Sarab

by Raja Alem

  At last they reached what seemed like the end, or an obstacle, and were forced to stop. In front of them, there was just a smooth stone wall. The Yemeni put his master on the ground and in total darkness they began to look feverishly for an opening. Simultaneously, they found a chink in the stone foundation. The Yemeni crammed his finger into it, and with extraordinary strength he began to pull. Sarab smothered hysterical laugher; she thought he was trying to move the belly of the entire earth like a madman. Suddenly the darkness wavered and rose, and daylight gushed into the tunnel, blinding the burning eyes of both. Sarab felt her skin was being scorched by the light. They were looking at the mountain at the end of the cemetery, and no one was around. The area seemed deserted; even the dead had abandoned this cemetery to stay in the heart of the city. The road south looked clear. Without a word, the Yemeni hoisted his master and strode off, expecting Sarab to follow him; when she didn’t, he stopped and turned to her impatiently.

  She urged him to keep going. “You go. I have to go back.” His eyes bulged in disbelief. “My brother Sayf is still there.” She couldn’t believe the madness of what she was saying; that she was voluntarily turning her feet back toward Hell.

  The Yemeni’s eyes softened sympathetically and he tried to persuade her to follow him, but she stood as firm as the rock behind her, unable to save her own skin and leave her brother to commit suicide.

  "Be sure to get him to safety.” It was vital to her at that moment that she felt she was guarding the two men she loved.

  Some hidden instinct told her that her brother was a lost cause, but she had to witness his end. When the Yemeni spoke, his voice was like a breeze from a grave.

  "Don’t worry. I have friends in the graveyard. They will look after us. And before God, I swear we won’t stop until we reach our people in Yemen, where our Mahdi will be guarded and no harm will come to him.”

  Sarab found it laughable that he was determined to call Muhammad “the Mahdi,” when at that moment it was the last thing that would have occurred to her, or that she cared about. To her, he was more than just the savior of humankind; he was the person who had cared about her, even if from a distance.

  Without a backward glance she plunged once more into the darkness. The moment she reached the well, the sound of the firing from the top of the minaret where Sayf was positioned suddenly stopped. She ran up the minaret to find her brother’s bullet-riddled body. Crushing despair prompted her to stay and die with him, but an inexcusable survival instinct forced her return to the tunnel. She tried to reach the well, only to find that a hand grenade had exploded inside it, closing off the path to freedom. She had been robbed of the decision to flee. She stood in the middle of the smoke, paralyzed with rage at her brother, who had died after she lost her only chance of survival. She stood there, thoughtlessly exposing herself to the bombardment while successive small explosions colored the background red and black. Her mind was whirring, reviewing the secret maps she had memorized, while an inner voice jeered: “It’s no surprise you’re focusing on escape tunnels. The traitor hidden in you was looking for a way out even before the battle started.” There was no way of quieting that voice other than by voluntarily plunging into the hell of the underground cellars to share the fate of her besieged comrades.

  Sarab felt a burden lift from her shoulders after frankly telling Raphael everything that had happened in the final hours of the Grand Mosque. But she was racked with guilt at having saved Muhammad, realizing only now that he bore just as much responsibility for what had happened as Mujan did. He was responsible for it all, to the last shot fired.

  “So they’ve come looking for you now?” Anxiety was clear in Raphael’s voice.

  “Please, don’t say that.” She felt young, silly, vulnerable, and unprotected, like she had when she was a child confronted with a bird bleeding to death in front of her for the first time. “No, it’s impossible.” She searched his green eyes for a refuge from the nightmare, and kept repeating feverishly, “No, you can’t be sure whether these accidents here have any connection to the Mahdi. It’s another world there . . . it’s so far away. . . .”

  “Please, Sarab, think with me. Apart from his bodyguard, you are just about the only person who knows that Muhammad is still alive and has been smuggled to Yemen.”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe that the Mahdi has influential friends acting on his behalf in every corner of the globe. I don’t know how they managed to find you, but they must have guessed that you also managed to escape, seeing as you smuggled the Mahdi out of the Grand Mosque. After you used your brother’s identity card, it wouldn’t be hard for them to trace you. Smuggling the Mahdi out of the siege was a momentous undertaking, and logic dictates you should be rewarded for it, but it also put you in the spotlight.”

  “Will they kill me for it?”

  “They would see you being here with me as a threat, in case you reveal that he’s still alive. So they are trying to bury the secret with you. You’re their enemy now.”

  She shuddered. “Do you think God is angry with me? Am I being punished for escaping the siege and marrying you?”

  Raphael, still kneeling, slammed his fist on the bed, enraged. He stood up.

  “All the fighters surrendered, including the legendary Mujan.”

  “I should have been executed with the others. Why deny it? I’m no less responsible than they were, just by being there. Even though I helped nurse the wounded, I accepted the use of weapons. Bearing arms against believers is a crime. That ground is sacred, blood is sacred, and we gave Him countless sleepless nights. I am a criminal, and I deserve to be punished and to die for it.”

  Tears flooded her cheeks, and Raphael hurriedly took her in his arms, gathering up her pain and kissing the top of her head.

