The Disoriented

by Amin Maalouf

  “Anyone would think you’ve been living here all this time.”

  “Somebody’s been looking after the apartment in my absence.”

  “Your adoptive parents?”

  I smiled and he responded with the same knowing smile.

  “Okay, let’s call them my ‘adoptive parents,’ since you find the term amusing.”

  “I’m just using the words you used in your email …”

  “To get a permit to come here, I had to claim a family emergency. And I could hardly explain who they really were.”

  “‘I’ve been missing my kidnappers, Sir, and I’d like to go and visit them.’”

  He laughed.

  “Not only would I not have been given a permit to travel, I’d probably have been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Not to mention a psych evaluation …”

  “So, you’ve kept in touch with them?”

  “Yes, from the day I left. When they released me, they made me promise to come back and visit. And I wanted to. I asked Mourad and Tania to take me to see them before I went to the airport.”

  “They told me all about it on the phone as soon as you were on the plane. I won’t repeat what Mourad—God rest his soul—said about you.”

  “God rest his soul. Whatever he said that day, he was probably right. I was pigheaded, heedless to danger. I was suicidal.”

  He said this last word as though savouring a familiar bitterness. And this reminded me that, at that moment, Albert and I were in the very place where the tragedy had almost happened twenty years earlier.

  Each probably recalling similar memories, Albert and I fell silent for several moments and stared down at our cups of café au lait. Then he went on:

  “When I started working in the US, I decided to send them part of my salary every month. Why? Because I had suddenly discovered how fascinating and wonderful life could be, how it was worth living, and I was horrified, in hindsight, at the thought of what I might have lost. I was—I still am—enormously grateful to those people, who, on two separate occasions, were agents of Providence. Blind agents initially, when they kidnapped me and, in doing so, prevented me from doing something irreversible. But later, conscious agents, who, when they found out that their son was dead, were magnanimous and selfless and, despite their grief and their rage, did not take it out on me, their prisoner.

  “So I decided to transfer ten percent of my salary to them. ‘Tithing,’ it used to be called … It has not made them rich, but it has meant they have been free of financial worries, and have even been able to renovate their house. When I arrived yesterday, they took me to see the renovations they had done with that money. They also looked after this apartment. Look around! It’s a lot tidier than it was when I lived here. They are fundamentally good, fundamentally honest people; the fact that they were forced to resort to kidnapping says a lot about the twisted nature of the war.”

  “In short, you’ve played the role of their lost son, and they’ve assumed the role …”

  “… of the parents I lost. Yes, that’s about it, I don’t need to explain it to you. Of all the friends I’ve kept in touch with, you’re the only one who knows my past.”

  I smiled.

  “In that case, the others must be completely in the dark, because I don’t know much!”

  “You know my father was murdered in Liberia.”

  “I knew it was somewhere in West Africa, but I didn’t know which country. We never talked about it. All I remember are the rumours that went around in school.”

  “I know they said horrible things. That he was a trafficker, a spy, and God knows what else. Actually, he had an import-export business in Monrovia, and one day some thugs showed up and murdered him in his office near the port. Either thieves planning to rob him or hired killers in the pay of one of his rivals. If there was a police investigation, no one ever told me the conclusions. Now you know as much as I do.”

  “And he used to come to visit you sometimes?”

  “He came twice, I think. But if I hadn’t seen photographs, I wouldn’t even remember what he looked like. He never wrote to me either. My only relationship with him was a monthly bank transfer.”

  “Like your adoptive parents’ relationship with you …”

  He smiled.

  “I’d never thought of that … Maybe that’s how I came up with the idea. But the similarities end there.”

  “And your mother was in a sanatorium in Switzerland, wasn’t she? Or was it a rumour?”

  “It was just a rumour, though in that case I’m the one who started it. My parents split up when I was four. My father left for Liberia, where two of his brothers were already working. And my mother married a man who didn’t want anything to do with another man’s child.”

  He trailed off. I was about to ask a question when I saw that he was close to tears. So I stared down at my coffee until he continued.

  At length, he said in a quavering voice:

  “She accepted this arrangement. She dismissed me as though I were a bad memory, as though even caring about me might compromise her new life. I got nothing from her, no letters, no bank transfers. When she dropped me off at boarding school, I told my friends that she was seriously ill and was going to a sanatorium for treatment. I couldn’t think of anything else to explain her abandoning me, and it sounded plausible. Actually, she was living in Nice, with her new husband and her new children.”

  “You have half brothers and sisters?”

  “I don’t know their names or how many of them there are.”

  “Did you ever see your mother again?”

  “Not once! One day, when I was nineteen, she wrote to tell me she was ill and wanted me to visit her. I didn’t go. I abandoned her on her death bed the same way she had abandoned me.

