In the Country of Men

by Hisham Matar

  ‘Settle down, girl, settle down,’ she said laughing. ‘First, make us tea.’

  And without hesitation Mama switched to the task. I watched Um Masoud sitting at our kitchen table and wondered if this was the way her husband, Ustath Jafer, behaved towards her. She seemed to relish the silence that had to be assumed while Mama made the tea. Mama’s hands trembled as she arranged the cups.

  ‘Well,’ Um Masoud began. ‘Jafer called and …’

  ‘What did he say? Has he found him?’

  Um Masoud smiled, and when Mama asked, ‘Where is he?’ she held out her hand and shut her eyes. ‘Now I don’t have all the facts. But I am sure you’ll see him very soon.’

  Mama began to cry. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said.

  On her way out Um Masoud said, ‘He might not look well,’ then, looking at me, ‘You know how the little ones can get nightmares.’

  She paced up and down the hallway. She washed her arms to the elbow, her feet, put a towel over her head and spread a prayer rug. Her lips mimed the words, she didn’t look comfortable sitting on her bent knees. When the telephone rang she ran to it.

  ‘Yes, Um Masoud. Here’s his number,’ she said. ‘His name is Moosa Yaseen.’

  Then she called Moosa. ‘Stay by the telephone. They will call you to fetch Faraj. Call me as soon as you hear anything.’

  She smoked incessantly even though she wasn’t ill. When I said I was hungry she made me a sandwich with a cigarette between her lips. She couldn’t be still.

  Around ten Moosa called.

  ‘Any news? Why are you calling, then? What if they call now and find the line busy? Hang up.’

  It was getting late. I could barely keep my eyes open. She put me to bed and when she kissed my forehead she seemed to linger.

  The following morning she came to my room.

  ‘Good news,’ she said, pulling the curtain open. The morning light was brilliant and harsh. She opened the window. Birds were busy chanting and seemed too eager. Her face was overtaken with what seemed to be happiness. ‘Something wonderful has occurred. God has looked into our case.’ She went around my room, picking up and folding clothes. ‘We must slaughter a sheep, no, a calf, and invite Jafer and Um Masoud and their two sons. What decent people they are.’

  The doorbell rang. It didn’t ring in Baba’s special ring. ‘Praise be to God,’ Mama said, then, ‘You stay here. Don’t leave your room.’ She closed the door behind her. I heard Moosa’s voice struggle under a heavy weight. I wondered if he was bringing in another picture of the Guide – perhaps now, I thought, we must hang one in every room. ‘Wait,’ Mama whispered. ‘OK, bring him here.’ I heard them enter Mama’s room and close the door behind them. They remained there for a while. Then I heard one of them leave the room. I went to the kitchen and found Moosa sitting there. He seemed far away, like someone who had just survived an accident. His shirt had dark brown spots on it. When I asked him what they were he said, ‘Just a bit of blood, that’s all.’ Then after a short silence he added, ‘I lost a tooth.’

  I heard Mama go from her room to the bathroom a few times, always closing the bedroom door behind her.

  ‘I will pass by later,’ Moosa said and left.

  I went to Mama’s room and knocked.

  I thought I heard a man’s voice first, then she whispered, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry.’ The door opened wide enough for her to squeeze through it. ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s in there?’

  She took me by the hand to the kitchen. ‘Now listen, Suleiman. I am going to tell you something very important. Baba is home. He’s a little unwell and so needs peace and quiet.’

  ‘Baba is … He’s …’ Whatever words I tried to utter shattered in my mouth. But she understood.

  ‘Yes, yes. But he’s not feeling well. He’s resting. You mustn’t disturb him, you mustn’t disturb him at all,’ she said, walking away, back to their room.

  When I went to use the bathroom I found the mirror above the washbasin covered with a white bed sheet. I lifted one corner and saw nothing different about the mirror.

  After a while Mama came to ask, ‘Where’s Moosa? Where did he say he was going? At a time like this we should stay together.’

  ‘He said he’ll pass by later.

  ‘Did he say when?’

  ‘Later. He just said later.’

  ‘At a time like this we should stay together,’ she repeated.

  ‘Why is the mirror in the bathroom covered?’ I asked.

  ‘He knows I need to talk to him. I hate it when he leaves without saying.’

