Anatomy of a Disappearance

by Hisham Matar

  “In that case, very good. If anything like that happens, call me immediately.”

  Neither Mr. Galebraith nor the headmaster brought up the subject. And I mentioned Father’s disappearance to no one. It became my secret.

  Some nights, lying in the dark after lights-out, I came close to telling Alexei, but I did not know what words to use. I did not know how to name what had taken place: kidnap, abduction, theft? None of them seemed right. And how was I to answer the questions that would surely follow, about why and who and how and wasn’t there anything I could do.

  In March, three months after it happened, I had taken a long walk through the hills. Buds wrapped in their velvet caskets clung to the tips of branches. Everything was on the brink of change. For the first time since I had arrived at Daleswick, the English sun warmed my skin. I had been wrong, I thought; I ought to have told Alexei. I pictured us walking through the grove and up the steep hill. We would sit on the craggy boulder there and look out onto the hills rolling and fading into the distance. We would spot our boardinghouse, small enough to hide behind a thumb. And this time we would climb here not for cigarettes and vodka, and not so that he could tell me about his life back in Germany, but to discuss a matter of the utmost importance. I could no longer wait. How ridiculous that I had left it this long, I told myself. The shock and anguish inflicted by the sudden and yet ambiguous loss of my father felt like a weight on my chest. It had never felt heavier. I wanted to roll it off onto the lap of a trusted friend who might help me make sense of it. I walked briskly back.

  I could not find him anywhere. Then, just when I began to wonder if this was not a sign, I found him in the common room watching the news. I sat on the far side, tempering my breath. Besides the library, this was the only room where talking was not encouraged. I waited for him to look my way so that I could gesture to him to follow me. I began to take notice of the news item that was holding his attention. A mother had lost a child. He had been playing in the garden. When she looked up from the kitchen sink he was gone. The cameraman zoomed onto her face as she tried to answer the reporter’s questions. It was upsetting to witness such intrusion into another’s grief. It was as if the camera took delight in the woman’s shame. I wondered what Alexei made of it.

  “How could you lose your son?” one boy called out and he was shushed down.

  Alexei continued to face the screen.

  “Stupid,” he said softly.

  I was not sure if he meant the woman on the TV or the boy who had just spoken. And because no one turned to him or told him to be quiet, I convinced myself that he meant the boy. But then Alexei jutted his chin out toward the television and got up and left the room. I watched the leather seat of his armchair fill with air.

  Nothing would be lost, I reasoned, by holding off for a few days.

  I remained agitated, uncertain whether to tell him or not, and at the height of my despair I would feel the sweat pool on my chest. One night a storm took hold of the trees outside our dormitory window. I watched them through the glass. The helpless things swung from side to side in the electric light. The mice in the attic above scurried back and forth. The wind moaned and whistled through the window. The rain, which came and went in sheets, was like a thousand fingernails tapping the glass.

  “It’s nothing, go to sleep,” Alexei said when he heard the floorboards squeak.

  The next time I woke up the world was a calm place. The leaves had hardly a breeze to contend with. In their stillness they looked exhausted. The trees on the outer perimeter of the grove had either collapsed or split into two. Alexei was fast asleep. He had slept through the rest of the storm. Something about that astonished me. What comfort allows such trust in the world?

  The stillness of that morning seemed to confirm my old instinct not to tell Alexei about my father. I made up my mind: I must keep this private. I could not bear the disquiet of another or worse, far worse, to see him fascinated, entertained by the oddity of what had happened. What is a happy German boy with happy parents to know about this?

  CHAPTER 27

  A couple of months later Alexei ran into the room we shared at Daleswick with a white piece of paper quivering in his hand. I took the letter, but it was in German.

  “My father has been offered a job in Düsseldorf. He accepted it. Annalisa can’t believe her luck. She will become a day pupil and I will do my final year there. We will all be together again.”

  He flung his arms around me. I tried to reciprocate the hug.

  “Don’t you worry, we’ll spend summers together.”

  Soon it was his last day at school. Before he had even gone to sleep he had packed his clothes, books, and records. He was leaving me Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello in G Minor because it was then the most beautiful thing I had heard. We vowed to stay in touch.

  His parents and Annalisa were coming to collect him. He seemed nervous. Then I heard he was looking for me. He took me to one side.

  “Please don’t say anything if you notice something unusual about my mother.”

  I went to the window when I heard a car come up the gravel path. Alexei ran into his father’s arms. Annalisa held her hands, waiting patiently to one side, before she, too, embraced him. She did not let go even after he had dropped his arms down. He laughed and held her again. Then his mother came, balancing on a cane. He was careful with her, hugged her softly and let his ear rest lightly on her shoulder. For a few seconds no one moved. When he let go, she leaned the stick against her hip and gestured fast with her hands. He nodded and said something in German, loudly, as if he were addressing someone hiding in the trees beyond. He looked back, and I thought it was time for me to appear. I was overtly conscious of the loud crunching noise my feet were making on the gravel. His mother was the only one who did not speak when I came to shake her hand. I understood then what Alexei had been anxious about and why that one time when he mentioned how much he missed his mother’s singing his eyes had welled. His mother, the singer, had completely lost her voice.

