyes for, all I had ears for was the aquatic choreography, the dance of the waters. The sea stupefied me with its mysteries; I loved it because it knew how to keep its secrets, like the Lord. Immemorial, untamed, unpredictable, it’s measured by the passage of time, while it reminds us of our lack of substance by erasing our footprints on the sand, shattering our wrecks on the reefs, obliterating our vessels’ wakes. Two attributes of the sea evoke God: communion and omnipotence. The earth may tremble under cataclysms, volcanoes may rip it open and hurricanes dishevel it, but the sea, the sea absorbs its tempests as one gulps down an egg, and although swollen by our fears, it continues to watch over its horizons while holding our coastlines at bay, eternally true to form, like a prophecy whose meaning eludes all who contemplate it.
That day, I would have loved to be a drop of water in a swirling eddy, an infinitesimal splash amid the white froth. I would have loved to disappear on the spot, with a finger snap, just like that. I had no fear of never seeing any more sunsets, since I would gaze at them to my heart’s desire from the orchards of the Lord. I wasn’t afraid of paining those dear to me, since they would all eventually join me in the eternal meadows. When the moment of truth arrives, good and evil cancel each other out. All that’s left is what you must accomplish with your eyes closed. You ask yourself no more questions. The necessary answer, the only answer possible, is “I’m ready!”
13
We’re playing on the deserted beach, Zahra and I. Zahra’s wearing a white dress, and I’ve got on swimming trunks too big for me. We’ve dug a deep hole in the sand. I ask Zahra to climb down into the hole. She laughs and tosses back her long hair. Shakes her head. I shrug and resolve to climb into the hole myself. Zahra holds me back by one shoulder and goes down in my place. I cover her up to the neck with sand. Suddenly, Yezza comes running down a dune, shouting, “Tsunami, tsunami!” I turn to look. A gigantic mountain of reddish water, escorted by a cloud of black raptors, is rushing toward the beach. Yezza joins me, breathless, her eyes rolled up. “Where’s Zahra?” she cries. “She’s…” Zahra has disappeared. “Where’s Zahra?” “She was there less than a minute ago.” “Find her before the tsunami sweeps us away.” I dig in the sand, dig like a maniac. My hands are bloody. It’s impossible to reach Zahra. I wind up grasping at a section of her white dress, which immediately begins to unravel between my fingers and disperses in coils of smoke. Panicked, Yezza throws me down on my back and starts trampling me in rage. “It’s your fault, it’s your fault.” Yezza’s feet are huge, ironshod hooves. Every time she stamps on my stomach, I vomit…
I woke up in a sweat, my guts liquefied. Ran to the toilet, with barely enough time to sit on the seat. My stomach relieved itself in a series of explosions. It felt as though I was evacuating my entire intestinal system.
“Go easy in there,” Hédi called to me from the living room. “Sounds like we’re in the middle of a brass band.”
I left the bathroom on shaky legs, the blood gone from my face.
“You’re as white as a sheet,” Hédi informed me. “What did you eat when I wasn’t looking? It smells like there’s a gas leak in the apartment.”
“I had a real bad nightmare.”
“If you’d gotten up at dawn to perform the Fajr prayer, you would have spared yourself such agitated sleep…You want me to go to the pharmacy and get something for you?”
“No need. Whatever it is will pass.”
I collapsed on the sofa. Hédi was watching a cultural program on television. In the studio, a swarthy writer was talking to a journalist from Belgium’s public broadcasting organization: “If we Muslims are lagging behind other peoples, it’s because of the way we mistreat women. All I have to do is walk out on the street or into an administrative office to gauge how much women are undervalued among us. No matter how outstanding a woman may be for her talent, her intelligence, her selflessness, men will see her only as inferior, subordinate, immature. No nation can fully emancipate itself without having first liberated women. But how can these male-chauvinist institutions be forced to admit that?” the writer ranted.
“Who’s this clown?”
“An Ay-rab toady sucking up to his masters. It’s enough to make you puke.”
“So what are you waiting for? Zap.”
Hédi thumbed the remote and switched to a news channel. Some badly defined images showed people running in every direction, or spurting out of a subway entrance like jerboas, in shock, their faces blackened by smoke. Some girls were crying, collapsed against a building. Stretcher bearers evacuated some of the injured while policemen tried to impose order on indescribable chaos.
“Where’s this happening?”
“No idea,” said Hédi. “I’m finding out about it at the same time as you.”
“The cops are Belgian, I think.”
Words appeared at the bottom of the screen: “Breaking News. Terrorist attack in the Brussels metro.”
“Shit!” I cried. “This is going to affect my departure for Marrakesh.”
“Why would it?”
“Well, security checks in the airports and train stations will be increased to prevent the people responsible from leaving the country.”
“Come on, you’re not on any police record anywhere.”
“Still, I don’t like this at all. They should have waited until I left for Morocco. My mission has priority.”
