In the Country of Men

3

That summer Ustath Rashid taught his son how to drive. He would prop Kareem up on a pillow and let him drive around the quiet streets of Gergarish. A week before we went to Lepcis, Kareem took his father's car keys without asking permission and drove me to the sea. He tried to get as close to the water as possible, but as soon as we reached the shore the wheels sank into the sand.

'Why won't you come to Lepcis?'

'Mama won't let me.'

'Stop making excuses, she already told Baba you can. What are you afraid of?'

'I am not afraid.' He didn't seem convinced. I worried he would think me a mommy's boy, so I told him. 'She's ill,' I said. 'I think she will die soon.'

'But all women are ill,' Kareem said. 'Mama bleeds all the time.'

'Really?'

'Yes. Sometimes I go into the bathroom and find the toilet water red. It's disgusting. It's their curse. But don't worry, it doesn't mean they will die.'

The water was as flat and still as oil. We ran until the water tripped us. We raced towards the turquoise, where the deep sea was cooler. I felt bad for Kareem, but also relieved that at least my mother didn't bleed.

'You'll love Lepcis.' He dived and tickled my feet.

Back on land we collected stones, wood and any rubbish we could find to stuff behind the wheels. The engine moaned and the car shifted sideways before it wriggled its way out of the sand.

Kareem had been to Lepcis Magna several times with his father. He had also seen Ghadames and Sabratha, the cave paintings in Fezzan. He had even been on a boat to Crete, where he said women swam naked. Like me, he was an only child. This was very rare because parents with only one offspring were always at the risk of leading people to believe that either the woman was no longer good, or, God forbid, both the mother and the father were objecting to God's Will. Mama was often asked why she didn't have more children. She would blush at the question. Baba blushed too when he was nudged by a friend and asked in a whisper why he didn't take another wife. Maybe it was this that in spite of the age difference – Kareem was twelve, where I was nine – had brought us close to one another. Because what united Kareem and me rarely felt like friendship, but something like blood or virtue. I wanted so much to be like him.

When Kareem and his parents first moved in next door Mama went to pay them a visit. She asked me to put on my black leather shoes, which I hardly wore because they were heavy and scraped against my ankles, and she ironed my white shirt and insisted I button its collar. I didn't mind because I was eager to meet my new next-door neighbour, who, the boys in the street had told me, was like me, without brother or sister. But when we arrived his mother, Auntie Salma, said that Kareem had gone out with his father to explore the area, then smiled, tilted her head to one side and said, 'Sorry.'

Our street was mostly lined with building plots, the foundations dug up and abandoned. The only five completed houses, identical in design, huddled together in the centre of the street: ours and Kareem's on one side; the other three, where Adnan, Masoud and Ali and Osama lived, on the opposite side.

I wandered around our new neighbours' house amused by the strangeness of being in a building that was the mirror image of ours on the outside but on the inside was completely altered by the different furniture and the colours of the walls: like two brothers who had grown distant. Our walls were lined in Italian wallpaper, European flowers in full bloom, autumn leaves falling always, the same bird perched on top of the same branch and plucking at the same twig over and over again, foreign butterflies on arm chairs, tables in dark, satisfied woods and our windows dressed in Dutch cloth and French velvet. Their walls were painted pastel, the skirting-board a dark brown, 'So that when they get dirty it won't show,' Auntie Salma explained, showing Mama around the house. 'What a clever idea,' Mama said, with worrying enthusiasm. Their windows were covered in the same cotton fabric, the sort of thing that was commonly found in Libya then, imported from Egypt. They weren't as well-off as we were; Ustath Rashid was only a university professor, whereas Baba was a businessman who travelled the world looking for beautiful things and animals and trees to bring to our country. That night I thanked God for our wealth and asked him to keep us so for ever and ever.

A couple of days before Ustath Rashid was taken I joined him, his students and Kareem on a day trip to Lepcis. I felt a string in my heart break as I looked back at Mama waving goodbye. Baba wasn't home.

At the beginning of the trip I was nervous, but then the whole bus began singing and clapping. Ustath Rashid's students were wonderfully jubilant; watching them I burned with anticipation to be at university. A couple of girls were pulled up to dance. With eyes downcast they shook their hips and twirled their hands in the air. Passing cars blew their horns. We were like a wedding party.

Kareem and I were sitting in the back, Ustath Rashid in the front, occasionally looking back at us and smiling. When the dancing and the clapping subsided, a chant took hold: al-Doctor, al-Doctor, al-Doctor… We didn't stop until Ustath Rashid stood up and turned to face us.

