The Return

by Hisham Matar

  Notwithstanding these bizarre exchanges, the meeting started well. Ziad set out the bare facts of the case and gave a brief history of our long struggle to get information. Seif broke with the official line. Instead of denying Father’s abduction and incarceration, he confirmed that our father had been taken to Libya.

  “This is a highly complicated case,” he said. “It involves the Egyptian secret services and the Libyan secret services. It would bring me a lot of trouble, but I am prepared to do it. I promise you both that I will look into it and bring you all the facts, minute by minute, of what took place, whether it is good news or bad news.”

  “Even if he is dead,” Mohammad al-Hawni put in.

  That was the first hint.

  “You can do with it as you please,” Seif continued. “I am prepared to publish it myself. I’ll get a full page in a newspaper and print it there,” he said, as though it was a dare. “I want to close the file.”

  Then he spoke of how dangerous my father was to the Libyan regime.

  “If you are so confident,” I said, “you should have put him on trial.”

  “What happened was stupid,” he said, which implied that there was another, “cleverer” way of making him disappear.

  “Look,” I said, “you and your father might disagree with my father’s politics, but do you doubt his patriotism?”

  “No,” Seif said.

  “Then shame on you.” I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Part of me wanted to test him, to see if, like his father, he had a fiery temper. “You took one of Libya’s finest and took him in a cowardly way, then pretended no one saw. A man who devoted himself to his country and whose father before him fought to liberate Libya from the Italians. It’s not so much stupid as criminal.”

  Then Ziad, softening the tone, said, “But, listen, we are hopeful. We want to give you a chance to limit the damage, the ongoing damage this is causing our family.”

  “What do you do in Cairo?” Seif asked Ziad.

  “I am an industrialist. I make clothes.”

  “So you have factories?”

  “Yes.”

  “You make clothes—what sort of clothes?”

  “For the American market, mainly.”

  “Why don’t you return? If you want to do business, we will help you. Libya is your country. We want you to break this barrier.”

  “We can’t talk of that now,” Ziad said. “Besides, I can barely make my business succeed standing still, let alone by moving it.”

  Then Seif looked at me and with an impatient tone said, “What do you want if he is dead?”

  That was the second hint.

  “We want to know when, where and how it happened,” I said. “We want the body in order to bury it in our own way, so we can have our funeral, and then we want accountability. You talk of ‘closing the file’: this is how you do it.” I was taken aback by the cold mechanical tone in my voice. It was as if I knew then that none of this would happen.

  “Understood,” Seif said.

  “And what if he is alive?” Ziad asked.

  Seif paused, rocking his leg. “No, no, no,” he said. “The question is: what if he is dead?”

  And that was the third hint. Father is dead.

  “Yes, but if he is alive?” Ziad persisted.

  “Either way, I will get you all the facts,” Seif said, then repeated what would become his refrain in our future conversations, which lasted thirteen months: “I want to close the file.”

  I pressed him to commit to a date by which he would provide us with the information.

  “Soon,” he said.

  “Weeks or months?”

  “Weeks, weeks,” he said. Then he said again, “But return. Libya is your country. We want you to break this barrier.”

  “This ‘barrier’ you speak of,” Ziad said, “is not due to shyness or timidity. We love our country. We have sacrificed a great deal for it. But any talk of us going back cannot take place before three things happen.”

  “What are they?” Seif asked.

  “Knowing the fate of our father and securing the release of our two uncles, Mahmoud Matar and Hmad Khanfore, and our two cousins, Ali and Saleh Eshnayquet. They have been political prisoners for the same period of time. The court has already issued their release, yet they remain in prison. Uncle Mahmoud is very ill and has been refused proper medical care.”

  “OK. What else do you want?” Seif said.

  “Our family home in Tripoli was stolen by a member of the regime. We want it returned.”

  Seif slapped the table and said, “Consider it done.”

  When Seif and the others stood up to leave, Mohammad al-Hawni lingered behind. He put one hand on my shoulder and the other on Ziad’s shoulder.

  “I want you to have faith in God. You are grown men now and must prepare yourselves for the worst.”

  “When did it happen?” I asked.

  He put his hands up. “I don’t know anything for certain. I am just saying…”

  “We are not here for advice or sympathy,” I told him. “We want facts.”

  “And Seif told you he will get you the facts.”

  —

  Ziad and I left the hotel. We avoided the main road and took the side streets towards Sloane Square and the café where Diana was waiting. It was a cold night. We walked slowly.

  “That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Ziad said.

  I felt responsible. I questioned the wisdom of putting us through it all, of placing us at the same table with the son of the man who killed our father.

  “Father is dead,” I said.

  “But you don’t know that.”

  “It’s fucking obvious, isn’t it?”

  Why this need to push his face in it? It was as if my desire for Ziad to accept it and my irritation at his stubborn denial was the self-same need and irritation I had towards my own refusal, for I too worked, as we walked away from that cursed hotel, with my small and moronic engine of hope, searching for how it could not be true.

