The Silence and the Roar

by Nihad Sirees

  “In their perspective, the Leader is the Truth.”

  “I have a different perspective.”

  “Well then, tell me, what is the Truth in your perspective?” Lama asked.

  The water had dried from both of our bodies and sweat started to glisten as our revitalization reverted into discomfort. Beads of sweat shimmered beneath Lama’s lower eyelids and under her nose; her neck was soaked. I reached out my hand and wiped the beads of sweat from under her eyes and nose and then held her and kissed her. I told her, “You are the Truth” and “I love you” and “Right now I want us to take the fan and go into the bedroom.” She dragged herself over and pressed her body to mine as I pulled her in closer. When I drew back she grabbed my head and forced me to gaze directly into her eyes. I saw that she was crying.

  “You’re my treasure and I have to protect your sparkle,” she whispered.

  “Why are you crying? Do you think I’m in danger?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid they’re going to steal you away or denounce you. Gold loses its sparkle on an ugly woman’s neck or wrists.”

  “Have you lost faith in me?”

  “Of course not, it’s just my nature to be nervous. Don’t you remember that I discovered my husband was cheating through intuition and dreams?”

  “I remember, but it’s your husband’s nature to cheat.”

  “He’s despicable. He cheated on me with girls of the regime for the sake of his own personal interest. Mr. Ha’el is even more despicable. That’s why I’m so nervous.”

  “We’ll see what happens.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see. Come on, grab the fan and hop into bed. I’ll just go cool off in the shower for a bit and then come join you.”

  I held her body that was cold from the shower, which I then also stood underneath for a long time as I tried to focus on the love we just made. The Leader’s speech was still happening. He made a joke every once in a while so the shouting of the masses would rise up and reach us while we made love. I tried to focus on the lovemaking and to ignore the sound of my silence and the noise of their roar.

  I apologize to the reader for this erotic chapter but I want to be precise in my writing. How else would I be able to bear the silence and the roar? The silence that was imposed upon me for years and years has nearly suffocated me. What else do I have to live for but this ardent love binding Lama and me together? Each of us found our equal in the other, the one we can only respond to with love. I would like to remind the reader that when I came out of the interrogation sessions during Fuck-Gate I used to immediately hurry back to visit Lama and find her there waiting for me by the only window in her flat. She would open the door for me and we would stand behind it, embracing one another for a long time without getting bored or tired. Then we would go to bed and make love in a way that was unlike anything we had ever done before. We found refuge in our lovemaking, and I can honestly say that we were answering back at them with love. Then we would sit and cool ourselves off with wet towels and make fun of them.

  Laughter and sex were our two weapons of survival. In the past writing had been my primary reason to persevere. But when silence was imposed on me we found that sex was a form of speech, indeed, a form of shouting in the face of the silence. When I had just emerged from the security branch I would be in a state of exhaustion or a condition that was more like an amalgamation of feelings: tiredness plus impudence, anger and emptiness. Therefore, I used to rush to the first taxi I could find, searching my feelings as I wished the driver would just take off instead of waiting for the light at the junction to turn green. I used to wish that Lama’s place was closer to the mukhabarat branch instead of being two miles away. On more than one occasion she accompanied me to the interrogation. She would wait outside because, as she put it, she could no longer bear to just stay home waiting for me to return. When I finally came out to find her standing in the shadows on the opposite sidewalk I would grab hold of her and gesture frantically at the first taxi I saw so that we could rush back to her flat. At first she found my hastiness odd and assumed I was running away from something but by the third time she understood the secret: I was in a rush for us to be alone together in bed, so that I could restore my own balance by making love to her.

  She also told me about how she used to feel while she was waiting for me to get out of interrogation, how in those times she used to cry and wish for me to come back so she could hold me close until she spoke out loud, calling for me to come at once because she so desperately hungered for me. When we entered the flat we would do exactly the same thing we had done on those occasions when she hadn’t come with me. We would stand behind the door, each one tightly and warmly holding the other until the time for hugging had passed, at which point I would lead her or she would lead me to the bedroom. As if time were assaulting us, we would hurriedly and inelegantly get undressed, chucking our clothes in all directions before lying down on the bed to make love urgently and violently, as if we had just been reunited after a long separation, despite the fact that usually we had made love the night before.

  When I returned from interrogation our faces would reject any disguise, whether out of modesty or embarrassment. The desire for life and for confrontation refused any disguise, no matter what kind it was. Our bodies would collide as if the two were one person: sheandI.

  Our post-interrogation habits differed from those that took place in ordinary times, when I wouldn’t dare to try some things or might ask for something new; in these unusual times we would be in such a state of desire that we no longer wanted to keep score. The artificiality that a man imposes upon himself or a woman imposes upon herself for reasons of preserving the impression the other has of him or her breaks down. The woman asks herself, What will he think of me if I do this or ask him to do that? In that situation, we got past those questions and kicked the problem of impressions out of bed.

