The Sirens of Baghdad

18

My sojourn in Beirut is drawing to its close. I’ve been waiting for three weeks now. I count the hours on my fingers or stand at the window in my room, staring down at the deserted street. The rain drums on the windowpanes. On the windswept sidewalk, a tramp blows into his fists to warm his fingers. He’s been there for a good while, on the lookout for a charitable soul, but I’ve yet to see anyone slip him a coin. His leggings are soaked through, his shoes are water-logged, and his general appearance is simply grotesque. Living like a stray dog, practically in the gutter — that’s obscene. This person, possessing not so much as a shadow, isolated in his wretchedness like a worm in a rotten fruit, can somehow forget that he’s dead and over with. I feel no compassion for him. I tell myself that fate has brought him so low in order for him to function as a symbol; he focuses my awareness of life’s unbearable inanity. What hopes does this man have for tomorrow? Surely he hopes for something, but for what? For manna to rain down upon him from heaven? For a passerby to notice his destitution? For someone to take pity on him? What a fool! Is there life after pity?

Kadem was only partly right. It’s not that the world’s grown base; it’s that men wallow in baseness. I’ve come to Beirut because I refuse to be like that tramp. I refuse to be one of the living dead. Either live like a man or die as a martyr — there’s no other alternative for one who wants to be free. I’m not comfortable in the role of the defeated. Ever since that night when the American soldiers burst into our house, overturning our ancestral values and the order of things, I’ve been waiting! I’m waiting for the moment when I’ll recover my self-esteem, without which a man is nothing but a stain. I think of myself as poised on the verge of everything and nothing. What I’ve gone through, lived through, been subjected to so far — none of that counts. That night was like a freeze-frame. That was when the earth stopped turning for me. I’m not in Lebanon; I’m not in a hotel; I’m in a coma. And whether I emerge from it and go on or stay in it and rot is up to me.

Sayed has personally seen to it that I want for nothing. He’s lodged me in one of the most expensive suites in the hotel and put at my disposal Imad and Shakir, two charming young men who treat me most respectfully and stand ready day or night, alert to the merest sign, poised to carry out my most extravagant wishes. I will not let any of this go to my head. I’m still the shy, retiring boy from Kafr Karam. Even though I know the importance I’ve assumed, I haven’t broken any of the rules that formed my character in simplicity and propriety. My only caprice was to request that the television, the radio, and all the pictures on the walls be removed from the suite; I wanted to be left with the strict minimum — namely, the furniture and a few bottles of mineral water in the minibar. Had it been up to me, I would have chosen a cave in the desert, far from the laughable vanities of people who lead pampered lives. I wanted to be my own focus, my own reference point; I wanted to spend the remainder of my stay in Lebanon preparing myself mentally, so that I’d be equal to the task my people have entrusted to me.

I’m no longer afraid of being alone in the dark.

I’ve filled my lungs with the mustiness of the tomb.

I’m ready!

I’ve tamed my thoughts and brought my doubts to heel. I’m keeping my spirits under firm control. My agonies, my hesitations, my blackouts are all ancient history. I’m the master of what goes on in my head. Nothing escapes me; nothing resists me. Dr. Jalal has smoothed my path and filled in my gaps. As for my former fears, now I summon them of my own accord; I line them up and inspect them. The great brown blotch that hid a portion of my memories when I was in Baghdad has faded away. I can return to Kafr Karam whenever I feel like it, enter any door, step into any patio, invade anyone’s privacy. My mother, my sisters, my friends and relatives all come back to me, one after the other, and I remain calm. My room is inhabited by ghosts, by those who are absent. Omar shares my bed; Sulayman blows through like a gust of wind; the wedding guests immolated in the Haitems’ orchards parade around me. Even my father is here. He prostrates himself at my feet, balls in the air. I don’t turn away or cover my face. And when a blow from a rifle butt knocks him down, I don’t help him up. I remain upright; my sphinxlike inflexibility prevents me from bending, even over my father.

In a few days, it will be the world that prostrates itself at my feet.

The most important revolutionary mission undertaken since man learned to stiffen his spine! And I’m the one who’s been chosen to accomplish it. What a way of getting even with destiny! The practice of death has never seemed so euphoric, so cosmic.

At night, when I lie on the sofa facing the window, I remember the painful events of my life, and they all reinforce my commitment. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do or what will be the nature of my mission. “Something that’ll make September eleventh seem like a noisy recess in an elementary school,” Sayed said. One thing’s for certain: I won’t shrink from it!

There’s a knock at my door. It’s Dr. Jalal. He’s wearing the same tracksuit he had on yesterday evening, and he still hasn’t bothered to tie his shoelaces.

It’s the first time he’s ever crossed my threshold. His alcoholic breath spreads out like smoke. “I was wasting away in my room,” he says. “Would it disturb you if I came in for a couple of minutes?”

“You’re not disturbing me.”

“Thanks.”

He totters over to the sofa, scratching his butt with a hand thrust down inside his drawers. I’ll bet he hasn’t bathed for a good long time. He casts admiring glances around the room. “Wow!” he says. “Are you some mogul’s son?”

“My father was a well digger.”

“Mine wasn’t anything.”

He realizes he’s said something outlandish and waves it away with one hand. Then, crossing his legs, he leans against the back of the sofa and squints at the ceiling. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night,” he complains. “These days, I can hardly fall asleep at all.”

“You work too much.”

He waggles his chin. “I have no doubt you’re right. These lecture tours are wearing me out.”

I’d heard talk of Dr. Jalal — none of it good — while I was still in high school. I’d also read two or three of his books, including a treatise on jihadist fundamentalism entitled Why Are Muslims Angry? — a work that aroused a great deal of indignation among the clergy. At the time, he was a very controversial figure in Arab intellectual circles, and many of his adversaries sought to hold him up to public contempt. His theories about the dysfunctions of contemporary Muslim thought were veritable indictments; the imams rejected his writings in toto, even going so far as to predict hellfire for anyone who dared to read them. For the ordinary devout Muslim, Dr. Jalal was nothing but a mountebank, a Western lackey in the pay of factions hostile to Islam in general and to Arabs in particular. I myself detested him; I thought his learning perverted, exhibitionistic, and conventional, and his contempt for his people seemed obvious to me. In my eyes, he offered one of the most repulsive examples of those traitors who proliferated like rats in European media and academic circles, fully prepared to exchange their souls for the privilege of seeing their photographs in a newspaper and hearing themselves talked about. I didn’t disapprove of the fatwas that condemned him to death; the imams hoped to put an end to his incendiary rants, which he published at length in the Western press and delivered with offensive zeal in television studios. I was, therefore, amazed — and also, I must admit, rather relieved — when I learned that he’d made an about-face.

The first time I saw Dr. Jalal in the flesh was the second day after my arrival in Beirut. Sayed had insisted that I attend the doctor’s talk. “He’s magnificent!” Sayed declared.

The event took place in an auditorium not far from the university. There was a huge crowd, hundreds of people standing beside and behind the rows of chairs that had been taken by storm hours before the doctor was scheduled to appear. Students, women, girls, family men, government workers packed the immense room. Their hubbub sounded like a seething volcano. When the doctor appeared on the platform, escorted by militiamen, the shouts of welcome shook the walls and rattled the windows. After the applause died down, he delivered a magisterial lecture on imperialist hegemony and the disinformation campaigns behind the demonization of Muslims.

I adored the man that day. It’s true that his looks are unprepossessing, that he drags his feet and dresses carelessly, that his exhalations are disconcerting and his alcoholic’s laziness incorrigible, but when he starts to speak — my God, when he merely adjusts the microphone and looks at his audience! — he exalts everyone in the hall. Better than anyone, he knows how to express our anguish and the insults we suffer and the necessity of breaking our silence and rising up. “Today, we’re the West’s flunkies; tomorrow, our children will be its slaves!” he cried, stressing the final clause. And the audience erupted, experiencing en masse a kind of delirium. If some plausible joker had sicced the crowd on the enemy at that moment, all the Western embassies in Beirut would have been reduced to ashes. Dr. Jalal has a knack for mobilizing everyone. The accuracy of his analyses and the effectiveness of his arguments are a joy to consider. No imam can match him; no speaker is better at turning a murmur into a cry. He’s hypersensitive and exceptionally intelligent, a mentor of rare charisma.

At the end of his lecture, responding to a student’s remarks, Dr. Jalal said, “The Pentagon is out to catch the devil in his own trap. Those people are convinced they’re several steps ahead of God. They were planning their war on Iraq for years before it started. September eleventh wasn’t the trigger; it was the pretext. The idea of destroying Iraq goes back to the moment when Saddam laid the very first stone for the foundation of his nuclear site. The Pentagon’s target was neither the despot himself nor his country’s oil; it was Iraqi genius. Nevertheless, mixing business with pleasure is perfectly acceptable; you can bring a country to its knees and pump out its lifeblood at the same time. Americans love to kill two birds with one stone. What they were aiming at in Iraq was the perfect crime. But they went that one better: They made their motive for the crime the guarantee of their impunity. Let me explain. Why attack Iraq? Because Iraq is believed to possess weapons of mass destruction. How can you attack Iraq without running too great a risk yourself? By first making sure that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Is this not the height of combinative genius? The rest came of its own accord, like saliva to the mouth. The Americans manipulated the planet by scaring everybody. Then, to be sure their troops wouldn’t be at risk, they obliged the UN experts to do the dirty job for them, and at no cost to themselves. Once they were certain there were no nuclear firecrackers in Iraq, they unleashed their military might upon a population already and deliberately beaten down by embargoes and psychological harassment. And the deal was done.”

I had an offense to wash away in blood; to a Bedouin, that duty was as sacred as prayer to the faithful. And with Dr. Jalal’s words, the offense was grafted onto the Cause.

