The Long Way Back

by Fuad al-Takarli

  That night when we were together, Fuad and I, I had been at the peak of my arrogance, confident not in my own strength but in his weakness, and reveling in this confidence. He was unable to get close to her, to possess her, for the simple reason that he knew it would destroy him. In the smoky hall where we sat surrounded by the continuous comings and goings of the clients, whores, and pimps, I watched him intently, mentally totting up the signs of weakness, hesitation, and fear in him. That dear friend! I was almost happy at the thought that I could do what he was afraid of doing, because he knew that his life would never be the same again if he possessed her in this way. I was euphoric because my soulmate was suffering. How despicable can a person be!

  As I stood wearily in the shadows by the uppermost branches of the olive tree, these thoughts terrified me. In this moment of truth I was afraid of discovering other things which might be the death of me. The light was faint in her room, and she was far away from me. She had formed a relationship with him, agreed to it because I had said nothing to her. Then they had met with this calamity because I had said nothing. Could this really be how things had happened? Was it possible that I had been involved? It was true that she hadn’t talked to me since that evening on the roof. I didn’t know why I was thinking of all this now, What about Midhat? What possible reason could he have had for choosing to distance himself from her of all people? Was there really any connection between out conversation and Midhat’s action?

  I was scared as I struggled to remember everything she had said that evening on the roof at sunset. I hadn’t been listening to the individual words, only to the sound of her voice, whose music set my heart on fire. I had wanted to fly above the sky with her, leaving all these different worlds of mine behind me. The thing was, she had said nothing to me. And I had understood nothing and continued to understand nothing.

  I looked across the courtyard towards her room, feeling desolate. She seemed like the last beacon of hope in my life. After her there was only darkness and futility. I thought I glimpsed a shadow crossing briefly in front of the dim light in her room, just for a moment, the blink of an eye. Was she still awake then, like me?

  I was afraid of everything, of her, the world, the very fact of being alive, and vet she was my only refuge. I advanced very slowly, holding on to the wooden balustrade. She had acquired the keys to my soul, to my destruction and also, possibly, to my salvation. Total silence enveloped me as I crept hesitantly towards her. She wouldn’t slam the door in my face, because I wasn’t demanding anything of her. I would stand on the margin of her world purely to ask questions. I stumbled as I went past my room, but held tightly to the balustrade and paused, mustering my strength for the last step or two. Her door was ajar, open and closed at the same time, not giving the impression that there was somebody inside. I moved laboriously towards it, and a pale column of light fell across my face. I saw her notice me. She was sitting on the long couch in the corner facing the door still in her black dress, her arms folded, looking at me. Once I had pushed the door open, I remained frozen on the threshold. Standing before her, I saw nothing clearly but felt violent emotions welling up within me. She stared at me, her eyes bright yellow through her long black lashes.

  “Sorry” I whispered. “Are the sleeping pills here?”

  She shook her head and went on looking at me. Saying these words to her had tired me out. I stood there waiting for her to speak. Her mouth was shut and strands of her blonde hair played around it.

  “The sleeping tablets? Where are they?” I asked.

  “I don’t know” Her voice was as cold as the blade of a knife.

  “Why are you keeping them here?”

  She seemed to straighten up slightly. “I told you, I don’t have any sleeping tablets. Go and look in the medicine cupboard downstairs. Why come to me?”

  I hesitated, then said, “You’ve got them. You took them from your mother. She said so. You took the whole bottle.”

  She closed her eyes for a few moments then let her hands drop crossly into her lap and tilted her head to the right. “What are you talking about? What are you trying to say?”

  She was no longer looking at me. I noticed that my voice trembled all the time I was speaking; there was a catch in it, no firmness. I was silent like the world around us. I felt that I had reached the dividing line between us by talking to her like this. I was anxious, as I had been for ages, but now I understood why; only now and because I was standing in front of her like a beggar asking her wordlessly to give me some meaning in my life, to give me her life. She knew very well that my words had other implications, and I couldn’t deny this.

