Land of No Rain (11 page)

Khalaf began to reel from the existential shock.

He told you he was longer a guard working for the Hamiya government, that the Grandson had died and there was a new commander from the Grandson’s family; not a direct descendant because, although the Grandson had been briefly married to a relative of his, under pressure from his father, they didn’t have any children. (Of course you knew that and more. You knew the rumours about the real purpose of his annual tours of inspection in the countryside and to the troops on the front, which lasted the whole of the spring, and of course you had also heard of the resentment the Commander the father felt in his latter years because of his son’s divorce and failure to produce an heir to preserve the chain of succession in his immediate family.) He said that one of the Grandson’s relatives had been brought back from a military academy abroad before he had finished his studies, to take the Grandson’s place; that the Hamiya he had known no longer existed, or, to be more precise, the contract for a project to develop it had been awarded to a large company that had started the transformation; that he was now an employee on a short-term contract with a new company that was going to lay him off after rebuilding and renovating Hamiya’s infrastructure; that the company was planning to set up modern facilities and malls stocked with all kinds of goods, and was working on turning the houses of the officers, soldiers and civilian employees who had been living in Hamiya for successive generations into contemporary-looking flats; and so on and so on . . .

More distraught than he had appeared earlier, Khalaf told you that the authorities no longer banned the books that had given the families sleepless nights and that had led to the development of very thorough monitoring mechanisms in the departments responsible for national security and traditional values; and that those in charge now had a list of banned items that included books and other publications that dealt with such apparently contradictory topics as weaponry and computer programs. Now civil servants fluent in several languages kept themselves busy registering the titles and classifying them into categories, the most dangerous of which were the booklets on thick belts that explode automatically as soon as the temperature of the bodies they pass matches the setting in the electronic chip connected to the explosive charge in the lining of the belt. Now that he was reluctantly convinced that two people with different names and in separate places might be, for some reason that escaped him, the one person Younis al-Khattat, you told Khalaf that books lose their magic when faith in them wanes. They become just pale ink on paper. A book can be poison, or a flower, or a heart that throbs when it stumbles upon someone who believes in it. You also told him he had done well not to fall under the spell of words, which boast, sometimes deceptively, that they are the epitome of life or even life itself, while life, according to a writer who does not care to have his name mentioned, is somewhere else.

After listening at first in confusion and anxiety, Khalaf gradually began to take a genuine interest in what you were saying, reminding you of the days when you used to tell him stories or the plot of a novel that had captivated you. There probably isn’t anyone who isn’t fascinated by stories. They may not read books that tell stories, but for sure no one objects to listening to a story, especially if it comes to them when they’re lonely or bored. So Khalaf thought it well worth listening to the story of the man who, to his misfortune, turned into two people, who were however reunited in flesh and in spirit when they dreamed or when they met face to face on the balcony of their family home.

Khalaf no longer spent much time checking the identity papers of those going into Hamiya or searching the bags of those coming out. He and his hut were just props from the past, because those tasks were now performed by modern electronic devices that saw through things, operated by unseen specialists. You saw people passing who didn’t even greet Khalaf, people wearing uniforms and with plastic laminated name tags hanging from their necks. They definitely weren’t Hamiya people or their offspring. You heard some of them speaking several languages, some of which you knew from living in numerous countries. Trucks and large bulldozers passed under the vast triumphal arch that could be seen from tens of kilometres away, inscribed with an incomplete line of verse. Khalaf was smoking a cigarette made in some foreign country. He offered you one and you said, ‘I’ve given up smoking.’ He was surprised. ‘Younis al-Khattat is a voracious smoker!’ he said. You smiled at the expression, which he had picked up from you, or from Younis al-Khattat, in the days of enthusiasm and promises. You remembered that he used to smoke local cigarettes that came in a square packet in the three colours of the national flag. You asked him why he had stopped smoking them and he told you they were no longer to be found. Khalaf sounded impatient that the story about the person who became two people was being interrupted, and wanted to hear it all, without any side talk or digressions. ‘That was a long time ago,’ you said. ‘As you can see, I have all the time in the world,’ he said. ‘I’ve just arrived,’ you said, ‘and perhaps there’ll be a chance later to tell you the story of what happened, and anyway, my story is like all stories, which tell of some things and are silent on other matters.’

