Nancy came suddenly into the restaurant. She was wearing a short denim skirt and a pink blouse, the top button of which was undone. She was accompanied by Faris Hassan, who was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing last time: a light brown linen jacket and a pair of khaki trousers with lots of pockets. They came over and embraced me. After the waiter had managed to bring some chairs, they sat down at our table. Nancy sat next to me, while Faris Hassan sat opposite. She smiled at me with her green eyes and her fair-skinned, rosy face. She pushed the hair away from her eyes and said abruptly, ‘You have work, black writer!’
‘So, what is it?’ I asked. I also asked her in a whisper if that idiot, referring to Faris Hassan, was in the know.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘a major Iraqi composer has been killed in mysterious circumstances in Al-Mansour in Baghdad. We want a full report on his murder for US Today News. We also want a book for the Press Cooperation Agency.’
‘Kamal Medhat?’ I asked.
‘You know him?’
‘As a violinist he’s very famous. As for his murder, I just read about it in the papers. Give me some information and tell me what you need exactly, and I’ll do the report.’
‘There’s something else I need to tell you …’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘This idiot that you hate so much will be going with you.’
‘Out of the question. I won’t do it, no way!’ I said.
‘It won’t be possible otherwise. I know what you’ve always thought of him, but …’
‘Believe me, I can’t work with that ass. Impossible!’
‘But he was the one who turned up important information.’
‘What kind of information could that numbskull have that nobody else knows about?’
‘It’s a long story. The three of us will meet tomorrow to discuss the whole thing.’
‘You discuss it with him. Please leave me out of it.’
‘Please listen to me and don’t let your thick head get in the way!’
‘Work with that donkey?’ I said, while the donkey guffawed and talked to the American in his sickening English accent.
Nancy worked for a news analysis agency, or what is usually referred to as a press cooperation agency. On this occasion, she was looking for a short newspaper feature, to be followed by a book, about an intriguing personality. We started talking about various other things, without mentioning the important topic I’d come to Amman to discuss. Instead, she spoke to me in the way that other journalists did in those days, starting with a question to which she knew the answer, before getting to the crux of the matter:
‘Have you ever worked in Sudan?’
‘I’ve been there a couple of times,’ I said.
Then she told me about her experience of spending a whole year in Darfur.
‘Does the Middle East situation frighten you?’ It was a question she might have posed to a politician. She went on to say that what terrified her was the fact that Middle Eastern countries were on the brink of disintegration and collapse or might splinter into pieces. But before she could finish what she was saying, a waiter came to take our order.
We drank some more while Nancy talked and Faris looked at me from time to time, without speaking. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, nervously pulled one out and lit it with a match which he shook to put out the flame. Then he carelessly threw the matchstick away, not bothering whether it landed in the ashtray or not. He placed his glass of Scotch in front of him, took a quick sip and put it down again. When he spoke he would look you directly in the eye, and when he discussed something, he would not allow his interlocutor to finish a point. That had been my first impression of him. What was more important, however, was related to work: the way he wrote his reports.
I loathed his reports. He exaggerated so much in an attempt to draw attention to what he was saying. He hadn’t the least sympathy for the people who were suffering from the devastating effects of war. He wrote in order to demonstrate his total mastery of his subject, however cruel. In fact, he wrote about people with utter disdain, caring little for people’s feelings, especially his readers. He often lingered over rough, bloody, cruel and callous scenes. Whenever he talked about what was happening in Iraq, he would speak in a loud voice as he drank and laughed.
For example, he once mentioned an Iraqi soldier he’d found lying on the floor with his ribcage crushed. He described the intestines spilling out of the stomach like spaghetti between his fingers, with an eyeball lying a metre or so from the body. This was how he’d described an image of war, totally unconcerned about its impact on others. He never left a scene of carnage, be it an explosion in a market or the aftermath of a battle, without taking a photograph. He didn’t mind photographing scattered, charred bodies, plastic shoes strewn all over the place, blood coagulating on the asphalt or human guts that resembled the shreds of food. He simply stood there and took the shot.
I knew little about his love life, although everyone knew he was having a relationship with a Brazilian girl called Paola, who worked for a local TV channel in Sao Paolo. She was a very tall mixed-race woman, with a strong, young body that was always in a state of arousal. I saw them together more than once, in Damascus, in Beirut, and in Amman. After 2003, I saw them together in Baghdad, where they’d created a furore at the hotel where we were staying because he didn’t care where they made love. In spite of the state of unrest in Iraq during the war, the widespread insurgency, violence and murder, the formation of political parties and societies, and the overall chaos, he used to take her to the nearest bathroom to make love.
The first time I sat at a table with him was at Katania House in Damascus, where he was drinking Scotch non-stop and lecturing a group of lodgers about his earliest sexual experience. It was when he’d been a soldier at the front. Although I hadn’t heard the story from the beginning, I caught up with it in the middle. He said the woman had seemed submissive as she went down the stairs with him. He was using his torch to show her where to tread. After a few moments, he started running the torchlight over her body. The light on her dark thighs filled him with desire. When she’d raised her dress again on her way down the stairs, he’d touched her thigh with his hand. She’d sworn at him softly, with two words intended to arouse him. He was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable desire to possess her, and he pressed himself against her. Because there was space only for two people and his torch was pointing down, he reached out to touch her body. She let herself glide towards him, her hands on his shoulders. She didn’t seem to be at all distressed; in fact, her smile had broadened invitingly. Rather than pulling back, she touched his neck and drew her face towards his. Swallowing his saliva, he devoured her with his gaze. She reached down with her hand and undid first the top button of his trousers, then the next. With his own hand he explored her body underneath her raised dress. It felt warm and soft, and quivered at the touch of his fingers. His breath became shorter as she leaned against the wall and pulled him towards her.
This was all I had to go on about the journalist that I was supposed to work with.
I took refuge in my room at the Select. It was small and clean and located on the upper floor of the hotel. It looked out onto a wide courtyard that had a huge, old pine tree in the middle. I sat by the window, staring at a beautiful church located two streets away. I opened my laptop and wrote a couple of paragraphs, inspired by my latest meeting with Nancy. But I was in total despair; I was afraid to miss this opportunity. It wasn’t money that I was concerned with this time. I love this kind of work, but I was waiting for a better time to write a novel and also hoping it might prove both successful and financially rewarding. If it also got translated in the West, it might turn out to be a good source of income for me. But I still haven’t managed to write it. The reason is mainly to do with my work as a journalist, but also because my connections and friendships with journalists and documentary film-makers were much stronger than those with writers. If truth be told, I hated the dead look on writers’ faces and the lifelessness of poets. I couldn’t stomach talking to literary figures, who sat in smoke-filled cafés, puffing on hookahs and speaking in hoarse voices about semiotics and structuralism. I couldn’t stand their boring, incomprehensible babble.