  “You didn’t fire a single bullet,” he said, “and you offered help to everyone, regardless of which side they belonged to.”

  “If only you knew how afraid I am. Sometimes when I lie in bed, I see bomb shrapnel falling out of a hole in my head, and poison gas running through my veins. I’m so afraid of being punished for my sins it’s like having a landmine inside me.”

  “Everything will calm down and you’ll be surprised by what you discover about your true self.”

  She lifted her face to him, looking into his eyes for corroboration of his words, and accepted a gentle touch of his lips against hers. She shivered, torn between the charge of pleasure and her feelings of guilt. It was the first time he had proffered such intimate contact.

  “You’re the only one who makes me feel human. I feel I’m myself with you.” Her voice shook from the depth of her gratitude. “Raphael . . .” Words failed her; they were both shocked by the tenderness with which she pronounced his name. It was only then that he realized she had never called him by his name before. She moved away, taking refuge in the space between them.

  “I love you when I see you afraid and lost in my world,” he told her. “I love you when I see you in my pajamas or in my bed, lost and not knowing where you’re going or what refuge you have apart from the street. I am strong because of my training, but the strength you see is nothing but a shell. Inside, I’m still the little boy buying birds and setting them free.” His words were like a breeze freshening the space between them. He respected the barriers she had put up to protect herself from him; this was his form of gratitude, an avowal of love.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You love me like you would a stray dog.”

  He laughed hoarsely and took her in his arms, resisting the desire to kiss her deeply.

  “I’m not afraid of dying,” she said, “but I am afraid of dying as a sinner.”

  His powerful embrace gathered up every objection and feeling of guilt. “You won’t die,” he told her. “Not before you grow old and I’ve seen every one of these black hairs turn white.”

  A tremor ran through her and she felt the Angel of Death hovering overhead. Not even in the siege had she felt it so close to he
r. She buried her head in his chest, filled with doubt about his promise, gripped by the certainty that she was nearing her end.

  “If I die here in this foreign country, what will happen to my body?” Her unexpected question shocked him. “If I die, perhaps it would be better to send my body to my country so it can be washed and buried there and it will be pure for the next life. Would that be too much for you?”

  The look in his eyes reminded her that she had saved his life; his pledge to carry out her wish was clear.

  He got up suddenly, changing the course of that melancholy conversation. “Wait a moment. Let me show you something,” he told her. He picked up a thick, leather-bound volume from his bookshelf.

  “Look. This is the notebook where my father wrote down his own recipes, the pinnacles of his invention. Come on, I’m going to make you brandade. It tastes like the sea. And I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  He took her hand and led her to the kitchen so she could help prepare the meal.

  “What do you think of opening a restaurant?” he asked. “I have enough saved to buy a small hotel. I was thinking of a beach in Spain—it’s the nearest we can get to the climate you’re used to. Just ten rooms with a restaurant attached, and I would look after the restaurant.”

  She laughed. “I could never have imagined a man cooking for a woman. You’ve upended everything.”

  Raphael held up his hands for her inspection. “Do you see? Better for a chef. Can you see these killer’s hands cooking?”

  She thought he was joking, but he was serious, and he looked morose.

  “They seem to have been created for cooking, much more than killing,” Sarab responded.

  He took both her hands and buried his face in them; she felt dampness in her palms, and froze at the realization that he was crying. His tears always shocked her; she had been raised thinking that a man weeping was like the sky falling in. They remained sitting like that as night fell, peacefully darkening the kitchen around them.

  The Archive of Death

  Despite the reassurances he’d given to Sarab, the car accident seemed to have deeply unnerved Raphael. The following morning the elevator in their apartment building was broken, and they were walking down the narrow staircase when he suddenly had a sort of fit. He stopped Sarab, and without preamble pulled her behind him for protection, then dragged her roughly down to the next floor. He wordlessly pushed her into a corner and signed to her not to move an inch. His crazed eyes flashed, his whole body was electrified, and he was ready to attack. He began to examine the wall and the shadows around them, looking for the enemy hidden there. He seemed to have forgotten her entirely.

  Sarab reached out to him, trying to break through the fog cloaking his brain. Even though she was frightened and aware of a possible threat to herself, she kept trying to reach the compassionate man behind that mask of madness. But he was another man now; a terrified war machine poised to wreak havoc, and she was the potential target.

  They both stood there, nailed to the landing in fear, while Raphael frantically searched his pockets for a weapon or a hand grenade and continued to scrutinize every inch around the damaged elevator. It wasn’t long before Sarab’s anxiety spiraled and she had the same feeling of being trapped that she’d had in the siege. But she held on, looking for a way out of the anxiety that had struck him.

  At last the madness receded from his features, loss settling in its place. He allowed her to draw him down beside her so they were both sitting on the stairs, and he took a deep breath. They sat in the weak light of the stairwell for about half an hour until he had collected himself once again.

  These episodes kept recurring, accompanied by regular fits of depression. Sarab would come across him sitting in the living room, apparently lost. They spent hours trying to regain the harmony and peace of the present and keep at a distance the war-filled past that haunted them both.

