by Raja Alem
“You . . .” He couldn’t finish his sentence; there were no words capable of conveying what had gripped him; he was choked by horror, as well as by relief that she had regained consciousness.
“I’m what? A portable grave?” she said.
He didn’t reply to her weak joke, and turned even paler; he had seen death in her.
She freed herself from him and moved away, feeling that the victims of the siege were living and breathing in her bones, and they would never leave her again. At that moment she was swamped with hatred toward Raphael for plucking her out of the siege and a fate she couldn’t postpone; and she knew at the same time, in the same breath, that she loved him.
Raphael stopped a taxi and opened the door for her, but she stood there staring at it, lost in her sweeping animosity. She was dazed by her freedom to hate.
Throughout her life, she had never been able to give free rein to her feelings. Of the ninety-nine names of God, she was most enthralled by al-Muhibb—the Loving—and al-Muntaqim—the Avenger. God had announced these names to Adam, but she was on the lowest rung of humanity and had never been free to try even a drop of intense love or hatred or vengeance. She had been a humble follower and only now, in front of that warehouse of bones, did she throw off her humility.
She turned her head to look at Raphael, feeling the intoxicating hatred pumping through her veins. And he stood there, shocked at what he could see in her eyes. His senses sharpened. He reciprocated her resentment, wanting to crush her, to crush himself, to be rid of their predicament.
This oscillation between love and hatred was electrifying for them both. Still testing the patience of the taxi driver, she allowed cyclones of hatred to whirl through her, hating her mother and her lunatic brother and even her father. Above all, she hated Raphael who had brought her here to be a walking tomb.
At last she got into the taxi, where she needled him: “You people have the audacity to turn death into some sort of show!”
The taxi driver, who was Moroccan, followed this one-sided whispered conversation with evident interest. He glanced admiringly at her in the mirror, and turned an envious gaze on Raphael’s rugged beauty.
Raphael’s silence encouraged Sarab to persist in her provocation: “You all scorn Israfil’s trumpet and ignore the fact that you’ve made a spectacle out of scenes like that.” Sarab realized that she enjoyed conveying her feelings; enjoyed the sense that the box of writhing emotions was slipping from her control day by day.
They traveled through the city, which began to be bathed in the red light of sunset, intensifying their confusion. Sarab knew that what she had said was sheer idiocy, intended only to provoke, but she was incapable of restraining her fury and keeping silent. Meanwhile, Raphael was in another world; a Latin phrase that had been carved into that underground world was echoing through his head.
Non metuit mortem qui soit contemnere vitam—He fears not death who scorns life.
He avoided looking at Sarab, wondering why the hell he had tangled himself up with such a tortured soul as this girl, who had been raised to scorn life. Was he offering himself up to inevitable pain? But that Latin phrase echoed the vow they had taken when they joined the GIGN: to save lives without regard for their own. That was what made them invincible, and impervious to death. This girl hadn’t entered his life in vain. She was the embodiment of this vow; he had to live with it, and test its vitality against his emptiness.
Ending Number Four: June 21, 1980
The visit to the catacombs disturbed Sarab deeply. The skull of the mad woman had succeeded in frightening her, causing her to doubt the blind trust she had placed in Raphael. But those qualms managed to distract Sarab’s attention from the attempts to pursue her, which now stopped as if they had never been. Both Raphael and Sarab relaxed in the belief that they had been nothing but a delusion brought on by the atrocities they had experienced, which had left their marks on them both. But Sarab regretted having told Raphael how she had saved the Mahdi; her disclosure now seemed like a definitive betrayal of everything her comrades had fought for, and self-contempt began to eat away at her.
One evening she was supposed to meet Raphael for dinner at the Relais de l’Entrecôte. Sarab had grown addicted to wandering the backstreets of the city at night, when Paris was enigmatically illuminated, transforming each alleyway into a dreamland. She would walk, wondering if the people hurrying and shoving around her were aware of God like she was. Were they afraid of sinning? She would observe young men and half-naked girls congregating on the street outside cafés and bars to slurp colorful cocktails, and she wondered whether they realized that they would rot in Hell.
