Horses of God

13

THE OUBAIDA BROTHERS were unrivaled mechanics, capable of dismantling and rebuilding any device known to man. They’d repair just about anything they were presented with: radios, TVs, satellite dishes, hair dryers, watches, computers. And for free. Which is another way of saying there was always a line at the door of the Internet café they’d opened at the entrance to the slum. In Sidi Moumen, faulty appliances were legion. As well as stuff you might salvage at the dump, the gadgets from Asia, which were alluring but cheap, were constantly breaking. The two men never turned down a job. At Hamid’s request, they hired Fuad, who was tired of his paltry sweet sales outside the school. He became a security guard at their café, a position created just for him, since there was no chance anyone round there would dream of stealing from them, they were so popular. Had elections not stopped at the slum walls (because people no longer believed in them), the Oubaida brothers would have won hands down and been elected presidents for life in Sidi Moumen, as they would in any self-respecting Arab country. At last, Fuad had a weekly salary and it changed his life. He bought himself a bicycle, which I fixed up to look brand-new, attaching a rearview mirror, a two-tone bell, and an old mudguard that had been lying around the shack. Ghizlane was overjoyed, she kissed my brother’s hands every time she ran into him.

Khalil the shoeshine found a job too, with a friend of Emir Zaid’s, at a printing press in the city. It was cushy work; he didn’t have to deal with café waiters, loutish racketeers, or police batons. He was entitled to leave the workshop at prayer times and, best of all, he could eat with the staff. In his wildest dreams he could never have imagined that. Three hearty meals a day! And he was the greedy type. He not only ate his share, but pounced on the leftovers on his fellow workers’ trays too. He’d mop their plates clean with bread rolls and drain all the glasses of Coca-Cola to the last drop. As for Nabil and me, we gave up bike repairs for good and became Abu Zoubeir’s messengers. We were glad to serve the master; many of the others envied us our closeness to him. We did all the cleaning at the garage and Nabil made the tea.

All the families of garage regulars were given a basket of food every day, but Yemma still found grounds to complain about how rarely we visited. One day I brought her a sheep, as the holiday was approaching. She burst into tears, not from joy at the sight of the struggling ram with its big horns, but from emotion at my presence. Seeing me all clean and handsome in my white robe, my beard cut Afghan-style, she took me for Hamid. She was angry with herself for this and sobbed some more. And she cried more than ever when my brother arrived halfway through the afternoon. Yemma spoke less and less and cried over nothing. Old people weep easily because they’re more conscious of time passing. They become emotional over the smallest thing.

Now that I’m up here, unraveling my past like a ball of wool, full of knots, I think she must have foreseen the fatal outcome of our adventure. Yet she had no idea of the mess we’d gotten ourselves into. Maybe it was that sixth sense Mi-Lalla used to talk about. In any case, that day she shut herself up in the kitchen to make the tea and stayed there longer than usual. She didn’t want to cause us any pain. Hamid and I promised to come and slaughter the sheep ourselves and she smiled. It was so good to see her smile. Said was happy to see us, since he could bore us witless with his rants on politics. Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Rwanda: you name it, he was onto it. With a sprinkling of earthquakes, deadly epidemics, and tsunamis for good measure. I refused to meet Hamid’s eye so as not to burst out laughing. Father was constantly sneezing, snorting his cheap snuff. He offered me some for the first time, a sign that he now saw me as an adult. I accepted, even though I didn’t like it. And we sneezed together. Like brothers. Seeing my nose smeared with powder and my bloodshot eyes, Hamid erupted into booming laughter, like in the old days. It had been an age since I’d heard him laugh. So I laughed too. And then we all laughed. It was laughter from the belly and the heart, the laughter of people who’d been starved of laughter; the reason for it scarcely mattered, it felt unbelievably good. And it went on and intensified until it turned into nervous laughter. Yemma started crying again. In fact, we couldn’t tell anymore if they were tears of joy or sadness; she was laughing and crying at the same time. And then we all were. We cried and laughed until we could cry and laugh no more. It was good laughter, family laughter. My father was squawking like a bird and I thought he was going to choke. Said was beaming and kept punching the cushion. He said we should all get together more often to have a laugh, even if the international situation wasn’t favorable. And Hamid was off again, laughing his legendary laugh.

That was the last time I saw my parents.

It was a very busy period. One night, people I didn’t know came to the garage to talk with the master. Abu Zoubeir, who normally dismissed us when he had important visitors, asked us to stay. Nabil, Hamid, and I felt flattered; we took it as a promotion in our secret struggle to be closer to the master. Now we were part of the inner circle. Abu Zoubeir consulted us on all kinds of subjects and seemed to take notice of our opinions. I’d keep my mouth shut, for fear of coming out with something stupid, but Nabil didn’t hold back, launching into damning condemnations of American or Israeli attacks. Abu Zoubeir agreed with him, and I admit I was a bit jealous. Luckily, my brother Hamid was there to fly the flag for our family and went one better, blasting the crusaders and the Jews. Better yet, he attacked Arab regimes that had no dignity, prostrate as they were before their Western overlords, their sole aim to perpetuate their dictatorships. I nodded my agreement; Hamid was completely right.

The television was turned to a channel that showed massacres of Muslims on a loop. And that made our blood boil, I can tell you. The little Palestinian boy in his father’s arms had died a hundred times. Every time he died, we had tears in our eyes. And rage sweated from all the pores of our rigid bodies as the loop showed the slaughter again and again. We saw soldiers, bristling with weapons, shooting blindly at people throwing stones, and we wanted to strangle them. The child was dead all right, but his father didn’t relax his grip, as if he were still alive. As if the piercing screams he’d uttered a few minutes before were still ripping through the uproar of shooting and people in panic. Abu Zoubeir said we had to react. The Prophet would never have tolerated such humiliation. Sitting cross-legged before the master, I felt fire flare in my belly, setting my eyes ablaze. A thirst for vengeance twisted my guts. We were ready to redeem our lost honor in blood. We weren’t losers or cowards. Still less doormats, on which repulsive heathens and our country’s corrupt wiped their feet.

Abu Zoubeir’s friends observed us with an air of satisfaction. One of them, probably their leader, was an elderly man, impressively tall in his turban and a white djellaba. He smelled of sandalwood, like the perfume Hamid used to bring back for Yemma. He closed his eyes and made a speech. It was about hope, about Jihad, about light. While there were still men like us, young, brave, with conviction, all was not lost. Satan’s henchmen had it coming. They would pay a hundred times over for what they were making us suffer. We would make their lives hell. Their sophisticated arsenals would be obsolete and ridiculous. God was with us and victory was within our grasp. We had weapons the unbelievers did not: our flesh and our blood. We would return them to God; He demanded them of us. Our sacrifices would be rewarded. The gates to heaven were wide open and beckoning. Those blasphemers could only tremble in their foul pigsties, in their debauched, abject lives, determined as they were to infect our children with their impurity. . Then he stopped talking. Stroking his beard, the sheikh cast his eyes over our faces, which were all lit up, and said: “You cannot defeat a man who wants to die!”

After a communal prayer, he stretched out his hand, which we all kissed in turn. And we never saw him at the garage again.

The sheikh’s face would haunt us for a long time. I remember the strange scene on the doorstep before he left. Abu Zoubeir knelt down and kissed his slippers as if paradise lay beneath them. The sheikh helped him to his feet and embraced him. He whispered in his ear something we couldn’t hear. But as he came back in, Abu Zoubeir’s eyes were red, as if he’d been crying.