The Dust of Promises

by Ahlem Mosteghanemi

  The possibility of his death had been there. But I hadn’t expected it to come this fast, or with this particular timing. All these coincidences taken together were too absurd to be mere happenstance. Rather, they had the insistence of Fate about them.

  Moved, the nurse said, ‘It’s painful to think that he died just two days before he was scheduled to be discharged. He seemed so happy about leaving. I myself was surprised when someone told me this morning that he’d spent last night in the intensive care unit.’

  After seeing me stand there stunned for a few moments without saying a word, she asked me if I wanted to see him. I told her I didn’t. She handed me a paper to sign if I intended to receive his things. After opening the closet and glimpsing the box of fancy chocolates on top of a pile of his clothes, I told her I preferred to leave that until later.

  I left the hospital in a state of emotional paralysis, as though my tears had been stored in a freezer that now contained what had once been ‘him’.

  I took the Metro laden with my bag, with all the things I’d brought him but which he no longer needed.

  Wanting to be rid of it, I tried giving it to a homeless man at one of the Metro stations. Suspicious, he showed no enthusiasm, preferring that I give him a ten-franc coin that he could buy some wine with. So I ended up giving him the bag and ten francs to boot, to persuade him of my good intentions.

  The master of irony and ambiguous silence, he hadn’t given me a chance to tell him the final lie I’d prepared to justify being too occupied to come see him.

  Maybe he’d needed to hear the things I’d kept to myself for fear of hurting him. Maybe he’d needed the truth. So by his death he’d exempted me from the need to go on lying. He’d decided to pass on to his spiritual ‘bed’ while I was occupying his earthly one.

  He’d given me his house, his women, his things, yet he hadn’t left me a chance to give him even a few pieces of zalabia, thereby to fulfil the final, simple wish of someone who was fed up with life in a foreign land and who had nothing left but his hunger for home.

  I recalled his sardonic air, and that distracted presence that precedes absence’s completion. There were so many things I would have said to him that day if it hadn’t been for the fact that, since the time when all this blank space came between us, I’d grown weary of words. And I wondered how long he’d been headed for the realm of wordless silence.

  As I walked into the apartment, I felt the full weight of the calamity, the shock of reality that pushes you under the wheels of a train you boarded with the intention of dreaming. I flung myself onto the living room sofa, exhausted as a race horse.

  First I had to stop running for a bit, to sit down and figure out what had led me to this house. I who’d amused myself by trifling with literature, had I unknowingly been trifling with fate?

  The situation was so bizarre, it had left me completely disoriented. I began reflecting on the scene as though I weren’t its main actor, and as though I’d seen it at some time in the past.

  When I read this artist’s life story, I’d found myself identifying with him in so many places, I wished I could repeat his life as intelligently as it deserved to be repeated. But who can claim to be intelligent over ‘what is written’ – the predetermined fate that, for me, had started with a book that no one can read and come out unscathed?

  Was that where the curse had come from? Or had it come from Hayat (whose name means ‘life’)? In keeping with the Arabs’ custom of calling what they see to be evil by a name that conveys its opposite, she was a woman who was the very converse of what her name signified.

  Or did the curse lie in the bridges, one of which still hung across from the sofa on which I lay? It was here that Zayyan had confronted the reality of the death of Ziyad, who had missed being Zayyan’s match by a mere three letters.

  In the presence of these bridges, I burst into dance to the rhythm of the one-armed Zorba on the day they informed him of the assassination of his only brother.

  Is it mere coincidence that bridges are constructed from cement, a substance that, like someone plotting against you, conceals a dark rage and unspoken evil? For a long time I’ve been suspicious of bridges’ intentions – ever since I noticed a resemblance between bridges and escapees, since they both have two opposite sides to them, and you don’t know which side they belong to.

  But Zayyan wasn’t an escapee. Rather, he was someone who wanted to facilitate the escape – the liberation – of what he thought to be a homeland.

  How stupid of the man! Between what he thought to be a bridge and what the bridge thought to be a homeland lies your dead body. After all, a bridge isn’t measured by the distance that separates its two ends, but, rather, by the distance that separates you from the abyss beneath it.

  When you’re born atop a rock, you’re doomed to be a Sisyphus whose lofty dreams doom you to a lifetime of towering losses.

  We who climbed the mountains of illusion, who picked up our dreams, slogans, projects, writings and paintings and carried them, panting, to the peak, how have we rolled back down the slopes of defeat one generation after another? And who will pick up all we’ve dropped in the foothills?

  When France, after standing meekly for seven years outside the gates of this citadel as well fortified as an eagle’s nest, at last entered Constantine, the city’s cavalrymen, unaccustomed to the ignominy of captivity, jumped off the bridges on horseback, returning to the valley’s womb. Death by jumping off those steep slopes was the final victory for these men whose sole source of pride was that they were sons of the rock.

  With them the era of beautiful death came to an end, and Wadi al-Rimal became a sewer bed for the offal of history where, along with the city’s refuse and news of its respectable thieves, floated the corpses of its beautiful, wretched sons.

