by Amin Maalouf
“Yes,” said Naïm, “Adam told us.”
“And what else did he tell you about me?”
The three friends were more than a little embarrassed. But there were several elegant escape routes. It was Sémiramis who first found one.
“He told us about the books you made him read.”
“I was impressed by him as a child. Every other day, he would show up with some huge tomes he’d just read.”
“The truth is, I read quickly so I could come back and see you, Hanum,” the former child mumbled.
“But come on! Come inside! I should be ashamed, chatting away like this and not inviting you into my home.”
“It looked to me as though you were heading out, Hanum,” Adam feebly protested.
“I was about to take my daily walk, but I can do that later. It’s not often I receive important visitors.”
As she was speaking, she had gone back to the door which she now held open so that the three friends could enter.
Adam was still staring at her, incredulous, as though by some miracle he had just been readmitted to Eden before the Fall.
How graceful she still was! Her favourite colour, pink, was still evident in subtle touches—the ribbon of her hat, the piping on her dress.
How old would she be? Adam had a point of reference, since he knew the lady was from the same generation as his parents. Had they still been alive, his father would have been seventy-six, his mother seventy-two. Hanum must be about the same age.
Curiously, the house was even more beautiful than it had been in his childhood memory. Although the building itself had not changed, a long wall of russet stone now ran from the kitchen door to the living room, the garden was better maintained, the lawn was neatly mown and the flower beds looked as though they had been carved out with a set square. He would quickly discover the reason for this improvement. The irascible Oum Maher had been expediently replaced by a woman from Hanum’s native land, a cheerful refugee who hailed from outside Mosul.
It was she who brought the coffee and the various pastries into the living room, then returned a few minutes later with three large glasses of blackberry syrup for the guests, and, for her mistress, a glass of water and a small plate with three colourful pills.
“Later!” Hanum murmured, embarrassed at having to perform this ritual of old age in front of her guests.
“No. Not later. Now!” the other woman said firmly, without moving an inch, yet retaining the same broad smile.
The lady had no choice but to swallow her tablets with sips of water. Then she explained:
“Sabah tends to my garden as though it were her own, and to me as though I were a sickly rosebush. Which I am …”
When the woman had disappeared, she added:
“In our countries, we make revolutions in the name of the people, and the people are driven out of their homes, thrown out onto the streets. I’m talking about Sabah, but I could just as easily be talking about myself. I have not been back to my homeland since our glorious revolution.”
Adam glanced around him and said:
“Everyone in this room is an exile, Hanum. I ended up in France, Naïm in Brazil, and Sémiramis was forced to flee Egypt with her parents when she was only a year old.”
“Because of the revolution?” Hanum asked.
Sémiramis nodded, without explaining the circumstances of their premature departure.
“Revolutions are a catastrophe!” their hostess sighed, waving her hand with the same gesture she might have shooed away a fly.
“They certainly have been in our region,” said Adam, who was reluctant to contradict her, but, as a historian, could not countenance such a generalization.
But the lady would brook no compromise.
“Not just in our region, Adam! Look at Russia! Before the Bolsheviks, the country was in full bloom. In a few decades, they had had Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev … Then revolution descended on the country like a long winter night, and the buds withered and died.”
“But if people rose up, it is because they had reasons, Hanum. You’re forgetting that Dostoevsky was a member of a revolutionary group; he narrowly avoided being executed and spent years in a gulag in Siberia.”
“Have you read the story he wrote after his release?”
To his embarrassment, Adam had not. He dodged the question with a joke.
“If you’d given it to me, Hanum, I’d have read it.”
“Back then, I hadn’t read it either. As a result, I had a high opinion of the Russian revolution, which compared favourably to the ones that have racked our country. I used to think that Soviet leaders had succeeded in building a great power respected all over the world, and that they had emerged from the Second World War as victors, while the Arab leaders had simply racked up a series of defeats and failures. When it comes to our revolutionaries, our self-proclaimed ‘progressives,’ I haven’t changed my mind, but when it comes to the Soviets, I have. When I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a book Solzhenitsyn wrote after his time in the Gulag, I remembered that I had a copy of The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky’s memoir of his experiences of prison, on my bookshelves. So, somewhat belatedly, I read it. And I sincerely recommend that you and your friends do the same. Read them, as I did, in reverse order. First the twentieth-century account, then the nineteenth. They are separated by exactly one hundred years. You will discover that, compared to the gulags of the Stalinist era, the prison camps in Tsarist times were like a holiday camp. And you can’t help but wonder: was this the unspeakable Tsarist regime that had to be toppled at all costs?”
Smiling all the while, she knitted her brows, just as she had done the day she caught Adam spying.
“You’re probably thinking I’m a bitter old émigrée.”
As one, the three friends protested.