  When Diana saw us cross the road, she ran out of the café. She knew immediately that the news was not good. None of us could stand still. We hailed a cab and all sat in the backseat. We reached home. We stood in front of the house for a minute or so, then decided to keep on walking. We ended up at the local restaurant. One of my closest friends telephoned, and a few minutes later he was walking into the restaurant. He looked at me consolingly, with eyes that read “How can I help?” This, I thought to myself, must be how mourners look at the bereaved. We ordered and then my phone rang, showing an unknown number. It was Mohammad al-Hawni, calling exactly an hour after our meeting. I walked out onto the street.

  “I’m so pleased we met,” he said. “I just want you and your brother to prepare yourselves for the worst.”

  “Look, Mr. al-Hawni, please don’t feel the need to prepare us. We are not children. It has been twenty years. You cannot ask me to give up hope until we know the facts.” As I said this I could hear, in the night air, my tired small engine whirring in the background.

  “Do you think if Seif knew that your father was alive he would not tell you?” he asked.

  “So Seif knows?” I asked.

  “Of course he knows.”

  —

  One month after our meeting, Seif called one evening at 7 P.M. I was on the bus, heading to the Wigmore Hall, late for a concert.

  “I want you to think of me as a brother and a friend,” he said, and when I didn’t say anything, he added, “I see you as a friend and a brother.”

  I got off at the next stop and walked into a quiet street.

  “I really think we can be good friends, you and I,” he said.

  “People can’t choose their history,” I told him, hearing that same cold mechanical tone return. “And if two men with as disparate histories as yours and mine can come to regard one another as friends and, who knows, perhaps even as brothers, then that is something that will no doubt go some way toward
healing our country.”

  “Good,” he said. “Good. Like I told you and your brother, I am determined to close the file. But in order for us to progress to the next step, I will need you to write down what you and your brother told me. Exactly how you told the story when we met. You send me this and I will let you know the next step.”

  “But is there nothing you can tell me now?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “But I know that you know.”

  “I do. I know what happened to your father, but I can’t tell you until I have all the facts.”

  “This is very difficult. Can’t you at least tell me if he is alive or dead?”

  “Wait until I have the facts.”

  I returned home and emailed him the information that same evening.

  —

  It was around those days that I got a call from an acquaintance, a Libyan diplomat stationed in New York, saying that a colleague of his, Tarek al-Abady, based at the Libyan embassy in London, wanted to speak to me. I recognized the name. Tarek al-Abady had attended the first reading I gave from my first book, back in March 2006, three months before the book was due to be published, when hardly anyone knew of it or of me. The reading was at the Irish Cultural Center in Hammersmith. Walking there, I had thought of Samuel Beckett. I thought of him because the Irish Cultural Center was close to Riverside Studios, where, in the 1980s, the Irish playwright had come from Paris to rehearse Waiting for Godot. My friend David Gothard, who was then the artistic director of Riverside Studios, told me once that the moment Beckett arrived in London he felt dangerously close to home and instructed David, “Under no circumstance, not even for a funeral, can you allow me to take myself to Dublin.” I admired Beckett’s stubbornness. When I arrived at the Irish Cultural Center, I saw three figures from the embassy sitting in the front row. Tarek al-Abady was one of them and introduced himself as the cultural attaché. As soon as I stopped reading, one of them put his hand up in the air. “Why did you set your book in Libya? We want you to write about life here in London.” A few days later a report was sent to Tripoli and my book was banned.

  I had seen Tarek al-Abady again. I was walking westward on Knightsbridge and he in the opposite direction, towards Hyde Park Corner and the Libyan embassy.

  “Mr. Hisham,” he called out. “What a pleasure. Please, come honor us at the embassy. Anything you need, just ask.”

  I was in a foul mood. “Anything I need?” I said sharply. “Well, let’s see, what might I need from you people? Oh, yes, I remember now. The same thing I have been asking for since 1990. What did you do with my father?”

  I wondered what now, four years later, Tarek al-Abady wanted. We agreed to meet at my private club. I chose the venue because it allowed me to ask for the list of names of those he would be bringing with him.

  “It’ll just be me,” he said.

  “I don’t know how you normally dress, but the club’s dress code is jacket and tie.”

  “I am a diplomat,” he snapped. “I always wear a suit.”

  I asked the club to prepare a room all the way on the top floor. Instead of taking the lift, I took him up the stairs. When we reached the top he was breathless. We sat down and for some reason I took note of the time. He started by telling me that he was from “a good family.” Then he relayed his soliloquy.

  “I want you to know, and may God be my witness, that my number one ambition in life, more than anything else, is to be your friend. I admire you and have always wondered—if you allow me to be honest—what is stopping you from coming back to your country. Libya isn’t Qaddafi’s. It doesn’t belong to him or his family. It belongs to you. Come back. Let us honor you. You’ve let others honor you. Countries around the world have given you awards and prizes; let us do the same. We want to give you prizes too. And if you want to engage in business, you own a share in Libya’s wealth…” and so on.

  These introductory comments lasted for over twenty minutes before he said, “I have been sent to you by Seif el-Islam Qaddafi and Abuzed Dorda.”

  Abuzed Dorda was the director of the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya, the intelligence services under Qaddafi.