'I am truly honoured to have such an orderly, well-mannered and respectable group of students. I would just like to know where you unruly bunch have hidden them.'

We all laughed, clapping and whistling as loudly as we could.

'The city of Lepcis Magna was founded by people from Tyre

' LEBANON.'

'Yes – very good – modern-day Lebanon. Subsequently it became Phoenician, then, of course, Roman, when it was made famous by its loyal son, Emperor Sep…'

'SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS.'

'Yes, our Grim African, both a source of pride and shame.'

'PRIDE PRIDE/

'Well, if you insist.'

Then the bus turned down a dirt road that led to the sea.

'Welcome to Lepcis,' Ustath Rashid announced.

He seemed transformed. Stepping down from the bus, smiling at the abandoned city scattered by the lapping sea, its twisted columns like heavy sleeping giants by the shore, he gave a deep sigh and recited a poem:

Why this emptiness after joy?

Why this ending after glory?

Why this nothingness where once was a city?

Who will answer? Only the wind

Which steals the chantings of priests

And scatters the souls once gathered.

Some of his students clapped. He smiled, bowed, blushing.

'Sidi Mahrez's lamentation for Carthage could have equally applied to Lepcis,' he said marching ahead.

We all struggled to keep up.

He took us to see a broken frieze that displayed part of the Emperor's name. Absence was everywhere. Arches stood without the walls and roofs of the shops they had once belonged to and seemed, in the empty square under the open sky, like old men trying to remember where they were going. Coiled ivy and clusters of grapes were carved into their stone. White-stone-cobbled streets – some heading towards the sea, others into the surrounding green desert – marched bravely into the rising sand that erased them. Ferns, grass and wild sage shot through the stone-paved floor. Palm trees bowed like old gossiping women at the edges of the city.

He showed us the 'Medusa medallions' carved in marble and inset high between the leap and dive of the limestone arches. They were boys with healthy cheeks full as moons, encircled with lush curls, their foreheads flexed, eyes anxiously inspecting the distance, lips gently open. 'They are also known as the "Sea-monsters",' Ustath Rashid said, 'always facing the sea, always expecting the worst.'

Kareem continued staring up at the Medusa medallions long after the group had wandered off to the next object.

'What's the point?' he said.

'To scare away the enemy,' I said.

'And how do you expect them to do that?'

'I don't know,' I said and walked away.

'Children are useless in a war,' he said following me.

We caught up with Ustath Rashid in what were the baths, tiled rectangular cubes carved into the ground and under domed roofs. Flaked frescoes of men stabbing spears into the necks of lions and cheetahs, others on boats in a river full of yawning fish, lined the walls and ceilings. Ustath Rashid stopped in front of a painting of a naked woman.

'This is a Maenad, a follower of the cult of Dionysus, the god that alleviates inhibitions and inspires creativity.'

Her eyes were as strange as a bird's, her lips full and melancholy, the area around her nipples glowed pink, and her stomach stretched down to hips that widened out softly. She was dancing, one hand above her head, the other out by her waist. I could hear Ustath Rashid's voice going further, footsteps following him. I came closer to her, traced my finger round the dark swirl of her bellybutton. I turned my finger round the pink centre of her nipple. Then my eyes fell on her dark lips. I kissed them, hearing my own breath against the cool dry stone. Something like guilt or fear made me withdraw. I felt a swirl of excitement in my belly. Her eyes seemed to be looking at me. I quickly kissed her again and ran to catch up with the others.

We picnicked there, and when everyone was lying under trees resting, Kareem and I went exploring. We spotted two of Ustath Rashid's students hugging below a chestnut tree. We watched him slip his hand beneath her jumper. She moaned a strange moan. Later the man got in a fist fight with another student. We weren't sure if it was over the girl. When one punched the other in the face it didn't sound like it did in the films; instead of a bang it was more like a wet kiss. Ustath Rashid put himself between them and got his spectacles knocked off. Everyone fell silent then. He smiled strangely while he searched for his spectacles. They all watched him. Kareem spotted them in the dirt and picked them up. He placed them in his father's hand. Ustath Rashid fixed them over his ears and smiled again, facing the ground, as if it was he who had lost his temper and was now embarrassed.

Just when everybody was preparing to leave, Kareem took me to see the amphitheatre. We took turns running down to the stage to hear our voices amplified against the rising steps shaped in a crescent moon. By this time

thick clouds were drifting into the sky, black and bruised. The sea was growing louder, crashing against the shore, then the rain fell.

