Shumaisi

by al-Hamad, Turki; Starkey, Paul;

  Abu Salih returned smiling, carrying the passport and ticket with a boarding card. He sat down beside Hisham, saying in a whisper:

  ‘Everything is OK … Takeoff is in half an hour. Don’t be agitated, just act calmly and normally. Come on … have a safe journey, my son, and send us something in the post as soon as you arrive …’ As he said that, he got up and laughed. Hisham wished desperately that his father and mother could be with him, but he also knew that it was in his interest for them not to be here. He was sure that they were, at that moment, sitting together in the TV room and that their hearts and thoughts were with him. He got up reluctantly, aware that he was embarking on an adventure whose outcome was unknowable. He kissed Abu Salih affectionately on the forehead, and they embraced. Then he made his way to the departure lounge, clutching the passport, ticket and boarding card in his fist. His heart beat faster and louder the closer he got to the small door behind which sat a passport official. When he reached it, he was shaking visibly, and his face and brow were completely drenched in sweat. The passport official sat at a small desk, with another stern-faced gentleman standing not far from him. He wore civilian clothes, which included a red headdress despite the incredible heat.

  Hisham gave the officer his passport with an uncontrollably shaking hand. The officer noticed at once.

  ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong,’ he said, leafing through the passport and looking at him.

  ‘No, nothing … just the after-effects of flu,’ he said in a dry voice, trying to smile. ‘I hope you don’t get the flu this summer!’ The officer smiled.

  ‘Don’t come to any harm,’ he said, and stamped the passport, which he handed back to Hisham. ‘Have a safe journey,’ he added mechanically, giving him a look that Hisham thought a little odd. The sound of the stamp on the passport triggered huge relief in Hisham, and he threw himself into the first seat he found, waiting to board the plane. He dried his face and wiped his glasses, perhaps for the thousandth time, then looked around. A small number of passengers had spaced themselves out in the seats scattered around the small hall, with several men in red headdresses standing in the corners or sitting between the passengers flicking through newspapers. After what seemed like an age, the plane’s departure was announced. The passengers lined up in front of the departure gate. Hisham handed his boarding card to the airline official, who tore off the bottom piece and handed it back to him, then gave his passport to an officer standing beside him near the gate, who began to flick through it.

  ‘Please wait a moment,’ he said, and pointed to a seat just beside him. Then he handed the passport to one of the men in red headdresses standing behind him.

  Hisham fell into the seat, hardly conscious of himself or of anything going on around him. He was seized by a violent headache, and was so afraid it was as if his fear had completely disappeared. His whole body had turned into a thumping heart. He tried to make himself believe this was just a routine operation that would soon be over and had no connection with his fears, but he knew the game was up when, as soon as he sat down, two men with red headdresses took up positions on either side of him while a third sat down on a seat opposite. The other passengers glanced pitifully at him, impatient to embark. He thought of trying to run for it. But how? And where to? It was all over, he just had to surrender. Was there anything else he could do?

  After the last of the few passengers had left, the gate was closed. The roar of the plane outside deafened Hisham, and pained the inside of his chest. The hall was now empty, except for a few officers and men in red headdresses. As soon as the gate closed, one of the men sitting beside him shook Hisham.

  ‘Come on,’ he said sharply. Another grabbed his arm while two more stood behind him, then they all moved out of the small departure lounge. They led him to a secluded room near the automatic door to departures, and Hisham noticed Abu Salih sitting where they had said goodbye. He was smoking voraciously, as was clear from the quantity of smoke pouring from his mouth. Abu Salih noticed Hisham too. He threw the cigarette to the floor, jumped up, eyes starting from his head, and stood rooted to the spot until Hisham had disappeared inside the room. Hisham longed to run towards him for help, but asking for help or running away was useless with these people, and in any case Abu Salih could not help him. In fact, he might harm him if he did anything that revealed their relationship.

