The Attack

by Yasmina Khadra

  “I, too, was married to a beautiful woman, Dr. Jaafari. She was the pride of my life. It took me seven years to discover that she was hiding from me the most important information a man should have about his wife’s fidelity.”

  “My wife had no reason to deceive me.”

  The captain looks for a place to dispose of his cigarette. I point out a little glass table behind him. He takes a last drag, longer than the preceding ones, and laboriously crushes out the butt in the ashtray.

  “Dr. Jaafari, even a tried and tested man is never completely out of the woods. Life is a perpetual pain in the ass, a long tunnel mined with booby traps and covered with dog shit. When you’re knocked down, it doesn’t make much difference whether you jump back to your feet or stay on the ground. There’s only one possible way of dealing with what you have to go through: You must prepare yourself every day and every night to expect the worst. Your wife didn’t go into that restaurant to have a snack; she went there to have a blast. . . .”

  “That’s enough!” I yell, leaping to my feet in a fury. “One hour ago, I learned my wife had died in a restaurant targeted by a terrorist attack. Immediately afterward, you announce that she was the suicide bomber. That’s far too much for an exhausted man to take. Let me cry for a while, then finish me off, but please, don’t make me feel grief and horror at the same time.”

  “Please take your seat, Dr. Jaafari.”

  “Don’t touch me. I forbid you to put your hands on me.”

  I push him away so aggressively that he almost falls over the little glass table behind him. He recovers quickly and tries to take control.

  “Mr. Jaafari . . .”

  “My wife had nothing to do with that massacre. It was a suicide attack, damn it! Not a housewives’ quarrel. We’re talking about my wife. Who’s dead. Killed in that bloody restaurant. Like the others. With the others. I forbid you to soil her memory. She was a good woman, a very good woman. The complete opposite of what you’re implying.”

  “A witness—”

  “What witness? What does he remember, exactly? The bomb my wife was carrying, or her face? I shared my life with Sihem for more than fifteen years. I know her like the back of my hand. I know what she’s capable of and what she’s not capable of. Her hands were too white for the smallest stain to escape my notice. She’s not your suspect just because her wounds are the worst, is she? If that’s your only theory, there have to be others. My wife’s wounds are the worst because she was the most exposed. The explosive device wasn’t on her, but near her, probably hidden under her chair, or under the table she was sitting at. As far as I know, there’s no official report that authorizes you to make such a serious accusation. Besides, a preliminary investigation is not necessarily the final word. Let’s wait for the communication from the terrorist commander. Some group will have to claim responsibility for the attack. Maybe they’ll throw in some videocassettes, one addressed to your attention, others to the press. The suicide bomber, if there was one, will be seen and heard.”

  “That’s not necessarily the case with these morons. Sometimes they make do with a fax or a telephone call.”

  “Not when it’s a question of making a big impression. And a female suicide bomber would cause a real sensation in that line. Especially if she’s a naturalized Israeli citizen married to a prominent surgeon who’s often been honored by his city and who represents integration at its most successful. I don’t want to hear any more of your filthy comments about my wife, Captain, sir. My wife was a victim of the attack; she wasn’t the person who carried it out. I want you to stop all this at once.”

  “Sit down!” the captain roars.

  His outcry pierces me through and through.

  My legs abandon me, and I sink down onto the sofa.

  Drained of strength, I take my head in my hands and curl up upon myself. I’m exhausted, worn down, wiped out; my ship has a thousand leaks. Sleep manhandles me with unusual boorishness, but I refuse to go under. I don’t want to sleep. I’m afraid of nodding off and then waking up from my dreams to the knowledge that the woman I cherished most in the world is gone, that she died blown to bits in a terrorist attack; afraid of having to suffer the same catastrophe, the same disaster, every time I wake up. . . . And this captain who’s in my face, why doesn’t he crumble into dust? I want him to disappear at once; I want the poltergeists that haunt my house to transform themselves into wind; I want a hurricane to smash my windows and carry me far away, far, far away from the doubt that’s gnawing at my guts and mixing up my signs and filling my heart with awful uncertainties. . . .

  4.

  * * *

  Captain Moshé and his helpers keep me awake for twenty-four consecutive hours. They take turns, spelling one another in the squalid room where the interrogation takes place. This is a sort of rat hole with a low ceiling and dully painted walls. Above my head, there’s a lightbulb inside a wire cage. The bulb produces a continuous sizzling sound that’s just about to drive me mad. My sweat-soaked shirt is eating into my back with the voracity of a bunch of nettles. I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I ache, and I don’t see the end of the tunnel anywhere. They held me under the armpits and half-carried me to the toilets so I could piss. Before I could manage to undo my fly, I emptied half the contents of my bladder inside my underpants. A wave of nausea nearly caused me to smash my face against the toilet bowl. They literally dragged me back to my cell. Then the harassment began again, the questions, the fists striking the table, the little slaps to prevent me from turning my eyes aside.

  Every time sleep distorts my judgment, they shake me from head to foot and turn me over to the zealous attentions of another officer, someone well rested and fresh as a daisy. The questions are always the same. They resound in my head like muffled incantations.

