Land of No Rain (6 page)

That night you dreamt three or four consecutive and interwoven dreams, not all of which you now remember. You remember that you saw a thin young man with a droopy moustache standing in front of another young man, rather stouter, who was undoing his watch strap and offering the watch to the one with the long hair. He told him something you couldn’t quite understand, but judging by the expressions on their faces, as they stood under a cloudy sky, it sounded sentimental and moving. Then you saw a wreck of a man, with some of the features of the young man with long hair, wrapping his arms around the trunk of a cinchona tree, looking startled by something.

In those dreams, which were tangled together like a ball of wool, you heard a regular ticking, and you woke up.

IV

The museums in the City of Red and Grey contain many artefacts stolen from your country and its neighbours. Some of them are among the museums’ finest and most renowned acquisitions – the ‘sacred goat’ that was once a god, the vast obelisk that visitors see at the entrance to the great museum, the winged marble lions, the restored statue of the storm and rain god, the ‘spring palace’ that was removed in its entirety, and the stela on which the secrets of the first writing are engraved. But, apart from these objects, there are few things in the city that are connected with the world you come from. For a long time no trace of your old country has blown your way. You haven’t met anyone from your immediate family or any other relatives. As far as you know, no relative or childhood companion has come to the countries where you have lived or passed through. Your family doesn’t travel anyway, and the people in Hamiya in general don’t have a tradition of emigrating or travelling. The City of Red and Grey has no significant community of people from your country. There are people you sporadically come across at public gatherings, but you have started to avoid them, out of caution or irritation with their foolish rustic nostalgia. It never occurred to you to live in this city, where many years ago your region was dismembered like a cake at a birthday party. That never registered on the radar screen of your imagination. You came to the city by force of circumstance after your ship ran aground there. But sometimes, in the gloomy tunnels to the underground trains, you see large advertisements showing the desert, camels, bedouin encampments and oases with palm trees, and underneath, in bold type, this phrase that never changes: ‘The Land of No Rain’. You guessed that these tourism posters refer to your country, but they don’t mention the name. Although you doubt that camels and bedouin encampments exist in the way the adverts show, the basis for your guess that the posters refer to your country is the wall of volcanic rock that appears in shots of the oases. But there are similar volcanic rocks in neighbouring countries too.

*  *  *

Hamiya has an embassy in the City of Red and Grey, but it doesn’t do anything worth mentioning. It might as well not exist. Once, you remember, the embassy came out of its eternal slumber for the occasion of the historic visit of the Commander. It was because of his historic visit that you found out the embassy existed. You also found out that for many years it had done nothing but prepare for the visit, which was wrapped in secrecy until it was announced on his arrival at the airport. The Commander, by the way, was called ‘the Grandson’ for short, because his predecessors in the military dynasty were the Commander the Founder and then the Commander the Son, and the title ‘the Grandson’ never referred to anyone else in your country. He left his headquarters in Hamiya mainly for tours of inspection in the countryside or on the borders, and he rarely made trips abroad. The person who did that, when necessary, was his prime minister. It is said that the Grandson stuck to his office because he was frightened there might be a military coup against him, and also because he was a reclusive man uncomfortable mixing with others. But the prevalent view as to why he didn’t travel abroad was that he was too engrossed in working for security and stability. This entrenched idea about the Grandson and his devotion to your security annoyed you, especially when you became interested in public affairs. Once, in the presence of your father, you criticised the feeble terms ‘security’ and ‘stability’ – which the official press carried straight from the mouth of the Grandson – as being ‘imported ideas’, and even your father replied that the man dedicated his life to work and was not known to have any inclination towards luxury or leisure. ‘What’s not to like about that?’ he asked.

Then one day in the City of Red and Grey you suddenly found yourself face to face with Younis al-Khattat. The surprise almost undid twenty years of exile, with all the hardship and the homesickness, and restored things to how they were in the beginning.