“Are you sick?” he asks me, gesturing toward the array of medications on my night table.

This catches me off guard. Since I’ve never imagined entertaining him in my suite, I don’t have a cover story ready. I curse myself. Why have I left all those medicine boxes and bottles lying around in plain sight, instead of putting them in the bathroom cabinet, where they belong? Sayed’s instructions were strict: “Don’t leave anything to chance. Distrust everyone.”

Intrigued, Dr. Jalal heaves himself to his feet and walks over to the night table. “Well, well,” he says. “There’s enough stuff here to medicate an entire tribe.”

“I have some health problems,” I say stupidly.

“Big ones, it seems. What are you suffering from that makes you have to take all this?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

Dr. Jalal picks up a few boxes, turns them over in his hand, reads the names of the medications out loud, as though they were some unintelligible graffiti, and peruses one or two fact sheets. With furrowed brow, he ponders several bottles, shaking them and rattling the pills they contain. “Have you by any chance had a transplant?” he asks.

“Exactly,” I say, saved by his guess.

“Kidney or liver?”

“Please, I’d rather not talk about it.”

To my great relief, he puts the bottles back in their place and returns to the sofa. “In any case,” he remarks, “you seem to be in good shape.”

“That’s because I follow the prescriptions rigorously. I’m going to have to take those medications for the rest of my life.”

“I know.”

To change the subject, I say, “May I ask you an indiscreet question?”

“Is it about my mother’s…activities?”

“I wouldn’t think of such a thing.”

“I discussed her escapades at length in an autobiographical work. She was a whore, no different from whores everywhere. My father knew it and kept quiet. I felt more contempt for him than for her.”

I’m embarrassed.

At last, he asks, “So what’s your ‘indiscreet’ question?”

“It’s one you’ve probably been asked hundreds of times.”

“Yes?”

“You used to be the scourge of the jihadis. Now you’re their spokesman. How did that happen?”

He bursts out laughing and relaxes. Obviously, he doesn’t mind addressing this subject. He clasps his hands behind his neck and stretches grossly; then he licks his lips, his face suddenly turns serious, and he begins his tale. “Sometimes things dawn on you when you least expect them. Like a revelation. All of a sudden, you can see clearly, and the little details you hadn’t figured into your calculations take on an extraordinary dimension…. I was in a bubble. No doubt, my hatred for my mother blinded me to such a degree that everything connecting me to her repulsed me, even my blood, my country, my family. The truth is, I was the West’s ‘nigger,’ nothing more. They had spotted my flaws. The honors and requests they flooded me with were the instruments of my subjugation. I was asked to speak on every television panel imaginable. If a bomb went off somewhere, pretty soon I was up in front of the microphones and the footlights. My words conformed to Westerners’ expectations. I was a comfort to them. I said what they wanted to hear, what they would have said themselves had I not been there to relieve them of that task and the hassles that went with it. I fit them, so to speak, like a glove. Then, one day, I arrived in Amsterdam, a few weeks after a Muslim had murdered a Dutch filmmaker because of a blasphemous documentary that showed a naked woman covered with verses from the Qur’an. You must have heard about this affair.”

“Vaguely.”

Dr. Jalal makes a face and goes on. “As a rule, there was standing room only, and not much of that, in the university hall where I spoke. This time, however, there were many empty seats, and the people who had made the effort to come were there to see the filthy beast up close. Their hatred was written on their faces. I was no longer Dr. Jalal, their ally, the man who defended their values and what they thought of as democracy. Forget about all that. In their eyes, I was only an Arab, the spitting image of the Arab who murdered the filmmaker. They had changed radically, those pioneers of modernity, the most tolerant and emancipated people in Europe. There they were, displaying their racism like a trophy. As far as they were concerned, from that point on, all Arabs were terrorists, and what was I? Dr. Jalal, the sworn enemy of the fundamentalists, the target of fatwas, who worked his ass off for them — what was I? In their eyes, I was a traitor to my nation, which made me doubly contemptible. And that’s when I experienced a kind of illumination. I realized what a dupe I’d been, and I especially realized where my true place was. And so I packed my bags and returned to my people.”

Having got all that off his chest, he withdraws into somber silence. I’m afraid my indiscretion has touched a particularly sensitive spot and opened a wound he’d like to let heal.

19

After dozing off on the sofa, Dr. Jalal finally leaves, and I hasten to remove my medications from sight. I’m furious at myself. What was I thinking? Even a dimwit would have been astounded at the giant battery of medicine bottles crowded onto my night table. Did Dr. Jalal suspect anything? Why, contrary to all expectation, did he come to my room? I didn’t think he was in the habit of visiting other guests. Except for when he’s getting drunk by himself in the bar, he’s almost never to be seen in the corridors of the hotel. Moreover, he’s generally sullen and aloof and returns neither smiles nor greetings. The hotel staff avoids him, because he’s liable to fly into an awful rage over some triviality. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure he knows nothing about the purpose of my sojourn in Beirut. He’s in Lebanon to give his lectures; I’m here for reasons that are top secret. Why did he join me yesterday on the terrace, when he’s a man who abhors company?

I intrigue him; there’s no doubt about it.

I take a lot of medication. For three solid days after my arrival in Beirut, various physicians examined me, evaluated me, sounded my depths, and drew my blood, assiduously passing me back and forth between scan machines and cardiographs. After being pronounced sound of body and mind, I was introduced to a certain Professor Ghany, the only person authorized to decide whether or not I would be sent on the mission. He’s a wiry old gentleman, dry as a cudgel, with a nimbus of thick, stringy hair surrounding his head. He subjected me to countless tests — some to determine what products I might be allergic to, others to prepare my body to resist possible rejection phenomena — and then he gave me my many prescriptions. Sayed informed me that Professor Ghany’s a virologist, but he’s also active in other scientific fields; a gray eminence without peer, Sayed says, almost a magician, who worked for decades in the most prestigious American research institutions before being kicked out because he was an Arab and a Muslim.

Until yesterday, everything was proceeding normally. Shakir picked me up and took me to a private clinic north of the city. He waited for me in the car until the consultations were over, and then he drove me back to the hotel. No questions asked.

Dr. Jalal’s intrusion troubles me. Ever since he left, I can’t stop going over our few encounters. Where did I make my mistake? When did I first arouse his curiosity? Did someone around me blow my cover? “I hope you’re going to give it to them good and hard, those bastards.” What was that supposed to mean? Who authorized him to address me in such a fashion?

Summoned, apparently, by my distress, Shakir finds me pondering these mysteries. “Is anything wrong?” he asks as he closes the door behind him.

I’m stretched out on the sofa. The rain has stopped at last, but from outside you can hear the swishing sound of vehicles driving through water. In the sky, thick brown clouds are gathering, preparing for the next downpour.

Shakir grabs a chair and straddles it backward. He’s not as young as I thought, thirty or so, handsome and jovial, with broad shoulders, a stubborn chin, and long hair pulled back in an austere ponytail. He must be nearly six feet tall. His blue eyes have a mineral luster, and their gaze is a little vague as they settle here and there, as though his head were somewhere else. I bonded with Shakir the moment I shook his hand, back on the Syrian border, when Sayed consigned me to him and Imad, who then brought me clandestinely into Lebanon. It’s true that Shakir doesn’t talk very much, but he knows how to be there. We can stand side by side and look at the same thing without exchanging a word.

But something’s different now. Ever since his friend Imad was found dead of an overdose, Shakir has lost his proud assurance. Before, he was crackling with energy. You didn’t have time to hang up the phone before he rang the doorbell. He put the same vigor and dedication into everything he did. Then the police discovered the body of his closest collaborator, and that was a sad jolt for Shakir. It was as though he’d hit a wall.

I didn’t know Imad very well. Except for our journey from the Jordanian border to Lebanon, he and I weren’t together much. He’d come with Shakir to pick me up at the hotel, and that was it. He was a shy kid, crouched in his partner’s shadow. He didn’t seem like a person who used drugs. When I learned how he’d been found, lying blue-mouthed on a bench in a public square, I immediately suspected that he’d actually been murdered. Shakir agreed with me, but he kept it to himself. Only once, I asked him what he thought about Imad’s death; his blue eyes darkened. We’ve avoided the subject ever since.

“Any problems?” he asks.

“Not really,” I reply.

“You look upset.”

“What time is it?”

He consults his watch and tells me we still have twenty minutes before it’s time to leave. I get up and go to the bathroom to wash my face. The cold water calms me down. I stay bent over the sink for a long time, dousing my face and the back of my neck. When I straighten up, I catch Shakir looking at me in the bathroom mirror. He’s standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his head tilted to one side, and his shoulder against the wall. I run my wet fingers through my hair, and he watches me with a glassy gleam in his eye.

“If you’re not feeling well, I’ll postpone the meeting,” he says.

“I’m fine.”

He purses his lips skeptically. “It’s your call. Sayed arrived this morning. He’ll be very happy to see you again.”

“He hasn’t given a sign of life for more than two weeks,” I point out.

“He had to go back to Iraq.” Handing me a towel, he adds, “Things are getting really bad over there.”

I dry my face and pass the towel around my neck. “Dr. Jalal came by to see me this afternoon,” I blurt out.

Shakir raises an eyebrow. “Oh, did he?”

“He also came out on the terrace last night to chat with me.”

“And?”

“It’s on my mind.”

“He said unpleasant things?”

I turn and face Shakir. “What kind of guy is he, this Dr. Jalal?”

“I have no idea. Not my department. But if you want my advice, don’t get all worked up over nothing.”

I go into my bedroom, put on my shoes and my jacket, and announce that I’m ready. “I’ll go and get the car,” he says. “Wait for me in front of the hotel.”

