“But Sir, it’s something really important.”
“Shut up, will you! And listen. A jeep is on its way here now, and there’ll be a First Lieutenant Nujaym asking for you. You are to go with him, understood?”
“But, Sir, I have something to tell you, I want to talk to the officer who interrogated me.”
“It won’t be necessary. Not necessary, you hear. First Lieutenant Nuj aym will be coming here to take you to the Military Tribunal. There you’ll sign some papers and then you can go.”
“What do you mean, go?”
“Go home.”
Zayn ’Alloul couldn’t believe his ears. They were lying to him! They were going to take him off for more questioning and another beating. “But Sir. .” The man in civilian dress walked off and Zayn’Alloul waited, sitting on a wooden bench in the empty hall. His mind was made up, as soon as he saw Lieutenant Nujaym, he would confess. A knot in the pit of his stomach.
Night fell, and still no one came for him.
Then there were footsteps outside and, craning his neck, Zayn saw an officer running in and shouting.
“Zayn ’Alloul!”
“Yes Sir!”
“Get up and walk.”
Zayn did as he was told.
“Where are your clothes?” the officer asked, surprised.
“They took me from the house in my pajamas.”
“OK. Let’s go.”
He was bundled into a station wagon. The officer sat up front, Zayn in back, next to a soldier holding a rifle between his legs. The officer said something to the driver, which Zayn strained to hear. The officer was saying that the question of Ali Shuayb and his extremist Communist group was really getting to him.
“We’ve arrested a hundred people, and not one of them is linked to the organization. So where is this organization then? All our information seems to be false. The organization has disappeared, vanished into thin air. Yet they’re still out there killing people. It’ll be our turn next.”
Clearing his throat, the driver ventured that it had nothing to do with them whatsoever.
“It’s between them and the authorities.”
“What do you mean? We are the authorities. You want the country to fall apart? We are the country, and it is our duty to eliminate every single one of them.”
The station wagon reached the Military Tribunal.
“Get out!” the officer barked.
Zayn ’Alloul climbed out of the vehicle and followed the lieutenant. They entered a luxurious office. The officer saluted and stood to attention. The man sitting behind the desk was in civilian clothes; he yawned ostentatiously as he asked:
“Where is he then?”
“Right here,” replied First Lieutenant Nujaym.
Zayn stepped forward; he could see there were papers on the desk.
“Sign here.”
“What are these?”
“Hurry up, will you… you don’t need to know everything! They’re papers, just papers. Sign.”
Zayn ’Alloul took the ballpoint pen from the man in civilian dress and signed.
“You can go home now.”
Joy slowly enveloped Zayn’Alloul. He’d never felt so happy, not even on his wedding day. Of course he was happy the day he got married to Husniyyah, but he was also consumed with embarrassment. The young men from his village were being bold, slapping him around the neck and shoulders as he cringed with shame. He knew they were all thinking about how he was going to sleep with her that night. But his happiness now was different: it was unadulterated.
Zayn took a step toward the officer, who held his hand extended. He felt so grateful that he bent down to kiss it, but the officer withdrew his hand.
“Go on, man. Beat it.”
Zayn stepped out of the large hall into the street, in filthy blue striped pajamas and a pair of old, holey slippers. He felt like dancing for joy at the thought of his home, his job, even the truck. He stood waiting for a cab to pass, but then realized he wasn’t carrying any money. So he walked, past the Museum, past Sinn al-Feel, finally reaching Naba’a. He was exhausted, walking all the way home in his pajamas, in the dead of night, like a beggar. Ignominy, that’s what it was. And then when he arrived, instead of being happy, she started to wail — she didn’t know how to be happy, that was her trouble, he always told her so. After having a wash, a proper one with soap and water, he had something to eat and went to bed. He ate without appetite though, as if he hadn’t felt hungry during those three long, dark days. He went to bed, but instead of waking early as was his habit, he slept until seven.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked her, irate.
She said she wanted to let him rest. But he wanted to go to work, he was afraid they’d fire him because he’d been absent for three days without a valid excuse. But when he went down to the to municipality building, everything was quickly settled. His boss said they would just deduct the three days from his leave and then advised him not to get mixed up in politics.
Zayn wasn’t upset about losing the days. He was happy just being back at work; actually, he was glad about the deduction, as it meant that the whole nightmarish episode was over. So there he was now, back at work, making the rounds with the truck, as usual.
Except that things had changed, they were different now. You needed special favors from friends in high places just to stay out of trouble. The biggest problem nowadays was that they fired at you if you so much as blinked. They neither heard you nor understood when you spoke to them. Where had these goons come from, it’s as if the earth had suddenly spawned them out of nowhere! There were bullies everywhere, nothing but bullies in this city. Zayn ’Alloul certainly was no bully, he hated that kind of stuff, which led to all kinds of atrocities. .
As he told his friend the juice-seller, the best thing to do was to steer clear of trouble. Even the question of Ali Shuayb didn’t mean much to him, anymore — true, Ali Shuayb had been different from the others, and ever since his release from jail, Zayn had realized how important Ali must have been. He obviously knew political players well enough to compromise them. But nowadays, everything was up for grabs, daylight robbery was the order of the day, and it was all done “in the name of the people” and “for the just cause of the nation.” What cause, what bullshit!
The thing is, why isn’t the city buying them those handsome red trucks anymore? The ones where you pile the garbage in at the back; then, when the driver switches on the engine, great big rolling blades churn all the trash into the belly of the truck? With those trucks, the vehicle stays pretty clean and there is no smell — or at least it’s bearable. They’ve set them back a couple of decades with the open dump trucks they have now, and it makes the job so much harder, there’s no pleasure in it anymore. And then there are the new workers, who take no pride in the job whatsoever! They assume, like everyone else, that a garbage collector is just someone who doesn’t know how to do anything else. That’s not at all the case! It’s an occupation like any other, requiring both skill and experience. The Lord alone knows where they got these new recruits from: ignoramuses who mix everything up together — tin cans with tomatoes, bottles with shoes. That’s no way to work!
And then, when you get this old, battered truck to the actual dump, in Shuwayfat, they go and set the garbage on fire! That’s no way to work, there’s no comparison, no comparison at all, between Shuwayfat and Qarantina! Now that was a proper garbage dump: a clearly defined area, with a name, where the garbage was dumped and then sorted, at least to some extent anyway. Even though the garbage was piled everywhere, it wasn’t harmful, because there were people that sorted it. They sorted it out well, putting each thing in its place.
Nothing gladdened our hearts more than seeing the street kids jumping up and down in excitement when they sighted the garbage truck. As if it were laden with presents! As soon as we’d emptied the trucks, the hills would swarm with them: children of all ages, girls and boys, squatting over the piles of garbage and working quietly, without fighting. It was like watching a silent game being played — hundreds of children on the garbage mountain fashioned by our labor, sorting trash and making an income, thanks to our work. They’d take things and resell them, that way we earned a living and they earned a living. We learned to set special things aside, like shoes and bottles, before shoveling the garbage into the truck. And however much we took, there was always plenty left to go around. We filled our bellies and they theirs. The children, the men, and the women of Qarantina scattered across the hills we created, and all of us made a living.