  ‘Why did you cover the mirror?’

  ‘Did you remove it?’ she said anxiously.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Don’t touch it.’

  I wasn’t allowed to even peek in on Baba.

  ‘In the morning,’ Mama said, standing between me and the entrance to their room.

  The door was left ajar, but everything inside was black. I didn’t hear Baba’s heavy breathing, nor did the room smell of sleep, but it had the silence of someone in it.

  ‘Baba?’ I called.

  ‘In the morning,’ she repeated, pushing me away. ‘And don’t come to him. If he feels up to it he’ll come to see you.’

  At first I didn’t think anything of it, but when I was brushing my teeth I remembered that it was Thursday night, that the next day was Baba’s day off, and it puzzled me why Mama didn’t want me to wake him up when on Friday mornings I always ran to his bed and pounced on him. It made him sit up startled, blowing air.

  How could it be so easy? What was absent in the Stadium? What didn’t intervene to rescue Ustath Rashid? Perhaps it was all the cowboy films with their logic of happy endings that made me think this way, that perhaps it wasn’t God but they who had invented hope and the promise that just at the point when the hero had the rope round his neck, suddenly, and with the Majesty of God, a shot would come from nowhere and break the rope. The hero would kick the man beside him, and the rest of the mob – the cowards – would jump on their saddles and ride off, up and over the hill. Everyone at the cinema would jump and shout and clap and hug one another as if it were a football match. Tears would come down my face, but it wouldn’t matter because many cheeks, grown men too, would shine with tears. I recalled the joy of such moments and how they seemed to burn a hole through my chest. Where were the heroes, the bullets, the scurrying mob, the happy endings that used to send us out of the dark cinema halls rosy-cheeked with joy, slapping each other’s backs, rejoicing that our man had won, that God was with him, that God didn’t leave him alone in his hour of need, that the world worked in the ways we expected it to work and didn’t falter? Something was absent in the Stadium, something that could no longer be relied on. Apart from making me lose trust in the assumption that ‘good things happen to good people,’ the televised execution of Ustath Rashid would leave another, more lasting impression on me, one that has survived well into my manhood, a kind of quiet panic, as if at any moment the rug could be pulled from beneath my feet. After Ustath Rashid’s death I had no illusions that I or Baba or Mama were immune from being burned by the madness that overtook the National Basketball Stadium.

  19

  At first I thought I had woken up very early because the light from my window sparkled like early-morning light and I couldn’t hear anyone in the house. I peed, enjoying the jet of my urine, the crystal froth it created. I went to see what time it was on the big clock in the hallway. Eleven-thirty. I felt a sinking dread at the thought that Mama and Baba had gone out without me. Their door was ajar. Through the gap I saw their forms buried in the sheets. The curtains were open, but the window was shut. I had never known them to sleep this late. I wanted to say, ‘Wake up, sleepyheads,’ but I didn’t. I thought I could detect a strange smell coming from the room. The large mirror on Mama’s dresser was also covered in a white sheet, and her small hand-mirror lay mute on its face. Why this hiding of mirrors, I wondered.

  I wen
t to the kitchen and sat at the breakfast table. It was almost noon. Will they ever wake up? What if they had both died in their sleep? I imagined my life without them and in imagining it I felt a flutter of excitement in my belly. Although I didn’t understand it, nor ever dared or knew how to confess it, this wasn’t unusual; I often fantasized about losing those I loved the most: imagining their funerals, the mourners, me being the remaining solitary orphaned figure in black. I went to see if they were alive.

  I entered their bedroom. I was struck by how terrible the smell in there was. It reminded me of the stink of a dog the boys and I had found one day on our way back from school dead with a swarm of flies buzzing around its bloated belly. But then I saw Mama’s back rise and fall with breath. Baba lay beside her entirely covered in the bed sheet.

  I sat at the breakfast table again. After a few minutes I heard one of them enter the bathroom, then the flush of the toilet and the hiss of the cistern. When I heard the bathroom door open I lifted the chair beside me and let it drop. I hoped it was Baba. But Mama walked in squinting against the light. ‘Good morning,’ she said, opening the fridge, yawning. She pressed a bottle of water against her lips and I watched the liquid fatten her throat with every gulp. She took a big breath and, looking up into the ceiling, said, ‘We survived the madness.’

