In the Country of Men

12

I found her sitting at the table, smoking. I sat opposite her. I wanted her to say something, to even repeat, 'I saw you, don't lie,' but she ignored me. I watched the garden through the glass door, its floor brushed long with shadows. We can go up to the roof and see how the sea changed today, I thought. Or I could set up her drawing table in the garden where she liked to draw an orange, a plum, a twisted leaf. I never had the patience to sit for her, but now I was willing to try.

'He had a gun, you know. He let me touch it.' Her eyes looked up at me. 'I wonder what Ustath Rashid did? Do you think he's a traitor, do you think Um Masoud is right? I know she gossips a lot, but I've been thinking about it and I think it's true: there is no smoke without fire. Well, it's true, isn't it? Can you have smoke without there being a fire? You can have steam, but that's different, isn't it?' She didn't say anything. She looked at me, then took a quick, nervous drag from her cigarette. Her fingers trembled slightly. Smoke spilled from her nostrils. 'He said he was a friend of Baba. He even called me Slooma and gave me this.' I put Baba's English fiery mint on the table. Mama's face began to change. The moments before we cry the face tries to fold away, hide itself from the world. 'He said Baba will be home soon. Please don't be sad.'

Sharief didn't say that Baba will be home soon, nor did he say, 'Don't be sad.' Those were my own words

that I put in his mouth, like Moosa adding in his own bits to the articles he read aloud.

She mumbled something. It wasn't until she cried again that she repeated it: 'Stupid Faraj.'

I thought of saying, 'Baba isn't stupid,' or, 'Don't call Baba stupid,' but she left the kitchen. I heard her bedroom door slam shut and the key in it turn. Then the telephone rang in the sitting room. She unlocked her door and ran to answer it.

'Hello? Hello? Who is it?' she said rapidly, then her eyes fixed on a spot on the wall and I guessed someone was talking at the other end. 'Yes, Bu Nasser, I am Um Suleiman.' She turned around herself. 'Bu Suleiman isn't here.' She looked at me, pursing her lips and shaking her head slowly. 'With all due respect…' she said and was interrupted. 'With all… With all due respect, Bu Nasser, this has nothing to do with me.' Then after a moment she added, ' Nasser is old enough to make up his own mind. You ought to take this up with him.' She looked at me again, raising her eyebrows, shaking her head. 'But I have just told you, Bu Suleiman isn't here. I have no idea where he is. Listen, I am sure Nasser will be fine,' she said and quoted from the Quran: '"Say: Naught befalleth us save that which Allah hath decreed for us." Then she listened to Nasser 's father. 'Well, Bu Nasser, if you feel this way you should tell your son. No one is forcing him to work for my husband.' When she put the receiver down she kept her hand on it, then telephoned Moosa. 'Can you hear an echo? Good, neither can I. Listen, Nasser 's father has just called. He's worried. He wants to know how involved his son has become. Says if anything happens to him he will hold Bu Suleiman personally responsible.' She looked in my direction, turned around and began secretly whispering. 'And there was an echo in the line. Yes, of course I know what that means. Call Nasser and tell him what his father said and tell him that I am upset: his father threatening us, holding us responsible for his son's fate…"

I suddenly remembered what Judge Yaseen had said to Baba after Moosa quit university: 'You have ruined my son.'

'OK, goodbye,' Mama said and hung up. She went to her room.

A little while later the telephone rang again and she came out, not running this time but walking with confidence and the air of authority possessed by those who believe they are innocent and right. She almost answered it, but something stopped her. She snapped her fingers and, as if the person calling could hear us, whispered, 'You answer.'

I picked up the receiver and looked up at her. 'Hello,' I said.

'Slooma.' It was Nasser. There was an echo; it was a bad line. 'It's Nasser here.'

'I know,' I said.

'How are you, young man? How's your mother? Can I speak to her?'

I handed the receiver to Mama. She pressed her hand against the speaker, curled her eyebrows and whispered, 'Who is it?'

'It's Nasser,' I said and began walking away.

'Listen,' she whispered. 'Was there an echo in the line?'

'Yes.'

Biting her lower lip she gently placed the receiver down. I didn't ask why she did that, or why she was still standing beside the telephone. After a few seconds it rang again.

She snapped her fingers again and said, 'Tell him I am not here, then hang up, don't chat.' She walked back to her bedroom.

I picked up the receiver and said, 'She's not here.'

'Why did you hang up on me?' Nasser said. He sounded hurt; his voice, trembling slightly, was made strange by the echo in the line. After what seemed an endless pause he said, 'When she returns tell her I called, OK? And… And tell her also that I am sorry about my father, about what he said.'

I never understood why I had taken a dislike to Nasser from the moment I had met him. Why was I always short when he was always nice? When he called on Eid to wish us good health and happiness he always insisted on talking to each one of us. Baba would hand Mama the receiver, smiling as if he was embarrassed or proud, as if this Nasser was his creation, as if he was responsible for everything Nasser said. When it was my turn I always tried to get out of it, but Baba wouldn't agree to tell him I was in the bathroom or out playing in the street. He would tense his eyebrows and motion for me to take the receiver from Mama. Nasser always spoke in the same way, calling out, 'Slooma!' as if I was on the opposite side of the road, then, 'How are you, young man?' I answered all of his questions as briefly as I could, and when he wished me good health and happiness I wished him the same, and when he said, 'I am your friend, Slooma,' or, 'If you need anything, think of me as your older brother,' I didn't know what to say and so said nothing but, handing the receiver back to Baba, I always felt a strange rush of anger burn my cheeks. And hadn't I many times wished for an older brother, an older brother like Kareem or even like Nasser?

