Rawi Hage - Cockroach

LATER, I THOUGHT ABOUT how strange it was that a few years had passed since my sister’s death, and how strange it was to be lying in a distant land, half covered, half clothed, on familiar sheets and between dim walls. A hand stretched out and touched my shoulder and Shohreh asked me if I had ever killed someone.

No, I said.

Did you ever want to?

Yes, but I hesitated when I had the chance.

Tell me about it. But wait, let me turn off the light first.

And the closet looked like the bogeyman, the dresser talked to me, a coat hanger waved its short arms when I said, I never killed anyone. But I did cause the death of my sister.

Shohreh lifted her head, and despite the dark shapes in the room I saw her eyes blink at me.

How?

I told her the full story. I told her about Abou-Roro. About Tony. About my sister’s death.

And the baby? she asked. What happened to the baby?

First she moved between my mother’s house and Tony’s parents’ house. Then I heard that Tony got married again and took her away from us.

And he got away with it, just like that?

Yes, all he had to say was that my sister had had an affair. It was the war and he knew all the militiamen.

People should pay the price for their crimes.

Sometimes they don’t, I said. They just don’t.

People should pay the price, just pay the price, Shohreh said, and dropped her head on her pillow, and the bed bounced, and the bogeyman moved and the dresser sailed away like a gondola pushed by the coat hanger, singing through arches over the sewage.

Why were you so upset at the restaurant last week? I asked Shohreh. And who is the man who upset you?

It is someone who should also pay the price for his crimes.

To whom? Why?

To society, to individuals, for chance, for revenge. What does it matter?

And the individual is you?

I need some water, she said. Do you want a glass of water?

No.

Shohreh went to fetch the water, but she took so long that I got out of bed and followed her to the kitchen. The house was cold and I was half-naked. She was smoking, and she gave me a puff from her cigarette. She crushed it before it was done. Then she held my hand for the first time and walked me back to bed. Come, she said, it is cold. What was your sister’s name?

Souad, I said.

Was she pretty?

Yes, very.

Older?

Yes.

For a long time after. . after what happened to me, said Shohreh, I did not think that I would be able to touch another man. In Iran I got myself a woman as a lover, an older woman. After I was jailed and tortured, men all looked like beasts to me. Are you shocked?

No, not at all. Nothing about humans shocks me. But then, I am only half human, I said.

Half human. She laughed. What is your other half? She burst into a louder laugh. A fish? Are you a fish?

No. A cockroach.

Cockroach, she laughed again, and jumped up and put the lights on. She flipped back the bedcover and ran her hands over my thighs, my chest, all the way up my head, caressing my hair.

I do not see anything unusual about you, she said. You look perfectly human to me. Do me a favour next time you choose to be something. Be a tiger, or a pony. Why do you choose to be such a despicable creature?

I never wanted to, it just happened. I think the species chose me, I said.

Freak. You are a silly freak. Okay, cockroach, I need a favour from you. She turned serious. When that man comes again to the restaurant, I want you to call me. Actually, could you find out where he lives?

No. I am not doing anything unless you tell me why.

She paused, and then she stood up and went to the bathroom. I waited for her in bed. I heard her pulling down her underwear, crouching like a female cat, spraying like water guns. I imagined the little pool of water slowly turning yellow. She did not flush. She shut the lid on the seat because at this hour, in this stretch of wooden houses, everything can be heard. Wood is a conductor of voices and steps; wood is hospitable and considerate to insects, oblivious to water, and a support for mattresses.

Shohreh returned to bed, drank from her glass, offered me some water, then lit another cigarette, blew smoke in the air, and said: He was my jailer in Iran. I took part in the student movement during the early days of the revolution and got arrested. This man you saw eating at the restaurant, he raped me, many times. He was my jailer. I was put in a small room. I was alone for months and months. I was barely eighteen when they came to our house and said to my mother that they needed me to go with them for questioning. Just normal procedure, they assured her. They even told her that they would bring me back in a few hours. Three years passed and I was still there, in a cell as big as a coffin. I was not allowed to speak, to cry, or even to breathe. And then they tried to indoctrinate me into their fanatic religious world. A TV played twenty-four hours a day behind the backs of all of us in our little cells. We could not see it, we could only hear the voice talking about God all day and all night. I blocked it out during the first few months. Then the words started to ring in my ears like noises or music. At times I wanted to laugh at how certain words were pronounced, how the voices thickened to give listeners a clue that an important person or figure was being mentioned. Then I started to escape into my head, and my mind drifted and I recalled the faces of my family — my little brother, my mother, my cousins. Sometimes I struggled to remember their names. Then I started to look at my space like a universe — every detail of the walls, my feet, my arms. Once a fly landed on my hand, and I sat and watched it sucking my blood, I watched it gorging on my vein and its belly inflating like a balloon. I did not stop it. This is life, I thought to myself, spilling blood is part of it, and just before it flew, I hit it, I crushed it, and watched the blood, my blood, splatter on my hand.

Shohreh paused. Then she asked, Would you kill your brother-in-law if you had the chance to do it again?

I stayed silent. I did not know. What if I could not pull the trigger again? What if I turned and left again? What if I walked away and grew a beard and stayed silent for years and disappeared, took a plane, left and never came back?

Shohreh said, You understand why I think about killing?

Yes.

Why do you say yes?

I just understand because I wanted to kill someone myself.

My torturer and your brother-in-law are the same kind.

You and my sister are the same kind.

Will you help me? Shohreh asked again.

Yes.

Majeed is useless, she said. He gives up on everything. He is content with so little of life. He wants to expose that man to the media, he said. How naive! Bring him to justice. Can you imagine? What would that do? How could we prove what he did after all these years? And did you see his big car and all those men around him? He obviously has money. He has power. He probably has some kind of diplomatic immunity. He is connected here. I saw the car plate. I need a gun. Can you get me a gun?

Yes.

When?

Soon.

How much? I will pay for it.

No need. I will get it, I said.

Shohreh smiled, kissed my forehead, took a long look at me. Then we lay on our backs and we both looked up and pretended to fall sleep under the wooden ceiling and above the mattress, enveloped by smoke and the haze of our breathing.

AROUND FOUR IN THE MORNING, Shohreh woke me up. Could you take a taxi back home? I need to be alone, she said. I will pay for it. I am sorry, I am so sorry. I need to be alone, she whispered, and she cried and turned her head away because she couldn’t face my sleepy eyes, my thick eyebrows, my flat nose, my uncombed hair, my sealed lips, my interrupted nightmares.