In the Country of Men

21

Baba remained mostly in his room for the following two weeks. Then one morning I woke up to hear him and Mama laughing. They were normal, as if nothing had happened, their voices light, floating with love in our house. Then I heard her sing absent-mindedly to herself, the way she used to do when taking a bath or hanging clothes out to dry or painting her eyes in front of the mirror or drawing in the garden. That singing that always evoked a girl unaware of herself, walking home from school, brushing her fingers against the wall, a moment before the Italian Coffee House, before Baba and me and this life. Hearing it unsettled me. It had been a long time since I had heard her sing like this.

After a little while my door swung open and Baba walked in. I pretended to be asleep. My heart raced, thumping below my ears. I felt him sit beside me on the bed. 'Slooma,' he said gently, his voice improved, almost normal now. When I didn't react he stood up and left the room. I then heard Mama's voice rise and fall in the kitchen.

After holding myself prisoner in my room for a few minutes I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came out I didn't know which way to go: to the kitchen, where I could hear their voices and the sound of cutlery scraping plates, or back to my room to sleep some more – maybe I could sleep the whole day through, I thought.

'Slooma,' Mama called cheerfully.

They were both sitting at the breakfast table. Baba had a smile on his face. I immediately wanted to ask him why he was smiling, but didn't. He opened his arms and said, 'Come, Slooma.' His hair was combed and he smelled of cologne. He must have bathed; the wounds on his back must have healed enough for him to bathe.

'Thank God, Slooma,' Mama said. 'Baba is feeling much better today.'

I thanked God out loud to show how pleased I was. He released me from his embrace and held my face in his hands. His hands were trembling, his eyes almost normal. I looked into them, but it was hard to find him there.

After breakfast Mama took to reading the newspaper to him. She read only the international news and whenever the name of our country or leader was mentioned she mumbled it quickly. When he caught me watching him, he smiled.

'I think I will draw today,' Mama said, folding the newspaper.

Baba looked at me. I began to feel nervous, nervous in the way you feel when alone in a lift with a stranger.

'What are you going to do today, Suleiman?' he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

Mama returned, clutching pencils in one hand. There was a bowl of fruit in the centre of the table. She held each one, turning it in her hand, then decided on an orange. She went out into the garden, saying, 'I'll be back for a chair and a little table. Yes, I'll need a little table. Oh, I am so excited.'

Baba and I were alone again. Just as he took a breath to speak, the doorbell rang.

I ran to answer it. It was Ustath Jafer.

'Hello,' I heard Baba say from behind me.

They shook hands. This was the first time Ustath Jafer had ever visited us.

'I am glad to see you up and about.'

Baba led him into the reception room, not smiling but blushing slightly. When he turned on the light he did a double take at the large photograph of the Guide. 'I am grateful for your help,' he said, almost absent-mindedly. He turned to me. 'Tell your mother to prepare some tea.'

I found Mama setting up her table and chair in the garden.

'Ustath Jafer is here.'

Her face lit up.

'Baba wants you to make tea.'

'But of course,' she said, walking briskly to the kitchen.

I went to my room. I felt the need to hear the world. I took my radio and lay with it in bed.

Revolutionary forces [it was the Guide's voice] are capable of and have the right to use terror to eliminate anyone who stands against the revolution. Now we can truly end the old Libyan society and build the new one, where the revolutionary elements help each other in fighting any anti-revolutionary movements in the universities, in the factories and in the streets.

Then came the cheers of the crowd, unstoppable, so loud they turned into a wave of noise, drowning everything, and because it became everything and was senseless I longed for the voice of the Guide to return. I went round the dial a couple of times, but every time I returned I found the massive and empty noise of the crowd.

I decided to go for a swim. I put on my swimming shorts, grabbed my flippers and ran out of the house. Mama was back in the garden, drawing her orange, singing to herself. She saw me in my swimming shorts, my flippers beneath my arm.

'Look first,⁵ she said, holding a pencil drawing of the orange, double the size of the real one.

'Bye,' I said and left.

