Arab Jazz (2 page)

Tu parl’ras moins avec un Glock dans la bouche.

Booba

(You’ll talk less with a Glock in your mouth.)

1

Ahmed is looking at the clouds in the sky, the clouds, the wondrous clouds, floating up there.

Ahmed loves poetry, even if his memory of it consists of fleeting snippets that bubble occasionally to the surface of his soul. Lines often return of their own accord, without author or title. This one brings back Baudelaire: something about a stranger, freedom, something English. Baudelaire was his favorite writer back in the day, along with Van Gogh and Artaud. Debord followed later. And then he stopped reading. Well, almost. Nowadays—when he goes downstairs, at least—he buys
Le Parisien
. And stacks of translated English-language pulp thrillers: Connelly, Cornwell, Coben. The names swirl around his head so much he gets the feeling he is reading one and the same novel, with the odd exception. And that’s what he wants. To lose himself by devouring the whole world in a single, uninterrupted story written by others.

He gets his fix from the second-hand bookshop on rue Petit, a tiny store from a different age that has miraculously survived between the Lubavitch school complex, the Salafist prayer room, and the evangelical church. Possibly because Monsieur Paul, the old Armenian anarchist who runs it, does not fall into any of the categories of luminary now holed up in the neighborhood. And because he sells his irreverent literature by the pound, which makes him seem more like a grocer than a dealer of Satanic texts. From time to time, the bookseller chucks in an extra copy without mentioning it. Ellroy, Tosches, an unpublished Manchette. Ahmed blinks very slightly. He is grateful to his dealer for not letting him go completely under. These authors he remembers.

He hasn’t gone downstairs today. There are still a few bits in the fridge: a baguette; some ham tortellini; a salmon and spinach quiche; enough butter for three bread
tartines
; some leftover strawberry jam made by Laura, his neighbor upstairs, a girl he might have loved if he still knew how; a pack of Evian; a bar of hazelnut Ivoria dark chocolate; five Tsingtao beers (twenty-two ounces); a half-bottle of William Lawson (twenty-five ounces); three bottles of wine (red, rosé, sweet Monbazillac); and three cans of Almaza alcohol-free beer cowardly left behind by his cousin Mohamed before he took off for Bordeaux eight months earlier. Not forgetting a packet of Tuc crackers, the remains of a
saucisse sèche
, two thirds of a Valençay cheese, two cups of skim milk, and a few crumbs of Leader Price muesli. Plus, of course, the obligatory box of Gunpowder green tea and some Malongo filter coffee. Just enough to keep him going until he has polished off the eight pounds of books he bought from Monsieur Paul the day before.

Ahmed is dreaming right now. He is watching the wondrous midafternoon clouds and he is dreaming. His mind is drifting away from the neighborhood where his life has stood still for five years. The detachment he longs for is fast approaching. Watch the clouds, read, sleep, and drink once evening has fallen. Little by little he has managed to distance himself from television, from screens. He knows very well that books have colonized his thoughts, but still he needs them. It is too soon for Ahmed to face his demons alone. Other people’s horrors, other people’s sick imaginations allow him to live with the monsters crouching in the back of his head.

Slowly his mind takes off, soaring toward the far-off lands of his ancestors. The impossible source. The outbound journey is direct, free of obstacles. Six miles up and he strains to see fields, mountains, water, rocks, and finally sand. A hundred dunes into the desert, he begins his descent toward the great blue erg. All of a sudden he sees camel-skin tents, men, beasts, slaves. That biblical race, at once so coveted yet so horrifically cruel. That crazy world that is both him and the opposite of him. That contradiction. Ahmed keeps a sensible distance, content as with every journey to glide at a safe height above the encampment of his distant cousins. He hovers incognito, floating among the desert’s keepers and the heavy-winged vultures who still recognize him as one of their own.