‘Here we are, breathing some new life into our old friendship, so if you don’t want to tell your story, at least tell me who you are now. I mean, are you Younis or Adham?’ asked Khalaf.

You told him, ‘I’m both of them. My greying hair and my posture, which is no longer as upright as a strict upbringing in Hamiya requires, are Adham, whereas the stubborn ticker (you smiled as you uttered the phrase) between my ribs may still be Younis. In fact it’s hard to tell them apart. I know Younis stayed behind and, as you said, he hasn’t changed much. But my new name and my new life apparently haven’t turned me into a completely different person, and the proof is that I want you to come with me to where I buried Roula’s letters and the perfumed locks of her hair, under the cinchona tree in front of our house before I escaped.’

Khalaf laughed. He still had his bushy moustache and there was a gap where two of his upper teeth had fallen out. The rest of his teeth were stained yellow by tobacco. Because of the two, or maybe three, missing teeth, he looked older than you, and you felt a deep sense of empathy with him.

‘Why do you laugh?’ you said, without disapproval. His bushy moustache, streaked with grey, cast a dark shadow on his lips. ‘Don’t you know?’ he asked.

‘Know what?’

‘What happened to Roula.’

‘Not much.’

‘But Younis knows!’ he said.

Then he looked at you with a trace of pity, or maybe of caution. You thought he was going to say you were like the bankrupt who goes through his old ledgers looking for debts he’s owed, but he didn’t. If he had, he could have wounded your pride, which was already wounded. You were going to say that you might be bankrupt but it was beneath you to leaf through old ledgers, because what was past was past and one shouldn’t cry over spilt milk. You didn’t say that, though he looked into the very depths of you, to the fragility that lurked there. You told him you were writing a history of Hamiya and that your sentimental youth was a core part of the book.

With that mix of pity and caution, he said, ‘You’d better not do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Take my advice,’ he said.

‘But I have nothing to lose,’ you said, without thinking what the words meant.

At that very moment you had a coughing fit that you tried to smother with the pocket handkerchief you carry around. ‘You look tired,’ Khalaf said. ‘Would you like to sit down a while?’

‘OK, let’s go,’ you said.

Khalaf shut the door of his ramshackle wooden hut and went off with you.

*  *  *

From the outside, because of the remains of the wall, the tall trees, the massive gun emplacements, the rusty glare reflectors and the dust blockers, the old installations looked the same as when you left. Of course you had expected them to look a little old and dilapidated, but you hadn’t expected the public library with its dome, the vaulted barracks, the polo ground or the central market to be gone. Nor did you expect that the company assigned to renovate Hamiya would have started demolishing most of what was left with bulldozers and dynamite, or that it would all look completely different. Near the polo field you were surprised to note the disappearance of the iron fence around the headquarters of the General Command, where the Grandson had been based. The guards had been withdrawn; it had lost its aura of mystery and dread and been turned into a company headquarters. You saw young men and women going in and out of the building, carrying maps and long rulers, with mobile phones that never stopped ringing. You were surprised to find the Commander’s new palace nestling, remote and stately, on top of the only hill overlooking Hamiya, surrounded by missile batteries and artillery pieces. You remembered that the hill had once provided the local people with a place to breathe fresh air when the heat was stifling, and had served as an arena for the carefree nocturnal frolics of young lovers, but in their conflict with the Grandson the jihadists had used the hill to bombard his office several times. You and Khalaf passed close by the Upright Generation Secondary School where you had studied. It was still there but was being used as a depot for the dynamite the company was using to blow up the deep concrete foundations of the stone structures. The name was still there, inscribed in a familiar
ruqaa
script on a stone plaque at the entrance, but underneath it the company had attached a metal sign with lettering written mechanically. ‘Dynamite Depot. Keep Away’, it said. As for the girls’ school nearby, it had been wiped off the face of the earth, and it seemed impossible to make out the cobbled pathway that led to the park where young men used to date their girlfriends, under the pine and queen-of-the-night trees. Nonetheless you imagined a school uniform with purple stripes, a head of wavy chestnut hair and big dark eyes looking bashfully at a dark, thin young man with the sparkle and the mysteries of the desert in his eyes. You took the girl in the purple striped uniform by the hand. Your hand started to sweat and your heart raced.

