Mansour's Eyes

by Ryad Girod

  MANSOUR’S EYES

  MANSOUR’S EYES

  Ryad Girod

  Translated from the French by Chris Clarke

  Published by Transit Books

  2301 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, California 94612

  www.transitbooks.org

  Les Yeux de Mansour © P.O.L Editeur, 2019

  English translation copyright © Chris Clarke 2020

  ISBN: 978-1-945492-36-5 (paperback)

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2020937464

  DESIGN & TYPESETTING

  Justin Carder

  DISTRIBUTED BY

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  (800) 283-3572 | cbsd.com

  Printed in the United States of America

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  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Translator’s Acknowledgments

  My God, now that the voices have been

  appeased and all has grown calm

  Now that each lover has retired with their beloved

  I retire with You, O My Beloved.

  Let this retreat, during this night, be for me

  deliverance from the fire.

  Rabiʿah al-ʿAdawiyya

  1.

  WE WAIT. All of Riyadh seems to be waiting. Soon it will be 10 a.m. and Al Safat Square is already dark with people. It shouldn’t be long now. All the nearby businesses have closed and the streets are filling up in the wake of a white 4x4, its speakers blasting the announcement of a heretic’s execution after Friday prayers. Everyone has gathered in Justice Square, where society puts its sinners to death. We wait. It’s hot, already very hot, and the sun cruelly floods the scene. A sandstorm has blown all night long, leaving behind, as if in suspension, a dust that seems to multiply the light’s brilliance. The sky is white. We form a more and more compact crowd around a pail of water and some rags that the courthouse’s employees have placed at the point they reckoned to be the exact center, the true middle of this large square typically occupied by women and children. This morning, there are only men, and real men, necessarily. In a few minutes’ time, the blade of a saber will slice through the neck of a body that will be divided into two parts. It takes a man to watch that. It’s nearly 10 a.m. and I leave the square to make my way back across the three hundred yards separating it from the courthouse, out of which will come Mansour al-Jazaïri, my friend. Policemen cleave the crowd in half, forming a cordon to expand the circle that surrounds the pail of water and the rags. One of them unrolls a rug, or rather a mat, just big enough to hold the two separated parts. The tension mounts, the impatience, and the fear as well. The cell phones are out, some are already starting to film and we can already hear, from here and there in the crowd, Gassouh! Gassouh! Cut it off! Cut it off! With difficulty, I again cross the three hundred yards packed with Arabs, Afghans, Asians, all mingling together for the occasion along this road down which Mansour will have to make his way so that he can kneel, lower his head, stick out his neck, and free himself from his transgression. Purify himself. Gassouh! Gassouh! Policemen are now positioning themselves in front of the great door of the tribunal. It shouldn’t be long now.