On the way back most of the bus was asleep. I watched Kareem nuzzle into his father's side.

At times I used to wish that Baba was more like Ustath Rashid. The two men were good friends, if unalike. Baba was much more aloof. The times I felt closest to him were when he was unaware of my presence: watching him spread his library of neckties on the bed, for example, humming an unfamiliar tune. Even the way he swam seemed distant: floating on his back, his toes pointing to the sky, his eyes shut, unconcerned where the waters might take him. At home he was often busy with a book or the endless number of newspapers that appeared at our door every morning. I would sometimes curl up beside him, but his powers of concentration were amazing and he would hardly notice me. I would study his face as he read. Even the English mints he bought on his trips abroad, and which he kept in a small silver box, seemed mysterious: they were the size of small aspirin pills, but as soon as I put one in my mouth it set it on fire. He would sometimes say something in Italian at the newspaper. That always made Mama laugh. 'Your father is swearing at the paper,' she would say.

Although he travelled more than Ustath Rashid he never took me with him. I begged him several times and once I felt so sick with sadness that I screamed, kicked his shins and pummelled his thighs, and, when Mama restrained me, I cried and called him 'Ugly!' He drove off just the same. I never again asked him to take me with him or cried in front of him when he came to leave. At other times I secretly wished that Moosa, Baba's closest friend, was my father instead. Moosa was much younger, closer to Mama's age, and as tall as a tree. He often carried me on his shoulders to pick the high fruit, sweetened by the sun, on the crowns of the plum and orange trees in our garden.

Once Baba returned from one of his business trips with a huge open truck full of trees that had come by sea from Sweden. It was strange to have them sleep outside our house. They were dark and moist and smelled like human skin. Mama and I spread the atlas on the kitchen table to see where exactly Sweden was and by which sea route Baba's trees had come. Another time the truck was full of cows, black and dark brown from Scotland. We -Baba, Mama, Moosa and I – fed them without letting them off the truck, stuffing the feed through the fence, their round big black glassy eyes following us in silence. Mama sang to them the way she sang to herself when she was in the bathroom, or when she was hanging clothes on the clothesline in the garden, softly like a little girl unaware of herself. Baba walked around the truck several times, making sure each cow got its share. The cows were silent the whole time, chewing gloomily.

I spent the whole of that day unable to leave them alone, turning around the truck, looking up at their pink titties, climbing to stare into their peculiar eyes. After nap time the boys came out and began teasing them too. Masoud wiggled his bum at them and mooed, causing his brother Ali to laugh so hard a vein on either side of his tiny neck bulged out. Osama wanted to hear them moo so he threw a couple of stones at them and the cows huddled together, their sudden movement causing the truck to rock slightly. This seemed to awaken a new fear in Ali; he ran to his front door, stood frowning at his fingers. 'Come, don't be such a baby,' his brother Masoud said. Ali ran inside his house and didn't come out for the rest of the day. When I threatened Osama I would tell Baba, he sighed and dropped the stones in his hands.

By nightfall the cows began to moo.

'Maybe they are frightened,' I suggested.

Moosa said it was the heat that bothered them. 'Where they are from the sun has no heat and barely any light,' he said.

'So you want to convince us you've been to Scotland?' Mama told him.

'No. I saw it in a film. I felt a chill just watching it.'

Baba couldn't say how cold Scotland was because he bought the cows off a man in Malta, which was only across the sea.

The following morning, after Baba had driven off with them, Um Masoud came to our door to complain. She was Masoud and Ali's mother and lived in the house across the street from ours. Like her two sons, Um Masoud was fat. Her buttocks were the size of giant watermelons. Although I never tried it, of course, I was certain I could balance a glass of water on one of them. Holding her youngest, Ali, by one hand and waving the other beside her ear, she said, 'I can still hear their mooing and suspect I will for a long time to come. Ali couldn't even sleep.' Ali was only six and, standing beside his huge mother, he looked like a dwarf. I stuck my tongue out at him. He frowned and looked away. 'He woke up several times screaming. And this is to say nothing of the stink they left behind in our street.'

'You just have,' Mama murmured.

'What did you say?' Um Masoud said, suspicion forcing her eyebrows into a deep V.

'Nothing,' Mama said.

Um Masoud walked away, pulling Ali by the hand, and repeating, 'Cows? Cows in our street?'

