The Sirens of Baghdad (22 page)

Sayed dismisses Shakir and invites me to get into his car. We drive across half the city without saying a word. I sense that he’s searching for words but not finding any. Once, unable to stand the silence, he reaches for the radio and then draws his hand back. It’s raining very hard again. The buildings seem to submit to the deluge with resignation. Their gloominess puts me in mind of the tramp I watched not long ago from the window of my hotel room.

We pass through a neighborhood with ravaged buildings. The marks of war take a long time to erase. Work sites devour large sections of the city, bristling with cranes, their bulldozers attacking the ruins like pit bulls. At an intersection, two drivers are screaming at each other; their cars have just collided. Shards of glass lie scattered on the asphalt. Sayed runs a red light and nearly crashes into a car that suddenly appears out of a side street. Drivers on all sides angrily blow their horns at us. Sayed doesn’t hear them. He’s lost in whatever’s on his mind.

We take the coastal road. The sea is stormy, as though tormented by an immense anger. Some vessels lie in the roadstead; in the general grayness, they look like phantom ships.

We drive about forty kilometers before Sayed emerges from his fog. He discovers that he’s missed his turn, twists his head around to get his bearings, abruptly veers onto the shoulder of the road, brings the car to a stop, and waits until he can put his thoughts into some order. Then he says, “It’s a very important mission. Very, very important. I didn’t tell you anything about the virus because no one must know. And I really believed, after all those visits to the clinic, that you would start figuring it out yourself…. Do you understand what I’m saying? It may look to you as though I kept quiet because I wanted to confront you with a fait accompli, but that’s not the case. As of right now, nothing’s set in stone. Please don’t think there’s any pressure on you; please don’t imagine there’s been any breach of trust. If you don’t consider yourself ready, or if this mission doesn’t suit you, you can back out and no one will hold it against you. I just want to assure you that the next candidate won’t be treated any differently. He won’t know anything until the last moment, either. For our security and for the success of the mission, we have to operate this way.”

“Are you afraid I’m not up to it?”

“No!” he cried out before he could stop himself. His finger joints whitened as he clutched the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I’m just confused, that’s all. If you felt cheated or trapped, I wouldn’t forgive myself. I warned you in Baghdad that this would be a mission unlike any other. I couldn’t tell you anything more than that. Do you understand?”

“Now I do.”

He takes out his handkerchief and wipes the corners of his mouth and under his ears. “Are you angry at me?”

“Not even slightly, Sayed. I was surprised to learn that the mission involves a virus, but that has no effect on my commitment. A Bedouin doesn’t lose his nerve. His word is like a rifle shot—it can’t be taken back. I’ll carry this virus. In the name of my family and in the name of my country.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep since I put you in the professor’s hands. It’s got nothing to do with you—I know you’ll go all the way. But this operation’s so…crucial. You have no idea how important it is. We’re down to our last shot, the last cartridge in the chamber. Afterward, a new era will be born, and the West will never look at us the same way again. I’m not afraid of dying, but our deaths have to mean something. They have to change our situation. Otherwise, our martyrs aren’t much use. For me, life’s nothing but an insane gamble; it’s the way you die that determines whether you win the bet. I don’t want our children to suffer. If our parents had taken things in hand in their day, we wouldn’t be so miserable. But, alas, they waited for the miracle instead of going out and finding it, and so we’re compelled to change our fate ourselves.”

He turns toward me. His face is deathly pale, and his eyes shimmer with furious tears. “If you could see Baghdad—if you could see what it’s become: ruined sanctuaries, mosques at war with one another, fratricidal slaughter. We’re overwhelmed. We call for calm, and no one listens. It’s true that we were hostages back when Saddam was in power. But, good God! Now we’re zombies. Our cemeteries are full, and our prayers get blown to pieces along with our minarets. How did we come to this? If I can’t sleep, it’s because we expect everything,
absolutely everything,
from you. You’re our only recourse, our last-ditch stand. If you succeed, you’ll put things back in their proper order, and a new day will dawn for us. The professor hasn’t explained to you the nature of the virus, has he?”

“There’s no need for that.”

“Yes, there is. It’s imperative that you know what your sacrifice will mean to your people and to all the oppressed peoples of the earth. You represent the end of the imperialist hegemony, the turning wheel of fortune, the redemption of the just—”

This time,
I’m
the one who grabs
his
wrist. “Please, Sayed, have faith in me. It would kill me if you didn’t.”

“I have complete faith in you.”

“Then don’t say anything. Let things take their course. I don’t need to be accompanied. I’ll know how to find my way all by myself.”

“I’m just trying to tell you how much your sacrifice—”

“There’s no point in telling me that. You know how people are in Kafr Karam. We never talk about a project if we really intend to accomplish it one day. If you don’t keep your dearest wishes silent, they won’t bear fruit. So let’s just shut up. I want to go all the way, without flinching. In full confidence. Do you understand me?”

