Days of Ignorance

by Laila Aljohani

  He’s laid her. The animal’s laid her! He’s laid her.

  And he? How had he failed to notice? He’d been busy laying other women.

  ‘What goes around comes around, Hashem. You’ve got a sister, and some day you’ll be sorry.’

  That was what Sahar had said one evening before getting out of his car for the last time some years earlier. He’d heard a tearful tremor in her voice, but he hadn’t done anything. Everything she’d done, she’d done of her own free will. He hadn’t forced her to do anything. He hadn’t promised her anything. He’d thought he was in love with her, but as soon as the blood flowed between her thighs, everything was over. The thrill of getting to know her was gone. The longing to touch her was gone. Even the pleasure of looking at her pretty face was gone. What he’d been looking for or expecting wasn’t there anymore. He kept thinking to himself: She’s easy, easy. She opened her door too quickly. He hadn’t been able to tell her that he’d been ridden with misgivings, just the way he’d ridden her, because she hadn’t resisted long enough, because she’d opened the door to her house, saying, ‘Come on in. Nobody’s home.’

  When, the first time, he’d tried to kiss her, she hadn’t gotten angry. When, the second time, he’d reached out to touch her, she’d smiled. And by their third meeting, she was moaning under him with a strange expression on her face that almost made her ugly. But he hadn’t been concerned about that, since it hadn’t been important for her to be pretty at that moment.

  His relationship with her hadn’t lasted long. Just a few weeks. Then it had all been over. He’d met her for the last time in response to her insistent pleading. She looked as though she’d just recovered from some protracted illness. Her eyes were sunken, her face was ashen, and she wasn’t pretty anymore. But he hadn’t wanted to think about what or who had changed. For a long time she didn’t say a word. But it didn’t occur to him to break her silence with a passing question about her, or about anything else for that matter. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, waiting for her to say something, anything. But she didn’t say a word. She just cried. Then she blurted out those words of hers: ‘What goes around comes around,’ and hurriedly got out of the car. He never heard about her again. He never saw her. He didn’t even try to ask about her. And why would he have tried? She wasn’t the way she’d been before. She wasn’t the rowdy girl he’d met one evening on Quba’ al-Nazil Street after just two telephone conversations.

  She’d said, ‘I’ll wait for you on the sidewalk on the right side of the street, across from the Ahli Bank. I’ll be carrying a small white purse.’

  When she settled onto the seat next to him, he’d begun to tremble. It was his first time. He’d been afraid she would notice how flustered he was. He squeezed the steering wheel as hard as he could. In the meantime, he took another look at the white purse without saying a word, waiting for her to say something.

  ‘If you aren’t going to say hello for my sake, say it for God’s sake at least, you . . .!’

  He breathed a sigh of relief. The purse was white, and this was her voice. Her voice. That’s right, hers. Even so, his stomach started doing flip flops. By this time they’d left Quba’ al-Nazil Street and were headed up the Safiya Bridge, and he was afraid his insides would give out on him.

  God damn streets that don’t have any public bathrooms!

  When the car headed down the bridge in the direction of al-’Awali, he pulled over, making some excuse he couldn’t remember anymore. Then he ran off in search of somewhere he could do what he needed to do. No sooner had he returned than half his fears had been allayed. She was still waiting for him. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. She was still breathing calmly and deeply. He thought to himself: Maybe she’s from the secret police. But he resisted the silly idea. Maybe she’d noticed how flustered he was. Then she uncovered her face, turned to him calmly and said, ‘Damn you. So all you think of when you’re with me is going to the bathroom?’

  He laughed. That was just what he’d needed to calm him down: laughter. He pulled over again, still laughing. Then he said, ‘Would you believe I thought you were with the secret police?’

  She started with fright. ‘My God, what a horrible thing to think! Lord, keep them in their places! What on earth gave you an idea like that?’

  He laughed again. Then they took off. He drove her all over the city that day. He sped like crazy with her sitting beside him, talking her head off and laughing as though she’d known him for years. He took her to Sultana Street, where they drove up and down. She told him how much she hated the traffic light in front of Amer’s Furniture Store.

  ‘You nearly have a heart attack waiting for it to turn green,’ she quipped.

  Then they took off for Al Jamiat Road, where they drove slowly along the wall of the King Abdulaziz University. Its paint was peeling off, and its color had faded from having the sun beat down on it for so long. She told him her dream was to finish high school as fast as she could so that she could go to the university. There was a sweet tone in her voice. He looked at her thoughtfully, and was startled to see how pretty she looked when she spoke with such joyful abandon. Her eyebrows were fine and arched. Her eyes were small, but they were captivating when she turned suddenly or looked down, showing her thick eyelashes. She didn’t have a beautiful nose, but it seemed to fit her face. As for her lips, they were tantalizingly full. Above them there was a slight moustache, and he remembered being bothered that day by her lack of concern to get rid of it. As he sat there looking at her, he didn’t know how he felt about her.

