In the Country of Men

20

Later that day Moosa arrived. Where has he been, Mama asked, and why didn't he say something before leaving? He thought she and Baba needed to be alone after such a traumatic experience, he explained.

'You told Suleiman you'd be passing by later, don't say you'll be passing by later when you have no intention of doing so. The last thing I need now is to worry about you.'

'How are you, Champ?' Moosa asked me, his weak smile full of effort.

'There's a monster in our house,' I thought of telling him. But he seemed elsewhere. His eyes darted around the room, and then he walked off towards the bathroom. Mama and I followed him. He bent over the basin and began to wash his hands. 'How's Bu Suleiman?'

'Thankfully all of his wounds are on the surface,' Mama said. 'They broke one rib, but nothing else. He just looks…' She shook her head and sighed deeply. I, for some reason, did the same. I remembered how Siham had copied her old father's gesture. Moosa noticed the bed sheet covering the mirror above the basin. 'He made me cover the mirrors. He doesn't want to see himself. He doesn't want Slooma to see him either,' she said, running her fingers through my hair as if she and I had discussed all of this before, shared all the details and retold them to one another so many times neither of us could truly say who had first told the story to the other.

Moosa was no longer wearing the bloodstained shirt he had on the day before, but he still seemed keen on cleaning himself, as if he had just returned from a long drive through the desert. He turned down his shirt collar, baring his thick long neck. He soaped his face and beard, his ears and neck, then splashed cold water on them. Mama and I took a step back to avoid getting wet. He dried himself vigorously, then pulled out a comb from his back pocket, puffed out his cheeks and combed his beard. When he had finished he looked at us for a moment, then walked out. He knocked twice on Baba's door. 'Bu Suleiman?' he called and opened the door just wide enough to enter then shut it behind him. Mama and I stood outside. We heard everything Moosa said, he was speaking loudly as if Baba was deaf.

'How are you?' he asked. Mama placed her ear against the door. 'Thank God for your safety. You do look much better than yesterday. You'll be back to normal in no time.' Then Baba must have asked him a question. 'Don't worry. They are all well. Everyone understands, no one blames you, you had to do what you had to do.' Then, after a pause, Moosa asked, 'Shall I bring you a glass of water?' and the door opened. Mama was startled. Moosa looked at her for a moment, then squeezed through the door and shut it behind him. We followed him into the kitchen. He filled a glass of water and gulped it down. 'Does he know about Rashid?'

'I don't know,' Mama said. 'I didn't tell him.'

He rinsed the glass again, filled it and walked back to Baba, but just outside the kitchen, as if he had heard a balloon explode in a nearby room, he paused for a second, then continued. I heard him knock twice and say, in the same loud and optimistic tone, 'Bu Suleiman?'

In all of this time Moosa didn't look into my eyes long enough for me to tell him or ask him anything. His movements were mechanical. I yearned to describe to him, second by second, what we had watched together on television. I remembered how there was comfort in the retelling of it when he and Mama and I sat around the breakfast table immediately afterwards. There were many details we had neglected, details I had noticed and was now wondering if he, too, had seen, like that dark patch of urine that Mama had missed. There was the way Ustath Rashid had been nudged tenderly up the ladder, with a mere touch on the elbow, and the sudden frustration at Ustath Rashid's reluctance that had overtaken the man at the bottom of the ladder. I couldn't wait, I couldn't wait for us to tell it back and forth, over and over, the way we described scenes in films we liked. And the man who was walking across the National Basketball Stadium, in the middle of the chaos, walking calmly from one corner of the screen to the other, holding a battered black typewriter under one arm as if it was a puppy; did either of them notice this? I longed to ask Moosa where he thought this man was going, what he was going to do with a broken typewriter, and why then and there? It hadn't occurred to me then that it might be Nasser 's typewriter, evidence rescued from the chase.

Mama filled a teapot with water and placed it on a burner. She was moving with certainty now that Baba was home. When she looked over at me and saw that I was looking at her she smiled, came and kissed me on the cheek. Even though she looked tired, her face was rosy and her eyes sparkled. 'It was a narrow escape; now I must focus on you.' I had no idea what she meant, but found myself smiling back at her.

We heard someone enter the bathroom and lock the door. After a few minutes Moosa appeared, walking towards the kitchen, clutching the white sheet in one hand. He flung it to one side. 'Let him see himself for what he really is,' he said; his lower lip was trembling and tears pooled in his eyes. He turned around himself, then left the room. Mama looked at me as if I would know why Moosa was behaving in this way. She followed him, then I heard their voices in the reception room. I stood outside the entrance.

'I can't bear looking at him,' Moosa said. 'The betrayal in his eyes – I am sorry, I am sorry – his voice scorches me, this is worse than death – forgive me – this is the blackest day of my life.'

After a long silence Mama said, 'Only yesterday you were ready to die for him, now you wish he had died for you.'

'I've been up for two days…'

I felt a presence behind me in the hallway. I turned around but found no one there. The walls long and lined with the same infinite bird plucking at the same infinite twig, the swing-doors silently shut at the end, the clock ticking monotonously like two people arguing.

'They killed the students closest to us. Rashid is dead, whereas Bu Suleiman is… People are talking, saying terrible things about him.'

'Let them talk. They would have been first to give him up if it was the other way around.'

'Rashid didn't, he didn't. And his wife, the poor woman, now suffers the consequences.'

'May God compensate her.'

'I don't know how to answer them, I don't know what to say.'

'Go home,' Mama said suddenly. 'It's time you returned to your country.'

'This is my country. I've lived here half of my life.'