  I sway in the metal chair that’s flaying my behind and grab the table to keep from falling over backward; then, suddenly, I let everything go like a disjointed puppet, and my face hits the edge of the table violently. I believe I’ve split open an eyebrow.

  “The bus driver has formally identified your wife, Doctor. He recognized her photograph at once. He said she did indeed get on the eight-fifteen bus for Nazareth last Wednesday morning. But as the bus reached the outskirts of Tel Aviv, less than twenty kilometers from the terminal, she asked to be let off. She claimed it was an emergency. The driver was obliged to stop on the shoulder of the road. Before he pulled away, he saw your wife climb into a car that had been following the bus. That’s the detail that caught his attention. He didn’t get the car’s license number, but he says it was an older-model Mercedes, cream-colored. Does that description mean anything to you, Dr. Jaafari?”

  “What should it mean to me? I’ve got a late-model Ford, and it’s white. My wife had no reason to get off that bus. Your driver’s talking nonsense.”

  “If that’s the case, he’s not alone. We sent someone to Kafr Kanna. Hanane Sheddad says she hasn’t seen her granddaughter for more than nine months.”

  “She’s an old woman. . . .”

  “Her nephew, who lives on the farm with her, says the same thing. Therefore, Dr. Jaafari, if your wife hadn’t set foot in Kafr Kanna for more than nine months, where did she spend those last three days?”

  Where did she spend those last three days? Where did she go? Where was she? An unfathomable murmur drowns out the police officer’s words; I don’t hear them anymore. I see only his eyebrows, twitching according to the traps he lays for me, his mouth, going over some arguments to which I am by now impervious, and his hands, describing his impatience, or, rather, his determination. . . .

  Another officer shows up, his face concealed behind dark glasses. He waves a peremptory finger at me as he talks. His threats fizzle out in the shallow waters of my clearheadedness. He doesn’t stay long and goes away muttering curses.

  I don’t know what time it is, or even whether it’s day or night. They took my watch away. And my questioners take care to remove theirs before they enter my r
oom.

  Captain Moshé comes to see me again, empty-handed. The search of my house has yielded nothing. He’s exhausted, too. He stinks like a crushed cigarette butt. His features are drawn and his eyes are red, he hasn’t shaved for a couple of days, and his mouth has a tendency to go slack on one side.

  “All the evidence inclines us to believe that your wife did not leave Tel Aviv, not on Wednesday nor on any of the following days.”

  “That’s not enough to make her a criminal.”

  “Your marital relations were—”

  I cut him off. “My wife didn’t have a lover.”

  “If she had one, she was under no obligation to inform you of the fact.”

  “We had no secrets from each other.”

  “Real secrets aren’t shared.”

  “There’s surely an explanation, Captain. But not the one you think you’ve found.”

  “Be reasonable for a second, Doctor. If your wife lied to you, if she made you believe she was going to Nazareth and then sneaked back into Tel Aviv as soon as your back was turned, that means she wasn’t playing fair with you.”

  “You’re the one who’s not playing fair, Captain. You tell lies to get to the truth. But your bluff isn’t going to work. You can keep me awake every day and every night, and you still won’t make me say what you want to hear. You’ll have to find some other donkey to pin this tail on.”

  He gets upset and steps into the hall. Comes back a little later with a stiff forehead and jaws like frozen pulleys. His breath submerges me. He’s on the verge of cracking up.

  When he scratches his cheeks, his fingernails make a frightful rasping sound.

  “I simply refuse to swallow this story. How can you say you didn’t notice anything unusual in your wife’s behavior recently? Were you two living under the same roof or not?”

  “My wife was no Islamist. How many times do I have to say that? You’re making a mistake. Let me go home. I haven’t slept for two days.”

  “Neither have I, and I have no intention of closing my eyes before I get to the bottom of this. The forensic team is adamant: Your wife was killed by the explosive charge she was carrying. A witness who was sitting at an outside table and was only slightly injured swears he saw a pregnant woman in the part of the restaurant where some schoolkids had organized a party to celebrate the birthday of one of their little classmates. He recognized this woman in a photograph, without hesitation. And it was your wife. Now, you’ve declared that she wasn’t pregnant. Your neighbors don’t remember having seen her pregnant at any time during your residence in the neighborhood. And the autopsy report is adamant on this point, too: no pregnancy. So what was it that made your wife’s belly so big? What did she have under her dress, if not the goddamned bomb that took the lives of seventeen people, including a bunch of kids who were just having a good time?”

  “Wait for the videocassette. . . .”

  “There won’t be a videocassette. And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t possibly care less about cassettes. They’re not my problem. My problem is something else, and it’s making me sick. I absolutely have to know how a beautiful, intelligent, modern woman, esteemed by the people around her, thoroughly assimilated, pampered by her husband, and worshiped by her friends—the majority of whom are Jews—how such a woman could get up one day and load herself with explosives and go to a public place and do something that calls into question all the trust the state of Israel has placed in the Arabs it has welcomed as citizens. Do you realize the gravity of this situation, Dr. Jaafari? We expect a certain amount of treachery, but not of this nature. I’ve picked over everything I could find out about the pair of you: your connections, your habits, your little weaknesses. The result? I’m totally stumped. I’m a Jew and an officer in the Israeli armed services, and yet I haven’t received a third of the considerations this city handed out to you two on a daily basis. And that fact shakes me up so much, I can’t believe it.”

