Land of No Rain

by Amjad Nasser

  Then one day in the City of Red and Grey you suddenly found yourself face to face with Younis al-Khattat. The surprise almost undid twenty years of exile, with all the hardship and the homesickness, and restored things to how they were in the beginning.

  With the passage of time and your wanderings overseas, you had almost forgotten Younis al-Khattat. You had forgotten his few poems, which were sometimes musical and sometimes grating, and you had completely forgotten the modernist metrical poetry of which he favoured the softest varieties. It’s true that he visited you in your dreams from time to time, but dreaming isn’t reality, as they say. Then, from beyond the walls of time and space, he popped up in front of you somewhere you didn’t expect a messenger or good news from your country. It wasn’t Younis al-Khattat in person that you met. That would not have been possible, because he never went beyond the borders of Hamiya. The one who crossed the border and left for other countries bore another name and was destined for other things. It wasn’t Younis himself but his works, or more precisely some of his poems. A prestigious cultural institution in the City of Red and Grey had organised an exhibition of the arts and literature of your region. It included contributions of variable quality and importance from various countries. It was an event that was unprecedented, as far as you know. The world you came from does not usually arouse such interest in a large and ancient conurbation whose secret life is dominated by money, sex, questions of security and fading imperial dreams. It’s the oil that gushes out of the region’s deserts that monopolises its attention. That’s the crux of the matter, as they say. Otherwise the region, which staggers under the burdens of the past and the pains of the present, which stretches – thirsty, hungry and humiliated – between the ocean and the gulf, does not exist on the map. Credit for this sudden interest in the world you came from must go to the suicide bombers that have given the people and the government such nightmares since the explosions of that bloody summer. It was the terrifying sequence of bombings, carried out by young men who paralysed a large city in broad daylight and amazed its inhabitants with their remarkable willingness to die, that made the elite take an interest in the principles and beliefs that inspired people to blow themselves up, along with other strangers. The bombings also gave the general public a phobia about people coming from a world wrapped in danger and mystery. Because life is dear in the City of Red and Grey, or at least it was before the plague broke out. In a way you find difficult to understand, it is cherished by those dying in hospital, by the blind with their sticks to guide them, and even by the destitute who call the streets their home. The inhabitants were terrified by what the prophet of the bombers said in his message to them: ‘We embrace death as you embrace life.’

  The week-long exhibition was a mixture of older literature and arts, interspersed with some rather more contemporary culture. You heard of it by chance. You were living in a remote neighbourhood crowded with the poor – locals, immigrants and unemployed – and you seldom went to the city centre, which was noisy and busy. On one of your trips downtown, you saw a poster on a billboard in the main square, which was covered in the droppings of grey pigeons. The poster, inviting people to attend the exhibition, also appeared in the underground tunnels with their eerie lighting. It featured famous landmarks such as the Pyramids, the Pillars of Hercules and the Kaaba, alongside less well-known ones such as the place where Jesus was baptised, the Jalali and Mirani castles and the ruins of Mari, as well as fantastical drawings of men in large white turbans: perhaps distant ancestors such as Averroes, al-Hallaj or Haroun al-Rashid. The slogan on the poster was a saying current in the city: ‘It’s never too late.’ As you read the poster you said to yourself, ‘Perhaps it’s an attempt to make up for the past, or recognition that the world extends beyond the clock tower that marks the birth of time from the clammy womb of misty grey.’ But you were sorry that this sudden awareness of your world should have sprung from that apocalyptic summer, rather than from genuine curiosity or from an openness to find common ground, even common interests, without inhibitions or preconceptions. An awakening of that kind, if it had come about earlier, could perhaps have prevented the deep chasm that had now started to separate the two worlds. As you passed the poster, the words of which suggested a belated correction, you recalled a saying you had been surprised to hear from a politician rather than a poet or an acrobat: ‘The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.’

  The exhibition was indeed diverse and ambitious: amazing archaeological finds owned by the city’s museums, recordings by prominent musicians, films from the black-and-white era, dances by men in white gowns and conical hats who whirled for ever, anthologies of poetry, a short story and chapters of a novel in both languages, and so on. In the anthology of poetry were three poems by Younis al-Khattat.