  ‘Is Baba still asleep?’

  She nodded and kissed me on the head. I didn’t kiss her hand. She filled the teapot with water and clicked the spark several times before the burner caught fire.

  ‘He’s very tired,’ she said, yawning. ‘We both sat up talking most of the night, slept just after it was light.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘On business.’

  I felt my throat tighten with anger.

  ‘When will he wake up?’

  ‘He’ll wake up when he wakes up.’

  I felt a rush of things come tumbling in my head before I heard myself scream, ‘When will he wake up?’ Then all the breath left me, sucked out by a world that had no air in it. I was shut out, my nails clawed at the wooden surface of the table.

  ‘What’s the matter? Calm down. Breathe. Look at me, look at me. That’s it. Keep your eyes here. It’s over. You’re OK now. Breathe, habibi, breathe.’

  She poured a glass of water and insisted I drink it.

  ‘You always lie. I am not a child and you always lie.’ When I looked at her she wasn’t angry. She looked worried and tender. ‘Don’t ever ask me to practise my scales again. They killed Ustath Rashid. Is Baba dead, too?’ She looked astonished by my question. ‘Is that why I am not allowed to see him? Has he begun to rot, is that why your room stinks?’

  ‘No. No.’ Then she sighed and said, ‘Wait here, I’ll be back.’

  After a short time I heard her call, ‘Slooma, come, your father wants you.’

  I went to her and stood at the entrance. I was immediately unsettled because the curtains were now drawn across and it was as dark as night in there. The stink of death was unbearable.

  ‘Come in,’ she said.

  Entering the room felt like entering the sea. The only light came in from behind me and fell on the floor.

  ‘Close the door behind you,’ she said.

  The darkness thickened. The mighty French velvet curtains kept the daylight out. ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘We are here,’ she said.

  Baba, if he was there, if he was alive, was as quiet as stone.

  ‘Where’s Baba?’ I wanted to switch on the light.

  ‘I am here,’ he said. His voice startled me. It was thick, deep and distorted by teeth and a blocked nose. But the scariest thing was that I could recognize him in it. It was Baba, Baba after he was no longer Baba, maybe even, I thought from within my fear and confusion, Baba after he ceased to be alive.

  ‘Why can’t I see him?’ I asked, fear urging me to switch on the light or pull open the thick curtains.

  ‘You can, habibi,’ he said, ‘But not now. Maybe tomorrow,’ a wire of grief tearing at his voice.

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Because Baba has got a terrible headache and light bothers him,’ Mama said quickly. I knew she was lying.

  ‘Where did you go, Baba?’

  ‘Don’t pester your father with endless questions,’ Mama said. ‘I told you he has a headache.’

  After a few silent seconds in the dark, Mama’s cool, open palms fell on my eyes and lips. She turned me around and pushed me out.

  She took me to the kitchen and said, ‘See? Your father is fine.’ She placed a hand on my cheek, ‘Go now play in the garden, habibi,’ and smiled as if I had done something good, as if I had just finished playing for her guests one of her favourite songs on the piano, something by Abd al-Wahab or Fareed al-Atrash.

  The noon sun was vertical. As soon as it fell on my head I felt its pressure. Doubt, that the man in Baba’s bed was Baba, also pressed on me, and I felt unable to escape it.

  ‘But of course he’s Baba.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because he’s in there and your mother says so.’

  ‘But you know how she lies.’

  ‘Don’t say that. She keeps truths and she does it only for your own good.’

  I walked under the trees in the shade, around the house. When I reached their bedroom window I saw the curtains open. ‘But I thought the light bothered him,’ I heard myself say. I couldn’t see in because of the reflection on the glass. I came closer, cupped my hands around my eyes and saw a naked man sitting on the bed, his back criss-crossed in dark glistening lines, some oozing blood. Suddenly he turned towards me. His horrible face threw me back. I fell beneath the glue tree. His eyes were closed, full of air or water or blood, like split rotten tomatoes, and his lower lip was as fat and purple as a baby aubergine. I heard him shout in his horrible, bubbling voice, ‘Najwa, Najwa, draw the curtains.’ Mama appeared at the window. She watched me for a moment – my heart was pounding, I was still on the ground, gasping for breath – then with one stroke she pulled the curtains shut.

