I was aware of my insignificance and didn’t care.
I had no more ambition than a stray dog.
So what was I to do now?
In a few days, I’d be flying to Marrakesh.
Previously, when I’d hear or see references to the greatest of solitudes, I didn’t imagine it as infinite as the void. And look at me now, all alone, absolutely alone, face-to-face with my responsibilities, like a grain of dust in outer space. Terrestrial attraction exerted no influence on me, nor did weightlessness. I was powerless before my conscience—that is, before an opaque mirror. Was that the greatest of solitudes? To have a crucial decision to make and not to know how to reach it? I hadn’t been in that state of mind in Paris. Back then, I was already in the next world.
But now, doubt invited itself to my table, and I prepared, as they say, “to eat my own flesh.”
“Return to earth for a while, Khalil.”
Hédi was in my room. I hadn’t heard him come home. Recently, I hadn’t been all that conscious of my surroundings. I made my way through crowds and down streets like a sleepwalker in his night, a spelunker at the bottom of an abyss. The previous day, I’d gotten into a taxi without realizing it.
“I’ve been talking to you for a good two minutes.”
“I’m sorry, I was very deep in thought.”
He pulled a chair over and straddled it, his arms crossed on its back. I didn’t like the way he was scrutinizing me. I had the impression he was violating my privacy.
“What were you thinking about?”
“The suicide attacker at Manneken Pis, the guy with the knife…”
He raised an eyebrow, intrigued: “What is it about that story that bothers you, Khalil?”
“I believe it looks more like a suicide than a feat of arms. Don’t you think so?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s not normal, what he did. In broad daylight, out in the open, he attacks policemen armed to the teeth, and his weapons are a pocketknife and a fake bomb belt…I’ve spent the morning considering this poor guy’s actions, trying to understand them, and I think they had more to do with despair than with conviction. I wonder if he chose to get himself killed rather than kill other people.”
Hédi sprang to his feet and pushed the chair aside to eliminate any obstacle between us. A repulsive expression, a grimace of outrage, distorted his mouth.
He said, through vibrating jaws, “Your words are shocking.”
“I’m just asking myself some questions, that’s all.”
“Your questions are doubly shocking. First of all, you don’t call a martyr a ‘poor guy.’ You’re in a better position than anyone to measure the significance of his act. Is it your sister’s accidental death that’s affecting your judgment? The sorrow her passing has inflicted on you—if your mission in Paris had succeeded, you would have inflicted the same sorrow on dozens of families. Would you have felt remorse for that? Of course not. There’s collateral damage in every war. Don’t let grief pollute your soul. What does our pain matter if the world only becomes better through it, more just, healthier? We exorcise our old demons by faith, remember? You have no idea what a wreck I was before I stepped into a mosque. I had no word to say about my life that my life didn’t contaminate. And look at what yesterday’s lost soul has become: a savior. The miracle has taken place, and from now on, we’re its instruments.”
“So we can’t ask questions now?”
“Not just any questions,” he said and stormed out of my room in a fury.
I heard him go out onto the landing, cursing as he went.
I got up in my turn and went over to the window. There wasn’t anybody on the curb across the way.
I thought again about the Manneken Pis suicide attacker. What was his message? Had he tried to save his soul by sparing others’ lives? I put myself in his place, striving to figure out his real motivations, and curiously enough, I felt less disoriented in his skin than I did in my own.
What had I gone to Paris to prove? What was I going to rectify in Marrakesh? The fact that the prophets haven’t succeeded in chastening us is evidence that frustration is profoundly human—the best among us are those who try to overcome it. Anger’s a headlong flight, the harsh rejection of our incapacity to put things in perspective, the outraged failure of good sense. Everything that eludes our control infects our reason and only throws the milestones of our perdition into deeper shadow. Wars are nothing but wastes of time, and the exalted damned are accomplices in their misfortune. Where was my own misfortune located, now that I’d attained the equivalent of all the furies and all the denials, all the certainties and all the disillusions? What would be the point of my suicide? To spoil the dreams of others because I’d taken a dislike to my own?
I had come to the end of things, exhausted, pitiful, and embittered. I no longer had the strength to demand anything at all, neither of myself nor of anyone else. Since my inner circle had thinned out, there would be no one chiming in to soothe my soul. The two people I cherished weren’t there anymore. Driss’s death had left a chasm in me, and Zahra’s the darkness that covered it.
Sometimes great causes are the results of wishful thinking; they’re born in a glimmer of hope, prolonged in the groans of the oppressed, affirmed in the promise of a better day. Paradoxically, while they’re building up their forces, they start sinning by excess and raising the ante so high as to make a claim for the ecstasy of self-flagellation. What in the beginning was blessed is now cursed; what was praised is smeared and abjured. Yesterday’s oaths become summonses for us, and he who was seeking salvation catches himself running toward his ruin. What position should I have taken up in regard to all that? I didn’t see myself anywhere in the catastrophe. Neither in the flames of my own cremation nor in the dazzling light of the enlightened. Perpetrator or victim, accomplice or simple pawn, I was in any case more to be pitied than condemned. If a condemned man had one chance in a thousand to enjoy a redemption after having served his time, there’s no rehabilitation in store for the man who is to be pitied, because of the contempt he’ll arouse until the end of his life.
