The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  Jacob nods and moves his chair closer to him. For a moment he thought there were no pictures. That there was only this blinding passion, Myriam’s version, and guns taped under tables.

  Yassim’s fingers fly over the keyboard, putting in his password, and Jacob focuses on memorizing what he types. Just numbers. 201207… He doesn’t see the last two. Fuck!

  The background is a solid blue. There’s only one nameless folder on the desktop. Yassim quickly clicks on a Photoshop icon in the dock and the screen fills with tiny pictures. He also finds a folder on the left side that Jacob didn’t see at first and clicks on it. Eight thumbnail images appear on the screen and he clicks on the first one. It’s of a small, dirty boy sitting in the back of a truck with a blank stare. Around him is only rubble and ruins.

  ‘Western Aleppo,’ Yassim says, and clicks on the next picture.

  A house that’s lost its whole front wall, so that you can see straight into people’s apartments, like a doll’s house. Armchairs and sofas and beds. Yassim enlarges the image.

  ‘The table was still set,’ he says.

  He shows a few more pictures of civilians, ordinary people in the midst of indescribable destruction and misery. Then he stands up and shares the rest of the coffee between them.

  Jacob takes out his phone and takes a picture of what’s on the screen. ‘Terrible,’ he says. ‘I honestly don’t understand how you have the strength to face it. Or the bravery to go there.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Yassim says and turns around. ‘Stop taking fucking pictures of the screen, okay?’ His voice is suddenly empty again, like the first time Jacob was here. Like when he said if he had secrets he’d hide them better.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jacob says. ‘I’m deleting them. I didn’t know I couldn’t, just wanted something of yours.’ Was that the reason he was photographing them?

  ‘Delete them,’ Yassim says. ‘The resolution is shitty, and they haven’t been published yet.’

  Jacob opens the Photos app on his phone, marks the pictures and holds his thumb above the trash icon. But he doesn’t press. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You have to ask me first,’ Yassim says. He’s at Jacob’s side now, staring into his eyes. He slowly bends forward and grabs Jacob’s chin hard. ‘We’re not married, no matter how much you like me. Do you understand?’

  Jacob nods. He feels stupid and naive again. At the same time it makes him horny to be reprimanded by Yassim. He’s attracted to his violence, for better or worse. And he hasn’t deleted the pictures.

  ‘I’m just impressed by you,’ he says quietly. ‘I can’t understand how you can go back and forth to Aleppo, that you can do the things you’re doing.’

  Yassim lets go of his chin and laughs weakly. He shrugs and drinks his coffee.

  ‘You do what you have to do,’ he says. ‘I know the city now. Have my contacts. I just don’t have the energy to discuss it when I get home. It’s two different worlds. Sometimes it feels like even more than that.’ Yassim bites his lower lip and looks at him with those eyes Jacob has never been able to hide from. Then he stands up and walks over to the kitchen area.

  ‘There’s so much…’ Yassim begins again with his back to Jacob. ‘So much I can’t share with you. Especially not here in Beirut.’

  He turns around and looks at Jacob with bottomless eyes. Their expression equal parts tragic and terrifying. Jacob wishes he hadn’t pushed him to the limit, wishes they could just have gone on like before, without any of this, without forcing them here. But this is where they have ended up.

  ‘What kind of things?’ Jacob asks. ‘What do you feel like you can’t share?’

  But the moment has passed, Yassim has covered the abyss in his eyes, forced it away again, and replaced it with a slanted, somewhat annoyed smile. ‘Don’t you have to work today?’ he says, moving towards Jacob. ‘Say no.’

  Jacob shakes off the feeling he had a few seconds ago. He thinks of the pictures on Yassim’s computer. Of the interviews he should transcribe. But nobody cares, of course. It’s just an activity to fill the time.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing I can’t reschedule.’

  Yassim grabs his cheeks and kisses him on his mouth. ‘Good!’ he says. ‘You know what people who want to see each other without being seen in Beirut do, don’t you?’

  Jacob shakes his head. ‘What?’

  ‘They go to Byblos.’

