by Nihad Sirees
CHAPTER EIGHT
I WALKED AWAY from the security services complex because I did not feel like getting in a cab. I had no idea where to go after everything I had just heard from Mr. Ha’el. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was so confused I couldn’t think straight. My mind was non-functional. There was nothing but emptiness in my head. I was running away from having to think about the two options Mr. Ha’el had put in front of me. Each one led to something more terrible than the other. Either. Or. No middle ground. Why wouldn’t they just let me live in my own isolation and silence? How did my silence harm them? He told me it was either the roar of the regime or the silence of the grave. The grave is a tranquil and quiet place that ordinarily I would prefer but Mr. Ha’el meant something else entirely. He had arranged things in a dastardly manner by involving my mother in his plan.
I found myself outside Samira’s building. The light in the living room was still on so I decided to go up even though it was very late, past midnight. I was no longer as excited as I had been about my meeting with that Comrade at Abu Nuwas restaurant now that matters had been revealed to me, now that Mr. Ha’el had been totally honest with me.
Samira opened the door after she saw me through the spy hole. She thought it was strange for me to show up at such an hour, especially since I rarely visited her.
“Fathi? Has something happened to Mum?” she asked me, clutching her chest in horror and staring at my outstretched hand.
“Relax, I was just passing by your building and saw the living room light still on.”
She only let me halfway in.
Calmed more by the expression on my face than anything I said, she finally invited me inside, guiding me to the living room. Apparently she had been up late watching a film. She switched it off at once and came over to sit down next to me.
“Where’s your husband?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“Sleeping, should I go and wake him up?”
“No, thank God he’s asleep. I want to talk to you about Mum and I don’t want him to hear.”
“What is it?”
“You know she’s getting married on Wednesday. That’s the day after tomorrow.”
She smiled, bending over and starting to straighten up the table in the middle of the room. It would have been wonderful for my mother to get married, if only it hadn’t been as carefully arranged as Mr. Ha’el told me it was.
“Yeah, I know. Are you against it?”
“She’s a free woman. She can do whatever she wants.”
I was silent for a moment, unsure of exactly what it was I wanted to say to Samira. She could tell I was hiding something.
“But what’s the matter?” she asked. “Why do you seem so nervous?”
My mind started to become clearer and I gradually became conscious of the path I would have to take in order to make it through this labyrinth.
“Has she had enough time to think this marriage through properly?”
“Everything’s happened so quickly.”
“How long have you known about it?”
“Two days. She told me last time I was over there. She was especially concerned about you because she knows how they don’t like you and how you don’t like them. Then she called me yesterday to tell me this marriage was in your best interests. I asked her why and she told me that Mr. Ha’el wants to get to know you better.”
I nodded my head as if in agreement, but I was actually searching my mind for the right way to explain to her what made me so nervous.
“He doesn’t love her,” I said. She asked me whom I meant and I said, “Mr. Ha’el.”
“What kind of an idiot would believe he is in love with her?” she asked. “Not even she’s convinced of that. Mr. Ha’el needs to marry a suitable woman now that he is an important public personality and has some fame in the government. Mum wants to have a husband now that Dad’s gone.” Laughing, she added, “She feels like a young woman about to get married for the first time.”
I neither laughed nor smiled but I did tell her half the truth.
“He’s interested in me, wants me to work for them, for the government, I mean.”
Samira laughed and clapped her hands together, mocking me.
“You’re a very nice person, Fathi, but so what? So they want to make peace with her and with you. Mr. Ha’el will be our stepfather and you’ll be like a son to him. Come on, my brother, be realistic.”
“So you think I should just go along with them?”
“Why not?”
“Aren’t you concerned about my reputation?”
“What reputation? Do you think Mr. Ha’el’s a pimp or something? He’s a man of the regime. Everybody wants to be his friend. What are you so afraid of?”
“The people’s respect.”
“Who cares about that?”