The automatic gate slides open with a screech, and we enter the grounds of the clinic. Shakir takes off his sunglasses before steering his 4×4 into an interior courtyard. He parks between two ambulances and switches off the engine. “I’ll wait for you here,” he says.

“Very good,” I reply, getting out of the vehicle.

He winks at me and leans over to pull the door closed.

I climb up a wide flight of granite steps and enter the lobby of the clinic. A male nurse intercepts me and shows me to Dr. Ghany’s office on the second floor. Sayed’s there, hunched in an armchair, his fingers clutching his knees. A smile lights up his face when he sees me come in. He stands up and spreads his arms, and we embrace forcefully. Sayed’s lost a lot of weight. I can feel his bones through his gray suit.

The professor waits until we release each other before inviting us to take the two chairs facing him. He’s nervous; he can’t stop tapping the desk blotter with his pencil. “All your test results are excellent,” he announces. “The treatment I prescribed has proved effective. You’re perfect for the mission.”

Sayed stares at me intensely. The professor lays his pencil aside, braces himself against the desk, lifts his chin, and looks me straight in the eyes. “It’s not just any mission,” he informs me.

I don’t turn away.

“We’re talking about an operation of a unique kind,” the professor goes on, slightly unsettled by my stiffness and my silence. “The West has left us no choice. Sayed’s just back from Baghdad. The situation there is alarming. Iraq’s imploding, and its people are on the verge of civil war. If we don’t act quickly, the region will go up in flames and never recover.”

“The Shi’a and the Sunnis are tearing one another to pieces,” Sayed adds. “The spirit of revenge is growing stronger every day.”

“I think it’s you two who are wasting time,” I say. “Tell me what you expect of me and I’ll do it.”

The professor freezes, his hand on his pencil. The two men exchange furtive glances. The professor’s the first to react, holding the pencil suspended in the air. “It’s not an ordinary mission,” he says. “The weapon we’re entrusting to you is both effective and undetectable. No scanner will reveal it; no search will find it. It makes no difference how you carry it. You can do so naked, if that appeals to you. The enemy won’t detect anything.”

“I’m listening.”

The pencil touches the blotter, rises slowly, comes down on a pile of paper, and doesn’t move again. Sayed thrusts his hands between his thighs. A heavy silence weighs like a leaden cape on the three of us. One or two unbearable minutes pass. Far off, we can hear the hum of an air conditioner, or perhaps a printer. The professor picks up his pencil again, turning it round and round in his fingers. He knows that this is the decisive moment, and he fears it. After having cleared his throat and clenched his fists, he gathers himself and says abruptly, “The weapon in question is a virus.”

I don’t flinch, nor do I completely understand what he’s said. I don’t see the connection with the mission. The word virus passes through my consciousness. A strange term, I think, but it leaves me with a feeling of déjà vu. What’s a virus? Where have I heard that word? It comes back to me, yet I still can’t manage to situate it properly. Then the examinations, the X rays, and the medications fall into place in the puzzle, and the word virus slowly, bit by bit, gives up its secret. Microbe, microorganism, flu, illness, epidemic, treatment, hospitalization — all sorts of stereotyped images parade through my head, mingle, and blur…. However, I still don’t see the connection.

Sayed sits beside me, unmoving, as tense as a bowstring. The professor continues his explanation. “A revolutionary virus. I’ve spent years perfecting it. Untold amounts of money have been sunk into this project. Men have given their lives to make it possible.”

What’s he telling me?

“A virus,” the professor repeats.

“I understand. So what’s the problem?”

“The only problem is you. Are you game for the mission or not?”

“I never back down.”

“You’ll be the person carrying the virus.”

I’m having trouble following him. Something in his words escapes me. I’m not digesting them. It’s as though I’ve become autistic. The professor continues: “All those tests and medications were designed to determine whether your body would be fit to receive it. Your physical reactions have been impeccable.”

Only now do I see the light; all at once, everything becomes clear in my mind. The weapon in question is a virus. My mission consists in carrying a virus. That’s it; I’ve been physically prepared to receive a virus. A virus. My weapon, my bomb, my kamikaze airplane…

Sayed tries to grab my wrist; I avoid his touch.

“You look surprised,” the professor tells me.

“I am. But that’s all.”

“Is there a problem?” Sayed inquires.

“There’s no problem,” I say curtly.

The virologist tries to follow up. “We have—”

“Professor, I’m telling you there’s no problem. Virus or bomb, what’s the difference? You don’t need to explain the why; just tell me the when and the where. I’m neither more nor less brave than the Iraqis who are dying every day in my country. When I agreed to follow Sayed, I divorced myself from life. I’m a dead man waiting for a decent burial.”

“I never doubted your determination for a second,” Sayed tells me, his voice shaking a little.

“In that case, why not move directly to concrete matters? When will I have the…the honor of serving my Cause?”

“In five days,” the professor replies.

“Why not today?”

“We’re adhering to a strict schedule.”

“Very well. I won’t leave my hotel. You can come and fetch me whenever you want — the sooner the better. I can’t wait to recover my soul.”

Sayed dismisses Shakir and invites me to get into his car. We drive across half the city without saying a word. I sense that he’s searching for words but not finding any. Once, unable to stand the silence, he reaches for the radio and then draws his hand back. It’s raining very hard again. The buildings seem to submit to the deluge with resignation. Their gloominess puts me in mind of the tramp I watched not long ago from the window of my hotel room.

We pass through a neighborhood with ravaged buildings. The marks of war take a long time to erase. Work sites devour large sections of the city, bristling with cranes, their bulldozers attacking the ruins like pit bulls. At an intersection, two drivers are screaming at each other; their cars have just collided. Shards of glass lie scattered on the asphalt. Sayed runs a red light and nearly crashes into a car that suddenly appears out of a side street. Drivers on all sides angrily blow their horns at us. Sayed doesn’t hear them. He’s lost in whatever’s on his mind.

We take the coastal road. The sea is stormy, as though tormented by an immense anger. Some vessels lie in the roadstead; in the general grayness, they look like phantom ships.

We drive about forty kilometers before Sayed emerges from his fog. He discovers that he’s missed his turn, twists his head around to get his bearings, abruptly veers onto the shoulder of the road, brings the car to a stop, and waits until he can put his thoughts into some order. Then he says, “It’s a very important mission. Very, very important. I didn’t tell you anything about the virus because no one must know. And I really believed, after all those visits to the clinic, that you would start figuring it out yourself…. Do you understand what I’m saying? It may look to you as though I kept quiet because I wanted to confront you with a fait accompli, but that’s not the case. As of right now, nothing’s set in stone. Please don’t think there’s any pressure on you; please don’t imagine there’s been any breach of trust. If you don’t consider yourself ready, or if this mission doesn’t suit you, you can back out and no one will hold it against you. I just want to assure you that the next candidate won’t be treated any differently. He won’t know anything until the last moment, either. For our security and for the success of the mission, we have to operate this way.”

“Are you afraid I’m not up to it?”

“No!” he cried out before he could stop himself. His finger joints whitened as he clutched the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I’m just confused, that’s all. If you felt cheated or trapped, I wouldn’t forgive myself. I warned you in Baghdad that this would be a mission unlike any other. I couldn’t tell you anything more than that. Do you understand?”

“Now I do.”

He takes out his handkerchief and wipes the corners of his mouth and under his ears. “Are you angry at me?”

“Not even slightly, Sayed. I was surprised to learn that the mission involves a virus, but that has no effect on my commitment. A Bedouin doesn’t lose his nerve. His word is like a rifle shot — it can’t be taken back. I’ll carry this virus. In the name of my family and in the name of my country.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep since I put you in the professor’s hands. It’s got nothing to do with you — I know you’ll go all the way. But this operation’s so…crucial. You have no idea how important it is. We’re down to our last shot, the last cartridge in the chamber. Afterward, a new era will be born, and the West will never look at us the same way again. I’m not afraid of dying, but our deaths have to mean something. They have to change our situation. Otherwise, our martyrs aren’t much use. For me, life’s nothing but an insane gamble; it’s the way you die that determines whether you win the bet. I don’t want our children to suffer. If our parents had taken things in hand in their day, we wouldn’t be so miserable. But, alas, they waited for the miracle instead of going out and finding it, and so we’re compelled to change our fate ourselves.”

He turns toward me. His face is deathly pale, and his eyes shimmer with furious tears. “If you could see Baghdad — if you could see what it’s become: ruined sanctuaries, mosques at war with one another, fratricidal slaughter. We’re overwhelmed. We call for calm, and no one listens. It’s true that we were hostages back when Saddam was in power. But, good God! Now we’re zombies. Our cemeteries are full, and our prayers get blown to pieces along with our minarets. How did we come to this? If I can’t sleep, it’s because we expect everything, absolutely everything, from you. You’re our only recourse, our last-ditch stand. If you succeed, you’ll put things back in their proper order, and a new day will dawn for us. The professor hasn’t explained to you the nature of the virus, has he?”

“There’s no need for that.”

“Yes, there is. It’s imperative that you know what your sacrifice will mean to your people and to all the oppressed peoples of the earth. You represent the end of the imperialist hegemony, the turning wheel of fortune, the redemption of the just—”

This time, I’m the one who grabs his wrist. “Please, Sayed, have faith in me. It would kill me if you didn’t.”

“I have complete faith in you.”

“Then don’t say anything. Let things take their course. I don’t need to be accompanied. I’ll know how to find my way all by myself.”

“I’m just trying to tell you how much your sacrifice—”

“There’s no point in telling me that. You know how people are in Kafr Karam. We never talk about a project if we really intend to accomplish it one day. If you don’t keep your dearest wishes silent, they won’t bear fruit. So let’s just shut up. I want to go all the way, without flinching. In full confidence. Do you understand me?”

