“Do you like relics, lieutenant?”
Assem doesn’t understand. Job’s questions baffle him. Even more baffling is the joy with which he asks them. As if he were deeply grateful to be having this nocturnal conversation with him, as if these shared night hours in this house on Al-Jnah Street were an interlude of grace. He must know, however, why Assem is there. He cannot help but know. And in spite of this a burst of real happiness goes through him when he asks his question, as if he were talking to a very old friend. He narrows his eyes and waits for the answer. When he sees that Assem doesn’t know what to say, he reaches under his armchair, then brandishes a bone. It’s a shinbone. Given its size, it can only be a human bone.
“What turns a bone into a relic?” he asks, his tone serious. “Have you ever wondered? I have. And here’s what I think. You need two ingredients: violence, and holiness.”
Then he lowers his arm and puts the bone back under the armchair. From now on Assem knows he has no control over anything anymore, that he will have to let himself be guided by Job, that he is the one who is directing the interview and that he will go on talking until he has maneuvered Assem to exactly where he wants him to be. From now on he knows the night will be open onto the sky, that it will be an infinitely long night, and that he will like this. A strange mixture of decay and power emanates from Job. Gone is the honed body he had in the photographs where he posed among the other members of the commando, but in his voice there is a solid, unshakeable strength. He senses that Job is taking him a long way away from his mission, that at this moment the concerns of the CIA are laughable. He is elsewhere.
“History stinks. Don’t you think, lieutenant? You and I both know it, because we still have that smell in our noses, isn’t that right?”
Why does he keep referring to Sirte? Because it’s obvious he’s talking about Sirte. Is he doing this to unsettle him? Or to create some sort of complicity between the two of them, to show Assem he knows where he’s been, knows what he’s been through? He keeps bringing up that moment. Is it so that the angry crowd will fill his mind and he will again feel the heat and fear of that day? Is it because he has sensed that this is Assem’s weak spot, and that what is unfolding here on this terrace is a combat? Or is it because he himself is haunted by similar memories, and he needs an acolyte to be able to confront them?
“You won, didn’t you, lieutenant? In Libya, that day. But would you say it: I won? I’m not talking about France, but about you, personally. Did you feel the victory?”
He knows he didn’t. There is no need to answer. Assem thinks it over. Has he ever felt the victory? The sense of having fulfilled his mission, yes. During Operation Serval, often. When he gave a fighter jet the precise coordinates of a high value target, heard the aircraft soar through the sky and then, a few seconds later, the explosions in the distance, followed by the radio message, “Target neutralized . . . ” But victory? No. As if absorbed by the images he has set loose, Job continues, speaking softly now.
“Have you seen Kyle and Maddox? Those American heroes . . . ”
Yes, he has seen Kyle. The sniper, celebrated throughout the country. The man with one hundred and seventeen victims. And Maddox, who managed to make the people hiding Saddam Hussein talk. What is he driving at? That it is unfair for the country to remember only them, and not Sullivan Sicoh as well?
“We chose the shadows, Job. You’ve known that from the start,” says Assem.
Job smiles at his remark.
“No. You don’t understand. It’s not that I envy them. You know what I see when I look at Maddox? You’ve seen him, in those powwows of his where he talks about his experiences, with his microphone clipped to his ear? A one-man show. He’s like some evangelist. He goes all over the South. Kansas. Louisiana. They’re all ready to pay to hear what the genius of interrogation techniques has to say . . . What bullshit. Me, what I see is defeat. His life came to an end the day Saddam Hussein was dragged out of the ground, with his hairy satyr’s head and his huge stash of money. And he knew it right away, I’m sure. He was losing his great enemy. All he had left was lectures in multipurpose meeting rooms and auditoriums. Same thing for Kyle. The American sniper. Yeah, really. The real story is not the number of men and women he killed. The real story is the wretched end he came to. Shot by another American, a guy who’d been in Afghanistan and volunteered in Haiti after the earthquake and came back stark raving mad. That’s the US in a nutshell . . . in those two men. One madman kills the other one because the country kills its children. And it’s always a defeat. And maybe Kyle even felt a sense of relief the moment he died, because at least that way he would die a hero. Maybe that is all Maddox wants. To be shot and spared all the years ahead where he goes on telling the same story, with his microphone and his bad jokes, to audiences who as time goes by will hardly have a clue who Saddam Hussein even was, or what the hell the US was doing in Iraq in the first place . . . ”
“Is that how you felt in Abbottabad? Defeated?”
Job doesn’t answer right away. He smiles gently into the night—or is it a grimace?—then turns to Assem and says, “What do we have to offer in opposition to all that, lieutenant?”