“They want me to clean up after them.”
“So what? If not you, it’ll just be someone else. Look at Dr. Q! Didn’t the people envy him his position before he died? When he died they organized a funeral for him that was fit for a king, and they put his name on the national library.”
“They want me to take his place.”
She crossed her hands over her chest anxiously, stood up and kissed me.
“You’re crazy. Totally nuts. You were supposed to come over and bring me the good news, not just sit there and tell me about it as if we had inherited a misfortune.”
“I’m not an opportunist and I don’t care for opportunists.”
“Tell me, what is an opportunist, in your opinion? Get real. The world has changed, my brother. Fathi, everybody’s trying to get on the good side of the Leader’s men. Now, you’re silent and hungry. Look at me.” She lowered her face and then stared at the entrance to the room. “You have to adapt to the situation as I have. I married the stupidest man in this entire city. I tried to make him smarter but it didn’t work. And to live in peace I’ve behaved as if I’m even stupider than he is, or at least as stupid anyway.”
“I’d let down the people who are closest to me.”
“You mean Lama? She’s as crazy as you are. Besides, isn’t it time for you to find a better-looking wife?”
“I love her and she loves me.”
“That’s great. But if she loves you she has to look out for your best interests. Can I give you my opinion, in a nutshell?”
I nodded, despite the fact that my interest was flagging.
“Do as I have done. Be a dummy among dummies.”
“They’re not dummies, but I get your point.”
“Don’t you see what’s going on? Everyone goes out into the streets to parade in these ridiculous marches. They shout slogans and they’re happy. If your people have gone mad, your mind can no longer help you. Come on, it’s time for you to get out in those demonstrations and chant for the Leader. Otherwise they’re going to stomp on you with their boots.”
“I can’t take the roar.”
“You can go out to the marches and just be silent. You can also put cotton in your ears. Besides, have you heard the latest joke?”
She finished what she had to say with an odd joke, and I smiled out of courtesy. But when I got up to leave she wouldn’t let me go before giving me something to eat. We went into the kitchen, where she entertained me with her witty personality. She told me joke after joke to whet my appetite as she warmed up some food and put it on a plate in front of me. We drank tea and she told me the latest stories about her husband. He had recently complained to someone about how he had married a simple woman and how he deserved a more intelligent wife.
We were making a lot of noise and she got up to close the kitchen door so our laughter wouldn’t wake up her husband. We drank more tea and laughed at her seemingly endless supply of jokes. Samira took me away from all my worries by making me laugh. Just then the door opened and my brother-in-law peered in, signs of bewilderment on his dim face. I said hello and then hurried to leave. It was very late. He tried to stop me from going but I excu
sed myself and left.
I hopped in a taxi and gave the driver my address. Halfway there I asked him to go to Lama’s instead. It was past two thirty when she opened the door for me. She had been asleep and I felt bad for coming so late but she assured me she had been waiting for me before falling asleep on the couch. I had decided not to tell her about the situation until morning because I was so exhausted and just wanted to hold her and get some rest, but she insisted I tell her exactly what had happened to me, especially what had happened to my hand.
Once we were in bed, ensconced in her warmth and the sweet scent of her skin, as tranquillity settled over the flat and the building and the city, I told her everything, everything that had happened to me that day. As I talked she freed herself from my arm and sat down cross-legged in front of me on the bed. She wanted to watch me as we talked.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’m confused. What do you think? Should I accept Mr. Ha’el’s proposition or do I refuse? And if I refuse, what’s going to happen to my mother? What’s going to happen to us?”
I went on to tell her, “I was about to go back to my flat and spend the night there because I’m dead tired but I decided to come here instead, to think out loud.”
We were both silent for a long time. I was awaiting her reply even as she waited for me to finish. As the quiet enveloped me I wished we could just remain there, silent until morning, but the silence was exhausting her so she asked me something to which she must already have known the answer.
“What would Dr. Q do?”
