Fariba Hachtroudi - The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

So I stamp my feet out here in the cold and I dream. I chant your name. My talisman. Who knows. Perhaps they’ve summoned me here to tell me it’s all over. No more questions. No more points to be clarified. No more doubts about me. Tell me there will be no more sordid detention centers for asylum seekers. No more temporary beds. No more no man’s lands where people vilify my existence. No more subhuman status. No more temporary papers. Maybe they’re going to tell me that at last I have the right to real documents that will allow me to work. To bring you over here. You’ll have no trouble finding a position that’s worthy of you. You’re so good at what you do. They’ll be blown away. You’ll be a star… I can see you running one of their research centers. I stamp my feet and daydream. Fantasies. You in my bed and me inside you. In a little while, maybe I’ll hear the magic words: Mr. 43221, your file is closed. Your case has been settled. The authorities, and God the father along with them, believe you. The appeal judge has handed down his decision: accepted! You have the right to become a citizen. The right to our documents. To our freedom. To our security. The right to live without trickery, without nightmares, terror, or the obligation to flatter anyone. The right to give the finger to the Supreme Commander, to forget him, to loathe him along with everything else. For you it’s the light at the end of the tunnel.

T urn around. Go back the way you came. Go home. Get into bed and forget him. Let him go. He can manage without a translator. I say these mantras over and over to myself when I see him outside the door to the Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons. But I keep on going. I get closer to the tall building but I don’t stop. I don’t hurry but I’ve come inexorably closer. 1 put one foot behind the other. Why? Why are my legs working independently of my will?

Yesterday I got a call from the Office. They needed a certified translator to fill in. It was urgent, said the metallic voice on the other end of the line. One last interview with an asylum seeker who’s a bit of a problem, said my interlocutor, who was not anyone I knew. I thought, he’s filling in, too. He went on, It’s a colonel from the Theological Republic. But — He interrupted me, I read your file. “Refuses to do any simultaneous translation for military or government personnel from her country of origin.” There was a silence. It lasted a few seconds. The man went on, We’ll pay you extra, double the usual amount, if you agree. Another silence. He repeated, it’s urgent. Well? I should have said no. But then I should not have hesitated for a second. No . A firm, sharp no , without prevaricating. The word no longer belongs — or shouldn’t belong — to my vocabulary, even if Yes hasn’t quite triumphed altogether. The word no , flying the colors of captivity, has all the connotations of a prison ordeal. To be avoided. Or, to be used in homeopathic doses. According to my shrink. Consequently, the word yes should automatically become one of those hymns to the glory of life which I so sorely need. Another one of the same shrink’s ideas; it seemed so stupid at first. And yet the exercise has turned out to be good for me. If I stop saying no, I no longer feel like I’m being attacked. But in this particular case I should have said no. It was a slip of the tongue. I said yes. Without knowing how or why. An unthinkable verbal slip of the most disciplined muscle in my ravaged body. Ordinarily I count to ten before I open my mouth. A lesson I learned from my dear departed grandmother, and which I practiced assiduously in the Supreme Commander’s jails. A lesson for life, basically. And which yesterday morning I forgot. To my great astonishment. I still wonder if it was really me who uttered that distinct, curt and unhesitant yes . I heard it without recognizing my own voice. It was like some robot, programmed in advance. By whom? To what aim? No idea. And here we go again. Now I can feel my legs urging me on, drawing me toward that tall man who’s hopping up and down to keep warm. He’s the soldier I’m supposed to help. I’m sure of it. Without a doubt.

