by Hisham Matar
Mohammed Ismail and I agreed to meet at 3 P.M. the following day. I didn’t think it was wise to go alone. I called one of my closest friends whom I knew would be good under pressure. He and I met midway. My friend is an Englishman who doesn’t speak a word of Arabic. I told him to pretend he did.
“Whenever I look at you,” I said, “just nod in agreement.”
We arrived on time, and, as had happened with my first meeting with Seif, we were kept waiting for an hour. This time it was at the lobby of the InterContinental Park Lane Hotel, one of a number of London hotels purchased with Libyan Investment Authority money under the name of one of Seif’s close associates. I had no idea what Mohammed Ismail looked like. Then a stocky figure walked out of one of the lifts and came towards us. We shook hands. I did not introduce my friend. I somehow thought that the more mysterious he seemed to Mohammed Ismail the better. Mohammed placed two mobile phones on the coffee table. He began by telling me of his family. His wife and child were living in London. He had named his son Hannibal.
“After Seif’s brother. I love Hannibal. Oh, Hannibal is great,” he said. Mohammed Ismail then began telling me of his late father-in-law. “He knew your father. They were in the military together. After the revolution my father-in-law was arrested, like your father, but was not released for another eighteen years.”
I thought of a man who had to live his last days with a grandson named after the son of the man who had incarcerated him. I remembered what Sarah Hamoud, who used to run the Libya desk at Amnesty International, once told me: “There is no country where the oppressed and the oppressor are so intertwined as in Libya.”
Then Mohammed Ismail said, “I have come specially to see you. I took the private jet.”
“Before you tell me what you came here to tell me,” I told Mohammed, “I just want to remind you that we were promised the full details.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “I am not here to tell you any news. I am here because Seif asks that you give an interview to an Egyptian journalist who writes for Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. We want you to tell him what happened. Then you are to write a letter to President Hosni Mubarak saying the same. When you have done this, we will supply you with the information.”
“But all this has been done. I have written countless letters to the Egyptian president and, as you saw from my email, many of my articles on the subject have already been published in the Egyptian press, clearly stating the role Egypt played in the crime.”
“I know. But we want you to do it again. You can speak to the journalist now. He’s waiting by the phone. Do this and tomorrow or at the most the day after you will have everything in your hands.”
I felt exasperated. “OK,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
He searched in his two phones for the number of the journalist. After a long silence, he said, as if it were an afterthought, “Why don’t you come to Libya?”
“One day,” I said.
“Seif wants you to work with us. Come, work with us.”
What better confirmation of the regime’s transformation than the son of a dissident working with the son of the dictator? So this is why Mohammed was telling me his little story about his father-in-law, I thought. Seif has purchased so many people that he must have thought he could surely buy me, have me cross over and, who knows, one day I might even name my son after him.
“Come work with us,” Mohammed Ismail repeated.
“I already have a job,” I said.
He couldn’t find the number. He left his two mobile phones on the coffee table and went up to his room to search for it. I was sure the telephones lay there recording. My friend pulled me away from the table.
“What did he tell you?” When I told him he said, “Don’t do it. Ask for an hour to think it over. You won’t lose anything. Call Paul.”
I dialed Paul’s number. He answered immediately. I quickly briefed him and he said, “Ask for some time. This way you can look into the journalist: who he is, what his record is like, et cetera.”
But I was a thirsty man. All I could think of was the prospect of finally possessing certainty over the one question that had occupied me for the past two decades and possessing it by tomorrow or, at the most, the day after. The word “after” was like a black hole in my thoughts.
When Mohammed Ismail returned, I wrote down the name and telephone number of the journalist. “I am not sure I can do this,” I said. “All that you are asking me to do has already been done. I don’t understand why I am being required to further expose myself and my family in Cairo.”
“Seif personally guarantees your family’s safety. No one will touch them in Egypt.”
“You know he can’t guarantee that. Look, give me a few hours to think it over. In the meantime, tell Seif my reservations and that what he is asking for has already been done countless times.”
—
My inquiries about the Egypt journalist all confirmed that he was in the pocket of Seif el-Islam. The head of Human Rights Watch in Cairo told me, “You cannot trust him to print what you say. It’s a trap.”
A couple of days later, as I was preparing to fly to Nairobi, I sent Seif an email, copying Mohammed. In it I mentioned again the names of the Egyptian newspapers that had reprinted my articles on the subject, detailing Egyptian involvement, and told them that any action that was now required had to come from them.
“We have suffered too much injustice to be asked now to go out on a limb. This is your chance to address our suffering and limit the damage done. Provide us with the truth.”
I was angry, but I was also relieved I would not have to tell my mother bad news.
18. The Good Manners of Vultures
My plane landed in Nairobi in the evening. Mother and I had supper in her small flat and sat up chatting until midnight. She lived here for part of the year because she has always loved the nature and also on account of her brother, Uncle Soleiman, who has, for several decades now, made Kenya his home. Her flat had the playful, noncommittal air of a holiday home. We fell asleep. Then Mother got up at 2 A.M. I heard her make coffee. Then she started baking bread. An hour later she went to the airport to collect Ziad. By around 5 A.M. she was back with Ziad, who came to me in bed and kissed me five or six times on the same cheek.