  “First of all,” Tarek continued, “allow me to vouch for them both. I swear, and may God be my witness, when Seif walks into the embassy, he is concerned about each individual and asks us all, not sparing one, if we are well and whether there is anything we need, anything. As for Abuzed Dorda, he is as decent as they come. They are asking one question and one question only: ‘What does Hisham Matar want?’ ”

  “How funny,” I said. “I spoke to Seif only the other day. He could’ve asked me himself.”

  “Well, to be honest,” Tarek al-Abady corrected himself, “it was more Abuzed Dorda who sent me. And he tells you if there is anything you need, anything at all, all you have to do is ask.” And he repeated, “We want to honor you. We want to give you prizes. Come to Libya and allow us to give you prizes like other people have done.”

  “So Dorda sent you?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Therefore you are a member of the Mukhabarat, then?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said, indignant. “I am a diplomat. I am a career diplomat.”

  “OK, fine. Please thank Mr. Dorda. Tell him I appreciate his concern and that Hisham Matar is perplexed as to why Abuzed Dorda is perplexed as to what it is Hisham Matar wants. It is what I have been asking for for twenty years: what have you done with my father? As for prizes, I dislike attention. I am also terrible with money. If I have ten pounds in my pocket I cannot wait to spend it.”

  “I give you my word,” he said. “I will tell him exactly what you said and ask him, and ask others too, about your father.”

  As we descended the stairs, he began to feign sympathy.

  “To be honest, it is very difficult working for this regime. It’s a headache. So many problems to resolve.”

  Then he told me with pride that he was awarded his London post in return for the “clean-up” he had done in Switzerland following the scandal Qaddafi’s son Hannibal caused there. Hannibal had beaten his servants in a hotel in Geneva so badly that they had had to be rushed to hospital. The authorities arrested him. In retaliation, the father detained two Swiss businessmen who happened to be in Libya at the time. The Swiss dropped the charges and allowed Hannibal to leave the county. Qaddafi refused to release the two Swiss nationals and still had them in a prison in Tripoli at this time.

  “What a saga,” Tarek said. “But, thanks be to God, it all ended well.”

  —

  Two weeks after I had emailed Seif the information he requested, he telephoned at midnight.

  “I will email you today developments and the next step,” he said.

  It had been six weeks since our initial meeting. In the hope of focusing his mind, I said, “The twentieth anniversary of the abduction of my father comes up in two weeks, on the 12th of March. Would you commit to providing the information before then?”

  He sighed. “I’ll try.”

  “I understand the complexities involved, but it is something that needs to be resolved urgently,” I said. I could feel my body stiffen.

  “It is burdensome,” he said.

  “Yes, and the greater burden is on this side of the fence. A proper resolution will be of great benefit.”

  “I will get you news before the 12th,” he said.

  —

  I didn’t hear from him for a week. Then Mohammed Ismail, Seif’s personal secretary, wrote to me.

  Dear Hisham

  It would be better that you talk about the facts in public or publish it, because it’s very sensitive that we raise it. When you do, we will reply. The part concerning your father after his arrival to Libya, we will give you access to that information. To save face this is the best way out.

  Regards,

  Mohammed

  The email articulated the problematic role Seif el-Islam Qaddafi occupied in Libyan public life. He was a representative of the
regime—the “we” here is the regime, and the “face” that is to be saved is also that of the regime—but he had no official role and therefore, when it suited him, he played the part of the independent reformer.

  Immediately on receiving the email, I called Mohammed Ismail. He said they needed me to make a public announcement in one of the English papers mentioning the role Egypt had played in the abduction. “In order to save face,” he repeated.

  “This has been done already, on countless occasions, and most recently a week ago,” I said.

  “I didn’t know this,” he said.

  “Have you not seen the press?”

  “No,” he said.

  I suspected this to be disingenuous and later that suspicion was confirmed. Given how closely connected Seif was to the embassy in London and how perturbed the embassy was by all the media, it is impossible that he and his aides did not know.

  “I’ll send you a selection of articles and interviews on the subject that detail Egypt’s involvement,” I said.

  —

  Three days later, on the evening of Friday, March 5, a week before the twentieth anniversary of my father’s disappearance, Mohammed Ismail telephoned.

  “I am coming to London tomorrow. Let’s meet.”

  I telephoned my friend Paul van Zyl. We went through all the possible scenarios. “If at any point during the meeting you want to call me, I’ll be by the phone,” he told me.

  I decided not to tell Ziad. I didn’t want to trouble him and get him to make the same rushed journey again. And I also wanted to reserve the option of keeping whatever terrible news Mohammed Ismail was coming to tell me to myself for a little while; then I could worry about how to break it to my family.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. Mother, Ziad and I had planned to be together in a couple of days to mark the date of Father’s disappearance. We had no idea how one ought to commemorate such an occasion. I could not travel to Cairo because, since the publication of my first novel, it was no longer deemed safe for me to go there. So we settled on Nairobi, the city where Mother spent part of the year. I couldn’t imagine having to inform her that Father was dead. I spoke the words out loud to see how they might sound. I didn’t know if I could do it. But if I knew for certain that he was dead, I would have no choice but to tell her.