Rabee Jaber - The Mehlis Report

He presses a button on the remote control. The news from the Rotana channel: Some artist is traveling to. He presses the button again. The weather in North America. What’s the temperature in Baltimore? He changes the channel as he starts to doze off. It’s a movie he’s seen before. Without realizing it, he falls asleep. The remote still in his hand on the edge of the sofa, Saman Yarid is fast asleep.

His cell phone wakes him. He opens his eyes and picks up the phone. It’s Roger’s number. It’s past one in the afternoon. How long has he been asleep? Four hours. He’s thirsty. Parched. He lets the phone ring and heads to the kitchen. He stands in front of the water cooler and drinks three full cups, spilling some on his shirt as he gulps it down. It’s as if he’s just crossed the Sahara. What’s this thirst? He keeps on drinking, but still feels empty. Then he notices he’s hungry as well. Horribly hungry.

He calls Oil & Thyme and orders three manakish sandwiches: one with thyme, one with cheese, and one with yogurt and bulgur. He could eat a whole sheep right now.

This is an exception to his diet. He doesn’t usually eat such heavy food. But he’s hungrier than he’s been in a long time. What’s this hunger? If it weren’t for mad cow disease, he’d have ordered minced meat as well.

It doesn’t take long for the food to arrive. He makes some tea while waiting for the food. And as the tea is steeping, he opens the fridge and looks at the bottles of milk (“Dairy Day” brand — skim), and at the cartons of yogurt and labneh cheese (“Tanayel Farms”), and at a circle of kashkawane cheese (“Hungary”). The bread’s in the freezer, as hard as ice. As he thinks about taking out the bread, the doorbell rings. The boy with the food says traffic slowed him down. It’s only a few yards from the Nasra district to Ghandour al-Saad Street, but traffic was backed up. So many cars, such a big mess. The food is six thousand liras. Saman gives him a ten-thousand-lira bill and tells him to keep the change. The boy thanks him happily, goes back out through the garden, closing the iron gate behind him, and then climbs onto a small motorcycle.

His cell phone rings again while he’s eating the thyme manakish and drinking some tea (by now his hunger is receding: he’s already devoured the hot cheese manakish ). He looks at the number and sees a “22” area code. What’s this dark number that keeps calling him? His fingers are oily, but he rubs them off with a Kleenex and picks up the phone. The caller hangs up the very same instant. Calling the number back won’t work. He’s tried that before. This dark nonexistent number. When he dials it a voice in French tells him he has the wrong number, the number does not exist. But how can it call him if it doesn’t exist? And how does it appear on the screen? The landline rings as he sips his tea. He’s not going to get up. He doesn’t want to answer the phone. Who’s calling this time? They’d call his cell if it were something important. There’s a report about the Pyramids of Giza on the TV. He switches to a sports channel: a soccer match from the English Premier League, an old one in black and white. They’re wearing old uniforms. Long shorts that extend below the knees. And their haircuts are strange. A rolling ball, and men running after it. Quick movements. Were they quicker back then? The cell phone rings. It’s Roger’s number.

Roger says he tried calling him at the office, and that Rania (one of the two women who work there) said he had called in the morning to say he was taking a day off.

“Are you sick?”

Saman says he didn’t sleep enough last night.

Roger asks him where he is.

At home, he replies.

Why didn’t you pick up the phone then? he asks. He laughs and asks what he’s doing.

Saman says he’s eating.

“At home?”

He says everyone does that, not just him.

Roger asks what he’s eating.

“ Manakish ,” Saman replies. “And I’m drinking tea.”

“ Manakish ? At this hour?”

Saman says he just woke up.

“OK. How about grabbing dinner tonight?”

Saman says he has plans with Cecilia. But they’re not getting together until nine, and he could see Roger before that.

“I’ll call you later and we’ll figure it out,” Roger says, and hangs up.

There’s a program about the American intelligence agency on TV. His finger hurts from pressing the button on the remote so much — he’d been flipping through the channels while Roger was speaking. He tosses the remote on the sofa and polishes off the thyme sandwich. Porter Goss, the director of the CIA, has a 570-acre farm in the middle of Virginia. He raises cattle and sheep and poultry there with his wife Mariel. He also grows vegetables and fruits. It’s all organic — he doesn’t use any pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Now for the last of the manakish , the one with yogurt and bulgur. It’s a lovely pink color. He can smell onions mixed in with the yogurt. The residents of the area come to Goss’s farm to buy tomatoes and mulberries and pears. If they’re lucky Mrs. Goss sells them some of her organic jam, which she makes from mulberries she’s cooked on a wood stove. Goss is a graduate of Yale. He has wanted to retire since 1999. He bought that farm for one million three hundred thousand dollars. But in September 2004, George W. Bush, the American president, asked him to head the CIA. The War on Terror is in his hands now. He still goes back to the farm to relax on vacations. The place is peaceful. It’s not like Washington. Goss served in Congress for sixteen years. Now he’s waiting for the war to end so he can leave the CIA and spend more time on his farm. Green fields. A distant mountain range. And another mountain range beyond that one. Crates of tomatoes. Saman Yarid notices they resemble the tomatoes from the mountains of Lebanon. He too needs a break. He should take a vacation from this convulsive city, this sick city that doesn’t know it’s sick. Its nerves are frayed. He should call the Ehden Hotel up in the mountains and reserve a room, rest a bit from all this noise. The air is cool up there — in the north.

His cell phone rings. It’s Cecilia. It’s as if she’s read his mind. He was thinking of her when he thought about Ehden.

She asks him where he is.

He says he’s at home. He’s says he’s tired and taking the day off.

“Are you sick?”

“I’ve got to go get my annual physical.”

“Have you made an appointment?”

He says he’ll call right now.

She says she wanted to hear his voice.

He says that makes him happy, and he was just thinking about her.

“What were you thinking?”

He tells her about his plans to got to the hotel.

She says she can’t take any time off right now, but maybe in a week or two.

He asks her if she’s still uneasy about.

He falls silent, and doesn’t complete the sentence.

She doesn’t speak. Neither does he. There’s an ad for a French perfume on the television. Is the program about the CIA over? The silence lasts a few long seconds. What’s connecting the two of them right now? A telephone wire? His phone doesn’t have any wires. She’s calling him from a landline, and he’s receiving the call on a cell phone. His friend Gabe once told him a call from a normal telephone first goes to the country’s central exchange. And from the central exchange it travels to the cell phone company, where it is converted — on devices called “routers” — from a normal (analog) call to a (digital) cell phone call. Then the signal is transmitted. Saman and Gabe had been talking about Mehlis’s investigations into the cell phone companies. The German prosecutor discovered some suspicious calls that preceded the assassination on February 14th. On the TV, a woman is running along the beach, and dolphins are jumping out of the water.