Voices of the Lost

by Hoda Barakat

  My father believed them immediately. He didn’t ask me about it. He just snarled, ‘Get out of my house and don’t you dare ever come back.’ When he raised his hand to slap me, I grabbed his arm, meaning to snap it in half. Instead, I spat into his face and walked out. I didn’t feel the slightest sympathy for him. He was pushing me away, back to the place where I’d become this person, so that I would stay there for good, and I knew it was somewhere I’d be exempt from having to ask myself any hard questions, happy enough in my lower world, my shadow world.

  My world – this underworld of mine. It kept me safe, like a giant warm womb, preserving me, the orphan without family. My only regret was that I didn’t have more of an education, because then I could have gone for all the promotions. But I was satisfied enough. Anyway, given what or where I was, or what I had become, it wasn’t possible to pull out or take a position of neutrality. So why should I punish myself with thoughts of remorse? Anyway, who was I to claim that these people were corrupt, immoral and murderous? And would I prefer returning to the hell I’d been in before? I loved being alive, and I wasn’t the only one who was staying alive through such means. There were more of us than there are grains of sand in the desert. I wasn’t in on all the secrets, and I didn’t have all the information they had gathered. It made more sense simply to believe in what my masters and chiefs said and what they told us to do.

  Were all these people thieves and sadists? No, certainly not. And some of them were my friends. We ate together, drank together, told jokes, enjoyed ourselves. Sometimes we exchanged tips based on our experiences conducting investigations. We weren’t the political experts. Those people had their skills and their experience, their apparatuses, their files. They were the source of our information. In any case, we didn’t trust those we interrogated, those who despised our country and our leader, and so, of course, despised us too. The truth is, our long practice in torture meant we knew exactly what would happen to us if we were to show any sympathy to anyone: that is, to put ourselves in their place. That old fear of mine had killed off any pity I might’ve felt for anyone. The only way to be safe was to be hard. It was much better not to try looking for the truth by listening to those we detained. Anyway, people who are locked up always lie, trying to save their skin.

  There was no point in thinking about it, or in hesitating. Even when perhaps we went further than was demanded of us. That happened to me when I was beating one of those operatives who fancied himself a philosopher. The club flew, missed his back and hit his head and… May your life be long! The head of our operation said, ‘Give him a number and take him away. Get rid of him somewhere away from here.’

  All this made me understand, in some kind of final and absolute sense, that God is absent from this lower world, and that God left it to us to run things. So this must all be God’s wisdom. I am a believer. It was God who gave me this mighty strength, because it is God who has planned and designed everything from the very beginning, even if our tiny brains cannot comprehend the greatness of His ends. That’s why I was ready to obey my superiors. And since sometimes obedience isn’t enough, I was one of those who commit perfectly executed atrocities on their own initiative, even before any orders are received.

  I didn’t want anything more than that, though of course I would have preferred to be able to send you more money. I know that was what I was thinking, but time defeated me. I still had a few stolen goods in my pocket – I hadn’t sold them yet – when the world turned upside down. The big bosses disappeared all at once and the people invaded our headquarters and attacked us. The demonstrations mounted by debauched atheists and the dirty mobs turned into rivers of human bodies. I still don’t know how I managed to slip out of their hands, which were pounding me from every side, hands and canes and stones. I fled.

  I fled without a moment’s thought. I spent long days and nights wandering aimlessly, covered in blood. In a neighbourhood on the edge of the city, a woman took me down to the river and washed me. She asked me if I was one of the men who had escaped from the prisons, and I said I was. When her sons returned home I started telling them I’d been in prison but had no idea what the location of that prison was. They’d taken me there blindfolded, I said. I talked about how they tortured me. I gave her sons all the details I knew so well. That was how I found myself in the opposition. From one opposition to another, I discovered there are many ways to get yourself somewhere else. I told myself, whatever it costs, whatever the dangers, I will travel, I will move on. In whatever country among God’s countries it is, I will find some security. I’ll begin a new life.