“I don’t think our group is behind this—I don’t even think they were aware it was going to happen. For all we know, it wasn’t even an attack. The media tend to react too fast; they start screaming about jihad as soon as somebody sees smoke somewhere.”
We stayed in front of the TV the entire morning, trying to learn what was actually going on. It turned out it really was a terrorist attack; ISIS immediately claimed responsibility for it. According to the first estimates, the toll was five dead and ten or so wounded.
* * *
—
My stomach was getting more and more sour, obliging me to run to the toilet every ten minutes. An atrocious torment was wringing my insides.
“It’s surely a stomach virus,” was Hédi’s diagnosis.
“We both ate the same thing yesterday.”
“The problem might be stress.”
“You think I’m afraid?” I yelled at him, insulted. “I know perfectly well why I’m going to Marrakesh. And I’m honored to be doing it. I’m not a coward, you understand? I didn’t back down in Paris. If it hadn’t been for that goddamn vest, I wouldn’t be here, holding myself back from knocking you on your ass. Watch your language, okay? If you don’t, I’ll kick you out of here, and you’ll be so fucked up your own mother won’t recognize you.”
“My mother’s dead, Khalil. I had no intention of offending you.”
“Then you’d better start thinking before you open your nasty mouth.”
Hédi preferred to retire to his room.
* * *
—
My stomach cramps subsided a little in the afternoon. To make amends, Hédi suggested we go out for a walk along the Graslei quay. I declined the invitation. In the evening, when I was well enough, he invited me to a substantial meal in a real restaurant. At the end of the dinner, we buried the hatchet.
* * *
—
Lyès was supposed to pass by and see me the following day, but he never came.
“It’s because of the attack,” Hédi supposed.
“You think he had something to do with it?”
“It would be a stupid mistake if he did. We have a bigger operation waiting for us in Marrakesh.”
“He hasn’t called you?”
“No.”
That night, Hédi and I went out for a wa
lk on the banks of the Lys River and did some exploring in the town center. The weather was mild. Groups of young people were amusing themselves in front of lively bars. We had dinner in a pizzeria. Hédi struck up a conversation with two girls at the table next to ours. They were not indifferent to the Tunisian’s charms. They burst out laughing at his anecdotes. Hédi had a disconcerting talent as a seducer. He was courteous and intelligent and never hesitated to flaunt his erudition. By the end of a half hour, the girls were hanging on his words.
“Why doesn’t your friend say anything?” chirped the cuter of the two girls.
“He’s a very shy guy,” replied Hédi.
“He’s got a name?”
“And other things too,” I shot back, “but I’m not interested.”
“He’s married,” Hédi hastened to intervene, trying to salvage his chances with the rejected girl.
In the end, Hédi left with the two girlfriends. As I watched the Tunisian moving away, flanked by his conquests, I wondered just how reliable he could be. A man who doesn’t resist living in thrall to his desires can’t claim to be practicing his faith as it should be practiced. I’ve learned to recognize those who believe and those who believe they believe. The latter think they’ve been touched by grace, but they’re mistaken. Grace touches only those with sturdy, unbending characters, the tough nuts to crack, the authentic radicals whom nothing on earth excites beyond measure. If Hédi yielded so easily to the cravings of the flesh, that meant that the deceptive joys of this world still mattered to him. I couldn’t see him with an explosive belt around his waist. When the moment of truth came, he wouldn’t be able to undo his attachment to worldly vices, and as a consequence, he’d be unable to find the courage to press the detonator button. Personally, I wouldn’t have bet on him, and I would have immediately refused a suicide operation if he’d been assigned to it with me.
You can prune trees, uproot them, turn them into paper, into furniture, into wooden frames, or just into logs, but you can’t change the true believer’s convictions one iota. As for me, I would never have allowed a woman’s eyes to blind mine. I wouldn’t have surrendered to temptations, and I wouldn’t have permitted the sirens’ song to replace the call of the muezzin. I was already elsewhere, unassailable in my floating tower; I was where no illusion could blur the guidelines I followed as a Muslim. I’d developed a strictly cosmic relationship with people and things. Was it my familiarity with death that modified my senses and refashioned my faculties? No doubt. I used to go on my way without lingering over my surroundings, but ever since November 13, 2015, each of my steps was transformed into a stop along the way. It was as if I was discovering another aspect of what I thought I knew. The sky was no longer the sky, it was an oasis; the earth was no longer the earth, it was a mirage—I tightroped between the two, my balance pole supple, my chin high, a pair of magnificent white wings on my back. What had seemed the purest banality took on an unsuspected singularity; former trifles became, all at once, essential; I might have felt an urge to reach out my hand and hold back whatever was fleeing away, but I wouldn’t do that, for nothing mattered anymore except this one implacable truth: everything on this earth is ephemeral, illusory, and vain…All that will remain, above the absences, above the finite, is the face of the Lord.
* * *
—
Hédi came home at daybreak and slept until noon.
