The senior astrologer waved his hand, and the other astrologers left the room. When they had shut the door behind them, the old astrologer sat down in front of the brigadier, who was calmly sipping a cup of tea.
The senior astrologer anxiously appealed to the brigadier. “Do you remember, sir, when we started seeing the specter of the One Who Has No Name?”
“That would have been in the springtime, toward the end of April.”
“Have you ever thought about how this monstrous criminal was made?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask? If it weren’t for all the rumors and my trust in what you say, I wouldn’t believe such a creature exists. Where are we living, and in what age? Ogres and succubi, in this day and age? They aren’t just manifestations of people’s fears,” said the brigadier irritably.
“No, sir. He exists. You’re entitled not to believe me, but when we get our hands on him, you’ll see.”
“Did you come just to tell me this, or is there something else you’re hiding?”
“Yes, I think we played a role in creating this creature, in one way or another. Things were proceeding as usual before he appeared. I think some of our staff helped create him,” said the astrologer. The brigadier held his cup of tea in midair. He didn’t drink from it or put it down.
“What do you mean?”
“Someone inspired the creation of this creature to stop crimes before they happen. What’s the point of predicting where a crime is going to happen when you can wipe out the criminal before he becomes one.”
“What do you mean?” the brigadier asked again, the tea of cup still poised in his hand. He was annoyed and confused. He wouldn’t believe what his favorite astrologer said because he hadn’t offered any proof, even if he did sell the government and the Americans information extracted from playing cards, and with sand, mirrors, rosaries made of beans, and so on. But the brigadier wouldn’t buy stories like this so easily.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A LOST SOUL
1
MAHMOUD DREAMED HE was holding her hand, his fingers intertwined with hers. They strolled lazily past the Sheraton Hotel and toward Abu Nuwas Street, their hands doing the talking, passing messages between their souls like an electric wire.
There were no sounds in the background—no car horns, no police cars or Hummers. The world around them was more cheerful, less dreary and depressing, and the future didn’t seem completely unknown. There was an assurance of something better, making things seem less oppressive or, like the Midas touch, turning them into gold.
“Have you ever seen a golden piece of shit?” he asked. “Do you think it would be beautiful or just another piece of shit?”
He didn’t know why he had asked this. But when he looked at her, he found that she was just a tree with cracked bark, another eucalyptus tree on Abu Nuwas Street. He noticed a bitter taste in his throat and could smell the tires of the passing cars. In his hand was a handkerchief soaked in his own sweat. He was squeezing it tight for no obvious reason.
He woke up sweating and felt deeply depressed. He had slept a long time. He didn’t want to get out of bed. He went back to sleep, to the reassuring images in his dream. It was noon by the time he was standing under a cold shower. He called Raghayib, the woman who arranged women for him, and waited in his room. He watched television, smoked, watched the cars and passersby on Saadoun Street from his hotel window. He stayed that way till sunset, when Zeina showed up.
It was hot and humid outside. Although the sun had set, heat still radiated from the street, so the first thing Zeina did after entering Mahmoud’s room was stand naked under the shower for a quarter of an hour. Her hair, which she held together with a pink clip, was soaked. Her makeup was now gone, and she didn’t care what Mahmoud thought when she came out of the shower stripped of everything, her skin cold and wet, and with an unalloyed sense of relaxation.
Just like the previous time, she told him her name was Zeina, but Mahmoud said her name was Nawal al-Wazir. She laughed and said that the name Nawal was old-fashioned, older than the traditional greeting Assalam aleekum. Then she laughed again and lay down on the bed, spreading her legs and giving him a view of where she had shaved her pubic hair. He said to himself that using Assalam aleekum to represent antiquity was itself old-fashioned, but it sounded nice when she said it. All he wanted to do was to put his arms around her and run his hands along her clean, naked body. “This is the moment you’ve been waiting for, my boy,” he said to himself. “After tonight, life won’t be anything like it used to be.”