  You see, Mansour had told me, it’s like making love without coming. An empty and hopeless undertaking … Months of saving up to buy myself this car and now nothing … there’s nothing more to it, I have it, end of story. Nothing more to it! The entire time we sat there talking, he continued to interject that Nothing!, shooting a sorrowful look over our surroundings as we sat drinking coffee at a table at the Starbucks located in the Royal Mall. This despite the fact that we had come here to celebrate the purchase he had just made, his acquisition of a beautiful red 6.2L Camaro V8 capable of going from zero to a hundred and sixty miles per hour in under fifteen seconds. Nothing, he said. Whereas for me, excited as a child, impatient to hear the roar of the engine, impatient to feel my stomach clench from the acceleration, I was squirming with impatience in front of the mug I had quickly drained so as to be ready to climb into the leather interior of that sports model and I was … jealous, yes, jealous, terribly jealous, but at the same time happy for my friend Mansour, absent before his own coffee, his gaze blank. Mansour, paralyzed where he sat, as if melted, folded in on himself and extraneous to all the agitation that reigned over this mall full of people coming and going, their arms loaded with all sorts of bags … single people, people in groups, people with their families, from store to store … as if the entire city had gathered here, in this mall, to live here. People coming and going and crossing paths, and yet all seemingly going in the same direction, following the same path, heading for the same fate … until our eyes landed on a father and his daughter. They walked right in front us, and shot us a look that was both surprised and curious … which they then diverted from us, almost simultaneously, to calmly continue on their way to the central roundabout of the Royal Mall. Spanish, or French, I had thought as I continued to observe the father, one hand holding onto his daughter, three or four years old, and the other a dozen bags. Mansour followed the pair with me as they skirted the crowd on their way to the first free bench, where the father set down his bags and released his daughter’s hand; she immediately went to place her feet within the large black circle that demarcated the central roundabout of the Royal Mall … to then run in a circle and laugh herself silly. Maybe to counter the force of inertia that was drawing her toward the middle, or maybe simply for fun, the little girl swung her arms like a propeller … which had the effect of multiplying her laughter and drawing the attention of other children. As for her father, he stared off into space waiting for the game to come to an end or for his wife to return from the shops that had detained her or quite simply for things to happen as they do, just like that, with time working its magic, and upon each lap made by his daughter, he perfunctorily shot out a Take it easy, Azadeh! … or Aziadeh … to which, each time, the marvelous little girl replied, in French, Oui papa! So maybe they were French but originally from Iran or Turkey … or Iranians who speak French … who is to say? Then a Starbucks employee brought us back to reality by collecting our coffee cups, which he decided were empty, giving the table a quick wipe with a rag soaked with antibacterial cleaner. Damp streaks traced across the surface each time only to disappear almost instantly, giving the glass that covered the table a somewhat lackluster look. When we turned back to the father and his marvelous little girl, all we saw was a newly liberated bench and a central roundabout crisscrossed by women dressed all in black. They had left, it was as if they had disappeared. This whole time, Mansour had maintained his stony look, which he suddenly decided to break, saying to me: It’s as if they never existed.

  As he got to his feet, Mansour was overcome by a violent headache that forced him to remain still and hold onto my arm. Upright, he looked in the direction of the central roundabout, raised his hands to clutch his head, and told me: My head hurts … you know, I’ve been getting headaches more and more often lately … He explained to me that recently, they hadn’t been letting up, the pain came more and more frequently, sharper and sharper, and it even woke him up in the middle of the night and the usual pills didn’t really do anything to help, that he really ought to see a doctor soon. More and more people were circulating within the mall�
�s galleries, balmy with the fragrance of oud, a scent that rose up from the immaculate tiles and clung to the glittering shop windows. Galleries that we hastily followed in search of an exit and fresh air, in the hope that Mansour’s pain would subside. In the parking lot, my friend still had that blank stare as he looked at his beautiful red Camaro, and admitted that he was still suffering. You drive, he instructed me, holding out the keys … I didn’t need to be asked twice, and quickly set off. The hum of the engine seemed to reach all the way to my heart, but the traffic along Takhassusi dampened my excitement. I moved forward frustratingly, in little bursts, making do with short accelerations. Endlessly running into red lights the length of the avenue. Get us out of here, he demanded. Into the desert. As soon as I was able, I took Mekkah Road and let the engine loose like I was freeing a wild animal. I shouted to him, Due west, with the sun right in our faces! as if I was inquiring about his state. That’ll be fine … he replied with a smile. And it’s true that it was fine. At that time of day, the sunset hour, the sky offered us a spectacular show. A silence came over us in the leather-clad cockpit of the Camaro, we could barely hear the rumble of its belly or the wind that whistled by at our passage, a silence within which we gazed upon the succession of boulders, gilt by the radiance of the sun, as they flew past us at full speed. The immense rocky plateau was cleaved in two by Mekkah Road; it was deserted, magnificent, giving way to sheer cliffs that looked out over a long expanse of red dunes we could make out, at that moment, only intermittently, at the end of each wadi or the bottom of each dizzying crevasse over which bridges gave the impression that they were trying to stitch together, bring closer, connect every escarpment on the plateau. The Camaro’s windshield became a movie screen in front of our eyes as it received the gentle orange light of a setting sun, hanging there, applying itself like a cream, a golden film across Mansour’s face as he stared straight ahead. Without blinking. Receiving upon his eyes the burning attention of the star toward which we were heading. Strangely, that sun in my eyes feels really good, he told me … I hardly feel the pain anymore. The entire leather interior of the beautiful Camaro was bathed in a sort of golden cloud, saffron-colored, and the gentle suspension, likely hydraulic, gave me the feeling I was floating or levitating above the rocky plateau … flying across a velvety smoothness that covered the stony expanse. At this hour, the desert offered a spectacular show. You know, he said, I often have this strange dream where I find myself all alone in a prairie. A sad, yellowish prairie, where I’m walking with no real destination, where I continue on without really knowing where I’m going. The grass is tall, dry, and I can hear it brushing against my legs. And I can smell it. I keep going, I keep going, until I see, each time, in what seems to me to be the very middle of that prairie, an animal lying there. I move toward it, it’s an ass. A beige donkey, or rather, light brown, an ass lying on his flank, his hooves splayed out, his head stretched out over that dry grass and his eyes wide open. He isn’t dead, no, but he isn’t sleeping, either, he’s just lying there and I get the feeling that he’s waiting for me. I look at him, I look at his beige coat, or rather, his brown one, and I instantly feel calm. I approach him, he doesn’t react … I sit down, right up against him, still he doesn’t react. I feel calm, I feel content, I reach out my hand, I bring it to him, I feel his coarse hair, I sink my fingers into it, I stroke it. This dream always seems to last all night … Snuggled up against an ass all night, can you imagine? … Right then the road began to plummet dizzyingly between two cliffsides. We left the plateau of the Najd and Mansour reverted to silence. The dunes, red, infinite, received us.