  They led him into a small room containing a small desk, behind which sat a smart gentleman in an impeccable white uniform. A smell of strong perfume wafted from him. Beside the desk were two large sofas, and between them a shining glass table. On one of the sofas sat another man, looking just like the man at the desk. The two were smoking and laughing when Hisham entered. The man at the desk looked at him in an offhand way, then went on laughing and smoking, blowing the smoke in Hisham’s direction. They sat him on the empty sofa and the two men who had brought him in sat either side of him, while a third sat on an armchair opposite. The fourth stayed standing by the door. Hisham smiled sardonically to himself despite his terror. Was it so dangerous? The man behind the desk dialled a number on the telephone and spoke rapidly to someone, with a few cryptic words, looking around at the people present as he did so. Then he replaced the receiver.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he said, and went back to talking to his colleague about the weather and the dreadful humidity. Hisham felt as if he was taking part in some horror movie. All his emotions had become mixed up, as though he inhabited a region outside time and space, a region with no dimensions. He took out a packet of cigarettes, lit one and drew heavily on it, before the man behind the desk sharply rebuked him.

  ‘Where do you think you are?’ he asked, glaring at him. ‘At home? In a café? Smoking is forbidden.’ Hisham stubbed out the cigarette with trembling hands. His heart was racing. The man behind the desk immediately took a packet of Kents from in front of him, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke in Hisham’s direction, smiling happily.

  After about half an hour, the door of the room opened, and two men appeared, both wearing red headdresses. They greeted the man behind the desk and handed him a piece of paper, which he signed and returned to them. Then he gestured to Hisham, telling him to get up. They grabbed him by the wrists and hustled him outside to a grey Land Rover waiting immediately outside the door. Beside the driver sat another man. They pushed Hisham into the back seat and got in beside him, then the Land Rover sped off. No one said a word. Before they left the terminal building, Hisham looked back and thought he saw Abu Salih stamping out a cigarette just by the door.

  49

  The sun had turned red and was on the point of setting when the Land Rover left the airport. It took the road towards Khubar, which they reached after less than a quarter of an hour. The car raced along al-Baladiyya Street, then headed straight for the shore, where it pulled up finally at a four-storey building surrounded by soldiers. The roof was a forest of aerials.

  Hisham walked with his companions along a narrow corridor inside the building. He caught a strong smell of the sea. At the end of the corridor they came to a metal desk, behind which sat a well-built officer wearing three stripes and holding an enormous ledger. The two men saluted the officer and handed him a piece of paper, together with Hisham’s papers.

  ‘We caught him trying to escape,’ said one. The officer took the passport and flicked through it.

  ‘Hisham Ibrahim Muhammad,’ he said, as if talking to himself. Then he looked at the two men who had brought Hisham and said, ‘Okay, your job is done, you can go.’ He gave them back their now-signed piece of paper, and they saluted him again and left.

  ‘Corporal Musad!’ shouted the officer. He opened the ledger in front of him, scribbled something in it, then closed it and threw Hisham’s papers in one of his drawers, while another soldier, wearing two stripes, arrived, stamped his feet on the ground and saluted. The officer behind the desk studied the corporal.

  ‘Take the prisoner to the third floor,’ he said. The corporal stamped his foot on the floor
once more, then dragged Hisham hard by the wrist.

  ‘Move it, prisoner!’ he said. The word ‘prisoner’ grated on Hisham’s ears. He was used to hearing it and reading it, but he never imagined it would ever be applied to him. Although he knew that not every prisoner is guilty, using the term made him feel that he was, and this caused him considerable distress. He had become guilty.

  Hisham and Corporal Musad made their way along a corridor that branched off from the first corridor, until they reached a crumbling staircase. On the third floor, Corporal Musad put him into a room with a wide door entirely made of bars. A young soldier stood beside it. Once the door was closed, the corporal said to him, ‘If you need anything, just call the guard.’ Then he left, giving him a look that seemed to Hisham sad. If he had been in a different situation, the corporal and the soldier on guard duty would perhaps have made him laugh. They were feebly built – short and extremely thin – and wore baggy military uniforms that gave them the air of smugglers.

