by Jamal Naji
He told me that al-Walid had been promoted and was now a commander on the battlefield. He also spoke about al-Walid’s heroic deeds and praised them immensely, with great pride and confidence, as if the only thing I was concerned about was bravery, attacks, and hitting tanks with rockets, when all I wanted to hear about was when he was going to come back to me.
“Mrs Umm al-Walid,” he asked, “do you know a man called Sari?”
My heart started pounding.
“A man with a pale complexion came to see me a while back,” I said. “His hair was parted. He was around fifty. I don’t remember his name. He came to see me in the shop.”
He was startled. “That was Sari. What did he want? Why did he come?”
“I remember he asked me about al-Walid,” I said.
He asked me if it would be all right to come by again and I told him that would be fine. He paused and then he urged me and made me promise to watch out for Sari. Then he said goodbye, promised to come back to visit as soon as he got the chance, and left.
I realized he didn’t give me his phone number or address, so I followed after him calling, “Omar! Omar!” But he didn’t respond. When I caught up to him and called his name he finally noticed me. “You didn’t give me your phone number,” I said.
Looking down at the ground, he said, “No, Mother. It’s best for both of us if you don’t know my phone number.”
“What about your real name? You didn’t tell me what it is. If your name was really Omar, you would have heard me calling after you from the moment you left the shop.”
“Yes, it’s true,” he said. “But these are necessary precautions, Mother.”
Samah Shahadeh
Fawaz was no longer capable of uninterrupted sleep.
In the past, he would put his head on the pillow at midnight and wouldn’t wake up until seven in the morning.
Seven full hours on the dot.
His hours of sleep decreased ever since our encounter with Uroub. Then they started becoming interrupted. I could see some sluggishness hiding in his eyes behind those eyeglasses.
A few days ago, I woke up and was tiptoeing to his bedroom. When I found him I saw he was wide-awake, not doing anything.
Sometimes he would close his eyes and appear to be sleeping, but I didn’t think he was really asleep. Sometimes he would fall into a never-ending coughing fit. But a few days ago he nearly choked. A severe choking fit woke him out of sleep and nearly killed him. I heard him coughing and panting from my room, so I rushed to him. His breathing was belabored, as though the air was caught in his throat. His face became blue-black and his eyes and eyelids turned red. Tears rolled down his face. I brought him some water and was about to call his doctor, but he pointed at me and waved his finger in sharp refusal.
When he settled down, I went and made two cups of anise tea and went to him. I put the tray with the two cups down onto the small table and then sat on one of the chairs there in the room. He got out of bed and sat down beside me in the other chair.
He began to wipe his face and eyes with a wet paper towel. As soon as he was finished, he glanced over toward the window. He seemed distracted.
Lately he had been avoiding looking me in the eye.
“The doctor should have come to see what happened to you,” I said.
“It happens to people all the time. Just a choking fit and now it’s over.”
I proceeded to change the subject. “I find it hard to believe the terrorists have singled you out from among all the dignitaries in the country. What is troubling you? Have you gotten entangled in political wrangling, or have you had a falling out with one of your clients over a large sum of money and you’re worried he’ll take revenge?”
He took a sip from his cup. Then he sighed and said, “If only the matter had to do with money.”
“No matter the reason, it isn’t fair to hide it from me. Together we can work out a way to relieve you from whatever is troubling you.”
He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “What I know is that you don’t work in politics and you have no enemies. Unless I am mistaken.”
“Is there anyone in this world who has no enemies?” he said.
In past years, Fawaz had a much easier time overcoming obstacles that came his way. Sometimes he even got ahead of events before they happened. He used to tell me – whenever I would ask him how he managed to solve a certain problem – it was his excellent intuition, using that expression he borrowed from my father and always used, “A padlock cannot withstand the power of gold.”
Had the power of gold deserted him this time? Or was it that old age had turned gold into a worthless hunk of metal? My thoughts grew slow and sluggish. Maybe his intuition had dulled?
His eyes roamed about the room. Then he said, “What will you do if something happens to me?” He gave a slight show of emotion on saying this.
Abu Hudhayfah
We caught the person who shot and tried to kill Darrar al-Ghoury and brought him into custody. We nabbed him a few days after Darrar left. How I wished Darrar had stayed with us long enough to see his adversary face to face and take his revenge.
The guards found him near the camp at night. His name was Yasin, and he was a Syrian national, one of the many who had been displaced to Zaatary refugee camp in north Jordan. He confessed during the interrogation that he was the one who tried to kill the mujahid Darrar al-Ghoury, may God ease his path, and under torture he spilled the name of the person who sent him on his despicable mission. He said all he knew was his first name, which was Sari, and had no knowledge of where he worked or for whose benefit he’d been sent.