  During my last days in Cairo, before I had returned to school, Taleb had telephoned nearly every day. He would exchange a few words with Naima first, then ask to speak to me.

  “How is our young pasha?” he would say.

  He usually sounded cheerful. He would speak about the weather or some film he had seen the evening before. He was a great one for exaggerating: something was either fantastic or truly awful. I now wonder whether his tendency to exaggerate was not a screen behind which he hid his anxieties, for even then I sensed that Taleb not only worried about me but felt somehow responsible for what had happened to my father. I understood this, because I, too, felt responsible.

  In late January, when I had returned to Daleswick nearly a fortnight after classes started, he began to telephone every Sunday. He visited me several times too. These visits meant a great deal to me because Taleb did not speak English and seemed for all intents and purposes to dislike England.

  I told him about Hass’s call. He listened and then asked if anyone had approached me about anything.

  “Anyone like who?”

  “Anyone like anyone,” he said. When I did not speak he added, “If anyone does you call me, understand?”

  “OK,” I said, even though I had no idea what he meant.

  He would often ask when I had last seen Mona.

  “Recently,” I would tell him. “Last week,” I would say if he pressed me for a precise time, even though the truth was I only saw her every four or five weeks when she would come up for just the afternoon.

  “Good, good,” he would say. “She is a good woman. And Naima, have you called her?”

  “No, why?”

  “You should call her from time to time.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s your duty.”

  A couple of weeks later he called again.

  “Did you call Naima?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to call her? You must call her. You can’t
lose touch with her. She’s too important.”

  “But I don’t have her number.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t have her number?”

  “I have to go.”

  “Wait. I will call you back with her number. Don’t move. Five minutes.”

  I waited by the telephone for fifteen minutes then left. The following day Mr. Galebraith came to say I had a call.

  “Naima doesn’t have a phone, but this is the number of the nearby mechanic. He will fetch her. Give him time. Be patient.”

  He read me the number then asked me to read it back to him.

  “Call now. And listen, from now on call her every week.”

  “Every week?”

  “Well, once a month at least.”

  I called the mechanic, but after waiting for more than three minutes I hung up.

  A week later I called again:

  “Don’t make me bring her here again for nothing,” the mechanic said.

  “But I am calling from England; it’s expensive.”

  “Then hang up and call again in fifteen minutes.”

  After ten minutes I dialed the number.

  “He’s eager,” I heard him tell her.

  “But is that him?” Naima asked.

  As soon as she heard my voice she went quiet. Only when she spoke again did I realize she was crying. She begged me to call again, to call often.

  “What’s today?” she asked, then repeated the same question to the mechanic.

  “Sunday,” I heard him say.

  “Sunday?” she said, then to me: “I will be here, beside the telephone, every Sunday, around this time, just in case you feel like calling.” When I did not say anything, she added, “I promise the next time I won’t cry.”

  I did not call after that.

  CHAPTER 28

  I was seventeen by this time and had perfected the art of squeezing some sort of activity into every gap in the school-year calendar. I was fortunate that Daleswick was known for these trips and that, although it was unusual for any one pupil to do this all year round, it was not entirely uncommon for students there to sometimes choose to go traveling together over Easter, Christmas or summer break instead of going home. We went hiking and sailing; we attended music and theater festivals; we worked for charities and took trips for the sole purpose of seeing a significant building or museum and sometimes just one painting or piece of sculpture. My time had suddenly become precious. I remember afternoons when I would run to my room to fit in half an hour of reading before supper. I felt grateful to my good father for having chosen Daleswick and funding what I knew to be a lavish education and, ultimately, a distraction.

  All this meant that I rarely needed to visit Mona. She, on the other hand, would occasionally take the train up on Saturdays and get a room in the bed-and-breakfast in the village. She would collect me in a taxi and take me out for lunch. I lost the old thrill. A gate had shut. And she sensed it, because she leaned forward more than she used to and talked more than ever before.

  A waitress once asked if we were mother and son. I let her answer.

  “Yes,” she said, but as soon as she did her cheeks pinked.

  One time she telephoned insisting that I come spend the weekend with her. I boarded the train on Friday afternoon and arrived in London when it was dark. The somber country had given way to a triumphant city. A steady rain fell and glowed silver beneath the streetlamps. I would stop and take shelter inside shop fronts, a practice I had up to then regarded as an eccentricity of the British. But there I was, huddled with them: coated figures under a semi-effective canopy, looking out. Every so often a wind would slant the lines of rain. None of us said a word. We made sure our eyes did not meet. If they did we would quickly turn away without a smile or a nod. Looking at us, you might have thought we were avoiding the lives that awaited us at home. Then, without explanation, certainly without the rain stopping, one of us would pull up his or her lapels and continue bravely down the pavement.

  I finally located the address in Little Venice. I stood on the opposite side of the canal, looking at the lit windows. Only when I pressed the bell downstairs did I notice how wet I was.

  “Come in,” I heard her voice say, and then the buzzer went.

