Requiem (17 page)

Ahmed
took a luxurious draw on his reefer and blew out a long, thin plume of blue
smoke. He looked at Tom as if he felt slightly sorry for him. 'The scroll.
You've come to find out about the scroll. You want to know what I've found.'

'Yes. I wondered
whether you'd made any progress. I'm quite curious about what it says.' It was
a lie; or at least, partially untrue. Tom was mildly curious about the content
of the scroll he'd placed in Ahmed's hands, but that was only a pretext for
coming here.

Ahmed
nodded. 'The scroll. Yes. The scroll. It is proving to be very interesting.'

'Oh? In what way?'

Ahmed
thought deeply before answering. 'In that it is unusual. And quite difficult to
translate. Quite a headache, I can assure you. So progress is slow. But any
day now I will have it all sorted for you.' He smiled thinly. His smile was
like a split in a fruit, and Tom knew he was lying through his teeth. He'd
hardly looked at the thing.

'Good,' he said. 'I'm glad it is going
well.'

'Yes. It's going well. But slowly.’

'Sharon says you have a first-class
brain.'

He made an ironic salaam. 'I'm pretty sexy
too.'

'I didn't
flatter you to try to get you to work faster on the scroll. I know that's what
you were thinking.'

Ahmed
seemed impressed. 'You are very intuitive. You think like an Arab. Hey, I've
just realized something.'

'What?'

Ahmed
was staring intently at a point just over Tom's shoulder. 'Your
djinn
.
It has gone.'

'Really?'

'Yes.
Gone. I'd forgotten about it. But last time you were here it was clinging to
your neck. How did you get rid of it?'

'I'm sure I don't know.'

He sighed.
'If you don't know, then for sure it will come back.'

It was to
talk about the
djinn
that Tom had come
to Ahmed's apartment. He'd hoped the pretext of the scroll would be enough to
justify a visit, but he was pleasantly surprised to find Ahmed so ready to talk
about his
djinn
.
He wondered what more
Ahmed could tell. He asked the Arab to describe what he had seen.

'It's not a
good idea,' he said, 'to describe your
djinn
.’

'Why not?'

He shrugged.
'Because when you put words to them, you add to their strength. They like to
wear words like feathers. Are you Sharon's lover?'

'No.
Why does talking about them add to their strength?'

'Have you
visited one of our mosques? It's forbidden to draw pictures of animals or
prophets or even people. Only Allah, they tell me, can do this thing. Also it
is written in the Koran that we should not speak of the
djinn
or of spirits and demons lest we awake them, and summon them, and they
plague us. Why do you lie to me about Sharon?'

'I don't
know. I just did. What difference does it make, if the
djinn
are already there?'

'So you are her lover.'

'I want you to tell me what you saw.'

'I saw it
clinging to you. Hanging around your neck, like a corpse you couldn't shake
off.'

'How does a
djinn
come to a person?'

'It waits in
a tree. And then, as you pass beneath the tree, it drops on you.'

'Where was this tree? In England or here
in Jerusalem?'

'Don't be a fool. It drops from a Tree of
Life.'

'Was it young or old? Man or woman?'

'I can't
tell you how much I desire that woman. No, I think you lie. Come on, it's true,
isn't it? You and she are lovers?'

'Perhaps. Yes.'

Ahmed let out
a wail and buried his head in his hands. When he emerged there were genuine
tears on his cheek. Then he laughed. 'Always someone is stealing her away from
me!'

'You were Sharon's lover?'

'No, but I
would have been if you hadn't stolen her away.'

Tom couldn't
tell if he was teasing, clowning for him. 'Tell me more about my
djinn
.'

'OK, I'll
tell you this. It was a woman hanging from your neck. A very old woman
pretending to be young. Or maybe the other way round. Who knows? Maybe she's an
Arab. I can't say. But she speaks many languages. Aramaic. Ancient Hebrew.
Greek. Latin. She claims to have known Jesus Christ.'

Tom felt his skin go cold. Bile swelled in
his throat.

'Yes,' said
Ahmed, suddenly become grave. 'I saw her. Now you see that Ahmed is not a crazy
dope-fiend. Believe me: the
djinn
are
real.'

'I just had to know. I'm sorry I doubted
you.'

Ahmed's
mood had changed. Tom realized he may have been play-acting before, but now his
looks had soured. Clouds gathered in his eyes. 'You're not the first. Not
everything is explained by Sharon's damned donkey-psychology.'

'She
would admit that. But what else can you tell me about this woman? Do you know
who she is?'

'I
don't. But you do. I can tell you nothing more than I've just told you. I have
given you the full extent of my knowledge.'

'Then tell me about your own
djinn
.'

'Why should I? You come
here - you have nothing to pay me with. Like most tourists, you come to
Jerusalem just to take. Why should I disclose to a cold Englishman the secrets
of my heart? Why the hell should I?'

'Because you're a kind
man. And because when you see someone suffering you want to help them.'

'Yes, it's
true you are suffering. But why should I extend my hand? Do you extend yours?'
Tom didn't know what he meant. Was he suggesting he should pay him? The cloud
that had passed over Ahmed made him look older now; not the joking, boyish
Arab, but something menacing, unpredictable, even dangerous. 'No, I see what you're
thinking. That's not what I mean by extending your hand.'

'What can I give you?'

‘I give you
a confidence. You give me a confidence. I will tell you my secret. You tell me
yours.'

‘I don't have any.'

'Then drink your
tea and let us shake hands, goodbye.'

'Wait. I do have a secret.'

'As I knew
you must.' Ahmed rolled another slim hashish cigarette and lit up. He waited
for Tom to begin.

