Yasmina Khadra - The Dictator's Last Night

I pick up the Koran and replace it immediately.

‘You see, Colonel? Even the most wonderful fairy tales, when they are reinvented as soap opera, end up being boring. That must be what has happened to the One up there. He has lost His train of thought where I am concerned. He does not even feel like knowing the end of the story any more.’

The lieutenant-colonel holds out the bar of chocolate.

‘There’s magnesium in it, sir. You need to keep your strength up.’

‘I am not hungry.’

‘Please …’

‘I am a mystic. Fasting suits me perfectly. It helps keep my mind clear when things refuse to go right.’

He does not press the point and goes back to sit on his chair.

This lad is outstanding. He has class, depth, an Olympian calm that keeps increasing his stature in my eyes, and — the rarest of virtues — he is entirely natural. He is aware of the great esteem in which I hold him, but that special favour has not spoilt him. Others would have taken endless advantage of it; he tucks it away in his heart like something precious, a holy gift that he could not expose to the air without damaging it.

‘What would you like to have accomplished that you have not had the opportunity to achieve yet, Colonel?’

He reflects for a moment or two, then, in a barely audible voice, he says, ‘To be loved madly.’

‘Are you not loved enough?’

‘My wife complains that she has married a ghost because of my continual absences, and my comrades are all wildly jealous of me. Every time I go on a mission they pray I won’t come back.’

‘That is normal with your comrades. They are cross with you for overtaking them and detest you because they know they will never be half the man you are. But that cannot be the case with your wife. If she is jealous, unlike your colleagues she is also praying day and night for you to come home to her.’

‘She knows I’m faithful to her.’

‘No one knows that kind of thing. However much we trust the one we love, when they are not there doubt stalks us everywhere, like our shadow.’

‘I haven’t been unfaithful to her once in eight years of marriage.’

‘It will come. You are handsome, as brilliant as it is possible to be, and ahead of all your intake. Any woman would fall for you. Women are more dazzled by rank than muscles.’

‘Not all, Brotherly Guide.’

‘How do you know? There are bedroom secrets that faithful husbands can never dream of.’

He raises his hands in surrender.

‘I hope there’s nothing for me to dream of.’

‘That does not depend on you.’

He has run out of arguments and laughs.

His good mood calms me a little.

‘Apart from being loved, what else would be your dearest accomplishment?’

He places his hands over his nose and reflects. His eyes are bright as he says, ‘My grandfather was a shepherd. He had no education, but he had a very good philosophy of life. I’ve never known anyone so comfortable with their poverty. The smallest thing could make him happy. When luck was on his side, for my grandfather everything was good. You had to see things as they were, not as you wanted them to be. In his eyes, just being alive was an extraordinary stroke of luck and no hardship could take that away. I remember he did nothing apart from look after his sheep, just vegetated and wore the same rags summer and winter. When I went to find him to suggest that he came and lived with my little family at Ajdabiya, in a nice villa that overlooked the sea, he just shook his head. Nothing in the world could have made him want to leave his tent that he’d pitched in the middle of nowhere.’

‘He was wrong.’

‘Maybe, but he was like that, my grandfather. He had decided to feel good the way he was, never going to much trouble. He was happy and rich in the joys he shared with the people he loved. Every morning he was up at first light to watch the sky catch fire. He said he didn’t need anything else … That’s the feat I’d like to have accomplished, sir. To be like my grandfather: a man never annoyed by anything, who possessed just the modest happiness that came from feeling comfortable with a life of complete frugality.’

‘I shall never understand how some people can pretend that resignation is the same as humility.’

I find the lieutenant-colonel touching in his naivety and wonder what will become of him. I would like him to survive this. He is so young, so handsome and authentic. He embodies the Libyan army I dreamt of, the officer who would outlive me, to carry on my teachings and deliver eulogies to my glory at every commemoration.

‘Do you know van Gogh, Colonel?’

‘Of course. He sliced off his ear so that the red on his canvas would be as vivid as his pain.’

‘Someone once told me that he mutilated himself because of a romance that went wrong.’

He opens his arms.

‘Every genius has his own fantasies, sir. You said yourself that there is no truth except death, and that it is lies that shape life.’

‘I do not remember having said such a thing.’

‘Many other quotations will be attributed to you in the future, Brotherly Guide. Just as we attribute anonymous poems to Al-Mutanabbi. It is part and parcel of mythology.’

‘Do you believe that people will remember me?’

‘For as long as this country is called Libya.’

‘And what will they remember about me?’

‘You will have followers, and a mass of detractors. The former will revere you, the latter reproach you for everything you have accomplished, because they have done so little with their lives. One thing is certain, that you will be missed by the majority of our people.’

‘I do not think so, Colonel. That people you speak of has no more memory than any hothead — how otherwise do you explain that it seeks my downfall after what I have done for it?’

The colonel runs his hand through his hair. A lock of hair flops onto his brow, emphasising a little more his young centurion’s charm. He contemplates his spotless white hands before speaking.

‘When I was doing a course at Vystrel Academy, near Moscow, I made friends with some of the Russians there. They were young officers or young cadres, straight out of university. They went around with the latest mobile phones, drove the most fashionable 4×4s, wore perfume from Dior and designer clothes and had dinner in chic restaurants that they’d booked online with their sophisticated laptops. They were today’s people, rich and in a hurry. They hadn’t known the period of scarcity, the chorni khleb , the endless queues outside shops whose shelves were practically empty, the institutionalised spying at post offices and prison sentences for wearing a pair of jeans you’d bought on the black market. Yet when they drank so much vodka that they couldn’t tell a fork from a rake, they went on and on about how bad everything was, how the country was going to the dogs, how the state structures were pathetic and the oligarchs’ corruption intolerable, and how much they missed Stalin’s iron hand … It’s the same everywhere, Brotherly Guide. In Chile they miss Pinochet, in Spain they miss Franco, in Iraq Saddam, in China Mao, the same way they miss Mubarak in Egypt and Genghis Khan in Mongolia.’

‘What image will they have of me? Will I be their guide or their tyrant?’

‘You’re not a tyrant. You did exactly what needed to be done. There are two sorts of people. People who work with their heads and people who need a big stick. Our people needed a big stick.’

I cannot agree with him.

I acknowledge that I treated those who became dissidents without mercy. How else could I have responded? To rule over people requires a culture that is compatible with a single medium: blood. Without blood, a throne is a potential gallows. To protect mine, I took a leaf out of the chameleon’s book: I walked with one eye looking ahead, the other behind, my step calibrated to the millimetre, my speech moralistic and as unhesitating as lightning. The moment I melted into the background, I became part of the background …