The Network

by Jason Elliot

  After the intensity of life on the streets of Omdurman, we feel out of place among the clientele of mostly lonely and bored-looking foreigners, and I suggest we go somewhere more real. Jameela agrees gratefully. We walk to an Ethiopian restaurant. There are no knives and forks, so she takes my hand gently in hers and shows me how to fold the food into the traditional pancake-like bread called injera. It’s the first time we’ve touched since we shook hands, and this tiny act of closeness feels like a landmark to me, as if I’ve discovered the source of the Nile.

  The pyramids are her suggestion. I’ve heard of the enigmatic site at Meroë, two hours north of Khartoum, but never imagined I might actually go there, much less in the company of a woman I’m struggling not to fall in love with. She lets me pick her up the next morning, and I’m shown into her home by her Sudanese housekeeper, who, judging from the twinkle in her eye when I appear, knows what’s afoot.

  We drive north for about two hours on the road to Atbara. Seeing how quickly the complexity and prosperity of the city fall away, as if from the edge of a flat earth, I’m reminded of Kabul, where the surroundings beyond the capital return to almost prehistoric simplicity after only a few miles.

  At a small settlement called Bagrawiya on the east bank of the Nile we turn off the main road and bounce along an unsurfaced track. It’s oppressively hot. Then the pyramids loom up, some pointed and others broken, reaching like ragged sets of teeth out of the orange sand. There’s about a hundred of them, much smaller than their Egyptian relatives and much less well known, fashioned from black stone nearly two and a half thousand years ago as tombs for the kings and queens of ancient Nubia. There is no one else there except a solitary local who wants us to ride his camel for an outrageous sum, and we send him guiltily away.

  ‘Quite a place,’ I say to Jameela, ‘for your ancestors to be buried.’

  ‘Do you know anything of the history?’ she asks.

  ‘Only that Meroë was the southern capital of the kingdom of the Kushites, who ruled Nubia for a thousand years, invaded Egypt and ruled as the pharaohs of the twenty-fifth dynasty. They traded with India and China, and their warrior queen Candace, riding a war elephant, confronted Alexander the Great himself, who withdrew rather than fight her magnificent warriors.’

  ‘You’re funny,’ she says.

  ‘I read it in the guidebook last night. I wanted to impress you. Did you know the gods were so jealous of the beauty of the queens of Nubia that they struck the tops of the pyramids with lightning to humble them?’

  ‘Good try.’ She smiles. ‘The tops were destroyed with dynamite by an Italian explorer in 1820. He was looking for gold. There wasn’t any.’

  We walk among the ruins in wonder at the lost civilisation that created them, ducking into the coolness of the few tombs that are open. As we enter one of them, Jameela reaches behind her for my hand and guides me gently inside. On the walls we can make out carved stone panels with Egyptian-looking winged gods. I run my hands over them and turn my head towards Jameela to see an expression of worry on her face, which I haven’t seen before but which disappears as my eyes meet hers. Outside again, under the stone gateway to the entrance we lean against the walls, facing each other in the silence. I’m just looking at her, and she’s returning the look, because we have somehow reached the end of the words we want to say to each other. The sun is low and the golden light catches the perspiration on her upper chest, and for a moment it’s as if her dark skin is glowing.

  I’m not sure what would have happened had the elderly guardian of the place not emerged from his nearby hut, and waved to us with a shout to let us know it was his time to clock off.

  ‘We should go,’ she says.

  It’s hot in the car. We drive for a long while in silence, as if the spell of the place is still on us. We pass trucks piled precariously high with cargoes, as well as passengers clinging to sacks of food and supplies, who wave and smile at us above the billowing fumes and dust.

  ‘Sometimes,’ says Jameela suddenly, ‘I miss the sea. I want to swim in the sea. I want to go to a desert island and feel the sand instead of this dust, and feel the water instead of this heat.’

  ‘Then let’s go to the sea,’ I say.