'Next time we will import snakes,' Mama said under her breath. 'Silent, odourless snakes.'

'What would people say?' Um Masoud continued. 'That we bring cows into our homes? It's not normal, this.'

I was glad she hadn't heard what Mama said about the snakes. Um Masoud's husband, Ustath Jafer, was an Antenna, a man of the Mokhabarat, 'able to put people behind the sun,' as I had heard it said many times.

Two days after we returned from Lepcis, and a week before I had seen Baba walk across Martyrs' Square, Ustath Rashid was taken.

I had seen men interrogated on television before. I remembered once a man who used to own a clothing factory in Tripoli. He was accused of being a bourgeois and a traitor. He was dressed in a light-grey Italian suit that shimmered slightly under the spotlight. He sat stiff in his chair, as if he was in pain. I was standing just outside the entrance of the room, where I wouldn't be seen. Baba and Moosa sat on the sofa, Mama beside them in the armchair. Moosa said softly to Baba, 'They deliberately spare the face. I bet his body is a patchwork of bruises.' Then a dark cloud grew out of nowhere on the man's groin, a stain that kept spreading. I saw it first. I ran to the screen, stabbing my finger at it. 'Move,' Baba yelled. I ran and stood beside Mama. 'Go to your room,' he said. 'It's all right,' Mama told him and he shouted, 'He shouldn't see this.' 'It's his country too,' she said calmly, facing the screen. He stormed out of the room. We watched the man trying to cover the wet patch with his hands, squirming in his chair.

But to see Ustath Rashid arrested was different. I had heard it said many times before that no one is ever beyond their reach, but to see them, to see how it can happen, how quickly, how there's no space to argue, to say no, made my belly swim. Afterwards, when Mama saw my face, she said, 'You look like you've seen a ghost.' When I told her what I had seen she brought her hand to her forehead and whispered, 'Poor Salma.' She took me to the bathroom and washed my face. 'You shouldn't have watched. Next time run straight home.' Then she made me soup and tea as if I had flu.

Somebody, a traitor, was printing leaflets criticizing the Guide and his Revolutionary Committees. They came in the middle of the night and placed them like newspapers on our doorsteps. I say somebody, but there must have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of men. The boys and I took turns staying up, hoping to catch sight of one. We imagined them to be all in black, masked and very fast. Ali claimed he saw one. Masoud whacked him across the head and said, 'If you lie about such things again I'll tell Baba.'

Everyone feared these leaflets and made a point of tearing them up in full view of their neighbours. Others, like Mama, took them inside only to watch them burn in the kitchen sink, then ran cold water over the ashes. I overheard her once say to Auntie Salma, 'They are going to get us all in trouble.' When I asked her what she meant, she sighed and said, 'Nothing.' Another time she stood stiffly out on the pavement listening to Um Masoud speak against the 'traitors', saying, 'Jafer is very distressed by these leaflets.' Mama spoke differently to Um Masoud, she seemed sympathetic. She frowned and shook her head and agreed with everything Um Masoud said. 'May God forgive them, they don't know how wonderful the revolution has been for this country.'

The morning before Ustath Rashid was taken the boys and I were so bored we took the leaflets the traitors had left during the night and tossed them over the garden walls, where they immediately became, officially, inside people's houses. We only did this in neighbouring streets, where we didn't know anyone. We tied their light paper bodies to small stones and hurled them over the high walls like the way grenades were thrown in war films. The act was exhilarating, but soon boredom set in again, so we returned to our street and began preparing it for a football match.

Gergarish was a newly constructed district and apart from the main roads that connected it to the centre of the city, most of its streets were yet to be named or tarmacked. We called ours Mulberry because there used to be an orchard of mulberry trees here, the last one remaining was next door in Ustath Rashid and Auntie Salma's garden.

The sun reached the centre of the sky. We heard the crackle of the local mosque speaker. We could see the pencil-like minaret rise in the distance above the low houses of our street. Then Sheikh Mustafa's voice came.

We marked the goal posts with rocks and empty plastic bottles, argued about the sides, and finally the game kicked off. After a few minutes a car hurtled towards us, billowing dust as if it was the only creature in the world. When we saw it, white in the sun, we stopped playing and ran to the pavement, letting the ball roll away.

