The Return

by Hisham Matar

  His two chief concerns, he said, were “security and the opportunists,” the armed groups vying for power.

  “What of the Islamists?” I asked.

  “They won’t succeed,” Maher said, and then proceeded to tell me about a Tunisian rapper who, having been threatened by an Islamic group, was forced to cancel a planned concert. “These people want a country without art, without conferences, without cinemas. An empty hole,” he said.

  “And they succeeded with the Tunisian,” I said.

  “Yes, but it’s a failed policy.”

  Eventually the conversation turned to the main purpose of our meeting: how, in his new position, he might help me find out what had happened to my father. Maher had his shirtsleeves rolled up, his elbows resting on the table. He pinched his flesh hard and spoke softly.

  “Uncle Jaballa is in my skin. I was very close to him. You were young; you might not remember.” Then he went to that place I was meant to have become accustomed to, where, through veiled speech, I was to understand the obvious, that my father was dead.

  “I have no doubt about that,” I lied. “What we want to find out is how and when it happened, where the body might be.”

  A strange thing happened then, something that had never occurred before. I sensed my father’s presence, just behind my right shoulder, beckoning me away, and I expected him to say—somehow I knew it was on the tip of his tongue—“Stop. Enough now.”

  I couldn’t move or speak. Thankfully, Maher stood up and said he had to go. I walked him out, watched him skip over the puddle that was always at the base of the steps outside the hotel. I recognized his prison body. That slightly stifled gait all political prisoners have. As though oppression were toxic sediment that lingered in the muscles. It expressed itself in a certain reticence. And the grievance seemed not to be with fate or ideology but with humanity itself. I waved as he drove off. He held his thumb up in a good-luck sign. I remembered his last words: “I’m here for you till the end of time. Anything you need. As for the hereafter,” he said, and laughed, “you are on your own.”

  —

  I went for a walk by the seafront. A plump boy, who was ten at most, rode a large quad bike through the families. Some sat on the low wall looking out at the sea, others had their backs to it, preferring instead to watch the promenade. The water was calm, reflecting the sky. Beyond the rocks that separated the shallow from the deep, the waters were massive but unthreatening, waiting, certain. The plump boy was doing circles now, the two front wheels up in the air. He almost ran into a couple. They, and he, seemed unperturbed. Now, with the front wheels still about a foot above the tiled ground, he headed straight towards one of the bollards that had clearly been placed at such intervals along the promenade to stop exactly this sort of thing. He slowed down, tightened the turn and threaded through, showing exceptional control. He stopped, as if expecting the applause he so rightly deserved. An even younger boy ran up to him and hopped on to the back of the quad bike. They sped off. A young boy and girl were playing football with paper cups. The father said, “What are you doing?” “Playing,” the girl answered, but she had stopped playing and was facing him. “Playing with rubbish?” the father asked. “There is nothing else to play with,” the boy told him and pulled the girl. A few steps ahead a small child started crying. She buried herself in her father’s lap. “Don’t be afraid,” he told her. “Stop being so frightened of everything.” The two boys on the quad bike flew past, gaining speed. I turned back. Children were running along the pavement. The brother and sister who were playing football with paper cups were now looking out to sea and counting aloud. They came to the end of their numbers and immediately burst out laughing when they caught sight of a small boy hiding behind one of the bollards.

  13. Another Life

  Word of the event got around. The car park surrounding the library was almost full by the time Mother, Diana and I arrived. The building had the air of an abandoned structure. The floor of the car park was covered in the tiles so commonly found in the southern Mediterranean, made up of broken pieces of marble and other stones set in resin. It was the wrong choice. It was designed for interiors. The relentless assault of the sun and the weight of the cars had cracked it in several places. Weeds and grass shot through the gaps. Up a few steps and we were inside the foyer. There wasn’t a book in sight, and even the index-card drawers were empty. I wasn’t able to go up to the other floors, but, judging from the ground floor, the library had been empty and closed for years. The vertical blinds that hung against the windows were bent out of shape, and several of their long strips were missing.

