Khafaji turns the conversation back to the subject. “Then what the hell happened?”
“What happened happened.”
The man seems to be telling the truth, but it doesn't help at all.
“Look. I need to know. Four girls were shot upstairs in the house you were staying at. Someone tied them up and shot them. Then someone untied them again. All this happened while you were staying in the house. There's no way they could have been killed in that house without you knowing about it, or at least hearing it.”
Utter silence. They look back at Khafaji as if he were speaking about a far-off country. Without thinking, Khafaji adds, “And one of them was my niece.”
To his surprise, the words improve the tone of the conversation. Khafaji stays with them for another hour, going over and over the same details. Despite his doubts, he realizes they're telling him everything they know. Which is nothing. Each time he asks a question, they give more or less the same answer. Their story is consistent, even if it doesn't mesh with the facts he saw. And even though they don't like Khafaji, they no longer show any hesitation in talking about the details of this event. For them, it has no importance.
Entirely unsatisfied, Khafaji leaves. On his way out, he stops to speak with the doctor. “Their bandages need changing. Also, television. They need television in the room. These prisoners are VIP. So important to us.”
The man nods and assures Khafaji that he'll make it happen. For the first time in hours, Khafaji's head feels clear.
Khafaji walks back to the office. Citrone is not there, but he has left a note asking Khafaji to meet in the morning to talk about the issue of housing. The soldier is still sitting at his computer. Still playing solitaire. Khafaji takes out his civilian clothes and goes to the bathroom to change. On his way out of the palace, Khafaji's hunger drives him toward the cafeteria. The place has closed, and the Indian workers are
cleaning up the various counters. One of them spots Khafaji and signals him to come over. He offers to make a sandwich, and Khafaji accepts. The man hands it to Khafaji in a paper bag, along with a plastic bottle of Coke. Khafaji offers him a cigarette. He takes it and puts it behind his ear as he goes back to work. As Khafaji walks through the shadows of the palace gardens, he unwraps the sandwich and eats it while walking back to the gate.
Khafaji walks out of the American Zone, then down many blocks before he looks for a ride. By the time he gets to the gate at the end of his street, it's late. Too late to visit Ali, not that he wanted to. The guards smile and invite Khafaji to drink tea with them as he goes upstairs.
“Thank God, you're home again.”
Khafaji looked at Suheir, then buried his face in her neck and breathed her in. She held onto him, happy but confused. “You didn't call. We weren't expecting you.”
Mrouj interrupted her, running down the stairs and throwing herself onto her father.
“My girl, my girl! I missed you both so much.”
“We're so glad to have you back.”
Mrouj did not let go of her father, not even when he knelt down to unlace his boots. As he pulled them off, thick pieces of dried mud scattered across the floor of the front room. Khafaji pulled off socks that were stiff with old sweat, then felt the cool tiles beneath his toes.
Mrouj just pointed. “Stinky, stinky! Get them out of here!”
Suheir picked up his boots and socks and put them outside. She shut the door and turned and smiled. “How long is your leave this time, Mhaysin?”
Khafaji only shook his head. Suheir walked into the kitchen, calling out behind her, “Mrouj, come get something for your father. He's tired and thirsty. Ask him what he wants to drink.”
Mrouj ran off toward her mother, then spun around. “Baba, what do you want? I'll get it! Look how fast I am!”
Khafaji tried to smile, but failed. “Anything. Water's fine.”
When Mrouj came back and saw the state her father was in, she ran back into the kitchen. She came back, dragging her mother by the hand.
“Mrouj, go outside and play. Be back for dinner, OK?”
“Yes, Mama.”
Suheir held him for minutes before he finally looked at her.
“Have you heard from Uday?”
“What's wrong, Muhsin?”
“When was the last time you heard from him, Suheir?”
“What's this got to do with him? We talked on the phone in February, I think. He can't call because he's at the front. But he's managed to send letters every week all spring. I've been getting one every Thursday. I haven't gotten one in two weeks.” She looked at the ceiling, and added, “Three weeks, tomorrow.”
“Show me one, I need to see one.”
“Why? What's this about?”
“Just get me a letter. Get me the last letter. Or any letter.”
Suheir came back into the room with a stack of envelopes. Khafaji looked at them one after the other.
“Aren't you even going to open them? I saved everything.”
“They fired me, Suheir. They didn't say why, but they put me on a bus and told me to wait at home until I received my next orders.”
“You mean they transferred you?”
“Fired. Demoted. Transferred. I'm not sure. But whatever it is, it's not a good thing. And it's got to be punishment for something. It's coming from somewhere up high. I had a long bus ride to think about what it could be, and the more I thought, the more I began to worry about Uday.”
Only then did Suheir notice the empty spots on his chest and shoulders where badges and medals used to be. She reached out and held his arm.
“What does this have to do with Uday?”
“Look at these postmarks, Suheir. He's not at the front. That means he's not with his unit.”
“God help him,” Suheir muttered. He looked out the window and added, “And us.”
Khafaji turned suddenly to Suheir and asked, “Is this everything? We need to get rid of it all right now.”
Suheir nodded as they set to work.
