The Colors of Infamy (8 page)

“What can you learn from this man without honor?”

“My dear Nimr, that is yet another prejudice that should be tossed in the trash. Honor is an abstract notion, invented like everything else by the dominant caste so that the poorest of the poor can boast about having a phantom good that costs no one anything.”

“But wait!” cried Nimr. “You have just stripped me of the only marketable thing I still possess. I am now poorer than when I got here.”

“I confess I don't see the relation between my concept of honor and your sudden poverty.”

“It's like this,” answered Nimr: “I've often heard people say that their honor was not for sale. I thought that sooner or later someone would offer to buy mine. You've just deprived me of the most profitable transaction of my life.”

“Don't worry. You can always sell your honor. Not everyone knows what I just told you; only a few of us do. You can relax.”

“I agree,” said Ossama, coming out of his shell. “I've learned so many things in such a short time that I will leave here much richer, even though I'll leave without honor. But what does honor matter if I got to meet a man like you?”

Karamallah looked at Ossama as if he were seeing him for the first time. He had been so fixated on the letter that had been opportunely submitted to his wisdom that he had forgotten who its industrious supplier was.
Th
is young thief, Nimr's ill-fated pupil, had managed to escape his teacher's miserabilism with a sartorial strategy that allowed him to steal from the rich. He had instinctively grasped the flaw of a society based on appearance.
Th
is was worthy of Karamallah's esteem.

“I know I can count on you,” he said to his young visitor with a surge of that fraternal feeling he reserved for those of his kind. “To begin with, we can use this letter to pressure Suleyman to accept meeting us in public, at a café in town. It is always worthwhile to converse with an individual of this sort.
Th
is is how one learns that infamy has no bounds.”

“I am at your service,” said Ossama. “What should I do?”

“Come see me tomorrow. Together we'll form a joyous battle plan to fight this evil developer of debris.”

“I would love such a battle,” Ossama assured him.

Nimr raised his arms to the ceiling, as if asking a favor of the heavens, but it was only a natural gesture in the face of the insufferable. He was incensed by the shameless and inexplicable complicity between Karamallah and his former pupil.

IV

A
tef Suleyman, the developer famous for modern urban genocides, did not wear the sign of infamy on his forehead, but this oversight of nature did not prevent the numerous inhabitants of the apartment buildings constructed by his real estate company from cursing him day and night; nor did it keep certain extremists from calling for his immediate death. Unfortunately, these invectives — from an acrimonious populace deprived of an education in economics that would have allowed them to appreciate the beauty of capitalism — never managed to reach the person at whom they were directed. Suleyman lived in splendor in the residential district of Zamalek, several kilometers from those planned communities that had sprung up in the desert where he practiced his lucrative business. Frustrated by the resilience of the Pharaonic monuments, he saw himself as a developer for the era of ephemeral buildings — symbols of modernity — that would leave to posterity
nothing but rubble and dust; in other words, disposable homes. His most recent product had proved to be of a particularly tawdry modernism, for among the rubble and dust of its premature collapse lay the corpses of fifty or so human beings who had reached the end of their mediocre existences without the slightest advance notice. Although he was not especially superstitious, Suleyman never forgot as he drew up his unbeatable estimates that fate could intervene. Yet the suddenness of a catastrophe that did not bode well for his reputation puzzled him. What sort of fate was it, then, that behaved so hastily, without concern for the havoc wreaked by its untimely clumsiness? Couldn't it have waited a suitable amount of time before perfidiously attacking a building whose paint was still wet, christened only three months earlier by a government minister? For Suleyman, this sort of fate was suspect; in fact, he suspected it of being linked to a conspiracy of enemies gravely offended by his success. He had always believed the popular adage that holds that wealth, like honey, attracts flies. In this instance, the flies were venomous, and they had already exuded their venom numerous times on the front pages of a newspaper that was independent and — worldwide rarity — incorruptible. Accused of embezzlement and fraud of every sort, Suleyman — like all his peers — would use his honor as his unassailable alibi, asserting that at the time the criminal acts had occurred, he was in the company of his honor. His bad faith went so far beyond the accepted norms of his profession that he aroused the admiration and jealousy of his more moderate competitors.