  Elderly men, dressed in suits and ties, stood in a cluster, talking to one another. One of them called to me and, as I approached, without knowing who they were individually, I knew they were my father’s friends. This is how old he would be today, I thought. I extended a hand to the first. He pulled me into an embrace. I could feel him shudder. His cheeks were closely shaven. Each one smelt clean and of eau de cologne. I don’t remember them saying much at all.

  More people began to arrive.

  At the opposite end of the foyer, a man, perhaps a decade older than me, held my mother’s hand to his chest, and she smiled, clearly happy to see him.

  I met men and women my age who knew me from school or summer holidays. They kept asking, “But, really, you don’t remember?” Eventually I said, “You all grew up together. You saw how his face changed and you saw how her body developed. Whereas I haven’t seen you in thirty-three years. Of course I don’t remember.” It wasn’t so much what I said but how I said it that gave me away.

  Diana was at the other end of the foyer, surrounded by several of my cousins.

  A butterfly had become trapped between the vertical blinds and the glass. The windows had not been washed in a very long time. I imagined scrubbing them down, one after the other, until they were clear. I kept looking to see if the butterfly had broken free, but it remained fluttering, unable to find the opening between the strips.

  Although the library seemed ransacked and unused, its conference room was entirely new. The seats were in white leather and the walls panelled in wood. Obviously, meetings had been more important than books. A man about the age of my father was sitting in the front row. He looked at me intently but with soft eyes that were slightly red and seemed to be brimming with tears. On his lap lay a fat leather-bound book. His hands rested on it, trembling a little. I wasn’t sure if it was due to emotion or old age. The room was full; all the seats were taken, and several people stood at the back. But because this man was sitting in the front row, we shared a strange intimacy, as I was the only one who could see his expression and therefore it seemed intended for me alone.

  Marwan had taken his role as my “Libyan publicist” too seriously. He had produced a slide show. The houselights went down, and the film ran for more than five minutes, showing pictures of Grandfather Hamed, my father, Izzo, and then me and my books, accompanied by a recording of Naseer Shamma playing the oud. The audience sat through it in complete silence. Then the event commenced: a conversation between Ahmed al-Faitouri and me, with my cousin Nafa al-Tashani sitting beside me in case I needed a translator. Although I am fluent in Arabic, I am not used to delivering public talks in it. The event lasted three hours and, halfway through, we had to stop for an intermission.

  The old man in the front row stood up and walked over to me. We shook hands. It was clearly difficult for him to speak.

  “I was Jaballa’s friend,” he said. “We went to college together.” He handed me the volume he had been holding on to. “He and I edited the literary journal,” he said.

  The man’s son, who was one of those trying to remind me earlier of summers we had spent together, said, “These are the complete issues. I had them bound in one volume.”

  I opened it. The Scholar, it said, was a literary journal for short fiction. The cover of the June 1957 issue, when my father was eighteen, had an illustration of a stack of books,
an inkwell, a beaming light and a semicircular protractor. The first page described the publication as “A journal published by the students of the Teachers’ College of Cyrenaica.” The journal’s motto was: “Education gains the nation its dignity, sovereignty and pride. Where knowledge spreads, prosperity, happiness and security prevail. Education is as necessary as water and oxygen.” This was the sentiment of the time. Libya was trying to drag itself into modernity. The policy of the Italian colonial government did not promote education for the “indigenous” population. Libya’s oldest university was not established until 1955—only two years before this issue of The Scholar was published—by royal decree by King Idris to commemorate the fourth anniversary of independence. Oil was yet to be discovered. Probably because of its association with literacy, the Faculty of Literature was the first academy to be established. Even such a modest start had to rely on foreign donations. Egypt contributed four lecturers, covering their salaries for four years, and the United States paid the wages of the Iraqi scholar Majid Khadduri, who eventually became dean. A year later, in 1956, the Faculty of Science was established; Economics in 1957; Law in 1962; Agriculture in 1966; and Medicine in 1970. This explains the earnest motto of the journal. My father was one of its three editors, who clearly saw the art of fiction as part of the national effort to drive up literacy and education.

