Khalil

by Yasmina Khadra

  “My brother Khalil, I apologize to you. We’ve all been on edge lately.”

  That didn’t mean I had just won the battle. Lyès’s retreat was nothing but a cleverly camouflaged snare. The emir was granting me the benefit of the doubt without going so far as to set aside his suspicions. I knew him too well to take his apologies at face value. Lyès wasn’t the type to let bygones be bygones or to leave anything to chance, and he was even less likely to exonerate a reformed terrorist or a person wrongfully accused. When he pretended to be turning the page, he was really transferring the same set of notes to a new sheet. And when he had someone in his sights, it was inevitable that he’d release the safety, curl his finger around the trigger, and fire. I didn’t need to be a wizard to perceive that I had just crossed the line into the unforeseeable. From that point on, starting with the embrace that crushed more than comforted me, I’d have to look under my bed two times before I could sleep soundly.

  * * *

  —

  As for Hédi, he disappeared from my view. There was no longer any question of our sharing a place, and no reason why our paths should cross.

  I still wonder if he hadn’t been assigned to me so that he could spy on me, so that he could go through my things whenever my back was turned.

  16

  Some schoolchildren, my fellow passengers, started whooping and applauding when the airplane touched down on the runway at Marrakesh Menara Airport. Beside me, a corpulent traveler—who had started chanting every time we entered an area of turbulence and hadn’t stopped until we left it—finally relaxed. He gave me a big, grateful smile, as if I were personally responsible for his safe arrival. I turned toward the window so I wouldn’t have to reciprocate. A tawny veil enveloped the city.

  Throngs of humanity besieged the counters of the border police. I calmly waited my turn. I wasn’t in a hurry. Here and there, tourists were feverishly filling out forms. An old lady rummaged in her bag, panic-stricken, until she finally put her hand on her passport and breathed a sigh of relief.

  The official at the window looked me up and down, tapped on a keyboard, took his time verifying I don’t know what, and then stamped my passport. He set me free and signaled the next person in line to come forward.

  A gym bag was my only luggage. I was heading for the exit when a customs agent asked me to open the bag. I unzipped it and he dug around inside, methodically, a little distressed at not finding anything interesting.

  Outside, the unseasonably humid heat made me take off my jacket. A young man wearing jeans slashed at the knees and a Paris Saint-Germain soccer jersey was waiting for me in the parking lot. First he consulted his smartphone, and then he started to come toward me.

  “I’m Nazim.”

  He kissed me on both cheeks, threw my bag into the trunk of his car, and invited me to get in beside him.

  “Did you have a good trip?”

  “I slept on the plane.”

  “Airplanes scare me to death. When I go to Europe, I prefer to take a boat.”

  “I’ve never taken a boat.”

  He started the engine and patted me hard on the shoulder: “You’re welcome among your people, my brother. Everything’s ready. We’ve just been waiting for you.”

  “Is that a photo of me on your phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Delete it.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Right now.”

  He stopped frowning, amused by how resolute I was.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Please.”

  He did as I asked, nonchalantly.

  “You have any others?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you get that one?”

  “Sent from Brussels via WhatsApp. I asked for it. I sure wasn’t going to wait for you inside the terminal with your name on a placard. There are lots of cameras.”

  “And there aren’t any here in the parking lot?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t have to carry a placard. Brother Khalil,” he added calmly, “I understand that you’re on high alert, but believe me, you’ve been entrusted to a tried-and-tested network. Everything’s under control.”

  I acquiesced with a nod. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “I’m borderline maniacal. It’s in my nature.”

  “There’s no reason for you to be like that anymore, Brother Khalil…Shall we go now?”

  “Ala barakatillah.”

  We left the airport.

  It was Friday, the day of the great prayer. A few vehicles, not many, were chasing one another on the road that led to Marrakesh. A blowout caused a bus to veer off the road suddenly and rattle along the shoulder. Nazim yanked the steering wheel violently to avoid the careening bus, righted the car, and continued steadily on his way.