  My beloved mother, I began a new life here, I really did. I learned what I had to of the language they speak here, in a short time. Then I entered the endless tunnel that is the process of getting papers. All the money I had was gone, after I’d paid a big sum to the smuggler who put us on a ship, and then more to the smuggler who set us on the overland route. We were on our feet for weeks. I followed the advice of everyone – individuals, organizations – who had anything to do with this process. In the last appointment I ever had with anybody from an aid centre or asylum seekers’ bureau, the caseworker took out a thin dossier from her desk drawer and opened it. ‘Someone from your country has testified against you. He says he knew you in the camp, he watched you, and you were working with the secret police. He says you personally supervised his torture in a cellar at one of their prisons.’ I denied it all, with very strong words. ‘Fine,’ said the woman. ‘But we will need to investigate.’

  I never went back. I didn’t go back to the refugee camp either. I was afraid of people who might recognize me. I slept in the streets with the Afghans and the Ethiopians. The Red Cross and some Islamic types brought us food and blankets. But then they kicked me out because of the alcohol. I had to join the huddled drunks with bottles clutched in their fists. I didn’t last long among them. On one particularly cold day, they beat me and took my winter jacket.

  Now I’m thinking about coming back. I mean, at this moment if the police arrest me, the only choice they would give me is to go back to my native country, if they give me any choice at all. Because they would like to get rid of us. I could buy a plane ticket and take a chance on getting inside. Once I’m inside the borders, I can look for a way to escape again. I’d have to find someone quickly who could get me forged papers. No matter what, I can’t stay here, not in this country and not in the airport. Although for now it seems I’ve still got the space to keep on writing to you.

  It was a cold and rainy day – the kind of drizzle that never stops and sends its dampness straight into your bones. I was trying to protect myself from it by pressing my back against the glass front of a supermarket, talking to a young man who was handing out free ad papers to anyone entering or leaving the store. In other words, he was a beggar. I couldn’t help laughing when he began telling me his dreams of travelling to Hollywood, where he would definitely become a big actor, and then from there he would help me out…and so forth. I could tell from his accent that he was from Eastern Europe. I asked him where. ‘Albania,’ he said. ‘Muslim, like you. I’d be willing to bet you’re an Arab.’ There was something about him I liked; or rather, I felt comfortable with him. Maybe it was because he was a beggar living off his own efforts. He wasn’t trying to survive by informing on people or stealing and selling young girls.

  A woman came out of the supermarket. She had yellowish hair and looked about sixty. She stopped, fishing for some change in her handbag to give to the Albanian. ‘You’re soaked,’ she said to me. ‘How can you manage in this cold? Where are you from?’ I mumbled an answer. ‘Aah, such a shame. I know your country, I love it. I have been there many times.’ Et cetera, et cetera. When she saw that I wasn’t inclined to chat about the magnificence and charm of my country, she changed course. ‘Where do you sleep?’ she asked us. ‘There are places that take in people without…when it’s this cold.’ Putting the coins in his pocket, the Albanian said he slept at a friend’s place, b
ut anyway, he was going to emigrate. He was leaving for the United States soon. ‘And you?’ she asked me. When I turned my head away, not wanting to speak, she apologized for intruding on my business. She asked us if we wanted her to go back into the store and buy us anything. Anything except alcohol, she said to us, and then she wished us a good day and left.

  She was back the next evening, with a very large carrier bag in her hand. She began talking about detestable egotism, and how one must think about other people…and so forth and so on, and that any human being is vulnerable to hard times, and how much likelier that is if he’s having to suffer through wars and terror and leaving home…and on and on and on. Then she pulled a big puffy jacket from the bag and presented it to me with words of apology, hoping I would accept her modest gift. The Albanian had given me a thick woollen shawl. As soon as he saw the coat he came round the other side of me, undid the shawl from around my neck and said, ‘C’mon, thank the lady.’ I put on the coat and she seemed very happy. She began thanking me for having accepted her gift, which she called ‘little’, not waiting for me to come up with words of gratitude or acknowledge the favour.

