The Tobacco Keeper (7 page)

Unable to find regular employment, he hadn’t stayed long in Poland. He’d also sensed that the socialist regime was on the verge of collapse, due to devastating inflation, massive unemployment
and defeatist attitudes. So in order to avoid sinking into the depths of despair like other immigrants, he’d decided to return to the Arab world. He’d soon settled in Beirut, where he’d worked first as a sales assistant in a small bookshop in Riad al-Sulh Square. Then he’d found a rather unusual job that had proved quite lucrative: he’d begun carving tombstones and other marble objects, such as memorials, that provided him with enough funds to emigrate to Brazil.

In Sao Paolo, the father had worked in trade and had been hugely successful, becoming one of the wealthiest Iraqis in the small Iraqi community that lived on the margins of the larger Lebanese and Syrian communities and mingled with them. It was in Sao Paolo that Asaad (whose real name was Emad Mahmoud Zaki) had studied journalism at Brazilian universities. He’d then worked for Brazilian television as a correspondent, moving between Beirut, Damascus, Amman and Casablanca.

So I found myself poised between two opposite personalities, one that I admired and the other that I loathed and couldn’t stand. This brought me back to the characters of
Tobacco Shop
.

The situation was not easy for me to accept. But Nancy exerted great pressure to bring another personality out of Faris, different from the one I knew. On that day, Nancy was like a dramaturge, trying to extract from this great actor his best ever performance. She quizzed him about himself. She asked him about things she might have heard from him dozens of times before and perhaps even knew by heart. But she was determined to gather up all his pearls and put them on display before me.

She asked him about his work as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, particularly at the end of the Taliban era. He described to us in detail his visits to Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar,
and the detention centres where many Arab fighters were held. Although I’d also been in Kandahar at the same time, we’d never actually met there. So I frequently found myself finishing off his statements and he mine, to the point that we spoke with one voice.

Faris spoke of many things. But to be fair, although I’d also lived in Kandahar, Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, I didn’t know those places as well as he did. He had an extraordinary ability to remember the tiniest details, things that should be impossible to retain for long. He would talk about the drizzle on fighters’ helmets or his visits to some Tajik camp buried beneath layers of snow. He knew the name of every single hill and didn’t omit a description of the mules carrying jerry-cans of water up the mountain. Nor did he forget the camel caravans entering Kabul. When he talked about Mazar-i-Sharif, he gave a detailed description of the mausoleum where, according to the Afghans, Imam Ali is buried. He charmed us with his description of the white doves on the domes of the mausoleum and the sparkling letters carved on its walls and arches by the best masons of the region. He also spoke of the names of squares, the remains of statues, the traffic lights, the horse-drawn carriages and the types of camels and donkeys that were employed in transporting heavy loads. He told us how he’d ridden in a Jeep with armed Afghans and entered their camp.

He had access to many secrets there that were completely inaccessible to me. He had contacts with the prominent warlord General Majid Rozi as well as with General Atta Aswad. He was the man entrusted to carry a message from Atta Aswad to the Uzbek leader Abdel Rashid Dostom. Then he talked about the civil war, the warlords and the militarization of the country. He was always
there, and seen everything, and he’d occasionally carried out tasks and missions beyond his duties as a journalist.

He sometimes oversimplified things, but at other times told us secrets we knew nothing about. His analyses had a tone that was neither journalistic nor scientific.

He spoke very simply but analyzed matters with remarkable accuracy. When he talked about himself, however, it was with a tediously self-congratulatory manner. Nancy must have told him my opinion of him, and he tried that day to present an image of himself that was different from the one we all had of him. It must have pleased Nancy to prove to me that what little I knew about him was nonsense and that he had other, unusual talents that I’d never suspected. At any rate, it was the first time I’d been able to put up with this pompous journalist among whose personalities I was lost, one of which I admired, and the other that I utterly detested.

But who was he?

