Sarab

by Raja Alem

  Turmoil overwhelmed Sayfullah, and he rushed to attack: “You’re a sinful demon, I know that much.” He spoke in a tense voice, betraying weakness.

  Raphael took advantage of it: “Can you explain why you destroyed the television yesterday when you need to know what happened to your friends outside?”

  They looked at each other, the traces of desperation evident to both. Fissures were gradually widening in their hearts while each tried to penetrate the defenses of the other, one aiming to escape, the other aiming for martyrdom and a throne in Heaven.

  “Television is the false messiah,” Sayfullah said. “It’s the secret agent of you Westerners, and you use it to invade the world and program our people with your iniquitous messages. You make us addicted to the temptations of naked women and devilish music and promises of eternal Heaven on earth. You use it to train people and enlist them in your army against our creed, and those who are naive and whose hearts or faith are weak fall easily into your trap, while our destiny is to fight your deceit. Everything shown on this screen is nothing but a delusion you have fabricated to ensnare us.”

  “Do you really consider yourself worthy of Heaven while you hide here and do nothing but threaten me, instead of continuing the fight out there and being defeated with your comrades?”

  Raphael knew he was taking a chance by challenging Sayfullah in this way, but the young rebel suddenly sank to the ground, the ultimate expression of despair and exhaustion.

  “You sound like a frustrated mother,” Sayfullah said.

  Raphael hadn’t expected this sudden change in tone, but he hurriedly encouraged it: “Yes, our mothers’ words are probably the first nails in our coffins. If they don’t believe in us, it distorts us for life.” Raphael sensed an inward shift in Sayfullah as his cruelty subsided, leaving room for cynical indifference.

  “My mother raised me by wrapping me in white, like a shroud. She couldn’t stand anyone who stayed in the shadows.”

  The bitterness in Sayfullah’s words didn’t escape Raphael. “No?”

  “It’s beyond belief, how strong my mother was. She’s the type that can’t die.” Sayfullah’s confession was almost inaudible. “She was molded from the kind of steel that can’t bend. Or perhaps it can only bend in God’s hands.” The insolence with which he was treating his mother terrified him, but he couldn’t control himself. “Now, finally, my poor mother is freed from the greatest of her sins: the shadow she raised as the twin to her favorite child, the shadow that mourned over her grave for days in agony, wondering whether she had been tormented by raising that ghost, that nothing.” Sayfullah stopped talking suddenly, his eyes glinting madly as he looked straight into his mother’s grave.

  “Was it a curse to be born from a steel womb, the ghost of a steel twin?” Raphael took no chances in imitating Sayfullah’s words, fearing to shatter the crystalline transparency, so very unexpected, of his dialogue with himself.

  “You know, twins are the cruelest creation. You share the fate of a single person, and most of the time one gets the best of everything, and the other becomes a freak.” Sayfullah kept talking to himself. “We mustn’t burn the dead with our tears. That is how we were raised; they hammered it into us that wailing scalds the dead in the graves. Why did I wail so much? Did I really mean to burn her with every tear and every sob?” His eyes wandered over the objects around him in an attempt to avoid the open grave in front of him, the fire he had touched to his mother’s body. “Dying as a martyr would have been like a medal for her. But I chose to escape like this, so I’ve deprived her of a medal yet again.” Immediately, Sayfullah regretted having allowed these words, all this hatred and rage, to escape from their prison. He hurriedly restrained himself and amended his admission. “May God punish me for this disrespect.”

  Realizing it was his turn, Raphael succumbed to confession. “You could say that my mother was also an iron woman. She killed my desire for all women. Toughness in a woman is a matter of pride for us—a mark of equality between the sexes. But a mother’s cruelty turns us into distorted creatures nothing like our real selves.” Raphael resisted a sudden burst of rage, suppressed since his youth, at his family’s allusions to the femininity he had shown as a teenager. There was more sensitivity and grace in him than femininity, perhaps as a reaction to his mother’s controlling personality; but even so, they tormented him with their insinuations.

