The Age of Reinvention (36 page)

A legal error, an accusation based on a tip-off, a rumor—Tahar's obsessive fear—and here he is, now, in this cell, head in hands, face lined with the effects of fatigue and shock. He calms down—he knows he has done nothing wrong—and finally falls asleep, exhausted. Every five minutes, a warden shines a flashlight at him to check that he hasn't attempted suicide. (How could he?) He decides to go on a hunger strike, hoping this will draw attention to his case, prove his innocence. Systematically he pushes back every meal he's given, ignoring the pleas and threats of the wardens, who are under orders to make sure he doesn't die. After two weeks, Samir—dull-eyed and hollow-cheeked—is urgently transferred to a military hospital, where he undergoes tests. They begin force-feeding him.

We want terrorists alive
.

He is alone in this white-sheeted bed, on a drip, as if he's been in a serious accident. For the first time since his arrest, he starts to cry. He wishes he could roll over into the fetal position and rock himself back and forth, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. Once he realizes that they are not going to let him die, that they will not alert anyone to his situation because they have the means to keep him alive anyway, he gives up his hunger strike.

A few days later, he is sent back to his cell, where he slips into a vegetative state. He makes himself do a few gymnastic exercises every day, but this resolution does not last long. He thinks:
I'm disappearing, day by day. I am going to die without ever finding out what really happened
.

One morning, Samir is rudely awakened. Sleepy-eyed, ashen-faced, hair and beard grown wild, he cuts a scary figure. “Your lawyer is here,” the warden tells him. His lawyer? He sighs. Is the nightmare ending? The warden takes him to the visiting room, where Dan Stein is waiting for him. The two sit across from each other.

“Dan, I'm going crazy!” Samir shouts, pressing his hands to the window. “Get me out of here, Dan!”

“Ruth called me as soon as you were arrested. I know you've made demands but they've only been passed on to me very recently. We've been doing everything we can while you've been in here, but so far they've refused all our requests.”

“Can they do that?”

“They can do whatever they like, Sami! You're lucky they even let me in today. They sometimes keep guys for weeks on end like this, without any legal representation. The security of the United States overrides everything. You're nothing compared to that . . .”

“Dan, I don't understand what's happened to me. Why am I here? I haven't done anything. You have to get me out of here!”

Stein opens his briefcase and takes out a notepad and pen. He asks Samir if he has been told why he was arrested. Yes, yes, they told him but he doesn't understand—it's all a big mistake, or a conspiracy, they're framing him . . .

Stein interrupts: “Let's cut to the chase. We don't have much time. Anti-terrorism laws have become much harsher since 9/11—you must be aware of that. They can do whatever they want to you. Since Congress voted in the Patriot Act, individuals have no real rights at all if they are suspected of being involved in Islamist terror activities. They think you're a sleeper agent, Sami. They think you came to the U.S. a long time ago to make a career here, to blend into American society, to become the kind of person no one would suspect, purely so you could commit a major attack years later. But what they don't understand—this is what they're struggling with—is why a Jew would be working for radical Islamists. They've got the CIA and the FBI on the case. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they've been in touch with Mossad.”

“And what conclusions did they come to?” he asks, with an undertone of animosity in his voice.

“That either you're not a Jew—which is a possibility . . .”

Stein looks at him as he says this, and Samir struggles to conceal his embarrassment.

“. . . or you've converted to radical Islam. Or, the last possibility, you really are a victim. But if that's the case, then they want to understand: Why you? What is their true target? You, your wife, your firm, your father-in-law?”

“I am not guilty of the crime I'm accused of.”

Dan Stein suddenly flashes him a hostile look. “I'm not yet sure I can accept that.”

“What? Why? You can't just let me rot in here! I'm telling you, I'm innocent! What do you want from me? Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg you? All right, then, I'm begging you. I need you!”

“I'll have to think about it.”

“I'm your colleague. I'm the husband of one of your best clients! You came to my birthday party last year—don't you remember?”

“First of all, I would like to understand how your brother can be a radical Islamist when you're a Jew. And, above all, your wife and I would like to know why you hid your brother's existence from us.”

“That's very simple: François is not my brother—he's my half brother. We don't have the same father. He converted and I knew nothing about it. I barely even know him! I only lived with him for a couple of years. Listen to me, I'm begging you—I have nothing to do with any of this!”

“Prove it.”

A fake!

SOPHIE MAUROIS
¹

A minor writer.

DAVID KASSOVITZ
²

After reading this book, the reader is the one who needs to be consoled.

TRISTAN LANOUX
³

The worst novel of the year.

JEAN DE LA COTTE
⁴

1
. A literary critic renowned for her integrity and discriminating taste, Sophie Maurois wants to give up everything to move to Ireland with a writer forty years her senior.

2
. David Kassovitz justified his acerbic review with the words: “When a Sephardic Jew complains, no one believes him.”

3
. A writer and columnist famous for his cutting wit and brutal attacks, Tristan Lanoux likes to tell people that he has everything a man could possibly want: the best books and the most beautiful women.

4
. An extreme right-winger and failed writer, Jean de la Cotte told a colleague, with reference to Baron: “I'm going to get him.”

The sound of gunfire and the thunder of hoofbeats. Well, Samuel had been warned:
Critics hunt in packs
. He doesn't want to read the virulent reviews. He has stopped buying newspapers, never listens to the radio or watches TV, and avoids social networks. But he always receives a phone call or a text from someone telling him how sorry they are, as if a family member has died.