  The name sent a shiver down your spine.

  The large anthology contained poems by six or seven poets from your country, including a poet who was killed in a mysterious car accident. In the middle of them was the name Younis al-Khattat, with a short confused biography that suggested he also had another name. For ages you hadn’t read the name in any newspaper or book, or heard anyone utter it. You had a recurring dream in which Younis al-Khattat appeared. Despite your wanderings in numerous countries the setting, content and words of the dream did not change. You were in a dark room with a raised bench where three men in military uniform were seated in red sashes, with ribbons on their chests. Next to each one lay an olive-green military cap decorated with an eagle spreading its wings. In front of them the rows of chairs were empty. To the right stood a metal cage holding a thin young man with long hair, a droopy moustache and shifty eyes. The three military men examined the papers in front of them and then looked up, towards the metal cage. Then the one sitting in the middle, the most severe and inscrutable, would speak these words: ‘Younis al-Khattat. Life imprisonment.’ You would wake up soaked in sweat every time.

  You knew there had been change in your country. But you didn’t expect to find Younis al-Khattat’s poems included in an anthology of writings selected under the supervision of official institutions, for several reasons. Younis al-Khattat wrote few poems, and they were published in local newspapers with limited circulation or in underground stencil-copied publications edited by young men who believed that words could be as powerful as bullets. Besides that of course there was the fact of his conviction in absentia. It’s true that the poems did bring him some attention in literary circles, and more than one critic wrote about the advent of a promising poet. But the fact remains that he was not a recognised poet, even though some of his poems on love and politics circulated among young people. One of the three poems in the anthology was called ‘The Lady of the City’, which was heavy with influences from the Song of Solomon. The lyricism in it is clear. The pastoralism – the hills covered with lilies, the lions and the spikenard – was also evident. But for all that clarity, a question obsessed you when you read the poem. How could a poet less than twenty years old describe how time weighed on his shoulders, how it had left scars on his body, how it made the ground sprout lily after lily and the gazelles give birth to gazelle after gazelle, and the days and nights pass in succession without his love for his beloved diminishing one iota? You told yourself that sometimes one’s words can sing the praises of something you know nothing about or overestimate the permanence of feelings. They can immortalise a moment that soon proves to be transitory, if not pathetic. You also said that it is emotional and intellectual discipline that generally gives words a way out, saves them from the nonsense of their firm promises and makes it possible to read them again with as little disgust as possible.

  You were not surprised for long that Younis al-Khattat’s poems had been included in the part of the large anthology that was devoted to your country. While roaming through the galleries of the cultural institution that was hosting the exhibition, you saw your old comrade Mahmoud, whom you all used to call Abu Tawila because of his unusual height. Ever
since middle school in Hamiya, Mahmoud had been noticeably taller than the rest of his colleagues. You were considered tall, but not as tall as Mahmoud. Those extra inches of flesh and bone were probably the only advantage he had over you. It didn’t feel like it was ten years or so since your stormy last meeting. He embraced you and spoke warmly. He waved his hands excitedly. More than once he put his hand on your shoulder with disturbing affection. But you couldn’t respond so obligingly. You needed time to cover half the emotional distance he had already crossed when he met you.

  It was hard for you to forget what he had done.

  He must have read the statement you and your comrades issued, which called him a defeatist who put his personal interests above the common cause. You were the spokesman for the Organisation and the one who drafted the statements it issued abroad. That was about ten years earlier. Mahmoud’s surprise decision to go home had been less of a shock than his rapid appointment to a prominent official position in the media. Those who suspected he had been a plant saw this as proof of their suspicions, while others rejected this interpretation, which gave the impression that your organisational structure was lax in the face of other forces. They said he was just a defeatist, a petit bourgeois with no stamina. You were one of those who favoured the second explanation. If he had really been a plant, he would have given you away before you left the country: he had known where you were hiding before your escape was arranged, and when you escaped abroad, with some of your comrades, he was with you.