“And maybe that’s what I’ve become, with age. I’ve spent my whole life desperate to see the region we live in evolve, develop, progress. But all I’ve had are disappointments. In the name of progress, of justice, of freedom, of nationalism, of religion, we keep embarking on adventures that end in disaster. People who call for revolution should first have to prove that the society they intend to establish will be more free, more just, and less corrupt than what already exists. Don’t you think?”
Her guests nodded politely, glancing at each other to see whether perhaps they should take their leave. Adam discreetly signalled for them to wait a little. He did not want their hostess to think that, by leaving, they were passing judgment on what she had just said.
At present, she seemed engrossed in anxious meditation. It was Naïm who lightened the mood.
“There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you since we got here, Hanum.”
She smiles. Because Naïm has a mischievous grin. But also because he has just joined the ranks of those who call her Hanum.
“I wanted to know whether, as a boy, Adam was a little angel or a little devil.”
The lady’s smile grew broader still. She seemed to marshal her thoughts before answering:
“When he was a little devil, it was because he was thoughtless. And when he was a little angel, it was because he was shy.”
The three friends greeted this with a polite laugh before getting up to leave. For the sake of form, their hostess invited them to stay and lunch with her; they made their excuses, claiming that they were expected elsewhere, and promising that they would come back to visit.
As she was opening the garden gate to let them out, Hanum seemed to remember something and asked them to wait. They watched as she walked away, then reappeared two minutes later clutching a handkerchief. She unfolded it for Adam, whose friends watched him suddenly blush.
“You dropped this coin one day, it rolled under a bed and got stuck in a groove,” the lady said in a tremulous voice. “By the time I found it,
you had left so I couldn’t give it back to you. Keep it safe, it’s a genuine Byzantine coin dating from the reign of the emperor Justinian.”
Adam cupped his hands as though receiving alms. He could no longer fight back his tears. His friends looked away, then hurriedly stepped through the door and set off along the flagstone path.
MAY 2 (CONTINUED)
The coin Hanum “returned” is not the one I discovered between the stones and later lost. Mine wasn’t Byzantine or Roman or Ottoman, at best it was a timeworn local coin. Of course, I didn’t say anything, I played along so as not to betray my co-conspirator, my benefactor, who wanted to give me this touching gift.
Unexpectedly, I now realize that the memory left by our time together was no less intense for her than it was for me; that if, to me, she had been a dazzling sun, perhaps I, to her, had been a sunbeam. Curiously, it is something I never thought about. Caught up in my own nostalgia, I rarely notice nostalgia in those I have known. It seems natural to me that they should have made their mark on my memory; the idea that I might have made my mark on theirs, I find surprising. Whether this is a sign of modesty or tactlessness on my part remains to be seen.
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The Fourteenth Day
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1
THURSDAY, MAY 3
Today, Albert arrived. Our little gathering of friends is beginning to take shape.
When I called him yesterday evening, he was already in Atlanta, Georgia, about to board a flight to London, where he planned to spend the night. He was so insistent that I not pick him up from the airport that, in the end, I promised not to.
Then, at the last minute, I regretted my promise and went anyway. After all, it is only because I asked that he’s coming back to the country. Besides, my own arrival two weeks ago when no one was waiting for me, has left a bitter aftertaste. Like Albert, I hadn’t wanted to put anyone out, but I wouldn’t have been unhappy to come to customs and be greeted by a few familiar faces.
Sémi did not come with me. She simply lent me her car, and Kiwan, the hotel chauffeur.
Once I arrived in the cavernous arrivals hall, I stood at the back so I could see the people arriving without my face being the first that Albert saw. He had made his own arrangements, he had told me, there would be people waiting to accompany him to his old apartment where he planned to spend the night. Given that he had sworn never to set foot in the country again, I assumed he had long since sold the apartment, but it seemed he had kept it. In fact, I could only assume he had someone who took care of it; otherwise, why would he think of spending the night there?
When he appeared, I recognized him instantly. Unlike Naïm, he has changed very little. He has even less grey hair than I do. Besides, his aquiline nose and triangular face meant that his profile is recognisable at a distance.
There was a couple waiting for him. The man was stocky, his wrinkled face surmounted by a shock of frizzy white hair; the woman was wearing a grey dress and matching head scarf. No sooner did the wanderer appear than two people rushed forward, each seizing an arm, and, in a flash, I knew who they were. Something about their gestures reminded me of the account Mourad had given of his visit to the garage where Albert had been held hostage.
I wouldn’t have made the connection had I not written the story down last week. But I am completely convinced. Something about their appearance, their gestures, betrays the fact that these people come from a different world to the one in which Albert and I grew up. Remembering Mourad’s account of the couple’s farewell to their former hostage, it occurred to me that the “adoptive mother” Albert had mentioned in his coded message could only be her.
I smiled, and took a step back. This was why he did not want other people to come and meet him. If I hadn’t phoned him last night, he would have waited until he was safely in the country before he called me.
