Khalil

by Yasmina Khadra

  “That’s normal, you were twins.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t make the connection. While I was emptying my guts, my sister was emptying out her blood, and I didn’t know it. I thought I’d caught a stomach virus. You see what I’m saying, Rayan? A stomach virus. The person dearer to me than anyone on earth was at the point of death, her suffering was tearing up my insides, and not for a second did I put that together in my head…You can’t imagine how I hate myself for not having understood. My twin sister was dying, and what was I doing? I was fixing myself some chamomile tea, chamomile tea, chamomile tea!” I shouted, punching the dashboard hard enough to crack my wrist.

  “Khalil, stop…There’s no point in feeling guilty.”

  My nostrils streaming, I fell back into my seat. Ants seemed to infest my arms, while cramps began once again to rack my stomach.

  “Please, Rayan, get me away from this blasted cemetery, quick.”

  * * *

  —

  The restaurant was south of the park, wedged between a permanently closed hardware store and an electric appliances shop. The space was tiny, with a minuscule bar and a few tables that could accommodate about ten people at most. Three customers at a table near the door were finishing their lunch. The waitress suggested that we sit in the back of the room, but Rayan opted for the bay window.

  “They make a great Moroccan sole here. I recommend it.”

  I agreed to try the fish.

  “If you want something else, there’s the menu.”

  “I’m not hungry, to tell the truth.”

  “I am. I went directly to the cemetery—hoping to find you there.”

  “Suppose you hadn’t found me?”

  “I don’t need to ask myself that question anymore. You’re here, I’m here, we’re together again. I missed you a lot, you know?”

  “You have Marie now.”

  “Friendship counts too.”

  And with that, we’d finished the few words we had to say to each other. Discuss all this with clear heads. Discuss what? Rayan seemed uncomfortable. I guessed that he was searching for an agreeable subject, something to lighten the atmosphere; I did nothing to encourage him. The silence suited me. Rayan was there; I didn’t ask anything more. He’d just scored a point—I wouldn’t have paid a visit to his mother’s grave. I wouldn’t have had the nerve.

  The waitress brought us our plates of sole à la marocaine.

  We ate in silence.

  Rayan ordered two coffees.

  “You’re still working for the Turk?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s all right?”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “He’s a little tightfisted, but he’s fair.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  The waitress brought us our two cups of coffee.

  “How about you, things going all right?”

  “I got a little promotion.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Nothing very prestigious, but it makes my mother happy.”

  “That’s always a plus.”

  He contemplated the patterns on his cup with a tender smile on his lips.

  “Remember when you and Driss took me to Madame Louise’s to lose my virginity?”

  “We were celebrating your seventeenth birthday.”

  “I nearly shat my pants.”

  “But you really stepped up.”

  “Not true…I lied to you. Madame Louise tried everything to make me relax, but there was no way of arousing the smallest fiber in me. I was just lost there on her bed, as soft as a piece of string. Eventually she told me to make up my mind or leave. I begged her not to say anything to anybody. She agreed, on the condition that I pay double: once for the unconsummated trick, and once for the secret.”

  “And so you paid?”

  “She snatched all the bills I had in my hand.”

  He turned his cup around in his fingers, his brow furrowed, holding his breath as though he were about to do a deep dive, and then he sighed and said, “Those were the good old days, weren’t they? Why is it that good things never last long?”

  He held his breath again. He seemed to be searching for the strength to set free whatever he was making such a strenuous effort to contain.

  The abscess burst.

  He asked, his voice uncertain, “Is it all over with those…people?”

  He watched for my reaction like a convicted man waiting to hear his sentence.

  “You didn’t believe me when I told you I didn’t go to Paris to kill anyone?”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here keeping you company. I admit it took me some time, but I got there in the end.”

