Land of No Rain

by Amjad Nasser

  * * *

  Two or three days after he arrived, a luxury car stopped in front of the house. A young man wearing a suit and a large tie got out. The man asked for him, and he came out to meet him. The young man was one of Mahmoud Abu Tawila’s staff. He wanted to take him to meet his old comrade. He declined, saying he wasn’t able to go. He asked him to tell his boss he would see him as soon as he was done with his various engagements. Clearly he didn’t want to meet his old comrade, at least not in the first few days after returning. The next day the same car stopped in front of the house again. A tall man got out, well-dressed with a trimmed black moustache and short jet-black hair. It was Mahmoud Abu Tawila. It was no longer possible to avoid meeting him. He didn’t go off with him, but invited him into the same diwan where his old comrade had previously attended some of the evening salons. Mahmoud Abu Tawila seemed humbled when he saw the picture of the father. He stood a while in front of the calligraphies hanging on the walls. He said things about how the country had lost a rare talent. ‘May God have mercy on his soul,’ he added. In a tone that may or may not have been sincere, he said, ‘The time has come for our country to embrace creativity, not drive it away!’ As with many things, he couldn’t be sure of his former comrade’s feelings towards his father. There was that constant ambiguity in the tone of his voice and in the way he spoke, the effortless way he patched together common sayings, maxims, proverbs and his own linguistic innovations to create what sounded like a model page from a textbook, though not one that was circulated widely. I gathered that Mahmoud offered him work in the cultural or media departments, as with other former opposition people. He added a new refrain to what he had said about change from within when they had met by chance in the City of Red and Grey. He told him the whole country was now at a crossroads, that the map of the region was being redrawn and they had to preserve the country’s identity and unity. He said the new commander did not have the experience or even the charisma of the Grandson, so it was essential to strengthen the national institutions that guaranteed the unity of the country and its survival in the face of the coming storm. He understood that his friend Mahmoud really was worried that a fragmentation of Hamiya’s nucleus, under pressure from the changes in the region, would lead to the wholesale disintegration of the country. Mahmoud told him that the country was at the centre of a tug-of-war between two camps, which political circles called the old guard and the new guard. Although he rejected the terminology, he was inclined towards those described as the old guard and said the label did not offend him. They were the ones, he said, who could be relied on to defend the identity and unity of the country. He told him that labels don’t usually mean much but in this case they did. The label was pejorative, as he put it, intended to give the impression, especially abroad, that this camp was reactionary and that its leading members were lured by the medals and other decorations that covered the Grandson’s chest, but in fact those known as the ‘new guard’ were just a bunch of political buffoons suddenly parachuted into the country by murky financiers. They weren’t very different from a group whose name might ring a bell with him, compradors, and that was what they were now being called by local radicals of the kind that exist in every age, even at this moment of major turbulence that was sweeping away ideas and ideologies. He didn’t comment on what his old friend said. It struck him as remote from his immediate concerns, as if Mahmoud were talking about things that were happening on another planet. Inside, he was surprised at how emotionally detached he was from what was happening in his country, if it really was happening, that is. He realised that history had its decisive moments and that this was doubtless one of them. So how was it that everyone remained indifferent to the bleak picture his old friend painted of the country’s future? He didn’t want to say anything. This probably stemmed from his inability to respond, not from an aversion to speaking or because he rejected what he was hearing from his old friend, who had preserved his extraordinary inner energy. He was familiar with those nihilistic moments when he felt indifferent towards things, when moving was the same as staying still, when speaking was the same as silence, right the same as wrong. That internal paralysis that a psychiatrist he often went to in the City of Red and Grey had linked to chronic depression.

  Is that what he had?