I suddenly felt a warm glow of affection for the first time towards Nasser. I felt bad that I had lied to him, so I said, 'It was Mama who told me to tell you she isn't here.'

I thought I heard him chuckle, try to restrain a laugh. But then he shouted, 'Who's laughing? Are you laughing at me?'

'I am not laughing at you,' I said, but whoever was laughing was now laughing even louder so Nasser couldn't hear me.

Through the laughter I heard him shout again, 'Who's laughing, I said?'

'What's your family name, boy?'

'Suleiman Faraj el-Dewani.'

'Not you,' the voice interrupted. 'You, the one called Nasser. What's your family name? Speak?'

This was not unusual. Many times it happened that I was speaking to someone on the telephone and a third person would come in. And sometimes I was that third person, hearing two people having a conversation, one voice always further away than the other, and sometimes I couldn't resist listening in, and once or twice I made background noises of stormy winds and explosions, and once I played them songs by Boney M. What was unusual about this was how, even though everything said was succeeded by an echo, both Nasser 's and the stranger's voices were equal in volume. And because in life – as Baba had told me – you can't listen and speak at the same time, the echo of my voice returned strange and new, and I realized that I had never heard myself before.

'Don't speak to him, Suleiman,' Nasser ordered. 'Hang up, hang up now.' He sounded desperate.

'This Nasser character isn't very friendly, is he, Suleiman,' the voice said calmly. I laughed because what he said sounded funny in contrast to Nasser 's desperation. The returning echo of my laughter sounded sinister.

'Don't listen to what he tells you. Hang up, I said,' Nasser shouted.

I heard the other voice say to himself or to someone else beside him or maybe to me, 'This Nasser character likes to play games.'

'Hangup!'

'No, I am not hanging up, you hang up if you want.' My words travelled between them like an arrow, uninterrupted.

The voice exploded in laughter again. Nasser 's line went dead. The voice stopped laughing and listened with me to the unending dial tone. After a couple of seconds, just when I was about to hang up, he said, 'You are wonderful, boy.' I didn't know how to respond. 'Tell me,' he said in a way as if we were old friends. 'How's your mother? You have such a beautiful mother, you know.' I felt my neck stiffen. Then he laughed and repeated what I had said to Nasser, It was Mama who told me to tell you she isn't.. ., and laughed again. My heart quickened and time seemed to slow down. 'Ah yes,' he said, catching his breath, 'what a beautiful mother you have. Great tea she makes, wonderful harisa. There's nothing like home-made harisa.' I suddenly recalled how on the day she minced the red chilli peppers Mama would bar me from entering the kitchen because of how the heat, she said, could burn my eyes. She wore gloves and wrapped a scarf round her mouth and nose like a robber. 'You should be thankful for a mother like that. Are you thankful, Suleiman?' I nodded twice. 'Tell her that if she ever needs drinking company, to call on me. Tell her I too get my medicine from that scoundrel, Majdi. Thank God for Majdi.'

I threw the receiver down. My heart raced like a mouse trapped in a wheel. I stood stiff by the telephone, unable to move. It rang again.

'Hello,' I said, hearing the tremor in my voice repeated by the echo.

'Slooma?' It was Nasser. He was whispering.

' Nasser. Thank God it's you. Who was that man? How come he knew us? He knew things nobody knows. Who is he?' We were brothers now.

'Did you hang up on him like I told you to?'

'Yes.'

'Good boy. Now listen, there isn't much time, I need you to give a message to your mother.' He was still whispering. I didn't like him calling me 'Good boy' but I had never felt such affection for Nasser as I did now. 'Tell her that we are doing all we can to find Ustath Faraj, we don't know where he is, he hasn't turned up here.' I imagined him speaking from the flat on Martyrs' Square. 'We have been expecting him… do you know where he is?'

'Why don't you stuff this telephone up your arse, fucker,' the voice returned again.

'Hang up, Suleiman,' Nasser shouted, and this time I hung up immediately. But as soon as I did, the telephone rang in an odd continuous ring. Fearing it would disturb Mama, I picked it up. It was the same man. His voice was clear, the echo now gone. 'Listen, boy. Do you know Nasser 's family name?' I said nothing, but then he shouted, 'Speak up.'

'No,' I said, remembering Ustath Rashid's interrogation on television.

'Do you know where he lives?'

'No.' Then, fearing what he might say next, I said, 'Yes.'

'Good,' the man said and I thought it was over, but then he said, 'Look, Suleiman, this is how this works. You will tell me where Nasser lives, and I will write it down. OK?' I felt my head nod, then, as if he could see me, he said, 'OK.'

After a short silence he shouted, 'Speak, boy.'

'You know where Martyrs' Square is?'

'Yes,' he said so softly it astonished me.

'He lives in one of the buildings there.' Then in a lame attempt at retreating I said, 'I think. I am not sure.'

'But of course you are… sure,' he said with confidence. I was confused. The pause before the word 'sure' seemed so deliberate I wondered whether he meant of course I was not sure, or of course I was sure. 'And which building on Martyrs' Square are you not sure he lives in?' he said.

'The one right on the square.' His silence was heavy, so empty I felt I had to say more. 'It has green shutters. His is on the top floor, with a red towel on the clothesline in front of the window.'

'Good,' the man said. Then he added, and again I didn't know whether he was speaking to me or to someone else beside him or even to himself, 'The red towel, that's the code, the bastards.'

' Nasser is a very nice person,' I added. But he had hung up.