She would stand nearby, watching them closely; why couldn’t they tell they were sinning, as she did? Did they know her Lord? Would they attack her if they knew what was whirling through her mind? That she had a God? They seemed godless, or at any rate lacking the God that had been offered to her.
If Sayf were here with his automatic rifle, would he have opened fire? She was drawn to their smiling, open faces. In their drunken state they were more awake than she was, locked as she was inside her numbing fear.
Sarab had acquired a pink silk dress. The color filled her with embarrassment; she felt her private thoughts were laid bare for passersby. The delicacy of the color revealed her heart and its craving to love and be loved, to be touched, to vigorously inhabit her body. Her arms tensed against the sides of the tight dress. All around her in Place Saint-Sulpice, dozens of buskers were gathered and microphones blasted music of all kinds into the open air—from jazz to rock to raucous Latin—till the ground shook. It was the first time Sarab had seen anything like it. She felt the air was light and her body was flying; she could barely control her lightening footsteps.
With every step she took into this dancing cosmos, her arms relaxed away from her body. She allowed the silk to brush every detail of her pelvis and backside. With every step, her body softened and opened, and she threw off the last vestiges of masculinity and hardness. With every step, she was aware of an untamed being wakening within her, ready to break out at any moment and dance wildly, to be swept away in the mad crowds and join the women and men gathered in the middle of the square. A towering woman in tight black pants danced with particular elegance, seductively swaying her slender limbs with a supple sensuality that caused passersby to pause. Sarab heard the cry of hunger in that body and was transfixed. She watched the woman enviously, aware that her body was roaring with the same seductive sensuousness. Bitter questions tore at her: How would Raphael react to such a graceful, seductive body? Would he exercise the same self-restraint that he does with me? How would he make love to such a woman? A truly female body oozes desire, not like my normal, average body.
The questions shocked her, and she was overcome by a sudden, unbearable desire to be possessed by Raphael; by no one but him. This desire blinded her as she was about to cross the street, and she was dimly aware of a long black limousine playing rock and roll that suddenly stopped in front of her and opened its doors. Two men leaped out of the back seat. The larger of the two grabbed her waist and swung her into the air as if he were dancing with her, then flung her to the ground and dragged her into the limousine. The music drowned out her scream, and no one noticed what had happened.
She was suffocated by the blaring music and the black bag wrapped around her head and face. She was pushed to the ground under their feet, and they trampled her and kicked her mercilessly at the slightest sign of resistance. She knew she had to stop struggling so they wouldn’t break her ribs, but the needle that was plunged into her arm saved her from having to surrender, and she fell into merciful darkness.
Aden
When she woke up, her body was stiff from being thrown onto a bare stone floor. The bag had been removed from her head. She could see a bare concrete floor, mustard-colored walls, and a single chair perched alone at the far end of the room. At first she thought she was alone, but she soon became aware of the gaunt man sitt
ing on the chair with his back to the door.
When he stood up and turned to face her, she gasped. She kept staring at him as her voice failed her. She felt a burning thirst, her head throbbed with a painful headache, and her limbs were numb and refused to obey her. It was clear she had been here for days.
“Yes, you saved my life,” the man said, “but look at where you ended up. I told you before: you were formed for a different life. But not this life of sin; you have fallen straight into its trap.”
His face contained something she couldn’t describe; it was marked by a darker glow than when she had known him, and the compassion had left his eyes, a slight alteration settling in its place. Despite her predicament, Sarab could only think mockingly: The blow to his head must have caused these droopy eyelids and stony expression. Perhaps that’s the price he had to pay for what he did in the siege.