The man-vulture wheels in the cloudless sky and observes the changes since his last visit. The air is different, denser. Throughout this hazy territory populated by rebels, carved up into different states, men and vehicles appear ready for war: combat gear and Kalashnikovs. Nothing new there. What is new is the length of some of their beards, the sermon delivered after the communal prayer toward the rising sun, the eyes which flicker disconcertingly between fever, certainty, anxiety, elation, and unfathomable suffering. The tragic irony of the desert warrior has given way to an existential dismay that is as thick and heavy as tar, uniting them in a self-loathing which—depending on their disposition—either shrouds them in darkness or blinds them with light. This has replaced the air they breathe. Ahmed is already holding this invisible, noxious gas in his lungs, its effects beginning to register. But he refuses to surrender, to bid farewell to his secret garden, his little bit of sand, his inner purity. He delays; dawdling, loitering. And then, behind a tent, the final decisive image, the grotesque depiction he cannot bear to face. A black, bizarre shape is huddled down there, a shape with no start and no finish. A sort of phantom, maybe human, maybe feminine, its eyes, covered by the darkness of a veil, turned to the sky. The mask-woman’s invisible eyes bore into his, a salvo of pure horror, perfect anguish. The man-vulture hesitates. Overcome by lethargy, he tears toward the ground at great speed, capable only of expressing the desire not to fall. His winged companions look on. They know those veiled eyes have shattered the traveler’s fragile invulnerability. Reminded of their duty as gatekeepers of the frontier between the worlds, the celestial scavengers flock to him, forcing him back up into the sky.

HIGHER! HIGHER! HIGHER!

FORWARD! FORWARD! FORWARD!

DON’T TURN BACK!

Driven back at tremendous speed to the outer limits of the aerial realm by his former fellow kin, Ahmed knows that from now on he is banished. At liberty to explore Siberia or Patagonia, but no longer welcome in these parts.

Laghouat, Ain Ben Tili, Meroe, Tiris, Tassili, Goulimine, Cyrenaica, Sicily, Ibiza, Olbia, Bonifacio, Valletta. Each time the return takes many twists. This time more so than ever.

Ahmed needs to process it, to stagger the time between the crazy world of there and his presence here, now. High above Valletta, some turbulence brings him back to reality with brutal abruptness. Could be a line from a poem by Desnos: “High above Valletta, a tempted Templar let himself fall.” Forget and carry on . . . In any event, he won’t mention it in his testimony, his confession, not that there will be one. And anyway, who would understand?

And so it is in the Valletta of Paris 75019 that he feels the first drop on his upturned face, his half-closed eyes gazing up at the sky. The second comes crashing down onto the gleaming sleeve of his djellaba, a present from his cousin Mohamed. Ahmed looks down and watches the scarlet stain spread across the white cotton. It’s not rain. A third tear strikes him on the end of his nose. He tastes it. It’s blood. His eyes slowly move upward, as if they know the sight that awaits them. A motionless foot is hanging two yards above him. It sits at a peculiarly obtuse angle to the ankle, itself patterned with a kind of geometric henna tattoo. On the tip of the big toe, the next droplet is forming, waiting to fall on his forehead. He moves aside, letting it splash onto his white lily, the only thing to adorn his balcony. Laura’s blood inscribes itself on the immaculate flower. And Ahmed comes back to Earth. He glances at the wall clock, round and green with a metal frame that only displays the number four. 9:15 p.m. That voyage lasted some time.

Well-thumbed books cover the walls of his studio apartment. In the absence of a bookcase, he just piles them up. His living space recedes as his reading progresses. He is keeping count: two tons and eleven pounds of paperbacks, all bought from Monsieur Paul. He’ll stop when he hits five tons. According to his calculations, by that point he’ll have just enough space to get from his mattress to his front door. When that day arrives, Ahmed will close the door, slide the key back under it, and leave, never to return.

He realizes immediately from the awkward angle of the foot that Laura is dead. Thanks to his books, he has picked up a few of the basic rules for such dire circumstances: don’t leave a single trace; no fingerprints. And all the rest. A second thing is immediately clear to him: they want to pin the blame on him. This certainty wells up from somewhere in the outer reaches of his consciousness, a place where a whole host of tiny, almost imperceptible signals has built up . . . throwaway lines uttered in passing. Sam the barber’s smile, which burns into the nape of his neck the second his back is turned. Or, in the corner of his eye, a complicit glance between two supposedly sworn enemies. Small, unsettling things like that, which he realizes take on some greater significance in light of Laura’s death. But what significance? Reluctant to make himself the prime suspect, he decides he will not flee, but he does need to know more, to determine the nature of the conspiracy and work out why they want to implicate him. Laura is still bleeding—the murder is recent. He is sure the killer wants to incriminate him, the victim’s neighbor, but no doubt he’ll want to cover some ground before calling the police or the press. Ahmed has a key to the girl’s one-bedroom apartment. He goes upstairs. The door is slightly ajar, creaking in the wind.