He spoke that day about his memories and the reports he’d published in foreign newspapers. It was a funny coincidence that he’d also worked in advertising, writing commercials for Mexican rice, swimming pools and saunas in five-star hotels. He talked of services during the tourist season, of swimming pools and fishing tackle. He’d worked for a while making kids’ cartoons. Perhaps this was the reason, he said, that he became so popular with children. This was before he started writing articles for a number of Arabic and foreign newspapers, and before moving on to work for well-known television channels. But all his writing was done under a pseudonym. I discovered that there was something else we had in common. Faris Hassan also wanted to write a novel. At least he regarded himself more as a writer than a journalist. This
was a common feature of many journalists, who viewed writers as having a higher status than journalists.

‘You probably hold the common view that a writer is superior to a journalist,’ I said, without mentioning anything about myself. At least I didn’t tell him that it was my own point of view as well. He didn’t try to defend this claim but treated it as an indisputable fact, something to be taken for granted. He told me only that the main reason he’d gone into journalism was because he wanted to make a living from a job in some way connected with writing. He wanted to earn from his writing, regardless of genre. He also said that journalism gave him the ‘editorial skills’ that were so necessary for writing a major novel. It was the first time, I felt, that he’d spoken realistically, in a graphic, down-to-earth way. He talked with a great deal of sarcastic humour, which was reinforced by his despair. The conversation brought me closer to him, a person for whom I had earlier felt nothing but utter contempt.

The following day, we all had a business meeting at the Canvass restaurant on Jabal al-Weibdeh. This was a classy place that journalists avoided like the plague because of its exorbitant prices. Nancy called it ‘the Guillotine’ and its waiters the ‘executioners’. We sat in the garden outside, drinking wine and eating grilled fish, while we discussed all aspects of the situation. At this point I should mention that our information on Kamal Medhat was very sparse. None of us knew much about the man. At the beginning, our discussion of him was sterile and hesitant, as if wading through a swamp. Nancy would talk and fall silent because of the yellow pollen falling from the blossoming trees, which clung to her eyebrows and lashes. She’d wipe her lashes with a paper tissue
and look expectantly at us. Faris Hassan wiped his own face as though he’d just stepped out of a pool. With an unexpected jerk of his tall, lanky body Faris then said, ‘Let’s go straight to Baghdad.’

We moved on to the Negresco. We drank in the midst of the din, while reporters came and went and waiters ran to and fro carrying glasses, bottles and plates. There were cameras, papers, facts, numerous faces and beards, long hair and dim lights. There was also a strong smell of fermentation as well as shouting, conversations, loud noises and many languages. This was a place I really loved. Nancy sat by my side, her leg touching mine. I talked to her with my shoulder against hers stealing brief glances into her eyes. She felt my warm breath and my touch. She knew that I was choosing my words carefully with the express purpose of exciting her. She laughed loudly and wiped her brow.

We spoke, of course, about the murdered Iraqi musician. We also talked intermittently, in the midst of the clamour and the shouting, about the trip to Baghdad and the information that was available. Faris sat facing us. He took care of the orders and spoke to the waiters, a cigarette in his mouth and a glass between his fingers, loudly addressing some man or other, or a woman sitting nearby. He allowed me to get close to Nancy and talk of old times. Mostly we recalled things that had happened between us when we’d been together in Beirut. Then the restaurant began to grow quiet. Light-headed from drinking, the journalists in the bar started to head to their homes and hotels.

At Nancy’s insistence we returned to the topic of Kamal Medhat.

The following day, Faris left for Baghdad in the hope of arranging a place for me at the agency site, in a building near the Associated Press inside the Green Zone. I stayed on in Amman, from where I
set out to find information. I had to prepare a short biography of Kamal Medhat, as well as detailed maps of the capitals he’d lived in: Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus. I also had to find maps of those cities from the time of his residence and to assess the changes that had taken place.