With the passage of time and your wanderings overseas, you had almost forgotten Younis al-Khattat. You had forgotten his few poems, which were sometimes musical and sometimes grating, and you had completely forgotten the modernist metrical poetry of which he favoured the softest varieties. It’s true that he visited you in your dreams from time to time, but dreaming isn’t reality, as they say. Then, from beyond the walls of time and space, he popped up in front of you somewhere you didn’t expect a messenger or good news from your country. It wasn’t Younis al-Khattat in person that you met. That would not have been possible, because he never went beyond the borders of Hamiya. The one who crossed the border and left for other countries bore another name and was destined for other things. It wasn’t Younis himself but his works, or more precisely some of his poems. A prestigious cultural institution in the City of Red and Grey had organised an exhibition of the arts and literature of your region. It included contributions of variable quality and importance from various countries. It was an event that was unprecedented, as far as you know. The world you came from does not usually arouse such interest in a large and ancient conurbation whose secret life is dominated by money, sex, questions of security and fading imperial dreams. It’s the oil that gushes out of the region’s deserts that monopolises its attention. That’s the crux of the matter, as they say. Otherwise the region, which staggers under the burdens of the past and the pains of the present, which stretches – thirsty, hungry and humiliated – between the ocean and the gulf, does not exist on the map. Credit for this sudden interest in the world you came from must go to the suicide bombers that have given the people and the government such nightmares since the explosions of that bloody summer. It was the terrifying sequence of bombings, carried out by young men who paralysed a large city in broad daylight and amazed its inhabitants with their remarkable willingness to die, that made the elite take an interest in the principles and beliefs that inspired people to blow themselves up, along with other strangers. The bombings also gave the general public a phobia about people coming from a world wrapped in danger and mystery. Because life is dear in the City of Red and Grey, or at least it was before the plague broke out. In a way you find difficult to understand, it is cherished by those dying in hospital, by the blind with their sticks to guide them, and even by the destitute who call the streets their home. The inhabitants were terrified by what the prophet of the bombers said in his message to them: ‘We embrace death as you embrace life.’

The week-long exhibition was a mixture of older literature and arts, interspersed with some rather more contemporary culture. You heard of it by chance. You were living in a remote neighbourhood crowded with the poor – locals, immigrants and unemployed – and you seldom went to the city centre, which was noisy and busy. On one of your trips downtown, you saw a poster on a billboard in the main square, which was covered in the droppings of grey pigeons. The poster, inviting people to attend the exhibition, also appeared in the underground tunnels with their eerie lighting. It featured famous landmarks such as the Pyramids, the Pillars of Hercules and the Kaaba, alongside less well-known ones such as the place where Jesus was baptised, the Jalali and Mirani castles and the ruins of Mari, as well as fantastical drawings of men in large white turbans: perhaps distant ancestors such as Averroes, al-Hallaj or Haroun al-Rashid. The slogan on the poster was a saying current in the city: ‘It’s never too late.’ As you read the poster you said to yourself, ‘Perhaps it’s an attempt to make up for the past, or recognition that the world extends beyond the clock tower that marks the birth of time from the clammy womb of misty grey.’ But you were sorry that this sudden awareness of your world should have sprung from that apocalyptic summer, rather than from genuine curiosity or from an openness to find common ground, even common interests, without inhibitions or preconceptions. An awakening of that kind, if it had come about earlier, could perhaps have prevented the deep chasm that had now started to separate the two worlds. As you passed the poster, the words of which suggested a belated correction, you recalled a saying you had been surprised to hear from a politician rather than a poet or an acrobat: ‘The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.’

The exhibition was indeed diverse and ambitious: amazing archaeological finds owned by the city’s museums, recordings by prominent musicians, films from the black-and-white era, dances by men in white gowns and conical hats who whirled for ever, anthologies of poetry, a short story and chapters of a novel in both languages, and so on. In the anthology of poetry were three poems by Younis al-Khattat.