  Suddenly she looked up at me with her large, captivating eyes, bright but troubled. “No. I don’t have such thoughts.” Her voice was sad, her expression, her whole demeanor. “I’m not ready to die, if that’s what you mean.” She looked away from me and was silent for a time, then continued, “You have a strange image of me, Karim. You always have had. I don’t know why Maybe you’re influenced by my physical appearance. Maybe you have feelings you yourself aren’t aware of. I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly to give these last words the painful emphasis she intended. “But I’m one of those girls who don’t have any luck, whom God is displeased with. I must have committed some sins without knowing it. But God has to have mercy on me in the end and let me forget.”

  “Forget?”

  “Why not?” Her tone was sharp and full of anger. “I’m the same as other people. Perhaps I don’t have . . .” She paused. “Perhaps I don’t have any hope of a future, but . . .”

  For some reason I interrupted her. “Munira.” Her name was a song in my mouth, a glad shout from my heart. I couldn’t stop myself saying it.

  She sat back slightly and turned her face away from me. My eyes fell on her chest, on the two mounds rising and falling a little faster than usual.

  “There’s obviously no point in talking plainly,” she said. Then, after a moment, “Please, Karim, I’m tired. This can’t come as a surprise to you. We’re all tired. But everything has its limits. There are people who can put up with . . .” She stopped with a perplexed air, rested her chin on her hand as if she was waiting, and looked sideways. She appeared to have lost her train of thought all of a sudden, and to have no desire to retrieve it.

  “Munira.” This time I was calling her, trying to make her listen to me. “Munira.”

  She looked up at me and I saw her radiant face, the face of my beloved, far away from me.

  “Don’t leave me alone. Don’t go, Munira.”

  The movement of her eyebrows betrayed faint signs of astonishment. She bowed her head and her hair hung in heavy clumps round her face. “Where would I go if I left? Don’t you know I’ve become the family’s property now? Registered in your name?”

  “Don’t talk like that. You know perfectly well what I mean.”

  “Please, please. I don’t know anything.”

  “No. You know. You know how I feel about you, Munira.”

  “You can keep your feelings to yourself. Do you understand?” Her eyes blazed. Between one sentence and the next she had become an angry lioness. She raised her hand decisively, putting up a barrier between us. “Keep them to yourself. Don’t bring me into your personal affairs. You’ve got no connection to me. Do you understand?”

  Her voice, despite its fierce tone, was not loud, but it tore at my entrails.

  “I’ve had enough of feelings,” she went on, “and I don’t want you bringing me into your life. Get away from me. Leave me in peace. I’m tired. Tired of all of you. I don’t want anything. Just leave me alone.”

  Although her hands were trembling and she was breathing somewhat unevenly, her voice was steady. I felt confused by what she said, but had been expecting it. She didn’t understand that I wanted nothing from her.

  “Munira, I just thought I might be able to help you. I’m sorry. I just thought...” I sounded more desperate than I expected to and stoppe
d. She remained quite still as if she hadn’t heard, her face turned away from me. For some reason I imagined she was on the point of collapsing or shouting uncontrollably.

  “Munira, please,” I said. “Don’t be hard on me. You’re the most important person in my life. But I’m weak and indecisive. I don’t know what to do. Believe me, Munira. You’re all I’ve got now. Don’t let me lose hope.”

  “You’re not weak. You’re like me and everybody else here. Warped and sick.” Her eyes were cold, her face pinched. “I knew this. I knew it only too well and I wanted to stay on my own, on the margins, but none of you would let me. He wouldn’t let me. He was sicker than me. He was weaker and more warped than either me or you, and he was a coward.” Hatred overflowed from her face, from the sockets of her eyes, as she spat her words out in a controlled frenzy. “You’re afraid of him. But I’m not afraid of anyone. You’re all cowards. You don’t know who needs help, who’s sincere, who’s having bad luck, whose world’s falling down around their ears. You’re cowards and fools. He didn’t want to understand, didn’t want to know who was guilty and who was innocent. And now you! Coming to tell me that you’re weak! As if I didn’t know!”

  I clutched on to the edge of the bed beside me and leaned against it. I was trembling. Every atom in my body was trembling. I couldn’t bear the hatred of the woman I lived for. “Don’t talk like that, Munira. Please don’t talk like that.”