  ‘It would take too long.’ She sighs. ‘Several days just to get there and back. It’s impossible to get to the islands in any case.’ She changes the subject. ‘Do you know anyone in Khartoum?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I tell her. ‘I haven’t done much socialising.’

  ‘Listen,’ she says. ‘I’m having dinner with a cousin and his family tomorrow. They’re nice people. You could come and impress them. With your knowledge of history, perhaps.’ She throws me an ironic smile.

  ‘I don’t want to impose,’ I say.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘My cousin can be a real pain sometimes but his wife is a good friend of mine. They’re quite traditional. Religious. Can you handle that, Englishman? I’ll call them to say you’re coming.’

  I am suspicious of him from the start. Jameela’s cousin is an Arab and his features are Mediterranean. His skin is fair. He is tall and lean and has an angular face with a sharp nose and chin. The most disturbing thing about him is his eyes, which are grey and lizard-like, and settle with a faint look of disdain wherever his head is turned, as if they are fixed in their sockets. His gestures are slowed by an affected piety.

  It’s an untypical configuration. I know that in Sudan only family or the closest of friends are invited to the traditional family home. Something is different here. An accommodation has obviously been made for their foreign guest, and a table and chairs have been put together in the room, which is the equivalent of an English family deciding to eat on a carpet on the floor. They have also invited a Sudanese man and his wife who have lived abroad for a few years and whose family connection I never catch. I suspect that their presence is intended to be a bridge between the traditional environment and the strange ways of a foreigner, which is me. Jameela is family but thoroughly westernised in her ways, and is accepted like a foreign film on television.

  Her cousin sits opposite me at the table with Jameela to one side. His wife, a young Sudanese woman with big soulful brown eyes, ferries the dishes to and from the kitchen, settling from time to time at the end of the table like a young deer drinking warily from a stream. Her eyes never meet those of her guests. They all speak in Arabic for most of the meal, until our host fixes on me and reveals that he does in fact speak nearly perfect English.

  ‘It is to be commended that you speak Arabic,’ he says to me with a sinister smile. ‘Insha’allah you will one day read the Holy Qu’ran.’ His teeth are perfect white.

  Jameela rolls her eyes.

  ‘My cousin has said you were in Afghanistan.’

  ‘My work took me there for a while,’ I say.

  ‘You were not there at the time of the jihad?’

  ‘For a short visit. It’s a long time ago now.’

  ‘You are not a Muslim,’ he says, as if this disqualifies me from travel. ‘What did you do there?’

  ‘I did what my friends did. Just lived.’

  ‘Did you fight?’ he persists.

  ‘There was fighting. It was wartime.’

  ‘It is an honourable thing to participate in jihad. Did you participate?’

  I don’t like where he’s trying to lead me. I don’t like his curiosity. I think of the grace and dignity of the old man at the shrine, who wouldn’t have dreamed of prying into the private life of a visitor. My host, it seems, links the idea of going to Afghanistan with fighting the jihad and nothing else. It’s impossible to explain to him that my sympathy for the Afghans at the time wasn’t anything to do with religion or its decrees, but simply because I liked the people I met.

  ‘I believe the Prophet – sala Allah alaeihu wa aleihu as-salaam – said that the greatest jihad is the struggle with one’s own personal weaknesses, and that the jihad against the worldly enemy is the lesser struggle – the jihad as-saghir.’<
br />
  I glance at Jameela while my host’s head is turned, and she shoots me a look of fond disapproval. But her cousin isn’t impressed.

  ‘How do you know such a thing?’ He ignores the implication of the question. ‘Did you fight or not?’

  ‘I lived as my friends lived. So I lived with them, ate with them, fought with them, prayed with them.’

  ‘You prayed with them?’ His hands settle deliberately on the edge of the table, as if he’s about to get up.

  ‘Omar,’ says Jameela, ‘let him eat.’ The conversation is making us both feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, recalling those serene moments at dusk when the men would lay their weapons quietly aside and turn their minds to God before resuming their worldly preoccupations. ‘Sometimes. Not always. It would have been strange not to.’