He smiled, but his smile had lost its former brilliance and was now rigid and contorted. He went on: “And so, I am committed to returning the service you did me. I am not a man to ignore his debts, and as I am resolved to saving your life, we will keep you here with us. You will enjoy the comfort we provide in abundance to our devout, honorable women. And I am confident that within a few days, you will realize the pure, honorable life you were born to.”
“You’re paying your debt?” She could only contradict the farce in his stately words. “Do you think you will ever pay this debt? How can a debt be paid by someone so revolting? You attacked innocent people. You were shooting and killing innocent people until the last moment . . . and for what? To become a caliph over people who were forced to pay homage to you. You wanted to issue commands and prohibitions along with Mujan. Wasn’t all that murder committed so you could become king? No aim, whatever it is, could justify murder.” For a moment she was muted by the disdain on his face, and then she added bitterly: “How naive we were, all of us who followed you to the Grand Mosque. How can you pay this debt, whatever you do?”
His face hardened. “So be it.”
He tried to stare through her, but was incapable of seeing anything but himself. “It is a shame. I can no longer see in you the courageous, purehearted fighter I knew in the Grand Mosque. Saving me was an act that required true martyrdom. The men surrendered but you kept fighting. Don’t you see what you were?” His eyes bored into her like a scalpel. “What a difference between what you were and what you have become! Sadly, your vision has clouded and you have been distorted. Your intimate association with the enemy has coated you in a thick skin that truth cannot penetrate. If you speak, we hear the voice of the enemy coming from you, and you have been blinded to our sublime goal. God sees that we did what we did to bring justice to a world infested with sin.”
“How can justice be done through tyranny and hostility?” Sarab retorted. “There was clear injustice done to the victims we imprisoned in the mosque, and those who paid the price of our fight.”
The change that had come over him was deeply rooted, and Sarab doubted that this was the same man she had smuggled away from the siege.
“Nothing can hold out against truth and righteousness,” he said. “We will do what we can to restore truth to you, and to return you to the righteous path.”
“I can’t believe I once saw you as a hero.”
His face contorted. “Of course, you are possessed by the Devil, and you have made this French infidel into an idol to worship. Listen carefully . . .” His wrathful look almost broke her in two. “Your flight with the infidel was a sin you should have been killed for, but I saved you from that fate, to pay the debt you hung around my neck.”
The Mahdi gestured, and two women appeared, swathed in black. They blindfolded Sarab, put a black abaya on her, and drove her in front of them. From behind the thick blindfold, Sarab sensed she had left the concrete room and was being taken down a flight of stairs. Her senses picked up the dampness of being underground, and she realized she was in a cellar. She walked for some distance, and then was lifted up and set down. Under her feet, she felt soft dust, and she knew she was in an open courtyard. She realized the women wanted her to lose her sense of direction as they led her in circles away from the room she had left.
They kept her walking for ten minutes or so. When they brought her to a halt, she heard a light knock on an iron door, which opened. Sarab was pushed inside and her companions disappeared. She felt a metal device tapping her head lightly, as if someone was ordering her to uncover her face, and the blindfold was lifted from her eyes. As soon as the blindfold was removed she was blinded by a white neon light.
A woman whispered, “At last. Hah—so you’re the Mahdi’s woman?” It wasn’t a question so much as an expression of contempt. “Nothing but skin and bones.”
Sarab was taken aback by the flashlight pointed at her by a very tall woman with a strong Egyptian accent. “Oh look, here comes your devil.” Shadowy women leaped behind her, scattering in alarm and spluttering the verses of protection in their hands. They rubbed these verses on their own bodies and blew them toward Sarab, to lay siege to her demon.
Sarab found herself in a primitive camp with black-robed bodies moving all around her; even she was wrapped in loss and blackness, which trailed behind her. Her name had been removed and she was known as “the Mahdi’s woman,” an appellation that roused envy and made her the butt of jeers and malicious comments that followed her wherever she went.