  Had he loved her? Love wasn’t something he’d been looking for at the time. And he wasn’t looking for it now, either. He’d often wondered whether he would ever love a woman. Besides, what was love? Why was it that when he asked this question, he found no answer? And why did it bother him – sometimes, at least – not to find an answer? Of all the women who’d passed through his life, which of them had he loved, if even just a bit? All the women he’d known – the tall ones and the short ones, the thin ones and the fat ones, the shy ones and the forward ones, the ones looking for love and the ones just looking for a good time – all of them had come and gone without pain, regret, or . . . hope. He’d forgotten a lot of them. They’d fallen through the cracks in his memory. So why hadn’t he forgotten Sahar? Maybe it was because a man doesn’t forget his first time, or his first woman. He hadn’t forgotten her. But afterwards he’d decided to be careful, and only to go after the ones who were just looking for a good time, especially married women, since none of them demanded any love and devotion. With them he could be sure there wouldn’t be any headaches. They knew what they wanted, and what he wanted. So as soon as boredom set in, the party would break up and it would be, ‘So long, have a nice life.’

  Al Hizam Street

  Ayman didn’t tell him what they’d do with the animal once they’d hunted him down. He said to him, ‘First we get hold of him. Then we’ll see what we’re going to do.’

  He couldn’t tell him everything. He told him the animal was a relative of one of the girls at the care home where his sister worked, and that he’d harassed her on the job. That was all he had needed to say to make Ayman’s blood boil.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ayman said. ‘We’ll teach him a lesson.’

  Ayman volunteered to make enquiries about the animal so that they could find out the details of his daily life. Once Hashem had shown him where he lived, it wasn’t difficult to ask about him and keep an eye on him. There was nothing exciting about his daily routine – no late nights out, and no friends to speak of apart from two or three who came to see him from time to time.

  And she was like him. The details of her life were few. Sometimes he wondered what she liked besides books. Was reading the only thing she enjoyed? She hardly took any interest in making herself up, so how could she possibly lure a man? What had attracted him to her? And what would they talk about – she and the animal – if all she did was read? He compared her ofte
n to the women he’d known, and wondered if there was any man who would pay any attention to her. Based on what he knew about women and the women he’d known, she wasn’t a woman. His sister wasn’t like a single one of them. She’d tried to get closer to him, but her attempts had failed, perhaps because he and she were like parallel lines that can never meet. He couldn’t understand how she looked at life. He found no enjoyment in the books she would hand him with a smile, saying, ‘Try to read one of them, at least. I picked out one I thought you’d like.’

  But nothing she chose ever pleased him. He’d read a few lines out of two or three of them, then set them aside. He had no time or patience for cold, lifeless words. His time belonged to him, not to books. His time belonged to the things he liked to do, not to pages filled with words whose authors would die before anybody had taken any notice of them. And she would die, too – not now, but later.

  She’ll die a slow death. Heh, heh, heh. Sweet idea: a slow death. Sweet and bitter. The remnants of schoolwork.

  Y-e-a-h.

  How many years had it been since he’d stopped going to school? Three years. God! Three years had passed since he’d graduated by sheer luck, but he hadn’t found a college that would admit him. It had seemed bad at first, but it didn’t seem that way anymore. He’d gotten used to it. Everything’s livable once you get used to it. Besides, what would he have done with a degree? Put it in a plastic cover and stick it in a drawer in his room like thousands of others who’d graduated years ago and who were still unemployed?

  When Hashem had been unemployed for nearly two years, his mother had pressed his father to find him a job – any job – to occupy his time until something came along for him. So his father rented one of the numerous little kiosks located along the northern wall of Al Baqi’ Cemetery and filled it with souvenirs, prayer beads and prayer rugs. When his father told him about the kiosk, he was gripped with melancholy. He felt as though he’d been buried under a mountain of ice. He couldn’t say no. At the same time, he went on thinking all night about what he would do in a kiosk selling souvenirs to pilgrims along a cemetery wall. By the end of the week the depression had made him ill. One night he came home late and headed to where his mother sat waiting for him. He buried his face in her lap and said, ‘I’m not going back to the kiosk. I’m going to die.’

  The next day his father stood at the door to his room. Without a trace of reproach in his voice, he said, ‘Regret doesn’t do any good, son. Your mother didn’t do you a favor by being so solicitous toward you. And I didn’t do you a favor by letting her raise you however she pleased. But I want to give you another chance so that I won’t feel I’ve wronged you.’

  He didn’t specify what kind of chance it was he wanted to give him. But two weeks later he found out. One evening his father took him to a large store that sold perfumes and women’s accessories in one of Medina’s markets. After explaining to him that he’d be working as a salesman, he left him there. It wasn’t bad at all. By the time the first half hour had passed, he knew he wouldn’t be bored. How could he be bored in a place that was full of women? In the kiosk also he would have been encountering women of all sorts. Once, when he’d complained to a friend of how miserable he was in the kiosk, the friend had told him, ‘Listen, boy. To get a peek at all those women is the chance of a lifetime. And you’re telling me you’re depressed?! God had you in a little paradise! You should have waited till the pilgrimage season. That’s when things really get good. You would have been making your living off all sorts of women: Algerians, Moroccans, Syrians . . .’