  “Why are you here then? What do you want? If you don’t want me to talk, what do you want me to do? What do you want from me? Tell me. Do you want mc to die? No. I’m not going to kill myself. The time’s past for that. And you’re the last person who has the right to ask me for anything.”

  “I don’t want anything from you, Munira. I don’t want anything. But give me a chance. Give me a chance to live. Don’t ruin out life for no reason.”

  “What life! Whose life am I ruining? Are you mad?” She looked angrily at me.

  I wanted to move close to her, but something in her face stopped me. A slight reddening of her eyes, that tremble in her lower lip, an indefinable change in her appearance: a sort of urgency and uncharacteristic hardness on her face. I went on watching her, feeling that I was slowly being torn to pieces, but was unable to escape.

  “Don’t make me have to repeat myself,” she said. “I’ve told you I’m really tired.” She paused, then went on, “You have to understand, there’s nothing between us. And there never will be. I don’t want any more like him. Leave me in peace. I can’t take any more of this kind of life. They’re always asking questions, talking. They all think I’m keeping a secret from them. They criticize me and blame me when they’re so cowardly and stupid themselves.”

  “Please, Munira.”

  She took out a white handkerchief and wiped her mouth with it. “None of them understands that there might be other people who arc-unhappy or have bad luck. They’re only interested in their own rights. They’re crazy! Who gets their rights in this world?”

  Without realizing what I was doing, I knelt down at her feet. The tears were flowing from her intensely yellow eyes, but she ignored them, fixing first on one point, then another, and letting her eyes travel over my face as I knelt before her.

  “He didn’t want to understand,” she went on. “He died without understanding. He wouldn’t deign to listen to a single word, and I thought . . .” She gestured, the handkerchief still in her hand. “I said maybe he’s different. Maybe if he knows my situation he’ll be sympathetic.”

  She pursed her lips in a gesture of scorn and despair, then I saw het take in the fact that I was kneeling inanely in front of her. “You’re all cowards, Karim, because none of you is capable of pity. Even when you know that wrong’s been done, you’re not interested in who’s innocent and who’s been wronged.” She hid her tear-stained face in her hands, sighed vehemently and whispered, “I’m going to go crazy He told me he loved me, then died without a word, or a sign. Why was he so hard on me?”

  Like her, I was crying, as I contemplated her mass of hair at close quarters and her delicate white fingers. Both of us were confronting a closed door. I realized that now, after listening to her, as if I hadn’t known it all before.

  I stood up, put my hand out, and gently touched her damp forehead. She did not react, but continued to sob, her body shaking and rocking convulsively. I stepped back slowly and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind me.

  The night was quiet. Leaning against the wooden balustrade, I looked around me in the darkness. I had nothing more to lose. To be aware of the beginning of the end was an odd feeling, one which not everybody had the chance to experience. My mind was calm, as if I was anaesthetized. I could see nothing ahead of me and felt that, with her help, I could perhaps understand the sense of this end.

  Chapter

  Twelve(2)

  Brief Shining and Survival

  They realized in a vague way, he and the old woman Atiya and the Hajji, that something was over. The rain fell drearily, the clock showed just after three-thirty and the explosions continued uninterrupted, with varying degrees of intensity Earlier they had eaten dry bread dipped in watery gravy, then they took refuge in the little room overlooking the courtyard, making desultory conversation, united by fear and a suspicion that they were approaching the end. Midhat didn’t want to tell them what was going on in his mind and what he was trying to decide, allowing them to feel that he was with them in their time of trouble. They were sitting drinking their bitter-tasting tea in the damp room that dull Saturday afternoon, when a strange silence descended on them. The radio orchestra, with its distinctive beat, had suddenly withdrawn. leaving the arena clear for the insane dialogue of war. The roar of the instruments of death became clearer and louder. The Hajji sat on his bed wrapped in a thick green blanket. He had taken it upon himself to recount to nobody in particular the story of his long life, which he had begun suddenly the night before and not yet finished. Midhat had woken up shortly after noon the previous day and found that Husayn was not in his usual place. He had obviously left the house while Midhat was asleep and not returned. Midhat had sat up in bed, listening to the constant reverberation of the machine-gun tire, then got up, washed his face, and joined the old couple downstairs. He found them there like two rats in a trap. Nobody spoke. They made do with exchanging looks in silence, and after a short time he began to feel restless in the gloomy little room and had the idea of going for a walk around the neighborhood. This soon evolved into an urgent desire to escape his tortured thoughts. Having told them he would be back in half an hour, he wandered aimlessly through the streets and alleyways, his mind empty, then gradually became overwhelmed by the situation around him. The people in the street were at war, busy preparing for a long blockade. When they prevented him from going anywhere near the exit points his one idea was to gauge his chances of escaping. The ways through were all blocked. Bullets grazed the walls, spraying chunks of stone about and leaving deep holes behind. People sheltered in corners and doorways. Some houses were empty It did not occur to him as he moved amongst these people, who were behaving in an apparently organized way to think of himself as one of them, even though for some obscure reason he was sharing their unknown fate. He was afraid, but anxious that this fear should not be his sole motivation for trying to survive.