The car pulled over in front of Kareem's house. Kareem froze, as if his heart had dropped into his shoes. Four men got out, leaving the doors open. The car was like a giant dead moth in the sun. Three of the men ran inside the house, the fourth, who was the driver and seemed to be their leader, waited on the pavement. He smiled at the two fat brothers Masoud and Ali. I didn't register then that he knew them. None of us had seen him before. He had a horrible face, pockmarked like pumice stone. His men reappeared, holding Ustath Rashid between them. He didn't struggle. Auntie Salma trailed behind as if an invisible string connected her to her husband. The man with the pockmarked face slapped Ustath Rashid, suddenly and ferociously. It sounded like fabric tearing, it stopped Auntie Salma. Another one kicked Ustath Rashid in the behind. He anticipated it because he jerked forward just before it came. The force of it made him jump, but he didn't make a sound. He wore that strange embarrassed smile of his. He didn't argue or beg, as if the reasons why, all the questions and answers, were known. His shirt was torn. But no blood. I was surprised by this, and later thought that if he had bled – even a little – it would have made it easier on Kareem, because we all would have respected a bleeding man. Ustath Rashid looked towards us, and when his eyes met Kareem's, his face changed. He looked like he was about to cry or vomit. Then he doubled over and began to cough. The men seemed not to know what to do. They looked at each other, then at Auntie Salma, who had one hand over her mouth, the other clasped round her braided hair that fell as thick as an anchor line over her shoulder. They grabbed Ustath Rashid, threw him into the car, slammed the doors shut and sped between us, crushing our goal posts. I couldn't see Ustath Rashid's head between the two men sitting on either side of him in the back seat; he must have been coughing still.

Kareem took a few steps after the car. For a moment I thought he was going to run after it. He stood with his back to us, then turned and walked home. Auntie Salma was standing, still clutching her hair, looking in the direction the white car had vanished, as if it was arriving, as if Ustath Rashid was in fact finally coming home from a long trip.

No one knew why Ustath Rashid had been taken, but the next day the rumours began to spread that he had been a traitor. Urn Masoud came to our door, clicked her tongue, looked around her and said, 'That's the fate of all traitors.'

Baba had heard Um Masoud gossip before: she claimed that Bahloul the beggar was richer than all of us put together, that Majdi the baker didn't only sell 'innocent bread' – that was how she put it – but something else, too, called Grappa, which wasn't only haram, but also illegal in our country. Such rumours didn't bother Baba, in fact sometimes they amused him, but Ustath Rashid was his friend. The two would often go walking by the sea when the sun was low. And many times they sat talking softly in Baba's study, where they were sometimes joined by Nasser. I would bring them coffee. Mama would knock twice, then open the door for me. Walking in slowly, balancing the tray, I would be hit immediately by the coarse, smoke-filled air. It made the bitter smell of cardamon and gum arabic rising up from the coffee almost pleasant. 'Don't spill,' were often Mama's last words before she swung the door open on those secret meetings. I quickly learned that the best way was to look ahead; not caring if I spilled, or not caring overtly, seemed to be the trick. But at the beginning I walked with my head down, facing the three black pools of coffee on the silver tray, telling my hands to be firm as I caught to my left, in the periphery of my vision, the knees of the two men sitting in the comfortable butterfly-cloaked armchairs, and to my right the brown wooden expanse of Baba's desk. When I had safely placed the tray on the desk, Baba would say, 'Well done, Suleiman.' When I looked up to face him I sometimes heard my neck crack. Their conversation was suspended from the moment Mama had knocked on the door, they were eager for me to leave. 'Close the door,' Baba would say, but then he often called me back at the last minute. 'Here,' he would say, 'empty this,' handing me an ashtray full of cigarette butts and dead matchsticks. And a few weeks before Ustath Rashid was taken, I placed the tray on Baba's desk and saw tears in his eyes. He was reading something. Ustath Rashid and Nasser were sitting in silence watching him. I went to his side. I nudged him and asked, 'Who upset you, Baba?' Ustath Rashid held his hand up and smiled. 'I am afraid it's me, Suleiman.' I was confused; why would Ustath Rashid upset Baba? Nasser chuckled. Baba put his hand on my head and in a scratched voice said, 'No one upset me, Slooma. I was just reading…' He looked at the piece of paper in his hand. 'It's so beautiful. We will have to publish this,' he said, handing the piece of paper to Nasser. Nasser folded it twice and put it in his shirt pocket.

I had never seen Baba cry before. I couldn't understand why reading something beautiful made him cry.

When Baba heard Um Masoud click her tongue and say, 'That's the fate of all traitors,' he couldn't keep silent. 'That's a lie,' he told her, his voice bubbling with anger. 'A lie the authorities spread to justify the disappearance of the innocent.'