  Gassouh! Gassouh! They’re yelling now, brandishing their cell phones toward the door of the tribunal, a heavy door, as if embedded or even brazed into the outer wall. And people continue to converge. The crowd invites more crowd. Hatred, curiosity, fear, boredom, conviction, misunderstanding, expectation, vengeance …

  I brought the beautiful red Camaro to a stop on a little road, gnawed by sand in spots, bordering the dunes. The sun continued its flamboyant descent as Mansour opened his door, climbed out without closing it behind him, and then advanced toward the mineral immensity that undulated all around us. Ignorance, severity, compassion, love, mercy, violence … His footsteps sank lightly into sand I imagined to be cool, from the leather interior where I had remained to roll a joint, following him with my eyes as he sunk down into the hollow between two dunes, then climbed the slope, responding to what seemed to be a summons … Piety, impiety, madness, wisdom … He reached the crest and followed its line as would a tightrope walker until he found the point he judged best to stop, to sit and contemplate … or perhaps he had stopped just like that, by chance, without any real reason, feeling the place sufficiently high up that he might contemplate the interminable expanse of the dunes or the rocky pediment by way of which we had come … or perhaps he was contemplating, further down from where we were by then standing side by side, the vast surface of the sand, which formed a sort of basin, like a dish, fully rounded, which I then saw as a small prairie of dry, yellow grass, in which I sought out an ass amid the grains of sand … while he, Mansour, was simply looking at the billions upon billions of grains … You’ll end up getting your head chopped off if you keep smoking that shit, my friend had warned me, with an evident lack of clairvoyance and intuition … or maybe it was a slightly erroneous premonition? A simple error in discernment? But we weren’t there yet in that moment … Atop the rocky pediment that proudly towered across from us, the shadows of the dunes chipped away at the sunshine that remained on that dry and dusty land. It was time for us to go. Mansour was feeling better. As for me, I felt my eyes burning in the dry air and saw the dunes dance in the growing dimness … I got into the passenger seat and looked, through the window, at the earth as it continued to shift, stretching off into the distance. More or less lying down in my seat, my head resting against the leather of the door, I checked in and out at the whim of my states of consciousness and unconsciousness, I let myself drift away. In the distance, like the lights of a beacon, the twinkling of Kingdom Tower drew the beautiful red Camaro toward it as we sailed through the desert.

