by Mohed Altrad
18
“Please don’t interrupt me, if you stop me every time I open my mouth, I’ll miss the market and you won’t find out what you want to know. I said I’d give you all the details. At the time no one made the connection between what was happening to your uncle and the men they’d heard. He wasn’t even the one to mention them first. And, actually, afterward I thought it was really strange he hadn’t said anything about them when they were the only bit of news we’d had in the area for a long time. If you want my opinion, I’m sure there’s something not right about this whole business. But let me get on with it, otherwise I’ll lose the thread again and we’ll never get it over with. Your uncle sat down on the running board of the car and started to cry. Everyone gathered around him in a circle, and no one was talking now. Then he calmed down and started telling his story:
“‘For a few days now,’ he said, ‘my colleague and I have been on edge but we didn’t really know why. Maybe it was the onset of spring that was getting to us, because those days and nights without a woman stuck in the middle of the desert, in that block of cement where the heat can cook you alive, with the same old iron beds, the same old pots and pans, the same teapot that’s been rusting for years, it ends up getting you down. So we decided to go out for a drive to calm our nerves.’”
The sheep trader paused, knowing how to create an effect.
“That was when someone started asking him about the strangers, but he didn’t like that at all. ‘There’s no need to talk about them,’ he almost screamed; ‘it’s nothing to do with them! I can tell you want me to talk about them, but there’s no way I’m going to. Nothing to do with it, I tell you, nothing to do with it!’ No one said anything because you know it’s best not to contradict policemen, even if you know them well. Otherwise it won’t be long before they turn up on your doorstep with sweet smiles on their faces. They chat about one thing and another and, while they’re at it, they mention that they don’t earn much and they’d be very happy if you gave them a chicken, a sheep, or even some money. If it was their birthday every time we had to give them a present, they’d be a couple of thousand years old by now! But your uncle was getting so wound up and we couldn’t seem to calm him. So someone asked why he said he’d killed his colleague and why he was covered in blood. He started crying again and it was quite a while before he could talk.
“Eventually he said, ‘We did a few rounds yesterday to check, because those men were there and that’s not normal. But there’s not much point in my telling you about that because it has nothing to do with this.’ He clammed up, went silent for a while, then went on: ‘We just checked, that’s all, and there was nothing going on, absolutely nothing. We’d driven far out into the desert for nothing, not even a crow in sight. But because of all that we couldn’t sleep. Mind you, we were also getting fed up with the place, we spend all day and all night there. Being on the main road doesn’t help much, you get trucks and buses passing from time to time, but you end up getting to know them all and they don’t even wake us now. Except this time we just couldn’t get to sleep, with all this business.’
“At that point, someone asked, ‘But what business?’ seeing as he kept saying nothing was going on. He started crying again, and couldn’t stop. I had to give him a good shake to get him to go on with his story.
“He said, ‘Our guardroom’s isolated and if anything happened to us, there wouldn’t be much point in calling the main station because it would take them at least two hours to get here. So we decided that if we were ever in any danger, we needed to know how to defend ourselves without any help. OK, so nothing’s actually happened since I started the job, but you never know. And because nothing’s happened and we haven’t had to use our rifles or pistols for a long time, we thought we should clean them and check they were working in case we needed them. We started to disassemble to oil all the parts. Good we thought of it because there was sand in the cylinders and they wouldn’t have worked when we needed them. Not that we needed them then, that’s not what I meant, but that’s when the accident happened … He was putting his pistol back together and I’d finished mine. So I said I was going to try firing it outside because it was a cloudless night and you could see well by moonlight. We put some old tins along the wall facing the door to the guardroom to practice. I backed away to take a shot at the tins and make sure my pistol was working properly. I didn’t look at the door while I was taking aim, and just as I fired he came out of the guardroom and walked past the tins. I yelled at him but it was already too late and he fell straight to the ground. At the time I thought he was mucking about and I shouted at him to stop it, it wasn’t funny. But he stayed there, not moving, so I ran over, still yelling at him. I crouched down and rolled him over, and his eyes were just staring into space …’
“Your uncle stopped talking, his throat was so tight he couldn’t say any more. We got him to drink some tea and asked him to keep going. He stopped crying and got angry with us. ‘I’ve told you everything,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone!’ We asked why he’d come to the village instead of calling the station and he said he was frightened, he said, ‘To be honest, I didn’t think, I jumped in the car and drove to the village to ask for your help in case anyone came to give me grief.’”
The old trader broke off, trying to avoid Maïouf’s eyes.
“So that’s what happened,” he said. “Now I’d better get to the market …”
“I know you well enough to know we could go on chatting for hours and you wouldn’t think once about your sheep. You know it’s the next bit I’m really interested in.”