  ‘But you are not a Muslim?’

  ‘Omar,’ says Jameela, with a note of protest.

  He looks at her then back at me as if to say, I’m talking; don’t interrupt me.

  ‘In wartime everyone prays in their own way. There it was a part of life.’

  ‘You did not feel …’ he looks up, searching for the word. Then he finds it, and his eyes fix on mine again with new intensity. ‘You did not feel like a hypocrite?’

  ‘Oh merde! That’s it, I’m leaving,’ says Jameela. She pushes her chair back abruptly and stands up. Her cousin looks up at her like a lizard, imperturbable, and then directs a strangled smile at her as if he’s found a hair in his food but is too polite to say.

  ‘It’s fine, Jameela,’ I tell her. ‘Your cousin is asking a legitimate question. He has his interpretation and others have theirs. That’s the basis of ijtehad. It’s what makes Islam interesting.’

  ‘How do you know such a thing?’ he asks again, almost angrily, as if his religion is a secret that no one else has the right to take an interest in.

  ‘He can’t talk to you like that. You’re his guest. This is not Islam.’ She utters the word with a sneer.

  Omar ignores Jameela’s outburst as if it’s beneath him to respond to it.

  ‘The answer to your question is no, I did not feel like a hypocrite. God speaks many languages, not just Arabic.’

  He sighs tolerantly, like a teacher who’s been let down by a promising pupil but sees that this isn’t the moment to pursue the issue.

  ‘I would be most interested to speak to you more about this subject. Perhaps you can come back and I will introduce you to some friends who would also be interested. We can make a small interview and you can also read some verses of the Holy Qur’an for the radio. There are many other things we can discuss.’

  ‘I would be happy to do that,’ I say. It’s a lie because I have no intention of allowing him to exploit me for his own style of propaganda. His version of religion is too political for me.

  Later, after the conversation has changed direction, I wonder whether I’ve judged him too harshly. Perhaps he is just genuinely curious and has never been exposed to the notion that you can be interested in a different culture and religion without becoming a fanatic. But the atmosphere never quite recovers.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ says Jameela when we’re back in the car. She’s more distressed than I am. ‘He can be such an idiot. Only religion matters to him and his friends. They’re so medieval, and they’re all like that.’ She calms down a little. ‘I was mixed up with them for a while.’ She starts the car and we pull away.

  ‘How mixed up? You’re scaring me.’

  ‘Family stuff,’ she says, as if it’s a chapter in her life she prefers to forget. ‘Ils sont tous des fanatiques.’ She looks at me. The smile has gone from her face. ‘I married one of them. Have you heard of Osama bin Laden?’

  ‘I think so,’ I say. ‘He’s becoming quite well known.’

  ‘I married one of his brothers. He was a good man.’ She pauses. ‘But he changed. Osama’s people changed him. Osama was a good man. He did good things for Sudan. But they changed him too. I used to see him and his people, and every time he was becoming more extreme.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to know about them,’ I say. ‘Watch the road.’

  ‘You have to understand,’ she says as a look of sadness crosses her features, ‘there’s a beautiful side to Islam and an ugly side. You’re a Christian. Christians have done cruel things. Evil things, I mean. But cruel people will always find cruel things to do. You don’t judge a whole civilisation on them. At the heart of Islam there’s a … a peace, an unimaginable peace and beauty. You find it in the simple people here, in their lives. Their gods are the sky, water and trees. Real Islam accepts all that. The Prophet was from the desert. He was a simple man who understood hardship.’

  We drive in silence for a while. There’s something raw about this issue for Jameela, and it’s exactly the kind of discontent that a proper spy would try to exploit, deepening the grievance to obtain information. But there’s no need to try to bring it out. It bubbles up again a few minutes later.