Sayed nods. “You’re surely right. The man who has faith in himself doesn’t need it from others.”

“Exactly, Sayed. Exactly.”

He puts the car in reverse and backs up to a gravel trail. We turn onto it and head back to Beirut.

I’ve spent a good part of the night on the hotel terrace, leaning on the balustrade, looking down at the avenue, and hoping that Dr. Jalal would turn up. I feel all alone. I try to get a hold of myself. I need Jalal’s anger to fill my blank spots. But Jalal is nowhere to be found. I went and knocked on his door — twice. He wasn’t in his room, nor was he in the bar. From my lookout post on the terrace, I peer down at the cars that stop at the curb, watching for his rickety silhouette. People enter and leave the hotel; their voices reach me in amplified fragments before dissolving into the other sounds of the night. A crescent moon, as sharp and white as a sickle, adorns the sky. Higher up, strings of stars sparkle in the background. It’s cold; my sighs are visible. I pull my jacket tight around me and puff into my numbed fists until my eyes bulge. My mind feels empty. Ever since the word virus penetrated my consciousness, a toxin has been prowling around in there, waiting to be released at any moment. I don’t want to give it the chance to poison my heart. That toxin’s the devil. It’s the trap lying in my path; it’s my weakness and my ruin. And I have vowed before my saints and my ancestors never to yield. So I look away; I look at the late-night crowd in the street, the passing cars, the festive neon lights, and the thronged shops. The sights solicit my eyes, and I let them take over from my brain. This city excels in solicitation!

Just yesterday, it was draped in an immense shroud that muffled its lights and its echoes and reduced its former excesses to a cold anxiety, rooted in uncertainty and failure. Has Beirut so completely forgotten its torment that it has no compassion for its cousins in their distress? What a hopeless place! In spite of the specter of civil war that hovers over its banquets, it pretends there’s nothing amiss. And those people on the sidewalk, charging around like the cockroaches in the gutters, where are they running to? What dream could reconcile them to their sleep? What dawn to their tomorrows? No, I’m not going to end up like them. I don’t want to resemble them in any way….

Two o’clock in the morning. There’s no one left in the street. The shops have lowered their shutters, and the last ghosts have vanished. Jalal won’t come back tonight. Do I really need him?

I return to my room, chilled but reinvigorated. The fresh air has done me good. The toxin that was prowling around in my mind gave up in the end. I slip under the covers and turn off the light. I’m at ease in the darkness. My dead and my living are near me. Virus or bomb, what’s the difference, when you’re grasping an offense in one hand and, in the other, the Cause? I don’t need a sleeping pill. I’ve returned to my element. Everything’s fine. Life’s nothing but an insane gamble; it’s the way you die that determines whether or not you win the bet. That’s how legends are born.

20

A middle-aged man presents himself at the reception desk. He’s tall and bony, with the waxy complexion of an aesthete. His outfit includes an old gray overcoat, a dark suit, and leather shoes worn at the heel. With his large horn-rimmed glasses and his tie, which has seen happier days, he exhibits the dignified and pathetic bearing of a schoolteacher nearing retirement. A newspaper protrudes from under one of his arms. He presses the button on the counter and waits calmly for someone to come and attend to him.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Good evening. Please tell Dr. Jalal that Mohammed Seen is here.”

The desk clerk turns toward the pigeonholes. Although there’s no key in number 36, he says, “Dr. Jalal’s not in his room, sir.”

“I saw him come in not two minutes ago,” the man insists. “He may be resting, or perhaps he’s very busy, but I’m an old friend of his, and I know he’d be unhappy to learn that I came by to see him and he wasn’t informed.”

From my seat in the lobby, where I’m drinking a cup of tea, I catch the clerk’s eye as he looks past the visitor. Then the clerk scratches his head and finally picks up the telephone. “I’ll see if he’s in the bar,” he says. “And you are?”

“Mohammed Seen, novelist.”

The desk clerk dials a number, loosens his bow tie, and bites his lip when someone answers on the other end. “Good evening, this is the front desk. Is Dr. Jalal in the bar? A gentleman named Mohammed Seen is waiting for him in the lobby…. Of course.” He hangs up and asks the novelist to be so kind as to wait.

Dr. Jalal erupts from the elevator, his arms open wide and a smile splitting his face from ear to ear. “Allah, ya baba! What good wind blows you here, habibi? I’m overcome — the great Seen remembers me!” The two men embrace warmly and kiss each other’s cheeks, delighted at this reunion; they spend a long moment in mutual contemplation and reciprocal backslapping. “What an excellent surprise!” the doctor exclaims. “How long have you been in Beirut?”

“A week. The Institut français invited me.”

“Excellent. I hope you’re staying awhile longer. I’d love to spend some time in your company.”

“I have to go back to Paris on Sunday.”

“That gives us two days. God, you look great. Come, let’s go up to the terrace. The view from there is splendid. We can watch the sunset and admire the city lights.”

They disappear into the elevator.

The two men sit in the glassed-in alcove on the hotel terrace. I hear them laughing and exchanging claps on the shoulder before I slip surreptitiously behind a wooden panel where they can’t see me.

Mohammed Seen extricates himself from his overcoat and lays it across the arm of his chair.

“Will you have a drink?” Jalal suggests.

“No, thanks.”

“Damn, it’s been a long time. Where do you live these days?”

“I’m a nomad.”

“I read your last book. I thought it was simply marvelous.”

“Thank you.”

The doctor sinks back into his chair and crosses his legs. He smiles as he looks the novelist up and down, clearly overjoyed to see him again.

The novelist leans forward with his elbows on his knees, joins his hands like a Buddhist monk, and delicately rests his chin on his fingertips. His enthusiasm has vanished.

“Don’t make such a face, Mohammed. Is there some problem?”

“Just one: you.”

The doctor throws his head back in a short, sharp laugh. He recovers immediately, as if he’s suddenly absorbed what the other has said. “You have a problem with me?”

The novelist straightens his back; his hands clasp his knees. “I won’t beat around the bush, Jalal. I attended your lecture the day before yesterday. I still can’t get over it.”

“Why didn’t you come and see me right afterward?”

“With all those people orbiting around you? To tell you the truth, I hardly recognized you. I was so baffled, I think I was the last person to leave the auditorium. I was stupefied, I really was. I felt as though a roofing tile had fallen on my head.”

Jalal’s smile disappears. His face takes on a pained, solemn expression, and furrows crease his brow. For a long time, he scratches his lower lip, hoping to eke out a word capable of breaking through the invisible wall that has just sprung up between him and the novelist. He frowns again and then says at last, “As bad as that, Mohammed?”

“I’m still stunned, if you want to know the truth.”

“Well, I assume you’ve come to teach me a lesson, master. Have at it. Don’t hold back.”

The novelist lifts his overcoat, pats it nervously, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. When he holds it out to the doctor, Jalal refuses with a brusque movement of his hand. The violence of the gesture doesn’t escape the novelist’s notice.

The doctor barricades himself behind his disappointment. His face is drawn, and his eyes are filled with cold animosity.

The writer looks for his lighter but can’t put his hands on it; as Jalal doesn’t offer his own, Seen gives up the idea of smoking.

“I’m waiting,” the doctor reminds him in a guttural voice.

The writer nods. He puts the cigarette back in the pack and the pack back in the overcoat, which he returns to the arm of his chair. He looks as though he’s trying to gain time so he can get his thoughts in order. He takes a deep breath and blurts out, “How can a man turn his coat so quickly, from one day to the next?”

The doctor trembles. His face muscles twitch. He doesn’t seem to have expected such a frontal attack. After a long silence, during the course of which his eyes remain fixed, he replies, “I didn’t turn my coat, Mohammed. I simply realized that I was wearing it inside out.”

“You were wearing it right, Jalal.”

“That’s what I thought. I was wrong.”

“Is it because they didn’t give you the Three Academies Medal?”

“You think I didn’t deserve it?”

“You deserved it, hands down. But not getting it isn’t the end of the world.”

“It was the end of my dream. The proof is that everything changed afterward.”

“What changed?”

“The deal. Now we’re the ones passing out the cards. Better yet, we set the rules of the game.”

“What game, Jalal? The massacre game? Is that anybody’s idea of a good time? You jumped off a moving train. You were better off before.”

“As what? An Arab Uncle Tom?”

“You weren’t an Uncle Tom. You were an enlightened man. We’re the world’s conscience now, you and I and the other intellectual orphans, jeered by our own people and spurned by the hidebound establishment. We’re in the minority, of course, but we exist. And we’re the only ones capable of changing things, you and I. The West is out of the race. It’s been overtaken by events. The battle, the real battle, is taking place among the Muslim elite, that is, between us two and the radical clerics.”

“Between the Aryan race and the non-Aryans.”

“That’s false and you know it. Today, our struggle is internal. Muslims are on the side of the person who can project their voice, the Muslim voice, as far as possible. They don’t care whether he’s a terrorist or an artist, an impostor or a righteous man, an obscure genius or an elder statesman. They need a myth, an idol. Someone capable of representing them, of expressing them in their complexity, of defending them in some way. Whether with the pen or with bombs, it makes little difference to them. And so it’s up to us to choose our weapons, Jalal. Us: you and me.”

“I’ve chosen mine. And there aren’t any others.”

“You don’t really think that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You’re not a true believer. You’re just a turncoat.”