  *

  They take off in Yassim’s VW Golf, head north over the uneven highway under the autumn sun, make their way out of Beirut, past the beaches and the casino in Jounieh, in between the mountains and the sea.

  ‘They say it’s the oldest city in the world,’ Jacob says. ‘That people have been living there for seven thousand years.’

  Yassim just nods and puts a hand on his thigh. Jacob has been reading about Byblos, and he remembers Agneta saying that Byblos was a place to get away from the watchful eye of one’s family, a temporary retreat for a date or affair. Nevertheless, it feels strange to be with Yassim outside the apartment.

  It takes only half an hour to get there in such light traffic, and Yassim has a completely Lebanese attitude to parking – he has no problem leaving the car halfway on a sidewalk close to an intersection.

  A short walk between historical ruins among a few school field trips and tourists, and they’re sitting down at Pepe’s, close to the harbour with the sea in front of them shining like brass in the afternoon sun. Jacob orders a glass of white wine, Yassim only water, and then they go to the refrigerated counter to point out what fish they want grilled up. It’s expensive, more expensive than Jacob was expecting, but Yassim just waves off his attempts to object.

  ‘My treat,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  They’re in the middle of their appetizer – hummus and bread, always hummus and bread – when Yassim’s phone rings and he apologetically rises and heads for the stairs that lead to the fishing boats in the marina. Jacob watches him go. Yassim’s face is tense again. That abyss in his eyes is back; he can see it even from this distance. Jacob takes a gulp of cold wine when he hears a voice he recognizes all too well right behind him.

  ‘It’s lovely here at Pepe’s, isn’t it?’

  Jacob swallows the wine far too fast and starts to cough. When he turns around, Myriam’s leaning back comfortably in one of the plastic chairs at the table behind him. Black jeans and sneakers. A pair of large black sunglasses. He fumbles for a napkin, his hands trembling. He didn’t call her this morning.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispers.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you were coming here,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ Jacob whispers. ‘I mean I’m with him. Please… Leave me alone.’

  She nods calmly and lifts her glasses, looks into his eyes. ‘It’s all about trust,’ Myriam says, shaking her head. ‘Such an unreliable friend. You’d better not forget that I see everything. That we see everything. It’s not just me, Jacob. Not just Swedish interests involved in this. There are many people waiting for you to do what you’re supposed to.’

  Down at the harbour, Yassim’s call seems to be over. He nods and gestures. Myriam stands up and takes a step towards Jacob. ‘It’s time now, you get me?’ she says. ‘You’ve had days to take care of this. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think you were trying to avoid your job.’

  ‘But how the hell should I do it?’ Jacob has raised his voice in desperation. ‘His computer has a fucking password!’

  He anxiously turns back to the harbour again and sees Yassim take the phone from his ear and turn back towards the restaurant. He raises his hand in an apologetic greeting. Jacob waves back before turning back to Myriam again.

  But she’s disappeared as if she were never there. There’s just a napkin lying on the table next to a half-eaten plate of hummus. He turns it over.

  YOU HAVE UNTIL TOMORROW.

  That’s it.

  ‘Who
were you talking to?’ Yassim asks and sits down on the chair opposite him.

  Jacob grabs his glass of wine, his thoughts racing, the whole restaurant shaking around him.

  ‘Nobody,’ he says. ‘Just some British lady who wanted to know how to get a taxi back to Beirut.’

  ‘Maybe she thought you were cute,’ Yassim says with a smile. ‘Not so strange.’

  Jacob forces out a smile. ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘I’m popular with women.’

  Yassim leans over and grabs his hand, stares deep into his eyes. ‘I have to go back to Syria,’ he says. ‘Soon.’

  Jacob is so relieved that there are no more questions about Myriam that he doesn’t even understand what Yassim is saying at first. When he does, the air rushes out of him. ‘Okay,’ he says stoically. ‘But you just got back.’

  Yassim nods calmly. ‘But after that,’ he says. ‘Do you want to go to Europe with me? In a few weeks.’