  ‘You don’t deny your religion and civilisation because there are some fanatics who call themselves Christian? You don’t deny all the goodness and beauty because there is some ugliness. You don’t have to feel guilty because the Church ordered the crusades, or a massacre, or – I don’t know – a Hiroshima or a Srebrenica, or because your Christian leaders built concentration camps or enslaved millions of innocent people? But if a Muslim is involved in something unspeakable, in the West they always point out his religion. They talk about Muslims as if a single word could describe a billion people, as if the word was really useful.’

  We pull up outside her home. The engine is still running, so I reach towards the ignition and turn off the engine. Jameela turns to me. She’s still upset. The issue has caused a division between us like an argument, and cast a shadow over the closeness I feel for her.

  ‘Do you know who the most extreme ones are?’ she’s asking. ‘They’re from Saudi, Egypt, Palestine. The ones who have the closest contact with the West. That’s where they learned their politics and their violence. And they’re always the ones you hear about. You never hear about the millions and millions of people who live quietly and tolerantly and peacefully and with the happiness that Islam brings to the heart of their lives.’

  But I’m not really listening. I lean across, reach behind her head with my hand, and draw it gently towards my own. Then I kiss her on her lips.

  ‘I am in love with you,’ I say quietly. ‘And each time I say goodbye to you, it hurts.’

  She looks at me in stunned silence. Her breath is uneven.

  ‘Go,’ she says. ‘Just go, please. Va t’en, je t’en prie.’

  11

  Her letter arrives the next day. Kamal brings it to me while I’m drinking tea on the balcony.

  À mon très cher Antoine,

  I cannot describe my feelings at this moment so I will not try. I am happy that we have met and I will always treasure the time we have spent together. But soon you will leave Khartoum and we will both be alone. When that happens, I know only that for one of us, or both of us, there will already be too much pain. Let us not make that pain greater than it needs to be. Please respect my wish that we not meet again.

  Je t’embrasse,

  J.

  Her housekeeper is outside, watering the bougainvillea, and greets me with a smile. Jameela is not at home, she says. I know, I tell her. I just want to leave her a present, I explain, and take the bags upstairs to her bedroom. The rose petals are fresh and fragrant. They are mixed with hibiscus and jasmine. I plunge my hands into them and scatter them over every surface, across the bed and dresser and bookshelves, until there is a thick layer of them from one side of the room to the other. The note which I leave on her table, by way of an answer, reads: ‘Please come to a picnic on Friday morning, to discuss your important letter (bathing suit optional).’

  On the Friday, when I drive to her house Jameela is still in bed. She descends a few minutes later in a pair of white sil
k pyjamas, brandishing the note I’ve left.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asks. She’s trying to look angry.

  ‘Trust me,’ I say. ‘We’ll be back by this evening. Just one picnic and then I’ll leave you alone.’ Which I have no intention of doing.

  At the airport an official leads us to the plane. It’s a Cessna 172R with just enough range to get us to our destination and back. I’ve already filed a flight plan and the plane is chartered for twenty-four hours. I haul my bags into the hold.

  ‘Are you at least going to tell me where we’re going?’ asks Jameela.

  I pull open one of the bags and show her a pair of diving fins.

  ‘You wanted the sea. I’m taking you to the sea.’

  She shakes her head very slowly, but she can’t conceal the faintest of smiles.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she says.

  I press a hundred-dollar bill into the hand of the official, who mimics a machine gun as he warns me thoughtfully not to stray into Eritrean airspace. After a few minutes of pre-flight checks we’re airborne, heading north-east from the city and watching the Nile snake away under our port wing.

  Jameela’s head is pressed against the passenger window in silent fascination. Over the intercom I hear her voice from time to time, pointing out the features of the landscape beneath us. Later I hear a strange sad music in my headset and realise she’s singing to herself.

  Two thirds of the way, a range of black and waterless mountains looms out of the wilderness below. Beyond, we can make out a thin blue band on the horizon which I point out to Jameela, who bites her lip in anticipation. I make the aircraft swing from side to side in celebration and Jameela’s face bursts into a dazzling smile of delight. Then, just shy of three hours’ flight time, I talk to air traffic control at Port Sudan and begin our descent.