He heard Zeina asking him to turn out the light. He took off his clothes and threw himself beside her on the bed. The light from the television cast moving flashes of light around the room. She asked him to turn off the television too, but as on the previous occasion, he wanted her to dance to a song from the Gulf.
“Dance, Nawal,” he said.
She laughed and pulled him toward her.
“Still Nawal?” she said.
He took hold of her plump arms and pulled her closer, forgetting about his request that she dance. His heart was beating like a drum. When he wrapped his arms around her, she used her free hand to grab the remote control lying on the pillow and turn off the television. It wasn’t pitch black—there were faint lights coming through the balcony window—but when he looked at her, he didn’t see anything, just lines of light that traced the outline of a woman who could have been any woman in the world. And yet he still saw her as one particular woman, Nawal al-Wazir, the woman he loved. There she was in his arms, even if she said her name was Zeina.
He covered her dark body with kisses, and she laughed, which he didn’t like. He dived deep into her, the pleasure coursing through him with a rising tempo, but then she started to moan uncomfortably, faking pleasure. She wasn’t with him but was looking forward to him climaxing quickly so she could be done with him.
“Shut up,” he scolded her, and she stopped. Then he clamped his hand over her mouth as he pressed against her from behind. When he had finished, she left the bed grumbling. She sat down naked on the chair next to the balcony window and started smoking. Mahmoud could see her face in profile in the diffused light. She was furious, but she was still beautiful. A minute later he shouted at her, and she replied angrily, “Who’s this Nawal you’re going on about? I tell you my name’s Zeina, god damn it, and then you call me Nawal?”
2
Mahmoud took a cigarette out of his packet and began to smoke, while Zeina sat next to the balcony window. He went over what had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours.
In the morning he had headed to Aziz’s coffee shop, wanting to relive something of the old atmosphere and forget the monotony of the magazine. He gave Aziz a friendly greeting and expected to see Hadi the junk dealer there.
“Is he at home?” asked Mahmoud.
“Don’t go to his place, sir. Leave him alone, for God’s sake,” Aziz said in a serious tone that Mahmoud hadn’t heard from him before. When the coffee shop emptied out somewhat, Aziz came and sat next to him. Mahmoud asked about the Whatsitsname, whether he was really the criminal people were talking about. Aziz said it was all a “made-up story” and then told him about Nahem Abdaki, the close friend, partner, and companion that Hadi had lost in an explosion at the beginning of the year. Hadi had lived through many disasters, but after a while he turned everything into amusing stories.
“The Whatsitsname that Hadi talks about is in fact Nahem Abdaki, may he rest in peace,” he added.
“How could it be him?” asked Mahmoud. Aziz explained that after the explosion, Hadi had gone to the mortuary to collect the body because Nahem didn’t have any family other than his wife and young daughter. Hadi was shocked to see that the bodies of explosion victims were all mixed up together and to hear the mortuary worker tell him to put a body together and carry it off—take this leg and this arm and so on.
/> Hadi collected what he thought was Nahem’s body, then went to the Mohamed Sakran Cemetery with Nahem’s widow and some neighbors. But Hadi was changed after that. He didn’t speak for two weeks, after which he went back to laughing and telling stories, and when he told the Whatsitsname story at Aziz’s coffee shop, Aziz and some of those sitting there knew that Hadi had written Nahem out of it and put the Whatsitsname in his place.
“Okay, but the recordings? I gave him a recorder, and he recorded conversations between him and the Whatsitsname.”
“Hadi’s a big bullshitter. He probably got one of his friends to record it. He has lots of friends we don’t know.”
“I don’t buy it. What he says in the recordings is powerful stuff. I mean, it’s from someone intelligent. Big stories with depth.”
“I really don’t know. But Hadi’s a mischievous devil; he could come up with anything.”