  “They’re coming back to life, all the dead,” he told her.

  She wanted to see what he saw, to break the terror revealed in his eyes.

  “It’s not my memory, it’s a universal memory,” he went on. “It’s opening up files full of faces, the face of every victim I’ve left behind me. Even the ones I didn’t meet, the ones I blew up from a distance. They’re all here, as clear as day, right in front of my eyes.” He pointed to a spot directly in front of him. “I can plant my fingers in their eyes. All those faces, without exception. I never counted them—there were too many. I can’t believe how many people I’ve killed.” He was silent for a while, then reached out as if he were scooping water from a river. “I can see a film running through all the atrocities I’ve committed, the big ones and the small ones. Nothing’s been forgotten.” He screwed his eyes shut, pausing the film reel and its barrage of images. “You would be disgusted if you could see inside my head. The torn limbs I left behind me, the charred bodies.”

  His tears shocked them both, but he let them fall and plunged back into the film. “I can’t believe it was me.” The agony contorting his features was more hideous than all the suffering Sarab had been seen on the faces of the wounded in the siege.

  “What infernal logic justifies everything I did for all those years? I can’t describe the horror rebuilding every cell in my body. I’ve been maimed forever.” His eyes bulged at her, demanding a reaction, an act of retribution, and when he got nothing but sympathy, he exploded in rage: “You make me sick! How can you live with a festering sore like me?”

  He was overwhelmed by the desire to destroy himself, and tried to drive her away. She was disturbed by this other man, this man who wasn’t the loving, protective Raphael, but she was also aware there was another Sarab inside her. He had to find a way of dealing with his own personal archive of extremism and terrorism.

  They were sharing the apartment with their shadow consorts, four bitter enemies locked in a perpetual struggle, unsure who would win the final battle.

  Underground Worlds of Paris

  During one of the walks Raphael took with Sarab in order to introduce to her the many worlds of Paris, they stood facing the Palais Garnier.

  “I’ll take you to the opera soon. It will be extraordinary, seeing it through your eyes.” Raphael was in one of his changeable moods, back to his cheerful, charming self.

  Caught unawares by a sudden rain shower, they ran in search of shelter. Instinctively, Raphael led them to a metro station. It was the first time Sarab had become acquainted with the concept of underground transport. Their cheerful headlong rush came to a sudden halt when Sarab became aware of where she was: the network of tunnels; the different levels and endless staircases; the silent, narrow corridors with plain lighting; the advertisements that darted past them on either side, exploding with colors.

  She shuddered and asked, “What is this? Where are we?”

  Raphael put an arm around her shoulders. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  She stammered as she tried to come to grips with the fear that had struck her. As they were standing in the middle of a passageway, blocking people flying past in every direction, Raphael pulled Sarab to one side and examined her face.

  “What is it?” he asked again.

  “An underground world,” she said incoherently, in a small, childlike voice that was charged with dread.

  “Let’s get out of here.” He drew her to the nearest exit, but she regained control of herself and reassured him.

  “No, let’s go on,” she said.

  He had no choice but to obey, and they continued on their journey back to Place Saint-Sulpice.

  Sarab sniffed the pure air outside the station and hated the thought of leaving that open space to go inside. She and Raphael drifted to a bench in front of the Church of Saint-Sulpice opposite the fountain.

  “For a moment I didn’t know where I was. I felt like I was underground at the Grand Mosque.” She surprised Raphael with this frank explanation. “Despite the differences between the two worlds, it’s the same feeling of being
in the ground, the same silence that waits and watches, the same coldness and isolation.” He was listening, but she didn’t know how to explain. “I don’t mean there is a resemblance, but . . .”

  He tried to grasp the shock she had felt when he’d herded her underground again.

  “I only knew the prayer cells under the mosque during the battle, while in normal circumstances they would probably be cooling in the heat, and a peaceful refuge. But the underground world I experienced during the siege was like an endless wound. Everyone was suffering and dying, whether they were hostages or fighters.” It was the first time she had opened the box of fear buried in her chest and released what was imprisoned inside.

  “The last hours were the worst. The despair was beyond anything you can imagine . . .” She stopped abruptly. “It’s strange. Why am I talking about ‘them,’ as if I weren’t one of them?” After a pause, she went on: “I was arrogant about the situation there. I separated myself from it as if it had nothing to do with me.”

  “But it wasn’t your war in the first place; it was Sayf’s war.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps I was so terrified, the horror of witnessing so much death paralyzed even my love for Sayf. I went numb in preparation for our inevitable separation.”

  She was silent for a while, then went on as if speaking to herself: “We went into a sort of trance. I’m positive we had stopped feeling, all of us. There was no more fear or pain or hope. It was a state of torpor. The body took over and kept fighting or being wounded or dying while our souls were somewhere else, watching impartially. Even the electrified water and the gas were like a game that couldn’t touch us. Your body fell and it didn’t matter that it fell. It was just a machine—your soul was still untouched. The only body that brought me out of that trance and made me grieve was my poor brother’s. Sayf was my mother’s victim just as much as I was.”