“We were all standing around him,” the old man went on in a glum voice, “and no one missed a single word but now that he’d stopped there was this long silence. And that’s when we heard a car engine getting closer. I was watching your uncle, and he got to his feet and came and stood among us. I could see he was shaking, but at the time I didn’t think anything of it because I put it down to the emotion from what had happened. But later I remembered it was just when we heard an engine away in the distance, and the closer that sound got the more your uncle shook. By the time the jeep arrived at the end of the street he could hardly stand on his own two legs.”
19
“A man got out of the jeep and asked what was going on. We didn’t get a look at him because his keffiyeh was up over his face, but we all noticed a big scar across his right eye, it made him look strange, almost frozen, the eye looked as set as the scar. On top of that, he had this voice like nothing I’ve ever heard, not near the village, not in Raqqa, not even in Aleppo. The next day I even asked some of the others about it, but no one else knew that voice either. I’d recognize it anywhere because it was so odd, metallic sounding, with an accent I couldn’t place. The hadjis think it’s a Saudi accent, but they’re not sure. There were two other men in the jeep. No one knows what they looked like because they didn’t get out. Either way, it was unusual seeing them in the village because there’s nothing to bring strangers to the place, the main road’s quite a long way away and there’s no sign to say the village is there. You lived in your grandmother’s house long enough before moving away to know you have to know how to get here or really stumble across it by chance. When you’re in the desert you can be a couple of hundred meters away and still not see it because of the dip in the land. So they must have come because they had a reason. The man said they were on a journey and had been on the road a long time. They’d stopped on the main road for a rest and heard gunshots. Almost immediately after that they saw the police car tearing past and they followed it. That’s how they got to the village. There again, none of us thought that through at the time because so much had happened in the last hour that we’d have believed anything. But when we talked about it afterward, no one had ever heard of anyone who chased after police cars in the middle of the night without a good reason. The man really wanted to know what had happened, he wouldn’t give up. Normally, no one would say anything but given the circumstances,
plenty of people felt like talking because, with all the goings-on, we’d have weeks’ worth of gossip in the village. You know what it’s like: the more you do to create memories, the better it is afterward … He was a funny sort: he looked almost happy when we said your uncle had just killed his colleague. While all this was going on, your uncle hadn’t said a word, but now I come to think of it, I’m convinced he was frightened. It wasn’t normal for him to go on shaking like that. When he saw the guy smiling he seemed relieved. But he started shaking again when the man came over and muttered something in his ear. No one heard what he said, but your uncle nodded. He got into the car with them and they left.”
“And you let him go?”
The trader looked up, surprised.
“Well, they hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“Just now you said they looked very determined, and now you’re saying there were three of them against the whole village …” Maïouf protested.
“Your uncle didn’t make a fuss, I swear it, it was almost like he knew them. He was frightened, but he followed them without a word and didn’t seem to want anything from us. He even left the police car right where it was and made it clear to everyone he was OK with these men.”
“The Bedouin don’t usually let strangers bundle one of their kind into a car, that’s all,” Maïouf muttered. “When someone takes refuge with the Bedouin, he’s safe, you know that. You know better than I do that our people would rather be killed than hand over someone who’s put trust in them, whatever the reason.”
“You’re a bit too full of yourself, young man,” the trader replied curtly. “You’re happy to judge everyone because you’ve done all that studying. You haven’t taken your baccalauréat yet and you’re acting like some sort of professor already! It’s easy to talk like that. You know, I’m one of the last who still remembers the big flocks, when the whole tribe, masses of us, drove hundreds of camels and thousands of sheep. When we came to a stop in the middle of the desert, we’d put up all our tents and it was like a whole town suddenly being born as the sun went down and the shooting stars came out. And then people started saying we couldn’t go here and couldn’t go there, we had to start taking a census, registering with the local authorities, we weren’t allowed to trade … In the early days we managed to put up a fight, we hid our children when the census officials came around so they couldn’t be registered and drafted into the army, or if they questioned the numbers we’d show them different children who were bigger or older. But it didn’t help much … We were driven out, penned into specific areas. It’s only recently that we’ve stayed in the village all year … Do you think this country likes us? You’ll see when you grow up, you’ll see how people watch you, how they treat you. And you’ll also realize the more you fight, the more you rebel, the more they’ll pursue you, the more they’ll drive you down, the more they’ll break you. That’s why I always look twice now before sticking my neck out. You have to understand your uncle wasn’t putting up any resistance. Everyone thought he was lying, he wasn’t trusting us with the truth. And given he’d just said he’d killed his colleague, even if it was by mistake, no one really felt like standing up for him. But he wasn’t in any danger or, at least, he didn’t say he was: when the man said they were taking him to Raqqa, he got into the jeep without a word. And that’s the truth.”