  But he hadn’t been able to bear it. He and death didn’t get along. How could he stand to have death right on the other side of the wall? How could he stand to see funeral processions coming from the Jibril Gate toward Al Baqi’, or to hear people praying over the dead two or three times a day? In the accessory shop, by contrast, death never passed by. Eyes passed by. Lips passed by. Hands passed by. Bodies passed by. But death didn’t pass by.

  What had brought death along? Let it stay away. That’s right. Let death go on lurking on one of Medina’s back streets waiting for the animal. But did he want the animal to die? Did he really want him to die? He didn’t know. When he thought about it, something burned inside him, and he was sure that the minute he saw him, he would murder him. That’s right. Death was the gentlest of all the ideas that came to his mind. He thought of digging his teeth into his flesh, scratching up his face, dragging him through the streets. He’d ruminated on it for nights on end. And every time he thought about it, the scene in his mind got more brutal, but his rage didn’t subside. He didn’t want to hurt him just once, but over and over. He wished he could have a chance to torture him at length. That’s right. He wanted to torture him for as long as he’d been consumed by this thing that blazed deep inside him but that he couldn’t name. If he had a chance, he’d cauterize him with a hot branding iron. He’d pour boiling water on him. He’d kick him between the thighs. That’s right. He’d kick him over and over again till the animal knew where his limits were. He heaved a slow sigh. At least he knew he’d kick what was between his thighs. He had a chance to do it, and nobody was going to stop him. Who would stop him? Lots of people would think the same way if they knew what he knew. If they knew about it, all his friends would support him. They’d pounce with him on the animal and beat him to death.

  Quba’ al-Nazil Street

  He noticed that silence had been dogging him ever since he’d turned off the radio so that the attendant at the gas station on Airport Road could fill his tank. Silence dogged him as he left the station. It dogged him as he drove down the city streets: King Faysal Street, Airport Road, Hizam Street, King Abdulaziz Street. And now he was heading down Quba’ al-Nazil Street in silence, which was one of many things he didn’t like in this life. He didn’t like silence. He didn’t like silence to be alone with him, just as he’d never liked death to be nearby, and never would. When he went to sleep he didn’t turn off the TV in his room. Instead he would turn it down, leaving it on just high enough to make him feel that somebody else was around and that the universe wasn’t yet empty. Then he’d go to sleep. In the beginning his mother had come into his room late at night to turn the TV off so that it wouldn’t bother him. However, she stopped when she saw his reaction, which indicated that he actually wanted it on. She realized that this was another of her son’s peculiar habits, and that she would have to reconcile herself to it the way she’d reconciled herself to his other habits – like eating rice with bread, only taking a bath in the morning, not wanting anyone to talk to him after he woke up until all his senses were functioning one hundred percent, and not wanting to be touched by anybody he didn’t know. She’d been worn out by this last idiosyncrasy of his when he was a little boy, and he had embarrassed her on many an occasion when other people were around. If anybody kissed him, he would grab his clothes, or his mother’s clothes, and irritably wipe off the place where the kiss had been planted.

  It might have felt strange to be surrounded so entirely by silence, but the loudness of the thoughts that filled his head had kept him from noticing it. Now, though, he did notice it. He noticed a silence that was interrupted by nothing but the roar of his car engine and the other cars passing by. He extended his index finger and turned on the radio, and the car was filled with the upbeat music that always came on before the MBC FM news broadcast. News?!

  What was on the news other than slaughter and portents of war? For the first time he noticed that he was tense, and that what felt like a heavy stone lay on his chest. He wished everything could be over quickly. But the things a person doesn’t like are never over quickly. If he’d been spending this time with one of his lady friends, it would have passed like a dream. But he wasn’t dreaming. He was awake, furious, and silent, listening to the news:

  . . . According to interested parties, the Iraqi opposition conference being held in London for the past two days, which has thus far been unable to overcome differences between the var
ious factions, has decided to extend its meetings today specifically in order to discuss the formation of committees that will be assigned the task of managing the country after the potential fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime.

  Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has stated that UN experts are making progress in Iraq, and has called on Baghdad to continue cooperating in order to avoid the outbreak of war.

  A Japanese warship fitted out with an advanced Aegis missile-detection system is headed for the Indian Ocean today in a controversial move which, according to some analysts, points to support for any potential US-led attack on Iraq.

  He thought of turning the radio off, but then thought better of it. Before long the news broadcast would be over and songs would come on. He wanted to hear some singing so that he could calm down, if even just a little, before finishing the job, then go home. If he had to wait, he would wait. However, he knew that once it was done, he would go home. He wasn’t going to spend the night out. No. He wasn’t going to wash his hands anywhere but in his own house. He was going to act according to the dictates of the situation. Then he would think about what he was going to do with her. After all, she was his sister, and he wasn’t going to beat her. Even if he thought of doing that, his father wouldn’t allow it, and he might beat him in punishment for it. He wouldn’t beat her. But he knew how to give her a taste of something more painful than a beating. First he had to finish him off, and then he would have time to deal with her.

  God damn her! Wasn’t she bothered by his smell? Everybody of his race gave off a pungent, obnoxious odor. Hadn’t she noticed it? You could smell one of them a mile away. How could she not have noticed?