Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

“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.

“You’re caught between two worlds, Mohammed. It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in. We’re in the midst of a clash of civilizations. You’re going to have to decide which camp you’re in.”

“I’m my own camp.”

“That’s so pretentious! You can’t be your own camp; all you can do is isolate yourself.”

“You’re never alone if you’re moving toward the light.”

“Like Icarus, you mean, or maybe like a moth? What light?”

“The light of my conscience. No shadow can obscure it.”

Jalal stops short and watches the novelist walk away. When Seen pushes open the double doors that lead to the lobby, the doctor starts after him but then changes his mind and lets his hands fall to his sides. “You’re still in the anal stage of awareness, Mohammed,” Jalal cries out. “A world’s on the march and you’re cross-examining yourself. They won’t give you a thing, not a thing! Those crumbs they let you have? One day, they’ll take them back! You’ll get nothing, I tell you, nothing, nothing….”

The swinging doors close with a squeak. The sound of the writer’s footsteps fades and then disappears, absorbed by the carpet in the lobby.

Dr. Jalal grabs his head with both hands and mutters an unintelligible curse.

“Do you want me to blow his brains out?” I ask.

He glares at me savagely. “Leave him alone!” he says. “There’s more to life than that.”

Dr. Jalal hasn’t emerged unscathed from his encounter with the writer. He seldom rises before noon, and at night I can hear him pacing in his room. According to Shakir, Jalal has called off the lecture he’d been scheduled to give at the University of Beirut, canceled several interviews with the press, and made no further progress on the book he was about to finish.

I don’t see how a scholar of his stature could be flustered by a servile scribbler. Dr. Jalal’s an eloquent man, a man with great rhetorical powers. The thought of such a genius allowing himself to be caught off guard by a vulgar hack disgusts me.

This afternoon, he’s slouched like a sack in an armchair, his back to the reception desk. His cigarette’s dying a slow death, leaving behind a little stick of ash. Staring at the blank television screen, his legs outspread, his arms hanging down over the arms of his chair, he looks like a battered boxer slumping on a stool.

He doesn’t glance over at me. On the table beside him, some empty beer bottles accompany a glass of whiskey. The ashtray is brimming with butts.

I leave the lobby. In the hotel restaurant, I order a grilled steak, fried potatoes, and a green salad. The doctor fails to appear. I wait for him, my eyes riveted on the door. My coffee gets cold. The waiter clears my dishes and takes down my room number. No one comes through the restaurant door.

I return to the lobby. The doctor’s in the same place as before, but now he’s leaning his head on the back of his chair and staring at the ceiling. I don’t dare approach him. And I don’t dare go up to my room. I step out into the street and lose myself in the crowd.

Shakir slaps his hands together forcefully when he sees me come in. He’s sitting on the sofa in my suite, as white as a candle. “I looked everywhere for you,” he says.

“I went for a walk on the esplanade and lost track of the time.”

“You could have called, dammit. One more hour and I was going to raise the alarm. We were supposed to meet here at five o’clock.”

“I told you: I lost track of the time.”

Shakir restrains himself from jumping on me. My composure exasperates him, and my lack of concern fills him with rage. He raises his hands and tries to calm himself. Then he reaches down to the floor, picks up a little cardboard folder, and hands it to me. “Your airplane tickets, your passport, and your university documents. Your flight to London leaves the day after tomorrow, at ten past six in the evening.”

Without opening the folder, I place it on the night table.

“Something wrong?” he inquires.

“Why do you always ask me the same question?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Have I complained about anything?”

Shakir puts his hands on his thighs and stands up. He looks red-eyed and sleep-deprived. “We’re both tired,” he says, still furious. “Try to rest. I’ll come by tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. We’re going to the clinic. Don’t eat or drink anything beforehand.”