by Amjad Nasser
You sat up straight on the mattress on the floor. You cleared your throat. Then you told him, ‘Listen to me as long as your bad temper will permit. A meeting like this, face to face in the open air, with all the time in the world, doesn’t always happen, and may not happen often in the future. You don’t know everyone I know but I definitely know everyone you know. You don’t know, for example, that I’m not the only person who uses this pseudonym, which you don’t like. How could you know that there’s someone else who’s a professional writer, like me, and bears the same name as me but who lives, fortunately, far away where the ocean roars and a thousand deserts loom? We have never lived in the same place. I myself only noticed this when I was asked to explain how I could be in two places or with two different women at the same time, although I am not some kind of superman. Then I was asked how I had come to write things that weren’t like me and that don’t bear the hallmark of my nervous tension, which is more famous than my writing itself. This is apart from the fact that his writings on current affairs take a position that is different from mine. I didn’t believe the talk about these alleged writings until a friend showed me some cuttings of them and I found that the content and form had nothing to do with me. They weren’t better than what I write, or worse. They were just completely different. It’s true that language is a universal feature of humanity and the same ideas are widely available, but the way we handle words and ideas differs from one person to another.
‘The first time I noticed that this person existed was when a critic, in the country that stretches from the ocean to the desert, commended my book Hamiya and the Bridge and I found a blurred photograph published with the review. The photo department in the newspaper had assumed it was a picture of me. It wasn’t me. I was convinced of that even though the picture was blurred and didn’t have any distinguishing features, unless you count the thick glasses that almost covered the man’s eyes. But when I remembered that I do sometimes wear thick-framed glasses, I was a little hesitant about taking a position on the identity of the person in the photograph. I interpreted it as just a coincidence. There was someone else whose name was my pseudonym and who practised the same profession. They say that God can create forty likenesses of a single person, so it wouldn’t be hard for Him to inspire forty men (or women) to give their children my assumed name, which you don’t like. I don’t know if you knew this, but when I gave myself this name, after I fled the country, I was thinking only that it was ordinary, a name like any other name.’
You stopped talking, then you looked at him. His face showed signs of scepticism, as though he wanted to say something. But apparently he intended to comply with your stipulation, not to interrupt until the end. So you continued:
‘Please believe me. Yes. That was the reason. After we split in two, I wanted to have an ordinary name that wouldn’t draw attention, that wouldn’t arouse suspicion of any kind and that was plausible in that city where bullets could easily fly. A name that would be lost among other names, with no special meaning, though in our language it’s hard for names not to have meanings or symbolise something. For example, my first name (which is now exclusively yours and which I remember only when I’m with you on this balcony or in the troubling dreams I have) is the name of a prophet, a man who’s also known as Jonah. But a marginal prophet. I don’t know what his message was. It’s said that in Nineveh he tried to guide his people to the right path but didn’t succeed. He abandoned them. He wandered around aimlessly. He went to sea and a whale swallowed him. I don’t think my father meant to imply any of this when he called me Younis. It would be disastrous if that’s what he intended, because there’s nothing of Younis the prophet in me, or even of Younis our relative, a good man we never saw without his crutches. Anyway I don’t like this name. It always struck me as an old man’s name. For ages it reminded me of our relative, who was already old when he was born. On crutches. This is the truth that you in particular must know. Besides, I don’t like big names. The names of heroes and gods that some writers and poets and politicians working in revolutions and secret organisations adopt for themselves. You know that in Hamiya I was branded with a red-hot iron on my stomach because of books and ideas, and I didn’t choose for myself (sorry, I mean you didn’t choose for yourself, because I still mix up the two personalities and the two periods) a name other than Younis al-Khattat. I want you to know you’re not the only one to have suffered. The anxiety and uncertainty I went through were no less painful than the disappointment, the sense of abandonment and neglect that you suffered. To carry around someone you no longer are, a name you’re not known by among people but which nonetheless remains stuck to you, is not just a procedural matter. Do you understand? It’s not just a question of a passport and bureaucracy. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be a subject worth talking about now.’
