Fariba Hachtroudi - The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

I stare at the Colonel’s knees. They are quivering imperceptibly. The left knee is actually trembling. He grabs his knees with his scarlet hands, which are swollen at the joints. He has pudgy fingers. Gnarled knuckles. His broad hands with their cracked skin calm his knees. The trembling stops. His fingers relax. The Colonel crosses his legs and shoves his hands into his pockets. Please proceed, says the boss.

I went to the front at the age of seventeen. The war had just broken out. I was a volunteer like hundreds of other guys from our village. My brother was at the head of a regiment of the Army of the Lord. That was how we had to refer to the Theological Republic’s brand-new army. We were all proud to be soldiers for the Supreme Commander, the new leader. The country had just been attacked by our heathen neighbor. We were defending our fatherland and the new regime which the Lord had blessed. We believed in it. I fought like a dog. Like my brother, who was my model. Like my cousins and thousands of others, while the country burned. We had faith in our superiors in those days. The faith of dogs, who had volunteered for martyrdom — that was our only fuel. Cold, hunger, a lack of ammunition, of sleep, of human warmth: nothing discouraged us. I picked up five medals for heroism, after one year of combat under conditions you simply cannot imagine. With a handful of other young guys, as crazy as I was, we liberated several villages the enemy had invaded. I was their leader. I was all of seventeen, commanding a regiment of rookie soldiers in rags. Scarecrows as stubborn as we were. Peasants, workers, farmers, all followed us, armed with hunting rifles or their bare hands. The dirty war went on for years. But in the end we got rid of the enemy. At the cost of huge sacrifices. While the rich kids in the capital were fleeing the country to avoid their military service, tramps like us were having their brains blown out. I would not disown those years of brotherly abnegation for anything on earth. Do you hear me? Not for anything on earth. Things went downhill after that. I have to agree. But I’ll say it again, because you like to hear me repeat my life story, I am proud of the years I spent fighting.

I returned from the front as an officer, ahead of my time because of my exemplary conduct during the holy defense decreed by the Commander, and I was taken on in an elite corps of the territorial Army. I rose rapidly through the ranks. I was good with weapons, and specialized in engines of war and the latest technology. During a competition I was noticed. It was fairly sophisticated equipment, I’ll warrant you that. I obtained the first prize and, the following year, a prize for excellence. Since you want me to repeat it to you, I will confirm that I can dismantle all sorts of automatic weapons with my eyes closed, as well as all any number of robots and control and espionage gadgets. Two months after the second competition, I was hired as a trainer for section K in the Army, a sort of holy of holies directly connected not to the staff but to the Residence of the Supreme Commander, head of the armed forces. When was that? You know very well, it’s written in black and white in the files piled up there in front of you. In the year 2000. Who was I training? As you already know, it’s in the signed deposition, and I’ve already told you a hundred times. Officers from our regiments and foreign volunteers. From fraternal countries. What’s that? Yes, they were volunteers, destined for outside operations. I beg your pardon? How do you want me to refer to them? I’m trying to be precise. That’s all your colleagues ever say. Be precise. Back there, these candidates were destined for martyrdom, they were our brothers in arms, valiant combatants in the service of God. They came from neighboring countries but also from Africa. There were a few Westerners, too. Quite a few, actually. The leaders pampered these neophyte apprentices. We were told they were going to help their countries cast off the yoke of heresy and decadence. Having said that, if you prefer I can use your regulation terminology — they were terrorists, jihadists, converted crusaders or… Shall I go on? Can we talk about something else? My promotions! The first one was in the winter of 2003, when the Supreme Commander made a surprise visit to our base. He noticed me and hired me on the spot. I was transferred to one of the top secret services in the Army. Top-level Security. In other words, the Gordian Knot of Intelligence, under the control of the Supreme Commander, the most powerful, most feared person in the country. Since 2005, thirty thousand people, directly in the service of the Commander’s Residence, have been governing every authority in the country and the eighty million souls under its rule. Yes, my life was turned upside down that day. I thought the day was blessed. In fact it was the most accursed day of my life. To be in the service of the Supreme Commander means completely putting your past behind you. Your identity. Your feelings. Your beliefs. To be in the service of the Supreme Commander you have to accept graciously that your duties are the only rights you can claim as your own. The first duty, a sacred one, is absolute obedience to the absolute Master. The relation of cause and effect is clearly established from day one. Those who work at the Residence go behind the mirror the moment they cross the threshold into that nest of vipers. Any individual incorporated into the Commander’s inner circle is no longer his own person. We were subjected to the regime of the Three Fs+S. S for self-sacrifice when the commander required it, and the three F s were, in order of importance, absolute faith, absolute fidelity, and absolute falsification. Faith and fidelity toward the Circle and those who were close to the Commander. Falsification where everyone else was concerned, the outsiders. Everyone else we were supposed to control, beyond the walls of our forbidden city. I would learn to lead a secret life in the bosom of my own family. What would you call this? Schizophrenia? Multiple personality disorder?