Sayed nods. “You’re surely right. The man who has faith in himself doesn’t need it from others.”

“Exactly, Sayed. Exactly.”

He puts the car in reverse and backs up to a gravel trail. We turn onto it and head back to Beirut.

I’ve spent a good part of the night on the hotel terrace, leaning on the balustrade, looking down at the avenue, and hoping that Dr. Jalal would turn up. I feel all alone. I try to get a hold of myself. I need Jalal’s anger to fill my blank spots. But Jalal is nowhere to be found. I went and knocked on his door—twice. He wasn’t in his room, nor was he in the bar. From my lookout post on the terrace, I peer down at the cars that stop at the curb, watching for his rickety silhouette. People enter and leave the hotel; their voices reach me in amplified fragments before dissolving into the other sounds of the night. A crescent moon, as sharp and white as a sickle, adorns the sky. Higher up, strings of stars sparkle in the background. It’s cold; my sighs are visible. I pull my jacket tight around me and puff into my numbed fists until my eyes bulge. My mind feels empty. Ever since the word
virus
penetrated my consciousness, a toxin has been prowling around in there, waiting to be released at any moment. I don’t want to give it the chance to poison my heart. That toxin’s the devil. It’s the trap lying in my path; it’s my weakness and my ruin. And I have vowed before my saints and my ancestors never to yield. So I look away; I look at the late-night crowd in the street, the passing cars, the festive neon lights, and the thronged shops. The sights solicit my eyes, and I let them take over from my brain. This city excels in solicitation!

Just yesterday, it was draped in an immense shroud that muffled its lights and its echoes and reduced its former excesses to a cold anxiety, rooted in uncertainty and failure. Has Beirut so completely forgotten its torment that it has no compassion for its cousins in their distress? What a hopeless place! In spite of the specter of civil war that hovers over its banquets, it pretends there’s nothing amiss. And those people on the sidewalk, charging around like the cockroaches in the gutters, where are they running to? What dream could reconcile them to their sleep? What dawn to their tomorrows? No, I’m not going to end up like them. I don’t want to resemble them in any way….

Two o’clock in the morning. There’s no one left in the street. The shops have lowered their shutters, and the last ghosts have vanished. Jalal won’t come back tonight. Do I really need him?

I return to my room, chilled but reinvigorated. The fresh air has done me good. The toxin that was prowling around in my mind gave up in the end. I slip under the covers and turn off the light. I’m at ease in the darkness. My dead and my living are near me. Virus or bomb, what’s the difference, when you’re grasping an offense in one hand and, in the other, the Cause? I don’t need a sleeping pill. I’ve returned to my element. Everything’s fine.
Life’s nothing but an insane gamble; it’s the way you die that determines whether or not you win the bet
. That’s how legends are born.

20

A middle-aged man presents himself at the reception desk. He’s tall and bony, with the waxy complexion of an aesthete. His outfit includes an old gray overcoat, a dark suit, and leather shoes worn at the heel. With his large horn-rimmed glasses and his tie, which has seen happier days, he exhibits the dignified and pathetic bearing of a schoolteacher nearing retirement. A newspaper protrudes from under one of his arms. He presses the button on the counter and waits calmly for someone to come and attend to him.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Good evening. Please tell Dr. Jalal that Mohammed Seen is here.”

The desk clerk turns toward the pigeonholes. Although there’s no key in number 36, he says, “Dr. Jalal’s not in his room, sir.”

“I saw him come in not two minutes ago,” the man insists. “He may be resting, or perhaps he’s very busy, but I’m an old friend of his, and I know he’d be unhappy to learn that I came by to see him and he wasn’t informed.”

From my seat in the lobby, where I’m drinking a cup of tea, I catch the clerk’s eye as he looks past the visitor. Then the clerk scratches his head and finally picks up the telephone. “I’ll see if he’s in the bar,” he says. “And you are?”

“Mohammed Seen, novelist.”

The desk clerk dials a number, loosens his bow tie, and bites his lip when someone answers on the other end. “Good evening, this is the front desk. Is Dr. Jalal in the bar? A gentleman named Mohammed Seen is waiting for him in the lobby…. Of course.” He hangs up and asks the novelist to be so kind as to wait.

Dr. Jalal erupts from the elevator, his arms open wide and a smile splitting his face from ear to ear. “
Allah, ya baba!
What good wind blows you here,
habibi
? I’m overcome—the great Seen remembers me!” The two men embrace warmly and kiss each other’s cheeks, delighted at this reunion; they spend a long moment in mutual contemplation and reciprocal backslapping. “What an excellent surprise!” the doctor exclaims. “How long have you been in Beirut?”

