'They killed the students closest to us. Rashid is dead, whereas Bu Suleiman is… People are talking, saying terrible things about him.'
'Let them talk. They would have been first to give him up if it was the other way around.'
'Rashid didn't, he didn't. And his wife, the poor woman, now suffers the consequences.'
'May God compensate her.'
'I don't know how to answer them, I don't know what to say.'
'Go home,' Mama said suddenly. 'It's time you returned to your country.'
'This is my country. I've lived here half of my life.'
'The only reason you are still alive is because it's not your country.'
'There was so much hope, so much hope. Three years ago eight thousand students in Benghazi and four in Tripoli. Twelve thousand students took a stand in an illiterate country of less than three million. We didn't succeed then. It took three years for hope to be reborn, only to see the few who dared sacrificed for the many. One of them, my friend, Muhammed…' he said and wept.
Mama's voice too now was tearful. 'Stop, Moosa, please. Praise the Prophet.'
'He was asking for news, if I knew where Bu Suleiman and Rashid were. I didn't have the heart to tell him. He was calling from inside, barricaded with the others in the university. I didn't have the heart to tell him what was happening outside.' Then, in an agitated voice, as if he was blaming Mama, he said, 'They gave their lives for their country.'
After a long silence Mama said, 'They weren't standing for me. May God have mercy on their souls and compensate their families, but they weren't standing for me.' Then in a pleading tone she added, 'If you want to help us, pack your bags and go home to your family in Cairo.'
He sighed. 'We have been issued with a deportation notice.'
'When must you leave?'
'Tomorrow. Father is furious. He left today.'
Again I felt a presence behind me, this time accompanied by a muffled, exhausted breath. Before I could turn a hand took me by the shoulder and buried me in loose fabric. I immediately wrapped my arms round Baba's waist and I was swallowed up in that stench again. I squeezed and he flinched. He mumbled something I couldn't make out. Then I realized it was my name. When I tried to pull myself away, to see his face, he squeezed me tighter. Mama and Moosa came to see what the noise was. Baba loosened his grip a little and I was able to look up at him. His eyes and lip had grown bigger, redder and bluer. Other details I hadn't noticed before were now visible and in a way they were more disturbing. His left eye was completely shut, but his right eye, close to the nose bridge, was open and as red as blood. A net of small purple veins mapped areas of his cheeks and chin. On one of his temples there was a small burn, a yellow and red circle. I couldn't see the other side of his face but imagined another one there to match it. His jallabia was unbuttoned at the chest, and the same wire-like hairs that I had once pulled sprouted out unharmed.
'What are you doing out of bed?' Mama asked.
'This is still my house, isn't it?' His lower lip, swollen and purple, quivered and distorted his words.
'Come and sit down,' she said, pointing towards the reception room.
But he walked away. I walked beside him, my arm wrapped round his waist. The clock's ticking was much livelier than our pace. I let go of him and ran to the clock. I opened its glass door and held the pendulum still. He was in the same place I had left him, favouring one side. I ran to him and when I embraced him he flinched again, tightening his arm round me. When we passed through the hallway swing-doors, he stopped for a moment, as if relieved we were alone now. Then he said, quietly like a secret, 'Let's go to the garden.'
The sun was an hour or two from setting and its light was soft and orange.
Take me up to your roof
It's your roof too, I thought. It's our roof. And even though I was holding him and we walked together side by side I felt so far away from him. I squeezed him a little tighter and looked up at his battered face in the warm and dying sunlight.
I waited until he had both feet on the first step before taking the next. And I don't know why at one of our pauses I said, 'One by one we'll get there,' and immediately hoped he wouldn't respond because anything he would have said would have made me feel awkward.
Life could have spent itself while we climbed those stairs, and I wouldn't have minded.
The roof reminded me of when we burned his books. 'We'll buy you new books, Baba.' Democracy Now was still beneath my mattress. When we reached the top I slid from beneath his arm, placed his hands on the fence and ran to fetch it. When I returned my heart was beating so fast I could barely speak. 'Here,' I said and, wrapping his hands round the book, whispered, 'I saved this one. Don't tell Mama or Moosa.' He held it with one hand to his chest, leaned with the other on my shoulders and we watched the sea. Baba craned his neck. Then I heard his breathing change. 'I can hardly see it,' he mumbled.
'The sea is quiet today,' I said, hoping to distract him.
'A good day for swimming, Baba. A good day for lying on your back and floating.'
Light shimmered fast on the water like seagulls crowding round food that the jealous sea was keeping from them. He tried to look towards Ustath Rashid's house, but was aiming too high. 'Maybe we'll go swimming,' I said, and again the hope that he wouldn't respond returned. Then he turned, and I turned with him, like 'two halves of the same soul, two open pages of the same book'. 'Let's walk under the trees,' he said.
We went down and walked on the patterns the low sun threw beneath us. I saw the ladder leaning against the wall where I had left it after eating the mulberries. I let go of Baba and climbed the ladder. When I was halfway up I looked down and saw him resting against the wall, holding his rib. I began hunting for mulberries. I altered my eyes to look only for small dark creatures. I walked on my hands and knees along the high wall, negotiating branches, until I found a crown of berries, ripe, red-black with juice and each as big as a beetle. He was sitting on the ground, leaning his back against the wall, holding a small stone – a stone very much like the ones I had thrown at Bahloul, and which on landing on his back had delivered a very satisfying blow – stabbing it into the dirt beside him. When I reached the ground I showed him the berries in my cupped hands and said, 'Mulberries, Baba, mulberries. The angels stole them from Heaven to make life easier for us. They are the sweetest thing.' I took one and stuffed it through his swollen lips. When he didn't move I said, 'Chew.' He moved his lower jaw up and down a few times then spat it out into his hand. I couldn't understand. I ate one and it was as delicious as ever. 'You don't like them?' I said.
His deformed lips made him look disgusted. He threw his chewed up berry into the dirt, wiped his hand on his jallabia and, pointing his finger at the small round burn on his temple, said, They put out their cigarettes here,' sucking in air. I looked down at the mulberries in my hands.
21
Baba remained mostly in his room for the following two weeks. Then one morning I woke up to hear him and Mama laughing. They were normal, as if nothing had happened, their voices light, floating with love in our house. Then I heard her sing absent-mindedly to herself, the way she used to do when taking a bath or hanging clothes out to dry or painting her eyes in front of the mirror or drawing in the garden. That singing that always evoked a girl unaware of herself, walking home from school, brushing her fingers against the wall, a moment before the Italian Coffee House, before Baba and me and this life. Hearing it unsettled me. It had been a long time since I had heard her sing like this.
After a little while my door swung open and Baba walked in. I pretended to be asleep. My heart raced, thumping below my ears. I felt him sit beside me on the bed. 'Slooma,' he said gently, his voice improved, almost normal now. When I didn't react he stood up and left the room. I then heard Mama's voice rise and fall in the kitchen.