'You just have,' Mama murmured.
'What did you say?' Um Masoud said, suspicion forcing her eyebrows into a deep V.
'Nothing,' Mama said.
Um Masoud walked away, pulling Ali by the hand, and repeating, 'Cows? Cows in our street?'
'Next time we will import snakes,' Mama said under her breath. 'Silent, odourless snakes.'
'What would people say?' Um Masoud continued. 'That we bring cows into our homes? It's not normal, this.'
I was glad she hadn't heard what Mama said about the snakes. Um Masoud's husband, Ustath Jafer, was an Antenna, a man of the Mokhabarat, 'able to put people behind the sun,' as I had heard it said many times.
Two days after we returned from Lepcis, and a week before I had seen Baba walk across Martyrs' Square, Ustath Rashid was taken.
I had seen men interrogated on television before. I remembered once a man who used to own a clothing factory in Tripoli. He was accused of being a bourgeois and a traitor. He was dressed in a light-grey Italian suit that shimmered slightly under the spotlight. He sat stiff in his chair, as if he was in pain. I was standing just outside the entrance of the room, where I wouldn't be seen. Baba and Moosa sat on the sofa, Mama beside them in the armchair. Moosa said softly to Baba, 'They deliberately spare the face. I bet his body is a patchwork of bruises.' Then a dark cloud grew out of nowhere on the man's groin, a stain that kept spreading. I saw it first. I ran to the screen, stabbing my finger at it. 'Move,' Baba yelled. I ran and stood beside Mama. 'Go to your room,' he said. 'It's all right,' Mama told him and he shouted, 'He shouldn't see this.' 'It's his country too,' she said calmly, facing the screen. He stormed out of the room. We watched the man trying to cover the wet patch with his hands, squirming in his chair.
But to see Ustath Rashid arrested was different. I had heard it said many times before that no one is ever beyond their reach, but to see them, to see how it can happen, how quickly, how there's no space to argue, to say no, made my belly swim. Afterwards, when Mama saw my face, she said, 'You look like you've seen a ghost.' When I told her what I had seen she brought her hand to her forehead and whispered, 'Poor Salma.' She took me to the bathroom and washed my face. 'You shouldn't have watched. Next time run straight home.' Then she made me soup and tea as if I had flu.
Somebody, a traitor, was printing leaflets criticizing the Guide and his Revolutionary Committees. They came in the middle of the night and placed them like newspapers on our doorsteps. I say somebody, but there must have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of men. The boys and I took turns staying up, hoping to catch sight of one. We imagined them to be all in black, masked and very fast. Ali claimed he saw one. Masoud whacked him across the head and said, 'If you lie about such things again I'll tell Baba.'
Everyone feared these leaflets and made a point of tearing them up in full view of their neighbours. Others, like Mama, took them inside only to watch them burn in the kitchen sink, then ran cold water over the ashes. I overheard her once say to Auntie Salma, 'They are going to get us all in trouble.' When I asked her what she meant, she sighed and said, 'Nothing.' Another time she stood stiffly out on the pavement listening to Um Masoud speak against the 'traitors', saying, 'Jafer is very distressed by these leaflets.' Mama spoke differently to Um Masoud, she seemed sympathetic. She frowned and shook her head and agreed with everything Um Masoud said. 'May God forgive them, they don't know how wonderful the revolution has been for this country.'
The morning before Ustath Rashid was taken the boys and I were so bored we took the leaflets the traitors had left during the night and tossed them over the garden walls, where they immediately became, officially, inside people's houses. We only did this in neighbouring streets, where we didn't know anyone. We tied their light paper bodies to small stones and hurled them over the high walls like the way grenades were thrown in war films. The act was exhilarating, but soon boredom set in again, so we returned to our street and began preparing it for a football match.
Gergarish was a newly constructed district and apart from the main roads that connected it to the centre of the city, most of its streets were yet to be named or tarmacked. We called ours Mulberry because there used to be an orchard of mulberry trees here, the last one remaining was next door in Ustath Rashid and Auntie Salma's garden.
The sun reached the centre of the sky. We heard the crackle of the local mosque speaker. We could see the pencil-like minaret rise in the distance above the low houses of our street. Then Sheikh Mustafa's voice came.
We marked the goal posts with rocks and empty plastic bottles, argued about the sides, and finally the game kicked off. After a few minutes a car hurtled towards us, billowing dust as if it was the only creature in the world. When we saw it, white in the sun, we stopped playing and ran to the pavement, letting the ball roll away.
The car pulled over in front of Kareem's house. Kareem froze, as if his heart had dropped into his shoes. Four men got out, leaving the doors open. The car was like a giant dead moth in the sun. Three of the men ran inside the house, the fourth, who was the driver and seemed to be their leader, waited on the pavement. He smiled at the two fat brothers Masoud and Ali. I didn't register then that he knew them. None of us had seen him before. He had a horrible face, pockmarked like pumice stone. His men reappeared, holding Ustath Rashid between them. He didn't struggle. Auntie Salma trailed behind as if an invisible string connected her to her husband. The man with the pockmarked face slapped Ustath Rashid, suddenly and ferociously. It sounded like fabric tearing, it stopped Auntie Salma. Another one kicked Ustath Rashid in the behind. He anticipated it because he jerked forward just before it came. The force of it made him jump, but he didn't make a sound. He wore that strange embarrassed smile of his. He didn't argue or beg, as if the reasons why, all the questions and answers, were known. His shirt was torn. But no blood. I was surprised by this, and later thought that if he had bled – even a little – it would have made it easier on Kareem, because we all would have respected a bleeding man. Ustath Rashid looked towards us, and when his eyes met Kareem's, his face changed. He looked like he was about to cry or vomit. Then he doubled over and began to cough. The men seemed not to know what to do. They looked at each other, then at Auntie Salma, who had one hand over her mouth, the other clasped round her braided hair that fell as thick as an anchor line over her shoulder. They grabbed Ustath Rashid, threw him into the car, slammed the doors shut and sped between us, crushing our goal posts. I couldn't see Ustath Rashid's head between the two men sitting on either side of him in the back seat; he must have been coughing still.
Kareem took a few steps after the car. For a moment I thought he was going to run after it. He stood with his back to us, then turned and walked home. Auntie Salma was standing, still clutching her hair, looking in the direction the white car had vanished, as if it was arriving, as if Ustath Rashid was in fact finally coming home from a long trip.
No one knew why Ustath Rashid had been taken, but the next day the rumours began to spread that he had been a traitor. Urn Masoud came to our door, clicked her tongue, looked around her and said, 'That's the fate of all traitors.'