  “Mujan and the people in Wajir, the settlement where I was born, all know that they nursed at the ghoul’s breast; that’s why every attempt to wean us from this milk, and to get us used to civilization in the settlement, has failed.” Sayfullah paused, listening to the echo of his words, which he had never dared to say out loud before. “The ghoul’s milk creates iron women, but they exist behind a veil; they only dare to reveal their iron faces to their children. Now I can feel my mother’s soul burning with her curses, she never stopped cursing me and the fate that had allotted her such a child.”

  “After my father, my mother moved onto three other men,” Raphael said. “None of them was able to live with her so they pulled away, and we paid the price.”

  The resentment of Raphael’s confession infected Sayfullah. Seemingly incapable of curbing his ramblings, he declared bitterly, “In the desert, they sent us out to nurse from the ghoul, the ferocious spirits that roam the sand, so that their milk would make our hearts into iron. I was lost in the desert for a whole night and they found me in the morning, suckling from a gazelle. I failed where my iron twin succeeded; there is no doubt he drank the blood of the ghoul.”

  “Your iron twin?” As soon as Raphael asked the question, he realized his mistake.

  Sayfullah twitched like he was waking up from a nap, realizing he had veered off course. He threw Raphael a look of doubt that was more like hatred, tempted to kill him then and there to obliterate everything he had revealed about himself. But instead of picking up his gun, Sayfullah went out to the terrace and stood there staring at the sky. He was waiting for a shooting star to annihilate him and end his torture, or for a miracle to descend on him.

  A faint creak turned his attention again to the room, and he remembered what the old men in Wajir had declared: “When the furniture creaks, an angel is present.” He turned to inspect the room. He sighed, his aching heart plunging as it sought to escape him and his burden.

  “What is stopping the angels from touching my heart?” he said. “But what can I expect—a heart molded by gazelle’s milk can only be crushed.” He had no doubt the creak came from the boxes of severed doll heads.

  Raphael followed Sayfullah’s tentative gaze and took advantage of it to continue chipping away at Sayfullah’s confidence and composure. “They’re watching you. You know very well that they never stopped. Boxes can’t cover Satan’s eyes.”

  Sayfullah didn’t smile; he took Raphael’s sarcasm seriously. He hurried into the kitchen, unearthed a sharp knife from the drawers, and went back to the room. Wrenching open the boxes, he began to stab the plastic heads one after another, gouging out the eyes. He gathered the eyes into a blue pile and began grinding the glass under his rifle butt. But however much he pounded, it was difficult to avoid their gaze.

  Here and there a cracked eyeball escaped and struck the wall, watching him from a distance. Another violent blow sent one horrifying monstrosity flying under the kitchen cupboard where it lurked ominously, observing Sayfullah’s desperate attempts to retrieve it. He lay prostrate in front of the cupboard, trying to use his rifle to penetrate the narrow gap and draw out the eye, but he failed; the eye and its wrath plunged further into darkness.

  “Now I’ve no doubt you were the sniveling twin,” said Raphael.

  The sneer opened old wounds in Sayfullah’s heart. His eyes gleamed madly. “Swords were not made to snivel,” he said, and he struck Raphael’s face, inscribing those words in both their heads. He was discovering the profound unspoken pleasure that came from unrestrained violence, the same inclination that had deserted him during the o
ccupation of the Grand Mosque.

  Strewn about the room, the fragile blue eyes continued watching Sayfullah’s madness with a mixture of defiance and terror.

  Day Five

  There was nothing but darkness. A ray of moonlight stole in from the terrace and swept over the shattered blue eyes. Sayfullah was sleeping like the dead. For an hour that seemed like an age, Raphael continued to pant in his struggle against his restraints, until he finally succeeded in freeing his hands and sank to the floor, unable to believe his luck. Cautiously, he crept toward the rifle lying to the right of the sleeping Sayfullah, and his hand seized it at the same moment his gaze fell on Sayfullah’s full, parted lips glowing in the moonlight. Raphael’s fingers closed around the weapon. He was ready to rush down the stairs and out of that place, but his body wouldn’t obey him. His insides contracted, his eyes fogged with heat, and his trembling hands sweated with an unnamable desire. As if in a trance, he pressed his burning mouth to the lips falling open in the shadows. At the gentle touch of his lips, Sayfullah’s opened deeper, responding hungrily to his hunger, and the two bodies cleaved together in a feverish embrace.