'The only reason you are still alive is because it's not your country.'

'There was so much hope, so much hope. Three years ago eight thousand students in Benghazi and four in Tripoli. Twelve thousand students took a stand in an illiterate country of less than three million. We didn't succeed then. It took three years for hope to be reborn, only to see the few who dared sacrificed for the many. One of them, my friend, Muhammed…' he said and wept.

Mama's voice too now was tearful. 'Stop, Moosa, please. Praise the Prophet.'

'He was asking for news, if I knew where Bu Suleiman and Rashid were. I didn't have the heart to tell him. He was calling from inside, barricaded with the others in the university. I didn't have the heart to tell him what was happening outside.' Then, in an agitated voice, as if he was blaming Mama, he said, 'They gave their lives for their country.'

After a long silence Mama said, 'They weren't standing for me. May God have mercy on their souls and compensate their families, but they weren't standing for me.' Then in a pleading tone she added, 'If you want to help us, pack your bags and go home to your family in Cairo.'

He sighed. 'We have been issued with a deportation notice.'

'When must you leave?'

'Tomorrow. Father is furious. He left today.'

Again I felt a presence behind me, this time accompanied by a muffled, exhausted breath. Before I could turn a hand took me by the shoulder and buried me in loose fabric. I immediately wrapped my arms round Baba's waist and I was swallowed up in that stench again. I squeezed and he flinched. He mumbled something I couldn't make out. Then I realized it was my name. When I tried to pull myself away, to see his face, he squeezed me tighter. Mama and Moosa came to see what the noise was. Baba loosened his grip a little and I was able to look up at him. His eyes and lip had grown bigger, redder and bluer. Other details I hadn't noticed before were now visible and in a way they were more disturbing. His left eye was completely shut, but his right eye, close to the nose bridge, was open and as red as blood. A net of small purple veins mapped areas of his cheeks and chin. On one of his temples there was a small burn, a yellow and red circle. I couldn't see the other side of his face but imagined another one there to match it. His jallabia was unbuttoned at the chest, and the same wire-like hairs that I had once pulled sprouted out unharmed.

'What are you doing out of bed?' Mama asked.

'This is still my house, isn't it?' His lower lip, swollen and purple, quivered and distorted his words.

'Come and sit down,' she said, pointing towards the reception room.

But he walked away. I walked beside him, my arm wrapped round his waist. The clock's ticking was much livelier than our pace. I let go of him and ran to the clock. I opened its glass door and held the pendulum still. He was in the same place I had left him, favouring one side. I ran to him and when I embraced him he flinched again, tightening his arm round me. When we passed through the hallway swing-doors, he stopped for a moment, as if relieved we were alone now. Then he said, quietly like a secret, 'Let's go to the garden.'

The sun was an hour or two from setting and its light was soft and orange.

Take me up to your roof

It's your roof too, I thought. It's our roof. And even though I was holding him and we walked together side by side I felt so far away from him. I squeezed him a little tighter and looked up at his battered face in the warm and dying sunlight.

I waited until he had both feet on the first step before taking the next. And I don't know why at one of our pauses I said, 'One by one we'll get there,' and immediately hoped he wouldn't respond because anything he would have said would have made me feel awkward.

Life could have spent itself while we climbed those stairs, and I wouldn't have minded.

The roof reminded me of when we burned his books. 'We'll buy you new books, Baba.' Democracy Now was still beneath my mattress. When we reached the top I slid from beneath his arm, placed his hands on the fence and ran to fetch it. When I returned my heart was beating so fast I could barely speak. 'Here,' I said and, wrapping his hands round the book, whispered, 'I saved this one. Don't tell Mama or Moosa.' He held it with one hand to his chest, leaned with the other on my shoulders and we watched the sea. Baba craned his neck. Then I heard his breathing change. 'I can hardly see it,' he mumbled.

'The sea is quiet today,' I said, hoping to distract him.

'A good day for swimming, Baba. A good day for lying on your back and floating.'

Light shimmered fast on the water like seagulls crowding round food that the jealous sea was keeping from them. He tried to look towards Ustath Rashid's house, but was aiming too high. 'Maybe we'll go swimming,' I said, and again the hope that he wouldn't respond returned. Then he turned, and I turned with him, like 'two halves of the same soul, two open pages of the same book'. 'Let's walk under the trees,' he said.

We went down and walked on the patterns the low sun threw beneath us. I saw the ladder leaning against the wall where I had left it after eating the mulberries. I let go of Baba and climbed the ladder. When I was halfway up I looked down and saw him resting against the wall, holding his rib. I began hunting for mulberries. I altered my eyes to look only for small dark creatures. I walked on my hands and knees along the high wall, negotiating branches, until I found a crown of berries, ripe, red-black with juice and each as big as a beetle. He was sitting on the ground, leaning his back against the wall, holding a small stone – a stone very much like the ones I had thrown at Bahloul, and which on landing on his back had delivered a very satisfying blow – stabbing it into the dirt beside him. When I reached the ground I showed him the berries in my cupped hands and said, 'Mulberries, Baba, mulberries. The angels stole them from Heaven to make life easier for us. They are the sweetest thing.' I took one and stuffed it through his swollen lips. When he didn't move I said, 'Chew.' He moved his lower jaw up and down a few times then spat it out into his hand. I couldn't understand. I ate one and it was as delicious as ever. 'You don't like them?' I said.

His deformed lips made him look disgusted. He threw his chewed up berry into the dirt, wiped his hand on his jallabia and, pointing his finger at the small round burn on his temple, said, They put out their cigarettes here,' sucking in air. I looked down at the mulberries in my hands.