“Ya akhi, I tell you I don’t know him, I swear to God, I don’t know a thing.”
Fatimah Fakhro is standing in the local party office, surrounded by militiamen. Sobbing, she repeats over and over again that she knows nothing. But this one guy, the one with the shades, he’s not paying the slightest bit of attention to anything she’s saying — it’s as if she were talking to the walls. . Her, talking, and them not hearing anything. . She’s frightened, she feels the same fear as when she saw that other face — the very same fear she felt when he pointed the machine gun at her and didn’t fire.
“I swear to God, I know nothing. Yes, I did see him, I saw him several times. Yes, I spoke to him and he told me, he told me that he would erase the walls, and I believed him, I swear I did. I’m not sure how, but I believed him. What have I got to do with anything, I didn’t kill him. . you’re not serious. . yes, yes, he said all those things and more. I wanted to give him something to eat. . he reminded me of Mahmud. . I got to thinking of how he was all alone in Kantari, Hussein had told me how spooky it was on that street and I thought of Mahmud, sitting there out on the sidewalk, all by himself, guarding the building. And I said to myself this man is just like him, and I took pity on him. No, no, he didn’t say much. . well, yes, he used to say that. . but I didn’t believe him. The fact is, I didn’t believe his story about the thousand men and the thousand women — they aren’t stories you can believe. But then, I thought, maybe he’s right. . everything’s possible these days. . who would have ever believed that all that has happened to us would happen? But it did. No one would have believed it possible, and yet these things happened, and he died. So I thought, well, maybe… And he looked so poor, flapping his arms in the air like a pigeon fancier, yes, just like a pigeon fancier who couldn’t find his pigeons. I used to bring him bread and cheese, and he’d say he liked laban. No, no, he had nothing to do with it, he didn’t talk to me about anyone, only about the thousand men. . I don’t know, I really don’t. He said a thousand men and a thousand women, but I don’t know any more than that, honestly, I don’t. He only spoke to me once, just once, and he asked me to make him a dish of stuffed grape leaves; so I made him some, and I waited for him, he told me he would come to visit me, he said he would eat it sitting on the sidewalk. . yes, that’s right, he told me to bring it out to him, over by the white wall. I waited for him, but he never came. And when I went out to look, there weren’t any white walls — all the walls were covered in pictures and posters. None of them were white. I did see a yellowish wall, so I waited there. It was my fault — he said he’d wait for me next to the white wall, but I couldn’t find it. So then I waited for him at home, but of course he didn’t come. Then the mistress told me he’d been found murdered. . I really don’t know anything, Sir. . Yes, of course, you’re right, Sir. .”
With a look of utter scorn, “Sir” got up and struck her. Fatimah wept and wailed, but “Sir” just slapped her face again. And then, they let her go.
They let me go, I didn’t say anything and I don’t know why, I swear to God I don’t. What I know, I told them. I told them everything I know. Ya akhi, it’s nothing to do with me, I’m not the one going around killing people; we’re not the ones doing the murdering, are we? They’re the ones killing us! We don’t kill people. Don’t you see how Mahmud died? And, to add insult to injury, they demanded that I repair the lobby of the building. Instead of feeling sorry for me, Sitt Elham told me her husband, Basheer al-Harati, had agreed to let me stay on in the building only if I paid for the repairs.
“But I have no money.”
“You have the bracelets, sell the bracelets.”
Even her! Poor Mahmud, you died like a thief! Everyone thought you stole the bracelets! But if you did, I’d like to know where they are!. .
Fatimah searched high and low but didn’t find anything. She went so far as to rip the tiles up from the floor of their room. Then she thought she’d ask Hussein to help her look for them. When she did, he stared at her witheringly, as if he suspected her. She asked him to go to the house in Kantari and look there.
“I can’t. Her children have taken over the apartment,” Hussein replied.
“Alright then, let’s phone Khawaja Fadee and tell him. Maybe he can help us evict them.”
“How would he do that?”
“Well, it’s his house, isn’t it? He’ll find a way. .”
“No, he can’t. It’s no longer his. He no longer owns anything here, don’t you realize? No, he can’t help us.”
Fatimah is sure that Hussein doesn’t believe her and that he is convinced she’s hiding the treasure. And now that he’s found out about her thing with Khalil Ahmad Jaber, he’s started to look at her in that strange way that he has — he doesn’t have to shout or lift a finger against her anymore, all he has to do is give her that look, and she hands over whatever money she has. Regardless of what she pulls out of the handkerchief tucked in her bosom, he asks for more.
Still, she had to find those bracelets… but how? She thought of getting Professor Nabeel to intervene on her behalf about the Kantari house, but he didn’t believe her either. He thought she was lying. Even him, her sole advocate, her benefactor. . So she decided to stop speaking. The best thing was to say nothing and do nothing. They were all going to die anyway, she thought, just like Mahmud, every single one of them.
As she sleeps, Fatimah dreams of Basheer al-Harati, dead; he’s coming toward her, a white stick in his right hand, and everything is white. The walls are white, his face is white, his hair, everything. Holding on to the white stick, he advances slowly, and when he reaches her house, he falls to the ground. He falls on his knees, then keels over to the left and rolls away further and further into the distance like a barrel rolling off into the void, and she hears crying and wailing, the very same sounds she hears when the shells rain down on the neighborhood.
Fatimah wakes up shaking with terror. She feels around for the children sleeping beside her, and tries to go back to sleep, but she can’t. It’s the first time it’s ever happened to her that she can’t fall asleep. Khalil used to tell her that he couldn’t sleep either.
“Why sleep? Half of life is wasted in sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I can’t sleep, and soon no one else will be able to either.”
But he did. She saw him, with her own eyes, asleep on the sidewalk at about eight o’clock one evening. She walked right by without him noticing her. Fearing him dead, she went up to him and, after looking around furtively, leaned down close: his chest was rising and falling and this smell — an incredible stench — emanated from him, it was like. . like what? She didn’t know how to describe it — it was unlike anything she had ever smelled before. . this smell of his, it remains in her nostrils to this day. Every time she wakes up at night and sits up in bed, the smell is there, as though he were asleep by her side — even though he died.
She gets up and washes her face, rinses out her nostrils and goes back to bed. But the smell won’t go away, it is stuck to her. And so she has come to loathe the man — that’s all she needed now, this man!
“I swear to God I don’t know him,” she told them, “I don’t know anything.”
Even though they didn’t believe her, they let her go.
Professor Nabeel told her it was a bad idea to get mixed up in that sort of thing. She tried to tell him she had nothing to do with it. He said he believed her, but that other people didn’t, and that there was talk of a relationship.