Um Masoud studied her fingers, comparing the length of her nails.

'But then they don't need to, obviously; there is always a volunteer more than willing to lie for them. The effortlessness, the automatism by which it happens Mama tugged at his sleeve. 'Let me,' he snapped. He squinted his eyes at Um Masoud. 'Weeds!' As he spoke the word he turned his hand as if tightening a screw, as if that word was meant to fix Um Masoud in her corner. 'Weeds, like rumours, need no help.' Baba's face reddened. It frightened me to see him like this because, although he was often serious, he very rarely became angry.

Um Masoud continued to study her fingers, smiling knowingly now, as if some old suspicion had finally been confirmed.

Ustath Rashid had once told Baba that their wives were like two lost sisters who had finally found each other. The first time they met – standing in Auntie Salma's kitchen among the half-unpacked boxes – the two women seemed happy that fate had finally brought them together. Since then, no two days would pass before one called or visited the other. They found excuses to interrupt each other's life. Many mornings Auntie Salma would come to our door to borrow sugar or flour or salt, and Mama would always ask her in. 'I am short of time,' Auntie Salma would say, but then forget herself until Ustath Rashid or Kareem would come for her, upset she hadn't even started preparing lunch yet. And sometimes it was Mama who went next door, and we were the ones left without lunch. Mama never forgot herself as she did with Auntie Salma.

They drank tea and talked endlessly; occasionally they would hunch over into whispers, then one of them would clap her hands and burst out laughing. They brought the latest music to play for each other, and sometimes one would play the tabla, calling out – aywa aywa - with the beat while the other danced, knocking her hips from side to side. And once I saw them dancing in Mama's bedroom to Julio Iglesias, dancing slowly the way men and women did in foreign films, then Auntie Salma bowed and kissed Mama's hand. Mama pulled her hand quickly away when she saw me. Auntie Salma came to me, held my hands and we danced. She was so sweet, full of smiles, her cheeks red.

When Baba was away and Mama became ill, we didn't answer the door, pretended we weren't in. But once I was so frightened I opened the door for Auntie Salma. She saw Mama on the floor in the bedroom, smelled her. It was as if a black shadow had fallen on Auntie Salma's face. She left the room, then came back with a wet towel. She patted Mama's face. Mama woke up, she seemed disoriented. 'What are you doing here?' she said. Auntie Salma helped her up to bed, then asked me to fetch a glass of water. When I returned I found Mama crying. Auntie Salma said, 'Praise the Prophet, girl,' and with a deep sigh Mama praised.

After Ustath Rashid was taken Mama didn't go to Auntie Salma and Auntie Salma didn't call or visit. Mama didn't want me to see Kareem either. 'No need for you to be so close to that boy,' she said. She had never called him 'that boy' before. 'This is a time for walking beside the wall,' she said. When I asked her what she meant, she said, 'Nothing, just try not to be so close to him, that's all.' She could feel my eyes following her, trying to understand, so she added, 'It just isn't good for you to be so close to all of his sadness. Grief loves the hollow, all it wants is to hear its own echo. Be careful.'

I was affected by Mama's words; I did feel myself nudged by guilt whenever Kareem and I were alone. She was right: a certain sadness had entered his eyes the day Ustath Rashid was taken, but it wasn't the sadness of longing, it was the sadness of betrayal, the silent sadness that comes from being let down. Or at least that's how it seems now. He became quieter – he was always quiet, but not this quiet – and refused to join in any of the games we played. Instead, he would lean on a car near by as we played football in the street, looking at us in a way that made me feel far away from him. At those moments I wished the Revolutionary Committee would return and this time take my father so that we would be equal, united again by that mysterious bond of blood that had up to that day felt like an advantage.

Later, when we were alone, I told him, 'Sorry, Kareem. Sorry we didn't all stand arm-in-arm to block the way. After all, Mulberry is our street.' He curled his lower lip and shrugged his shoulders. I felt the way Mama must have felt when, after she had been ill, I was angry at her; I wanted so much to bring him out of his silence. I took him swimming. But instead of heading for the deep, clear waters of the sea that touch the horizon, quickly past the blue-black strip that always frightened us because its floor was alive with dark weeds and movement and things, Kareem swam reluctantly. When I was past the dark waters, moving like a streamer with my long flippers, stabbing my arms fast into the pale turquoise, I looked back and saw him on the shore, walking away.