  I went down to the riverbank with the Albanian, to eat. He opened the carrier bag and began lining up its contents on the grass. I got into the habit of going to the river whenever I felt depressed or upset. I would stare into the moving water, and gradually I would settle down, and finally even fall into a pleasant state of drowsy stillness. I don’t know why, back home, I never went to the riverbank near where we lived to calm myself. As if, once I was older, I had forgotten how I used to swim there with the other boys, how we would bob around in the only kind of bliss that we were ever allowed to have. We munched on wild grasses and sucked the eggs we found in nests. But later on, I never went, as if the water there was not real water. As if that had been another childhood, belonging to another man.

  Then the Albanian started going on as if he were acting out a scene in one of his films. He said my mother must have made a vow for me on Laylat al-Qadr while celebrating the revelation of the first Qur’an verses to Muhammad. Or he said something like that, in his own manner of speaking. He said I ought to smile back at that woman who gave me the coat. I should humour her and be nice to her. At least I should answer her questions! He was fingering the hem of the coat. It was excellent quality, he added, an expensive brand only rich people wore. This woman must certainly be wealthy, he told me, and she probably lived alone, and he thought she was taken with me. ‘I’ll bet you she comes by again,’ he said. He was an expert on women about her age, he said, women who lived alone and miserably, because their native countries weren’t anything like our countries, where we took care of elderly ladies and respected the aged. I let him go on talking and we started joking around about old ladies’ romances, and remembering how the Prophet Muhammad warned against falling for older women because it shortens your life. I even started mock-scolding him, saying that this woman he was talking of must be about the age of his mother. He stopped joking. ‘God have mercy on her soul,’ he said. ‘We’re not talking about mothers.’

  When I stepped into her home, I was feeling convinced that God wanted to help me, and it was God who had sent this woman to me. He wanted to test my intentions about turning over a new page in my life. Her place wasn’t a rich person’s home, as the Albanian had imagined it. But, for me, warmth was the highest possible level of luxury, followed by a bed, any bed.

  I had to forget my former life, the good and the bad. And I did forget it. When I sank into the tub filled with hot water, I didn’t want to come out for anything, even a promise of Paradise. This providential woman, I would have kissed her hands. I did everything she asked. I helped her clean and tidy the flat, and wash and iron, and cook. Occasionally I surprised her by cooking one of our dishes.

  Sometimes she asked me about my life. I always told her I didn’t like to remember a past that had been so frightening, and I just wanted to forget all the pain and anguish I’d been through. After that, she started saying how much she wanted to help me get papers. And then, that she didn’t understand why I refused. I told her I didn’t want those documents. Then I asked her whether my staying there was risky for her. She said the law forbade her to take in foreign migrants, especially those without papers. She was a free woman, she said, and she did whatever she thought was the best thing to do. But because of this, she insisted that I not leave the flat, and that I must not open the door to anyone who knocked. Even the curtains – I had to leave them closed, and the lights out, whenever she wasn’t home. This is what we had to do until we could find some solution.

  When she was at work, I set the radio to the station that broadcasts in Arabic, which she showed me, or I watched TV if there was a boxing match, or a body-building programme, or football. It reminded me of the club. I would start trying to guess which of the guys there had told on me, or thinking back to things I’d said that they wouldn’t have liked much. Then I repeated to myself that it was just jealousy. One of them must have envied my good body and the strength of the blows I could deliver, and so he invented some story to slander me. He claimed I insulted our president and leader, and that I was a communist or an Islamist and a member of the Brotherhood. It’s possible that I let myself speak a little too grandly in front of those young men. Yes, because I was trying to keep distant the humiliation of the adolescent whose father beat him in front of people as if he was still a little boy. I’d begun claiming I had views and ideas, and that I knew a lot of things there that no one else knew, and so…

  I could have become a famous boxer.