“I’m sorry,” Maïouf said, looking away. “I didn’t mean to insult you. But I’m sad because I now know too much about this, and I wish it could be different.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re young,” the old man said. “As for me, I’m off to sell my sheep.”
And he walked away wearily, his back stooped.
20
Once the first case had been concluded the crowd grew restless.
Chairs were vacated, and there was a lot of coming and going. New people arrived and looked for a seat to watch the next case: that of Maïouf’s uncle. The latest events were being discussed on all sides. Maïouf was shoved aside several times. He clearly couldn’t stay where he was without being trampled underfoot. He didn’t want to get lost in the crowd of gawking sensation-seekers, so he stepped outside to get some fresh air until the hearings started again.
As he walked out through the imposing front doorway, Maïouf was dazzled by the harsh morning light reflecting off the sand as if off a flat sea. The big steps were the scene of constant to-ing and fro-ing, which meant he couldn’t sit down. He walked around the building, and found that the northern side was quieter and afforded a few welcome areas of shade. Maïouf chose one and crouched down to calm his nerves. He thought he’d stay there a matter of minutes but succumbed to a long daydream.
He remembered the moment when, with his heart hammering, he’d dared to speak to the young girl living next door. He’d been introduced to her not long before by the daughter of the house where he lived. But the introductions had been rushed, halfhearted. He’d been on his way out when they met. She hadn’t really seemed to notice him but he was very taken with her. And he’d been obsessed by her ever since. Which is why on his way home from school on this particular day he’d dragged his heels so he’d be outside her house just as she arrived home. He’d watched her so often that he had an accurate idea of her timetable, and knew exactly when he’d see her. When she appeared, he quickened his pace to be in step with her.
“Good evening!” he ventured.
She looked at him with a pretense of surprise and some amusement.
“I don’t think I know you,” she replied with mock severity. “Do you think a girl should speak to a stranger in the street? And if she does, would you have any respect for her?”
As she said this, the girl’s face broke into a smile, a slight flush of red still stealing over her cheeks from when he’d spoken to her.
“But we do know each other!” he protested. “Don’t you remember?”
The girl shook her head: no. A little disappointed to be so easily forgotten, Maïouf decided to change his tactics.
“We come across each other often, you know. I live next door to you.”
“What a coincidence!”
Her laugh was so clear, so spontaneous that he was won over by her cheerfulness and—partly out of happiness, partly out of relief—burst out laughing himself. They walked together like this for a while, laughing but embarrassed. Secretly, he was ecstatic. A boundless pleasure was filling his lungs and accelerating his heart rate. She’d agreed to talk to him! She even seemed happy! A dream was shaping up as reality. He couldn’t believe it was possible. Luckily, it wasn’t he himself talking and laughing—oh no! It was someone else with his face, and he was watching him do it, admiring his composure.
All the same, he was worried that a long silence might ruin this first exchange, and was on the point of launching into a long description of something when she interrupted him with a charming tilt of her head.
“Well, I hope we’ll see each other again.”
And she’d turned away and walked through her door without another word. He stayed there on the sidewalk, sorry he couldn’t talk to her any longer but intoxicated because he hadn’t been rejected. He’d sung to himself all evening and, for the first time ever, didn’t throw himself into his books after the evening meal.
The following day they’d met again, and the day after that, and every day since. But Fadia—that was her name, a name he said over and over with a sense of wonderment—hadn’t agreed to meet him except for these engineered “chance” encounters on the way home from school. So at the end of every afternoon he rushed out into the street and waited for her to appear. She’d guessed what he was up to but had accepted it with a graciousness full of promise.
He even got the feeling she enjoyed their conversations, which often went on for some time outside her front door. This must be it, the ideal love that Sufis talked about. Taking pleasure in someone else’s company. Sharing her happiness and deep-seated hopes, being luminously in communion with her. The very act of imagining Fadia
’s body, of being drawn into erotic fantasies about her, seemed degrading in comparison with these noble feelings. He could think of Fadia only in the words of the great poet Omar Khayyam, whose vision of happiness was “water, grass, and the contemplation of a beautiful face.”
Someone shouted farther up the street, startling Maïouf. The trial! He leapt to his feet, noticed that the sun had moved across the sky, and ran around to the main entrance of the building.
21
The prosecution speech was drawing to a close.
“So, your honor, this boy is claiming it was an accident. Who could ever prove that, when the only witness is no longer with us to corroborate it? I say that if his version were true we wouldn’t have found his clothes covered in blood. If his version were true we wouldn’t have found the crime weapon at his home. No, if it was an accident, he wouldn’t have fled the scene. An accident … would have meant he had nothing to fear.”