A little while later he was lying beside me. Mother took the sofa.
“But how will you sleep like this?” Ziad told her.
“Don’t you worry,” she said. “Do you need pajamas?”
“No.”
After a few seconds, “Do you need pajamas?” she asked again.
“Awful time to arrive,” Ziad said. “Neither morning nor night. This is what the English call ‘the grave hour.’ ”
“How morbid,” Mother said. “Don’t they also call certain jobs that? ‘Graveyard jobs’?”
“Grave hour,” Ziad repeated.
Then we all tried to sleep. But Mother couldn’t stop. She asked more questions about the flight, whether he needed pajamas, whether we were cold and whether she should bring out the blanket. She misses us. Each one of us misses us. Maybe one day we will live in the same country again.
After a long silence passed I got up quietly in the dark and went to her.
“Go sleep next to Ziad,” I whispered.
“No,” she said.
“Let’s please not argue and wake him.”
“OK,” she said. “I have an idea.”
I knew what she was going to do and I let her do it. I went to the bathroom, and when I returned she was already lying on the cushions on the floor. I sat on the terracotta tiles beside her.
“I am not moving until you go to the bed,” I said.
She got up.
“I’ve already turned over the pillow,” I said.
“OK, but you didn’t have to do that,” she said. “Do you need another pillow?”
“No,” I said.
“I’ll get you one,” she said, and gently laid one beside me. I could feel its cool wh
ite form.
I realized that I was lying in a draft. I waited until both of their breaths turned deep and slow, then I pulled the cushions to one side.
—
When I felt the sun pressing against the curtains, I got up. Mother and Ziad were fast asleep. I got dressed and slipped out.
The earth in this country is like an inkwell. It stains every bare foot, car tyre and tree trunk a reddish brown. All else is lush green. The sky above is close and vivid. The sun is nearly audible.
When they arrived at the café they were both smiling. We spent the rest of the morning sipping passion fruit juice by the swimming pool. The trees surrounding the pool were taller than minarets. Their canopies had the effect of the vaulted ceiling of a theater. When we spoke, we spoke about the beauty of this country, or the beauty of Ziad’s children, or teased one another about a new shirt, a funky pair of sunglasses. Then we took pictures of one another.
It was clear that none of us was quite sure what we were supposed to do. Nairobi was the first place we came to when we fled Libya back in 1979. Our first place of exile. And here we were, burdening it again with the task of consoling us.
By the afternoon Mother had left. Ziad and I remained by the pool. The sun was strong. We moved beneath the sheer and translucent canopy of one of the tall trees. Its shade was as thin and even as silk on the skin. An eagle that we had seen hovering high above landed on one of the branches. It slowly folded its wings and, as if in response, the surrounding leaves shimmered. The bird was out of scale, too large even for this high tree.
We neither heard nor saw anything before a branch crashed on the side table between Ziad’s lounger and mine. It shattered my mobile phone, which I was obsessively carrying around. As I collected the various parts of the phone from the ground, I wondered whether another branch was silently racing down towards my brother or me. The waiter rushed towards us, apologized and proceeded to move our things to another pair of loungers in the sun, outside the influence of the tree.
“It could have killed us,” Ziad said.
I was busy putting the phone back together. I turned it on and stared at it until the screen lit up.
“It wasn’t very big,” I said.
“Yes, but it was unexpected. A few centimetres this way or that and…” When I didn’t complete his sentence, he said, “No?”
“Yes,” I said. “It could have.”
One of the bathers, who saw what happened, spread her towel beneath the same tree and lay there, her shiny body terribly exposed.
“Do you think we ought to warn her?” Ziad said.
“Well, she saw it,” I said.
“Still,” he said.
Neither of us moved. The heavy eagle was still roaming the canopy. After a long silence, and within the privacy of our own thoughts, each of us seemed to have accepted that going to warn a half-naked woman we didn’t know about a danger she was aware of might seem intrusive or overbearing. And her confidence was alluring; we had both registered this. Perhaps had things been different, Ziad and I could have displayed a similar coolness of mind and remained in our places, certain that such a rare occurrence as a branch crashing to the ground was unlikely to repeat itself.
I watched the eagle.
“I don’t understand why eagles are so revered,” I said. “America puts it on its dollar, we Arabs admire it, but, if you think about it, when you consider how eagles live, they are treacherous.”
“They are strong and proud,” Ziad said.
“Strong, proud and treacherous,” I said. “They attack the young when the mother is away.”
“They are fast, have amazing precision and, unlike vultures, they eat only what they hunt,” Ziad said.
“Vultures are far more admirable,” I said.
“But how can you say that?” Ziad said.