  I tried to glance through it, but then the old man returned me to the contents page. Somehow my eyes couldn’t focus. With a gently quivering finger he pointed to two short stories. The author’s name: “Jaballa Matar.” I knew of my father’s attempts at poetry but I had no idea that when he was a student he had fancied himself a writer of prose fiction. My mother was standing beside me by now, looking at the book.

  “Did you know about this?”

  “I had no idea.”

  We turned to the stories. Father’s photograph was included. He was wearing a suit and tie and a confidently serious expression. He looked like a young Albert Camus.

  One of the stories was called “In the Stillness of the Night: A Libyan Tale,” and the other, “A Struggle with Fate.”

  I asked Mother again, “Are you sure he never mentioned it?”

  “No, not a word.”

  We decided to open the second half of the event with a reading of “In the Stillness of the Night.” My cousin Nafa stood up and read:

  The wind roared against the tent that stood alone in the desert. Its pegs were firmly planted in the sand. The time was midnight. Darkness perched over the world. The moon, having just taken off its deep red garment, passed now, stretching through the spacious skies. Stillness spread its curtain over everything. The only sounds that could be heard were those of the grazing camels and the lazy melody of the sheep’s bleating. Wonderment dominated the universe. Fear had rooted itself into the lives of those who inhabited these parts. Everyone was afraid except the men in the tent: Ahmed, who was his mother’s only son, and his maternal uncle. Accompanying them was the uncle’s family. Despite the specter of the enemy, who threatened everyone on this land, Ahmed and his uncle had ventured out to these plains to tend to their livestock. Nothing mattered to them more than the well-being of their flock. Fear was kept at bay because they had sufficient weapons and ammunition, which, on a previous confrontation, they had captured from the enemy.

  The “enemy” was the Italian Army unit that was sneaking into the camp to steal the livestock. “The enemy’s eyes,” we are told, “never sleep.” Once surrounded, the uncle, who is an old man:

  hears inside his chest the defiant cry of a young rebel. He is transformed, feels a bitter strength, and is emboldened by a youthful vigor that, at any moment, is liable to fade, and self-discipline earned by old age and a harsh life….“No, I will not escape!” he murmured to himself. “I will not try to escape….I will remain until this white hair is soaked in blood, deep red blood that will spring out of the countless wrinkles in my skin. I will not let disgrace stain my forehead. Let the resistance begin.”

  The old man and his nephew bravely defeat the “Italian invaders.” But then Ahmed cannot find Aisha, his beloved cousin:

  [He] was terrified, his muscles contracted and his heart trembled with confusion and anxiety. He was filled with dismal foreboding that one of those evil men had sneaked into the tent and kidnapped her. Ahmed hastened to track the remaining enemy troops, but the old man pulled him by the cloak. Aisha was approaching. With the eagerness of a thirsty man, Ahmed rushed to her. “Where have you been? What were you doing?” he said with gentle admonition. But he understood everything from her face and the weapon on her shoulder. Nonetheless, he went on asking: “What is this in your hand?” With the pride of the girls of the African continent, she replied: “This is a medal I found on the chest of the commandant whom I killed with my own hands.” Ahmed was about to embrace her, but his uncle’s presence stopped him.

  The story was signed, “Jaballa Matar, Year 3.” The old man’s words, “I will not let disgrace stain my forehead,” were echoed thirty-six years later in Father’s first letter from prison, when he wrote, “My forehead does not know how to bow.” When my father was kidnapped, I was nearly the same age as he was when he wrote this story. Outside of school, I read only poetry. I had only begun to read fiction in my spare time when I was nineteen—in fact, a few days after I had lost my father.

