by Amin Maalouf
Whatever the reason, the dream was now coming true … but it was also about to come crashing down. Figuratively and literally. Of the ten people who were expected, eight had arrived early, impatient for the “chairperson” to arrive and the “symposium” to begin. Aside from Sémiramis, Dolores, and Naïm, who were staying at the hotel, the first to arrive was Albert, followed by Ramez and Dunia; Nidal arrived at precisely 12:30 p.m., taciturn, aloof, still obviously wondering what he was doing with this bunch of heathens; Tania showed up at about one o’clock, cheerful and chatty in her widow’s weeds. The only people missing were Adam and Brother Basil.
It was at about 2:30 p.m. that worry turned to panic. Ramez jumped to his feet. “We have to go and find out where they are!” A minute later, two cars set off. Dunia and Dolores went in Ramez’s car while Nidal took Albert and Francis, the maître d’hôtel, who was worried for his brother and who knew the stretch of road. Since Sémiramis had to stay behind, Tania and Naïm decided to stay with her.
It took an hour for the two cars to reach the accursed spot. By now, a crowd had gathered—cars parked on the hard shoulder, people waving and pointing down into the ravine from which rose a thin cloud of smoke. There were other people down on the valley floor, some in khaki uniforms.
“I have come to meet the ghost of a friend, and already I am a ghost myself,” Adam wrote on the day he arrived. He did not know how right he was. Those who saw him as he lay in a hospital bed, faceless, his eyes vacant, stiff, and white in his bandages, felt as though they were looking at a ghost.
In his last notebook, which was found on him, he had written several pages dated Friday, May 4, and even some dated Saturday, May 5—which had probably been written when he got back from dinner at Le Code Civil.
I’ll wait until the last person has arrived and we’ve gone upstairs to the restaurant before calling for silence and formally standing up to take the floor, with my speech in front of me. Since there will only be about a dozen of us gathered around the groaning table, I feel I should say, by way of introduction, that I’m not about to make a big speech. Though this is exactly what I plan to do. Having written to some and met up with others so I could persuade them to come, it seems appropriate for me to remind them, with a certain solemnity, why it was important that we meet up again after so many years of estrangement, and what we should talk about.
I’ll speak in French so that Dolores doesn’t feel left out. And also because it’s the language in which I find it easiest to express myself after so many years teaching in Paris.
My first words must, necessarily, be the most conciliatory. Later—over dinner or at some point on Sunday—I’ll touch on more sensitive subjects, since I feel that this is important.
“What brings us together, first and foremost,” I’ll say, “is the memory of those who are no longer with us. Mourad’s untimely death has reminded us how we should have remained closer, and how we became scattered. No one did more than Mourad to bring us together, back when we were twenty years old, and today, it is thanks to him that we are gathered together again. Thanks to him, and to Tania, who urged me to invite you all to this reunion. Which, I have to confess, I first thought of as an impossible idea, especially at such short notice. I would especially like to thank her for setting aside her grief to come here and share, not just our nostalgic tears, but our inevitable laughter. I would like to dedicate those tears and that laughter to those who are no longer with us.
“Firstly, to Bilal. Those of us who knew him will never forget him. I often think about him, about our long walks, our arguments, his eyes, his voice. Even now, after all the years that have passed, there are stories I still long to tell him, books I want to make him read, subjects I want to discuss with him, that I could only discuss with him, and I curse the circumstances that took him from us too soon. I know that Nidal feels the same. He agreed to be here with us because I mentioned his brother’s name. There are many things that separate us, but we will always be connected by the memory of a budding writer cut down by a shell in the early days of the war.
“I sometimes wonder what sort of literature he would have written if he had had time to get down to it. Did he have the talent of the poets and novelists we read together? I’d like to think so. But one thing I know for certain is that he had a writer’s temperament, and also the harebrained ideas.
“One of these harebrained ideas had to do with me. When he first heard my name, he didn’t say How’s Eve?—most people can’t resist. But he clearly decided from then on to address me as though I was that other Adam, our common ancestor, as though I carried within me all of human history.
“I could have found it tiresome, especially since he insisted on bringing it up every time we met. But I didn’t. I was flattered by this special attention. More than that, it was his insistence that caused me to reflect on the meaning of names, and the fate attached to them. We get accustomed to our name so quickly that we barely stop to think about its meaning, or the reason that we bear it.”
Then, over several paragraphs, Adam mused about the names of those who were to be gathered around the table, with a mixture of erudition and imagination, and the occasional witticism. He brought up what Hanum had said: “Naïm is another name for Paradise.” He explained that Bilal was a freed slave from Abyssinia, whose beautiful voice was so beloved by the Prophet that he made him the first muezzin; adding that, in Java, “even today, every muezzin is called Bilal.” He touched on the name Sémiramis, “legendary queen of Mesopotamia, who was—even then—worshipped as a goddess,” and, at the words “even then,” we can imagine him discreetly winking at his chatelaine; then he moved on to Mourad, “the Desired, the Coveted, a name coined by mystics to refer to the Most High, and one that medieval Europeans pronounced Amurath”; before going on to explain the Marian origins of the name Dolores, and the German etymology of Albert—noble and illustrious. Not to mention Basil, which means “king” or “emperor”—“hardly the most humble name for a monk to adopt.”
When he came to his own name, Adam initially referred the would-be orator to what he had written two days earlier.
See entry dated May 3, passage beginning with “My name encompasses all of nascent humanity, yet I belong to a humanity that is dying …”; it seems appropriate for the occasion.
But, immediately, he changed his mind.
Having reread the entry, I am not so sure that I want to read it to my friends. Not on the first day, anyway. It is not a text of opening and welcome, but one of closure and farewell. What purpose would be served by saying to them: “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. I am the attendant to the dead …”
The end is a little less sinister: “My great joy has been to find amid the floodwaters a few small islands of Levantine delicacy, or tranquil tenderness. And this, at least for the moment, has given me a new thirst for life, new reasons to struggle, perhaps even a quiver of hope. And in the long term? In the long term, all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are lost children.”
I could stop at the word “hope” and keep the rest to myself.
No. Thinking about it, I need an epilogue that is more moving, more powerful, something more likely to spark debate. I need some time to think about it, but I’ll come up with something …
Adam never wrote this other epilogue. Perhaps he was writing it in his head as the car went off the road. This is something we will only find out on the day he regains consciousness.
Will that happen? The doctors are reluctant to give an opinion. They say he will hover between life and death for some time, before tipping one way or the other.
Dolores, who had him transported to a Paris hospital by air ambulance, and is constantly at his bedside, prefers to say he is on borrowed time. “Like his country, like this planet,” she adds. “On borrowed time, like all of us.”
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On the Design
As book design is an integral part of the reading experience, we would like to acknowledge the work of those who shaped the form in which the story is housed.
Tessa van der Waals (Netherlands) is responsible for the cover design, cover typography, and art direction of all World Editions books. She works in the internationally renowned tradition of Dutch Design. Her bright and powerful visual aesthetic maintains a harmony between image and typography and captures the unique atmosphere of each book. She works closely with internationally celebrated photographers, artists, and letter designers. Her work has frequently been awarded prizes for Best Dutch Book Design.
The photograph on the cover was taken by Italian photographer Andrea Jemolo, who specializes in photographing architecture and art for magazines and publishing houses. This particular image, “Ceiling of the artrium,” shows detail from the Mosque of the Imam (formerly the Royal Mosque or Shah Mosque), which stands in Naghsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, Iran.
The cover has been edited by lithographer Bert van der Horst of BFC Graphics (Netherlands).