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B ACHIR MEFTI ceded her and she followed afterwards. I continued to stand near the door of the apartment building, oblivious to everything, as satanic thoughts coursed through my mind. I was nothing more than a wounded animal whose pride had been hurt at the peak of its narcissism, in its inner core, which was no longer shielded in any manner. Nonetheless, I was incapable of thought; what would it mean to think about something like this? I needed to retreat, head bowed, in silence, simple silence, and try to forget – nothing more. I knew that I should not try to remember, because all memories would be just so many wounds, just a greater eruption of poisoned pus and a slow death that doesn’t arrive at once, descending at lightning speed, as we might wish and desire – not the glorious death of a person who no longer has anything that binds him to life, a death that rescues him from the evil of this world and the misery of existence. I imagined going to the ultimate limit in my sins, but when I met her brother Karim, I didn’t tell him anything. He had continued to treat me with respect, exactly the way I knew he would – a coward with people he thought personified some authority or other. I had known this from childhood, while all the other children and teenagers of the quarter victimized him, he himself bullied and tyrannized anyone he felt he was strong enough to hurt. He never tried anything on me. Instead he humoured me, sensing that I had something on him. If I told him: “Do this!” he would. I knew why. He certainly did not fear me; he feared my father, who was the prison warden. The only thing that frightened a person as despicable and wretched as Karim was prison and the feeling that he wasn’t able to dodge a power superior to him. I found him sitting in al-Fareeq Coffeehouse in the Belouizdad Quarter. I knew that this had been his favourite coffeehouse since those empty years that no longer retained any meaning. He had changed. His body was scrawny and his face scarred. How long had he been in prison? Seven years or more . . . I didn’t know.All those years would inevitably have increased his stupidity and dulled his spirit, shattering him and certainly making him more monstrous than before. My older brother had told me about him, saying that he had helped Karim a little but added that “prison was prison”. Prison meant living each second of your life on the dividing line between life and death. Karim saw me as he looked up to glance outside. He tried to rise from his chair to shake my hand, but I begged him to remain seated. When I asked how he was, he complained about everything. He certainly had changed. He spoke like a sage who has undergone the ultimate test and returned from another world with an understanding of life’s essence, 128 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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2012 INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION stripped of any philosophy or subtext. He spoke at length about the seven years that had ground him to a pulp, leaving him feeling very miserable and very insignificant. He was heedlessly flagellating himself. What had happened there, in that pitch-black gloom, to change him, to make him feel he was on a terrifying, dark path? Why did he feel that after those years he must try something new to save his spirit and afford it solace and comfort, so it could feel a certainty he had never previously encountered? He said: “I’ll tell you the story,” and then narrated it to me: “I don’t know where to begin. I just know that all this was linked to my pathetic spirit and meagre intellect. Otherwise I wouldn’t have beaten a man to death for badgering my sister at a time when I myself used to pester women of all ages. So why did I get angry when I saw someone else do it? Why did I blow up? Was it because I thought I was a perfect man whose sister had no right to do anything except promote his manhood? I almost lost mine my first night in prison.” He broke off briefly as a tear spilled from his eye.Then he resumed his story: “It was a miracle. I was in trouble. Had it not been for the wise man everyone called Sheikh Osama, something truly terrible would have happened. God shielded me from those ugly mugs and evil hearts. I don’t know where the man came from but he saved me from that shame. Oh, what a disgrace! Praise the Lord! Al-hamdulillah!” He repeated that phrase many times as his tears flowed. I did not know how to console him but sensed that he had suddenly become a different person. His heart had weakened and his spirit had disintegrated. Despite his sister Rania’s suspicions, his character and constitution were no longer of a invidious nature. He was no longer a person to whom emotions meant nothing and who regarded a woman as an insect that he would crush just because he could. He spoke feebly, as though finding it difficult to produce coherent words. He uttered them like someone extracting a wound from deep inside his chest, tearing it, unhealed, from his spirit by its roots. And yet, I sensed that he would tell me in due time about something even more crucial. As I tried to sort out the changes that his worldview had undergone, he suddenly added: “Praise the Lord, first and last,Who sent that person to me – I mean Sheikh Osama – and Who was able to guide me to the straight path. Sheikh Osama, who was in his fifties, was revered and feared by everyone in the cell. He spoke an antique Arabic that we had difficulty understanding, but when he recited the Qur’an, our hearts were humbled, our eyes wept, and our spirits felt elevated. This change, naturally, did not occur overnight. I did not feel those things at first.The matter re- BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 129

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B ACHIR MEFTI

ceded her and she followed afterwards.

I continued to stand near the door of the apartment building, oblivious to everything, as satanic thoughts coursed through my mind. I was nothing more than a wounded animal whose pride had been hurt at the peak of its narcissism, in its inner core, which was no longer shielded in any manner. Nonetheless, I was incapable of thought; what would it mean to think about something like this? I needed to retreat, head bowed, in silence, simple silence, and try to forget – nothing more. I knew that I should not try to remember, because all memories would be just so many wounds, just a greater eruption of poisoned pus and a slow death that doesn’t arrive at once, descending at lightning speed, as we might wish and desire – not the glorious death of a person who no longer has anything that binds him to life, a death that rescues him from the evil of this world and the misery of existence.

I imagined going to the ultimate limit in my sins, but when I met her brother Karim, I didn’t tell him anything. He had continued to treat me with respect, exactly the way I knew he would – a coward with people he thought personified some authority or other. I had known this from childhood, while all the other children and teenagers of the quarter victimized him, he himself bullied and tyrannized anyone he felt he was strong enough to hurt. He never tried anything on me. Instead he humoured me, sensing that I had something on him. If I told him: “Do this!” he would. I knew why. He certainly did not fear me; he feared my father, who was the prison warden. The only thing that frightened a person as despicable and wretched as Karim was prison and the feeling that he wasn’t able to dodge a power superior to him.

I found him sitting in al-Fareeq Coffeehouse in the Belouizdad Quarter. I knew that this had been his favourite coffeehouse since those empty years that no longer retained any meaning. He had changed. His body was scrawny and his face scarred. How long had he been in prison? Seven years or more . . . I didn’t know.All those years would inevitably have increased his stupidity and dulled his spirit, shattering him and certainly making him more monstrous than before. My older brother had told me about him, saying that he had helped Karim a little but added that “prison was prison”. Prison meant living each second of your life on the dividing line between life and death.

Karim saw me as he looked up to glance outside. He tried to rise from his chair to shake my hand, but I begged him to remain seated. When I asked how he was, he complained about everything. He certainly had changed. He spoke like a sage who has undergone the ultimate test and returned from another world with an understanding of life’s essence,

128 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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