‘It will
mean nothing to you. It will sound foolish. But I'm going to tell you why I
gave up my teaching job in England. I haven't told anyone else. I haven't even
told Sharon.'

Ahmed listened
attentively and without interruption as Tom told him the full circumstances
regarding his resignation from the school. When he'd finished speaking, Tom let
out a huge sigh. The Arab nodded thoughtfully before offering his observations.
'This is the tree, Tom, from which the
djinn
dropped upon you. A very shadowy Tree of Life. A very old
djinn
.
Yes, she is gone for the moment, but
who knows if she will come back? Now I have your secret.'

'Yes.'

‘I could see it was hard for you to tell
me these things.

And I'm going to repay
you with the story of my own secret.'

Before doing
so, Ahmed replenished the mint tea and rolled himself yet another hashish
cigarette. He lit his reefer and looked hard at Tom. 'Only truth will cross my
lips. Lies are the enemies. Listen to me as I tell you this. Now I will give
you something which will help you know the truth from a lie.'

He
inhaled a lungful of smoke and crossed the room. He put his mouth close to
Tom's lips. 'Open your mouth,' he croaked through his crowded lungs. He
steadied Tom's chin with his hand and gently blew a thin stream of smoke into
the back of his throat. 'Take it back into your lungs.'

Tom
breathed in the smoke. It was cooler than he expected, though the act of
inhalation forced a slight convulsion in him and squeezed a tear from his eye.
But he held it for a moment before exhaling. His heart knocked and he felt
slightly dizzy.

Ahmed
returned to his cushion and assumed a cross-legged position before beginning
his tale.

31

Bismillah
al-
Rahmani
al-
Rahim
.
In the name of God the merciful and the compassionate,
let me tell the tale without diversion or distortion. Let not the demons of
untruth nor the spirits of false witness pull at my tongue. Though none but God
can look into a man's darkest heart and know what he sees there, let me light
the lamp of right speaking that we may pass from shadow to illumination.

I first
heard of the existence of the Masters, or the 'Near Ones' as they should more
properly be known, when I was a student at one of your English universities, in
the city of Leicester. While I was there I wasted my time on the normal
undergraduate activities, which is to say I flouted the Islamic taboo on
alcohol and spent three years getting horribly drunk and spending all my days -
with occasional success - in trying to bed English girls. I stayed on for
postgraduate studies. I was a member of the Islamic Students' Society and a
militant student activist, passionate about many causes - I no longer remember
which ones. Most of all I enjoyed being a disgrace to the Islamic Students'
Society.

But I
got my come-uppance when I fell in love with an unintelligent middle-class English
girl called Victoria. She let me make love to her once only and then refused to
have anything to do with me. I cried openly. I wrung my hands on the public
stage. I drank copious amounts of supermarket whisky. I remember mornings when
I woke up with my head feeling like a split cantaloupe. Have you had that
feeling?

A
friend   called   Rashid, president of the Islamic
Students' Society, told me to pull myself together, that I was making a grand
fool of myself all over the university. He helped me. I stopped drinking and
struggled through my final dissertation. Rashid took me away one weekend to
stay with some friends in Bradford. I was talking with someone, and when I
mentioned I was from Leicester, he told me of a man living there whom I should
visit. The words Masters and Near Ones were used in my presence for the first
time.

When
I returned to Leicester I was curious, and I visited the address I'd been
given. It was an unassuming terraced house in an Asian quarter of the town. I'd
told no one of my intention to visit, but it was as if I was expected. I rang
the bell and an Arab woman answered the door, beckoning me inside without a
word. She led me to a room at the rear of the house, where there were low
lights. In the middle of the room a man was sitting on the floor. A cushion
rested opposite him, as if intended for me. I made to enter the room, when the
man held up an admonitory hand.

'Stop!'
he said. 'Wait at the door. You are too full of alcohol.' I was astonished. I
hadn't had a drink in perhaps three weeks, and I told him so. 'Three years,' he
said. 'It will take you three years before these
djinn
will quit you, so long as you don't drink in that time. And so long as you
stop
blubbing
over women you can't have.'

My first reaction
was to think someone must have set me up for this encounter, but it wasn't
possible. My encounter in Bradford had been a chance meeting, which I'd
initiated. I peered at the man sitting on the floor. In the shadows it was
impossible to determine his age. His spectacles reflected lamplight, so that I
couldn't see his eyes, but I could see his grey hair and the wrinkles of his
skin. I thought perhaps he was Indian, or Iranian, but his Western dress gave
away nothing.

He said. 'I
can't do anything for you with all this alcohol confusion. Come back in a
year.'

‘I won't be
here in a year. I'm returning to Palestine.' I was still poised in the doorway.

His glasses
flashed in the light. 'If you stay in Palestine, you won't be around for long,'
he said. Then he called the woman, who all of this time had been standing
behind me, and whispered something to her. She drew me into the corridor,
closing the door behind her.

'You are
lucky,' she said, 'a lucky young man.' Then she wrote, in Arabic, a name and address
on a piece of paper. 'Go to see this man.'

It was some
place in Baghdad. 'Baghdad!' I almost shouted. 'Why should I go to Baghdad?'
I'd never been there in my life and had no desire to go to Iraq, that
oppressive, militaristic country.

'Then perhaps
you shouldn't,' she said, already ushering me to the front door. Then I was
out on the street, shaking my head.

I had no
intention of going to Iraq, but I found myself pocketing the scrap of paper.
Within two weeks I had returned to Palestine, to Jerusalem, wondering about my
future. I kicked my heels for a while, tried this and that. I even tied a scarf
to my face and threw stones at Israeli soldiers. The fun went out of it when
one of their bullets passed clean through my thigh muscle. One inch higher and
you would now be listening to a eunuch.