  He politely ignored Mahmoud’s offer. But Mahmoud didn’t give up. He wasn’t that type. He asked him to think it over and said he understood his circumstances after everything he’d been through. He told him the country needed him now more than ever. He, personally, needed his advice. But he avoided a candid response to Mahmoud’s request and said he wanted to be free at last to write. He had many postponed projects and needed time to finish them off. His old friend noticed that he wasn’t in good shape. He didn’t look like the person he had met again in the City of Red and Grey ten years after they had parted. Mahmoud knew what had happened in that city. He knew what had happened to his wife. As he hinted to his friend who had returned, he also knew that he had been the ‘guest’ of the National Security Agency. He told him they had nothing against him now because circumstances had changed, the old files had been closed, and the agency now had other priorities. But the returnee was somewhere else, in body and in spirit. He had a plan of action from which he would not deviate. In our lengthy exchanges, he admitted to me that he still harboured some affection for his old friend, who had long competed with him in everything. Because there are some things that can’t be wiped out easily, feelings that don’t completely dissipate or turn into their opposites. There’s a sediment that settles in the heart. There’s something that lingers in the depths, resisting complete obliteration.

  I don’t know why one distant memory came back to him, of when he met Hala. He didn’t need to tell me about that particular memory. It happened when he was me. It was more about me than about him. I immediately recalled that afternoon under the vine trellis. The interminable heat. The big shade. Awaiting the arrival of the woman who wanted to join the Organisation. The smell of mint that blew in from I don’t know where, because at comrade Hanan’s bungalow, in front of which we were sitting on plastic chairs, there was nothing but a vine trellis that cast some welcome shade, and some patchy grass growing on wasteland thanks to a leaky water pipe that had never been fixed. Two of the five or six people present – comrade Hanan and me – knew Hala from before. She lived in a house near comrade Hanan’s house and Hanan didn’t introduce her to us until she was sure she was eligible to join the Organisation. The meeting was social and informal. That’s how it should seem to Hala and to the guards that were posted everywhere. Hala arrived carrying a cake. Beads of sweat were forming on her brow and the tip of her nose, which made her look more attractive. Maybe she was flustered because she didn’t know most of those present. I had met Hala casually a few times with comrade Hanan and, because of her easy-going nature, our relationship had become uninhibited, with none of the awkwardness or complexes that usually constrain relationships between young men and women in our country. I noticed that she showed an interest in Mahmoud, but he was so malicious that he ignored her interest. In fact he ignored her completely. I knew this characteristic of his. The way that, by ignoring someone, he makes the person he ignores inquisitive about him. But Hala wasn’t the type to be ignored. Her femininity, her cheerfulness, her distinctive Anatolian features, her statuesque figure. It was hard for a young man to see her and not turn his head. But these qualities did not turn Mahmoud’s head. That’s what he wanted to convey to her, in his devious way. And he succeeded. It was a casual meeting. Various subjects were discussed. But not politics directly, just peripherally: the poverty in the slums and remote towns, women’s liberation, eradicating illiteracy, the gaps in the five-year plan and so on. Quick headlines and a cursory discussion. One subject led to another. That meeting, when Mahmoud spouted what sounded like schoolboy talk on almost every subject that came up, was the start of Hala’s infatuation with my friend. The rest is details. Such as the fact that shortly a
fterwards Hala and Mahmoud announced their engagement, which never came to marriage for some reason he would never disclose to us. I noticed that after the engagement Hala kept her distance and was reserved. She no longer slapped her hand on my shoulder when she laughed at something I had said or kissed me on the cheek when we met. I didn’t understand. I asked her if something about me had upset her and she denied it. She said it was maybe because she was tired from work. After graduating from the National Education Institute, the Hamiya personnel department had given her a job as a teacher in a girls’ school in a remote town. Her excuse was not convincing. Her attitude upset me but I didn’t dwell on it. At the time I was deeply in love with Roula. Her father had been killed and we got engaged after a passionate love affair. Hala’s eyes, by clouding over when we met, were telling me why she was keeping her distance, but I ignored them. I found out from comrade Hanan, who told me in disbelief that the reason for Hala’s changed behaviour towards me was Mahmoud’s jealousy and his suspicion that she was fond of me, or perhaps his suspicion that we had once had a relationship. The mere fact that I had known her before him apparently upset him.