  Was it obscenity? Sure, but the obscenity of the innocent that appears without any design or planning, the obscenity that satisfies both parties, although neither one of them would talk about it afterward. I began to head off for questioning braver and more capable of withstanding it. Throughout the session, I would be calmer and more self-assured, to the point that I even started mocking what was happening, laughing and cracking jokes, making fun of Fuck-Gate even as it preoccupied the security services and the Party, concerning even the president of the writers’ union himself, who proceeded to enlist writer Comrades to attack me and pitch slogans against me, making fun of me or otherwise messing with me. I yearned for my visit to HQ to end so I could go back to Lama afterward, knowing that we would wash away those frustrations together.

  The beautiful thing about Lama is that she respects her body; you might even say she sanctifies it. Ordinarily she wakes up in the morning to begin a precise regimen of self-care. Her flat is only five minutes from the public garden; every morning she puts on special athletic clothes that make her sweat profusely and heads over there to power-walk for a full hour with one of her neighbors. I don’t quite know where the added benefit is in making her body sweat like that during her walking exercise when she is already sweating in her flat all the time anyway. Once I asked her that very question and she confirmed that they are two completely different kinds of sweating—sweating in the morning while walking has myriad benefits, whereas she continuously cools her body down at home and tries to keep herself from sweating. She also got used to doing Swedish aerobics before coming home and standing in the cold shower. She does a lot of strenuous exercise throughout the day, memorizing a number of exercises and their benefits, all for the benefit of her posture or her stomach or some such thing. Because she has not given birth she still has a shapely and firm body without a hint of sagging or wrinkles.

  She used to go swimming once a week year-round. To this day I still accompany her to the swimming pool in the summertime but in the winter she goes to a pool that is for women only and when she comes back she is mellowed out both physically and psyc
hologically. In bed she tells me how when the water touches her skin she longs to be in my arms. Lama’s relationship to water is an intimate one and it’s hard for me to imagine how she would be without water in which to continuously swim or shower. Many times when I went to see her I would walk in and think she was gone. Then I would step into the bathroom and find her sleeping in the tub. She told me the thing that most attracted her to this little flat and made her buy it was the tub in the bathroom.

  Let me tell you a little more about how Lama sanctifies her body. She is so scared of getting sick that she convulses and breaks down into tears when a simple discoloration or rash or even a little insignificant wrinkle appears on her body. She loves her beautiful, elegant and healthy body. One time she complained that her right breast felt abnormal and that she needed to go to the doctor. She was so terrified that she made herself ill from her fear of being ill. I don’t know why she was so worried about the existence of a lump in her breast after the doctor had done all the necessary imaging and tests and asked her to give him three days in order to look them over. During those three days she lived an unbearable nightmare, convinced that the results would come back positive. I could never leave her alone during that period since it was possible she would die of anxiety. She was less afraid of death than of disfigurement. Her body is worth more to her than her life. On one occasion she made me swear on everything we hold dear that I would help her to die if she ever got sick with a physically disfiguring illness.

  Lama takes pride in her body and knows its worth; she spoils it and pleases it and keeps a close watch on it: it is her spoiled child. One day she told me that her parents used to make her take regular equestrian lessons at one of the clubs where she learnt how to ride horses very well. When she fell off the back of her steed without getting a scratch, she got scared of breaking a rib or an arm, even though she refused to give up the club because of her passion for riding. After she saw one of the trainers actually fall and break his leg she stopped riding horses. The flawlessness of Lama’s body means that she has no hang-ups about being naked. A woman gets accustomed to hiding most of her body from the people who are closest to her, including her husband, because of some imperfection or the passing years or exhaustion and atrophy. This is what we call the embarrassment of revealing imperfections. Perhaps shyness is the reason why women are afraid to reveal their physical imperfections (some psychologists even base their theories on the notion that women consider their vaginas a permanent imperfection that is something to be ashamed of). But Lama doesn’t have a single imperfection on her entire body that she could be afraid of revealing to her lover, so she has no problem being naked in front of him. As soon as Lama gets home she strips off all her clothes and does everything in the nude. She goes into the bathroom to stand in the shower for a few minutes and then comes out sopping wet to continue what she had been doing before going back into the bathroom again. In this weather there is no need for clothes, whether I’m over at her place or she’s alone; a bikini might suffice when she is alone but never when we are together. She got used to walking around in front of me, moving here and there, without covering her body with a single stitch of cloth. And when she sat down, she would do so freely, without caring what part of her body might be visible. That was Lama: a liberated woman who owns herself without any hang-ups; her lover could have his way with her, however he wished.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I HAD A LIGHT LUNCH with Lama before going downstairs. She makes the best falafel sandwiches. I ate two while Lama had just half of one; to help wash it down we split a beer. I told Lama I intended to go visit my sister Samira in order to find out what she thought about our mother getting married and to ask her about some things that were still unclear to me, anything my mother might have confided in her, because women speak more freely amongst themselves; they don’t keep secrets from each other.