The name sent a shiver down your spine.

The large anthology contained poems by six or seven poets from your country, including a poet who was killed in a mysterious car accident. In the middle of them was the name Younis al-Khattat, with a short confused biography that suggested he also had another name. For ages you hadn’t read the name in any newspaper or book, or heard anyone utter it. You had a recurring dream in which Younis al-Khattat appeared. Despite your wanderings in numerous countries the setting, content and words of the dream did not change. You were in a dark room with a raised bench where three men in military uniform were seated in red sashes, with ribbons on their chests. Next to each one lay an olive-green military cap decorated with an eagle spreading its wings. In front of them the rows of chairs were empty. To the right stood a metal cage holding a thin young man with long hair, a droopy moustache and shifty eyes. The three military men examined the papers in front of them and then looked up, towards the metal cage. Then the one sitting in the middle, the most severe and inscrutable, would speak these words: ‘Younis al-Khattat. Life imprisonment.’ You would wake up soaked in sweat every time.

You knew there had been change in your country. But you didn’t expect to find Younis al-Khattat’s poems included in an anthology of writings selected under the supervision of official institutions, for several reasons. Younis al-Khattat wrote few poems, and they were published in local newspapers with limited circulation or in underground stencil-copied publications edited by young men who believed that words could be as powerful as bullets. Besides that of course there was the fact of his conviction in absentia. It’s true that the poems did bring him some attention in literary circles, and more than one critic wrote about the advent of a promising poet. But the fact remains that he was not a recognised poet, even though some of his poems on love and politics circulated among young people. One of the three poems in the anthology was called ‘The Lady of the City’
,
which was heavy with influences from the Song of Solomon. The lyricism in it is clear. The pastoralism – the hills covered with lilies, the lions and the spikenard – was also evident. But for all that clarity, a question obsessed you when you read the poem. How could a poet less than twenty years old describe how time weighed on his shoulders, how it had left scars on his body, how it made the ground sprout lily after lily and the gazelles give birth to gazelle after gazelle, and the days and nights pass in succession without his love for his beloved diminishing one iota? You told yourself that sometimes one’s words can sing the praises of something you know nothing about or overestimate the permanence of feelings. They can immortalise a moment that soon proves to be transitory, if not pathetic. You also said that it is emotional and intellectual discipline that generally gives words a way out, saves them from the nonsense of their firm promises and makes it possible to read them again with as little disgust as possible.

You were not surprised for long that Younis al-Khattat’s poems had been included in the part of the large anthology that was devoted to your country. While roaming through the galleries of the cultural institution that was hosting the exhibition, you saw your old comrade Mahmoud, whom you all used to call Abu Tawila because of his unusual height. Ever since middle school in Hamiya, Mahmoud had been noticeably taller than the rest of his colleagues. You were considered tall, but not as tall as Mahmoud. Those extra inches of flesh and bone were probably the only advantage he had over you. It didn’t feel like it was ten years or so since your stormy last meeting. He embraced you and spoke warmly. He waved his hands excitedly. More than once he put his hand on your shoulder with disturbing affection. But you couldn’t respond so obligingly. You needed time to cover half the emotional distance he had already crossed when he met you.

It was hard for you to forget what he had done.

He must have read the statement you and your comrades issued, which called him a defeatist who put his personal interests above the common cause. You were the spokesman for the Organisation and the one who drafted the statements it issued abroad. That was about ten years earlier. Mahmoud’s surprise decision to go home had been less of a shock than his rapid appointment to a prominent official position in the media. Those who suspected he had been a plant saw this as proof of their suspicions, while others rejected this interpretation, which gave the impression that your organisational structure was lax in the face of other forces. They said he was just a defeatist, a petit bourgeois with no stamina. You were one of those who favoured the second explanation. If he had really been a plant, he would have given you away before you left the country: he had known where you were hiding before your escape was arranged, and when you escaped abroad, with some of your comrades, he was with you.