  Jacob shakes his head and lets go of Yassim’s hand. ‘What?’ he says. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A job,’ Yassim says. ‘I just got asked to do a job in Europe in about a month and I don’t want to go without you.’

  The napkin with Myriam’s command is turning damp in Jacob’s hand. He looks at the face in front of him, remembers the cool of the pistol beneath the table against his fingers.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, I want to go.’

  22 November

  Stockholm

  It’s not yet two in the afternoon, but it feels like a grey twilight is settling in around Klara as she sits in the car in front of Trattoria Romana and opens the black notebook to the first page. She holds it close to her eyes, trying to make our Gabriella’s messy handwriting.

  ‘Cucumber. Yoghurt. Garlic. Bread.’

  A grocery list.

  Beside the insight that Gabriella was probably planning on making tzatziki, this doesn’t give her much, and Klara keeps flipping forward.

  Gabriella seems to use the notebook for all sorts of scribbling. Most notes are lists, a couple about work, a few sentences about a meeting or a conversation with a client.

  Klara flips quickly until she gets to the middle of the book where the notes end abruptly. With a sigh she starts from the beginning, reading each page a bit more carefully. But there’s nothing, as far as she can see, that seems to be linked to what happened this morning.

  Disappointed, she flips even faster through the notebook until something stops her. She thinks she might have seen something, some note, some numbers. She goes back until she finds the page again. Holds the book at another angle trying to get more light on its pages. There are a few words dashed down. Just a few lines.

  ‘Palais de Justice. In front of the elevator,’ she reads. ‘24/11, 16:00’. Then a name. ‘Karl’. Then no more.

  24 November? That’s in two days, Tuesday.

  Klara recalls Gabi’s phone call yesterday at the hostel. Tuesday in Brussels, she said. Terrorism crackdown, the police said.

  She puts the notebook back in Gabriella’s bag and takes out her phone. First, she needs to figure out where they’ve taken Gabriella.

  She looks up the number for the city jail, and a young woman answers almost immediately. She can only confirm what Klara vaguely remembers from studying criminal law in Uppsala.

  ‘The police have seventy-two hours to decide if they want to detain your friend,’ the girl says. ‘The detention will be decided by one of the Stockholm district courts, and all you can do is wait for a detention order to be established. You’ll have to contact the district court this week. That’s all the advice I can give you for now.’

  Klara hangs up and leans back. Seventy-two hours. Three days. Gabriella is unreachable until Wednesday unless they release her early.

  *

  It takes less than fifteen minutes to drive to Bastugatan on Södermalm and find a parking spot. She grabs Gabriella’s bag and locks the car, then walks shivering through the early evening light towards her friend’s apartment.

  The weather has shifted quickly and heavy clouds are rolling in above the rooftops. She can already see tiny, fleeting raindrops shining in the streetlights. She’s not quite sure what she’s going to do in the apartment, but it feels like the natural place to start.

  She unlocks the front door with one of the keys on Gabriella’s keychain and turns the light on in the stairs. The apartment is on the third floor, with French doors that open onto a stunning view of Stockholm. Gabriella bought the small one-bedroom when she became a partner at the firm, and the price made Klara almost faint. But Gabriella just shrugged.

  ‘I don’t have anything else to spend my money on right now,’ Gabrielle told her.

  There were many who’d dreamed of a life like this when they were studying in Uppsala. Partner in a law firm. A beautiful apartment in central Stockholm. But Gabi and Klara used to consider it a prison. They wanted to be free. Be creative. The law was just a starting point for them, a foundation while they figured out what they were going to do to change the world. Gabriella as a defence attorney and Klara in international relations. But then they ended up with those ten-hour days just like everyone else. Gabriella at a prestigious law firm, Klara as a political adviser in Brussels. Or not Klara any more. Not after everything that’s happened.

  On the second floor she stops to listen. It occurs to her that since the police have arrested Gabriella, they might search her apartment, or at least have it under surveillance. Why didn’t she think of that until now? She feels so stupid.

  She cocks her ear, but can’t hear anything beside her own breath echoing between the stone walls of the staircase.