  I let my eyes flit from place to place, left and right. I’d always felt a tug at my heartstrings whenever I returned to the Moroccan countryside. My very first memory evoked Ba-Shérif, my great-grandfather, whom I never dared to approach because he seemed to inhabit a parallel world. He was a ghostly centenarian who spent his days in his room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his Quran open on a tiny stand. In the evening, at the hour when the dog days of summer left everyone gasping for breath, he’d go outside and take the air at the foot of a carob tree, where a wicker chair stood waiting for him. He’d sit on it as on a throne and dedicate himself to contemplating the distance until nightfall. When he went off by himself like that, no one was supposed to disturb him. Everybody assumed that Ba-Shérif was communing with his absent loved ones. Intruding on him amounted to a kind of profanation. Wrapped up in a robe that had been ironed countless times, his turban flawlessly folded, holding his cane instead of a scepter, he never said a word. He had no need to say anything at all; his presence alone was enough. I spent hours observing him from afar, simultaneously intimidated and fascinated. Really, there wasn’t all that much to observe. Ba-Shérif became one with his chair and moved an arm only to chase away midges. He had light eyes before which all other eyes groveled, a collar of white beard I would have loved to stroke with my little fingers the way you stroke a chick’s down, and two immaculate pink hands that rested on his knees like offerings. He resembled a sacred figurine, left by a god to give us food for thought. Ba-Shérif was an open book. He embodied in his own individual person the entire history of the Rif region. Every wrinkle on his brow told an epic tale. After having experienced everything, merited everything, given everything, he was serenely awaiting his hour, with the satisfaction of accomplished duty. If he didn’t often speak, if he almost never moved, it was to persuade himself that he was already gone. He would meditate at the foot of his carob tree, shaded by his prayers, there where no one dared to disrupt his austerity, and where time itself appeared to have stopped. Ba-Shérif was his own king. The Lord was in him, and everything around him was Paradise. He passed away on the day when I blew out my seven candles, immobile on his wicker chair, a blissful smile on his face, his fingers clutching his prayer beads…

  Emerging from my childhood, I was caught again by an everyday smell of pastries baking in an oven. I saw myself in short pants, running to Ammi Brahim’s bakery, which was at the end of a blind alley, to buy some piping-hot galettes. My twin sister and I would race there, because the first one to arrive got the crispest pastry. I was crazy about well-done galettes, which crunched under your teeth before dissolving like butter on the tip of your tongue. Zahra could run as fast as an antelope. With a few bounds, she’d leave me far behind. It was no use taking a shortcut across some fields; I could never catch up with her. She’d be waiting for me on the bakery’s threshold, her arms proudly crossed over her chest, her nose held high, and although I’d arrive bent in half, my throat parched, my nostrils running, I’d refuse to acknowledge her victory. “You cheated.” “Cheated how?” “You didn’t count to three.” “Bad loser. I g
ave you a big head start.” Then, moved to pity by my sullen manner, and knowing I felt wounded in my young male self-esteem, she’d let me choose whichever galette I wanted.

  A little behind the village was the tribal farm, which overlooked the ancestral lands that cascaded down the northern slopes of the Kebdana Mountains. When I woke up in the morning, I loved to look out the window and admire the orchards that spread out before me as far as I could see; at night, I’d spend hours trying to catch a glimpse of the jackals that would come and prowl around our henhouses. Sometimes, hidden under a white sheet, my twin sister would burst into my room and try to frighten me. “Hoo-hooo, I’m the dead witch, back for my revenge…” “Stop scaring me, Zahra…” “Hoo-hooo, tremble, little puppy, no one will come and rescue you…” I knew it was her, but I was scared stiff…

  “If you’re thirsty, there’s a bottle of mineral water in the glove box.”

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  A kid was sitting astride a donkey as it climbed up an embankment. Not far from a hovel made of sheet metal and mud, some goats were gamboling about, closely guarded by a dog. We had goats and working animals on the farm. The first time I tried to mount a donkey, it bucked and sent me flying. Khizzou, our shepherd, a puny little boy as nimble as a monkey, made fun of me all summer long. “An ass isn’t a bicycle, you know,” he’d tell me scornfully.