Tomorrow I’ll go prowling around the police station in a way that’s sure to get me noticed. Then I’ll post myself on the opposite sidewalk and won’t move until the policeman on duty finds my attitude suspicious. When he starts to get inquisitive, I’ll move my jacket aside so that he can see the knife under my belt. The moment he puts his hand on his weapon, I’ll brandish mine and cry “Allāhu akbar” and charge him, so he’ll have to shoot me. I hope I’ll be dead before I hit the ground. I don’t care what interpretation the media will assign to my behavior, or what Lyès and his coterie will think of me. Whatever happens, I’ll no longer be subjected to the contempt of some or the denunciations of others. After all, when you haven’t known how to live your life, you have no right to complain about what will never come again.
* * *
—
I had a sudden urge to hear a voice other than the one wailing in my head. I picked up my phone. My hand shook as I touched the keypad. I waited and waited. As soon as Yezza recognized my voice, she hung up. I called her back. Five times in a row. I was resolved to spend the night doing that, if necessary.
Eventually, she cried out, “What do you want?”
“We have to talk.”
“We have nothing to say to each other.”
“Wrong. I have something to say to you.”
“I don’t want to hear anything.”
“You know that’s not true. Otherwise you would have gotten rid of your landline.”
There was a silence, and then she began to whine: “Why did it happen to her and not to me? Why did God call her, her, so young and so beautiful, instead of calling me, me, a disappointed old maid? I’m the one whose only wish is to be done with this bitch of an existence.”
“It’s fate, Yezza.”
“Fuck fate. What are we, really? Numbers in a game of chance? What the hell is it we’re supposed to do on earth, eh? Make the people dearest to us suffer? I detest life, I detest what it represents, and I detest what it hides. I’m mad at the whole world.”
“It’s none of the world’s doing. It’s just the way things are, that’s all.”
I heard her sniffle.
“What do you want from me?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“That’s your problem, and I couldn’t care less. There’s no way for you to wash the blood off your hands. I hate you. I hate you with all my might. You can’t conceive of how much I hate you. I should have turned your goddamn belt over to the police. Yeah, that’s what I should have done, right away. I blame myself for not doing that. Your place is in an asylum. Prison isn’t made for madmen.”
“I’d like for you to tell Mother I love her.”
“Tell her yourself. Besides, I doubt that you have a heart. You’re nothing but a monster, just like those nutcases who masquerade as your brothers.”
“Tell her I regret that I—”
She hung up on me.
“Who are you talking to?”
Hédi was standing in the entrance hall, his fists on his hips. It was like he could pass through walls.
“You’re not supposed to talk to anybody at all.”
“What’s it to you?”
“It just so happens to concern me. There’s nothing ambiguous in my orders. You’re to use this phone only to receive calls. And there are only two authorized callers: Lyès and me. Nobody else. Are you trying to screw up our plans, or what?”
He leaned toward me. “Your eyes are red. Were you blubbering?”
“Get out of my way.”
He grabbed my wrist aggressively. “What regrets were you talking about? And who was on the other end of the line? If you don’t want this mission, you pass on it. Nobody’s indispensable. There’s a long line of volunteers.”
“Unless you want to wind up with only one arm, Hédi, don’t even think about putting your hand on me again.”
“Wow! There’s something wrong with you, my man.”
“Let go of me, damn it.”
He slung me against the wall. The movement he made was full of cold animosity. “I’m going back outside for some fresh air. There’s a bad smell in this shithole this evening.”
“Great idea, beat it.”
He shot me a look that went all the way through me, like a sword thrust, wiped his nose on his sleeve, started to say something else, thought better of it, and left the apartment, nearly splintering the door behind him.
* * *
—
Lyès had my knife firmly clutched in his fist. His eyebrows low, his jaws clenched, he was trying in vain to keep down the anger welling up in him. In the silence of the room, his respiration recalled the breathing of an asthmatic.
Hédi was at his side. As a prosecution witness.
We were in a farmhouse about thirty kilometers north of Brussels. Through the window, I could see fields veiled in mist. The sky was a steely gray. Fat clouds were preparing to discharge their bile onto the fuming countryside.
“You disappoint me, Khalil. I feel such sorrow. We discussed at length the calamity that befell you. I warned you to take care. Don’t let doubt distort your convictions, I said. I told you the Evil One would take advantage of the smallest weakness in your spirit to corrupt you…”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at, Lyès.”
