Fariba Hachtroudi - The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

I hope to hear from the Colonel. Tomorrow means a fresh start, a new promise.

For the last twenty days I’ve been in the detention center for illegal migrants. A place where any hope of freedom is gone. Possible freedom. Potential. Hypothetical. The walls ooze with the anxiety of depressive insomniacs. The pestilential rejects of humanity, waiting to be extradited. A factory for the despondent. Men in the prime of life, twiddling their thumbs. Morning to night. The hardiest among them rebel. Shout their rage, after midnight. They won’t put up with it, they say. They’ll fight. They’ll know how to defend themselves… The most courageous among them make plans for a possible future. They get excited. Pass around a bottle of adulterated vodka. Drown themselves in it, and forget the pale nights. To hear them, you’d think all you have to do is set sail for England and the El Dorado. There are honest people smugglers… you just have to find them. A few hours spent brushing aside the bad news of the day. They have put aside the thoughts of their mates’ corpses, mates who set out on the rotting crafts of slave-ship smugglers. They thought they were honest, too.

I hear shouting in the corridor. I won’t get involved. I drift off. I am lulled by the murmur of hushed conversation. I ferment my nightmares. I miss Yuri and his stories. I tell myself I should have gone on waiting for Godot, the way he told me to, instead of venturing into the labyrinth of the secret services. Dens of spies, not something I would recommend, he used to say. Godot was the last story Yuri told me. Tonight I prefer it to the one about Achilles. I too dream of the future’s probabilities. I could slip on the part of Godot, and you’d be waiting for me, my Vima. Just one hour with you, time enough to tell you one of Yuri’s stories. To impress you. To dazzle you with all the things I’ve learned while we’ve been apart. To make love to you as if it were a fairy tale unfolding. For years you took me traveling in your Milky Way, tucked inside the sparkling Big Dipper. I wish I could tell you about the feats of Achilles. My desperate, absurd waiting… Godot, or the impossibility of the infinite present, says Yuri. I hope someday you will know how much I loved you.

W ould Vima have become the renowned scientist she is today were it not for the Colonel? Or, should I say, were it not for the Colonel’s love? His devotion?” I have just typed the question mark at the end of chapter two when I am startled by the ringing of the telephone. It’s the secretary from the Office. They need me. I have to be there in an hour at the latest. It’s a pain, but I have no choice. I am under contract for the week. I’ll be there. In an hour at the latest, she repeats. I confirm. Reassure her, irritated though I am. The book is just beginning to take shape. I find it hard to tear myself away from the computer screen. I switch it off, in a very bad temper.