Mahmoud believed Aziz, although there were gaps in his story, questions without answers. On his way back he stopped at the end of Lane 7 and looked from a distance at the ramshackle front wall of “the Jewish ruin,” where Hadi lived. He thought about ignoring Aziz’s wishes and knocking on the door to get the story directly from Hadi, but he was worried Hadi might in fact be smarter than he was, as Aziz was sure he was, and might drag him back into the maelstrom of his outlandish story. For now Mahmoud didn’t have the energy for this.
3
Ali Baher al-Saidi had been away for several days when a group of men with thick gray mustaches and prominent paunches turned up at the premises of al-Haqiqa magazine to make inquiries about him. Mahmoud received them warily. They asked for Saidi’s telephone number in Beirut, and Mahmoud said he didn’t have it. They asked about Saidi’s house, his relatives, his companies, and so on. Mahmoud denied knowing anything. When they had given up all hope of obtaining any useful information, they left, disgruntled.
In the afternoon Mahmoud, racked with anxiety, tried to call Ali Baher al-Saidi, but he didn’t pick up. Mahmoud tried calling a second and third time, and finally Saidi picked up. As usual he was relaxed. Mahmoud told him about the visitors, and Saidi praised the way he had dealt with them. He asked Mahmoud to deal firmly with others like them but didn’t explain who those others might be or why they were asking questions. He asked Mahmoud to call his private secretary and ask her to come to the magazine to keep such visitors at bay.
“She knows how to answer them, and it’s not your job,” he said. “You just concentrate on the magazine.”
Saidi got off the phone quickly, leaving Mahmoud puzzled. He was too embarrassed to call him back and ask him more questions.
Mahmoud called Saidi’s secretary the next day, and she told him she had resigned. Her fiancé wouldn’t agree to her working at a place full of men, saying it was dangerous on the streets. Mahmoud didn’t know how to answer and preferred not to argue.
He was right in the firing line, a situation he wasn’t used to. He woke up at eight o’clock in the morning, washed, shaved, put on smart clothes to emulate Saidi. Taking out a small notebook, he looked at his priorities for the day. He called Sultan, Saidi’s personal driver, to take him on reporting assignments. From that point on, his phone never stopped ringing. The magazine staff—all except for Farid Shawwaf—looked up to him as the “big boss” and a carbon copy of Saidi himself. Maybe they saw him relaxed and happy, as Saidi always appeared to be. But in fact he was anxious and afraid of surprises. He was even more afraid of failing in Saidi’s eyes. He couldn’t wait to move out of the limelight and go back to being a number two who receives orders from the boss.
Mahmoud was very busy when Nawal al-Wazir called on Saidi’s phone. He saw the number 666 and picked up, but no one answered. He could hear a sigh at the other end of the line, or imagined he did, before the caller hung up.
Two days later the old janitor, Abu Jouni, came in and dropped a bombshell: Nawal al-Wazir was in the office. She had come in a white Suzuki so small it looked like a toy. She took off her wraparound sunglasses and sat on the red leather sofa, radiating vitality and good health and smiling at Mahmoud, whose heart beat violently. She looked many times more beautiful than she had two months before.
“So that joker friend of yours has left you tied up here while he goes gallivanting around, has he?” she said.
“He’s gone to a conference in Beirut on the media and human rights.”
“Yes, you told me, yes. Now you’ll see how he tricks you.”
She put out her cigarette in the ashtray before it was finished, then continued: “He’s gone there to play around. There is no conference.”
“Really? I wouldn’t know.”
“You’re a nice guy, Mahmoud. As soon as I saw you with Saidi, I said, ‘They’re like chalk and cheese, these two.’ And that friend of yours is a real bullshitter.”
“Is he my friend or your friend?” Mahmoud dared to ask. He saw her smile, then chuckle.
“Yes, my friend,” she said. “But don’t get carried away. He was just helping me on a film. He gave me its plot in the first place.”