  The room was very large and painted white – or what had once been white. Humidity had leached away the colour, leaving great chunks of the wall just bare cement. One tiny barred window looked out over the sea, and there were three straw beds. The floor was bare but for a scattering of broken tiles. Cockroaches poked their heads out of the cracks. It was clear that the whole building had been designed as residential flats, but was now converted into a prison. Hisham stepped towards the window. He gazed out at the still waters of the Gulf, watching the last remains of the reddish twilight struggle against the darkness. He was no longer quite as terrified as he had been, though he was certainly still apprehensive – his greatest fears had now been realised.

  Nausea overcame him, and with it a biting cold that numbed his spirit and his body. He closed his eyes and tried deeply inhaling the humid atmosphere of the sea, but the air of the Gulf does not invigorate … it just made him more nauseous, and now he wanted to vomit. There was no toilet or basin in the room and he could not bring himself to ask. He thrust his face against the bars on the window, giving his stomach and his soul the freedom to vomit, but he could only bring up a little yellow, bitter-tasting liquid, despite the fact that he retched so hard he almost heaved his stomach from his belly. He put his finger into his throat, but nothing came out. He carried on trying until his stomach almost came up in his hand. It was then he remembered that he hadn’t eaten anything since morning. He hadn’t had any appetite, and he had no desire for food now, although he felt as if the walls of his stomach had met and threatened to consume each other.

  Hisham left the window and crossed the room to call the guard. He asked for the bathroom. The guard opened the door, led him to the bathroom, then stood at the door, waiting. A foul stench filled the air; a stench of rotting fish, humidity and excrement. Hisham stopped his nose and breathed through his mouth, putting his head under the tap and letting the water run for a long time. Then he filled his stomach with water and went back. The nausea had eased a little, so he lit a cigarette, which he inhaled deeply. He felt a slight headache, which soon cleared. He looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock in the evening. He smiled … About this time, Noura would bring them their milk, and at about this time he would sit with his parents in front of the television drinking tea. His throat hurt, so he stamped the cigarette out on the floor, lay down on one of the beds and read the faint graffiti on the walls: Isam … 10/3/1970 … Say, nothing will befall us unless it be the will of God … Our steps are preordained, and if steps are fated for a man, he must walk them … A man’s heartbeat tells him that life is but minutes and seconds … If a people wants life one day, fate must respond … Alas, the darkness of prison has set in … Every night has its dawn … Stand firm by your view in life and struggle. Life is faith and struggle … He looked around at the walls until he dozed off for a bit, but he soon woke again, aching all over, with a pain in his stomach. Sweat ran from every pore in his skin, his body shook violently and he was as cold as ice despite a temperature of almost forty degrees. He got up and went over to the window again. Darkness covered everything, except for a few lights glistening in the distance. Perhaps they were the lights of Bahrain! He sighed deeply, feeling nothing but sorrow and regret. He could hear the voices of children playing on the beach below him, and a child nearby singing in a gentle voice: O dove that sings so sweetly, what’s wrong with you that you cry for my eye … my family blames me and does not know that the fire is burning the foot that steps on it. He wanted to vomit again, but nothing came up except water and yellow fluid. He went back to bed, still shaking, and tried to sleep, but his eyes burned him like pieces of hot charcoal while the cold was almost killing him. He got up and called the guard, who came grumbling.

  ‘Yes … What is it this time?’ he asked. Hisham explained that he was bitterly cold and asked for a glass of water, two aspirin and a blanket. The guard laughed.

  ‘What is this?!’ he asked sarcastically. ‘You think you’re in your mother’s arms?’ Hisham felt bitterly insulted, but he implored the guard. The guard snorted.

  ‘All you bring us is your heartache,’ he said. Then he looked at the floor and shouted:

  ‘Private Mahbub!’

  ‘What is it, Private Ali?’ came a voice.