His obsessive search for the troublemaker who had ruined a real estate deal guaranteed to bring him fame and fortune did not in any way decrease Suleyman's wrath against his accomplice, the minister's brother — that cowardly and stupid individual who had dared send him a break-up letter filled with serious allegations, a missive that had now fallen into the hands of a stranger. And at this very moment that son of a louse Abdelrazak was holed up with his mistress, a wizened old belly dancer whom he kept royally with the money Suleyman paid him in exchange for more or less licit services. In truth, the transformation of one of his most beautiful creations into war rubble and those fifty supposedly innocent victims were nothing but minor incidents, no doubt unpleasant, but not to such an extent that his business would be harmed. Sooner or later every bloodbath is followed by another, even more spectacular one. Nothing could prevent a misfortune brought about by destiny, thought Suleyman, suddenly struck by wisdom. He was entitled to hope that this same destiny would soon cause a train to derail or a stadium to burn. (He preferred this latter option because of the throng of degenerates who frequented places of that sort.) And as a result, the human dregs burned to a crisp would number in the thousands, thereby making his own count of fifty dead ridiculously low by comparison.

Setting aside his shameless speculations about improbable, world-class fatal accidents, Suleyman came back to his major problem, the one and only quandary of the famous letter. However it were to occur, the dissemination of this letter with its ministerial letterhead would mark the end of a very lucrative collaboration with certain eminent civil servants whom Abdelrazak, using his kinship with a minister, had managed to lead off the straight and narrow path, down devious roads paved with precious stones. Suleyman swore to himself that once he had recovered the letter he would go fetch that pathetic son of a cross-eyed mother at his mistress's home, pamper him, and perhaps even take him to a newly opened brothel where the oldest girl was no more than sixteen.
Th
at would be a change from his dancer with her sagging belly and would surely make him easier to manipulate. Suleyman had no choice, and he was prepared to stoop to anything to make Abdelrazak go back on his decision to end their collusion — even to tell him that he would make him his heir, which would be a dreadful lie: the fountain of his hatred for this scoundrel was nowhere near drying up. Suleyman was not one to forget that this individual had written him an impertinent, vulgar letter in a style worthy of a cabby, with the intention of dishonoring him. In his distress, however, he had to acknowledge that Abdelrazak was an essential cog in those corrupt networks without which business, for Suleyman in any case, was unimaginable. If he were to consent to work in real estate like an honest businessman, his company's profits would fall to the level of those of a clay jug factory.

Th
e stranger, in this case a young man who claimed to be a student — without specifying of what — had called to set up a meeting in a well-known café in the working-class El Huseini district.
Th
e café owed its reputation to its customers — a mix of intellectuals, philosopher-beggars, and simple actors in life with no apparent specialization. Suleyman had sat on its esteemed terrace for entire nights when he was still preparing his future exploits in the domain of preplanned, legal theft.
Th
e young man claimed to have found a letter addressed to Suleyman on the sidewalk of Rifaat Harb Street, and to have picked it up with the altruistic aim of returning it to its owner. He was referring to the letter that had been lost at the same time as Suleyman's wallet — but no mention was made of this latter object — and promised to return it to him when they met. Obviously he was hoping to extract some money in exchange, and Suleyman was prepared to give it to him without argument. Still, there was something suspicious about this rendezvous; its bizarre and restrictive clauses would have caused the greatest mistrust even in a newborn. First of all, it was to take place at night, as if it were a meeting among conspirators; then there was this working-class district, a fertile ground for shady schemes; finally — and much more alarming — there was the presence of an additional person who, the so-called student claimed, was very eager to talk to him in a solely social way. Talk to him about what? One more witness in this matter and soon the entire city — which was waiting for just such an event to snicker and rejoice — would know absolutely everything about the miracle of his wealth. For what diabolical reason had the young man confided in this person?
Th
e question continued to plague Suleyman, like those riddles that remain unsolved for centuries.

Just as an ugly woman grows no uglier with age, the El Huseini district had not undergone further degradation over the years. Having parked his car far from where his meeting was to take place, Suleyman walked through a night illuminated by the lights of cafés and stalls and the torchères of peddlers more than by the municipal streetlamps lost at the ends of muddy alleyways. He felt as if he had left the neighborhood only yesterday, so clearly did he remember certain hovels with their cracked walls, and certain crevices that adorned the sidewalks, especially one in particular — still in operation — that had almost maimed him a very long time ago. Still, what he found surprising, new, and incomprehensible was the atmosphere of rejoicing that he sensed around him, a rejoicing that seemed to defy the ordinarily quaint and somber face of poverty. Yet it was not a holiday. All these people noisily calling to one another, jeering and laughing loudly as if simply being alive were enough to make them happy, deeply irritated him. He quickened his pace, not wanting to get mixed up in this orgy of shouts and joyous discussions — this booming cheerfulness was an offense to the delicate joys of the rich. A man in a barbershop, his bare feet slipped into sandals, was getting a shave from a young apprentice in swimming trunks.
Th
e sight of a poor wretch indulging in the luxurious pleasure of freshening up his face at this hour increased Suleyman's irritation and inspired a variety of hypotheses about the fellow's motivations.
Th
e man was getting a shave before going to meet a birdbrain of a mistress (she was obviously a birdbrain) in some local dive. Or, another conjecture, this one a bit on the macabre side: the man had been warned of his death the previous night and wanted to arrive attractive and clean at the gates of heaven.
Th
e absurd behavior of this esthete of the slums continued to nettle Suleyman until he was approached by a boy of about ten dressed in a brand-new saffron-colored robe who seemed very impatient to know the time.