I thought he told us everything he knew, because Commander Sharhabil undertook the torturing himself, and Yasin kept repeating that all he knew was his name was Sari, and that he got 1,000 dollars from him, near Zaatary refugee camp, in return for killing Darrar. And he would get another 2,000 dollars once he’d done it and come back to the camp. When Commander Sharhabil ordered him to pull the 1,000 dollars out of his pockets and show him, Yasin started crying and said he had given it to his wife in the camp before coming, so she could take care of their three children. Sharhabil blew up in anger and smacked him over the head with the butt of his machine gun.
“I don’t think he’s hiding anything,” I said to Commander Sharhabil. “He’s not vying patiently or waging jihad for religion or for any cause; he did it for money.”
“Then the only thing to do is kill him,” he replied.
Blood poured from Yasin’s fingers and head, while his face was pale and trembling. His knees shuddered and he looked pleadingly at the commander who was cleaning out the wax from his ears using a swab meant for cleaning weapons, and scratching the bottom of his chin with the fingernails of his other hand.
But not a chance! Commander Sharhabil chose a very strange death for him: He gave him a spade and ordered him to dig a hole in the very place where he had tried to kill Darrar. When he finished, Sharhabil ordered Yasin to lie down in the hole, and when he did, bullets rained down on him from Sharhabil’s machine gun. The smell of gunpowder filled the air. Sharhabil emptied an entire round of ammunition into Yasin’s body, which started flopping about inside the hole. Then Sharhabil ordered that Yasin’s corpse be covered with dirt before putting his machine gun back on his shoulder and brushing his hands together to clean them off. Then he said, loud enough for everyone who had gathered around the hole to hear, “Let him be a warning to others.”
But a sudden feeling of uncertainty came over me, despite my joy at having caught that traitor. It had to do with something Sharhabil had told me before, which was that Darrar knew a Jordanian man named Sari whose name he mentioned a little while back. And he asked me if that bit of information meant anything to me.
I didn’t know what to say to him, despite my attempts to piece things together. In the end, that fellow Sari sent Yasi
n to kill Darrar, according to his confessions. It wasn’t unlikely that he was connected to one of the branches of the secret intelligence that were targeting the mujahideen.
I reminded Commander Sharhabil of that information in case it would help us. He fell silent, looked directly into my eyes, and then turned his face right and left, as if sniffing out his surroundings. But he didn’t say a word, which was his habit – a habit that so often won him a certain level of obscurity, and elicited much curiosity.
The next day, he doubled up security in and around the camp and changed the nighttime password.
Sari Abu Amineh
I hadn’t lost hope, but I was afraid, because I didn’t know where Walid went after Darrar was killed – Darrar, who I’d enlisted for the purpose of frustrating and overpowering fate. And I also hadn’t foreseen losing touch with the Syrian Yasin, who killed Darrar. Where had he gone?
I was cut off from Walid’s news, and that was what terrified me.
Could they have caught Yasin? Did he confess about me? But what would he confess? Like Darrar, all he knew was my first name. He didn’t know where I worked or who I worked for, didn’t know where I lived, and didn’t have a picture of me, either.
The only real danger was Walid, since if he came to Amman he would be able to figure out who I was through his mother.
Couldn’t he have come back to Amman without my knowing?
Everything was possible now that Darrar was dead; news about Yasin and Walid was cut off now that those two were gone.
Once again I had the feeling that death was dancing around me and taunting me. Maybe it would grab hold of me at any moment.
I went to see Umm al-Walid at her shop, which was called Nouveauté Al-Hidaya.
It was a small shop, no more than sixteen square meters in area, and was filled with robes and Islamic women’s clothing hanging on pipes and folded in piles on shelves. What was irritating about the shop was that it was located in the heart of Swayleh on the right side of the main road leading to the Jordan Valley region. It was a street teeming with cars and pedestrians with all their noise and commotion, and with a mixture of smells from car exhaust, roasting meat, garbage and chicken reeking in the trash bins.
When I saw Umm al-Walid for the first time, I found myself staring with curiosity at the features of her face. I couldn’t erase that image I had in my mind of her – the image of a woman who had surrendered her body to the Basha in a Paris hotel, where he did to her what a husband does to his wife, and possibly more.
And even though she knew I had been privy to her whole story, she hadn’t flinched one bit when I confronted her with the fact of her illegitimate son.
More than that, her tone was confident, free of shame, as if what she had done were nothing more than voluntarily submitting to some outdated medical test.
She received me this time with a degree of disdain. There was a lot of force and anger in her voice, more than the time before.
“Praise God for Walid’s safe return,” I said.
I felt – after a few moments passed – that what I said hadn’t sounded good.
She replied after a pause, “Listen, Mr Sari. Don’t go looking for evil, for evil knows your address.” Then after another pause she added, “I told you you’d be better off staying away from me and al-Walid. Tell that to your boss Fawaz, too.”
She finished folding the clothes she was holding without looking at me.
“Mrs Umm al-Walid,” I said, trying to appease her, “I’ve come to help you. If you need any help, I am ready, at the Basha’s command. If you want to advance your business or you need any amount of money, we are ready. The Basha never forgets his friends.”