  “I’m not proud, it’s something I’ve regretted my whole life. But, at the time, that’s what I wanted. She’d never written to me before, no birthday cards, not even a letter when my father died. And even in the letter informing me she was ill, she couldn’t find the right words. ‘Every Sunday I pray that you will be happy.’ I was tempted to write back and say I didn’t need her prayers because, as far as prayers were concerned, I had more than enough at boarding school; and that, when I was growing up, what I needed was a mother who would hug me to her breast, not one who prayed for me in a church on the French Riviera. She explained to me that her second husband had wanted to start a new life with her, one that was not ‘tainted’ by memories of the past. I almost wrote back to say that, since she hadn’t wanted me to taint her life, maybe I shouldn’t taint her death.

  “In the end, I didn’t write anything, didn’t reply. Two weeks later, I received a card with a sombre grey border informing me of her death; there was no note. The way I’d treated her was no more than she probably deserved. Even so I felt devastated. When I think back to my suicide attempt, to that macabre card I had printed, I tell myself that maybe this was guilt making me pay for my spiteful act of revenge.”

  A silence. I sat and waited. He continued:

  “I’ve never been much interested by religion. Any religion. I’d had my fill with all the morning Masses I had to attend at the Christian Brothers school. But there’s a saying attributed to the Prophet, one that has haunted me ever since I first heard it. It says: What we do in this world will be rewarded in the next, except for the way we treat our parents, which will be punished or rewarded in this world.”

  “Do you think the precept applies to your ‘adoptive parents’?”

  “They certainly think so. They tell me that when I’m old, my children will look after me just as I’ve looked after them. I say: ‘yes, Uncle,’ ‘yes, Auntie.’ They would be upset if I told them I’ll never have children.”

  Albert fell silent. I asked no questions. We stared at each other. We exchanged mute words. Then he said:


  “You’ve always known, haven’t you?”

  The truthful answer was “no,” since I found out only a few days ago when Ramez confided in me. But, given how he had phrased the question, I felt saying “no” would sound like a clumsy way of saying “yes.” In the end, I said:

  “We never talked about it.”

  “It was difficult to talk about it here. Despite how close we were. We grew up together, our friendship developed at an age when every secret could be seen as an invitation. It was safer to trust to what was unsaid …”

  “I assume it’s different In America …”

  “There are bigots everywhere, but as long as you follow the ‘instruction manual,’ they don’t make your life a living hell. You quickly learn to hang out with these people rather than those people, to phrase things in a certain way in order to defuse the situation. Anyway, I’ve never been in favour of forced ‘outing.’ Everyone has the right to choose whether or not to come out, to whom, and how. The people who pressurize you into making rash statements aren’t your friends. Decent people don’t pressure you. Whether or not they’re gay, they’re simply happy to be your friends, your colleagues, your students, your neighbours. And I don’t disturb them either. Either because of their way of life, or because of the way of mine.

  “I tell people what they’re willing to hear. Not what they want to hear but what they’re able to hear. I’ll never tell my ‘adoptive parents’ the truth. Why upset them? Every time they write, they say they want me to find a nice girl and settle down. I make no promises, but I allow them to hope for what they believe they should hope for. What good would it do to tell them that my ‘fiancée’ is called James?”

  A silence. A tinkle of coffee cups.

  “So, what about you? I assume you’re not still with the adorable girl I met in Paris twenty years ago. Since you never mentioned her in your emails, I’d assumed she was out of the picture. She was a psychologist, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes. Patricia.”

  “You’re not with her anymore?”

  “It’s ancient history.”

  “Were you together long?”

  “Seven years.”

  “So, what about more recent history, what’s her name?”

  “Dolores. She’s a magazine editor.”

  “And you’ve been together …”

  “Six years now. Maybe a little more.”

  “Am I to understand that you’re thinking about moving on?”

  “Absolutely not. That’s not how it works. When I’m with a woman, I always want it to last forever, and I always believe it’s possible.”

  “But, one after another, they let you down …”

  “The problem isn’t them, it’s me. As soon as my happiness is complete, I become convinced that it can’t last. So I do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t. It’s pathological, and I know I’m doing it. I know I’m destroying the relationship, but I can’t stop until the destruction is complete.”

  What I didn’t say to Albert, because it didn’t occur to me at the time, is that the image that has always haunted me is of my parents, laughing, a few short hours before their plane crashed. How many times has this image resurfaced, at moments of great happiness in my life, as if to remind me that happiness is temporary, that the laughter I hear is the herald of some imminent tragedy.

  When happiness becomes the enemy of happiness …

  Our conversation ended when his “adoptive father” came to pick him up. Apparently, there was a party being thrown in his honour. The mechanic duly invited me, but only because I happened to be there, so I politely declined the invitation, claiming I had a prior engagement.

  I was saddened by this interruption. Albert and I still had a million things to say to each other—about his job, about his research and mine, about the collection of music boxes I’d seen on the shelves.

