“With what? Plastic explosives, booby-trapped packages, spectacular crashes. Vandals don’t build; they destroy. We have to take responsibility, Jalal. We have to learn to suffer low blows and injustices from those we consider our allies. We have to transcend our rage. It’s a question of humanity’s future. What can our disillusions weigh in comparison with the threat hanging over the world? They didn’t treat you decently; I don’t deny it—”
“Nor you, either. Remember?”
“Is that a valid reason for deciding the fate of nations — the obnoxious conceit of a handful of Templars?”
“In my view, those dim-witted Christian warriors are the incarnation of all the arrogance the West displays toward us.”
“You forget your disciples, your colleagues, all the thousands of European students whom you taught and who disseminate what you taught them, even today. That’s what counts, Jalal. To hell with recognition if it’s granted by people who can’t hold a candle to you. According to Jonathan Swift, ‘When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.’ It’s always been the way of the world. But your triumph consists in the knowledge you bequeath to others and in the minds you enlighten. It’s not possible that you can turn your back on so much joy and satisfaction and embrace instead the jealousy of a band of unthinking fanatics.”
“Obviously, Mohammed, you’ll never understand. You’re too nice, and you’re too hopelessly naïve. I’m not getting revenge; I’m laying claim to my genius, my integrity, my right to be tall and handsome and appreciated. You think I’m going to accept exclusion, or erase the memory of so many years of ostracism and intellectual despotism and ignorant segregation? Not a chance. Those days are gone. I’m a professor emeritus—”
“You used to be, Jalal. You aren’t anymore. Now that you’re on the obscurantist faculty, you’re proving both to your former students and to the people who wounded you that you’re not worth very much after all.”
“They’re not worth very much to me, either. The exchange rate they charged me is no longer current. I’m my own unit of measurement. My own stock market. My own dictionary. I made the decision to revise and redefine everything I knew. To prescribe my own truths. The time of bowing and scraping is over. If we want to straighten up the world, the spineless have to go. We have the means of our insurrection. We’ve stopped being dupes, and we’re not hiding anymore. In fact, we’re crying out from the rooftops that the West is nothing but a crude hoax, a sophisticated lie. All its seductiveness is false, like a cheap, fancy dress. Underneath, it’s not such a turn-on. Believe me, Mohammed. The West isn’t a suitable match for us. We’ve listened and listened to its lullabies, but now we’ve slept long enough. Once upon a time, the West could amuse itself by defining the world as it saw fit. It called indigenous men ‘natives’ and free men ‘savages.’ It made and unmade mythologies according to its own good pleasure and raised its charlatans to divine rank. Today, the offended peoples have recovered their power of speech. They have some words to say. And our weapons say exactly the same thing.”
The writer claps his hands together. “You’re out of your mind, Jalal. For God’s sake, come back to earth! Your place isn’t with people who kill and massacre and terrorize. And you know it! I know you know it. I listened to you closely the day before yesterday. Your lecture was pathetic, and I never caught so much as a glimpse of the sincerity you used to display back when you were fighting for the triumph of restraint over anger. Back when you wanted violence, terrorism, and the misery they bring to be banished from the earth—”
“Enough!” The doctor explodes. “If you like being a doormat for worthless cretins, that’s your business. But don’t come and tell me how delightful it is. You’re living on a manure pile, goddamn it! I can tell shit when I smell it! It stinks, and so do you, you and your simpering recommendations! Let me tell you what’s clear. The West doesn’t love us. It will never love you, not even you. It will never carry you in its heart, because it doesn’t have one, and it will never exalt you, because it looks down on you. Do you want to remain a miserable bootlicker, a servile Arab, a raghead with privileges? Do you want to keep hoping for what they’re incapable of giving you? Okay. Suffer in silence and wait. Who knows? Maybe a scrap will fall out of one of their trash bags. But don’t bore me with your shoeshineboy theories, ya waled. I know perfectly well what I want and where I’m going.”
Mohammed Seen raises his arms in surrender, gathers up his overcoat, and stands up. I hastily withdraw.
As I go down the stairs, I can hear the two of them coming down after me. Jalal’s hollering at the writer. “‘I offer them the moon on a silver tray. All they see is a flyspeck on the tray. How can you expect them to take a bite of the moon?’ You wrote that.”
“Leave my work out of it, Jalal.”
“Why so bitter, Mr. Seen? Is that an admission of defeat? Why does a magnanimous man like you have to suffer? It’s because they refuse to recognize your true value. They call your rhetoric ‘bombastic’ and reduce your dazzling flights to imprudent ‘stylistic liberties.’ That’s the injustice I’m fighting against, that dismissive glance they deign to bend upon our magnificence — that’s what has me up in arms. Those people must realize the wrong they do us. They must understand that if they persist in spitting on the best we have, they’ll have to make do with the worst. It’s as simple as that.”
“The intellectual world’s the same everywhere: shady and deceitful. It’s a sort of underworld, but without scruples and without a code of honor. It spares neither its own nor others. If it’s any consolation to you, I’m more controversial and hated among my own people than I am anywhere else. It’s said that no one’s a prophet in his own country. I would add, ‘And no one’s a master in foreign lands.’ No one is honored as a prophet in his own country or as a master anywhere else. My salvation comes from that revelation: I want to be neither a master nor a prophet. I’m only a writer who tries to put some of his spirit into his novels for those who may wish to receive it.”
“Which means you’re satisfied with crumbs.”
“I am, Jalal. Completely. I’d rather be satisfied with nothing than mess up everything. As long as my sorrow doesn’t impoverish anyone, it enriches me. There’s no wretch like the wretch who chooses to bring misfortune where he should bring life. I could lie awake dwelling on my bad luck or my friends’ grief, but the darkness makes me dream.”
They catch up with me in the corridor on the ground floor. I pretend to have just come out of the men’s room. They’re so absorbed by their intellectuals’ squabble that they walk past without noticing me.