She placed what was in her hands on one of the shelves, and leaned on her elbow against the countertop. She looked into my face and said, “Truly I am in need of your help.”
“At your service, Mrs Umm al-Walid,” I said.
“I want Fawaz’s address.”
With that I tried to keep calm and asked her, “Why do you want the Basha’s address?”
“I can get it myself,” she said. “I’m only asking you for it to save time.”
“Do you want his address so you can go visit him, for example?” I asked.
She looked away from me and went back to folding a shirt on her table. “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe someone else will pay him a visit.”
Muntaha al-Rayyeh
Even though I had made peace with myself concerning that old, fleeting escapade with Fawaz, I couldn’t forget the abuse I’d been subjected to when I tried to call him and when the Porcupine confronted me with his suspicious eyes. Fawaz hadn’t bothered to ask after me: Had I gotten pregnant from him? Had my family found out and killed me, for example?
It seemed he was the kind of man who thought a woman who succumbed to a man was dishonorable.
I felt that al-Walid’s comrade, who had called himself Omar, had come to do something about Sari or Fawaz. His words were extremely forceful.
Life had become complicated once again.
I felt that in life there were unseen lines and strings that led me and influenced my life without my seeing or feeling them.
Maybe my isolation at home after being widowed caused me to think about life and people’s conditions, and about the events I had been through but had not attempted to interpret.
What made my head spin as I sat behind my counter at the clothing shop was that that meager sheikh I had seen when I spoke with Sheikh Abu Muhsin, the imam of the mosque, suddenly came through the door of my shop and said, “As-salaamu alaykum.”
Then he sat down on the chair across from me behind the counter without asking permission.
His beard was white and his face appeared long and tiny below his headdress.
“Don’t you remember me?” he asked, staring at me with his pitch-black eyes encircled by their red eyelids.
“‘God creates forty people with the same looks,’ sheikh,” I said.
He lowered his head and started fiddling with his prayer beads. “May God have mercy on Abu al-Walid,” he said.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Yes, and I participated in his funeral – may God have mercy on his soul,” he answered.
I looked carefully at his face while he was occupied with his beads. Maybe he did it intentionally so I would examine his features.
Suddenly he looked up at me and said, “You used to call me the Porcupine at the Malco Company where you worked under my supervision.”
I felt something akin to an electric shock shoot through my body and stop the blood from flowing in my veins. I found myself slapping my head and forehead with the palms of my hands, and then covering my eyes with them.
The Porcupine!
After thirty years, the manager who used to hit on me and all the other female employees had turned religious? With a beard and short dishdasha robe and all? After he had known everything under the sun except God the Almighty?
And he knew Nael! And went to his funeral!
All I could think to do was get myself away from that place. Nothing I could have said or done would have been enough to lessen my shock. Going home was the only solution.
I got up and said nervously, “I want to close the shop, please.”
“Is this how you welcome your old boss?” he asked, laughing. “The friend of your late husband, in the shop you inherited from him?”
I stormed angrily towards the door. “Please, before I lock the door.”
He didn’t move. He cast a glance at me that brought me back to the moment when he first set eyes on me after I got back from Paris. That offensive look.
“What happened to your premature son? Did he find out who his father is?”
He said “premature” sarcastically.
I pulled myself together and said, “
Listen, Porcupine. I know that God Almighty can bring life back to decaying bones, but I do not think He would bring them back to life so they can deceive people or avenge themselves on them! What do you want from me?”
He stood up. “Nothing,” he sighed. “O God, ‘Give admonition in case the admonition profits (the hearer).’xii But fortunately, I still have the Malco Company record books, the ones we used to work on together. Do you remember them?”
“What have I got to do with that failure of a company?” I said.
He shook his head. “I was looking through the papers and found some receipts having to do with you: the record of your visa to Paris, the price of the plane ticket, your vacation, travel expenses, and your signature on everything, a copy of your passport with the visa and exit and entry stamps. You know those cursed documents. Would you like copies before I send them?”
I shuddered. “Who are you sending them to?” I asked.
“Al-Walid, of course.”
“And so what if I traveled to Paris before I was married?” I screamed. “That’s if your mail reaches him!”
“I forgot to mention I have a record of the dates: your trip, your return, your marriage, and your conception of al-Walid. The pregnancy was conceived roughly two months before your marriage, while you were in Paris. His birth date attests to that. May God have mercy on your soul, Nael.”
I summoned all my strength. “Are you trying to act as a deputy for God, the Lord of the Worlds, and dole out my punishment yourself? What do you want from me?”
He stood up. “Al-Walid! Is he here now, in Jordan? I want his phone number. And has anyone come to see you on his behalf?”
My voice cracked when I answered, “Al-Walid is in Syria and doesn’t have a phone. Nor does he want one. And no one has come to see me on his behalf.” Then my voice took on a pleading tone while tears of defeat spilled from my eyes. “What can I do to make you leave me alone?”