  I also regretted having been so cavalier when talking about my lovers. While talking about love is a noble thing, talking about lovers is vulgar. I still remember a conversation I had with Bilal just before he died in which he tried to persuade me otherwise. I had been impressed by the daring, the audacity of what he said, but thinking back, a quarter century later, I feel more than ever wedded to my position. And today’s conversation was not likely to change my mind.

  Since Albert had confided in me, I felt I had to do likewise. This, it seems, is the nature of polite conversation … But the way I talked about the women in my life was an insult to my love for them. Naming one after another, in a single sentence, was callous, perhaps even hateful. While we were together, Patricia had been my whole life, and the thought that she is now merely an episode, an incident, is repulsive to me. And Dolores is not my most recent girlfriend, she is the person I love most in the world; I would shed bitter tears if I were to lose her.

  What about Sémi? Is she simply a parenthesis, as I’ve described her in this book? Thinking back, I was wrong to speak about her in such terms. A parenthesis that opens the doors to paradise is not a commonplace parenthesis, and I do not want it to end. In a few days we will go our separate ways, but the love I pledge her now will never be forgotten or betrayed.

  As he took his leave of Albert outside the building, Adam was planning to go to a local café to record snatches of their conversation in his notebook before he forgot them; then he would wander through the city at random, as once upon a time he loved to do, but has not done since his return.

  But by the time he had finished making his notes, it was 1:00 p.m., the streets were hot and sweltering, there were roadworks everywhere. He no longer had the energy to walk. He closed his notebook and hailed the first passing taxi.

  When he arrived back at the Auberge Sémiramis, he made no attempt to contact the chatelaine or Naïm. Tired and dripping with sweat, he went straight up to his room, undressed as soon as he walked through the door, took a long shower, and fell asleep in his dressing gown.

  Two hours later, he was woken by a hand stroking his forehead. He smiled, without opening his eyes, without stirring, without saying a word. Fortunately in this case, since, if he had said a name, it would have been “Sémiramis.”

  But it wasn’t her.

  -

  2

  Dolores had given Adam little hope that she would join them.

  When Adam first tried to persuade her to come to the reunion, his partner had been less than enthusiastic. The old friends he longed to bring together were strangers to her, she did not share their memories, had no place there, and she told him as much; besides, she did not speak a word of Arabic, so her presence would stop them speaking freely in their native tongue. “You’ll spend the whole time explaining things to me, and end up regretting inviting me.”

  But all this was merely an excuse so that she could make up her mind at the last minute, and so that she could be sure that he genuinely wanted her to come. In fact, she longed to spend time with him in the country where he had been born, to meet the friends he had known, to finally feel a connection—if only through a “catch-up session”—to one of the happiest periods of his life. Most importantly, she was determined that he not experience this important moment with only Sémiramis for company.

  Dolores was doing her best not to succumb to jealousy, she even felt a certain pride that she did not feel resentful towards the woman who had “borrowed” her partner. She had met the woman only twice, but felt an instinctive sympathy for Sémiramis, she trusted her, despite what had happened, perhaps because of what had happened. In fact, it was thanks to the complicity of her “rival” that she had been discreetly able to organize her journey. As a result, she felt no bitterness towards the hotel manager … But Dolores knew it was high time that she reclaimed this man who was hers. And definitively closed this “parenthesis.”

  It was Sémiramis who greeted her at the airport and drove her to the hotel, where the receptioni
st informed them that Adam was in his room. Dolores expected to surprise him working at his laptop. Slowly, she opened the door. The room was in darkness. Leaving her suitcases outside, she tiptoed in and found her partner asleep.

  And so, stroking his forehead, she woke him. Even before he opened his eyes, he recognized her perfume. He wrapped his arms about her, whispering “Querida” as though he had been expecting her. She slipped between the sheets next to him.

  The lovers’ tender siesta was interrupted by a phone call from Albert, apologizing for abruptly abandoning his friend that morning, and suggesting that they meet up in the city that evening.

  “Are you sure your kidnappers are prepared to release you?” Adam joked.

  “No,” his friend said, “but they’ve given me a furlough for the evening. You remember the restaurant Le Code Civil?”

  “Next to the University? How could I forget? It was our local …”

  “I just walked past and was astonished to discover that it still exists. Or, to be exact, that it exists again. It closed at the outbreak of the war, then someone decided to reopen it. I’m also inviting Sémi and Naïm. I think it’ll be an excellent preface to our reunion.”

  Adam was delighted.

  “I’ll sit in my usual seat, and order exactly what I used to order.”

  Dolores didn’t know what he was talking about, but her partner’s delight was infectious; she mimicked his smile and laid her head on his bare shoulder.

  “Beneath that rebellious pose of yours, you’re a dyed-in-the-wool conservative,” his friend said at the other end of the line.

  Adam made no attempt to deny it.

  “If I had countless lives, I’d spend one of them going to the same restaurant every day, sitting at the same table, in the same chair, ordering the same thing.”

  “With the same partner,” Dolores whispered in his ear.

  “Yes … with you,” he said, holding the receiver away from his face so he could kiss her.