Suddenly Karim recalled a visual detail — something he’d noticed and forgotten. He’d seen that Taher was carrying a package under his arm, and now it came to him that his friend had had a habit of walking with a homemade bomb. Whenever someone asked him what he was planning to do with it, he’d snarclass="underline" “There’s no shortage of bastards — I’ll find somewhere to throw it!” Karim felt certain that Taher hadn’t abandoned his strange ways — the package he was carrying had to be a bomb — and he was scared now that he might be attacked. Taher was fully capable of throwing a bomb in his face without a shred of pity, even more so because he considered him a traitor. Karim knew his mentality and his revolutionary code of honor. Taher wouldn’t hesitate to throw a bomb at his own mother if she happened not to share his opinion about something. With growing unease, Karim looked for a way to escape his pursuer. Anxiously he inspected the long deserted road without finding a single dark corner to hide in. Just the corn-vendor’s cart on the sidewalk lit by the streetlamp. Hide behind the cart? Idiotic. It would roll away without him — the merchant was getting ready to close up shop, as if he’d had a premonition of impending disaster. Karim picked up his pace, feeling vaguely ridiculous and not daring to turn around to see if Taher was still following him. A coarse voice addressed him, stopping him dead.
“Hey, Karim! You don’t have to run away from me!”
Karim turned around, a forced smile on his lips. He was as nervous as a woman seeing an old lover she’s betrayed and abandoned. He opened his arms in a sign of welcome.
“Hello, Taher, my brother! What a happy coincidence. How are you?”
He wanted to embrace Taher, but his former friend flinched and made a point of pulling back.
“I’m doing very well,” replied Taher. “And you? Still having fun?”
“Yes, I’m all right. Believe me, I’m happy to see you. It’s been a long time since I’ve laid eyes on you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Taher, “but I was in prison. It was hard for me to make it out to the salons and cafés.”
Taher’s face, gaunt and creased from hardship and a lifetime of trouble, made his outcast state all too clear. His eyes glinted with a wild intransigence common to those who fight for a hopeless cause. He scrutinized Karim suspiciously but with a sense of suppressed tenderness, too, a feeling of sympathy for his comrade — a traitor to the cause, but someone who was still present in his memory. Basically he was as nervous as Karim, even though he was playing the roles of accuser and pitiless judge. His clothes were preposterous for a man in his straits. In every season, he wore a tight brown suit in quite decent condition, a shirt with a starched collar, and a dark tie — the austere outfit of a low-level office worker and a striking contrast to his starving revolutionary’s face; he was like two characters superimposed on each other. But that was Taher’s great principle: a real revolutionary must dress correctly! The bohemian attitude of some of his comrades made him beside himself with anger; he’d often attacked Karim for not wearing a tie.
Karim was at a loss for words at his friend’s news. Prison couldn’t have been fun for Taher, who took everything so hard. Karim felt a flash of guilt for standing there, the picture of health and happiness, in front of this man who had escaped from the deepest dungeons in order to accuse him and curse him. Despite himself, he couldn’t stop eyeing the package that Taher still held in his hand. He was ashamed of his fear, but it was stronger than he was; he trembled, thinking of the bomb. Taher noticed his nervousness with a withering sigh. Finally something had amused him.
“Don’t worry about the package,” he said sarcastically. “It’s not a bomb. These are my old shoes that I’m taking to the cobbler. The soles have completely come off. You can see: I’m walking barefoot at the moment.”
“How could you think…!” Karim protested feebly.
Still, he lowered his eyes to be sure that Taher was telling the truth: in fact, his friend’s feet were bare. For an instant he was transfixed, unable to look away from Taher’s feet. To wear a starched collar and no shoes, how strange! Karim didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I’m truly sorry, brother!”
“Don’t be; it’s not at all important. I’ve endured every possible misery. I don’t need to live in an apartment with a terrace. I love palaces — I love to destroy them!”
“It’s a servant’s quarters!” Karim exclaimed. Then, more quietly: “How do you know where I live? You’ve been spying on me!”
Taher smiled mockingly, as if Karim was a naive child who needed everything explained.
“We know everything about you,” he said. “You think you’re so clever, but we know everything you’re up to, you and your friends. Did you know that the police suspect us for your nonsense? We won’t tolerate it much longer. That’s why I want to speak to you.”
Without thinking, he adopted a conspiratorial voice — inexplicably, since the road was devoid of a single human soul.
“What nonsense?” asked Karim, irritated by his hissing.
“The posters sucking up to the governor — you think I don’t know where they come from?”
“What is it about them that bothers you?”
“They make us look ridiculous to the police. And I don’t like that. We’re not pranksters!”
Taher was outraged at the thought that the police took him for a clown for using such primitive means to overturn the government. To impute these types of inanities to him was to attack his honor as a revolutionary. It besmirched his entire past as a militant, all his years in prison. He saw himself sinking in the esteem of the police, and he fumed with rage. And at the same time his pain was tinged with sorrow because it was his old comrade in arms, this traitor turned puppet, who was responsible for the affront.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Karim. “The police don’t suspect you one bit. They know perfectly well that you’re a serious bunch.” He added, as if for his own sake: “Just like them. Let me tell you something. You’re out of the loop. The police aren’t ignorant of the fact that your brand of revolutionary would never do something like this. Don’t you know they’re making progress all the time? Thanks first of all to what your people leaked during interrogations, but also to the fact that the government has given manuals to the secret police, in which they explain your psychology and how to combat your theories. So you see, they know all about you now. They know that you could never change your ways so drastically.”
“In any case, you’ve changed,” Taher responded bitterly.
By mutual agreement, they’d sat down on the parapet, facing the sea. They were quiet, their gazes lost in the immense black void. Karim was savoring this moment of reconciliation. But Taher’s mania, his need to win or die, could know no peace. Slowly he turned toward Karim, awaiting a gesture, a word of repentance or regret. He felt the sadness of a terrorist pressed into action, having to go about his bloody work despite the love and tenderness that still drew him to his victim. His heart bled, and he wanted to beg Karim to renounce this foolishness, to resume the idealism of his past. Sweat drowned his shrunken features; he might as well have been covered in tears.