For a fraction of a second I can see Yuri in the place of the guy giving me the third degree. I’m thinking, Filthy cop, but I say I don’t really understand these scholarly words. I add that I went along with it all the best I could. My life was unfolding in a closed circuit. I would change my identity the way I changed my shirt. As far as my family was concerned, I was a businessman. It was the explanation for my sudden fortune, it justified the extravagant salary deposited every month into the account of the director — who happened to be me — of a front that belonged to the Circle. I moved into a magnificent house, with garden, swimming pool, and all the trimmings. I lived like a prince. But in a permanent state of anxiety. The Residence was worse than the Army. Any discussion outside the order of the day was off-topic. Questions were forbidden, dangerous. We all tried to outdo each other when it came to showing our loyalty to the Commander. It was a contest in obsequiousness. We reveled in our degradation. But I didn’t want to get my hands dirty… I beg your pardon? You want me to repeat that? I told you I didn’t want to get my hands dirty. That’s right, sir. You want me to explain? And yet it’s simple, I never killed anyone. Never, do you hear me? Except as a soldier in the field of battle. You’re at liberty not to believe me. What did you say? I was training others to kill? Not at all, sir. I was training people how to use combat materiel and cutting-edge technology. Those were my fields of expertise. You want me to remind you whom I was training? You want to know whether the volunteers from other countries were potential suicide bombers? The kind who blow themselves up on buses and subways and kill innocent people? Could be. To be exact, I would even say definitely! Are you satisfied? But it wasn’t my remit to keep up with what those guys got up to once their training was over. No, that wasn’t my problem. It was their problem and that of their hierarchical superiors in the operational sector. It wasn’t my signature authorizing their missions. What? What do you mean afterwards? What was my remit? You have it in the miles of paperwork there before your eyes. Twice I was put in charge of the so-called sensitive personnel. In other words: I trained the personal guards for the Supreme Commander’s inner circle. Then I joined the exclusive committee of the Commander’s personal representatives. In charge of security in penal institutions. It was my job to renovate and oversee the technological installations. As the Commander’s representative I automatically became the coordinator between Military Security and Intelligence. In fact, the Commander wanted to clean up both of those mammoth administrations before absorbing them into the top-level sector at the Residence. My role would be to oversee the drastic purges within these organisms. This decision was a consequence of the growing number of spectacular escapes by political prisoners who were considered a risk to the system. There was a scandal when a former highly placed official, now disgraced, escaped from Ravine. In broad daylight. It triggered a crisis among the country’s leaders. Because an escape necessarily implies complicity among the personnel. At the top of the ladder, it goes without saying. In other words, those who have the right keys. The prisons of the Theological Republic, reputed to be the best-protected places on earth, had become regular sieves. My job consisted in beefing up the security of the installations. Padlocking the bastions of power. Making them impregnable, the way they’d been in the past. The way they should be. The technical aspect was child’s play. Unmasking the traitors, the scum who were responsible, that was another story. I could turn a blind eye to the trafficking, which the guards organized, of drugs, medications, books, or pencils, why not. But to allow the escape of traitors or political prisoners who were viewed as terrorists — never again.