“I forbid you—”

“All right. I haven’t come here to upset you. But I wanted to tell you this: We bear a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, Jalal. Everything depends on us, on you and me. Our victory will mean the salvation of the whole world. Our defeat will mean chaos. We have in our hands an incredible instrument: our double culture. It allows us to know what’s going on, who’s right and who’s wrong, where some are flawed, why others are blocked. The West is mired in doubt. It’s used to imposing its theories as though they were absolute truths, but now they’re meeting resistance and coming apart. After so many centuries, the West is losing its bearings; it’s no longer lulled by its illusions. Hence the metastasis that’s brought us the current dialogue of the deaf, which pits pseudomodernity against pseudobarbarity.”

“The West isn’t modern; it’s rich. And the ‘barbarians’ aren’t barbarians; they’re poor people who don’t have the wherewithal to modernize.”

“I couldn’t agree more. But that’s where we can intervene and put things in perspective, calm people down, readjust their focus, and get rid of the stereotypes this whole frightful mistake is founded on. We’re the golden mean, the proper balance of things.”

“That’s arrant nonsense. I used to think that way, too. To survive the intellectual imperialism that snubbed me — me, an educated man, a scholar — I told myself exactly the same things you’ve just told me. But I was sweet-talking myself. The only risks I took were in TV studios, where I criticized my people, my traditions, my religion, my family, and my saints. They used me. Like a piece of charcoal. I’m not charcoal. I’m a two-edged blade. They’ve blunted me on one side, but I can still gut them with the other. And don’t think this has anything to do with the Three Academies Medal. That was just one more disappointment among many. The truth lies elsewhere. The West has become senile. It’s not aging well — in fact, it’s just an old, paranoid pain in the ass. Its imperialistic nostalgia prevents it from admitting that the world has changed. You can’t even reason with it. And therefore it has to be euthanized…. Look, you don’t build a new building on top of an old one. You raze it to the ground, and then you start over, from the foundation up.”

“With what? Plastic explosives, booby-trapped packages, spectacular crashes. Vandals don’t build; they destroy. We have to take responsibility, Jalal. We have to learn to suffer low blows and injustices from those we consider our allies. We have to transcend our rage. It’s a question of humanity’s future. What can our disillusions weigh in comparison with the threat hanging over the world? They didn’t treat you decently; I don’t deny it—”

“Nor you, either. Remember?”

“Is that a valid reason for deciding the fate of nations — the obnoxious conceit of a handful of Templars?”

“In my view, those dim-witted Christian warriors are the incarnation of all the arrogance the West displays toward us.”

“You forget your disciples, your colleagues, all the thousands of European students whom you taught and who disseminate what you taught them, even today. That’s what counts, Jalal. To hell with recognition if it’s granted by people who can’t hold a candle to you. According to Jonathan Swift, ‘When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.’ It’s always been the way of the world. But your triumph consists in the knowledge you bequeath to others and in the minds you enlighten. It’s not possible that you can turn your back on so much joy and satisfaction and embrace instead the jealousy of a band of unthinking fanatics.”

“Obviously, Mohammed, you’ll never understand. You’re too nice, and you’re too hopelessly naïve. I’m not getting revenge; I’m laying claim to my genius, my integrity, my right to be tall and handsome and appreciated. You think I’m going to accept exclusion, or erase the memory of so many years of ostracism and intellectual despotism and ignorant segregation? Not a chance. Those days are gone. I’m a professor emeritus—”

“You used to be, Jalal. You aren’t anymore. Now that you’re on the obscurantist faculty, you’re proving both to your former students and to the people who wounded you that you’re not worth very much after all.”

“They’re not worth very much to me, either. The exchange rate they charged me is no longer current. I’m my own unit of measurement. My own stock market. My own dictionary. I made the decision to revise and redefine everything I knew. To prescribe my own truths. The time of bowing and scraping is over. If we want to straighten up the world, the spineless have to go. We have the means of our insurrection. We’ve stopped being dupes, and we’re not hiding anymore. In fact, we’re crying out from the rooftops that the West is nothing but a crude hoax, a sophisticated lie. All its seductiveness is false, like a cheap, fancy dress. Underneath, it’s not such a turn-on. Believe me, Mohammed. The West isn’t a suitable match for us. We’ve listened and listened to its lullabies, but now we’ve slept long enough. Once upon a time, the West could amuse itself by defining the world as it saw fit. It called indigenous men ‘natives’ and free men ‘savages.’ It made and unmade mythologies according to its own good pleasure and raised its charlatans to divine rank. Today, the offended peoples have recovered their power of speech. They have some words to say. And our weapons say exactly the same thing.”

The writer claps his hands together. “You’re out of your mind, Jalal. For God’s sake, come back to earth! Your place isn’t with people who kill and massacre and terrorize. And you know it! I know you know it. I listened to you closely the day before yesterday. Your lecture was pathetic, and I never caught so much as a glimpse of the sincerity you used to display back when you were fighting for the triumph of restraint over anger. Back when you wanted violence, terrorism, and the misery they bring to be banished from the earth—”

“Enough!” The doctor explodes. “If you like being a doormat for worthless cretins, that’s your business. But don’t come and tell me how delightful it is. You’re living on a manure pile, goddamn it! I can tell shit when I smell it! It stinks, and so do you, you and your simpering recommendations! Let me tell you what’s clear. The West doesn’t love us. It will never love you, not even you. It will never carry you in its heart, because it doesn’t have one, and it will never exalt you, because it looks down on you. Do you want to remain a miserable bootlicker, a servile Arab, a raghead with privileges? Do you want to keep hoping for what they’re incapable of giving you? Okay. Suffer in silence and wait. Who knows? Maybe a scrap will fall out of one of their trash bags. But don’t bore me with your shoeshineboy theories, ya waled. I know perfectly well what I want and where I’m going.”

Mohammed Seen raises his arms in surrender, gathers up his overcoat, and stands up. I hastily withdraw.

As I go down the stairs, I can hear the two of them coming down after me. Jalal’s hollering at the writer. “‘I offer them the moon on a silver tray. All they see is a flyspeck on the tray. How can you expect them to take a bite of the moon?’ You wrote that.”

“Leave my work out of it, Jalal.”

“Why so bitter, Mr. Seen? Is that an admission of defeat? Why does a magnanimous man like you have to suffer? It’s because they refuse to recognize your true value. They call your rhetoric ‘bombastic’ and reduce your dazzling flights to imprudent ‘stylistic liberties.’ That’s the injustice I’m fighting against, that dismissive glance they deign to bend upon our magnificence — that’s what has me up in arms. Those people must realize the wrong they do us. They must understand that if they persist in spitting on the best we have, they’ll have to make do with the worst. It’s as simple as that.”

“The intellectual world’s the same everywhere: shady and deceitful. It’s a sort of underworld, but without scruples and without a code of honor. It spares neither its own nor others. If it’s any consolation to you, I’m more controversial and hated among my own people than I am anywhere else. It’s said that no one’s a prophet in his own country. I would add, ‘And no one’s a master in foreign lands.’ No one is honored as a prophet in his own country or as a master anywhere else. My salvation comes from that revelation: I want to be neither a master nor a prophet. I’m only a writer who tries to put some of his spirit into his novels for those who may wish to receive it.”

“Which means you’re satisfied with crumbs.”

“I am, Jalal. Completely. I’d rather be satisfied with nothing than mess up everything. As long as my sorrow doesn’t impoverish anyone, it enriches me. There’s no wretch like the wretch who chooses to bring misfortune where he should bring life. I could lie awake dwelling on my bad luck or my friends’ grief, but the darkness makes me dream.”

They catch up with me in the corridor on the ground floor. I pretend to have just come out of the men’s room. They’re so absorbed by their intellectuals’ squabble that they walk past without noticing me.

“You’re caught between two worlds, Mohammed. It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in. We’re in the midst of a clash of civilizations. You’re going to have to decide which camp you’re in.”

“I’m my own camp.”

“That’s so pretentious! You can’t be your own camp; all you can do is isolate yourself.”

“You’re never alone if you’re moving toward the light.”

“Like Icarus, you mean, or maybe like a moth? What light?”

“The light of my conscience. No shadow can obscure it.”

Jalal stops short and watches the novelist walk away. When Seen pushes open the double doors that lead to the lobby, the doctor starts after him but then changes his mind and lets his hands fall to his sides. “You’re still in the anal stage of awareness, Mohammed,” Jalal cries out. “A world’s on the march and you’re cross-examining yourself. They won’t give you a thing, not a thing! Those crumbs they let you have? One day, they’ll take them back! You’ll get nothing, I tell you, nothing, nothing….”

The swinging doors close with a squeak. The sound of the writer’s footsteps fades and then disappears, absorbed by the carpet in the lobby.

Dr. Jalal grabs his head with both hands and mutters an unintelligible curse.

“Do you want me to blow his brains out?” I ask.

He glares at me savagely. “Leave him alone!” he says. “There’s more to life than that.”

21

Dr. Jalal hasn’t emerged unscathed from his encounter with the writer. He seldom rises before noon, and at night I can hear him pacing in his room. According to Shakir, Jalal has called off the lecture he’d been scheduled to give at the University of Beirut, canceled several interviews with the press, and made no further progress on the book he was about to finish.

I don’t see how a scholar of his stature could be flustered by a servile scribbler. Dr. Jalal’s an eloquent man, a man with great rhetorical powers. The thought of such a genius allowing himself to be caught off guard by a vulgar hack disgusts me.

This afternoon, he’s slouched like a sack in an armchair, his back to the reception desk. His cigarette’s dying a slow death, leaving behind a little stick of ash. Staring at the blank television screen, his legs outspread, his arms hanging down over the arms of his chair, he looks like a battered boxer slumping on a stool.

He doesn’t glance over at me. On the table beside him, some empty beer bottles accompany a glass of whiskey. The ashtray is brimming with butts.

