'How could he have done such a thing?' she said over the telephone. 'Has your father forgotten what kind of country we live in? And where did he find this book? Didn't we burn it?'
I knew it was best to say nothing, but the temptation to inform our eavesdropper was too great. 'I saved it,' I said. After a vacuous silence she yelled, like a child pleading, 'Why? Slooma, why?' and I, fully aware that the telephone line was tapped, that what we were having was a three-way conversation with the third party silent, said, 'It's my book, I am to blame, Baba never believed in such ideas,' knowing that such words rescue no one but only implicate.
There was indeed an element of intrigue and madness in the way Father had behaved. He, more than most, must have known that 'walls have ears', that informing on your fellow citizens is Libya 's national sport, that the Medici were breathing down all necks. Had he, at the young age of forty-eight, gone senile? Had he managed to delude himself that he could still change things? Had he come to prefer death over slavery, unlike my Scheherazade, refusing to live under the sword?
I began to get telephone calls from her brothers, the 'High Council', urging me to return, promising I would be spared the Evader's prison sentence, that they would see to it that 'friends in high places' would doctor my file, cross out the words 'Stray Dog'. I began to consider this, consider it seriously. Particularly because Mother began to sound depressed, recalling all the missed opportunities: the education and careers she might have had. Loneliness seemed to remind her of all the things she had missed. Then once I telephoned and got that old voice, altered, her words lagging behind, that same nervous giggle that was somewhere between laughter and crying. I felt the room turn round me. I hung up. When she called back the following morning and I heard her voice, anxious, genuinely confused, I hung up again.
The messages, the countless messages she left I erased without listening to their content. She didn't go as far as calling Judge Yaseen, or asking one of her brothers or her father to call me.
Then the most extraordinary thing happened. I received a letter from Kareem. The stamp told me that it was from Libya. It seemed a cruel intrusion into the life I was making in Cairo, where I was handsome and independent enough to be surrounded by all the illusions of immortality, a desire very similar to wanting to be free of the past. The delicate, nervous handwriting, the letters modestly inverted, scratched with a consistently needle-sharp pencil, no doubt rhythmically turned in the fingers with an obsessive diligence for evenness and consistency, made me long for my childhood friend.
Dear Suleiman,
For a long time your mother refused to give me your address. She offered several reasons, none of them convincing. Once she said that the judge didn't allow you to receive letters. 'Give it to me anyway,' I said, 'I won't write, I'll visit instead.' 'Stop pestering me, Kareem, I don't want you to distract him,' she said. So I stopped asking after that and was content only with hearing from her that you are well. I miss you, dear friend. And now I am sorry that when I have finally managed to write it's to inform you of news that fills my heart with sorrow.
Your mother is unwell. She has not left your house for weeks. I visit her – don't worry, what's missing from her life is only to see you, I am making sure she needs for nothing. Stacked on her bedside table are sealed envelopes addressed to you. At first she would hide them from me, but lately she has been so unwell. Sometimes she can't even recognize me, thinks I am you. I took the opportunity and copied your address. I hope this reaches you. I hope that it finds you well. I hope you still remember me.
In this country we don't understand the illnesses of the heart. What I tell her, no matter how sweet, I am sure tastes as bland as cotton wool. She needs you. Call her soon. Your friend and brother, Kareem
I wanted to know his news, what had become of him and the rest of the boys. I wanted to know if he still remembered my betrayal. I had heard from Mama that Kareem and Auntie Salma, afraid of losing their house after Qaddafi decreed that anyone had the right to claim a vacant property as their own, had returned from Benghazi to Mulberry Street. Other than this I knew nothing of what Kareem's life was like. I detested how she and her past, how her 'illness' injected the world with so much urgency that not even my childhood friend and I had time to reminisce. And so even this letter, with its careful and delicate handwriting, that had come through against her will, I refused to respond to.
Then, on the first of September, an 'amnesty' was announced in commemoration of the revolution that had originally placed the now pardoned behind bars. Father was a beneficiary of this warped mercy, and Mother returned to her sober self, busy again with her duties, with the marriage she had resisted and now could not live without. He remained at home and would sometimes telephone me, saying, 'I just wanted to hear your voice,' and so I talked for long stretches of time to satisfy this desire. When he handed the receiver to her I noticed a peculiar aloofness enter my voice. She tried, always, to break the distance, to bring me back, to have me speak with love.
One month after his release, and, cruelly, a few days after the ban on Libyans travelling abroad had been lifted – making me at once jubilant and nervous at the thought of seeing them again – my father died.
It has been forty days now. Today the mourners, according to Libyan custom, can remove their black clothes, play music, whistle and sing to themselves as they paint their eyes in the mirror.
He died two deaths, both existing simultaneously in my heart. The first was according to my mother.
'Heart attack, in the night, during sleep,' she said, and, to comfort me, added, 'He died painlessly,' whatever that means.
I could hear in the background the piercing voice of Sheikh Mustafa, the house full of mourners. I didn't ask if she was beside him when it happened, or if his snoring had driven her to the sofa. I didn't ask what were his last words. Nothing seemed to matter. He was dead.
Then she seemed distracted. She wanted to get off the telephone, attend to the countless people who had come to offer their commiseration. 'Everything is fine,' she said hastily. 'Don't worry, habibi. We'll speak more later, OK?'
How silly it is to still be the boy away, the one who interrupts the movement of life, and who always needs to be kept up with the news, actively included.
'Siham,' she called. 'You remember Siham, Nasser 's sister? Here, she wants to speak to you,' and Siham's voice came on, shy, excited, intrigued.
'Suleiman? Hi, how are you, do you remember me?'
'Yes… Of course,' I said, astonished at how vividly I could recall her chestnut hair, her soft virgin lips, and confused also by the heat that was, after all of these years, blushing my cheeks. 'How are you?'
'I am engaged,' she said happily.
I was relieved she didn't utter the usual platitudes, hoping that God would compensate me for my loss. I didn't want to ask about her old father, I was sure he was either dead or dying. 'How's Nasser?'
'He's very well, very well,' she said excitedly. That mysterious melancholy she had as a child seemed to have been replaced with a lightness, a sparkling keen curiosity. 'In India,' she said, relishing the novelty.
' India?' I said, unable to conceal that amazement felt by Libyans living abroad when they hear that a compatriot has managed to pass through the gate, been miraculously exempt from the endless restrictions and decrees, feeling both a sense of triumph, in knowing that there still exists a thread connecting their country to the rest of the world, and jealousy, at not being permitted to return. 'What is he doing there?'