  I also told Lama I had to stop by the Party building to pick up my ID card before going to military security at nine thirty, which is what the head of the patrol that stopped me near my mother’s house had asked me to do. I had forgotten all about it because we had been so preoccupied with the matter of my mother’s marriage to Mr. Ha’el, and she immediately got nervous when I told her I had to pass by both offices and started advising me to stay calm and not to make fun of them or piss them off because they are quick-tempered and might not have much of a sense of humor, because simple sarcasm might turn into a major catastrophe, such as causing me to have to go back and see them throughout the week.

  The television set was blaring as I said goodbye to Lama and walked downstairs. It seemed as though the march had finally ended because the broadcasters were discussing, each from his own location, how great the march was, interviewing the masses and directing questions at them about their feelings toward the Leader and the twenty-year anniversary. When I emerged from the building the streets were empty. I headed toward the city center. After a few hundred yards I noticed that traffic had started moving once again; the scattered clumps of people returning from the march were on the move. Men who had preferred to stay home were tentatively coming out after making certain the event was over, but they were a tiny minority relative to those coming from the other direction. Car after car transporting young men who waved pictures and flags and chanted in support of the Leader started to pass by, their horns honking nonstop. Long lines of cars zoomed by, although sometimes they had to slow down and eventually the young men riding inside would start to lose their patience and chant even louder, as their shouts devolved into gibberish.

  Two posses of marching young men held up pictures of the Leader and flyers that glorified him and the Party. Their clothes looked disheveled from sweat and the crowds; their faces and their eyes were as red as beetroot; yet despite the fact that their voices were hoarse they continued repeating chants and praises for the Leader. In a matter of minutes I found myself face to face with thousands of people, mostly young men, some of whom looked dead tired but most of whom were in a state of unnatural agitation, as if the march had not ended and was just getting going. They were becoming more fierce. They took up the entire width of the street, waving pictures and stopping the flow of traffic as the people in cars shouted in protest and continuously honked their horns. At one junction I saw a brawl break out between the two groups of overstimulated young men and some drivers. I heard fists pounding on the cars as their chants were transformed into shouting and cursing. Then both posses were pelted with stones from a third direction even as some people—and I was among them—took shelter in the entrances of buildings out of fear that the stones would rain down on their heads. Regiments from the security forces and armed battalions of militiamen quickly arrived on the scene and proceeded to bash both groups until the young men who were still able to do so ran away and the rows of cars managed to start moving again, although there were certainly cases of drivers getting beaten up.

  I came out of the foyer of the building where I had taken shelter and started walking against the flow of traffic until one of the Comrades, who had seized those hooligans and detained them up against the wall, noticed me walking toward the city center and not the reverse. He let me pass although he watched me for a while. This Comrade could tell I had not been part of the march because of the direction I was walking in. When I turned around to make sure he was not watching me any more, I bumped into the hordes and got thwacked by the end of a sign being carried by an employee who was dressed in a blue work uniform by order of the Party.

  I was swimming upstream, bumping into people coming toward me. The longer I walked the more jammed the streets became, and it took greater and greater effort to clear a path through them, until I got so tired that I began to think I never should have left Lama’s flat in the first place, that I should have waited until the sun had gone down instead. I continued making my way forward, running into people, and when I reached the junction with a side street that I had assumed would be less crowded, I found it to be just like all the ot
her streets, so I gave up on the idea and continued walking straight ahead. It wasn’t just the crowds that were bothering me, but the noise as well, which was building to a crescendo with all the car horns and the young men shouting and the megaphones strung along balconies and trees droning with patriotic anthems and military march music and the enthusiastic voices of broadcasters. I had to stop in the entrance to one of the buildings because I simply could not go on any farther. In that moment a large group of young women dressed in khaki who were returning from the march were being harassed by some of the overstimulated young men in cars right in front of me. The first car in line, filled with young men, inched its way closer to the young women, threatening to run them over. The driver revved the accelerator suggestively, which made the engine produce a terrifying sound, as if the car were about to pounce on the women. I heard shouting here and there. Some of the women were laughing while others were screaming in fright. Just then dozens of men hurried over to surround the women and protect them, forming a perimeter and turning outward to confront the guys in the car. When one of them abruptly socked the driver in the face, all the young men leapt out of the car and a brawl ensued in which the weapons of choice were pictures of the Leader and the wooden sticks they were affixed to, as the pictures got scattered and trampled underfoot. While the men and the youths brawled and hurled the handles of those flying pictures, the women had found the perfect opportunity to skedaddle when suddenly we heard the sound of a single gunshot as a number of Party Comrades came charging at the skirmishing horde, brandishing their guns and proceeding to crack skulls with the butts of their pistols in order to break up the melee. Apparently one of the Comrades hit a man who got too big for his boots, standing up to confront the Comrade face to face as the two of them traded insults. The other Comrades stopped what they were doing and came over to repay the man with punches until he was overpowered, at which point they picked him up and ran off with him, moving away in the direction of the Party vehicles.