  Nothing can prevent you from climbing ‘the bridges of death’, not even the ‘safety belt’ with which, after too many cases of suicide, they wrapped the bridges’ waists. The railing might prevent you from looking down on death, but it can’t prevent death from looking down on you where you are in the depths of your failures.

  Suddenly, like Hayat, I’d begun to consider these paintings a bad omen, and I felt as though my sitting in front of them was a silent provocation of a fate I had no strength to face.

  I was glad that I’d be leaving the apartment soon, and that the paintings would stay where they were. Then I remembered the painting I’d bought, and which would remain in the exhibit until it ended. I thought of having Françoise bring it. Then I thought about how strange it would be for me to travel with Zayyan’s corpse in the company of that painting. My stream of consciousness finally brought me to my suitcase, which I needed to pack, and to Zayyan’s things, which I would have to sort through quickly, since I didn’t know when my flight to Constantine would be.

  I found myself recalling what I’d experienced two years earlier after Abdelhaq’s assassination. I’d had to get my things out of his house, where I’d stayed from time to time during that period when journalists had to keep constantly on the move. Abdelhaq himself hadn’t had a fixed address since the time he began feeling himself in danger.

  Maybe things had been easier back then, since my only concern had been to gather my own things, whereas I’d left to his wife the miserable task of taking care of his. Even so, I’d been pained on account of all the things Hayat had brought. Through successive visits, the house had come to be occupied both by Abdelhaq’s humble possessions and by those other, high-class items that she used to smuggle out of her house. She pitied a house that was such a far cry from the opulence of her own residence, not realising, of course, that she was furnishing not my home but my friend’s!

  At first I’d been planning to explain the situation to her. But then I’d started to enjoy the romantic misunderstanding we’d gotten ourselves into, and I was tempted to hold on to the ambiguity that had brought us together.

  Whenever he passed through, Abdelhaq could see how often she�
�d visited by the new additions to the house, from beautiful towels, elegant sheets and a bathrobe to crystal ashtrays and kitchen utensils. I’d gotten used to seeing her arrive laden with everything she could get her hands on at home, including even imported cheeses, chocolate bars, and packs of cigarettes. In fact, so incorrigible was she in her sentimental criminality that she once gave me some clothes and jewellery she’d bought for my wife!

  She was generous in everything: the way she worried about you, the way she busied herself with you, the way she craved you, the way she pleasured you, and even the way she caused you pain.

  It was the kind of adoring generosity that, when you lose it, you feel the same ache you felt when you were orphaned the first time, since you realise there isn’t another woman in the world who will ever love you to the same degree, or in the same way. You can see that during your infatuation with her she wrought havoc in you with her wanton ardor and liberality. She corrupted you, ruined you, pampered you and shaped you to the point where you’d be of no use to any other woman.

  When Abdelhaq died, the question arose as to what I was going to do with the things Hayat had brought to his house. Should I leave them there for his wife to deal with however she chose, or should I take them to my house to punish myself with them?

  Even more difficult than coming up with a convincing story for my wife to explain where the things had come from would be having to live with them every day, since every one of them was associated with a memory that stirred up sorrows, and took me back to a happiness that bore the seeds of my approaching misery.

  This woman’s love had been an ongoing punishment. Never did I meet a woman after her but that she brought a kind of chastisement, never did I use anything she’d given me but that I tormented myself with it, and never did I draw another woman close but that I felt chilled to the bone.

  How was I to escape painful comparisons? She who had bestowed on me more than any other woman ever could: had she secretly hoped, in everything she gave me, to cause me pain? After all, everything romantic love gives you contains the seeds of its future retribution.

  Which is more merciful, then: what the dead leave you when they depart, or what love leaves you after the departure of the living?

  I put out my questions in the ashtray of anguish and headed for Zayyan’s room.

  Behold life, with its ‘things’ that never die. Behold the things that you think you’ve won, only to find that they’ve defeated you, since they’re bound to outlive you.

  The task I faced with Zayyan’s things was reminiscent of the one I’d confronted with my father’s things and the bedroom he bequeathed to me, with a wardrobe containing suits, clothes and items suited to a man his age: his nightshirt, two house robes – a thick one, and a light silk one – his underwear, which was always the same French brand, his calendar, his woollen house slippers, his glasses, his watch, his sweaters, and his medicines, of which he had a three-month stockpile, since he thought that by buying large quantities he was buying a longer life for himself.

  In my father’s bedroom, then in Abdelhaq’s house, and now in the presence of Zayyan’s things, I saw that we’re of less value than anything we own.

  Otherwise, how could an ashtray that cost ten francs live longer than you do? How could the hands of a 500-franc watch go on turning, oblivious to the fact that your heart has stopped? The same goes for a bed, a chair, or a pair of shoes. How is it that a pair of socks still damp from your sweaty feet cares nothing about your demise?

  How is it that the things you paid the most for are the first to betray you, and that the ones that nearly cost you your life go to someone else the minute you die?