Suleyman looked at the child with visible disgust, and his words came out of his mouth like spittle.

“Why do you want to know the time? Do you have a date?”

“No, I don't have a date,” the child answered.

“So what good will the time do you?”

“I just wanted to chat. I'm looking for my father.”

“I don't understand. What's the relationship between my watch and your father?”

“Well, you see, my father left my mother and me when I was very small, so I don't know him. My mother said that one day he'll come back and that he's very rich. So every time I see a person like you, dressed like a rich man, I think that maybe he's my father.”

“And what did your father do?”

“He was a thief,” the child said with pride.

“You little devil! Get away! I'm not your father.”

“Too bad. You're his spit and image.”

Suleyman attempted to give the child a kick, but he fled, vanishing into the crowd.

Th
is nighttime stroll through nauseating streets long ago banished from Suleyman's memory — he only wished to dwell on the sumptuous décors of grand hotels and on liqueurs imbibed around luxurious swimming pools — was becoming unbearable. Again he thought of Abdelrazak, who was responsible for his distress, and he made a wish: that Abdelrazak would see his own mother prostitute herself in a brothel for lepers when she was ninety. (And that was really a quite charming wish compared to what Suleyman held in store for him in the near future.) Suddenly he stopped to listen to a voice that had come out of nowhere, but that he had known since childhood. A radio was playing the much-loved songs of the mythical chanteuse whose voice would accompany men in their daydreams and unappeased desires for a long time to come.

T
h
e Mirror Café had lost the better part of its original footprint and its terrace now occupied merely a small parcel of sidewalk. A few moldy mirrors with gilded frames — survivors of the disaster — were still hanging on the walls, as if to provide the café with proof of its identity. Suleyman was not put off by its decline; he had expected it. He was contriving to look affable and good-natured for his meeting with the young stranger who had telephoned, and who had assured him that he'd easily recognize Suleyman because, being an avid newspaper reader, he had often admired his picture on the front page when the topic was some financial scandal or an indictment for premeditated murder.
Th
is information, despite its anecdotal and slightly insolent character, had reassured Suleyman as to the young man's social milieu and level of education. If the young man knew how to read, he would know how to act in a respectful, honest way toward an elder. Suleyman was a great believer in education, despite not having received any. In fact, he could already imagine this admiring and obedient stranger entirely devoted to him. He walked onto the café's terrace with his head held high and an authoritative pout on his face, as if he were posing for a newspaper real estate ad.

Ossama caught sight of him and was about to wave to him, but Karamallah held him back by the arm.
Th
e master wanted to study the infamous man in action from afar and, if only for a moment, to observe his bearing among a public particularly steeped in disrespect for wealth. He was in for an astonishing sight. Suleyman was inspecting the terrace with the eye of a boss who had come to hire day laborers and who suddenly realizes that he has before him a gang of fainéants who have nothing better to do than smoke hookahs, play backgammon, or rant against the government with huge bursts of laughter. All these men sprawling about in languorous lethargy had a knack for exasperating him. Suleyman looked like a man who had fallen to the bottom of a pit and was awaiting the advent of improbable saviors.

At last Ossama stood up and invited him to sit at their table.
Th
e sight of the young man reinforced Suleyman's favorable opinion of his education and his family's social standing.
Th
e alleged student was dressed very stylishly, and the older man sitting next to him seemed to be his equal in the sartorial arts. A sour note in this display aroused Suleyman's suspicion, however: the two elegant men who had met with his approval were accompanied by a third with a shaved head and a black beard that hid half his face.
Th
is character was wearing a raw silk robe open at his thick neck and glasses with tinted lenses that made him look like a hit man in a comedy. It was to be feared that this unexpected guest would disrupt the idyllic interview Suleyman had imagined, and it was imperative to know for what reason the presence of this intruder — a blot on the gathering — had been deemed indispensable. If it were as a neutral observer, a better choice could have been made. With this thorn in his side, Suleyman moved toward the table where the fearsome leaders of an uproarious game awaited him.