I returned to my hotel at noon. The moment I stepped into the lobby, I saw Nancy sitting in the corner with her driver. She saw me come in and rushed over, saying that Faris was in Baghdad and that everything was ready for me. He’d be there to meet me at the airport. She gave me my plane ticket and a card with some important information. She also gave me a badge attached to some blue cord, to hang around my neck. This was my press card with the agency logo, stamp and licence. Nancy looked utterly exhausted, as though the volatility of the situation in the Middle East had left its mark on her face and hands. Although she was only thirty, the curls of her soft hair seemed ashen. She looked as though she were at a funeral. She was pale, worn-out and tense, and she was chainsmoking. Her appearance aroused strange and contradictory feelings in my heart. I reminded her that we were supposed to meet in the evening to spend some time together before I left, but she apologized, saying she had some urgent business to take care of in Damascus.

By dawn I’d flown to Baghdad.

‘Your destination?’ The man at the entrance of Queen Alia airport in Amman asked me. He had a bushy moustache that hid his lips, and a blue beret pulled down over his forehead.

‘Baghdad,’ I said, putting my suitcase on the floor.

He shuddered a little, looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a journalist,’ I said and showed him the card hanging from the blue cord on my chest.

He searched me carefully with his hands, tapping on my back and shoulders as well as between my legs. He ordered me to take off my shoes. So I removed my shoes, my khaki jacket, my glasses, my mobile phone and my belt. I placed all the items in addition to some coins in a grey plastic tray, which he passed through the machine. I was then allowed to go through the metal detector. There was a woman carrying an expensive leather bag walking next to a man dressed in a white suit and silk tie. He had a gold ring on his finger. There was also a foreigner with a cigar in his mouth and another person who was holding a string of prayer-beads and talking to a hefty policeman slouched in a leather seat.

I placed my small black leather bag, my Sony DCR-TRV461E camera and tripod on a small trolley, which I pushed in front of me. I headed quickly to a wooden counter inside the terminal. When I looked up, I noticed that the clock on the wall opposite showed two in the morning. The airport workers were sitting in their blue uniforms on wooden benches, yawning. Some were stretched out on the benches while others were fast asleep. When I reached the counter, I lifted my luggage onto the scales. A female airport employee gave me my boarding pass and pointed me to passport control. As I headed towards the white counter, I heard the last call for the British Airways flight to Cyprus. The call made one of the travellers jump up and hurry towards the counter.

I handed my passport to the airport employee, who flipped through it back and forth. A frown appeared on his dark face and there was a strange look in his eyes. He took a long time examining the passport and then asked me my destination. ‘Baghdad,’ I said, without adding a single word. I felt that he was taking his time and began to fidget. So he raised his head, glanced at me, rapidly stamped the passport and handed it back. Hugely relieved, I stashed it in the pocket of my jacket, picked up my little bag, put it over my shoulder and walked away. The terminal was filled with Marines heading for Baghdad.

I sat on a wooden bench watching them. Gathered in one spot, their loud voices were as piercing as an exchange of shots in a tennis rally. They wore camouflage uniforms and their heads were shaved. They were solid guys and carried their khaki rucksacks and kitbags on their backs. Some were stretched out on the floor, while others were sitting on benches. It was clear that they were booked on the same flight, bound for Baghdad.

At the wooden barrier, a few government employees were also preparing to board the plane with us. They were dressed in elegant suits and long ties, and carried Samsonite briefcases. The number of passengers increased as they were joined by bearded clerics wearing black turbans and holding long strings of prayer-beads between their fingers. Their veiled wives stood close by. On the benches sat families also preparing to go to Baghdad. They spoke fluent English without a trace of an accent. It was clear they were Iraqi families who’d settled in Europe and the United States and were now returning to Baghdad. Some of them were employed by the new government. The girls wore jeans and pretty T-shirts, and the boys had modern outfits and strange haircuts. They moved confidently and light-heartedly among the passengers, as though heading for a party. Their destination, after all, was the Green Zone, the location of the government and foreign embassies, and not the Red Zone, which was one of the most dangerous locations in the world.

Apart from the Marines, there were Asian workers: Filipinos, Malaysians and Pakistanis. They were employed at US military bases as cleaners, cooks, porters, dishwashers, ironers, salesmen and servants of all kinds. Other Asians were dressed in black suits and long narrow ties. It was clear they worked as personal bodyguards for businessmen, contractors or venture capitalists.