Abd al-Rahman’s existentialism was limitless; it transcended all boundaries. His nausea contained an unbelievable sweetness, irresistible desire, and ineffable rejoicing. He acted a bit strange in his nauseated condition: he would slump onto a carriage driver, fall heavily on the seat, roll over into the stagnant water of the sidewalk, or fall from his bed or in the garden. He did not need to be artificially elevated to experience this happiness, which is purer than any joy. He needed a great spontaneity to know this happiness. He believed that there were two types of threats to the mind: external events that might hamper the progress of nausea and internal matters that caused him to forget, even for a second, the nausea.
During a bout of heavy drinking he might forget to express himself and tell those around him that he suffers from what philosophy refers to as nausea. Once he recovered from his drunkenness, most often in his room, and remembered, it would be too late. His mood would darken, and he would become angry with himself because he had failed to detect his nauseated state as it happened and thus had lost it. There were occasions when Abd al-Rahman forgot to express this feeling clearly, and he felt it slip away. In fact, it was the philosopher himself who sometimes neglected this feeling once he became absorbed in and crushed by worldly matters. He allowed himself only a minimum amount of worry about experiencing an anxious, dazed happiness caused by some accidental event. The happiness he experienced was most likely the result of pure nervousness, a condition that made it impossible for him to capture the feeling during moments of intense and total enjoyment. Thus the eternal feeling of nausea became a temporary one, while the philosopher preferred a timeless nausea, as did existential thought. This fleeting, beautiful, nauseating moment melted too fast, like butter in seawater, whereas the philosopher would have liked it to be everlasting, eternal. He often said to Ismail Hadoub, “What if man stayed in a state of nausea from birth to death?” Hadoub was surprised and asked, “How could that be?” and wrote down the philosopher’s reply.
In response to Hadoud’s astonishment, Abd al-Rahman offered a lengthy explanation, “For example, drinking brandy like this excellent vintage, or smoking Dutch tobacco like the fine stuff I have now in my pipe, or resting on the chest of a woman like Dalal (whose breasts protrude like two blown balloons), then experiencing a high and permanent degree of nausea. Drinking, smoking, and resting on a woman’s chest until death would be permanent nausea, a moment fixed in time while the world goes forward. This would mean the actualization of a complete existentialism, and thus one would become the greatest existentialist on earth.”
As he concluded, he shook his head, threw it back in a philosophical manner, and lapsed into a state of anxious silence. His words touched Ismail Hadoub deeply. “This is what escaped Sartre. He didn’t pay attention to it, isn’t that so?”
“No, he did not,” Abd al-Rahman replied, “but I would like to transmit my thoughts to those who worship existentialism. I would like to introduce them to my existential thinking because existentialism is an open pleasure, a general one, not individual or selfish. In other words it is a selfish pleasure made for others to enjoy. We will establish an Arab existentialism with its own character. We want to promulgate it and distinguish it from western existentialism as Sartre defined it.”
Ismail Hadoub rushed to write down these complex comments, words that were incomprehensible to him, puzzling philosophical declarations. They didn’t require proof; they were self-explanatory through their complexity alone. Ismail understood philosophy as something that was impossible to understand, which explained the attractive and fascinating nature of Abd al-Rahman’s words. He used to utter incomprehensible and unknown words that gave him certain superiority over his peers. He was lost in a philosophical fog, and through it was able to achieve success. The situation reassured the philosopher’s parents, but he was concerned with his own personal fate. He knew that his ability to express mysterious ideas gave him the power to control weak characters even if stronger minds denounced him. He masked his position with the excuse that our society was not philosophical.
Ismail Hadoub wrote down everything the philosopher said. He didn’t want to lose a single word. He was the only one convinced that Abd al-Rahman was a giant thinker who deserved to be believed and followed. He was a philosopher, and Ismail was devoid of philosophy; he was wealthy and could spend money, whereas Ismail was poor and couldn’t find anything to eat. Abd al-Rahman resembled Sartre, but Ismail did not; he looked like himself. Abd al-Rahman was married to Sartre’s cousin, but Ismail was a single man hunting for a rich wife.
The differences between the two men were tangible, and both were well aware of them. Philosophy could not erase those social disparities but in fact deepened and strengthened them. Each was aware of his true circumstance, his social status, and each tried to delineate his life according to this contradiction. Abd al-Rahman liked to distance himself from his class. He avoided and disliked his social class and never failed to express his feelings toward it. His attitude constantly called to mind his membership in the elite class, and it reminded those around him of the refinement of his class and its arrogance. For these reasons he sought to climb down the social ladder and become part of the lower classes. Only those who are highly placed want to go down — a natural inclination. Ismail, on the other hand, wanted to climb up the ladder because he was affiliated with the lower stratum of society. Thus the difference between those who climb up the ladder and those who come down is social and not philosophical. It’s an economic difference, if we consider the significance of the matter. It’s the difference between rich and poor, or beggar and donor, regardless of the nature of the donation, whether it’s material or philosophical. This made Abd al-Rahman the donor and Ismail the beggar, since Abd al-Rahman was the philosopher and Ismail a mere follower.
5
Ismail Hadoub was not pampered or philosophical like Abd al-Rahman, the philosopher. He appeared on the Baghdad scene in the mid-fifties as a salesman selling pornographic photographs. In his early days in Baghdad he did not have anything regular to eat or drink or even a place to sleep. He ate whatever he could lay his hands on, and that meant leftovers and garbage from rich people’s kitchens. He drank the dregs of arrack left in bottles thrown near bars, and he slept wherever he could. He took odd jobs: selling pornography, carrying luggage at modest hotels, cutting glass in al-Jam market, sweeping for the municipality, and sometimes working as a servant in rich people’s homes. He had an inclination for pleasure, amusement, and a vagabond life. He wandered the streets and picked pockets in bus stations. He lived in cheap, dirty, half-derelict hotels in the company of smugglers, pimps, and thieves, painters, bakers, and carriage drivers. He’d sleep anywhere: on a cheap wet sofa, in putrid stables, or on the roof of a crumbling apartment building, sharing the rent with four or five other men. He’d often wander by cinemas, groceries, jewelry shops, or even bars and public squares to sell his photographs, steal purses, hustle counterfeit liquor, and do a bit of smuggling, gambling, and pimping as well.
Ismail used to roam to remote corners of the country, then return with a new look and new clothes and take up work different from what he’d done before. It’s possible he was directed to Mahallet al-Sadriya or to Mahallet Siraj al-Din from the khan near the Abu Dudu district. Ismail spent six years in this airless, unlighted khan, a place known to those who saw it from the outside as a hole or a long labyrinth, opening on a dark space filled with dirt and putrefying substances. His feet led him there usually at night, his knife wrapped in a cloth cinched around his belly. He lay on a mattress as thin as a wooden board and covered himself with a dirty, colorless blanket, long accustomed to its pungent smell. Even in this miserable place he was not always safe, as Abboud, the gangster of Siraj al-Din, would push him away and steal his space on the mattress. Ismail placed the mattress on a platform to protect it. This stony elevation served more than one purpose. It was a cupboard to hide his cooking utensils and other valuables, some stolen pornographic photographs he sold, and even some dry bread. It was his dining table during the day and his bedstead at night, and a place to stretch and rest despite the loud snoring of the other occupants. His sleep was often interrupted by the bedbugs gnawing at his skin. He’d scratch at them endlessly and often fall from the mattress onto the ground, where he’d find himself too tired to get up. When he stayed on the floor, he fell victim to cockroaches and rats. He’d bat them away, eyes closed with exhaustion and fatigue.