  ‘A glass of water, some aspirin and a blanket for his mother’s darling here …’ Hisham swallowed the insult despite himself. He went back to bed and dozed a little more, until he heard the voice of the guard:

  ‘Hey, prisoner! … Hey, rubbish!’ Hisham opened his eyes, dragged himself over to the door and took the water and aspirin, while the guard chucked the blanket on the floor. He swallowed the aspirin, drank the water and picked up the blanket, suddenly feeling as if he wanted to break down and weep, but he pulled himself together and went back to bed. The blanket was old and tattered, and stank of stale urine, but he wrapped himself in it anyway and after a few minutes got used to the smell. He felt a little warmer, and closed his eyes. But he soon started up again when the guard rapped on the iron bars of the door and shouted:

  ‘Supper … supper, prisoner!’

  ‘I don’t want it … I don’t want it,’ he replied shakily, hardly conscious of his surroundings. He covered his head with the blanket and dozed off again, to sink into a fitful sleep of phantoms and hallucinations.

  50

  He was drenched in sweat when he woke the following day to the sound of the muezzin calling the dawn prayers. His own smell had mingled with that of the blanket; together they smelled like an abandoned toilet. He got out of bed, feeling extremely weak, with a needle-like pain in his bones and joints. He must really have caught flu, as he had told the officer at the airport. His shirt was a soaking wet rag and his underwear smelled foul, as if it had been steeped in a barrel of excrement. He took a long time adjusting to his surroundings, then got up and moved wearily over to the door. There was a new guard there, older than the previous one, but with the same loose clothes. He was fighting off sleep. Hisham asked permission to go to the bathroom, promising himself a cold shower, but once there he could see no shower. He took a bowl from beside the lavatory and filled it with water which he poured over his body, until he felt a little better. Then he dried his body with his vest and went back to his room.

  The nightmares returned. He read the walls again, and leaned against the window to gaze over the waters of the Gulf, listening with pleasure to the sound of car horns coming from the distance. He went on switching from the grafitti on the walls to the window over the sea, until he heard the guard’s voice calling him for breakfast.

  Breakfast came in a grease-lined paper bag, the contents of which Hisham spread out onto the blanket on the ground … a loaf of bread, a plastic bag containing some warm beans, a boiled egg and some pickles. He asked the guard for a plate and a glass of tea. The guard grunted, called another soldier, then brought a plastic plate and a glass of lukewarm tea, which he gave to Hisham.

  ‘God strengthen the government,’ he said, looking Hisham st
raight in the eye. ‘Amen,’ replied Hisham casually, then went back to his breakfast. He didn’t feel hungry but he knew he had to eat – he’d eaten nothing since yesterday. He forced down the boiled egg and some of the beans, then lit a cigarette, which he smoked with the glass of tea. His nausea had completely disappeared, but he remained gripped by an anxiety he could not overcome. He finished the tea and asked for another glass, but the guard refused in a harsh voice.

  ‘It’s forbidden, prisoner,’ he said. ‘Do you think you’re at home? God bless the government that feeds you!’ Hisham went back to his bed, but soon felt the familiar nausea return. He got up, lit another cigarette and moved back to the window, looking at the horizon and puffing his smoke into the distance, envying it as it blew away into the sky. Everything was perfectly still, both time and space – the very waters of the Gulf seemed to have died … everything had conspired to assassinate time.

  51

  The sun blazed in the middle of the sky. The heat was unbearable, the humidity dreadful, and the stench intolerable. In the distance, a muezzin called the faithful to prayer in a fine and captivating voice. Other muezzins followed, all mingling with each other until the city seethed with so many voices calling the faithful to prayer, the sound became a scream. In the middle of all this he heard a voice nearby singing in a sad, soft tone. It was the same voice he had heard yesterday. Could he be imagining it? Was the voice coming from within or from outside? Hisham couldn’t tell, but it hardly bothered him. The important thing was to listen and enjoy its melancholy, penetrating melody.

  He took to pacing about the room for a time, then lying down on the bed, then getting up and standing at the window, smoking joylessly and enviously watching the smoke evaporate into the air. His joints ached and his bones felt as if they had been crushed. His nausea came and went. He was smoking the last cigarette in his packet when he was startled to hear the voice of the guard call out his full name – Hisham Ibrahim Muhammad al-Abir. He went over to the door, where the guard asked him: