“Now I do.”
He takes out his handkerchief and wipes the corners of his mouth and under his ears. “Are you angry at me?”
“Not even slightly, Sayed. I was surprised to learn that the mission involves a virus, but that has no effect on my commitment. A Bedouin doesn’t lose his nerve. His word is like a rifle shot — it can’t be taken back. I’ll carry this virus. In the name of my family and in the name of my country.”
“I haven’t been able to sleep since I put you in the professor’s hands. It’s got nothing to do with you — I know you’ll go all the way. But this operation’s so…crucial. You have no idea how important it is. We’re down to our last shot, the last cartridge in the chamber. Afterward, a new era will be born, and the West will never look at us the same way again. I’m not afraid of dying, but our deaths have to mean something. They have to change our situation. Otherwise, our martyrs aren’t much use. For me, life’s nothing but an insane gamble; it’s the way you die that determines whether you win the bet. I don’t want our children to suffer. If our parents had taken things in hand in their day, we wouldn’t be so miserable. But, alas, they waited for the miracle instead of going out and finding it, and so we’re compelled to change our fate ourselves.”
He turns toward me. His face is deathly pale, and his eyes shimmer with furious tears. “If you could see Baghdad — if you could see what it’s become: ruined sanctuaries, mosques at war with one another, fratricidal slaughter. We’re overwhelmed. We call for calm, and no one listens. It’s true that we were hostages back when Saddam was in power. But, good God! Now we’re zombies. Our cemeteries are full, and our prayers get blown to pieces along with our minarets. How did we come to this? If I can’t sleep, it’s because we expect everything, absolutely everything, from you. You’re our only recourse, our last-ditch stand. If you succeed, you’ll put things back in their proper order, and a new day will dawn for us. The professor hasn’t explained to you the nature of the virus, has he?”
“There’s no need for that.”
“Yes, there is. It’s imperative that you know what your sacrifice will mean to your people and to all the oppressed peoples of the earth. You represent the end of the imperialist hegemony, the turning wheel of fortune, the redemption of the just—”
This time, I’m the one who grabs his wrist. “Please, Sayed, have faith in me. It would kill me if you didn’t.”
“I have complete faith in you.”
“Then don’t say anything. Let things take their course. I don’t need to be accompanied. I’ll know how to find my way all by myself.”
“I’m just trying to tell you how much your sacrifice—”
“There’s no point in telling me that. You know how people are in Kafr Karam. We never talk about a project if we really intend to accomplish it one day. If you don’t keep your dearest wishes silent, they won’t bear fruit. So let’s just shut up. I want to go all the way, without flinching. In full confidence. Do you understand me?”
Sayed nods. “You’re surely right. The man who has faith in himself doesn’t need it from others.”
“Exactly, Sayed. Exactly.”
He puts the car in reverse and backs up to a gravel trail. We turn onto it and head back to Beirut.
I’ve spent a good part of the night on the hotel terrace, leaning on the balustrade, looking down at the avenue, and hoping that Dr. Jalal would turn up. I feel all alone. I try to get a hold of myself. I need Jalal’s anger to fill my blank spots. But Jalal is nowhere to be found. I went and knocked on his door — twice. He wasn’t in his room, nor was he in the bar. From my lookout post on the terrace, I peer down at the cars that stop at the curb, watching for his rickety silhouette. People enter and leave the hotel; their voices reach me in amplified fragments before dissolving into the other sounds of the night. A crescent moon, as sharp and white as a sickle, adorns the sky. Higher up, strings of stars sparkle in the background. It’s cold; my sighs are visible. I pull my jacket tight around me and puff into my numbed fists until my eyes bulge. My mind feels empty. Ever since the word virus penetrated my consciousness, a toxin has been prowling around in there, waiting to be released at any moment. I don’t want to give it the chance to poison my heart. That toxin’s the devil. It’s the trap lying in my path; it’s my weakness and my ruin. And I have vowed before my saints and my ancestors never to yield. So I look away; I look at the late-night crowd in the street, the passing cars, the festive neon lights, and the thronged shops. The sights solicit my eyes, and I let them take over from my brain. This city excels in solicitation!
Just yesterday, it was draped in an immense shroud that muffled its lights and its echoes and reduced its former excesses to a cold anxiety, rooted in uncertainty and failure. Has Beirut so completely forgotten its torment that it has no compassion for its cousins in their distress? What a hopeless place! In spite of the specter of civil war that hovers over its banquets, it pretends there’s nothing amiss. And those people on the sidewalk, charging around like the cockroaches in the gutters, where are they running to? What dream could reconcile them to their sleep? What dawn to their tomorrows? No, I’m not going to end up like them. I don’t want to resemble them in any way….
Two o’clock in the morning. There’s no one left in the street. The shops have lowered their shutters, and the last ghosts have vanished. Jalal won’t come back tonight. Do I really need him?
I return to my room, chilled but reinvigorated. The fresh air has done me good. The toxin that was prowling around in my mind gave up in the end. I slip under the covers and turn off the light. I’m at ease in the darkness. My dead and my living are near me. Virus or bomb, what’s the difference, when you’re grasping an offense in one hand and, in the other, the Cause? I don’t need a sleeping pill. I’ve returned to my element. Everything’s fine. Life’s nothing but an insane gamble; it’s the way you die that determines whether or not you win the bet. That’s how legends are born.
20
A middle-aged man presents himself at the reception desk. He’s tall and bony, with the waxy complexion of an aesthete. His outfit includes an old gray overcoat, a dark suit, and leather shoes worn at the heel. With his large horn-rimmed glasses and his tie, which has seen happier days, he exhibits the dignified and pathetic bearing of a schoolteacher nearing retirement. A newspaper protrudes from under one of his arms. He presses the button on the counter and waits calmly for someone to come and attend to him.
“May I help you, sir?”
“Good evening. Please tell Dr. Jalal that Mohammed Seen is here.”
The desk clerk turns toward the pigeonholes. Although there’s no key in number 36, he says, “Dr. Jalal’s not in his room, sir.”
“I saw him come in not two minutes ago,” the man insists. “He may be resting, or perhaps he’s very busy, but I’m an old friend of his, and I know he’d be unhappy to learn that I came by to see him and he wasn’t informed.”
From my seat in the lobby, where I’m drinking a cup of tea, I catch the clerk’s eye as he looks past the visitor. Then the clerk scratches his head and finally picks up the telephone. “I’ll see if he’s in the bar,” he says. “And you are?”
“Mohammed Seen, novelist.”
The desk clerk dials a number, loosens his bow tie, and bites his lip when someone answers on the other end. “Good evening, this is the front desk. Is Dr. Jalal in the bar? A gentleman named Mohammed Seen is waiting for him in the lobby…. Of course.” He hangs up and asks the novelist to be so kind as to wait.