  As quietly as she can, she starts up the final flight of stairs to the third floor. She can see it’s empty when she peers around the corner. She exhales and takes the last steps two at a time.

  But when she gets to the landing, she freezes. Slowly she lowers the bag onto the stone floor and approaches Gabriella’s door. Police tape crisscrosses the doorframe. The lock seems broken, like someone drilled into the mechanism itself, leaving it completely unusable.

  She’s not surprised, but it still feels like an assault, almost worse than the arrest itself. That somebody would go into her friend’s home, rifle through it, paw at her most private possessions.

  She presses down on the handle to test it and feels the door start to open. The only thing keeping it closed is the tape. Couldn’t they at least have replaced the lock? Do they really intend to leave Gabriella’s door unlocked, protected only by just a few strips of tape?

  Not caring about the implications, she carefully pulls away just enough police tape to be able to open the door and go inside.

  She’s barely set one foot inside when she hears someone behind her on the staircase.

  ‘Stop!’ a muffled voice says behind her. ‘Not another step.’

  20 October–13 November

  Beirut

  Yassim is unusually quiet during their lunch at Byblos and also during their walk down by the small marina. When they’re finally back in the car again, he seems to hesitate before turning the key. He turns to Jacob.

  ‘I like being with you so much,’ he says. ‘It’s like everything else disappears, like we’re in a bubble.’ He falls silent, turns away, staring out through the windshield.

  ‘But?’ Jacob says.

  Slowly, Yassim turns back to him again. ‘I thought things would work out in some way, thought I’d be able to stay here longer. But the call I just got… It’s impossible. I have to leave sooner than I thought.’

  ‘But what about Europe?’ Jacob asks quietly. ‘Surely you’re coming back?’

  Yassim smiles and leans over to him, kisses him gently on the cheek. ‘I’ll always come back,’ he says. ‘And we’ll go to Europe together, later. I promise.’

  *

  For Jacob, October still feels summery, but in comparison to the suffocating heat they had before, it feels cool. He no longer feels like he’s going to die every time he’s for
ced out into the sun.

  Two weeks without Yassim go by, and Jacob can hardly remember what he looks like. But he remembers Yassim’s smell, his voice, especially the strict one, the one that makes Jacob blush and do whatever Yassim wants. Almost anything he wants.

  Myriam is furious, of course, when he calls and informs her that Yassim has disappeared again, and that he still hasn’t managed to install the flash drive. Her voice terrifies him, and it scares him even more when he realizes he’s not going to tell her about their planned European trip. She expects him to tell her stuff like that, to tell her everything. So why doesn’t he?

  To protect Yassim, to gain some time. Because he doesn’t feel sure about her, and because he’s slowly starting to realize that Myriam needs him. He does have a few cards to play in the middle of all this hopelessness. If she exposes him, she’ll also lose him, so she’ll just have to understand that this will take some time. That insight reduces the intensity of her threat.

  ‘This isn’t a fucking game, Jacob,’ she says. ‘You’re hanging out with a terrorist. When will you get that through your thick skull?’

  When she says that, it sounds so convincing, so obvious. Why else would she do all this? The weight of that insight threatens to drown him completely. He’s somehow become an accessory, living close to a terrorist, sleeping with a terrorist, in love with a terrorist. There is no context that can justify it – not if you know.

  At the same time he’s seen the photographs Yassim took in Syria, heard him talk about them. He’s looked more deeply into Yassim’s eyes than into anyone else’s; has felt his hands on him, his skin against his own, and what Jacob saw and felt is not consistent with what Myriam tells him. For one moment, he believes it can’t possibly be true, it’s impossible that Yassim is lying and the assurance of that calms him, decreases the pressure around his chest.

  Then he remembers the gun beneath the table and he’s back at square one again.

  *

  At the embassy, Jacob looks at the pictures Yassim took again. They’re blurry, naturally, since they’re photos of a computer screen snapped in haste. But they’re all he has, so he opens the browser on his computer and starts to search for images from Aleppo. He limits the search to the last few weeks. They may have been published by now.