I leave the lobby. In the hotel restaurant, I order a grilled steak, fried potatoes, and a green salad. The doctor fails to appear. I wait for him, my eyes riveted on the door. My coffee gets cold. The waiter clears my dishes and takes down my room number. No one comes through the restaurant door.

I return to the lobby. The doctor’s in the same place as before, but now he’s leaning his head on the back of his chair and staring at the ceiling. I don’t dare approach him. And I don’t dare go up to my room. I step out into the street and lose myself in the crowd.

Shakir slaps his hands together forcefully when he sees me come in. He’s sitting on the sofa in my suite, as white as a candle. “I looked everywhere for you,” he says.

“I went for a walk on the esplanade and lost track of the time.”

“You could have called, dammit. One more hour and I was going to raise the alarm. We were supposed to meet here at five o’clock.”

“I told you: I lost track of the time.”

Shakir restrains himself from jumping on me. My composure exasperates him, and my lack of concern fills him with rage. He raises his hands and tries to calm himself. Then he reaches down to the floor, picks up a little cardboard folder, and hands it to me. “Your airplane tickets, your passport, and your university documents. Your flight to London leaves the day after tomorrow, at ten past six in the evening.”

Without opening the folder, I place it on the night table.

“Something wrong?” he inquires.

“Why do you always ask me the same question?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Have I complained about anything?”

Shakir puts his hands on his thighs and stands up. He looks red-eyed and sleep-deprived. “We’re both tired,” he says, still furious. “Try to rest. I’ll come by tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. We’re going to the clinic. Don’t eat or drink anything beforehand.”

He wants to add something but then decides it’s not necessary. He asks, “May I go?”

“Of course,” I say.

He wags his head, gives the cardboard folder one last glance, and leaves. I don’t hear any steps fading away in the corridor. He must be standing guard at the door, stroking his chin and wondering I don’t know what.

I lie down on the bed, clasp my hands on the back of my neck, contemplate the chandelier above me, and wait for Shakir to go away. I’ve come to know him; when he can’t figure something out, he’s incapable of making any decision before the matter is settled. Finally, I hear him go. I sit up and reach for the folder. Along with the passport, the university papers, and the British Airways tickets, it contains a student identification card, a bank card, and two hundred pounds.

I take one of the pills that usually help me to sleep, but it has no effect. It’s as though I’ve drunk a whole thermos of coffee. Lying on my back, fully dressed, with my shoes still tied, I stare at the ceiling, which a neon sign outside splashes with bloodred light. The traffic noise has diminished. Occasional vehicles pass with a muffled swish, taunting the silence that’s taken hold of the city.

In the next room, Dr. Jalal’s awake, too. I hear him walking in circles. His condition has worsened.

I wonder why I didn’t mention the writer’s visit to Shakir.

Shakir’s here on time. He waits in the suite while I finish my shower. I get dressed and follow him to his car, which is parked in front of a large store. Despite a chilly breeze, the sky is clear. The sun ricochets off windows, as sharp as a razor blade.

Shakir doesn’t drive into the clinic’s inner courtyard. He goes around the building and down a ramp to a small underground parking area. We leave the car, enter a hidden door, and climb a few flights of stairs. Professor Ghany and Sayed meet us at the entrance to a large room that looks like a laboratory. The doors leading to the aboveground floors of the clinic are reinforced and padlocked. At the end of a corridor illuminated by a series of recessed ceiling lights, there’s a gleaming room entirely covered with ceramic tiles. A large glass panel divides it in two. On the other side of the glass, I see a kind of dentist’s office with an armchair under a sophisticated light projector. There are metal shelves loaded with chrome-plated containers all around the room.

The professor dismisses Shakir.

Sayed avoids looking at me. He feigns interest in the professor. Both of them are tense. I’m nervous, too. My calves are tingling. My pulse pounds in my temples. I feel like vomiting.

The professor reassures me. “Everything’s fine,” he says, pointing me to a chair.

Sayed sits beside me; that way, he doesn’t have to turn away from me. His hands are red from kneading.

The professor remains on his feet. With his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, he informs me that the moment of truth has come. “We’re going to proceed to the injection shortly,” he says, his voice choked with emotion. “And I want to explain to you what’s going to happen. Clinically, your body is fit to receive the…the foreign body. In the beginning, there will be some side effects, but nothing serious. Probably some dizziness in the first few hours, maybe a touch of nausea, but then everything will return to normal. I want to put your mind at rest immediately. Before today, with the help of volunteers, we’ve carried out several tests, and all along adjustments have been made as required, based on whatever complications arose. The…vaccine you’re going to receive is a total success. You have nothing to worry about on that score. After the injection, we’re going to keep you under observation all day — a simple security measure. When you leave the clinic, you’ll be in perfect physical condition. Forget about all the medications I prescribed for you earlier — they’re no longer necessary. I’ve replaced them with two different pills, each of which must be taken three times a day for a week. You leave for London tomorrow. A physician will assist you once you’re there. In the course of the first week, things will go along normally. The incubation period won’t cause you any major undesirable effects. It varies from ten to fifteen days. The first symptoms to appear will be a high fever and convulsions; your medicine will be at your side. After this phase, your urine will gradually turn red. From that moment, the contagion is operational. Your mission then will consist in riding the subway and going to train stations, stadiums, and supermarkets, with the goal of contaminating the maximum number of people. Particularly in train stations, so the epidemic will spread to the other regions of the kingdom. The phenomenon propagates with lightning speed. The people you contaminate will transmit the virus to others less than six hours before they themselves are struck down. It acts somewhat like the Spanish flu, but the catastrophe will have decimated a good part of the population before people realize that the two epidemics aren’t really alike at all. This new one is unique, and we alone have the knowledge that will be required to stop its further spread. And our intervention will require compliance with certain conditions. This is an unstoppable mutating virus. A great revolution. It is our ultimate weapon…. The physician in London will explain whatever you’d like to know. You can confide in him; he’s my closest collaborator…. After the onset, you’ll have three to five days to visit all the most frequented public places.”

Sayed takes out a handkerchief and pats his forehead and his temples. He’s on the point of passing out.

“I’m ready, professor.” I don’t recognize my voice. I have the feeling I’m slipping into a trance. I pray for the strength to get up and walk without collapsing to the air lock that leads to the room behind the glass panel. My sight blurs for a few seconds. I breathe deeply, struggling for a little air. Then I come to my senses and heave myself to my feet. My calves are still tingling and my legs wobble, but the floor remains firm. The professor puts on a silver HAZMAT suit, complete with mask and gloves, so that he’s entirely covered. Sayed helps me get my own suit on and then watches us go through the air lock to the other side of the glass panel.

I place myself in the chair, which immediately starts rising and reclining with a mechanical hiss. The professor opens a small aluminum box and extracts a futuristic syringe. I close my eyes and hold my breath. When the needle enters my flesh, every cell in my body, with a single unified movement, seems to rush to the perforated spot. I feel as though I’ve fallen through a crack in the surface of a frozen lake, which pulls me down into its depths.

Sayed invites me to dinner in a restaurant not far from my hotel. It’s a farewell meal, with all that such an occasion entails for him in terms of embarrassment and awkwardness. You’d think he’d lost the power of speech. He can’t bring himself to say a word or look me in the face.

He won’t drive me to the airport tomorrow. Neither will Shakir. A taxi’s going to pick me up at 4:00 P.M. sharp.

I spent the whole day in Professor Ghany’s subterranean clinic. He came in to examine me with his stethoscope from time to time. His satisfaction grew with every visit. Then I had four uninterrupted hours of a deep, dreamless sleep, followed after I woke up by only two dizzy spells. I was as thirsty as a castaway on the sea. They brought me some soup and crudités, which I couldn’t finish. I didn’t feel sick, but I was groggy and pasty-mouthed, and I had an incessant hum in my ears. When I got out of bed, I staggered several times; then, little by little, I was able to coordinate my movements and walk properly.

Professor Ghany didn’t come and bid me farewell. Since Shakir had been sent off duty, it was Sayed who stayed with me in the afternoon. After nightfall, we left the subterranean parking garage in a small rental car and drove away from the clinic. The city lights were at full blaze, illuminating even the surrounding hills. The streets were seething, like my veins.

We pick a table in the back of the dining room so we won’t be disturbed. The restaurant’s packed: families with lots of kids, groups of laughing friends, couples holding hands, shifty-eyed businessmen. The waiters are busy on all fronts, some of them balancing trays, others writing down the customers’ orders in minuscule notebooks. Near the entrance, an enormous and rather odd fellow laughs hard enough to burst his carotid artery. The woman sharing his meal looks uneasy; she turns toward her neighbors and smiles wanly, as if asking them to excuse her companion’s indecorous behavior.

Sayed reads and rereads the menu and remains undecided. I suspect that he regrets having invited me. I ask him, “Have you been back to Kafr Karam?”

He flinches but doesn’t appear to understand my question. I restate it. This relaxes him a bit; he lowers the menu he’s been using as a screen and looks at me. “No,” he says. “I haven’t been back to Kafr Karam. Baghdad gives me no time off. But I’ve remained in contact with our people. They often call up and tell me what’s going on over there. The latest news is that a military camp has been established in the Haitems’ orchards.”

“I sent my twin sister a little money. I don’t know whether she got it.”

“Your money order arrived intact. I talked to Kadem on the phone two weeks ago. He was trying to reach you. I told him I didn’t know where you were. Then he put Bahia on. She wanted to thank you and to find out how you were doing. I promised her to do everything possible to find you.”

“Thanks.”

Neither of us finds anything to add. We eat in silence, each of us lost in his own thoughts.

Sayed drops me off at my hotel. Before getting out of the car, I turn to him. He smiles at me so sadly that I don’t dare shake his hand. We part without pats or embraces, like two rivulets spilling off a rock.