“A week. The Institut français invited me.”

“Excellent. I hope you’re staying awhile longer. I’d love to spend some time in your company.”

“I have to go back to Paris on Sunday.”

“That gives us two days. God, you look great. Come, let’s go up to the terrace. The view from there is splendid. We can watch the sunset and admire the city lights.”

They disappear into the elevator.

The two men sit in the glassed-in alcove on the hotel terrace. I hear them laughing and exchanging claps on the shoulder before I slip surreptitiously behind a wooden panel where they can’t see me.

Mohammed Seen extricates himself from his overcoat and lays it across the arm of his chair.

“Will you have a drink?” Jalal suggests.

“No, thanks.”

“Damn, it’s been a long time. Where do you live these days?”

“I’m a nomad.”

“I read your last book. I thought it was simply marvelous.”

“Thank you.”

The doctor sinks back into his chair and crosses his legs. He smiles as he looks the novelist up and down, clearly overjoyed to see him again.

The novelist leans forward with his elbows on his knees, joins his hands like a Buddhist monk, and delicately rests his chin on his fingertips. His enthusiasm has vanished.

“Don’t make such a face, Mohammed. Is there some problem?”

“Just one: you.”

The doctor throws his head back in a short, sharp laugh. He recovers immediately, as if he’s suddenly absorbed what the other has said. “You have a problem with me?”

The novelist straightens his back; his hands clasp his knees. “I won’t beat around the bush, Jalal. I attended your lecture the day before yesterday. I still can’t get over it.”

“Why didn’t you come and see me right afterward?”

“With all those people orbiting around you? To tell you the truth, I hardly recognized you. I was so baffled, I think I was the last person to leave the auditorium. I was stupefied, I really was. I felt as though a roofing tile had fallen on my head.”

Jalal’s smile disappears. His face takes on a pained, solemn expression, and furrows crease his brow. For a long time, he scratches his lower lip, hoping to eke out a word capable of breaking through the invisible wall that has just sprung up between him and the novelist. He frowns again and then says at last, “As bad as that, Mohammed?”

“I’m still stunned, if you want to know the truth.”

“Well, I assume you’ve come to teach me a lesson, master. Have at it. Don’t hold back.”

The novelist lifts his overcoat, pats it nervously, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. When he holds it out to the doctor, Jalal refuses with a brusque movement of his hand. The violence of the gesture doesn’t escape the novelist’s notice.

The doctor barricades himself behind his disappointment. His face is drawn, and his eyes are filled with cold animosity.

The writer looks for his lighter but can’t put his hands on it; as Jalal doesn’t offer his own, Seen gives up the idea of smoking.

“I’m waiting,” the doctor reminds him in a guttural voice.

The writer nods. He puts the cigarette back in the pack and the pack back in the overcoat, which he returns to the arm of his chair. He looks as though he’s trying to gain time so he can get his thoughts in order. He takes a deep breath and blurts out, “How can a man turn his coat so quickly, from one day to the next?”

The doctor trembles. His face muscles twitch. He doesn’t seem to have expected such a frontal attack. After a long silence, during the course of which his eyes remain fixed, he replies, “I didn’t turn my coat, Mohammed. I simply realized that I was wearing it inside out.”

“You were wearing it right, Jalal.”

“That’s what I thought. I was wrong.”

“Is it because they didn’t give you the Three Academies Medal?”

“You think I didn’t deserve it?”

“You deserved it, hands down. But not getting it isn’t the end of the world.”

“It was the end of my dream. The proof is that everything changed afterward.”

“What changed?”

“The deal. Now we’re the ones passing out the cards. Better yet, we set the rules of the game.”

“What game, Jalal? The massacre game? Is that anybody’s idea of a good time? You jumped off a moving train. You were better off before.”

“As what? An Arab Uncle Tom?”

“You weren’t an Uncle Tom. You were an enlightened man. We’re the world’s conscience now, you and I and the other intellectual orphans, jeered by our own people and spurned by the hidebound establishment. We’re in the minority, of course, but we exist. And we’re the only ones capable of changing things, you and I. The West is out of the race. It’s been overtaken by events. The battle, the real battle, is taking place among the Muslim elite, that is, between us two and the radical clerics.”

“Between the Aryan race and the non-Aryans.”

“That’s false and you know it. Today, our struggle is
internal.
Muslims are on the side of the person who can project their voice, the Muslim voice, as far as possible. They don’t care whether he’s a terrorist or an artist, an impostor or a righteous man, an obscure genius or an elder statesman. They need a myth, an idol. Someone capable of representing them, of expressing them in their complexity, of defending them in some way. Whether with the pen or with bombs, it makes little difference to them. And so it’s up to us to choose our weapons, Jalal.
Us
: you and me.”