“And yet it’s so obvious.”
“Not to me.”
“Who were you talking to on the phone?” Hédi asked, pressing me.
“What’s your problem?”
“You’re not answering the question,” Lyès reprimanded me.
“My older sister hasn’t been at all well since my twin sister died. She’s tried to kill herself twice. I called to see if I could lift her spirits.”
“Zahra isn’t dead. She’s among the blessed in the eternal gardens. Your family should rejoice for her.”
“He was in tears,” Hédi persisted. “He’s the one who wasn’t at all well. He was saying he regretted—”
“You expected a celebration? What would you have done in my place?”
“Exactly what I’d been ordered to do. And our emir’s instructions were clear. You didn’t have the right to call anyone, no matter who.”
That morning, two men had intercepted me as I was leaving the apartment building. They’d searched me and confiscated my knife—they knew I was carrying one—before pushing me into a car. They weren’t rough, just strict, like highly trained soldiers. I hadn’t felt a need to resist them. One of them drove, the other sat behind me on the backseat. I didn’t ask them where they were taking me. They had no obligation to tell me. And besides, what was the point of knowing where we were going? I’d taken some sleeping pills; I was groggy and indifferent to whatever was awaiting me.
The two men had remained silent the whole trip. They looked straight ahead, as if fascinated by something in the distance. The horizon, however, was nothing but dull gray fog. The plain seemed to be in the doldrums on that sunless, joyless day.
“Did anyone twist your arm, Khalil? I proposed a mission to you, and you accepted the mission. I asked you whether it suited you, and you said it did. You know perfectly well that you have the right to refuse any operation you don’t feel up to carrying out. Our fighters are volunteers, Khalil. They’re free to decide and responsible for their choices. But once they commit themselves, they don’t back down.”
“What does this have to do with the phone call, Lyès? What are we talking about?”
“I’m talking about you.”
He’d tried to make his cry sound as implacable as a rifle shot.
I kept a cool head. So that I could think, quickly and precisely. If I wanted to get out of my predicament without suffering too much damage, I had to find the right counterattack. I let my eyes rest on Hédi, giving him a look I tried to make both irritated and uncompromising. Then I turned to the emir, quaking with indignation, and pointed a finger at my roommate: “What did our Tunisian friend tell you? And where did he come from, anyway? Just a few months ago, if that, he was a complete stranger. Then he shows up one day, and now he’s teaching you who I am. So where are we, Lyès? You and I grew up in the same gutter, remember? And some interloper comes along and makes me a stranger in my own group.”
“We learn every day,” the emir said. “And it’s never enough for us to be sure about what we think we know.”
“Is that a verdict, Lyès?”
“We’re not there yet.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because of this!” he thundered, brandishing my switchblade.
“Is that your Exhibit A?”
My composure appeared to disconcert him for a fraction of a second, but Lyès had a way of taking things in hand. His fist tightened on the handle of the knife. “Can you tell me what you planned to do with this thing?”
“What do you think?”
“You planned to attack a soldier or a cop in the street…who would then have shot you down like a dog, and you would have died for nothing.” He offered me the knife. “If that was your project, go ahead, stab me.”
“Why would I stab you?”
“To finish me off, that’s why. Haven’t you just broken my heart?”
“It’s you who’ve just broken my heart, Lyès. I thought you had some personal consideration for me, I thought I didn’t have anything more to prove, I thought you had as much confidence in me as you had in yourself, and here you are, grilling me like a common suspect…”
“So why the knife?”
“I’ve always carried a knife on me. I d
on’t see why that’s suddenly a problem today.”
There was a crushing silence.
Hédi lowered his eyes.
Lyès kept his riveted on mine. I didn’t turn away. I knew I absolutely must not turn away. Showing the slightest weakness would have terrible consequences. I discerned in his motionless gaze the questions that were flashing through his mind at dizzying speed. Nothing showed on his face. I waited for a feature to relax, or for a chink to reveal what he was pondering, but Lyès remained as inexpressive as a block of granite.
Then, after an eternity, his lip trembled. He said, in a suddenly conciliatory tone, “What have you done with my instructions, Khalil? I forbade you two to carry a weapon of any kind. Once ethnic profiling gets started, it has a tendency to increase, and that’s what’s going on. Imagine if you get stopped and frisked. Your stupidity will land you in a police station, pressing your inky fingertips onto paper cards. Is that what you want? To be indexed and presumed poisonous, like a botanical specimen?”
I didn’t say anything. As far as I could tell, the examination of conscience wasn’t over yet. Lyès was giving me some slack so he could trap me better.
He spread out his arms. I didn’t budge. He was waiting for me to come to him, to make myself small and creep under his arm. I stood my ground. He considered and considered me, shaking his head, and then he moved first and came to me. He flattened me against his bearish chest. His burning breath seared my neck.
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