22

There’s a message for me at the reception desk. An envelope, taped shut, no writing on it. Inside, a card with an abstract design on the front, and on the back, a line written with a felt-tipped pen: “I’m proud to have known you. Shakir.”

I slip the note into the inside pocket of my jacket. In the lobby, a large family swarms around a low table. The children squabble and jump off the backs of chairs. Their mother tries to call them to order, while the father laughs, ostensibly having a conversation on his cell phone. Beyond them sits Dr. Jalal, exasperated by the kids’ racket and deep in his cups.

I go up to my room. A brand-new leather traveling bag is sitting on my bed. Inside, there are two pairs of designer pants, underwear, socks, two shirts, a thick sweater, a jacket, a pair of shoes in a bag, a toilet kit, and four large volumes of literature in English. A piece of paper is pinned to a strap: “This is your baggage. You’ll buy whatever else you need once you’re in place.” No signature.

Dr. Jalal comes in without knocking. He’s drunk, and he has to keep clutching the doorknob to avoid falling. He says, “Going on a trip?”

“I intended to tell you good-bye tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He staggers and catches himself twice before he manages to close the door and lean back against it. Totally disheveled, with half his shirt hanging out of his pants and his fly wide open, he looks like a bum. The muddy blotch on his left pants leg is probably the result of a fall in the street. His face is ghastly, with swollen eyelids, wild eyes, and leaking nostrils.

His mouth, which he wipes on his sleeve, has gone soft, unable to articulate two consecutive words without drooling. “So, just like that, you’re going away on tiptoe, like a prowler? I’ve been hanging around the lobby for hours because I didn’t want to miss you. And what do you do? You pass me by without a word.”

“I have to pack.”

“Are you running me off?”

“It’s not that. I need to be alone. I have to get my bags ready and put some things in order.”

He squints, thrusts out his lips, sways, and then, with a deep breath, gathering all his remaining strength, he straightens himself and cries, “Tozz!”

Although it’s a weak cry, it makes him reel. He clutches at the doorknob again. He says, “Can you tell me where you’ve been from morning till night?”

“I went to see some relatives.”

“My ass! I know where you were holed up, my boy. You want me to tell you where you were holed up? You were in a clinic. Or maybe I should say a nuthouse. Son of a bitch! What’s that like, the world of mental-defectives? Shit!”

I’m stunned. Paralyzed.

“You think I’m stupid? You think I couldn’t figure it out? A transplant, for God’s sake! You don’t have any more scars on your body than brains in your skull. Damn it all, don’t you realize what they’ve done to you in that shitty fucking clinic? You have to be stark raving mad, putting yourself in Professor Ghany’s hands! He’s completely fucked-up in the head. I know him. He could never even dissect a white mouse without cutting his finger.”

He can’t know, I tell myself. Nobody knows. He’s bluffing. He’s trying to trap me. “What are you talking about?” I say. “What clinic? And who’s this professor of yours? I was with some relatives.”

“You poor sap! You think I’m trying to fool you? That moron Ghany has lost it altogether. I don’t know what he shot you up with, but it’s surely a load of crap.” He takes his head in his hands. “Good God! Where are we, in a Spielberg film? I’d heard about that nutcase doing creepy things to prisoners of war when he was with the Taliban. But this is going too far.”

“Get out of my room.”

“Not a chance! It’s very serious, what you’re going to do. Very, very, very serious. Unthinkable. Unimaginable. I know it won’t work. Your shitty virus will eat you alive, just you, and that’s all. But even so, I’m still worried. Suppose Ghany has succeeded, loser though he is? Have you thought about the extent of the disaster? We’re not talking about terrorist attacks, a few little bombs here, a few little crashes there. We’re talking about pestilence. About the apocalypse. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of dead, maybe millions. If this really is a revolutionary mutating virus, who’s going to stop it? With what, and how? It’s completely unacceptable.”

“You yourself said that the West—”

“We’re well past that point, you idiot. I’ve said a lot of stupid fucking things in my life, but I can’t let you do this. Every war has its limits. But this — this is beyond all bounds. What do you hope for after the apocalypse? What’s going to be left of the world, except for rotting corpses and plagues and chaos? God himself will tear out His hair….” He jabs his finger at me. “Enough of this bullshit! Everything stops now! You’re not going anywhere, and neither is the filth you’re carrying. Teaching the West a lesson is one thing; massacring the fucking planet is something else. I’m not playing. Game over. You’re going to turn yourself in to the police. Right away. With a little luck, maybe you can be cured. If not, you’ll just have to croak all by yourself, and good riddance. You unspeakable fool!”

Shakir arrives at once, breathless, as if he has a pack of devils on his heels. When he bursts into my suite and sees Dr. Jalal on the carpet with a pool of blood like a halo around his head, Shakir puts his hand over his mouth and utters a curse. He glances over at me, slumped in the armchair, then kneels down next to the body lying on the floor and checks to see if the doctor’s still breathing. His hand pauses on Jalal’s neck. Furrowing his brow, Shakir slowly withdraws his hand and stands up. His voice cracks as he says, “Go into the next room. This is no longer your problem.”

I can’t pull myself out of my armchair. Shakir grabs me by the shoulders and hauls me into the living room. He helps me sit on the sofa and tries to yank the bloody ashtray out of my cramped hand. “Give me that,” he says. “It’s all over now.”

I don’t understand what the ashtray’s doing in my hand or why my finger joints are skinned. Then it all comes back to me, and it’s as if my mind has rejoined my body; a shiver passes through me, shocking me like electricity.

Shakir succeeds in loosening my grip and taking away the ashtray, which he slips into the pocket of his overcoat. He goes into the bedroom, and I hear him talking to someone on the telephone.

I get up and go to see what I’ve done to the doctor. Shakir blocks my path and escorts me — not roughly, but firmly — back into the living room.

About twenty minutes later, two medical technicians enter my suite, busy themselves around the doctor, put an oxygen mask over his face, shift him onto a stretcher, and carry him away. From the window, I see them push their patient into an ambulance and drive off with their siren wailing.

Having mopped up the blood from the carpet, Shakir’s sitting on the edge of my bed with his chin in his hands; his eyes are fixed on the spot where the doctor lay. I ask him, “Is it very bad?”

“He’ll make it,” Shakir says without conviction.

“Do you think I’m going to have problems with the hospital?”

“Those med techs are ours. They’re taking him to one of our clinics. Put it out of your mind.”

“He knew about everything, Shakir. About the virus, the clinic, Professor Ghany, everything. How is that possible?”

“Everything’s possible.”

“No one was supposed to know.”

Shakir lifts his head. His eyes have almost no more blue in them. He says, “It’s no longer your problem. The doctor’s in our hands. We’ll be able to find out the truth. You should be thinking only about your trip. Do you have all your documents?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need me for anything?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to stay with you awhile?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He stands up, walks to the door, and steps out into the corridor. Then he turns and says, “I’ll be in the bar in case you should…” He closes the door. Without a word of farewell, without so much as a sign.

The desk clerk informs me that my taxi has arrived. I pick up my bag and take one last look at the bedroom, the living room, the sun-splashed window. What am I leaving here? What am I taking away? Will my ghosts follow me? Will my memories be able to manage without me? I lower my head and walk quickly down the corridor. A couple and their two little daughters are loading their luggage into the elevator. The woman struggles in vain to budge an enormous suitcase; her husband watches her contemptuously. It doesn’t occur to him to give her a hand. I take the stairs.

The clerk’s busy checking in two young people. I’m relieved that I don’t have to tell him good-bye. I cross the lobby in a few long strides. The taxi’s parked in front of the hotel entrance. I throw my bag into the backseat and jump in. The driver, an obese fellow wearing a gigantic T-shirt, eyes me in the rearview mirror. His hair cascades down his back in long black curls. I don’t know why, but I find him ridiculous, him and his sunglasses. I say, “Airport.”

He nods, puts the car in first gear, and then, with studied nonchalance, slowly drives off. Slipping between a microbus and a delivery truck, he merges with the traffic. It’s hot for April. The recent downpours have washed the steaming streets clean. The rays of the sun ricochet off vehicles like bullets.

At a red light, the driver lights a cigarette and turns up the sound on his car radio. It’s Fairuz, singing “Habbaytak Bissayf.” Her voice catapults me through space and time. Like a meteorite, I land on the edge of the gap near my village where Kadem had me listen to some of his favorite songs. Kadem! I see myself in his house again, looking at the photograph of his first wife.

“Would you mind lowering the radio?”

The driver frowns. “It’s Fairuz.”

“Please.”

He’s irritated, probably even horrified. His fat neck trembles like a mass of gelatin. He says, “I’ll turn the radio off if you want.”

“I’d like that.”

He turns it off, offended but resigned.

I try not to think about what happened last night. Dr. Jalal’s words resound like thunder inside my skull. I shift my eyes to the crowds on the sidewalks, the shop windows, the cars passing on both sides of the cab, and everywhere I look, I see only him, with his incoherent gestures, his thick tongue, his unstoppable words. The traffic flows onto the road to the airport. I lower my window to evacuate the driver’s smoke. The wind whips my face but doesn’t cool me off. My temples are burning and my stomach’s in an uproar. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. Didn’t eat anything, either. I remained shut up inside my room, counting the hours and struggling against the urge to stick my head in the toilet and puke my guts out.