Assem says nothing. Just then he thinks of Shaveen, the young Kurdish fighter outside the entrance to the camp at Kawergosk, so lovely, holding her rifle with determination, her cartridges slung over her shoulder. There was a light in her face that made him sense she would never know the melancholy of combat. Was it because of her youth? Or because she believed body and soul in the Kurdish cause? Was it because she knew she was everything her enemies despised: a woman with long black braids who would not wear the veil and who fought like a man? She stood for everything they wanted to suppress, and if she ever fell into their hands they would destroy her. So for her, to be alive was a victory. Every hour of the day or night. When she went to the front, when she came back, as long as she was alive, she was victorious, and her very existence was an insult, a slap in their faces. Shaveen’s smile filled his mind, but he didn’t tell Job about her. That is what he has to offer, to set against the mediocrity of victory, against Maddox and his pathetic sideshows, his same old jokes and flamboyant posturing, but he doesn’t want to speak about her, doesn’t want to share Shaveen with Job. He suspects that if he did, Job would tarnish his memory of her and that would be unbearable. Or maybe it is because he knows that the man sitting there across from him must also have clung to faces like that, but has ended up feeling that basically they were no better than all the others, that they were nothing but a stronger wall against defeat; he knows that if he talks about Shaveen Job will smile and explain to him why she cannot protect him from anything—and he, Assem, does not want to be deprived of that image. So, in lieu of an answer, he says:
“What have you decided to do, Job? Play your own game? Set yourself free?”
Job looks at him calmly.
“I’m glad they sent you, lieutenant,” he says with a smile. “Because you understand. That means we will have good discussions in the future . . . ”
Assem wonders if this is his way of indicating that the interview is nearly over. He realizes he hasn’t said any of the things he’d prepared, so he starts again, with his mind on his mission:
“We haven’t talked about why I’m here.”
“But we have . . . Of course we have,” says Job, “in fact that is all we have done.” Then after a long pause he adds, “Do you really think the CIA cares about my occasional little traffic in antiquities? It’s something else. Didn’t they tell you? Of course not. They let you come and have a good sniff around and they figured the less you know, the better. That’s an insult to you . . . But I’m grateful they chose you. It could have been so much more disappointing.”
Suddenly he seems overwhelmed by a deep fatigue. He sighs. His features are drawn. He stands up and for a long time he looks at the sea in the distance. Assem can no longer see his eyes, but h
e hears his voice:
“We’ll meet again, lieutenant. Since they decided, in a way, to entrust me to you . . . ”
Just then, as if everything had been orchestrated in advance, as if, through some sort of telepathy with the night and with his men, Job could control everything, the Egyptian who had brought Assem in now appears on the terrace. He nods to Assem to inform him that the interview is over and he must go with him.
“In three weeks,” says Job, “get a room at the Menelik Hotel in Addis Ababa. We’ll continue our conversation. If our words have not abandoned us by then . . . ”
He says this last in a melancholy tone, as if he had a presentiment of the disasters to come, but almost mischievously as well, as if he could read Assem’s inner deliberations. Assem is startled. He heads for the door, waits to see if Job is going to turn around—is stunned to find he hopes he will—and just as he is resigned to leaving the terrace Job’s voice rings out one last time, louder now, almost threatening:
“Remember the bone, lieutenant. And ask your superiors what it would take to turn it into a relic. Zeal. And believe me, you can find that everywhere. Just waiting to spread . . . ”
Assem goes out. As soon as he reaches the enfilade of rooms the Egyptian walks right behind him, and he can feel the barrel of a revolver in his back. He is surprised by this sudden appearance of menace. It is as if Beirut were resurfacing. He has left Job’s terrace and his deep, spellbinding voice, and now he is back on Al-Jnah Street, playing the intelligence game—plots, trafficking—and it all makes him immediately long for the minutes or hours—he hardly knows which—he has just spent up there.
VI
CAPUA
It’s so strange to see your enemy. Not the soldiers in the opposite camp, on the battlefield, the ones who tremble just like you do and scream just like you do, praying that they will stab you in the belly and not the other way around, not those men, who are sometimes boys not even fifteen or sixteen years of age, no, it is strange to see the very heart of the enemy. That is what he is can see there before his eyes: the walls of Rome. On the other side of those walls are the temples of Juno and Demeter, the Forum, the Senate, shop stalls, the villas of the patricians, and the squalid brothels of the outlying districts. On the other side is the Empire’s money and the orders that come and go, circulating throughout Europe. His own men can hardly believe it. Everything is so close now. He remembers the crossing of the Alps and the fog on Lake Trasimene. He remembers the heat at Cannae and all those hours of forced march. After Cannae, when they went to Capua, the men were able to sleep in beds for the first time in three years. And there too he roused them from their sleep, there too he called them back to war and ordered them to march. Capua has been surrounded by the Romans. For the time being, it is resisting, but before long it will have to open its gates or die of suffocation. He must not lose Capua. It’s his only access to the sea. From Capua he will be able to send for reinforcements and alternate his men. From Capua, he can maintain the pressure on his enemy and wear down their nerves. Rome knows this. Everything depends on this. That is why they are besieging the rebel city. The trial of strength is dragging on. To try to break out of the deadlock he is commanding one part of his army and marching on Rome. He knows he does not have the wherewithal to undertake a siege. That has never been his intention. He just wants them to believe he that he does. The Empire’s capital must feel threatened. Must believe they are heading for disaster and, therefore, call back their soldiers. Then the vise around Capua will loosen and he’ll return to prepare his victory.