  She kissed my cheeks, smiled. But there was something wrong. She was in a hurry, uneasy. An old jazz record played a little too loudly. I had never known her to like that kind of music. Then I spotted a man’s brown leather jacket on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She fetched a glass, looked into the oven then banged its door shut.

  “What would you like to drink?” she asked, not looking at me.

  I heard a toilet flush, a door open and someone come out, whistling out of tune.

  “Toby, Nuri. Nuri, Toby,” was the extent of Mona’s introduction.

  I stood up and shook the man’s hand.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said.

  I looked at Mona, and she looked away.

  “Finally Crumb thought it safe that we should meet.”

  “Toby, behave.”

  “Just glad to finally meet someone from your Egyptian odyssey,” he told her. “We wondered if the old girl had deserted us.”

  After an awkward silence I asked, “Crumb?”

  She blushed.

  “I see,” he said. “Hiding it from your fancy friends.” Then to me he added, “It’s her nickname, since she was a child.”

  He looked satisfied, smiling with his keen eyes on me.

  “How’s school?”

  “I love it,” I said and could not help looking again at Mona.

  “Excellent,” Toby said.

  “He hates it,” she told him.

  “Don’t believe her,” I said. “I am having the time of my life. Really.”

  “It beats the City,” he said. “I work in finance.”

  “And on which odyssey did you and Mona meet?”

  “I like him,” Toby told her and laughed. “University, we met at university. Many moons ago. Probably before your time.”

  “What was Mona like then?”

  Toby was eager to tell me. He leaned forward and was about to speak when we heard Mona shout:

  “Enough.”

  Toby looked at her, but she was looking at me. A silence as thick as sand fell now. Suddenly the music seemed very loud, and Mona must have thought so too, because she went to the stereo and turned it off.

  “Don’t worry,” Toby told her. “I won’t embarrass you.”

  “You already have,” she muttered, and I pretended not to have heard that.

  “She was, as sadly she remains, a genuine pain in the arse.”

  She threw a tea towel at him and covered her mouth.

  “But, but,” he laughed. “A diligent student notwithstanding.” He pulled the tea towel off his shoulder. “So glad to have her back.”

  I stood up so violently that the chair fell against the wall behind me. Not knowing what to do or how to explain my abrupt movement, I looked at the time, at my father’s old watch.

  “I am sorry, so sorry … I must …”

  I slung the bag over my shoulder.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  I tried not to look too long into her eyes: how ashamed and lost they seemed, how dark and small.

  “I am already late.”

  “For what?” she said.

  “I had promised a school friend I would stay over.”

  “But you … The dinner?” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “But when will you be back?”

  “Tomorrow. Definitely.”

  Now I was winning; it felt like I was winning.

  “But you can’t just leave. And who is this friend, anyway?”

  “Alexei,” I said.

  “But hasn’t he left school?”

  “He’s in London, visiting.”

  “Give me his number. I need to know how to get hold of you.”

  “I don’t have it. I w
ill call as soon as I get there.”

  Toby placed his arm around her. “He’s not a child,” he told her.

  They followed me to the door and stood waiting as the lift crept up. I stared at my shoes. I knew that she knew that I was lying, that there was no friend expecting me and that, more than anything else, I wanted to be expected, waited for, welcomed. Now her silence came to resemble a challenge. I must not turn back, I told myself. I must prove to her that I can do this. Tears filled my eyes. I fixed them on the lift door and prayed that neither of them would place a hand on my shoulder. The lift arrived and I quickly got in. After the doors shut I heard her say, “Call as soon as you get there.”

  And just like that I was out into the night again. The rain had stopped, but the air was colder. The dampness had gone through my coat. I trembled and told myself it was not fear. I was alone in London, but I could afford a hotel. After all, that is what people do, I told myself, when they have nowhere else to stay. And I had experience. Had I not countless times followed Father to the reception desk of some hotel in a foreign city? I recalled how he used to say, “I have a booking.” And although I had no booking, it comforted me to imagine him there, beside me, just out of view to the left.

  I found a hotel more quickly than I had anticipated, on the same street, perhaps six or seven doors down, overlooking the same canal. I knotted my scarf to hide the school tie. With all the confidence I could muster I approached the reception and slowly lowered my bag.

  “I would like a room, please. I don’t have a booking.”

  He shot a glance beyond me.

  “For one,” I said, and, although his face remained uncertain, he pulled out a form and took my details.

  “Do you have a preference which floor?” he asked.

  I was not sure and could feel myself begin to sweat. Then I thought of the floor she lived on and said, “Fourth.”

  He asked for a deposit, and it was half of the money I had. Earlier that day at the bank I had imagined us going to Clarisse’s for fondue and then on to the cinema, so I had withdrawn half of my monthly allowance.

  I sat in the darkened room by the window and watched the light of the streetlamps play on the water. This was not Cairo, and the slim canal was certainly not the Nile, but I tried to imagine living here, seeing this view every day. Then I realized I was shivering. The cold had reached my bones and touched them. Mother used to run me a bath in winter. That is what I must do to kill the shiver, I told myself. I lay in the bathtub until the hot water cooled.