The ticket counters are thronged. The public-address announcer is a woman with a nasal voice. People are kissing one another, separating, meeting, searching the crowd. It looks like everybody’s getting ready to leave Lebanon. I stand in line and wait my turn. I’m thirsty and my calves are aching. A young woman asks me to give her my passport and my tickets. She says something I don’t understand. “Do you have any bags?” Why does she want to know if I have any bags? She looks at the one I’m carrying. “Are you holding on to that?” What’s that supposed to mean? She rolls a label around one of the straps on my bag, shows me a number and a time on my boarding card, and then points me to the area where people are kissing one another before they part. I pick up my bag and head to another counter. A uniformed agent instructs me to place my bag on a conveyor belt. On the other side of a glass, a woman watches a screen. My bag disappears into a big black hole. The security agent hands me a little tray and tells me I’m to put on it all the metal objects I’m carrying. I obey. “Coins, too.”

I step through a frame. A man intercepts me, runs a wand over me, lets me go. I recover my bag, my watch, my belt, and my coins and walk to the gate indicated on my boarding card. There’s no one at the counter. I take a seat near a big picture window and watch the dance of the airplanes on the tarmac. On the runway, there’s a steady turnover of flights landing and taking off. I’m nervous. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever set foot in an airport.

I believe I must have fallen asleep.

My watch reads 5:40 P.M. All the seats around me are taken. Two ladies are busy behind the counter; the illuminated screen above their heads has been turned on. I see my flight number, the word LONDON, and the British Airways logo. On my right, an old woman pulls her cell phone out of her purse, checks to see if she has any messages, and thrusts the phone back into her purse. Two minutes later, she yanks out the phone and consults it again. She’s worried, waiting for a call that doesn’t come. Behind us, a future father beams upon his wife, whose belly swells under her maternity dress. He attends to her every need, alert to the slightest sign from her, eager to show her how deeply he’s enraptured; his joy shines in his eyes. A young European couple leans against a vending machine, their arms around each other and their golden hair covering their faces. The boy is tall, with a fluorescent orange T-shirt and ripped jeans. The girl, as blond as a bale of hay, has to rise up on her toes in order to reach her boyfriend’s lips. Their embrace is passionate, beautiful, generous. What’s that like, kissing someone on the mouth? I’ve never kissed a girl on the mouth. I don’t remember ever even holding a girl cousin’s hand or having anything resembling a romance. In Kafr Karam, I dreamed about girls from a distance, secretly, almost ashamed of my weakness. At the university, I knew by sight a girl named Nawal, a doe-eyed brunette. We greeted each other with our eyes; furtive looks were our farewells. I think each of us felt something for the other, but neither of us had the nerve to find out exactly what that was. She was in another class. We contrived to pass each other in the halls — our encounters lasted long enough for a couple of strides. A smile sufficed to make us happy; we basked in its memory throughout the ensuing lectures. After classes ended, my fantasy’s father or older brother would wait for her at the university gates and spirit her away from me until the following day. Then the war came and gave my daydreams the coup de grâce.

An announcement comes over the public-address system: The flight for London is now boarding. Nervous bustling begins all around me. Already two lines of passengers have formed, one on each side of the counter. The elderly woman on my right doesn’t stand up. For the umpteenth time, she pulls out her mobile phone and stares at it dolefully.

With a heavy heart, she places herself at the end of the line. A young woman checks her passport and hands her a piece of her ticket. She turns around one last time and then disappears into a corridor.

I’m the only one left.

The ladies behind the counter laugh as they exchange pleasantries with a gentleman. He leaves through a glass door and comes back a few minutes later. A last-minute passenger arrives on the run, amid the squealing of his wheeled suitcase. He apologizes effusively. The ladies smile upon him and show him the corridor; he hastens toward it.

With a look of annoyance, the gentleman at the counter checks his watch. One of his colleagues leans toward a microphone and makes a final call for a missing passenger. The passenger she’s talking to is me. She repeats the call a few times over the course of the next several minutes. Finally, she shrugs, puts things in order behind the counter, and runs after her two colleagues, who have preceded her into the corridor.

My airplane rolls to the middle of the tarmac. I watch it turn slowly and reach the runway.

The screen above the counter goes black.

It’s long past nightfall. Other passengers joined me in the seating area before disappearing into the corridor. Now another flight is announced, and the seats around me are occupied for the third time.

A small gentleman, highly excited, takes the seat beside me. “Are you going to Paris?” he asks.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is this the flight to Paris?”

“Yes,” someone says reassuringly.

The airbus for Paris takes off, majestic, impregnable. The great halls of the airport grow quiet and sleepy. Most of the waiting areas are empty. In one, however, there are about sixty passengers, patiently waiting in what seems like religious silence.

An airport security agent comes up to me, walkie-talkie in hand. He’s already made two or three passes through this section, apparently intrigued by my presence. He plants himself in front of me and asks me if everything’s all right.

“I missed my flight,” I say.

“I thought as much. What was your destination?”

“London.”

“There aren’t any more flights for London tonight. Show me your tickets, please…. British Airways. All the offices are closed at this hour. There’s nothing I can do for you. You’re going to have to come back tomorrow and explain what happened to the company concerned. I warn you, they’re pretty inflexible. I don’t think they’ll let you use today’s ticket tomorrow. Do you have a place to stay? You’re not allowed to spend the night here. In any case, you’re going to have to talk to the airline. I’ll show you where their office is. Come on, follow me.”

I head for the exit. My mind’s a blank, and I let my feet carry me. I have no choice. A great hush has fallen over the airport. There’s nothing for me here. An airport worker pushes a long caterpillar of carts ahead of him. Another applies rags to the floor. A few shadows still haunt the remoter corners. The bars and shops are closed. I have to leave.

A car pulls up beside me as I wander away from the terminal in a daze. A door opens. The driver is Shakir. He says, “Get in.” I sit in the passenger’s seat. Shakir skirts a parking lot and comes to a halt at a stop sign before turning onto the road, which is lined with streetlights. We roll along for an eternity without speaking or looking at each other. Shakir doesn’t head for Beirut; he takes an outer ring road. His labored breathing matches the rhythm of the car’s engine.

“I was sure you were going to chicken out,” he says in a colorless voice. There’s no reproach in his words, but, rather, a distant joy, as when a person determines that he hasn’t been wrong. “When I heard them announce your name, I understood.” Suddenly, he strikes the steering wheel with his fist. “Why, for God’s sake? Why put us through all this trouble, only to pull out at the last minute?”

He calms down and unclenches his fist; then he notices that he’s driving like a madman and eases off the gas pedal. Below us, the city evokes a giant jewelry case, open to reveal its treasures. After a while, he asks, “What happened?”

“I have no idea.”

“What do you mean, you have no idea?”

“I was at the gate. I watched the passengers boarding the plane and I didn’t follow them.”

“Why not?”

“I told you: I have no idea.”

Shakir ponders this response for a moment before he loses patience. “That’s just nuts!”

When we reach the top of a hill, I ask him to stop. I want to look at the lights of the city.

Shakir parks on the side of the road. He thinks I’m going to throw up and asks me not to do it on his floor. I tell him I want to get out, I need some fresh air. Mechanically, he moves his hand to his belt and grasps the butt of his handgun. “Don’t try anything cute,” he warns me. “I won’t hesitate to shoot you down like a dog.”

“Where do you think I’m going to go with this stinking virus inside me?”

I search in the darkness for a place to sit down, find a rock, and occupy it. The breeze makes me shiver. My teeth chatter, and gooseflesh rises on my arms. Very far off, on the horizon, some ocean liners traverse the pitch-black sea, like fireflies carried away on a flood. The sigh of the waves fills the silence of a hectic night. Lower down, set back from the shore to escape the marauding waves, Beirut counts its treasures under a waxing moon.

Shakir crouches down next to me, one arm between his legs. “I’ve called the boys. They’re going to meet us at the farm, a little higher up from here. They are not at all happy, not at all.”

I pull my jacket tight around me, hoping for warmth. “I’m not moving from this spot,” I say.

“Don’t force me to drag you away by your feet.”

“You do what you want, Shakir. Me, I’m not moving from here.”

“Very well. I’m going to tell them where we are.”

He pulls out his mobile phone and calls “the boys,” who, it turns out, are indeed in a rage. Shakir stays cool, explaining that I categorically refuse to follow him. He rings off and announces that they’re coming, that they’re going to be here soon.

I gather myself around my thighs and, with my chin wedged between my knees, I contemplate the city. My eyes blur; my tears mutiny. I feel sad. Why? I couldn’t say. My anxieties merge with my memories. My whole life passes through my mind: Kafr Karam, my family, my dead, my living, the people I miss, the ones who haunt me…. Nevertheless, of all my memories, the most recent are the most distinct: that woman in the airport, hopefully examining the screen of her cell phone; that father-to-be who was so happy, he didn’t know which way to turn; that young European couple kissing each other…. They deserved to live for a thousand years. I have no right to challenge their kisses, scuttle their dreams, dash their hopes. What have I done with my own destiny? I’m only twenty-one years old, and all I have is the certainty that I’ve wrecked my life twenty-one times over.

“Nobody was forcing you,” Shakir mutters. “What made you change your mind?”

I don’t answer him. It’s useless.

The minutes pass. I’m getting colder. Behind me, Shakir paces up and down; his coattail flaps noisily in the wind. He stops abruptly and cries out, “Here they come.”

Two sets of headlights have just turned off the highway onto the road leading to where we are.

Contrary to all expectations, Shakir puts a compassionate hand on my shoulder. He says, “I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

As the vehicles come closer, Shakir’s fingers dig deeper and deeper into my flesh, hurting me. “I’m going to tell you a little secret, my man. Keep it to yourself. I hate the West more than it’s possible to say, but I’ve thought about it, and I think you were right not to get on that plane. It wasn’t a good idea.”

The crunching of tires on gravel fills the air around the rock. I hear car doors slam and approaching footsteps.

I say to Shakir, “Let them be quick. I don’t hold it against them. In fact, I don’t hold anything against anybody anymore.”

I concentrate on the lights of the city, which I was never able to perceive through the anger of men.