  But it was striking that his comments on the nature of your work with the Organisation and on the rigidity of your theories had started only a short time before he suddenly decided to go home, and then only cautiously. He had started talking philosophically, in a decadent liberal tone in your opinion, about the relativity of evil. Comparing two evils: the regime and what he called the overwhelming tide of obscurantism. Within the Organisation you hadn’t taken a clear position on the fact that the religious forces were vocal in the country and that some wings of that movement had turned to violence. You stuck to your class-based analysis of the regime, of the forces that had a real interest in change and the role of the revolutionary vanguard in bringing it about. You pointed out confusedly that what was happening in your country was a struggle within the bourgeois class itself. The right was attacking the right. But the thrust of your propaganda remained focused on the regime, which you held responsible for the conflict, for the violence and the bloodshed that was taking place. You said it was the natural outcome of its decision to use the religious forces to wage war on the left. You observed what was happening in Hamiya towards the end of the Grandson’s reign with a certain vengeful satisfaction. What you didn’t say in your statements, you discussed in your closed meetings: if the regime was weakened by the religious forces, was it in the interests of the forces of change or not? Your comrades were close to unanimous that in the end what was happening would work in their interests, because in your opinion the religious forces did not have a sustainable agenda. They were part of the forces of the past, and history could repeat itself only in the form of farce. By weakening the regime and shaking its foundations, these ahistorical forces would help put history on the right track, whether they wanted to or not. But it was a remark by the theorist of the Organisation that became proverbial, when he likened the religious forces to the ox that ploughs the land and prepares it for those who plant the seeds: the ox that pulls the plough of history. Then, as if he had had a sudden inspiration, he said: ‘Let the ox do the work!’ That phrase became an unofficial slogan. You didn’t like the metaphor. You thought it smacked of opportunism in disguise, but you didn’t say that, perhaps because the issue wasn’t fully clear to you, perhaps because you were taken by surprise by the sudden change in the relationship between the religious forces and the regime. But you were not comfortable with what followed: the beginnings of a flirtation between the Organisation and the religious forces, to confront the regime. On that your position was unambiguous, passionate in fact. You argued for the need to stand firm at equal distance from the regime and from the religious forces. You said that tactics should not part company with strategy, and that it was liberal deviationism to say that the end justifies the means. But all this happened after Mahmoud had gone back to Hamiya. To be fair, you should remember what Mahmoud had said at the meeting where the theorist of the Organisation came up with the ox metaphor. He had ridiculed the slogan ‘Let the ox do the work’ and said the ox would turn its horns on everyone. Now you’re wondering whether what he did was make an ideological and political choice in favour of one evil over another, or whether on the Island of the Sun, the last place you had been together, Mahmoud had met one of the Hamiya officials who had come to the island for tourism and shopping; and the bargaining had started there. You don’t know and you didn’t ask him. But you could find no other convincing explanation for how he had managed to enter the country without being sent back, because he was one of a small minority of people that had tried to go home and not been re-deported by the border guards. Hamiya’s policy in this regard was inflexible: not to let back fugitives even if they were wanted men, to leave them like stray dogs barking in the streets. This was the exact expression current in the official media when referring to opponents of the regime who were active abroad. The expression ‘stray dogs’ rarely meant actual dogs. Anyone who heard the expression on the radio or read it in the newspapers understood immediately what was meant.

  * * *

  Hamiya may be the only country in the world that does not arrest fugitive dissidents when they try to come home. Instead, it sends them back where they came from. This has created several diplomatic crises with neighbouring states as well as with other more distant countries. It once happened that a group from an organisation similar to your own left the airport on the Island of the Sun to go home, and the airport authorities in Hamiya put them back on the plane that brought them. The authorities on the island wouldn’t let them back in and put them on the first plane back to Hamiya, and the guards at Hamiya airport sent them back to the island again. The authorities on the island contacted Hamiya, but the contacts failed to secure assurances that the group of returnees would be let in. Human rights groups condemned Hamiya’s conduct. Statements were issued demanding that Hamiya let its dissident nationals come home, especially as some of them had wives and children. The appeals and protests fell on deaf ears in Hamiya, which forced the Island of the Sun to accept the group, who were kicked around between planes and airports until another country agreed to take them.