  But I don’t have any regrets about anything. To feel any remorse, I would have to know what it is I ought to be sorry about, but to this day, I don’t know. I don’t know what was in those pages of written confessions and regrets that they forced us to sign with our own blood. And anyway, how can I think about ‘regret’ when I really didn’t have any choices to make? Maybe I ought to regret showing off my strength so grandly to the men in the prison, or the lies I told to slander the sons of good families. But God understands that I was forced to do these things. God might remind me sternly that I got pleasure from the things I did, and that I was proud of them. This is true. If God questions me on these things, I will ask Him, ‘What do You think led me to do that?’ ‘And You – why did You abandon me?’ ‘Why didn’t You…?’

  When the woman was not at home, sometimes I slid into a bad depression. ‘My life has no meaning,’ I would tell myself. ‘This woman will throw me out soon, because everything ends sooner or later. And I won’t be able to go on forever lying about my papers.’

  I began opening cupboards and wardrobes and drawers when she was out of the house. From some papers of hers that I came across, I learned that she was in her mid-fifties. So she was quite a lot younger than she looked – probably due to the wrinkles across her face and hands. Even more likely, it was the moustache hairs that she apparently made no attempt to pluck out. She didn’t pluck or shave anything, not her eyebrows or her underarms or her legs. By this time, she had begun to move around the house in front of me in thin, revealing garments, without any show of embarrassment. I would tell myself, ‘She’s at home, it’s her way of being comfortable, free to do whatever she wants in her own place.’ And I would remind myself, ‘This is the way foreigners are. They aren’t ashamed to show bare skin like we are.’ I felt some shame and embarrassment, but she didn’t.

  Then she started telling me about the life she’d had with the man whose clothes still hung in the wardrobe. She told me how he had been unfaithful to her. He’d betrayed her, stolen her money and disappeared. One time I asked her – I wanted to show some interest in her story – why she still kept his clothes after everything he had done to her. She laughed and said she had lived the most beautiful days of her life with him, and she still loved him, and one day he would come back because no one else in the whole world would ever love him as she had loved him. Every so often, she said, she would air o
ut his clothes and lay them in the sun, and wash and iron the white shirts, since otherwise, if they stayed shut away in the dark, they would go yellow. When I asked her how I would recognize him when he arrived, so that I would know it was all right to open the door, she said, ‘You don’t need to worry about it, he still has the key.’

  From that day on I couldn’t shake off a terrible sense of anxiety. But I didn’t know how I could go on living with this awful feeling of uneasiness and fear. It became impossible for me to put on the jacket she had given me because I began to smell his odour in it. I no longer went anywhere near his clothes in the wardrobe. My heart would start pounding against my ribs whenever I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. But at least I did come up with a plan. If he were to return when she was out of the house, I thought, I would just say that I was a new tenant, and I didn’t know anything about the woman who used to live in this flat. In fact, I would take the key from him.

  I knew, then, that the blessed comfort I’d known in that place would not last. I knew that God wouldn’t give me much more breathing space. That was just the way things were; there was no logical reason for it. After all, what good could result, or who would benefit, from punishing me? I began finding it intolerable to stay in the flat alone. By the end of the day, when the woman came home, I would be in such a high state of tension that I couldn’t hide it. She thought my anxiety was because I didn’t have papers, and so she would go on at me again, asking what it was I wanted to do, and why I refused to start the procedures, to submit the official request I would have to make in order to get those papers. This went on, until one evening she said she had learned about a new organization that could lessen the period of time one waited for acceptance – or rejection. This group could help me to replace the documents I had lost on the way, or that had been stolen from me by vagrants, which was what I had told her. Then she said, with a big smile that only accented her moustache hairs more, ‘I told them about you.’