  Time stopped, but Sayfullah was floating, his body torn away. The fog of naked desire and hatred in his eyes tore at Raphael.

  Shaken to the core, Sayfullah didn’t know what to do. Both were lying there, each staring at the belly of the other.

  Raphael had pinned Sayfullah’s body to the ground like a terrified animal, using his lips swollen from his enemy’s bites and the rifle pointing at his head. “Listen,” he said. “Mad dogs are roaming the city right now looking for escaped cowards like you; there’s an attractive bounty on every head collected. Even if you don’t hang around here to be tortured and put out of your misery by the state, I only have to drag you to the street. As soon as the mob sets eyes on you, they’ll tear you to pieces.”

  Like two beasts, they stared at each other, eyeball to eyeball. Sayfullah seemed relieved at having ceded control to his enemy, and Raphael wondered whether his ties had been left a little loose on purpose.

  “Fine. What are you waiting for? Kill me.” The barely audible words quavered like echoes in Sayfullah’s head.

  “Oh no, it’s not that simple. A worse fate is waiting for you at the hands of the Lord.”

  It wasn’t the threat, but the trembling smile in Raphael’s eye that made Sayfullah’s jaw quiver.

  “Maybe I don’t seem like a soldier to you,” Raphael said. “Actually . . . it’s not usual for a soldier to have the thoughts I have now. Since I saw you I’ve been haunted by one temptation: to hear the shell you’ve built around yourself shatter. A moron like you presents a challenge I can’t ignore. You’re a terrified piece of shit, a juvenile fool who doesn’t know anything about the world apart from the clichés dug up by his own perverted mind.”

  Sayfullah spat in his face and was startled when Raphael licked it up with provocative pleasure. Nonchalantly, he pushed away Raphael’s hand, the one pointing the gun at him, and then lashed out suddenly with a kick to Raphael’s groin.

  They fell into another struggle; Sayfullah seemed to have lost his earlier ferocity, as if the rage which had driven him had been wrested away, and it was easy for the Frenchman’s flexed muscles to crush his slender body into submission. Raphael pushed Sayfullah’s face into the wall and secured his body there between his thighs. He took Sayfullah’s head between his hands as though to break his neck, but instead his right hand crept forward of its own accord, sliding the length of the arched back to the slim hip, where his touch softened, sliding sensuously over the round backside, and found its way between the slender thighs.

  “Merde!” The Frenchman exploded, shocked by what he had touched. At once, his hand began to tear the clothes away from the skinny body, which had begun to resist him desperately, only to end up pinned to the wall like a statue while its sex was exposed.

  “A woman?” Raphael spat in fury. “All this time, I was defeated by a woman? Me? A GIGN officer?”

  A vein in his head exploded from rage and blood gushed from his nose. Defeated, furious with himself, he surrendered to the fact that the doubts about his sexuality that had followed him all his life had come to this: a woman disguised in male clothing. What an utter farce; here was life presenting him with another betrayal.

  “I am Sayf, a man like the other fighters.”

  Her uncowed haughtiness ruptured Raphael’s latent aggression, and he blindly aimed blows at her face, at his mother’s face, at his comrades with their bared teeth, at his father, at himself.

  The girl received the blows without trying to shield her face; she struggled fiercely to free her hands in order to cover her nakedness. Being naked in front of a man overpowered any hell she feared to face in the afterlife.

  Suddenly Raphael grasped what those small hands were trying to do; they were absorbed in pulling a coat around her to cover her sex, leaving her bloody cheeks exposed to his slaps.

  This pitiful idea paralyzed his hands. The stupidity of such a reaction had floored him. A trail of fresh blood streamed from the left corner of the woman’s mouth and down her neck, and her dark-red cheeks were an indication of his own weakness, which he had masked with cruelty. He felt more feeble and squalid than he ever had in the darkest hours of his life; he had never felt so young, even when he was raped.