And just when I was about to speak again, to say something about the good manners of vultures, how they do not attack unless certain that the victim is dead, I decided I didn’t actually care about the subject. My mind went instead to a poem Father used to recite about the pride of eagles, and a photograph I keep of him looking into the eyes of an eagle perched on his arm. Then I wondered if the eagle above was our father. Perhaps this was why it sent a branch precisely on to my bloody phone. I didn’t tell Ziad this, because I didn’t want him to think that I believed Father was dead. He feared I knew more than I was saying, that Mohammed Ismail had told me something definitive and I was keeping it to myself so as not to break his heart and Mother’s. The truth was, at that moment I didn’t believe Father to be dead. But the truth was also that I didn’t believe him to be alive either.
—
The following day, on the eve of the anniversary, I had a missed call from a number that began with the area code +55. I looked it up: +55 was the code for Brazil. I dialed the number and Mohammed Ismail answered.
“How’s Brazil?” I said.
“How do you know we are in Brazil?” he asked suspiciously.
“The code.”
“Ah, OK,” he said. “I spoke to Seif and he said you have to do it.”
“Did he see my email?”
“What email?”
“I sent you an email explaining my reasons further and stating that this issue has already been written about in Egypt recently. Al-Dustour newspaper published a big piece on it only a couple of weeks ago.”
“OK, we will look at the email and call you back.”
—
On the evening of the anniversary, we gathered in Mother’s place. Uncle Soleiman joined us. Mother had spent the afternoon wrapping grapevine leaves and now they were laid out on a circular platter in the middle of the table along with her bread. We ate until it became hard to breathe, then we moved on to the sofa and lit cigarettes. Suddenly the reason for our reunion was unavoidable. And this was how we commemorated it. We told and retold the story of how it had happened. Each time one of us remembered a new detail. Then we told other stories, tributaries to the main one, stories that led away and then back to the same event. We were the witnesses hovering around the scene of a crime. And as these retellings offered no comfort, we went on until 3 A.M. A couple of days later, each one of us would be in a different country. Over the following days we called each other every day, sometimes more than once.
19. The Speech
I heard back from Mohammed Ismail ten days later.
“Seif says you have to do it. You must do it. Do it and we will see if it would be possible to provide you with the information.”
“Look, you can’t keep repeating the same request without addressing my concerns. I refuse to expose my family to any further danger. Please tell Seif that I ask him kindly to limit the damage done and tell us the truth.”
“I will.”
—
I heard nothing back for several months. Then, on the evening of the 16th of June, five months after my initial meeting with Seif, Cousin Hamed, Uncle Mahmoud’s son, called.
“I have a message for you from my father. ‘Conditions are worse than we have ever known them to be. We have to pay for water. Prison guards treat us like animals. The food is uneatable. You have a week. If conditions don’t improve we will start our hunger strike.’ ”
I could not sleep. As soon as the morning came I telephoned Seif. There was no answer. I contacted Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, asking if there was anything they could do. I tried calling Seif again. I then telephoned al-Hawni, who picked up. He sounded sympathetic, said he would speak to Seif. I dialed Seif’s number another time, left him a voice message and then sent him a text version of the same message:
“Relatives in Abu Salim are not well. They are threatening to go on hunger strike.” I did not hear back for a couple of days, when, sometime past midnight, I got the following text from Seif:
“Today is my birthday.”
—
Two days later he texted again:
“Please can you call me 2morrow we need 2 talk
.”
I did and he said, “Your relatives will be moved to another prison to arrange for their release. And, regarding your father, I will draw you a road map. More needs to happen. You need to trust me. There is nothing in it for me. I will lose more than I gain. If you were me, you wouldn’t touch it.”
“Men are their actions,” I said.
“Trust me.”
A few minutes later I got this text:
“Most important, don’t do anything you don’t want. MOSHE DAYAN”
I texted back:
“Be the change you want to see in the world. MAHATMA GANDHI”
He replied:
“;->”
—
Some weeks later, having heard nothing, I called him.
“I don’t think you are taking this seriously,” I said. “You speak of trust but you haven’t told me what you know.”
He began screaming down the phone. “This is complicated; so many are involved, the Mukhabarat, the Egyptians—”
I interrupted. “Seif, Seif,” I said.
“What?” he barked.
“There’s a problem with the line, you’ll have to call me back,” and I immediately hung up.
He called straightaway. He repeated what he said but in a much calmer voice. It worked.
“You have it the wrong way round,” I said. “I don’t need anything from you. There is nothing you have that can add or take away anything from me. My father is a crown on my head. What I am offering you is a chance to limit the damage caused. And you wouldn’t be doing it for me but for yourself, for history. History will judge. So from now on stop asking me to go out on a limb. I will not take another step before you provide me with what you know.”
—
He telephoned a couple of days later at midnight. He sounded cheerful, friendly. He said he had asked the British to write directly to the Libyan Foreign Ministry requesting information on my father.
“Could you ask the FCO to do it ASAP? As soon as they issue the letter, I will be able to fulfill on my promise. It will be a headache,” he said. Then, without any irony, he added, “I’ll do it for free.”