  Unfortunately for him, it was only through me that Mahmoud experienced some of the landmark events in his life and developed interests that preoccupied him for so long. This was a pattern that Mahmoud openly fought against. He tried to bury his anger about it deep inside himself, but from time to time it would float to the surface and I could sense the unpleasant taste of it in my stomach. It was apparently too much for him that I had known the woman he was about to marry, even if our acquaintance had gone no further than innocent friendship or affection of the kind that brothers and sisters might have. I must admit he would sometimes startle me with remarks that might not have been original but sounded as if they were. I’ll never forget one striking turn of phrase of his, when I told him that he borrowed other people’s remarks and brazenly passed them off as his own. ‘You shouldn’t borrow what you want. You should steal it,’ he said.

  I didn’t bring up the subject of Hala with Mahmoud. Because events gathered pace. How could I have known we were heading towards an event that would drive us apart, that the last memories still resonating in my head would be of this circle of young people full of hope, the leisurely sessions under the vine trellis, and the short man sitting with us who we thought was a senior member of the Organisation while he was in fact the local leader who would later be executed and buried in an unmarked grave? Because what happened happened, and I am no longer me.

  * * *

  He had to make this visit.

  It wasn’t tradition that made him do it, but something else.

  I saw him hurriedly putting on a pair of trousers he took from his wardrobe, then a T-shirt he found on the edge of the bed. He put the hunting hat with the wide brim on his head, the same one he was wearing in the photograph with Khalaf and Salem, after finding it at the top of the wardrobe. He knew the sun would be fierce after a while. He had decided to go and visit them. But his mother and his father were buried in different cemeteries. With the increasing population and the prevalence of death the old cemetery, with its earth graves close to the surface, was crammed full, so a second cemetery and then a third had sprung up. He didn’t think about which grave he would visit first but just set off, walking with a slouch. His grey hair flashed like a mirror under the sun of a yawning mid-morning. By his side walked young Younis, sometimes holding his hand, sometimes letting it go, as though uncomfortable with the idea of being connected to someone or something.

  Many years ago, when he was the same age and height as the boy who was sometimes holding his hand, sometimes letting it go, he used to walk along these streets, jumping from wall to wall with a stick in his hand. He used to read books about chivalry and the agonies of love under lamp-posts, and comb his hair with a quiff. There were fewer streets then than there are now, but they were tidier. As was apparent from his uncertain gait, he didn’t know which street to take after the big junction that divided our district into four equal sections, the junction for which the house that people called Nakuja Abad, after the two words inscribed on the arch outside, was a major landmark. He was looking at the child, and the child realised he was confused. The child pointed towards the west. They crossed the last street he knew and then he left young Younis in charge. He was silent, and so was the boy. From one street to the next, young Younis said, ‘This way, Uncle.’ Then he would fall silent again. He followed in the footsteps of the boy, who led him by the shortest route, like the word sakiina in the maze of his father’s Kufic design. I’m sure he gave up trying to recognise the small streets, because the goods in the shops along the way had mostly changed. The new goods met needs that were unknown in the past. Perhaps he noticed that these same goods, with the same names, in the same packets or tins of the same colour, were now available everywhere: an alternative form of internationalism that splashed its brands across towns and villages, across oceans and continents, transcending languages and local distinctions, an internationalism of magic merchandise that floats across the face of the earth.