How long has he been killing? For how many months has war been wearing this face, a succession of ever bloodier battles? There is nothing else all around him: battlefields and circling birds driven mad by the smell of blood. There are worse things than fatigue and exhaustion. There are worse things than the horror of a hallucinatory nightmare of battle. Than hands still trembling hours after the mêlée, than horses singed by fire, than thousands of dead soldiers in a forest so dense the bullets ricochet as if caught in a lunatic labyrinth: there is the feeling of futility. A battle for no good reason. Today’s battle more than all the rest. He cannot share this thought with anyone, but he feels it, and it is destroying him. A slaughter that does not even have the virtue of being decisive. Perhaps, in the end, he does deserve his nickname, “Grant the Butcher.” How many men has he sent to their deaths since the war started? How many men have lost their lives because they obeyed the plans he made, because they followed the orders he gave? Tens of thousands. Every day they are dying, and today more than usual. What can he cling to, to keep leading men into battle? To Lincoln? Yes, perhaps. He admires him deeply, the man with the long face. And to the cause: slavery is a crime committed by humankind against humankind. He has said so, over and over. Grant must cling to this: he and his men are the forces of progress. They are the future—the only possible future—of the great country that will be born. But sometimes it seems so little in the light of those rows upon rows of supine bodies, their hair in the mud, skin already turning gray—most of them young men—it is so little . . .
She insisted on stopping off at the museum. It is deserted at this time of day, closed to the public. Which is good. That is how she wanted to see it. The inauguration was held last week. She saw the images on television. She heard the speeches the Iraqi president gave, and the head of UNESCO. What no one said was that now a race has begun. The men in black are destroying everything. Yesterday they flattened Nimrud with bulldozers. Every site they find will suffer the same fate: mallet, angle grinder, or dynamite. Which one will be next? There is talk of the temple at Hatra. They consume antiquity, doom to oblivion sites that witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire, that were there at the birth and death of nations, of civilizations.
Hannibal continues to ride along the walls of Rome, in the hopes that his enemy will panic and call the armies back from Capua in order to defend their capital. Again he asks—he has already asked three times since he got there—whether the scouts have brought any news of enemy troop movements. The answer is no. Rome has seen him, is observing him, is making comments on his presence, but has made no decisions. Will the city lose its composure? Again and again he rides past the walls. He wants to be seen, wants the guards to mention it to their superiors, wants the superiors to call the consuls and the consuls to inform the Senate. Hannibal is there, beneath your windows, prowling past the walls like a cat, relishing the prospect of the pillaging he is about to order, “Hannibal himself has come,” “The great final battle is near”: that is what he wants to hear, “Recall the armies from the south,” “Hannibal is attacking Rome,” “We must prepare for the siege,” that is what he hopes and again he asks, “Any news from Capua?” and he is told, “Nothing.” History is still hesitating and he knows there is nothing for it but to wait and remember that one day, as a child, he promised himself he would make it all the way to Rome, and today he is there, the first invader on the Empire’s lands. Yes, let them panic! Let fear confuse their minds. Because he has already accomplished something no one ever had before him.
Tonight in his tent he is weeping uncontrollably, mindful only that no one can see him. Not that he’s ashamed, but he knows that tears are a sign of weakness, and he has no right to give his men such a show. A macabre coincidence of warfare has brought them back to the same place: the Wilderness forests. One year ago a battle was fought here, against Lee’s soldiers. At the time, the Confederate soldiers defeated Hooker. The dead bodies are still there. And today the torrential rain has reopened the graves, and the men who were fighting could see they were standing on a field of bones. Those who fell, face to the ground, were conjoined with the remains of their erstwhile comrades, who welcomed them with a skeletal smile. He is weeping, his mind still full of the downpour transforming the ground into a muddy field, and the fires spreading from one spot to the next despite the rain, burning the wounded men alive. The Wilderness has devastated them. But
when he wipes his face to hide his tears, when he leaves his tent to be among his men, he thinks about Rome. “Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur.” He who conquers is not the conqueror unless the conquered admits it. He can tell no one, but as he looks at his men trying to warm themselves around a campfire, hardly speaking, trying to retrieve the sensation of being alive, he understands that defeat is not a question of losses but of movement. You have to keep going. What is at stake is not to win the battle of Wilderness, but to prevent Lee from catching his breath. He is marching on Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. The Southern general wants to slow down, play for time. He is betting on the elections about to be held in Washington. Without a clear victory, Lincoln will not be reelected and, if he is not, the Confederates will have all the latitude they need to negotiate their insurgency. That is what Lee wants. And that is what they must respond to. All through the camp, inside the tents, there are murmurs that the Union army was defeated today. And why are they saying this? Because there are seventeen thousand bodies lying there in the woods, their faces still lit by the dying embers from the fires? As long as History continues to hesitate he will not be conquered, and for the time being, that is what it is doing. It must be forced. That is why he is ordering his men to get to their feet. Tomorrow the army will set off again and continue southward toward the enemy capital. Tomorrow the army will be on the march and as long as it is on the march there will be no defeat.
Hear Our Defeats Page 10