  The same question had come back: How was I to face the unjust presence, the terrible, frigid presence of those things that had no interest in someone whose corpse was still warm? Of course, there’s nothing more malicious than innocence. So I’ve learned not to be deceived by things’ seemingly ingenuous, familiar presence. However sad they might appear to be, they’re gloating in secret, reminding you that even though their owners are gone they’re the ones that will survive. They might even go to their former owners’ enemies, the way a dead soldier’s boots go to a miserable adversary on a snow-swept battlefield.

  If you want to test things by your death, close the door and leave.

  The first crafty thief is the dust that will place its gloved hand on your things without moving them from their place. Without anyone noticing, they’ll become his by virtue of your absence.

  The dust that advances, sweeping over every place from which you’ve absented yourself, is nothing but a rehearsal for what will happen after your death.

  At that point, your things will go to whoever snatches them up, not with the diffidence of dust but with the insolence of a thief. It makes me think of a scene from the story of Zorba. As a certain old lady is dying, she sees that the people who’ve come on the pretext of consoling her are vying to pilfer her things, taking advantage of her inability to defend the possessions she’s striven all her life to protect. Faced with a painful quandary, she doesn’t know how she should expend the meagre strength she has left – by clinging to her last breath, or by holding onto her last hen?!

  In death, the most miserable role falls not to the person who’s passed away and has nothing more to worry about. Rather, it goes to those who have to witness the fate of his possessions after he’s gone.

  Sad though she was, I didn’t think Françoise would put up with having things’ cadavers in her house for very long. Based on what I knew of her, they’d be gone in no more than two or three hours – the time she would need to gather up Zayyan’s papers and books so that she could hand them over to the next Arab who came into her house.

  As for the other things, she might put them in bags, which would take their place on the ground floor next to the rubbish bin. Or, at best, she might keep them in her garage to wait for the next Red Cross collection.

  Françoise was obsessed with charity initiatives. It was as though she’d devoted herself to helping les misérables of humanity who, depending on the latest tragedies in the world, took turns occupying her heart and her bed. It had even occurred to me that her intimacy with Zayyan fell under the rubric of her charitable activities.

  Depending on the most recent news report, I would see her rush to answer calls to provide aid to this group or that. She would gather up clothes she didn’t need, shoes, curtains and sheets – some worn out and some not – into big plastic bags which she would take down and deposit next to the concierge’s station, where they would wait to be picked up by the Red Cross.

  Françoise combined kind-heartedness with Westerners’ naiveté in relating to the Other. It was a naiveté governed by a media-driven logic that oversimplifies things by dividing the world neatly into good guys and bad guys, civilised and backward, necessary and unnecessary.

  One day when I saw her going downstairs with some bags to donate to victims in Sarajevo, I confessed that I envied her the courage to get rid of everything so quickly, and her ability to throw things into a bag to give them away without regret, hesitation or nostalgia, unconcerned about things’ memory or sentimental value. I told her I wished I could be like her – that I could gather up my memory into a bundle and set it at the door. That way, I could get rid of my load and travel light the way she did.

  ‘So then,’ she asked, ‘what do you all do with things you don’t need any more?’

  ‘We don’t have anything we don’t need,’ I said jokingly. ‘Even when our stuff gets old and worn out, we need it in our wardrobes or storage sheds, not out of stinginess, but because we love to weigh ourselves down with memory. If we give charity, we prefer to give money rather than our things’ dead bodies. That’s why we always need big houses.’

  Then I continued with a laugh, ‘Isn’t that catastrophic?’

  Behold the catastrophe! O Arabs weighed down with your loads, another bequest awaits you! But what will you do with the ill-fitting foreign
identity of a man whose homeland hadn’t found room for him, and who left you what he’d imagined to be a homeland: books on poetry and Algerian history, pictures he’d taken with people who may have been family or friends, who may be dead or still living, an old copy of the Qur’an, several years’ organisers filled with addresses, appointments and names, medical prescriptions, used train, Metro and aeroplane tickets, posters from art exhibits he’d put on, cassette tapes of Arab music, house coats, and small items associated no doubt with memories known only to him, such as an empty Chanel No.5 bottle that lay in a far corner of the wardrobe, bathed in a kind of fragrant sorrow as if loyalty were sobbing in apology for all women’s infidelities?

  You gather about you fake imitations that you call a homeland. You surround yourself with strangers you call family. You sleep in the bed of a transient whom you call a sweetheart. You carry in your pocket a little black book filled with the numbers of people you call friends. You invent holidays and occasions, symbols and customs, and frequent a coffee shop the way you’d visit a friend.

  As you’re tailoring an ersatz homeland, your foreign-made identity gets so loose on you that it feels like a burnoose about to fall off your shoulders. You treat a foreign land as though it were home, and home as though it were a foreign land. You’ve got to realise, man, that your foreign-made self is a tragedy that you only become aware of in stages, and your awareness of it is only complete when the coffin lid closes over the unanswered questions of a lifetime. By that time, of course, you aren’t around to find out what a stranger you were, or what an exile you’ll be henceforth!

  I was still thinking about what to do with all these things when suddenly I glimpsed a pair of shoes under the dresser. It was his only pair of shoes, or, rather, the only pair left here, since he was sure to have had another one that he’d worn to the hospital.