  When he decided to make this visit, he didn’t say to me, ‘Hey Younis, let’s go,’ as he did when he visited his friend Salem, who had had a tumour removed from his brain several years ago and lost a considerable part of his memory. His old friend had recognised him briefly, then a moment later asked him who he was. He had also suggested we visit another friend called Wahid, who owns a workshop making metal parts. He’s the person who appears in the photograph of the hunting expedition with Khalaf and Salem, the one he didn’t recognise at first. He spent longer than I expected with this friend of his. As soon as the man saw him, he said, ‘I didn’t know that when we daubed horseshit on the governor’s car it would become an epic chapter in your book Hamiya and the Bridge!’ Then, after that quickfire opening, his friend the metal man laughed, revealing teeth decayed by sweet tea and tobacco. The man who had come back to his birthplace also laughed heartily. This was the first carefree laugh I had heard from him since he came back. He laughed until he broke into a protracted coughing fit from deep in his lungs and almost fainted. He likes Wahid. He likes him as much as he liked Khalaf, because they both had reserves of goodwill and loyalty that were impervious to change and unlikely to run out, as if these traits were inseparable parts of their temperament. Something organic that they were born with and would die with. Like hands, heads, noses, hearts and arteries. These two childhood friends of his had not opened a book since they left middle school. Is it books that corrupt, that change and alter deep-rooted nature?

  This time he didn’t say to me, ‘Hey, Younis, let’s go.’ He took young Younis with him. He asked the boy, ‘Do you know where they are?’ Without needing to ask his uncle what he meant, the boy said, ‘I know. I visit them every Friday and recite the first chapter of the Quran at their graves.’

  The cemetery they finally reached hadn’t existed before. He didn’t recognise it. He knew the old one, which was now in the middle of their neighbourhood. Perhaps he thought that in his time there were fewer dead. Death really had been less familiar, less ordinary than it is today. It was a rare event that brought the whole neighbourhood together. The night after a death was frightening for children, and especially for him. What troubled him most was abandoning the dead after the burial. That communal severance from someone who was alive a few hours earlier. Complete severance. Disengagement. Leaving the body in a hole covered with soil. The worst part is what awaits the dead after that communal severance. An interrogation in which the two angels leave no stone unturned. Various forms of torture if the dead has been undutiful to his parents or has neglected his prayers or fasting. I think he thought of that, because I thought of it, and as long as I thought of it, he must have thought of it too. I began to feel exactly what he felt as soon as he surveyed the large dusty cemetery with its wire fence. The caretaker came out of a wooden hut at the entrance when he saw them pushing the metal gate with the annoying squeak. Young Yo
unis pointed inside the cemetery. When the caretaker shook his head and waved his hands he realised the man couldn’t speak. It was clear that the caretaker knew the boy. The sign language that the child used and the caretaker’s response certainly looked primitive to the returnee. In the City of Red and Grey, where the person who was me twenty years ago had lived, there had clearly been great progress in sign language. And, of course, even among the deaf there are educated people and illiterates. The caretaker of our cemetery, with his tattered scarf thrown any old how round his neck, might count as a sign-language illiterate. But why would the deaf caretaker of a cemetery, in a place at the mercy of relentless dust, need words beyond those he exchanged with the child? Those few primitive gestures were enough for him to know what the child said, or more precisely what he meant.

  The man who had come home couldn’t understand the system on which the cemetery was based. The graves, some of them made of earth raised a little above ground level and others on which the family of the dead had had concrete platforms built, took up all the space available. They were cheek by jowl, like the houses in the neighbourhood. But the burials were apparently in chronological order, from the oldest to the most recent. He thought about how the cemetery had become a copy of the very neighbourhoods where he ran through the lanes in his childhood and that remained almost as they were in the past, with the difference that curved aluminium dishes had sprouted on the roofs of houses, like desert mushrooms after abundant rainfall.

  At last the boy reached the grave, three steps ahead of his uncle. As soon as his little feet touched the ground in the cemetery, he tried not to step on any of the tightly packed graves, as if picking his way between the arms and legs of a sleeping body he was frightened of awakening from its sacred slumber. The grave was like all the graves around it. Apart from the stone marker, the only thing that distinguished it was an olive tree that received regular doses of water. It was luxuriant. Green, despite the dust that inevitably coated its leaves and branches. In comparison with the olive tree, the other cemetery plants seemed to be yellowing or wilting under a determined sun.