The waiting room is packed. Straight away I identify my compatriots among the men squeezed together on the dilapidated bench. There is just something in their gaze, you can’t miss it… I go into the office and close the door behind me. The director, Mr. Hans, hands me two files and the day’s agenda. He says, Students in graphic design, sentenced in absentia to fifteen years in prison. They were able to get out at the last minute. Three months spent crossing Central Asia until they got to the Schengen Zone. Included in the file are copies of their caricatures representing the Commander as a fire-breathing dragon. Crime of lèse-majesté. Before you examine the files, Hans adds, read the insert on page 8 of the Posten , the news-in-brief section. It’s important. I open the newspaper. The title, in bold characters, makes my blood run cold. “Death by Drowning of Former Colonel from Theological Republic.” I skip a few lines and focus on the end. The police have now ruled out the possibility of suicide voiced at the beginning of the investigation. According to the crime squad investigator, they are dealing with a contract killing, ordered from the country of origin of the former high-ranking officer, who was seeking asylum. I put the newspaper down on the table. Try to get hold of myself. It’s freezing in here, I stammer, and I wonder if the heating hasn’t broken down. I stand up. I rub my palms together. I hope the director hasn’t noticed how my body is trembling. He says, This is the first case in series A. You know, the guy that the big boss questioned a few months ago. He asks, It was you who worked as his translator, wasn’t it? I nod. I have difficulty speaking. Breathing. I go to the restroom. Lock myself in. Drink huge amounts of water. Splash my face. Anxiety is sawing through my guts. I take a tranquilizer. Wait for it to take effect before I go back to Hans. He says, One thing’s for sure, the leader of that vile regime is behind this assassination. I don’t care one way or the other if those guys go around killing each other, but for Christ’s sake, why can’t they wash their dirty laundry in their own country? I wonder why he didn’t say “in your country.” Does he really think I belong to his country now? He concludes, We have to be very vigilant. Pay close attention to the statements of the young men who are coming in today. Reread their depositions carefully. I nod. I pretend to concentrate on the files. I leaf through them, mechanically. Surprised by my silence, he eventually asks me what I think about the whole business. I shrug. Nothing. I don’t think anything about it. And yet I would like to ask him why they did not offer him protection. And add, Aren’t we also at fault, to some degree? Yes, I would say we — including myself in the Office — to pretend to belong. But I say nothing. I bite my tongue. He wouldn’t understand. The no that is screaming inside me fills my lungs. Hans says no more about it. He calls in one of the two graphic design students. He is young, handsome, anxious. He sits down where the Colonel once sat. He spells his first and last name. Familiar sounds harmonizing so well with the echo of the no which persists all through the interview. The no which is burrowing deeper and deeper inside me. I listen, I translate, I transcribe. Like a robot. Just as I did with the Colonel. In this same room. After three hours of extreme tension I leave the place. Completely drained. Depressed. With this no throbbing, refusing to let go. The sky is low, the air is heavy. On the street corner I buy the evening papers and go into the first café I find in the shopping mall next to the building. The Colonel’s death is not mentioned in any of the papers other than the Posten , which I have folded into my backpack. I drink my second coffee straight down, with a splash of brandy. I buy some running shoes in a sporting goods store. I run all the way home. There is nothing better than a marathon to deal with overexcited nerves.

After a freezing shower I curl up in bed under the covers and read the insert in the Posten at least a dozen times. Backwards, from bottom to top. Which gives: “drowning by murder… country our in asylum political requesting was.” I would like to rid myself of words. The scandalous, inadmissible verb. Thus the act which is said to have occurred would be canceled out, given the absurdity and confusion of the statement. It’s a subterfuge that takes me back to my early childhood. During those long winter nights when my grandmother was teaching me the secrets of the how the world was created from the mouth of the Goddess Atahina. By uttering the names of things she made them appear. She said ocean. Then land. Then man. And in that way she created the world and all the creatures that inhabit it. Do you understand, my little one? Then she wrote down everything she wanted to keep in this world. Tell me, grandmother, if I write ocean and then erase it, will I make the ocean disappear? Try another word, rather. Take “cruelty,” for example. That will surely work. Then you will be allowed into the country of kind people. It’s the nicest country in the world! Tell me, grandmother, what word would you suggest today? Yield. Accept. Let go. Stop shouting no. Put an end to its vibrations, they’ll drive you mad. There is no longer anything admirable about that sterile no , powerless in the face of what is irreversible. It’s pitiful. Del won’t ever be coming back. The Colonel is dead. He had warned me, after all. He knew, and so did I, that the men in power would eventually get him. For an assassin, even a reluctant one, there is no escape. And a traitor on top of it. I take a pill. Sleep. That’s the only remedy. My nightmare is full of words. The words in the article: drowning, murder, contract killers, agent, theological republic, asylum. And other, older words. Those that are embedded in my soul. Words the goddess said, without my knowing it. Words that cannot be removed with the simple rubbing of an eraser. Del, love, hope, reunite, abandon, betrayal, pain, nostalgia. Words with sad or laughing eyes, terrified or indifferent. The Colonel’s, Del’s, my mother’s, my father’s. The glazed eyes of dead fish.