Khafaji wakes up late. As he makes a pot of tea, he remembers the dream that woke him once, just before dawn. A nightmare in the guise of an Egyptian musical. The band strikes up a song, and a dancing girl suddenly appears in the middle of the dance floor. Close-up on the smile that flashes across white teeth furiously chewing on gum. Other dancing girls swirl around her as she moves forward toward small round tables where the audience sits drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. The girl whirls around, and the other girls disappear into the wings. Suddenly, the violins fade out and the music becomes a purely percussive beat. Dum-tik, tik-dum-tik. Dum-tik, tik-dum-tik. Close-up of the girl's midriff as it shakes with increasing frenzy. She whirls around and around violently. Spinning and spinning as the music's tempo rises to a crescendo. Montage of mad musicians. This one blowing furiously on a reed flute, that one hitting the strings of an oud, another banging on a tambour. Finally, the girl collapses in a heap in the middle of the dance floor. Close-up on the girl's face, her lips contorted in ecstasy and pain. The audience explodes in loud applause, and the girl is carried off the floor.
After a pause, the scene begins on the same stage with another girl, another dance, and another collapse. It repeats five times in all â each girl with her own individual features and flourishes. One is athletic and kicks her legs improbably high into the air. One flips her wrists and fingers like a Hindu goddess. Another curls her lips like an Andalusian gypsy. The last shakes a round belly while rolling her hips in small jerks.
Only later in the morning does Khafaji realize that the faces of the first four are those of the dead girls. And then came the grand finale that ripped him from sleep. At first the body of the last dancer seems to belong to Sawsan. Or Suheir. She circles around Khafaji's table, but he can't get a glimpse of her face. She pulls on his tie and swings past him, but he still can't see who it is. Then, as she begins to shake and bend, she suddenly turns over him, so close Khafaji can feel her breath on his face. Zubeida Rashid.
Khafaji went back to sleep. When he woke up again, he was exhausted, but his headache was gone.
While making tea, he decides to break the news to Nidal. He washes his face, shaves slowly, and gets dressed. As he's walking out, he remembers the ID cards from the villa, and goes to find the pillowcase. He stuffs them in his pocket and walks out, fixing the door shut behind him.
For the first time in days, there is no one sitting in the building's entrance. Khafaji salutes the guards at the gate down the street, then walks a slow zigzag through the neighborhood, in the opposite direction from the day before. He looks behind him more than once before heading to Kamal Jumblatt Square, where he catches a taxi. Khafaji mentions the address in Saadun, and the young driver says “As you wish” in a polite voice. The young man pauses, then asks, “Would you mind if I played some music?”
Khafaji replies, “By all means.”
The driver chuckles and slips an old cassette tape into the stereo. Khafaji is glad to hear what he hears. Fayruz's
Immortal Songs
. Khafaji closes his eyes and listens to the songs. Music is the only element that has the power to reverse time. The more he listens, the more present the past seems. And it fills him with a warm feeling. A checkpoint diverts traffic, and the detour adds twenty minutes to their drive. Each time they pass a gas station, the flow of cars comes to a halt, then opens up again on the other side.
The building Khafaji gets out at overflows with the bustle of life. Children are everywhere, playing in the street out front. In the garage below. Their laughing voices fill the stairwell.
As soon as Nidal's wife Maha sees Khafaji at the door, she guesses the news he's come to deliver. She collapses on the floor. The other women of the house lift her onto the couch and she faints again. They urge her to retreat into the bedroom, and she disappears with one of them. Nidal returns home fifteen minutes later carrying a plastic bag of fresh bread. He hears his wife and sees Khafaji and immediately understands that his daughter is dead. He sits down on the couch next to his brother-in-law. Khafaji's hand rests lightly on the man's heaving shoulders. Khafaji looks up and sees a crowd of children thronging around them.
“Go downstairs and play,” Khafaji murmurs. The older siblings grab the younger ones and disappear.
Minutes pass before Nidal recovers his composure. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and says, “We're done. We're leaving.”
Khafaji looks away but keeps his hand resting on Nidal's shoulder. He notices the row of over-packed suitcases along the wall.
After a long pause, Nidal pulls gently on Khafaji's hand until they're looking at one another.
“Why?”
“I'm sorry, Nidal. I don't have any answers.”
“Tell me what happened, then. You found her?”
“Day before yesterday.”
Nidal squints and looks away. Embarrassed, Khafaji continues talking. “There were three others. Murdered.”
Khafaji lets it sink in for a minute before continuing. “I think they were kidnapped. Maybe for ransom. Maybe just because they were working for the Americans. They were killed right when the Americans showed up.”
Khafaji attempts to catch the man's eye, but now it's Nidal who's looking away. “Her body was taken to Yarmouk Hospital, they said. I can go with you when you're ready.”
A new torrent of wailing spills from the bedroom.
Finally, Khafaji asks, “Did you know that Sawsan was working for the Americans?”
“I knew she was getting paid in dollars. She never talked about what she was doing. So we thought that was a possibility. What did her professor say?”
“She told me nothing. It was someone else who told me. For what it's worth, Sawsan was only doing what a lot of other kids are doing. Working as translators.”
After a pause, he adds, “There's a lot worse that kids might do, you know.”
Nidal shakes his head. “Like what?”
“Don't get me wrong, but there aren't many decent ways to make a decent living. So what if she worked for the Americans?”
Nidal shakes his head and laughs bitterly. “Is this a joke? Why did you come here?”
“I'm not joking⦔
Nidal glares at Khafaji. Finally, he speaks. “So, what was Sawsan translating, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how was she translating for the Americans when she didn't know more than a few words of English?”
Now it's Khafaji's turn to glare.
“Everyone knew that about Susu. She was no good with languages. Her brothers used to tease her in English because they knew she wouldn't understand them. And she never did.”
He laughs and blows his nose. He shakes his head again and again.
“Only a fool would have hired Susu as a translator. You found the wrong girl.”