He pushes it open with his shoulder, making sure his skin doesn’t come in contact with anything. He has to see for himself. To experience it. The window at the far end of the apartment is wide open, a terrible breeze working its way down the passage. The gray sky suddenly fills with the dark clouds gathering over parc de la Villette. A distant growl of thunder. He has to act fast. In the center of the main room, the table has been painstakingly laid for two people. An open bottle of Bordeaux, glasses two-thirds full. An uncooked pork joint sits on a white porcelain platter, bathing in a red liquid, a black-handled kitchen knife stabbed through its middle. There’s almost a hint of farce about it. The unreal fusing with the real. The young man lurches forward, looking for something to steady himself. His hand is about to grab the back of the chair when a little voice calls him to order.
No prints, man, no prints!
He steps back, turning his head to find his own face staring back at him, reflected in an oval mirror hanging on the wall to the left. It has been a long time since he’s looked at himself. He is surprised by his gaunt cheeks, his complexion that looks more like soil than bronze, his six-day beard. But something else strikes him: he’s handsome. Sure, the few women he had been intimate with had often said things like “You’re good looking” or “Ahmed, you’re a handsome guy!” Suddenly, those unimportant words from a different life take on a new meaning. His slightly frizzy hair, his full lips, his gentle eyes: they all come together harmoniously. Other features, too, that he’s unwilling to detail. He is moved. He remembers Laura’s gaze, and how closed his heart was to her. He turns away from his reflection and heads for the balcony.

And beholds the horror he knows he must face.

She is upright, tied fast to the other side of the railing with white electrical cable. He moves toward her big blue eyes staring into the abyss. It is as though he is seeing her for the very first time, as if death alone could show him her face in all its soft, benevolent, supreme beauty. He recalls her discreet efforts to make her feelings for him known. Pain and suffering grip him. Only when presented with her irrevocable absence does he realize his love for her, and, worse still, her affection toward him. And the closeness he felt for her, and that she understood despite his blindness. She was beautiful. They could have fallen in love. His heart is broken and enlivened at the same time. He reaches for her cheek, but stops a few fractions of an inch short. Returning to his senses, to prudence, a thought wells up inside him, a cliché, but one he claims for himself that very instant.
I will avenge you, Laura.
He moves half a step closer to the nightmare. The young woman is naked except for a crimson T-shirt. Her mouth gagged, chest seemingly untouched. Her underbelly is nothing more than an enormous gash that has now stopped dripping onto Ahmed’s balcony.

The wind blows and threatens as flashing lights fill the street. The murderers haven’t hung around. Taking his leave, Ahmed is horrified to notice that the three orchids he took such meticulous care of when Laura was away have been decapitated. Only the stems remain, bunched up in their plastic pots on the kitchen counter. He looks for the heads of the flowers but doesn’t find them, removes himself painstakingly from the apartment, makes his way downstairs, and shuts the door just as someone calls the elevator. He left no prints whatsoever. A rumble of thunder. The first drops fall heavily, dousing the lily. Ahmed closes the windows and shutters, removes his stained djellaba, turns it inside out and rolls it into a ball—stains on the inside—before stuffing it into a plastic bag, one from the Franprix supermarket on the corner. Tomorrow he’ll get rid of it, before the police obtain their search warrant. He puts on his well-worn Brooks Brothers pajamas, the last present from his last girlfriend, the mystical Catarina, before he gets into bed, closes his eyes, and falls asleep. He needs to dream now. Laura is dead. He must live. He no longer has the choice. His dreams will mark the way. Ringing. Knocking. “Police, open up!” He doesn’t hear. Pigs. Scum. Their paths have crossed for some time. Avoiding them now will be a struggle. For the first time in years, Ahmed hasn’t needed a drink to get to sleep. Albeit a fitful sleep. Death, that grim tyrant, is keeping watch, looking on with glee. He resists, refusing to give himself over. Death moves aside for another: an insidious beauty, a bewitching spy, his customary nighttime visitor. There is never any penetration in his dreams. No nudity even. Just dampness. Tonight he stands firm, however, holding his seed and his nerve. And the ghosts retire in their fury, warning of worse to come. Frozen darkness, wind, rain lashing against the shutters and in his head. Lightning. Grimacing face! Iblis appears then disappears. The sleeper groans, his tongue scraping across incisors and molars. He stirs but he doesn’t wake.
Shazam
. The livid face of the killer lights up. Ahmed opens his eyes, dazed. An unpleasant sense of déjà vu. Time to forget. The fleeting image retires to a deep corner of his skull. He knows it. It will guide him.