I’m a few feet away from him. He’s at least two heads taller than I am. I hurry my step. Go past him. I can hear him mutter a timid good morning. I nod my head, press my lips, and punch in the code to unlock the green button for the employee interphone. I ring the bell, again punch in the numbers and letters of my ID, the magic formula which gives me access to this sanctuary of hope, “to the possibility of being.” A free individual in a society governed by the rule of law. The doors creak. I enter the building and hurry to the elevator. Sixth floor, Room 2304. Here I am. The man in charge, the department head — among colleagues they call him the big boss — greets me. He is visibly surprised. He refrains from asking any questions. This is indeed the first time I’ve agreed to an interview with an official from my country of origin, a military man on top of it. I have a quarter of an hour before I will find myself in the presence of the man I saw outside the entrance. A brute. With a massive, imposing build. Having said that, if he had been a puny little one-eyed hunchback he still would have been a barbarian. Just like the other mercenaries from a regime that tortures, terrorizes, and oppresses my compatriots, holding them hostage in their own country. I have fifteen minutes to change my mind. Fifteen minutes, or nine hundred seconds. Which is plenty of time to get out of it. I can pretend I don’t feel well, come up with a pretext, some emergency, some sudden family matter… I can’t make up my mind. I’m trying to think. In vain. My thoughts drift, and come apart as soon as they occur to me. I’m passive. I stare at the screen on my laptop, and count the passing minutes. Suddenly it comes to me in a flash. Why should I run away? If anything, this is a bad day for the big man downstairs. The presence of the big boss is not a good sign. He is the last one who questions the asylum seekers before they close the case for good. In 99.99 % of the cases the request is rejected. The thought is comforting. Enchanting. I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever it takes to eradicate the Colonel from the list of candidates for human dignity. You can count on my overzealousness, you son of a bitch.

The boss is speaking to me. Pardon? He says, Would you like to take a look at the questionnaires which I have… No. He is surprised. He knows me well enough to be astonished by such abrupt verbal velocity. There’s nothing impulsive about me. I don’t like negatives. I don’t seek out the word no and I have made this widely known. I’ve been working here for three years, and no one has ever heard me utter a categorical no . They call me Mrs. Maybe, Miss Why-Not, the we’ll-see girl… These nicknames for the interpreter with the Olympian calm suited me fine. I was proud of them. Until today. The arrival of the soldier, visibly, has changed things. The word no has invaded my repertory. The big boss asks me if everything is all right. I look at him, vacantly. He rephrases his question, he can’t help it, it goes with the job. As if I were one of those unfortunate fugitives who want to trick him so he has to trap them. Madame, is there a problem? I take a deep breath, and count to ten. I am thinking, Absolutely not. But I answer yes, unintentionally. Without batting an eyelash. This yes was not what I was thinking. This yes slipped out — the way the no did, earlier — and it frightens me. I hear it, once again, and don’t recognize my own voice. Like yesterday, when I agreed to come. I’m disconcerted. But my traitor of a voice — how phony can you get? — repeats the word yes , and follows with, I’m just a bit worried about my son. He’s sick. The boss didn’t even know I had a son. Nor did I, I feel like saying. And I feel like explaining what it’s like, to have a miscarriage in a prison cell. Prisoner 32, in solitary, Section 209 of Ravine Prison. But my voice fell silent. Fortunately. Silence at last, I think, how can you call a prison Ravine? You can never know what’s going on in the depths of the Theological Republic. You have to be locked up in there. Let the place penetrate you to the bone. But I digress. Ravine doesn’t mean a thing in my mother tongue. The cynicism of wordplay would surely enchant the jailers of the Theological Republic and the Supreme Commander. I’m sorry about your son, I hope it’s not too serious, says the boss, dubiously. I don’t answer. A self-imposed silence. A storm in my heart. Ravine! The Ravine prison, the programmed rapes. The uninterrupted beatings. Raining down from everywhere. Ravine and its incomparable torturers. Infanticides. The loss of my love child. It was surely for the best. In the order of things. The implacable logic of the footnotes of history. My own history. I probably wouldn’t have known how to love that child after Ravine. In the end I say, In fact, he’s my nephew. I love him like a son. My voice rescues me with this new lie. The big boss knows I don’t have any children, even if he doesn’t know that I cannot have any, anymore. I understand, he says, sympathetically. It’s time. Are you ready? Good. I’ll bring him in. Above all, don’t forget that the only purpose of the interview is to verify the Colonel’s prior declarations. To uncover any contradictory statements. I think, Count on me to nail that son of a whore. I nod my head.