Dr. Jalal erupts from the elevator, his arms open wide and a smile splitting his face from ear to ear. “Allah, ya baba! What good wind blows you here, habibi? I’m overcome — the great Seen remembers me!” The two men embrace warmly and kiss each other’s cheeks, delighted at this reunion; they spend a long moment in mutual contemplation and reciprocal backslapping. “What an excellent surprise!” the doctor exclaims. “How long have you been in Beirut?”
“A week. The Institut français invited me.”
“Excellent. I hope you’re staying awhile longer. I’d love to spend some time in your company.”
“I have to go back to Paris on Sunday.”
“That gives us two days. God, you look great. Come, let’s go up to the terrace. The view from there is splendid. We can watch the sunset and admire the city lights.”
They disappear into the elevator.
The two men sit in the glassed-in alcove on the hotel terrace. I hear them laughing and exchanging claps on the shoulder before I slip surreptitiously behind a wooden panel where they can’t see me.
Mohammed Seen extricates himself from his overcoat and lays it across the arm of his chair.
“Will you have a drink?” Jalal suggests.
“No, thanks.”
“Damn, it’s been a long time. Where do you live these days?”
“I’m a nomad.”
“I read your last book. I thought it was simply marvelous.”
“Thank you.”
The doctor sinks back into his chair and crosses his legs. He smiles as he looks the novelist up and down, clearly overjoyed to see him again.
The novelist leans forward with his elbows on his knees, joins his hands like a Buddhist monk, and delicately rests his chin on his fingertips. His enthusiasm has vanished.
“Don’t make such a face, Mohammed. Is there some problem?”
“Just one: you.”
The doctor throws his head back in a short, sharp laugh. He recovers immediately, as if he’s suddenly absorbed what the other has said. “You have a problem with me?”
The novelist straightens his back; his hands clasp his knees. “I won’t beat around the bush, Jalal. I attended your lecture the day before yesterday. I still can’t get over it.”
“Why didn’t you come and see me right afterward?”
“With all those people orbiting around you? To tell you the truth, I hardly recognized you. I was so baffled, I think I was the last person to leave the auditorium. I was stupefied, I really was. I felt as though a roofing tile had fallen on my head.”
Jalal’s smile disappears. His face takes on a pained, solemn expression, and furrows crease his brow. For a long time, he scratches his lower lip, hoping to eke out a word capable of breaking through the invisible wall that has just sprung up between him and the novelist. He frowns again and then says at last, “As bad as that, Mohammed?”
“I’m still stunned, if you want to know the truth.”
“Well, I assume you’ve come to teach me a lesson, master. Have at it. Don’t hold back.”
The novelist lifts his overcoat, pats it nervously, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. When he holds it out to the doctor, Jalal refuses with a brusque movement of his hand. The violence of the gesture doesn’t escape the novelist’s notice.
The doctor barricades himself behind his disappointment. His face is drawn, and his eyes are filled with cold animosity.
The writer looks for his lighter but can’t put his hands on it; as Jalal doesn’t offer his own, Seen gives up the idea of smoking.
“I’m waiting,” the doctor reminds him in a guttural voice.
The writer nods. He puts the cigarette back in the pack and the pack back in the overcoat, which he returns to the arm of his chair. He looks as though he’s trying to gain time so he can get his thoughts in order. He takes a deep breath and blurts out, “How can a man turn his coat so quickly, from one day to the next?”
The doctor trembles. His face muscles twitch. He doesn’t seem to have expected such a frontal attack. After a long silence, during the course of which his eyes remain fixed, he replies, “I didn’t turn my coat, Mohammed. I simply realized that I was wearing it inside out.”
“You were wearing it right, Jalal.”
“That’s what I thought. I was wrong.”
“Is it because they didn’t give you the Three Academies Medal?”
“You think I didn’t deserve it?”
“You deserved it, hands down. But not getting it isn’t the end of the world.”
“It was the end of my dream. The proof is that everything changed afterward.”
“What changed?”
“The deal. Now we’re the ones passing out the cards. Better yet, we set the rules of the game.”
“What game, Jalal? The massacre game? Is that anybody’s idea of a good time? You jumped off a moving train. You were better off before.”
“As what? An Arab Uncle Tom?”
“You weren’t an Uncle Tom. You were an enlightened man. We’re the world’s conscience now, you and I and the other intellectual orphans, jeered by our own people and spurned by the hidebound establishment. We’re in the minority, of course, but we exist. And we’re the only ones capable of changing things, you and I. The West is out of the race. It’s been overtaken by events. The battle, the real battle, is taking place among the Muslim elite, that is, between us two and the radical clerics.”
“Between the Aryan race and the non-Aryans.”
“That’s false and you know it. Today, our struggle is internal. Muslims are on the side of the person who can project their voice, the Muslim voice, as far as possible. They don’t care whether he’s a terrorist or an artist, an impostor or a righteous man, an obscure genius or an elder statesman. They need a myth, an idol. Someone capable of representing them, of expressing them in their complexity, of defending them in some way. Whether with the pen or with bombs, it makes little difference to them. And so it’s up to us to choose our weapons, Jalal. Us: you and me.”
“I’ve chosen mine. And there aren’t any others.”
“You don’t really think that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. You’re not a true believer. You’re just a turncoat.”
“I forbid you—”
“All right. I haven’t come here to upset you. But I wanted to tell you this: We bear a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, Jalal. Everything depends on us, on you and me. Our victory will mean the salvation of the whole world. Our defeat will mean chaos. We have in our hands an incredible instrument: our double culture. It allows us to know what’s going on, who’s right and who’s wrong, where some are flawed, why others are blocked. The West is mired in doubt. It’s used to imposing its theories as though they were absolute truths, but now they’re meeting resistance and coming apart. After so many centuries, the West is losing its bearings; it’s no longer lulled by its illusions. Hence the metastasis that’s brought us the current dialogue of the deaf, which pits pseudomodernity against pseudobarbarity.”
“The West isn’t modern; it’s rich. And the ‘barbarians’ aren’t barbarians; they’re poor people who don’t have the wherewithal to modernize.”
“I couldn’t agree more. But that’s where we can intervene and put things in perspective, calm people down, readjust their focus, and get rid of the stereotypes this whole frightful mistake is founded on. We’re the golden mean, the proper balance of things.”
“That’s arrant nonsense. I used to think that way, too. To survive the intellectual imperialism that snubbed me — me, an educated man, a scholar — I told myself exactly the same things you’ve just told me. But I was sweet-talking myself. The only risks I took were in TV studios, where I criticized my people, my traditions, my religion, my family, and my saints. They used me. Like a piece of charcoal. I’m not charcoal. I’m a two-edged blade. They’ve blunted me on one side, but I can still gut them with the other. And don’t think this has anything to do with the Three Academies Medal. That was just one more disappointment among many. The truth lies elsewhere. The West has become senile. It’s not aging well — in fact, it’s just an old, paranoid pain in the ass. Its imperialistic nostalgia prevents it from admitting that the world has changed. You can’t even reason with it. And therefore it has to be euthanized…. Look, you don’t build a new building on top of an old one. You raze it to the ground, and then you start over, from the foundation up.”