Once again you noticed the anticipation on his face. He didn’t ask you in words. But the expression on his face was asking for a clarification. The expression was telling you that the two things didn’t balance out. One of them was unlike the other. You looked uncertain too. Because one cannot fully express what one feels. There’s no language in the world that can convey feelings as they stir and shift inside us, especially if they arise from uncertainty and confusion. So you continued:
‘How can I best explain it to you? I could just tell you it’s an existential question. A question of existing or not existing. In other words, of you being yourself and someone else at the same time. And this is something you didn’t know. But trust me when I say that it doesn’t matter what we call the suffering as long as it comes from the same painful source. Of course there’s more than one reason why I’m sharing secrets with you twenty years after we split up, and the most important one is for amusement. Because the nights are long on this balcony, which is open to a star-studded sky. The nights are long here and we don’t have anything else to do. Our father died of grief at how I damaged his reputation. That’s what you told me with unenviable arrogance. Although I doubt that. Our mother died after him. And before them our grandfather and grandmother. It was they who would ensure the evening passed quickly by telling stories, and besides we’re no longer so young that we need compete to count the stars, which we were forbidden to count in the old days in case warts appeared on our hands. Do you remember that? We used to count a particular patch of sky, then discover that we were counting the same stars again, or that the patch had started to grow bigger and the number of stars was multiplying, or they were changing their positions and their shapes. So we would stop counting, happily admitting defeat. So let me tell you my story about the other man who has that name of mine you don’t like. It might amuse you. Or console you. And it might persuade you to tell me a story, maybe about the little tricks you play, about how you’re still not cured of love, and about your letters to Roula, which more than once have put me in an embarrassing and awkward position. I know you’re still writing them, with inspiration from the Song of Solomon, which I can no longer stand, because they find their way to me in the far reaches of exile.’
You noticed that he raised his eyebrows in protest. So you told him, ‘Stop that. Do you think I don’t know who keeps writing the love letters, even if you don’t always send them? Don’t raise your eyebrows. Stop shaking your head and let me continue.’ He did in fact stop making those gestures of protest, but with a certain pain, which showed in his eyes. You felt sorry for him. To ease the situation, you told him, ‘Do you want to know how my meeting with Roula went?’ You saw his features relax and his hands, which were clasped tight across his chest, loosen up. You told him, ‘I’ll tell you, provided I can go back to my story. Will you promise me that?’ He nodded in agreement in a childish manner that made you feel even more sorry for him. You told him:
‘Firstly, it was you who loved her, not me. It’s true that I didn’t completely break free of you, if you’ll forgive the expression, because something of you survived inside me. But I don’t know exactly what it was. When I
stood in front of the mirror I felt anxious inside. I took a tranquilliser. Then I relaxed a little. But it wasn’t the tranquilliser that made me feel that the whole business was something to do with someone else. With you, to be precise. Because the pill wasn’t hallucinogenic. There are such pills that make one hallucinate and see things that in reality don’t exist. No, it was an ordinary tranquilliser. And I’ve grown used to taking them to calm my nerves and make the images that go through my mind less intense. It’s a disease or a symptom that’s called “depression” and it’s common these days, but these pills in any case no longer do me much good. It was you who stood looking at me in the mirror. Don’t wave your hand in denial. Don’t do it. Because I know it. Why? Firstly, because we really have become different people – the one here that’s you, and the one there that’s me. Even when I came back I didn’t become you, and I don’t think we will become one again. Secondly, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t have let my eyes climb up her legs and try to move her dress up her golden thighs, so much so that I lost track of what she was saying. If it mattered to me as much as it mattered to you, I would have kept looking at her face, despite the ravages of ruthless time. Thirdly, she referred to the fact that she always sees Younis al-Khattat. She doesn’t need a newspaper or magazine to see him and be aware of him, because he never left here as I did. Yes. She said she’s kept every line he wrote. Every sprig of lavender he picked from the flowerbeds in the Hamiya gardens. The newspaper in which the poem ‘Lady of the City’ appeared. She said these things were her treasures. That she called her first son Badr after his favourite poet. And then it doesn’t require extraordinary intelligence to realise that I’ve changed, become a different person in fact, with a different life and different relationships and interests from Younis al-Khattat. This didn’t escape her. Because she loved Younis al-Khattat, and Younis al-Khattat isn’t me. So let me go back to the first story. You don’t seem enthusiastic but listen to me anyway.
‘The local newspapers started to write about me, but as someone other than you, after the Grandson died and the censorship of publications was lifted. You know from the papers that I travel often and I’m invited to conferences and meetings. Sometimes I recite poetry that doesn’t follow the traditional rules of metre or rhyme, poetry such as you’ve never written and that maybe you don’t consider poetry, or I make fiery comments about change and the transition from the old slow-moving times to new times (I no longer do this because I’ve been losing faith in many things), or I take part in meetings on narrative and biography. Anyway, some years ago I was invited to a conference in an old city with houses that lean against each other and with markets and alleyways that crisscross like a tangle of intestines. Like a body, it had orifices that were open and hidden at the same time. This is roughly how it was described by a foreign woman who visited it and was cured of insomnia and chronic emotional trauma. In my case, I can say that the houses, the alleyways and cafés of the city, where people had lived and breathed non-stop for a thousand years, brought back memories of cities where I had lived shortly after we split. It was the smell of mint, rosewater and marzipan from the houses and cafés in the afternoons that set my memory working in reverse. So did the smell of manure from the animals that were still the only means of transport in the markets and streets, which were so narrow that they hardly allowed two people to pass. Don’t be surprised that such a city still exists on the face of our wretched planet. What I say is not a figment of my imagination, because that doesn’t obey me much any longer. The city exists, exactly as I’m describing it to you. I can imagine right now the man who makes leather shoes, whose small shop smelt of tanning, sitting on the doorstep of his house (I don’t know how I found my way there through the maze of alleyways and interlocking houses), drinking mint tea from a greenish glass veined with golden lines, smoking cigarette after cigarette and staring perhaps at the same stars we can see arrayed above us here. I can imagine that. When he found out I hailed from a country near the Holy Land, he invited me to his house in the hope I would bring him good luck. Imagine? Me bring him good luck, when I’m weighed down by doubts and sins, a mixture of atheism and an early religious upbringing!’