Sustain me with cakes of raisins,

Refresh me with apples,

For I am lovesick.

You heard Khalaf say, ‘This is where the Mothers grocery store stood, where you would trick the owner and steal the cigarettes she sold in ones.’ You remembered the square packets of local cigarettes she used to sell. Khalaf carried on naming the buildings and districts that for a long time defined the real or imagined image of Hamiya, both for those who lived there and for those passing through. You could hear his voice as he spoke the names with a whistling sound caused by the gap left by the missing two or three upper teeth, but your hand was still sweating and your heart pounding. That hand, with its five dainty fingers, was still in your hand and the wavy chestnut hair sometimes brushed your face, and you could smell a mixture of jasmine and faint girlish sweat. In the meantime you thought about Khalaf laughing when you mentioned Roula and her letters buried under the tree with the perfumed locks of her hair, and you wondered what he meant when he said, ‘Younis knows!’ When you reached the site of your old house, its stones heaped up like a pagan grave, and you saw the enormous trunk of the cinchona torn out of the ground, you realised what his laugh meant. You didn’t notice that your tour of the ruins of the old buildings with Khalaf had made you more like Younis than Adham, until you reached the site of your demolished house, where the teeth of a bulldozer blade had ploughed up the ground. You stood in front of the trunk of the cinchona tree, which you could once embrace with your two arms but which even four arms could not possibly encircle now. Four or five big slow scenes crossed your mind: Roula at your last meeting, telling you that you were still a child and would never grow up; Khalaf himself, avoiding looking you in the eye whenever you met; the Grandson, shot in the shoulder, and the master of ceremonies shot dead; the poultry farm where you and several of your comrades hid, waiting for the smugglers who took you across the border one dark night.

VI

When you told Khalaf, ‘I don’t have a story worth telling,’ you were lying. If it was up to Khalaf, he would have said graciously, ‘Let’s go and sit on a wooden bench in Hamiya Park and I’ll tell you what happened today.’ You could have done that twenty years ago too. In fact, that’s what you used to do. It used to be other people’s stories, not your own. You didn’t have a story at that time, and anyway telling other people’s stories is easier and living them is more fun. Lying to Khalaf was not pure lying. You didn’t lie to him because you wanted to lie, but perhaps because you weren’t confident of your story. It wasn’t like those stories you used to tell him, sometimes on a wooden bench in Hamiya Park, sometimes on a chair in a café in the downtown area, or like the secret information Khalaf used to tell you about people arrested trying to smuggle banned books into Hamiya.

*  *  *

That’s because Khalaf was in fact dead.

Khalaf had been killed before you came home, in a confrontation with jihadists who had adopted the shanty towns as the base for their activities. These people became active after you left and they came close to establishing a monopoly on the streets. They broke their long truce with the Grandson, or rather their undeclared alliance with him from the days when the National Security Agency was hunting you down like rats in holes. A group of them tried to infiltrate Hamiya while Khalaf was on duty at the pedestrian gateway, and he resisted and was killed. Khalaf was dead. You read the news, which was published in the local press, and you saw a picture of Roula, whom you hadn’t seen since you escaped abroad, receiving the Medal of Duty, Hamiya’s highest decoration, from the Grandson. She looked different from how you remembered her. Her hair was tightly gathered at the back, her face was severe, her mouth pursed and her dimples less pronounced, but nonetheless she had preserved some of her magic, which was hard to define.