  Towards the end of the event, the audience asked questions concerning the challenges the country was facing after the revolution, the place of literature and ideas in Libya, the role of education and civil society, human rights and the importance of addressing past atrocities. “So we make sure they never happen again.” I answered these, albeit inadequately, but that was not the point somehow. That these questions could be asked in a civil and well-organized literary event was the main objective. As much as I am by nature uneasy about such attention, I knew that any feelings of pride or optimism that I might have provoked in those present that day were in truth not about me at all but, put simply, about the possibility of a different reality, one that we had all glimpsed during that short window of hope between the revolution and the devastation of the civil war that followed. Several of the people that stood up to speak did not ask a question but wanted to tell the gathering a piece of information about my grandfather or father. It was as if I were a stowaway being claimed back by the fatherland. The thirty-three years that troubled me troubled them too. Once these sentiments died down, the man I had seen earlier, who grasped my mother’s hand in the foyer, stood up to speak.

  “Good evening. I am very happy to take part in celebrating Hisham Matar and his work. I have to be honest, though. I regrettably have not had a chance to read Hisham’s books, but I am familiar, of course, with his father’s long resistance and the ultimate sacrifice that man made to his country. However, what people here might not know about, and what has not been mentioned this evening, are the silent sacrifices of Hisham’s mother, Fawzia Tarbah.”

  My mother was sitting in the front row beside Diana. She seemed uncomfortable. She looked at me. She whispered something to Diana, and then they held hands. I think every child is born with a tiny device implanted in their chest that signals the moment their mother is about to cry.

  “In the 1970s I took part in the university student protest here in Benghazi,” the man went on. “I was arrested, taken to a prison in Tripoli. My mother—I’m her only child—was losing her mind. She asked who she could stay with in Tripoli and people told her of a woman who put up mothers of political prisoners. She was known for having an open house to these mothers who traveled the distance to visit their children. I never met this woman, because by the time I was released they told me she had left the country. But my mother, who passed away recently or else she would be here speaking these words, told me about the kind woman in Tripoli. She spent months in her house. And this woman, my mother told me, thought of a thousand tricks to distract my mother. Every week the two women cooked for the entire prison wing, 150 men. They sent us plat
efuls of the finest food. They sent books, pens and writings pads. The guards stole much, but much also reached us, and what reached us was enough.”

  The moment he finished speaking that last line, my mother covered her face.

  “We all know what Jaballa Matar did. But I came here tonight not so much for Jaballa or Hisham, but to tell you all what I know of this gracious woman and to thank her, although no amount of gratitude would be sufficient.”

  Everyone stood up. When eventually the clapping stopped, the only words my mother could muster, barely audible, were “Thank you.”

  —

  Later that evening, back at the hotel, I asked Mother if it was true that she had housed mothers of prisoners.

  “Yes, but he exaggerated a little,” she said. “I did it a couple of times.”

  “Obviously enough times that you earned a reputation for it,” I said.

  “To be honest, I don’t remember. It all seems so long ago. Another life.”

  14. The Bullet

  The days complicated my nights. I lay in bed turning. It often took several hours to fall asleep. A truth seemed to rise up in the dark. The noises of Benghazi, the sea murmuring beyond, came through the window as though they were solid physical shapes. The night had turned the city into an idea whose sounds were as material as bread and stone. I had never been anywhere so burdened with memories yet also so charged with possibilities for the future, positive and negative, and each just as potent and probable as the other. The entire country was poised on a knife-edge. In less than two years, the streets of downtown Benghazi, around the hotel where I lay staring into the ceiling, would become a battleground. The buildings, now occupied with families and their secrets, would stand as ghostly skeletons, charred and empty. Several of the people I met—I can count three from the event in the library alone—would be assassinated. We didn’t know it then, but this was a precious window when justice, democracy and the rule of law were within reach. Soon, in the absence of a strong army and police force, armed groups would rule the day, seeking only to advance their power. Political factions would become entrenched, and, amidst the squabble, foreign militias and governments would violently enter, seeking their opportunity. The dead would mount. Universities and schools would close. Hospitals would become only partially operative. The situation would get so grim that the unimaginable would happen: people would come to long for the days of Qaddafi. It was of course impossible to imagine such a nightmare back in March 2012, yet in those night hours, lying there listening to the city in the dark, I could sense the possibility of horror.