'When you return I'll have another one. Perhaps with the skin peeled and resting beside it. I remember seeing a painting like that by some European artist. They are very interested in fruit, those Europeans. I wonder why,' she mused, looking at her drawing.

The ground was hot. I thought of returning to collect my sandals. It was a good walk still to the sea. But to stop the momentum of my steps seemed to require more effort than to keep on moving. I thought of putting on my flippers, but that would have made me walk as slowly and awkwardly as a pigeon. I tried to keep as close as I could to the walls of the houses, but the sun was vertical, the shade narrow and mean. It was quicker to walk in the sun. I walked like an insect, my elbows raised up to my ears, my back arched, my feet curling against the heat. I hopped quickly as if I were dying to pee. Several times I stopped to sit down and give my feet a break, rubbing them and blowing at them. I thought of the bridge sizzling above the fires of Hell, the one we all have to cross to reach Paradise. I held the sea as my target, my paradise. When I reached Gergarish Street, the wide street that follows the shoreline to downtown, I could see heat rippling up from the tarmac. I ran across it, I ran across the sand too and didn't stop until I reached the water-soaked flat sands of the shore. My feet finally in blissful relief. Low wavelets curled their white foamy edges across the turquoise face of the water, the wind was almost still. I looked at the dry sand behind me and wondered how I would walk back.

At the end of the pier, where the waters were as clear as glass, someone was sitting, dangling their feet in the water. For a moment, before I remembered that he and his mother had moved to Benghazi, I hoped it was Kareem. When I got closer and realized that it was Bahloul, I almost laughed. He seemed to be daydreaming. I never imagined Bahloul sitting like this in solitary contemplation. The pier creaked beneath my feet. When I reached him I couldn't help but chuckle, and he turned around, his face disfigured with fear. He seemed to be trembling. This reaction irritated me. I pounded my feet on the wood of the pier and growled 'Ghrrr' at him and was reminded of that secret rush of power I had felt chasing him around our garden, throwing stones at his back, hearing my shots land with a satisfying thud, the thumps that made him scream hideously like a horse. He stood up, seeming to consider his escape. How could he be trapped with all of that sea behind him? I made as if to charge at him. He turned solemnly towards the sea and after a short pause jumped into the water. There was something exaggerated about his fall, as if he was jumping from a great height. And only then did I understand why Bahloul hadn't got his boat wet; why, although he had saved up and bought the boat, he hadn't started fishing yet. Bahloul couldn't swim.

I heard his violent and useless splashes. I let go of my flippers and rushed to the end of the pier. I extended my hand to him. I wanted to save him – and he knew it too – he tried to slap his way towards me. He was swallowing water. His jallabia ballooned around him and hindered his efforts. I remembered Mama's warning about diving in to save a drowning person. 'Never do it,' she said. 'A drowning person is so hungry for life they can easily take you down with them.' I reached as far as I could, but Bahloul was sinking. When I gave up trying to save him a surge of power came over him. He kicked and slapped the water until he managed to grab hold of one of the pier's legs. I extended my hand but he spat at it, looking around as if expecting someone else to save him. But there was no one, no one but me. Without deciding to I found myself pushing him down with my foot. His knotted hair felt coarse and soggy. He tried to defend himself by grabbing my ankle. This angered me even more. In trying to release my ankle I kicked him in the face. Blood gushed out of his nose into the water. Salty sea water is good for a wound, I knew this well. He began to scream that horse-like scream of his, louder than ever now. I pushed him down again to silence him. Suddenly, without warning, his resistance sank away. I pulled my leg out of the water. After a silence that seemed to last for ever, Bahloul sprang up again, coughing and vomiting, dirtying the clear water. He took hold of the pier's column again. He looked at me with a mixture of fear and outrage.

'How's your nose?' I asked.

But he didn't speak, hugging the column and keeping it between us.

I thought of saying sorry, but I collected my flippers and walked away. My heart had never ached with more longing, longing for my true friend, twelve hours away now in Benghazi.