He said, “Welcome,” nothing more. He was facing a round sofa and started to fold his body slowly to settle down on it with exaggerated composure. He wasn’t swaying, but he looked like someone who was trying hard not to fall down. His eyes were sunken and moved in their sockets with the same slowness as his body.
“The war... took us... young men... and... alienated us so often... from where we came... afterward... left us back... on our trash heaps... on purpose... you... they towed... your boat... for you... I... I... as... you see... I was... I became... a cripple.”
Adil tried to appear as if he were in charge of his mind and body. As he sat on the sofa he recuperated somewhat. He was exercising his control over the situation. I don’t know what he’d prepared for this meeting but he’d certainly known about it beforehand from his brother’s son Samir. He was definitely struggling to appear worthy of his mansion, but his words seemed to make him feel regretful, his eyes moist with tears that wouldn’t fall. Then he asked me, “Do you still read? I still write. Rosette, bring me the file.”
After his tearful moment, she was pleased to comply. Rosette walked upstairs to the second floor and came back with two thick, leather-bound volumes. Written on the first one in gold letters was, Secret Conversations of the Dust. The Tenth Floor was written on the second in the same lettering. Adil handed me both books, then took out a thick notebook that contained reviews of his books. I flipped through it and my eyes passed over words like “the great novelist,” “the creator,” “the innovator,” “He delves into the depths of the human soul,” “soaring,” “an incredible imagination,” “penetrating wisdom,” “masterful philosophy,” “modernity and postmodernity,” “innovation,” “avant-garde literature,” “the revolutionary soul,” “destruction and ruin,” “deeply rooted structure.”
The pages I was holding in my hands were replete with all kinds of praise and commendation, though the clippings displayed a pitiful absence of either well-known or meaningful names. Adil then handed me his treasure — a stack of translations into French, English, Italian, Spanish, and German — not with prestigious publishers, but that doesn’t matter. By all accounts, Adil Uliyyan had been able to start from nothing and put out a book. It cost him less than his garden did. He bought the book and its publishers for a price less than what he paid for his fleet of servants. I thought that everything in the world must be off-kilter if it occurred to someone like Adil Uliyyan to play at this kind of game.
Then he handed me two more books from the stack. One of these was Modernity in Adil Uliyyan’s Fiction and the second, The Thought of Adil Uliyyan. Two professors — neither of whom I’d ever heard of — had written them. There’s no doubt that he’d given each of them a little money. I imagined him slipping it into each of their pockets while making a show of the fact that money was not the issue here, that it’s best to negotiate with your eyes closed.
But I don’t follow literary criticism and I don’t know if Adil Uliyyan has a standing in literature... or indeed if any of these “critics” made any difference or not. It would be strange if all of this praise was merely there hidden away in his file, and had come to pass without anyone noticing it. It would be stranger yet if Adil had succeeded in exploiting his writing in the same way he succeeded in his other ventures. What will remain of literature if it becomes a matter of financial exploitation? The cost of fashioning a writer like Adil Uliyyan would be less than that of opening a shop. Adil didn’t actually admit that he’d paid for the book and I didn’t expect him to do so either. But this was his sole exploit about which he never mentioned money.
He remained on the sofa all taut as a bow. He was wearing a thin black jacket and gray trousers. His shirt was hanging loosely off his body and was fashionably untucked. He handed me the articles written about him page by page, waiting for me to read each one before returning it to the file for safekeeping. While I was reading, he observed me with steady eyes. I gave him the pages back without comment, though while reading all of this extensive praise a sound escaped from between my teeth, which he received with a gratified smile. When I stopped flipping through the papers, I told him that I didn’t understand criticism and critics but they’d praised him a lot. He was content, pleased with what I’d said. It seemed to me that his body relaxed a little. He wanted me to know that he wasn’t merely a person who couldn’t control his body and who was practically keeling over in front of me.
Finished with the papers and books, he started reminiscing about when we were friends, the days back when we were young men. He had more memories than I did — and I doubted if some of them had even happened. Perhaps they were his own inventions. In his narratives, he was the hero of the story and I was merely his sidekick.
He narrated to me — or rather to his wife — the story of the cemetery guard who would have kicked us out, had he not resisted. I knew nothing about this story. Nor the one in which we were confronted by four men while going down to the river. That time, it seems, he outwitted them and we escaped. These stories had me at a loss. But when he started in on the tale of his imaginary adventures with the curate’s daughter, my bewilderment disappeared. I realized that Adil Uliyyan was the very same liar I once had known.
He finally reached an old story that he was still proud of and wanted his wife to hear. It’s the story of a practical joke he played on me. We were sitting beside a natural spring, one of those places that feels like it’s inside the earth, perpetually dark. We arrived there at the end of a day’s outing during which we’d eaten a picnic lunch outside. He took out two plates, gave me one, and told me to do as he did. I don’t remember the reason he gave but I assented in order to please him — I couldn’t say no to my friend on the trip that day. He scooped up water from a little stream and I followed. He started dipping his fingers into the water on his plate, passing them under the plate, and then rubbing them all over his face. I did the same. He repeated this and I imitated him until we stopped. Then we left. We crossed the village square together and then parted to go home. I didn’t yet know that my face was stained with charcoal; there had been sooty charcoal under my plate that had stuck to my damp fingers. Even now — almost forty years later — Adil’s still proud that he was with me when my face was covered in soot in the middle of the town square and everyone laughed at me. This was the go-to episode that he’d recall whenever we met.
Up until this day, I’d never known him to have the ethical disposition to be ashamed of himself for putting a friend in this kind of situation, one that started out as a joke but turned to malice. His smugness about his own cleverness and the success of his prank has remained the same — from when he was fifteen until now that he’s over fifty. From this incident, something childish developed within him and remained there. No doubt this same childish thing was also present in the cartridge of bullets he emptied into the head of the customs man. And no doubt this childish impulse has accompanied him on all his exploits and malicious deeds. He’s the child who plays practical jokes to get attention — amusing people or terrorizing them, there’s no difference.