“He would convince the people everything is fine. Compose poetry that glorifies the Leader and write heroic novels. He would command the enormous propaganda machine that makes people believe black is white and white is black. He would make the piles of rubbish disappear beneath an imaginary bed of roses.”
I saw her eyes growing misty, but instead of telling me what to do she asked, sobbing, “Tell me, I’m begging you, what are you going to do?”
I moved over and held her. I began kissing her eyes and drinking her tears, then whispered, “Here’s what I’m going to do.”
She clung to me and her sweaty body trembled as she sobbed. I began kissing her madly because love had always been my shelter and hers.
That night I had a strange dream. Security forces had taken Lama and me to a swanky hotel and sequestered us in a room there. Suddenly the wall transformed into a window through which we could see what was going on next door without being seen. My mother came in wearing her wedding gown with a bouquet of roses in her hand, holding Mr. Ha’el’s arm with her other hand. They looked like they were just getting back from their wedding party. Mr. Ha’el stared at me through the window and gestured for me to watch what he was about to do as he started tearing at my mother’s clothes, roughly throwing her down on the bed and proceeding to have his way with her. I picked up a chair and was about to smash the glass in order to go in and save her from the claws of that savage beast but Lama grabbed hold of me and stopped me, pointing at my mother.
She was enjoying what was happening to her, moaning with pleasure even. Mr. Ha’el got up confusedly and stared down at her, then up at the window. My mother’s reaction bothered him. She got out of bed and started begging him to come back, but he coldly shoved her away and moved closer to the window, threatening us with his fist. He was outraged by this disorder, by the failure of his plan. My mother approached him and tried pulling him back toward her, but he pushed her aside a second time and then stormed out of the room, cursing the whole way. My mother followed him in her tattered clothes, begging for him to return.
In the dream Lama and I started laughing so hard that we collapsed onto the bed.
AFTERWORD
IS IT POSSIBLE for the silence and the roar to co-exist? The answer is most certainly, yes. In countries ruled by people obsessed with supremacy, authoritarians and those who are crazed by power, the ruler or the leader imposes silence upon all those who dare to think outside the prevailing norm. Silence can be the muffling of one’s voice or the banning of one’s publications, as is the case with Fathi Sheen, the protagonist of this novel. Or it might be the silence of a cell in a political prison or, without trying to unnecessarily frighten anyone, the silence of the grave.
But this silence is also accompanied by an expansive roar, one that renders thought impossible. Thought leads to individualization, which is the most powerful enemy of the dictator. People must not think about the leader and how he runs the country; they must simply adore him, want to die for him in their adoration of him. Therefore, the leader creates a roar all around him, forcing people to celebrate him, to roar.
I had always wanted to explore certain dimensions of dictatorship: the orchestration of such roaring marches and how people are coerced into the streets to chant for the leader under the direction of bullhorns. The leader seeking to cover himself with a roaring halo is not a nice thing to see. Naturally he would only ever do that as a means of covering up and suppressing any other sound.
With this roar he also aims to cover up the violent crimes he unleashes against his rivals in the underground dungeons of the security apparatus, those places located far out of sight but which everyone knows about.
I believe that love and peace are the right way to confront tyranny. Thus I wrote this novel about the dictator whose opponents cannot find any other way to stand up to him but through love and laughter. It is with love that the hero of the story acquires the strength to stand up and confront silence; with laughter that he tears off the frightening halo with which the dictator has surrounded himself, and then subsequently dares to confront his minions.
There is another kind of roar that this author never thought the leader would ever be capable of using: the roar of artillery, tanks and fighter jets that have already opened fire on Syrian cities. The leader is leveling cities and using lethal force against his own people in order to hold on to power. We must ask, alongside the characters in this novel: What kind of Surrealism is this?
As I present my novel to the English reader, my heart is agonizingly heavy about what is happening in Syria, my homeland.
NIHAD SIREES
Cairo, August 2012