Kadem was only partly right. It’s not that the world’s grown base; it’s that men wallow in baseness. I’ve come to Beirut because I refuse to be like that tramp. I refuse to be one of the living dead. Either live like a man or die as a martyr — there’s no other alternative for one who wants to be free. I’m not comfortable in the role of the defeated. Ever since that night when the American soldiers burst into our house, overturning our ancestral values and the order of things, I’ve been waiting! I’m waiting for the moment when I’ll recover my self-esteem, without which a man is nothing but a stain. I think of myself as poised on the verge of everything and nothing. What I’ve gone through, lived through, been subjected to so far — none of that counts. That night was like a freeze-frame. That was when the earth stopped turning for me. I’m not in Lebanon; I’m not in a hotel; I’m in a coma. And whether I emerge from it and go on or stay in it and rot is up to me.
Sayed has personally seen to it that I want for nothing. He’s lodged me in one of the most expensive suites in the hotel and put at my disposal Imad and Shakir, two charming young men who treat me most respectfully and stand ready day or night, alert to the merest sign, poised to carry out my most extravagant wishes. I will not let any of this go to my head. I’m still the shy, retiring boy from Kafr Karam. Even though I know the importance I’ve assumed, I haven’t broken any of the rules that formed my character in simplicity and propriety. My only caprice was to request that the television, the radio, and all the pictures on the walls be removed from the suite; I wanted to be left with the strict minimum — namely, the furniture and a few bottles of mineral water in the minibar. Had it been up to me, I would have chosen a cave in the desert, far from the laughable vanities of people who lead pampered lives. I wanted to be my own focus, my own reference point; I wanted to spend the remainder of my stay in Lebanon preparing myself mentally, so that I’d be equal to the task my people have entrusted to me.
I’m no longer afraid of being alone in the dark.
I’ve filled my lungs with the mustiness of the tomb.
I’m ready!
I’ve tamed my thoughts and brought my doubts to heel. I’m keeping my spirits under firm control. My agonies, my hesitations, my blackouts are all ancient history. I’m the master of what goes on in my head. Nothing escapes me; nothing resists me. Dr. Jalal has smoothed my path and filled in my gaps. As for my former fears, now I summon them of my own accord; I line them up and inspect them. The great brown blotch that hid a portion of my memories when I was in Baghdad has faded away. I can return to Kafr Karam whenever I feel like it, enter any door, step into any patio, invade anyone’s privacy. My mother, my sisters, my friends and relatives all come back to me, one after the other, and I remain calm. My room is inhabited by ghosts, by those who are absent. Omar shares my bed; Sulayman blows through like a gust of wind; the wedding guests immolated in the Haitems’ orchards parade around me. Even my father is here. He prostrates himself at my feet, balls in the air. I don’t turn away or cover my face. And when a blow from a rifle butt knocks him down, I don’t help him up. I remain upright; my sphinxlike inflexibility prevents me from bending, even over my father.
In a few days, it will be the world that prostrates itself at my feet.
The most important revolutionary mission undertaken since man learned to stiffen his spine! And I’m the one who’s been chosen to accomplish it. What a way of getting even with destiny! The practice of death has never seemed so euphoric, so cosmic.
At night, when I lie on the sofa facing the window, I remember the painful events of my life, and they all reinforce my commitment. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do or what will be the nature of my mission. “Something that’ll make September eleventh seem like a noisy recess in an elementary school,” Sayed said. One thing’s for certain: I won’t shrink from it!
There’s a knock at my door. It’s Dr. Jalal. He’s wearing the same tracksuit he had on yesterday evening, and he still hasn’t bothered to tie his shoelaces.
It’s the first time he’s ever crossed my threshold. His alcoholic breath spreads out like smoke. “I was wasting away in my room,” he says. “Would it disturb you if I came in for a couple of minutes?”
“You’re not disturbing me.”
“Thanks.”
He totters over to the sofa, scratching his butt with a hand thrust down inside his drawers. I’ll bet he hasn’t bathed for a good long time. He casts admiring glances around the room. “Wow!” he says. “Are you some mogul’s son?”
“My father was a well digger.”
“Mine wasn’t anything.”
He realizes he’s said something outlandish and waves it away with one hand. Then, crossing his legs, he leans against the back of the sofa and squints at the ceiling. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night,” he complains. “These days, I can hardly fall asleep at all.”
“You work too much.”
He waggles his chin. “I have no doubt you’re right. These lecture tours are wearing me out.”
I’d heard talk of Dr. Jalal — none of it good — while I was still in high school. I’d also read two or three of his books, including a treatise on jihadist fundamentalism entitled Why Are Muslims Angry? — a work that aroused a great deal of indignation among the clergy. At the time, he was a very controversial figure in Arab intellectual circles, and many of his adversaries sought to hold him up to public contempt. His theories about the dysfunctions of contemporary Muslim thought were veritable indictments; the imams rejected his writings in toto, even going so far as to predict hellfire for anyone who dared to read them. For the ordinary devout Muslim, Dr. Jalal was nothing but a mountebank, a Western lackey in the pay of factions hostile to Islam in general and to Arabs in particular. I myself detested him; I thought his learning perverted, exhibitionistic, and conventional, and his contempt for his people seemed obvious to me. In my eyes, he offered one of the most repulsive examples of those traitors who proliferated like rats in European media and academic circles, fully prepared to exchange their souls for the privilege of seeing their photographs in a newspaper and hearing themselves talked about. I didn’t disapprove of the fatwas that condemned him to death; the imams hoped to put an end to his incendiary rants, which he published at length in the Western press and delivered with offensive zeal in television studios. I was, therefore, amazed — and also, I must admit, rather relieved — when I learned that he’d made an about-face.
The first time I saw Dr. Jalal in the flesh was the second day after my arrival in Beirut. Sayed had insisted that I attend the doctor’s talk. “He’s magnificent!” Sayed declared.
The event took place in an auditorium not far from the university. There was a huge crowd, hundreds of people standing beside and behind the rows of chairs that had been taken by storm hours before the doctor was scheduled to appear. Students, women, girls, family men, government workers packed the immense room. Their hubbub sounded like a seething volcano. When the doctor appeared on the platform, escorted by militiamen, the shouts of welcome shook the walls and rattled the windows. After the applause died down, he delivered a magisterial lecture on imperialist hegemony and the disinformation campaigns behind the demonization of Muslims.