“I’ve chosen mine. And there aren’t any others.”

“You don’t really think that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You’re not a true believer. You’re just a turncoat.”

“I forbid you—”

“All right. I haven’t come here to upset you. But I wanted to tell you this: We bear a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, Jalal. Everything depends on us, on you and me. Our victory will mean the salvation of the whole world. Our defeat will mean chaos. We have in our hands an incredible instrument: our double culture. It allows us to know what’s going on, who’s right and who’s wrong, where some are flawed, why others are blocked. The West is mired in doubt. It’s used to imposing its theories as though they were absolute truths, but now they’re meeting resistance and coming apart. After so many centuries, the West is losing its bearings; it’s no longer lulled by its illusions. Hence the metastasis that’s brought us the current dialogue of the deaf, which pits pseudomodernity against pseudobarbarity.”

“The West isn’t modern; it’s rich. And the ‘barbarians’ aren’t barbarians; they’re poor people who don’t have the wherewithal to modernize.”

“I couldn’t agree more. But that’s where we can intervene and put things in perspective, calm people down, readjust their focus, and get rid of the stereotypes this whole frightful mistake is founded on. We’re the golden mean, the proper balance of things.”

“That’s arrant nonsense. I used to think that way, too. To survive the intellectual imperialism that snubbed me—me, an educated man, a scholar—I told myself exactly the same things you’ve just told me. But I was sweet-talking myself. The only risks I took were in TV studios, where I criticized my people, my traditions, my religion, my family, and my saints. They
used
me. Like a piece of charcoal. I’m not charcoal. I’m a two-edged blade. They’ve blunted me on one side, but I can still gut them with the other. And don’t think this has anything to do with the Three Academies Medal. That was just one more disappointment among many. The truth lies elsewhere. The West has become senile. It’s not aging well—in fact, it’s just an old, paranoid pain in the ass. Its imperialistic nostalgia prevents it from admitting that the world has changed. You can’t even reason with it. And therefore it has to be euthanized…. Look, you don’t build a new building on top of an old one. You raze it to the ground, and then you start over, from the foundation up.”

“With what? Plastic explosives, booby-trapped packages, spectacular crashes. Vandals don’t build; they destroy. We have to take responsibility, Jalal. We have to learn to suffer low blows and injustices from those we consider our allies. We have to transcend our rage. It’s a question of humanity’s future. What can our disillusions weigh in comparison with the threat hanging over the world? They didn’t treat you decently; I don’t deny it—”

“Nor you, either. Remember?”

“Is that a valid reason for deciding the fate of nations—the obnoxious conceit of a handful of Templars?”

“In my view, those dim-witted Christian warriors are the incarnation of all the arrogance the West displays toward us.”

“You forget your disciples, your colleagues, all the thousands of European students whom you taught and who disseminate what you taught them, even today. That’s what counts, Jalal. To hell with recognition if it’s granted by people who can’t hold a candle to you. According to Jonathan Swift, ‘When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.’ It’s always been the way of the world. But your triumph consists in the knowledge you bequeath to others and in the minds you enlighten. It’s not possible that you can turn your back on so much joy and satisfaction and embrace instead the jealousy of a band of unthinking fanatics.”

“Obviously, Mohammed, you’ll never understand. You’re too nice, and you’re too hopelessly naïve. I’m not getting revenge; I’m laying claim to my genius, my integrity, my right to be tall and handsome and appreciated. You think I’m going to accept exclusion, or erase the memory of so many years of ostracism and intellectual despotism and ignorant segregation? Not a chance. Those days are gone. I’m a professor emeritus—”

“You used to be, Jalal. You aren’t anymore. Now that you’re on the obscurantist faculty, you’re proving both to your former students and to the people who wounded you that you’re not worth very much after all.”

“They’re not worth very much to me, either. The exchange rate they charged me is no longer current. I’m my own unit of measurement. My own stock market. My own dictionary. I made the decision to revise and redefine everything I knew. To prescribe
my own
truths. The time of bowing and scraping is over. If we want to straighten up the world, the spineless have to go. We have the means of our insurrection. We’ve stopped being dupes, and we’re not hiding anymore. In fact, we’re crying out from the rooftops that the West is nothing but a crude hoax, a sophisticated lie. All its seductiveness is false, like a cheap, fancy dress. Underneath, it’s not such a turn-on. Believe me, Mohammed. The West isn’t a suitable match for us. We’ve listened and listened to its lullabies, but now we’ve slept long enough. Once upon a time, the West could amuse itself by defining the world as it saw fit. It called indigenous men ‘natives’ and free men ‘savages.’ It made and unmade mythologies according to its own good pleasure and raised its charlatans to divine rank. Today, the offended peoples have recovered their power of speech. They have some words to say. And our weapons say exactly the same thing.”