Imm Yahya was standing behind the door, her back bent with the years of her life, her head covered with a white headscarf, like a ghost swaying in the darkness.
“Why don’t you turn on the light?” said Radwan, moving restlessly where he stood because the woman was blocking the entrance.
“I’m blind, son,” she said in a low quavering voice, “and anyway the electricity’s always being cut off in this town. They steal everything here, son. We’re just a bunch of paupers.”
“I’m Sheikh Radwan, Hajja, and I have Dr. Karim, a friend of the late Khaled, with me.”
“Who’s Khaled?” she asked.
“Your grandson Khaled, Imm Yahya, and I’m Radwan.”
“Who?”
“I’m the sheikh. I came to see you this afternoon and we talked about Yahya’s papers.”
“Honestly, son, I’m a poor woman and I don’t have anything to give you. Go away, and may God find you others to give.”
Radwan looked at Karim and said she thought they were beggars. “Dear God, help us out here!”
“Come on! Have you forgotten, Hajja?”
She said she didn’t know a Sheikh Radwan or any other sheikhs. A slight smile appeared on her lips before she closed the door, and the two men heard the sound of the key turning in the lock.
“I seek refuge with God from lapidated Satan! God save us from women and their wiles! I came and saw her at three o’clock this afternoon and she was sharper than you or me and told me she’d be waiting for me at home at six this evening. I seek refuge with God! Poor thing! She understands, then she fades out and can’t even remember her children, so how’s she supposed to remember me or you? Let’s go,” said Sheikh Radwan. “But as we agreed, doctor.”
“What did we agree?” asked Karim.
“We agreed about the papers. When are you going to give them to us?”
“That’s not what we agreed. We agreed I’d give them to you based on Imm Yahya’s request and you saw what happened,” said Karim.
Sheikh Radwan put his hand on Karim’s shoulder. “Don’t play with me, Sinalcol. I’m not joking.”
“And I’m not joking either,” replied Karim, though when he saw Sheikh Radwan’s face turn red with anger he started talking again, saying, “Just give the order, Mawlana, but the fact is I don’t know where the papers are. I’ll have to look for them. Don’t worry, though, I believe you, and the papers will get to you.”
“When?”
“That I don’t know.”
“You have to know.”
“Let’s say next Friday. I’ll come to Tripoli, same day next week. We can meet at Hallab’s at noon and then go together and visit Khaled’s grave.”
“You’re a gentleman, doctor. God bless you.”
Karim turned to leave but Sheikh Radwan stopped him and told him that his companion would take him to el-Tall Square where he’d find the taxis for Beirut. Karim explained that he’d be spending the night in Tripoli at the home of a friend.
“If you’re sleeping the night in Tripoli you must stay with me, and most welcome too.”
Karim explained he’d promised Abd el-Malek Dakiz that he’d spend the night at his place and the man was waiting for him in the café at the port.
The sheikh suggested he take him there in his car and on the way warned him about Abu Ahmad. “He’s a madman. I swear if it hadn’t been for me the boys would have killed him. During the war on the morning of the Eid, he used to climb up to the Castle of Saint-Gilles, wash down the tombs of the crusaders, and beg mercy on their souls. ‘These are our ancestors,’ he’d say. A hundred times I told him, ‘They were polytheists, it won’t do,’ and he’d answer me that they weren’t infidels, they were our Christian brethren and he was doing his duty toward the souls of his ancestors.”
Karim tried to explain that Abu Ahmad’s view was possibly correct because the name of the Dakiz family did indicate it might be of crusader origin and the man was just following his conscience. “But they are infidels,” said Radwan, going on to say he was sorry if his words upset Karim as one of their Christian brethren. “It’s Khaled’s fault. When we took over the castle it was my opinion that we should demolish the tombs but Khaled refused. He said we couldn’t act aggressively toward the graves of People of the Book. God rest your soul, Khaled, what a noble spirit you were! Now, though, there aren’t any more tombs, of course. I don’t know who removed them. You know there are none of us left in the castle. Our Syrian brothers are sitting up there.”
Sheikh Radwan recounted that a fit of insane fury had overcome Abd el-Malek when he saw what had happened to the tombs. He’d cursed Islam and the Muslims in the courtyard of the Dakiz Mosque, “and if I hadn’t intervened, the boys would have beaten him to death with their shoes.”
The sheikh said he was free to phone him at any hour of the night if he felt in any way upset with Abu Ahmad: he’d be standing by to send him his car whenever he wished and to save him from the predicament he’d got himself into.
Sheikh Radwan was right: the night with Dakiz turned out to be a predicament and more, but there was no reason for fear. The elderly man was peaceable and kind. All one had to do was listen endlessly to the same stories and put up with his theories of the ins and outs of religion, the meaning of life, and the meaninglessness of history.
Abd el-Malek Dakiz was a philosopher — that was how the man introduced himself. He’d completed a huge work in three parts on the crusades but hadn’t been able to find a publisher. People told him Amin Maalouf had beaten him to it with his story of those wars, and that after his book The Crusades through Arab Eyes, no one was going to be interested in Abd el-Malek’s work. Abd el-Malek was convinced there was a conspiracy to prevent him from publishing his book. When he asked his son Ahmad to get him an appointment with Rafiq Hariri so he could try to get a subsidy to help him publish it, his son had wormed his way out of it using various excuses. “The worst thing is feeling that your own son is embarrassed by you,” said Abu Ahmad as he explained to Karim that his book was different from all the others because it dealt with history only as a point of entry to a discussion of life; he’d discovered from studying the history of his family that there was a mismatch between history and life. Daily life was full of noble qualities but history was frivolous, repetitious, bloody, and mad.
Karim had arrived at the Ash’ash Café to find the elderly man sitting there waiting for him, smoking a narghile. It had occurred to Karim that his prevarications with Sheikh Radwan had been a mistake. He would have done better to agree to what he wanted from the start and avoid the visit to Imm Yahya and the pain that he’d felt when he saw the woman in such a state. Karim felt his every limb was hurting and found the torment of memory unendurable. Why was he going to spend the night here in the home of this madman whom he didn’t even know? And could his soul find room for yet more stories?
At the same time, but from a different perspective, he felt, with a vehemence he found difficult to explain, that he should refuse to give the papers to Sheikh Radwan. The papers were just like Jamal’s. They had become his personal memory and no longer had any general significance, so why should he let Sheikh Radwan distort them? Jamal’s papers were still with him. True, because of the chaos that had overwhelmed Fatah following Abu Jihad’s assassination, no one had asked him for them. But what if someone were to ask him for them today so they could be published — and supposing they were modified and their contents played around with and her picture put on the cover with her hair — which, the last time he’d seen it, in her posters, had been flying in the wind — hidden from sight by an Islamic headscarf and with a frown in place of her laughing eyes, would he then hand over her papers?