  “Don’t try to take advantage of my physical and mental state, Captain. My wife is innocent. She had absolutely nothing to do with any fundamentalists. She never met any, never spoke to any, never had dreams about any. My wife went into that restaurant to have lunch. Lunch. Nothing more, and nothing less . . . Now leave me alone. I’m wiped out.”

  Whereupon I cross my arms on the table, lay my head on them, and fall asleep.

  * * *

  Captain Moshé comes back again and again. At the end of the third day, he opens the door of the rat hole and shows me the corridor. “You’re free to go, Doctor. You can go home and take up a normal life again, if possible. . . .”

  I collect my jacket and stagger along a corridor where some officers with their coats off, their shirtsleeves rolled up, and their ties undone observe me in silence. They look like a pack of wolves watching their prey get away when they’d been sure it was trapped. At a window, a clerk with a rugged profile gives me back my watch, my key ring, and my wallet and has me sign a release; then, with a short, sharp movement, he snaps down the little pane of glass that separates us. Someone escorts me to the exit. Daylight assails me as soon as I set foot outside the building. It’s a fine day; an enormous sun is shining down on the city. The noise of traffic brings me back to the land of the living. I stand still on the steps for a few moments, gazing at the vehicles in their everyday ballet, the dancing punctuated now and then by the sound of horns. The streets aren’t crowded. The neighborhood looks neglected. The trees that line the roadway don’t seem to be very happy about it, and the pedestrians loitering about are as sad as their shadows.

  At the bottom of the steps, there’s a large automobile with its engine running. Navid Ronnen is at the wheel. He puts one foot on the ground and an elbow on the car door and waits for me to join him. I understand at once that he’s had something to do with my liberation.

  When I get close to him, he frowns. Because of my swollen eye.

  “They beat you?”

  “I slipped.”

  He’s not convinced. “It’s the truth,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t insist. “Shall I drop you off at your house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re in a pitiful state. You need a shower, a change of clothes, and something to eat.”

  “Have the terrorists sent the cassette?”

  “What cassette?”

  “The videocassette for the attack. Have you finally found out who the suicide bomber was?”

  “Amin . . .”

  I back up to avoid his hand. I can’t bear to have another person lay a hand on me, not even by way of comfort.

  My eyes lock onto Navid’s eyes and don’t let go.

  “Since they’ve released me, it means they’re certain my wife had nothing to do with the bomb.”

  “I have to take you home, Amin. You need to recover your strength. That’s the important thing right now.”

  “If they let me go, Navid, come on . . . if they let me go, that means they’ve . . . What have they found out, Navid?”

  “They’ve found out that you, Amin, that you had nothing to do with the bomb.”

  “Only me?”

  “Only you.”

  “And Sihem?”

  “You have to pay the knass. That’s the rule.”

  “A fine? And since when is that rule in effect?”

  “Ever since the fundamentalist suicide bombers—”

  I interrupt him by waving a finger. “Sihem isn’t a suicide bomber, Navid. Try to remember that. Because it’s the most important thing in the world to me. My wife isn’t a child-killer. Have I made myself understood?”

  I leave him standing there and go away without knowing where. I don’t want a ride home anymore; I no longer need someone to put a hand on my shoulder; I don’t want to see anyone, not anyone on my side, not anyone on the other side.

  * * *

  Night surprises me on a stone slab facing the sea. I haven’t the least notion of what I did with my day. I believe I fell asleep somewhere.
My three days and three nights of captivity have left me completely unraveled. I’ve lost my jacket. I must have left it on a public bench, or maybe someone stole it from me. I’ve got a large stain on the upper part of my pants, and splashes of vomit splotch my shirt; I’ve also got a vague memory of puking under a footbridge. How did I dawdle my way to this stone slab overlooking the sea? I don’t know.

  Away out on the water, an ocean liner twinkles.

  Closer in, the waves hurl themselves desperately against the rocks. Their racket resounds in my head like the blows of a club.

  The sea breeze refreshes me. I gather myself around my legs, sink my chin between my knees, and listen to the sounds of the sea. My eyes gradually grow blurry; my sobs overtake me, jostling together in my throat and setting off a series of shivers that pass through my body in every direction. I take my face in my hands and groan and groan until finally I begin shouting like a man possessed into the deafening roar of the waves.

  5.

  * * *

  Someone has attached a poster to the iron gate of my house. It’s not exactly a poster—it’s the front page of a daily newspaper with a large circulation. Above an imposing photograph depicting the bloody chaos in and around the restaurant targeted by the terrorists, there’s a headline in large print, spread across three columns: THE FILTHY BEAST IS AMONG US.

  The street’s deserted. An anemic streetlamp sheds its light, a pallid halo that hardly extends beyond the lamp itself. My neighbor across the street has his curtains drawn. It’s barely ten o’clock in the evening, and there’s no light in any window.