  ‘You see?’ I whispered to myself. ‘He’s not Baba.’ I ran into the house. I was standing in front of their bedroom door. I knocked. ‘Who’s in there?’ I screamed, my voice full of fear. They didn’t answer. ‘If you don’t answer I swear I’ll open the door,’ I said and pushed the door open.

  I ran to the curtains and pulled them open. The naked monster was under the covers again, pretending to be asleep, pretending to be Baba. And Mama was sitting on the bed beside it, looking at me. She seemed almost frightened. I wanted to tell her, ‘Don’t worry, everything will be all right.’ I opened the window instead. Somehow I felt we, Mama and I, would be safer this way. The new air seemed to wash the room.

  ‘Baba doesn’t want you to see him like this,’ Mama said.

  Suddenly the figure under the sheets sat up on the edge of the bed, giving me its back, wrapping its body in the white bed sheet that was stained with thin lines of blood. Slowly I began to recognize him: his wavy black hair, the modest hills of his shoulders, the neck I massaged many times and many more times buried my face in to kiss and make the ticklish sound of a fart that always made him laugh. Tears choked me.

  ‘Baba?’ I tried to say.

  He twitched. ‘Take him away. Please.’

  ‘It’s no good now. He saw you.’

  ‘Baba?’

  ‘Yes,’ he snapped, as if the effort to speak was punishing him. ‘Take him away, he’ll get nightmares.’

  ‘I almost never get nightmares.’

  After a few seconds, during which I thought I must leave or else the world wouldn’t continue, Baba spoke. ‘My eyes aren’t working properly. I am … ill.’ Then he shook his head and waved his hand behind his back. I thought of running to kiss it a thousand and one times. ‘Najwa,’ he said, the gesture of his hand finally making sense, ‘please, take him away.’

  20

 
; Later that day Moosa arrived. Where has he been, Mama asked, and why didn’t he say something before leaving? He thought she and Baba needed to be alone after such a traumatic experience, he explained.

  ‘You told Suleiman you’d be passing by later, don’t say you’ll be passing by later when you have no intention of doing so. The last thing I need now is to worry about you.’

  ‘How are you, Champ?’ Moosa asked me, his weak smile full of effort.

  ‘There’s a monster in our house,’ I thought of telling him. But he seemed elsewhere. His eyes darted around the room, and then he walked off towards the bathroom. Mama and I followed him. He bent over the basin and began to wash his hands. ‘How’s Bu Suleiman?’

  ‘Thankfully all of his wounds are on the surface,’ Mama said. ‘They broke one rib, but nothing else. He just looks …’ She shook her head and sighed deeply. I, for some reason, did the same. I remembered how Siham had copied her old father’s gesture. Moosa noticed the bed sheet covering the mirror above the basin. ‘He made me cover the mirrors. He doesn’t want to see himself. He doesn’t want Slooma to see him either,’ she said, running her fingers through my hair as if she and I had discussed all of this before, shared all the details and retold them to one another so many times neither of us could truly say who had first told the story to the other.

  Moosa was no longer wearing the bloodstained shirt he had on the day before, but he still seemed keen on cleaning himself, as if he had just returned from a long drive through the desert. He turned down his shirt collar, baring his thick long neck. He soaped his face and beard, his ears and neck, then splashed cold water on them. Mama and I took a step back to avoid getting wet. He dried himself vigorously, then pulled out a comb from his back pocket, puffed out his cheeks and combed his beard. When he had finished he looked at us for a moment, then walked out. He knocked twice on Baba’s door. ‘Bu Suleiman?’ he called and opened the door just wide enough to enter then shut it behind him. Mama and I stood outside. We heard everything Moosa said, he was speaking loudly as if Baba were deaf.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked. Mama placed her ear against the door. ‘Thank God for your safety. You do look much better than yesterday. You’ll be back to normal in no time.’ Then Baba must have asked him a question. ‘Don’t worry. They are all well. Everyone understands, no one blames you, you had to do what you had to do.’ Then, after a pause, Moosa asked, ‘Shall I bring you a glass of water?’ and the door opened. Mama was startled. Moosa looked at her for a moment, then squeezed through the door and shut it behind him. We followed him into the kitchen. He filled a glass of water and gulped it down. ‘Does he know about Rashid?’