  He turned toward the street. My reaction encouraged him to unload the rest of what was on his mind: “How do these pseudo-imams manage to persuade young men to relinquish their dreams, their joys, their wives and children? I don’t think sermons are enough. The guys you see on surveillance videos a few seconds before terrorist attacks don’t look drugged or disturbed. On the contrary, they seem determined. Where do they get such unshakable assurance from? Have they seen something? Have their mentors allowed them to glimpse a revelation, the apparition of an angel, or the gates of heaven? If not, how to explain the bliss they display before they blow themselves up?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I’m just trying to understand, Khalil.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. Ask for the check, please. It’s time for me to go home.”

  “I’ve offended you.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  Rayan signaled the waitress to bring us the check.

  I went out into the street before he’d finished settling up.

  A few drops of rain glittered on the sidewalk. I pulled my jacket tight around me and put my hands under my arms. A tour bus started blowing its horn, inviting a group of Chinese tourists to get on board. Rayan joined me.

  “I went to compliment the chef. A real magician. I intend to take Marie to this restaurant. She loves Berber cooking.”

  We came to the little parking lot where Rayan had left his car.

  “Can I drop you off somewhere?”

  “No, thanks, I need to walk.”

  “It’s going to rain.”

  “I don’t care. I feel like pumping some blood into my legs and my brain.”

  “Shall we get together one of these days?”

  “Why not?”

  “Suppose we go and see what’s become of Madame Louise?”

  “You’d do that to your fiancée?”

  “I’m not obliged to do anything. I’ll wait for you at the bar, as usual.”

  “I broke myself of those habits ages ago.”

  “Too bad. You should pick them up again from time to time so you can taste life’s pleasures.”

  He hugged me close, frantically ruffling my hair, like a big brother tousling his little sibling’s curls.

  “You blockhead. You were the most rebellious of the three of us, as armor-plated as a safe, jealous of your independence. You jumped from one bed to another, ready to slam the door behind you at the least sign of habit, because you were so insistent on your freedom. How did you let those charlatans take you in?”

  “Those things happen.”

  Rayan—he couldn’t understand; he didn’t need those things, not him. His mother compensated for all of them. She’d kept watch over his every step, constantly at his side, but with her gaze fixed on the distance. While he was still barely able to stand, she saw him laden with diplomas, climbing the ladder of success, a man with a chauffeur and a secretary. She’d spared no resources to make him an engineer, and a brilliant one at that, and she didn’t despair of his becoming his own boss someday.

  This was not my case.r />
  Me, I lived from hand to mouth, laughing raucously to create a diversion. I didn’t blame my lot on anyone. Existence is made like that: there are well-off people and disadvantaged people, people who succeed at everything and people who are sitting ducks. At first, of course, I tried to figure out why good fortune never smiled on me. I asked myself a bunch of other questions, but the replies were all dodges. Eventually, I stopped thinking about it. I didn’t care if I knew what was a matter of destiny and what the result of a bump in the road. Whether the sky is red or blue—what does that change for someone who’s groping his way along? I was living my life from day to day, wishing for better tomorrows like everyone else. But nothing came. Worn down by experience, I’d stopped waiting for the miracle—I no longer believed in it, and I’d decided to be content with whatever scraps destiny granted me…