She looked at her watch, opened her strange oval-shaped handbag, and took out a small key, then looked at Mahmoud and said, “Do you mind?” She went up to Saidi’s vast desk and leaned over to the bottom drawer, the one that was always closed. Mahmoud didn’t know what was in it and didn’t have a key for it, but Nawal was opening it. She took out some files and a small box that might be for a watch or an expensive fountain pen, and then a paper box of the kind used by the shops that develop and print photographs at Bab al-Sharqi. She gathered everything in a thick plastic bag with an ad for Gitanes cigarettes on it, then lifted it and shook it to judge the weight.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He knows. He gave me the key. These are my things. The script for the film and some other stuff.”
“And why are you taking them? I mean, what’s happened?”
“Everything’s over, and I advise you to be careful. You remind me of my brother who moved to Sweden ten years ago, and my late husband, may he rest in peace.”
“So what should I do?” asked Mahmoud. “Why should I be careful?”
She turned toward the door, then looked back at Mahmoud. She gave a long sigh and said, “We can’t talk here.”
He thought she was suggesting they leave the magazine offices and go somewhere else to talk, but for some reason he begged off, saying he was busy and promising to call her to set a time to meet and talk.
In fact, he was suspicious and wanted time to digest what she had said. He escorted her to the front door, and was dazzled by the color of her brand-new Suzuki. She didn’t seem to be a beggar or a prostitute; she was a respectable woman. Perhaps Mahmoud had made a mistake and should have gone with her wherever she wanted. Hadn’t he dreamed of seeing her? Hadn’t he imagined her face and her figure in his elaborate sexual fantasies? He had even chosen a woman to sleep with because she looked like Nawal.
Before she drove off, Mahmoud stood in her car’s path like an idiot. It could have hit him. She came to a sudden halt, and Mahmoud raised his hand to signal that she should wait for him. He hurried back into the office, grabbed his leather bag, had a word with Abu Jouni, and then ran out. He opened the car door and sat next to her. As she drove off, he felt a stiffening in his crotch but tried to look composed. He was content just to be next to her, as if the dream that was so depressing to wake up from had started to come true.
Before they emerged onto the main street, they came across Sultan in his four-wheel drive, trying to turn into the lane. Nawal made way for him, and as he drove past, he tried to make out the faces behind the windshield. Noticing Mahmoud, he didn’t approve, acknowledging them with just two quick honks of his car horn, the same way truck drivers greet each other.
4
Nawal said Saidi was evil, the most evil man she had ever known. She had met him through friends and had rea
d a book of his that was published in London called The Conditions for Democracy in Rentier States. He had convinced her that he could finance her first full-length film by introducing her to organizations with links to the American Embassy in Baghdad that were willing to subsidize films from the Islamic world produced by women. They had agreed on the concept, and then he had written the screenplay. He told her it would be about the evil we all have inside us, how it resides deep within us, even when we want to put an end to it in the outside world, because we are all criminals to some extent, and the darkness inside us is the blackest variety known to man. He said we have all been helping to create the evil creature that is now killing us off.
Nawal said that Saidi had tried to be intimate with her several times. He wanted from her what most men want. When she came to a dead end with him, she suspended the project and kept out of sight until today, when she came to retrieve her things from Saidi’s desk before he came back. When she had a good look at Mahmoud, she felt there might be some hope for the film after all, that it could be made with help from a competent, ambitious young man such as him.
“I’ve read what you’ve written for the magazine. Amazing. You’re going to be a great writer, Mahmoud.” Mahmoud’s eyes sparkled with pride, as if he were receiving the prophecy of a trusted fortune-teller. But he wanted more from Nawal. He had learned some effective tricks from Saidi. The accusation his friends made, that he had become just like Saidi, didn’t bother him at all. But in order to make the likeness complete, Mahmoud had to pass one more test. He had to have Nawal al-Wazir in the same way Saidi had had her. Or perhaps Saidi hadn’t really had her, as she insisted, in which case Mahmoud would outdo Saidi, would leave him in the dust.
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