It hurts—he doesn't deny it. He never imagined this kind of reception. He can't read a negative review without feeling devastated. He remembers the day when, after being panned in the press, he thought about throwing himself under the wheels of a truck on the Paris–Honfleur freeway. Some people might consider such an act disproportionate: Why should artistic criticism provoke someone to end their life, and especially in such a brutal, showy way? But Samuel doesn't see it that way. The hardest thing is certainly not success—success and the recognition that accompanies it, all those invitations from bookstores, all those journalists wanting to interview you, all those readers writing to you to tell you how much your book moved/thrilled/transported them and/or how it changed their life; all that money, transforming what had for so long been a
problem
into something that provides you with a freedom you had never experienced before: the freedom to write when you want, where you want . . . So, all of these symptoms of success had been wonderful. The most difficult thing, the most painful ordeal he'd had to face as a famous writer, was unpopularity. Being hated, criticized, publicly reviled . . . this is something completely new, and puts him in a dreadful state. He opens a newspaper and reads that his book is “awful.” He switches on the TV and watches himself appear on a literary program during which, in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers, a journalist points at him accusingly and says: “I don't like you one bit.” And no matter how courageous and dignified Samuel's response to this—he told the man that he had the right to dislike his book but not him as a person, because he didn't know him, had never even met him before—the truth is that it destroyed him. Morally and physically, being hated to that degree makes him collapse internally, leaves him paranoid. He wonders what it is—in his book, in his behavior, in the way he expresses himself in interviews—that could engender such a flood of insults. He feels as if, at any moment, someone might come up behind him and fire a rifle shot through the back of his head. For years, as a social worker, he had been perceived as a person of value, a “good” man, esteemed, well liked, and yet now here were all these people—people he had never even seen—stating publicly that they hated him. He feels like he has been the victim of a terrible injustice. And, rereading the words of Thomas Bernhard after the publication of his novel
Frost
, Samuel appropriates them: “I felt sure that the mistake of putting all my hopes in literature was going to suffocate me. I no longer wanted to hear about literature. It had not made me happy.”

He had never been as unhappy as he was now, and his only comfort was alcohol. He started drinking again, went out every night to parties, kissed everyone
mwah
mwah
, and one morning, on a high-profile TV show, signed his own death warrant when he answered a journalist who asked how it felt to suddenly become so unpopular, with the words: “Success is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Locked up in his cell, only a small amount of news filters through to Samir—and it's always the worst news. His firm's clients are withdrawing their business, changing lawyers. The story even made the front page of one of America's biggest newspapers:

French lawyer suspected of role in planned terrorist attack on U.S.

Berman calls Pierre Lévy and tells him everything in a litany of reproaches, his voice thick with bitterness. Everything he built up is crumbling, and someone is going to pay for it: “You're the one who recommended this guy to me! You brought him over here. You trained him. You paid his way through law school! You have a moral responsibility for what's happened. Who
is
Sami Tahar? Do you know? Shall I tell you what I think? You put your trust in a man who charmed and duped you. You recommended a lawyer who is causing my ruin!” Pierre Lévy is distraught. He has heard Berman's version of events, he has read the papers, but he is in such a state of confusion that he can't reply. He is the only one who knows that Samir is a Muslim Arab, and now he too is plunged in doubt. What if he had been manipulated? What if Samir deliberately orchestrated his confession so that one day (and that day has arrived) he would be able to claim his protection, even expect Pierre to pay his bail if it came to trial? Objectively, the facts are stacking up against Samir. Everything seems to suggest that he invented an irreproachable life story for himself in order to deflect attention from his real purpose. Everything seems to suggest that he is guilty. “Now he's asking for you!” Berman continues. “He says he will tell the truth to you and you only.” Pierre replies immediately that he will fly to New York in order to try to prove Sam's innocence, to prove that this is a miscarriage of justice. “I certainly hope you're right,” Berman says. “Because if it turns out that he was a spy, a terrorist, a traitor, we'll have to close the firm! And you know what that means for me? I have a family to look after, I'm deep in debt. What the hell is going to happen to me?” “Everything will work out, believe me,” Lévy reassures him, without believing it himself. “That's pretty optimistic. It must be the Sephardic Jew in you, because my guess is exactly the opposite: Things will only get worse. No client will go near us. Shelley and Associates have already taken over about a third of our business. If we don't come up with a strategy pretty damn soon, we're headed for disaster.” “Have you called Tim Vans? He handled publicity for the boss of Vertigo after their financial scandal and they ended up steadying the ship.” “I can't afford to spend two hundred thousand on a guy who writes press releases!” “All right, I'm on my way!” As soon as he has hung up, Pierre Lévy begins organizing his departure. That evening, he takes a flight to New York and, after struggling through a mass of red tape, finally receives approval for a meeting with Samir. He
has
to talk to him.

When Pierre Lévy enters the visiting room, he has difficulty concealing his shock.
Sami?
Samir has a slightly wild-eyed look, his lips tensed. There are bald patches in his hair—a new geography marking out the borders of his pain. His skinny arms hang down by the sides of his gaunt body like artificial limbs, moving only when the handcuffs dig into his wrists. Which they often do, clearly, because his wrists are ridged with swollen red marks. His face is emaciated, the complexion waxy, almost yellowish. His eyes, deep in their hollowed-out sockets, betray a new fear. His cheeks are overgrown with a thick black beard that gives him a neglected appearance. He looks weak and sick—so different from the Tahar that Lévy last saw in Paris. This is what a fall from grace can do to a man. This is what mental confusion can do. A complete metamorphosis, as if the pains that racked his body had contracted his muscles, shrunk his stature as a man. Samir can't hide his surprise at seeing Pierre. Never would he have imagined them approving this meeting. His former boss must have pulled some serious strings to make this happen, using his political connections, making promises. And here he was. “You came,” Samir whispers. “Thank you.” Samir sits down and collapses, burying his head in his hands. This lasts three or four minutes. Finally, he controls himself and sits up.