I retreated two more steps and melted into the crowd of strangers. Had he spotted me? Maybe. Maybe not. His attention seemed to be monopolized by these unlikely parents, chatting to him, listening to him, stroking his hair, his arms, his shoulders.
The man had already commandeered his suitcase and his travel bag and was hurrying on ahead, presumably to his car. Albert was fighting to keep hold of one of the pieces of luggage, while the woman was trotting behind.
Should I try to catch them up? No. I slipped away and went back to the waiting car. When Kiwan asked if my friend had arrived safely, I told him all was well and we could head back to the hotel.
On the drive back, I waited for twenty minutes and then dialled Albert’s US cell phone. A recorded female voice informed me that the person I was calling could not be reached. I didn’t leave a message, preferring to wait until he calls me.
This he did an hour later, by which time I was back in my hotel room. It was obvious that he had no idea I’d gone to the airport. So much the better.
His flight was fine, he tells me, he’s back at his old apartment, he thinks he might go straight to bed, since he feels horribly jet-lagged and didn’t sleep a wink in London. He suggests that I call by his place tomorrow morning and asks whether I will be able to find the old apartment. Remembering how, when we were young, I used to make fun of his terrible sense of direction, I say that if he’s been able to find it, then I definitely can. He does not rise to the bait, but simply gives a little laugh, then we both say, “See you tomorrow.”
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2
When his other friends called asking for news of the traveller, at about seven o’clock that evening, Adam did not mention the scene he had witnessed at the airport.
He simply told them that Albert had just called, that he had arrived safely and in good spirits, but was exhausted and planned to go straight to bed.
That evening Sémi and Naïm were planning to visit Tania, to whom Naïm had not yet offered his condolences, and asked if Adam wanted to join them, but he demurred, explaining that he was tired and had a migraine, probably from the hours spent driving at rush hour through clouds of exhaust fumes.
This was probably just an excuse. Was it because he had already seen enough of the widow, and because, where Tania was concerned, he felt a certain weariness? Perhaps. Another plausible explanation was that he did not want to see anyone before he had a long face-to-face conversation with Albert.
He decided not to leave his room that evening. He ordered a light supper, just a plate of cheese and some fruit, and set about organizing the notes he had been taking, and writing some general observations.
On the drive back, while we were stuck in traffic, the hotel chauffeur confessed—apologizing profusely as though he was about to commit the greatest faux pas—that he’d never met anyone called Adam before. I reassured him, saying that I wasn’t in the least offended by his remark, that in this country my name was very rare, and that I found it flattering rather than embarrassing. Surely, bearing the name of the first man was a privilege?
He nodded politely, though he did not seem convinced by the argument. If I was right in deciphering his expression, he seemed to think I was making the best of a bad job. But he was clearly grateful that I had not taken offence at his comment.
When Kiwan fell silent, I carried on the conversation in my head. Responding to the assurances I had just made in a way that he could not have done. It is true that my name encompasses all of nascent humanity, yet I belong to a humanity that is dying. I’ve always been struck by the fact that the last Roman emperor was named after Romulus, the founder of the city; and the last emperor in Constantinople was named Constantine—again, after its founder. As a result, Adam, as a name, has always filled me more with fear than with pride.
I have never known why my parents chose to give me this name […] I remember asking my father one day, and he merely answered: “He is our common ancestor!” as though this was something I might not know. I was ten years old and I made do with this explanation. Perh
aps I should have asked him, while he was still alive, whether, behind the choice, there was some goal, some dream.
I believe there was. In his mind I was destined to belong to the cohort of founders. Today, at the age of forty-seven, I am forced to admit that my mission will not be accomplished. I will not be the first of a line, I will be the last, the very last of my family, the repository of their collected sorrows, their disappointments, and their shame. To me falls the hateful task of recognizing the faces of those I have loved, to nod my head and watch as the sheet is drawn over them. […]
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The Fifteenth Day
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1
FRIDAY, MAY 4
I spent the whole morning with Albert, in the apartment where he had once planned to commit suicide. He spoke as though we had never confided in each other before, and as though we would never meet again.
I had taken the precaution of arriving in his neighbourhood early, and I had marshalled my memories in order to find his building, which was still recognizable. The lobby, decorated with blue tiles, seemed to have survived the war unscathed. The only change was that a thick metal grille with a keypad, as ugly as a prison gate, had been fitted outside the lift; a futile precaution, since the keypad had been ripped apart and there was no lock on the gate.
When I reached the sixth floor, I pressed my ear to the door to make sure my friend was awake. It was not yet eight o’clock, but already there were noises from within. The doorbell worked; he opened the door, already dressed, and we threw our arms around each other.
I wanted to suggest that we go out for breakfast, as we had that day in Paris, after he had been released by his captors and was about to fly to the United States. But he had already set the table.