  Many people know that this strange arrangement, unique to Hamiya among all the countries in the world, is the brainchild of the security-obsessed adviser, who is said to be a relic of a vanished empire, a man who does not appear at any public functions and whose photograph is not published in the newspapers; so shadowy a man that some people doubt he even exists. But those who are confident that he does exist assert that he was the man closest to the ear of the Grandson and that it was he who suggested this despicable procedure, which is a punishment harsher than the humiliations of imprisonment. The Hamiya authorities do not explain the procedure. They neither admit it nor deny it. But the most plausible explanation for it can be derived from the phrase, almost a slogan, that recurs in the official media: Let them rot abroad.

  * * *

  In his usual friendly way Mahmoud said, ‘Let’s go and have a coffee outside. Don’t you know a good café where we can sit?’ ‘Sure,’ you told him.

  The cultural complex where the exhibition was being held lies on the riverside. Nearby there are several cafés and bars. It was afternoon. The great river that divides the city in two twists and turns like the body of a giant snake. Dark. Mysterious. On its surface floats the detritus of human society – empty bottles and cigarette ends, just as the city’s famous poet described it. Men and women cross in both directions, carrying umbrellas as a precaution against rain that might fall at any moment, their eyes fixed before their feet, obli
vious of everything around them. You noticed that while speaking to you Mahmoud was ogling passing women in a way that violated the norms of behaviour in the City of Red and Grey. This is a habit that people coming from your world are forced to abandon grudgingly after staying for some time, because almost no one in the city stares at anyone, let alone casts lecherous glances at the breasts and bottoms of passing women. It’s even worse for a man to look back at a woman who has already walked past him. This is wholly improper. When you see someone do that, you can bet he’s a newcomer to the city, and you rarely lose your bet. That doesn’t mean it’s a virtuous city, because vice also exists, with its own market and customers. Vice is a packaged commodity: there are people who buy it and people who sell it. When you first analysed this you attributed it to capitalism itself, which commodifies everything, including the human body and human desires. Then you were uncertain how to categorise it, and in the end you saw it as a mixture of commodification and irremediable human defects. You don’t deny that in the city you saw types of perversion you had never heard of before. Don’t panic, it wasn’t first-hand experience, but in the magazines displayed on the uppermost racks in newspaper shops (which you would sometimes peek into). From browsing nervously through these magazines, you learnt that there were devotees of feet, of shoes, of underwear and body odours, and that there were people who were turned on only by handcuffs, whips, canes and slave chains. Do you remember the Conservative member of parliament who was found hanging from a tree in a public garden, in women’s underwear? People on their way early to work came across him hanging there, in lingerie, a conservative who advocated maintaining values and family cohesion. That made you wonder. Then you remember another strange incident that happened to you personally, but not here. It might not have been perverse but it seemed strange, and at the time you didn’t find any explanation for it. Anyway, you hadn’t come across it before. It involved a young widow, the wife of a colleague killed in the City of Siege and War. You had gone to her apartment to pay your condolences. You were surprised how the situation changed so quickly. From patting her on the shoulder, to putting your hand on hers to comfort her, to hugging her firmly, and then with desire, then with passionate kisses, and taking off her black mourning clothes and scattering them across the small sitting room. It wasn’t the sudden surge of carnal desire that struck you as strange at the time but the words she used. In her husky voice, she asked you to have sex with her in the most explicit and vulgar terms. After frantic sex, and perhaps because of the vulgarity, which stemmed from a moment when you were both emotionally confused and carried away by raw instincts, she started to cry, almost hysterically. Sex without any preliminaries whatsoever. Unconsciously you were both swept away in its raging torrent. As she apologised, between copious sobs, you reassured her that it didn’t matter. ‘Please don’t get a bad impression of me,’ she said. She kept repeating this phrase until you left. Just as, in the heat of erotic excitement, she had repeatedly asked you to have sex with her in words that would ordinarily sound crude. This spontaneous erotic encounter with your colleague’s widow was not the end of the story. When you again felt the urge to taste the unfamiliar fruit that unexpectedly hung within your reach, you went back to her. In fact you never forgot the strange squealing noises she made, nor the vulgar words she used. It excited you to go back to her, specifically the vulgarities of which you silently disapproved when you heard them for the first time.