  And then, wham! Those things arrive. You don’t know how they came down on you or when it started: an argument that degenerated, a racist remark, a feeling of impotence in the face of injustice—it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when the rejection of an entire society starts to germinate inside you. You grin and bear it and wait, ready to take offense. You think you can banish your old demons by brawling, but those things remain, become organs among the other organs in your body, producing toxins that infiltrate your neurons. Then some sentences start grafting themselves onto your subconscious. You’re seeing a war movie with your pals, nibbling popcorn in the back of a theater, when you hear, “What are these grunts dying for? Multinational companies? And what can they offer them in return? A minute of silence, a medal, a monument covered with pigeon shit?” You don’t pay attention to those words, you shrug and stick your hand back in the popcorn. But the words get into your brain through a trapdoor and accumulate. You’d never suspect that you’ve just absorbed a sleeper agent. Like many others, intercepted here and there. Until the day when you’re watching a TV program about jihad and you hear, “Mercenaries die for their employers, soldiers for interests that bring them nothing. Gangsters die for peanuts. But the shahid, the martyr, he never dies; he basks in the gardens of the Lord, surrounded by houris and dazzling rainbows.” At first, that goes over your head. You dismiss it as fantasy. Then one evening a neighbor, a friend, or someone you barely know starts bragging about the sermons the imam of the local mosque has been delivering. You listen out of courtesy, because you couldn’t care less about hearing the Good Word. But the brother gets back on your case every time the two of you cross paths. Often, he’s waiting at the tram stop for you to get off. In the end, he persuades you to go with him to the blind alley where the imam officiates. In reality, he hasn’t actually persuaded you. You go with him so he’ll stop nagging. That’s how it happened with me. Lyès would nag: “You have to go and listen, Khalil. Tell him, Driss, tell him what he’s missing.” And Driss: “Lyès is right. You’ve absolutely got to come to the meetings with our imam. They’ve changed my life.” “Come on, come with us, Khalil. It won’t commit you to anything. And it won’t be long. What have you got to lose? Your job? You don’t have one. Your time? It doesn’t count for you. Please, do me this favor.” Curiosity is the mother of temptations, and temptations are treacherous. After all, where’s the risk in listening to an imam? It’s better than listening to yourself talk. And so there you are, in the midst of the faithful, listening with only one ear, getting bored stiff. Your neighbor elbows you in the side by way of enjoining you to behave properly, and then to pay more attention. Little by little the sleeper agents that you’ve accumulated without your knowledge start to replace certain sensitive fibers in you. As for the imam, he has the answers to all the questions that used to torment you in the past, but he never hands you a clue capable of enlightening you; he refers you to your disappointments, to the snubs you thought you’d overcome, to your wounds that have never properly healed—the lost soul becomes your double, the rebel your Siamese twin, sermons your release, violence your legitimacy. To hell with racists, death to Islamophobes; you’re not turning the other cheek anymore. By the time you realize what’s happening to you, you’re already someone else, a brand-new person, a person not even you could have imagined. You’re respected, listened to in your turn, loved; you discover a real family, projects, and an ideal. You become a brother, and you walk among men with your head high, like a lord. The residual citizen who kept a low profile is dead and buried; you are the navel of the world, and you regret that it took you so long to join the Association. And one day, one blessed day, when you’ve already enjoyed every consideration, you’re granted access to the privilege of privileges: the revered sheikh invites you into his home, under his roof! He takes you aside, has you sit on a bench made by a craftsman from your village; embroidered pillows, carpets smelling of incense; he offers you tea and cookies freshly made by henna-stained fairy fingers. And when you’ve sipped your beverage until your thirst is gone, the sheikh looks you in the eyes, places his august hands on your shoulders, and with a penetrating voice like a salve to your heart, he asks you, “What, in your view, is Truth, Brother Khalil?” You reply at once, since the answer seems obvious to you: “It’s Almighty God, my dear imam.” To your great surprise, the sheikh disagrees; he shakes his head and solemnly confides to you, “No, Brother Khalil, on this earth, the Truth is you. For you will be asked on the last day, What thanks have you given to Him who made you a creature of love and light?” And then, all the sense you thought you had of people and things and their complexity, all the false values you were taught in school, the notions of good and evil, of guilt and contrition, the function of honor, virtue, duty, loyalty, and purity, in short, everything you thought you’d understood, learned, or experienced collapses around you like curtains of dust, and you find yourself face-to-face with the only Truth that counts: you, which is to say, either God’s soldier or Satan’s henchman.

  For you, having reached this stage of exaltation, there’s no more turning back. If a single bolt were removed, the entire framework would fall apart—and who would want to see the scaffolding of his mausoleum disintegrate?

