Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

“I have some health problems,” I say stupidly.

“Big ones, it seems. What are you suffering from that makes you have to take all this?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

Dr. Jalal picks up a few boxes, turns them over in his hand, reads the names of the medications out loud, as though they were some unintelligible graffiti, and peruses one or two fact sheets. With furrowed brow, he ponders several bottles, shaking them and rattling the pills they contain. “Have you by any chance had a transplant?” he asks.

“Exactly,” I say, saved by his guess.

“Kidney or liver?”

“Please, I’d rather not talk about it.”

To my great relief, he puts the bottles back in their place and returns to the sofa. “In any case,” he remarks, “you seem to be in good shape.”

“That’s because I follow the prescriptions rigorously. I’m going to have to take those medications for the rest of my life.”

“I know.”

To change the subject, I say, “May I ask you an indiscreet question?”

“Is it about my mother’s…activities?”

“I wouldn’t think of such a thing.”

“I discussed her escapades at length in an autobiographical work. She was a whore, no different from whores everywhere. My father knew it and kept quiet. I felt more contempt for him than for her.”

I’m embarrassed.

At last, he asks, “So what’s your ‘indiscreet’ question?”

“It’s one you’ve probably been asked hundreds of times.”

“Yes?”

“You used to be the scourge of the jihadis. Now you’re their spokesman. How did that happen?”

He bursts out laughing and relaxes. Obviously, he doesn’t mind addressing this subject. He clasps his hands behind his neck and stretches grossly; then he licks his lips, his face suddenly turns serious, and he begins his tale. “Sometimes things dawn on you when you least expect them. Like a revelation. All of a sudden, you can see clearly, and the little details you hadn’t figured into your calculations take on an extraordinary dimension…. I was in a bubble. No doubt, my hatred for my mother blinded me to such a degree that everything connecting me to her repulsed me, even my blood, my country, my family. The truth is, I was the West’s ‘nigger,’ nothing more. They had spotted my flaws. The honors and requests they flooded me with were the instruments of my subjugation. I was asked to speak on every television panel imaginable. If a bomb went off somewhere, pretty soon I was up in front of the microphones and the footlights. My words conformed to Westerners’ expectations. I was a comfort to them. I said what they wanted to hear, what they would have said themselves had I not been there to relieve them of that task and the hassles that went with it. I fit them, so to speak, like a glove. Then, one day, I arrived in Amsterdam, a few weeks after a Muslim had murdered a Dutch filmmaker because of a blasphemous documentary that showed a naked woman covered with verses from the Qur’an. You must have heard about this affair.”

“Vaguely.”

Dr. Jalal makes a face and goes on. “As a rule, there was standing room only, and not much of that, in the university hall where I spoke. This time, however, there were many empty seats, and the people who had made the effort to come were there to see the filthy beast up close. Their hatred was written on their faces. I was no longer Dr. Jalal, their ally, the man who defended their values and what they thought of as democracy. Forget about all that. In their eyes, I was only an Arab, the spitting image of the Arab who murdered the filmmaker. They had changed radically, those pioneers of modernity, the most tolerant and emancipated people in Europe. There they were, displaying their racism like a trophy. As far as they were concerned, from that point on, all Arabs were terrorists, and what was I? Dr. Jalal, the sworn enemy of the fundamentalists, the target of fatwas, who worked his ass off for them — what was I? In their eyes, I was a traitor to my nation, which made me doubly contemptible. And that’s when I experienced a kind of illumination. I realized what a dupe I’d been, and I especially realized where my true place was. And so I packed my bags and returned to my people.”

Having got all that off his chest, he withdraws into somber silence. I’m afraid my indiscretion has touched a particularly sensitive spot and opened a wound he’d like to let heal.

After dozing off on the sofa, Dr. Jalal finally leaves, and I hasten to remove my medications from sight. I’m furious at myself. What was I thinking? Even a dimwit would have been astounded at the giant battery of medicine bottles crowded onto my night table. Did Dr. Jalal suspect anything? Why, contrary to all expectation, did he come to my room? I didn’t think he was in the habit of visiting other guests. Except for when he’s getting drunk by himself in the bar, he’s almost never to be seen in the corridors of the hotel. Moreover, he’s generally sullen and aloof and returns neither smiles nor greetings. The hotel staff avoids him, because he’s liable to fly into an awful rage over some triviality. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure he knows nothing about the purpose of my sojourn in Beirut. He’s in Lebanon to give his lectures; I’m here for reasons that are top secret. Why did he join me yesterday on the terrace, when he’s a man who abhors company?

I intrigue him; there’s no doubt about it.

I take a lot of medication. For three solid days after my arrival in Beirut, various physicians examined me, evaluated me, sounded my depths, and drew my blood, assiduously passing me back and forth between scan machines and cardiographs. After being pronounced sound of body and mind, I was introduced to a certain Professor Ghany, the only person authorized to decide whether or not I would be sent on the mission. He’s a wiry old gentleman, dry as a cudgel, with a nimbus of thick, stringy hair surrounding his head. He subjected me to countless tests — some to determine what products I might be allergic to, others to prepare my body to resist possible rejection phenomena — and then he gave me my many prescriptions. Sayed informed me that Professor Ghany’s a virologist, but he’s also active in other scientific fields; a gray eminence without peer, Sayed says, almost a magician, who worked for decades in the most prestigious American research institutions before being kicked out because he was an Arab and a Muslim.

Until yesterday, everything was proceeding normally. Shakir picked me up and took me to a private clinic north of the city. He waited for me in the car until the consultations were over, and then he drove me back to the hotel. No questions asked.

Dr. Jalal’s intrusion troubles me. Ever since he left, I can’t stop going over our few encounters. Where did I make my mistake? When did I first arouse his curiosity? Did someone around me blow my cover? “I hope you’re going to give it to them good and hard, those bastards.” What was that supposed to mean? Who authorized him to address me in such a fashion?

Summoned, apparently, by my distress, Shakir finds me pondering these mysteries. “Is anything wrong?” he asks as he closes the door behind him.

I’m stretched out on the sofa. The rain has stopped at last, but from outside you can hear the swishing sound of vehicles driving through water. In the sky, thick brown clouds are gathering, preparing for the next downpour.

Shakir grabs a chair and straddles it backward. He’s not as young as I thought, thirty or so, handsome and jovial, with broad shoulders, a stubborn chin, and long hair pulled back in an austere ponytail. He must be nearly six feet tall. His blue eyes have a mineral luster, and their gaze is a little vague as they settle here and there, as though his head were somewhere else. I bonded with Shakir the moment I shook his hand, back on the Syrian border, when Sayed consigned me to him and Imad, who then brought me clandestinely into Lebanon. It’s true that Shakir doesn’t talk very much, but he knows how to be there. We can stand side by side and look at the same thing without exchanging a word.