  While everyone was having a siesta, rocked to sleep by the singing of the cicadas, Khizzou, my cousin Allal, and I would go snake hunting in the maquis. Khizzou knew the places where the snakes went to ground. One day, an enormous black serpent flung itself at us. As Allal jumped back, he caught his leg in a root and tumbled down into the ravine. Khizzou and I were petrified. Allal had no chance of surviving such a fall unhurt. At first, we didn’t even dare approach the edge of the precipice to assess the damage. How stunned we were when we saw Allal, five meters below us, standing up among the rocks and waving his arms to show us he wasn’t injured. That day, I should have noticed that miracles weren’t the exclusive privilege of the prophets. That would no doubt have awakened me to the bright side of things. But things have many different sides, and I couldn’t stand back far enough to spot them all.

  “So you’re returning to the boondocks for the first time since when?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, in any case, you haven’t missed very much. It’s always the same story here: the rich on one side, the cops on the other, and the poor caught in the middle…”

  At that precise moment, a group of young people in a shiny new Porsche convertible passed us, their car stereo turned up to deafening. There were two boys in the front seat, a pimply twerp and two high-spirited girls in the back. The driver thumbed his nose at us, making fun of our junker, and stepped on the gas. Nazim accelerated in an attempt to catch up with the convertible, but he only made himself ridiculous.

  I had an urge to turn around so I could take a last look at what I was leaving behind. I didn’t. Behind me, there was nothing but regrets.

  Rayan received a telephone call from his mother.

  “Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “Switch on the TV and go to a news channel.”

  Rayan pressed the remote.

  The screen lit up, showing a snake charmer who was frightening some kids. A man disguised as a belly dancer was playing for laughs. The square was teeming with people. Rayan recognized Jemaa el-Fnaa, in Marrakesh. He turned up the sound. The off-camera voice of a correspondent was talking about a terrorist attack thwarted by the Moroccan security forces. “The five terrorists, two of whom are Belgians”—Rayan nearly fell over backward when he recognized Khalil in a photograph displayed on the right side of the screen, next to a picture of a man with red hair—“were neutralized at four o’clock in the morning. In order to cause maximum damage, they had planned to blow themselves up in Jemaa el-Fnaa at an hour when the crowds would be thickest. Thanks to an anonymous tip, a massacre was avoided. Security officials have seized explosive belts, Kalashnikov rifles, and homemade hand grenades. As we speak, residences are being searched in the suburbs of the medina.” An image of a riad appeared, a traditional Moroccan house where, according to the reporter, the five terrorists had been apprehended. A detachment of commandos, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles, were bustling around three police vans and two ambulances. “In the course of the engagement between the suicide bombers and the antiterrorist units, two jihadis were wounded. According to the local authorities, there were no civilian or military casualties.” An amateur video showed the end of the operation: some individuals trying to hide their faces while being ushered into the vans.

  “Can you believe it?” Rayan’s mother cried at the other end of the line.

  Rayan wasn’t listening to her.

  He let himself fall into the armchair behind him and grabbed his head.

  * * *

  —

  A few weeks later, back from a training course in Geneva, Rayan found in his mail an envelope whose stamp bore an image of King Mohammed VI of Morocco. He opened it at once. Inside, there was a postcard of a palm grove. On the back, under a heading, three lines written in black ink with a felt-tip pen:

  Moka wasn’t wrong.

  The real duty is to let live.

  I decided to “wait until spring.”

  —Khalil

  Rayan was intrigued by the heading: “D minus 1,” thickly printed and underlined three times. He sat at his computer and typed “Marrakesh terror attack.” An interminable list of newspaper and other articles appeared on the screen. Rayan clicked on the first link. It was a good one. Photographs of the five terrorists occupied half the page. Rayan checked the date of the operation in which the Moroccan security forces had thwarted the attack on Jemaa el-Fnaa square: March 23. He turned the envelope over. The Marrakesh postmark indicated that the stamp had been canceled on March 22.

  Rayan interlaced his fingers under his chin and stared at his computer screen for a long time.

  “You could have spared yourself all that,” he heard himself say.

  A Note About the Author

  Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of the former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul. He adopted his wife’s name as a pseudonym to avoid military censorship. He is the author of more than twenty books, at least six of which have been published in English, among them The Swallows of Kabul and The Attack, both short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He has twice been honored by the Académie Française, winning both the Prix d’Académie, médaille de vermeil (2001) and Grand Prix de Littérature (2011). He lives in France.

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