  He ignored the blood gushing from his nose and the convulsions deep within. He trained his savage gaze on the black triangle between her legs, aiming rays of hatred and contempt like a knife at the figure responsible for his degradation. If he didn’t want to rape her physically, he wanted to wound her deeply, to perforate the virginity of her pride and dignity. She welcomed this humiliation; her pupils dilated madly and her body was paralyzed under the masculine gaze penetrating her very bones.

  I am dead. A suicidal wish clamored in her veins, inciting her body to disintegrate and escape this disgrace. In one way or another, she was relieved to have surrendered control of the situation to this man who called himself a “jijin” officer, even though the word didn’t mean anything to her. Would killing him have meant something? Had she missed out on a heroic deed? What was the importance of all this?

  Suddenly Raphael’s strength ebbed. He smashed his fist into the wall and received a jolt of pain, which eased the self-hatred overwhelming him.

  Pointing the rifle at her head, Raphael began to search the pocket of the National Guard uniform she had used as disguise. He came across an identity card thrust into the chest pocket and compared the picture on the card with her face, reading the name Sayf al-Qutaybi. He aimed a vicious blow at her midriff, asking, “Who did you steal this from?”

  Her resistance collapsed at seeing the bloodstain on the card. As if trying to control a fit of hysteria, she slapped her own cheeks: what had she done to Sayfullah’s identity card? Terror froze her and she felt the knife of the past at work in her brain, scraping away the layers of pretense and the armor she had built around unbearable pain.

  For the first time, she grasped the shocking truth she had tried to ignore: she was Sarab, a girl, and Sayf was the name of the twin brother she had revered, but as soon as the opportunity offered itself, she had pounced on it like an eagle, stealing his name and his identity. Of course she deserved to end up naked in front of this infidel; a mere woman lacking brains and religion, in thrall to this jijin officer who was probably a sort of infidel jinni; a woman ready to go to Hell for her nakedness.

  She longed to snatch that card from under Raphael’s contaminating stare. The pain of discovering a spot of that beloved blood on the card overwhelmed the pain of her sinful nakedness. She felt her brother’s blood point an accusing finger at her, and the picture on the card nailed her to the spot with the same exasperated look he always gave her. That look of displeasure was the only comment he ever passed on her existence, and as she accepted how much she deserved it, the dam broke in Sarab’s heart. She collapsed to the ground, not caring to cover herself, perhaps even wal
lowing in her humiliation. She sat gazing blankly at the opposite wall. She stared unblinking at the little girl. She was hypnotized by the unrestrained frivolity of that figure, who hadn’t been slow to take advantage of Sarab’s sudden surrender; the girl had dared to resemble her, and declare her resemblance with the same cheerfulness that had always been categorically denied to Sarab.

  Sarab sat there at the mercy of her captor. That mercy allowed her, a girl, to confront the atrocities of the past three weeks, and everything that led her to where she was now, naked.

  To Medina

  When his mother died, sayf fell into an abyss. He searched for consolation in the desert, hunting bustards as if pursuing the ghosts haunting him. He seemed deaf, but would instantly explode at any attempt to try to pull him out of his sense of loss.

  Sarab was aware that her brother savored the state of mourning, immersing himself in it. Whenever he shot at a bird and missed, she felt the bullet hit the sky. But however much she understood the ferocity of his grief, it didn’t lessen the shock when she woke up one dawn to find him gathering their father’s guns and preparing to disappear from their hometown, Hijrat al-Wajir. She quelled her breathing and the terror that coursed through her veins like poison, turning her face purple, and she didn’t dare ask him why or where. She followed him on tiptoe, hoping not to anger him in case he turned her away and made her return to Wajir. Hidden by the shadows of dawn, they slunk away; even the dogs, which usually were pleased to see her, watched them in silence. The two boyish figures were almost identical: dark-faced Sayf with the beard he hadn’t shaved in months, followed by Sarab like a faithful dog, disguised in a man’s clothes with the bottom half of her face wrapped in her father’s famous red-and-white head covering. They walked for days, and Sayf never turned back once to look at her; he simply didn’t care, as indifferent to her as a man to his shadow. He had been hypnotized by the news circulating through the settlements about the dissident preacher Mujan al-Qutaybi, descended from the Ikhwan, whose fame had spread as he called for reform.