  15

  We parted in the parking lot.

  Rayan nodded to me one last time before he drove out onto the road.

  I was a little sad to think that I wouldn’t ever see him again.

  * * *

  —

  I walked until I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. A light drizzle was spluttering over the city, and strollers deployed their umbrellas. The cafés were jam-packed; there was a soccer match on television, and the smokers outside were following the contest through the big plate-glass windows, nervously dragging on their cigarettes. Parents were picking up their children at the door of a music conservatory. A mother in front of me was hurrying to catch up with her daughter. The child, barely taller than her violin, her braids festooned with ribbons, was jumping along the sidewalk as though playing hopscotch.

  “In school this morning, the teacher said that when there are lots of girls and just one boy, you write ils, as if they’re all boys, and not elles, even though they’re almost all girls.”

  “Grammar’s like that, sweetie.”

  “Well, I think it isn’t fair.”

  It isn’t fair…The angel who’s supposed to watch over me had stuck a knife in my back. Where had I failed, to be punished in this way? How had I deserved to be alone and lost on that boulevard, where nobody sensed so much as the tiniest shock wave of the explosions raging inside me? It isn’t fair…Did I need anything else, any additional heartache to encourage me to die? I had left for Paris with my heart as light as a sparrow gliding on the air. I hadn’t hesitated for a second to press the detonator button. Did I feel fear? Not for a moment. So why even more misfortune? It seemed useless, as well as badly timed. It isn’t fair…I thought my absolute dedication exempted me from some trials, I was better than other people because I had volunteered to sacrifice myself for the good of my survivors, I could walk on burning coals or the velve
t vault of a rainbow, and there I was, limping in the rain, my toes squeezed too tight by my own shoes. It wasn’t fair; no, I didn’t deserve that fate should insult me like this.

  * * *

  —

  A shadow was walking beside me. I recognized the Manneken Pis suicide stabber. He was one of the damned, dragging his chain, his neck bent low, his eyes full of darkness.

  I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since my father disowned me.

  He resembled my grief, the suicide stabber of Manneken Pis.

  * * *

  —

  I found myself standing in front of a shop window where a variety of knives was on display. There were knives for every occasion. Swiss knives, hunting knives, butterfly knives, cigar cutters, stilettos, serrated daggers, Laguiole knives, steak knives, genuine jewels with sparkling blades and rosewood, ivory, or buffalo-horn handles. A young woman behind the counter was watching me, suddenly uncomfortable to be alone in the shop.

  * * *

  —

  Hédi wasn’t home. He’d forgotten to close the living room windows. The apartment was as frigid as a meat locker. I turned up the heat. In the vacant lot, the bums were arguing. As always. I saw them gesticulating, pushing one another, backing off, and then returning to the charge. A passerby watched, holding a dog at the end of a leash. There was no shooting star in the bruised sky for me to make a wish on, and not the smallest sign that I should accept my lot.

  I slammed the shutters on a view that no longer meant anything to me.

  * * *

  —

  Lying on my bed, I listened to my pulse as it resonated through my body.

  The harsh overhead light was gnawing at my eyes.

  I switched it off.

  The darkness calmed me down a bit. I thought about Driss and Rayan, about our Molenbeek years, about our adventures and our contests. At what point had the brothers swapped out all my points of reference? Had I really had any? I don’t think so. I was in their path, a lost object; they picked me up and kept me because nobody claimed me. What had I been before that? A fallen leaf tossed about by contrary winds. A blank page, on which they promised to write an epic poem whose hero would be me. Was I happy when I was among them? Of course. I was happy and proud; I had a visibility, a presence, an ideal, where before I’d done nothing but hang out in dives and then make my way home, clinging to walls, one hand in front of me and one hand behind, to my father’s deep displeasure. A parasite, that’s what I’d been before, a layabout beyond shame who survived by sponging off his stingy father and his miserable mother.