He looked like he was about to break his promise to listen to you till the end. He seemed to be growing annoyed. He probably wanted you to get on with the story rather than twisting and turning around it, so you continued:
‘No story is straightforward. Time isn’t straightforward either. Because time and words and emotions wrap around each other like the layout of that ancient city, or like some of your father’s calligraphic designs, which turn words into eternal riddles. But, in deference to your impatience, which remains unchanged, I will summarise:
‘Our hosts put us up in a hotel that was once the home of a city notable but had been sold by his grandchildren to some of the investors who flocked to the city when it became an international tourist destination. Now you can hear people jabbering in multiple languages in the city’s lanes and markets, where one might easily get lost for ever. The hotel, I mean the home of the notable, was built in the style of the great kingdoms that came and went in that region. It had a high wooden gate carved with images of imaginary birds and delicate flowers that one could almost smell. A mounted horseman could have ridden through the gate without bending down. In the middle of the courtyard there was a pool, with a fountain in the centre. The tiles on the floor of the courtyard and in the pool were very small. The patterns they formed changed every ten or fifteen tiles, depending on the angle of inclination of the sun, and even in the dark they reflected colours that varied between green and blue and pale yellow, as though the pool and the tiles that were in it and around it reflected a traveller’s dream about a place he sought but could not reach. In the courtyard I found people I knew and others I didn’t. I was given an upper room that overlooked the pool. In fact all the rooms overlooked the pool. I put my bag in the room. Leaning over the marble basin, I washed my face slowly with the water of the city. Because, despite everything, I still see water as a source of good luck, just as my grandmother did. I see water as able to bring the dead back to life and, when I wash, I repeat some of her ritual prayers silently to myself. Then I went down to the courtyard. The guests were milling around, chatting away at various levels and pitches, without them noticing the changing patterns of the tiles or the shifts in their colours as the sun moved across the sky. I drank a frothy mint tea, served by a boy in traditional costume, carrying a teapot that never ran dry on a pale silver tray that never ran out of glasses. I stood with a friend who comes from a country close to our country. Behind my back I heard someone say, “Have you seen Adham Jaber?” I looked back. The other person pointed at me, and the person who had asked said, “No, that’s not him.” Then they melted into the crowd. My friend noticed that something had come over me. “Is there a problem?” he asked. “No,” I said. Then, after a short silence, I added, “Did you hear someone mention my name?” “No, I didn’t,” he said. I thought that what I had heard was a hallucination, like the ones I have that are a mixture of fantasy and reality. But in the lobby, in the lecture hall, on our magical tour through the warren of twisting lanes in the old city, and in the restaurant, I still felt that there were eyes pinned on me at all times. I heard my name mentioned several times, but they were not referring to me. I didn’t think much about it. I left it as it was in its raw state. In all its mystery, real or imaginary. Sometimes I do that. I just let the feeling sink in without allowing my mind to analyse it. But the eyes pursuing me had come closer and grown more piercing. I could almost feel them penetrating every inch of me. The breath I could feel behind my back, which disappeared when I turned around, was almost stinging. Breaths interspersed by a feeble wheezing sound, from lungs ruined by nicotine. I hadn’t done anything here to deserve being monitored by anyone. Nothing real called for that, especially in this place. Because I’m far from Hamiya, very far, and what I did there is of no interest to anyone here. On the eve of the conclusi
on of the conference, I had a headache. You don’t know those headaches that knock me out. I wanted to have a rest in my room before joining the group for the traditional closing ceremony that the organisers had prepared. I went to reception to get the key to my room. The receptionist was speaking to a man who, from the back, seemed to be on the stout side. I heard the receptionist tell the man with some impatience, “Sir, there’s no one on the guest list by that name, and the only person from that city is Mr Younis.” Then the receptionist saw me approaching. The other man turned to see where the receptionist was looking, and the receptionist said, “There he is!” Before I could reach the wooden counter behind which he was standing, the receptionist asked me, as if pleading for help, “Mr Younis, has anyone other than you come from the city where you live?” I looked straight at the man, who resembled to some extent the man whose picture was published with the article praising my book. “No,” I said, “I’m the only one.”