  Gassouh! Gassouh! shouts the crowd when the heavy door of the tribunal opens and two men step out. They advance toward the onlookers, requesting they back away with sweeping gestures, stretching out their arms and waving their hands without the slightest trace of ambiguity. It’s clear now, we can hear them, they ask everyone to back up. Violently. Gassouh! Gassouh! responds the crowd, and the two men go back the way they came. The seconds drag on, interminable. The silence folds in on itself like a promise that has worn thin and then been recanted. The seconds drag on, intolerable, and the two men reappear, followed by two policemen flanking Mansour, his head bowed and buried in the large folds of a white turban. We cannot see his face … only his hands and feet, bare, at the extremities of a long white tunic. Dirty. His hands and feet hobbled by a thick chain … his hands and feet shackled and linked by a heavy chain, which forces him to hunch and to stumble. And behind Mansour, one last man, large and strong, wearing a black cape embroidered in gold and firmly holding a long saber and a Qur’an … Gassouh! Gassouh! cries the crowd once again, despite the evidence that things are in place and inevitably moving forward. And those billions of particles of dust, in suspension, hesitating to fall, smaller even than particles: molecules, atoms, those billions upon billions of dust atoms in suspension, multiplying the lackluster whiteness of the morning, aggregating to form a sort of whitish fog, thick, compact, and seeming to freeze not only the space but also the time around this scene in which Mansour comes to a halt, then raises his head then looks at us before resuming his march. Looks at us, all of us. A scene frozen like an old snapshot.

  Perhaps Abdelkader, smack dab in the middle of the nineteenth century, had worn the same look when he was asked to pose for that photograph, when he was taken from the room in which he had been sequestered, when he was brought outside for better lighting, outsid
e of what seemed more hovel than castle, and was asked to put on his handsome white burnoose, for prestige, asked to stand atop a beam of sorts that raised him up a few inches so that he would be perfectly inset within the frame of one of the hidden doorways of what seemed more Prison de France than Château d’Amboise, so that the shot would be a good one, and when they asked him to pose and when he tried to find a gaze that might correspond to what was expected of him, or perhaps he didn’t have to seek one out, maybe he simply balanced himself on that beam of sorts, which acted as a display stand, and waited until the photographer had finished his work, listening to the Loire flowing by further down, and perhaps thinking, as he did each day, each hour, and each minute, of the words of the Duke of Aumale, or perhaps those of General de Lamorcière, of the promise given, mulled over each day and each hour and each minute of his imprisonment by the banks of the Loire, along with his entire tribe, his entire smala as they said in those days, the duke’s word specifying a safe house and protection in Alexandria or in Akka, and he, the old emir, not being able to comprehend such a betrayal, a breach of the promise made, waiting patiently for the error to be corrected, the misunderstanding … waiting through interminable seconds for this liberation that must surely take place … because a nobleman, a descendant of the king, could not go back on his word, the word of France. Or maybe that look had been the one he was already wearing, ashamed and humiliated at having led his entire smala and perhaps an entire nation to cold and to death, or perhaps he was worried about what he had dared write to the royalty: If you were to bring me, on behalf of your king, all the wealth of France, in millions and in diamonds, and if it were possible for me to hold it all in the flaps of this burnoose, I would sooner hurl it into the waters that lap against the walls of my prison than release you from the oath you have solemnly sworn to me. I will carry this promise within me until the grave. I am your guest. Make of me your prisoner if you so desire, but the shame and dishonor will weigh upon you and not me. Whatever it was, he did not have to seek very far to find a suitable look, he just had to maintain the one he had worn since he had been taken there, he and his entire smala, to that damp and cold land where the Loire flowed shallow and slow. The strange gaze that he brought to bear upon that world, which must have been the absolute inverse, or the exact opposite, of his own world. Today, Mansour is looking at us with what is undoubtedly that same strangeness. His eyes are clear. My God how they are clear! Pale eyes, as if made of glazed earthenware, which pan across this unrelenting crowd, as if he meant to look at each one of us. Then he lowers those oddly pale eyes, seems to look at the ground, and resumes his march forward. Gassouh! Gassouh!