  He returned after less than an hour, walking wearily beneath the wooden overhangs of the windows. The air was spring like, full of the fresh smell of greenness; it reminded him of burying his face in damp green grass warmed by the hot sun. He saw her among the people hurrying past him, wrapped in her abaya, the right side of her face partly showing and some strands of her hair falling on to her forehead. For a moment he was terrified and his heart pounded. She was walking agitatedly apparently undecided which way to go. He wanted to retreat or hide from her, but she turned round suddenly and the beautiful image in his head was lost in the mass of imperfections in this girl’s face. The nose, eyes, chin all pointed to a completely different p
erson. How could he have been so mistaken?

  He was still upset when he went back into the house. They received him as if he was the bearer of all the world’s secrets, sitting in a fog of cigarette smoke, huddled round the brazier’s dying embers drinking one-glass of tea after another. He reported what he had seen as he drank his tea, feeling depression replace the emotion he had felt when he mistook another girl for her. The old woman asked him whether Husayn was going to be late coming back. The sound of shots filled the air and almost prevented them from hearing what each other was saying some of the time. He didn’t answer her.

  “A real celebration, janim” said the Hajji.

  This mixture of Turkish and Arabic had made him laugh bitterly He still remembered it now as he watched the rain falling dismally. It had been the very beginning of the Hajji’s story, which he had then kept up for many hours the previous evening.

  “In the town of Al-Kut, janim. At the siege of Al-Kut. Your humble servant was there. We’d come from Qasr Shirin to Sibiliyat. An English general, Townsend, the bastard, was under siege with fife . . . fifteen thousand people. Fifteen luk janim.” His face worked violently as he talked, and every now and then his small eyes shone through his dense thatch of white hair. “Half dead. We arrived half-dead. I rested on my arms and slept, janim, on the ground like a donkey, on the public highway I nearly got trampled on by horses. But thank God. The artillery blazed away for two hours. We were in the trench. For two hours the artillery blazed away. Attack. Hand-to-hand fighting. We shouted, Allahu akbar. Allahu akbar,’ and struck. We bayoneted the English in their stomachs. An Indian queer pulled his trousers down and said, ‘I’m a Muslim. I’m circumcised.’ Poof! Did he think we were born yesterday? We stabbed him in the stomach and plenty more like him.”

  He gestured with his arm, demonstrating how you bayoneted someone, his features peculiarly savage.

  Midhat had wanted to go up to his room, but had decided to stay with them in the end, just as he was doing now, watching the sad rain falling on this gloomy Saturday at twilight. The Hajji chattered on endlessly for hours through the rumble of gunfire. As he listened he was surprised by the impression that came to him unbidden, influenced by the Hajji’s stories, that some obscure nameless force—Life, God, call it what you like—was playing arbitrarily with vast crowds of human beings, driving them along for thousands of miles from all directions, bringing them together to fight each other, letting some of them be killed and leaving the others to suffer, go hungry, wander aimlessly over the earth. In the course of these violent and capricious mass migrations, the individual understood nothing and floated like a straw on the surface of a river in flood; if he was spared all the dangers, he was left wondering why he should have been chosen as a player in this game which pleased no one.