“It’s the Mahdi’s savior, but just look at her. They brought her back from some franji country. She’s a sinner who deserves to be stoned to death for allying herself with the enemy.”
“In the end, women are women; they lack reason and religion. This apostate fell from Heaven to the depths of Hell by her own doing and her own shortsightedness.”
She realized that she had been housed in a wing of the camp reserved for single women. It was a type of ward: ten women were housed in each long, thin dormitory with an adjoining bathroom.
That morning, Sarab was overcome by the severity of this dormitory. After the luxury of Paris she was enveloped in despair looking at these bare concrete walls, unrelieved by any furniture apart from the foam mattresses laid out on the ground, used both for sleeping and sitting on. She didn’t object to the mattresses; what confused her was the light. Instead of the shaded sidelights that she had become used to in the apartment on Rue Bonaparte, there were only neon striplights lined up over the four walls like train tracks, which followed her and spied on her movements even when she went to the bathroom. She had grown accustomed to the security of the sidelights’ warm glow, and this light had an antagonistic quality. Sarab felt she was shriveling under the harsh white neon lighting, and under the gaze of the women who studied her curiously and doubtfully.
She heard a voice whispering, “Rue Bonaparte.”
She remembered exactly where it was. It was carved into her head, where it crossed Rue du Four and then Boulevard Saint-Germain until it reached the Seine, full of shops selling clothes and accessories. She remembered the flowers that were renewed in the glass vase on the table to the right of the apartment entrance, wafting the scent of gardenia on some days, orchids on others. In that camp, she dwelt especially on the scent of orchids, which lingered on after the flower died; Raphael would let the fragrance recede over two days before changing it for a rose or a lily or. . . . Once, he had brought birds of paradise, and he had envied her astonishment at them; she had been certain that they pricked up their orange crowns and flew around when the apartment was in darkness, and she was sure she heard them twittering.
She was afraid that the women would perceive the conflict in her head between the scent of orchids and the choking stink coming from the bathrooms attached to each dormitory. The creaking wooden doors were always left open, allowing the suffocating smells to creep into the room.
She slept deeply that night and dreamed that the open windows looking over the Luxembourg Gardens had been closed on her, forcing her to inhale the concrete walls with tall, narrow wound-
like niches gouged into them that not even air could pass through.
“Come on, there’s no room here for no-good parasites. Grab a bite to eat and follow us to the workshop.” Sarab noticed the plastic table laid with brown bread, a bundle of spring onions, and some tin cups of milk. She had to gulp her onion with a round loaf, like the others, who were already peeling and chewing in silence. Her throat was torn with thirst, and she sipped some milk silently under their sardonic stares.
“Let’s wait and see; as time goes on she will eat her own belly fat,” the Egyptian said maliciously, careful not to look at Sarab—as if she didn’t exist. It was a trivial thing but it demoralized Sarab; it stirred up memories of how her mother ignored her.
The women wrapped themselves in black abayas, and Sarab followed them. Keeping together in a herd, they led her into a dusty alleyway and brought her to a building that seemed like a huge factory or a vast hospital.
Sarab was greeted by a concoction of smells that seared her head like a flash of lightning. Her eyes teared up and she was struck by a fit of coughing and sneezing. It was a smell she couldn’t define, like the odor of war itself; a mixture of disinfectant and something like gunpowder. The women cast pitying glances at her then left her with Latifa, a Pakistani woman. They were swallowed up as they went down the branching passages.
Latifa led her to a desk to the right of the entrance and stood in front of the Yemeni supervisor who distributed the women around the workshop. Apart from one sharp look, she was careful not to raise her eyes to Sarab, directing her instructions instead at the red pen she twirled mechanically in her fingers.
“You will go with Latifa; you will train alongside her in the medical team.”
“Wait, there’s been a misunderstanding—” Sarab stammered. “I don’t work here.”
The official planted her pen nib in the paper and stared at the hole it left in the page.