Around sunset, Lyès finally reappeared, accompanied by Ramdan. We had dinner, all four of us, in a cheap restaurant run by a Moroccan. When we were back in the apartment, Lyès informed me that I’d be leaving for Marrakesh sooner than originally planned.
“When?”
“In three days…Hédi tells me you were sick.”
“I’m dealing with this stomach virus.”
“He refuses to get himself some medicine,” Hédi lamented.
“I drank some infusions,” I reminded him.
“They didn’t help.”
Lyès frowned. “You have to take care of yourself, Khalil. Suppose you arrive in Marrakesh with your stomach in turmoil? People are going to think you have something to feel guilty about, and you might have problems at the airport. Get rid of that nasty virus, you hear?”
“First thing tomorrow, I’ll buy some medicine.”
He gave me a long, funny look and then asked if I’d tried to get in touch with any family members or close friends.
“Come on, you forbade me to do that.”
“Very good. No contact with the outside world. Do you feel ready?”
“I’m champing at the bit.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Before leaving, Lyès took Hédi aside and whispered something in his ear. The Tunisian nodded. We escorted the emir to his car. Ramdan took the wheel. He hadn’t turned his eyes to me, not once, the whole evening.
Hédi and I waited until the car disappeared around the corner before we went back inside. The Tunisian went to bed at once and turned out the light in his room.
I stayed in front of the television a good part of the night, while my stomach did flips.
* * *
—
My gastric condition worsened.
At ten o’clock in the morning, I went out into the city to buy some medicine.
As I was leaving the pharmacy, I found myself nose to nose with Serge, an old neighbor in Molenbeek. I’ve rarely loathed a person as much as I loathed Serge. He was an authentic scoundrel. At twelve years old, in spite of his cherubic mug and his elfish body, he loved to fight and hang around the markets. Leading a band armed with clubs and bicycle chains, he often showed up at the soccer games we played on makeshift pitches; he and his friends had come to ruin our fun, stealing our ball as they passed, pilfering things we’d left on the sidelines. Sometimes Serge would chase us to the very doors of our buildings. The shopkeepers called him “the Demon of rue d’Osseghem,” a nickname that Serge was proud to bear. The last time our paths had crossed—some three or four years previously—a major squabble had broken out between us. At the time, I was selling contraband cigarettes to make ends meet. Serge came up to let me know that I was operating on his turf, and he ordered me never to set foot there again. Without the intervention of an old lady who separated us with blows from her umbrella, one of us would have remained on the ground. Serge had a broken nose and a broken jaw; I had three cracked ribs, a fractured tibia, and a cut on my scalp that required seven stitches to close.
Before I had the time to duck back into the pharmacy to avoid him, he gave me a little sign with his hand and said sharply, “How’s your sister, Khalil?”
Something inside me instantaneously decompressed.
I grabbed him and slammed him against the wall: “How do you know my sister?”
Surprised at first by my reaction, he freed himself from my grip and said, “What’s got into you, man? Are you sick, or what?”
“The next time you dare to talk about my sister, I’ll rip your tongue out.”
He stared at me for a moment, dumbfounded, and walked away.
I hurried to catch up with him: “I’m not finished with you yet.”
“Take my advice and stay where you are. If you put your dirty paws on me one more time, you won’t be able to use them to gather up your teeth.”
“Do I ask you how your sister’s doing? And you say it just like that, in the street, as if we were cousins or something. What have you done with your horma, your respect for family?”
“Your best bet would be to see a shrink.”
“Oh, would it?”
“Yeah. You ought to calm down a bit, little hoodlum. What the hell does horma have to do with it? Me, I lost a friend in the attack on the subway in Brussels. Your sister got out alive, but others didn’t make it.”
There was a discrepancy somewhere. I wasn’t sure what I was hearing anymore.
&nb
sp; “What are you talking about?”
Whatever Serge must have read on my face extinguished his anger. He asked, “You haven’t heard?”
Without realizing it, I grabbed hold of his shirt collar. This time, he didn’t push me away. He looked at me as if I had fallen from another planet.
“No one’s told you anything?”
I felt my flesh grow hard as stone. “My sister was in the metro?”
“I’m truly sorry you have to find out this way.”
“Is she dead?”
“If that had been the case, I wouldn’t have asked you how she was doing. According to my mother, she was only wounded.”
Heaven and earth swapped places around me. My stomach contracted exactly as it had the morning of the Brussels attack. I ran to a lamppost and vomited at its base.
14
I took the first train for Brussels. In a trance. Praying with all my heart that the wounded sister was Yezza and not Zahra. The Lord would surely resent my praying for one to the detriment of the other, but I wasn’t much interested in knowing what was right and what wasn’t. If misfortune had chosen to strike my family, I wanted the malign force at least to grant me a little favor, however insignificant: rather Yezza than Zahra.
* * *
—
And it was Yezza who opened the door.
I nearly collapsed.
“What do you want in our house?” she snapped, pushing me away.
A whirlwind took possession of me. I could hear my heartbeat, resounding inside me.
Khalil Page 14
