The Long Way Back Read online

  Everything is mine, and there is no shame involved.

  He saw his aunt and grandmother coming out of the room where the television was. They had passed through life, nothing more. They would never be able to say that they had known it. He resumed his walking. Clearly, he wasn’t going to end up like them. As soon as he had reached a definite conclusion, he would get going. So his journey that summer would be confined to gathering the information which he needed to realize his very first project.

  Being on your own in the world gave you the best chance of a full life. And that meant leaving behind these surroundings which were impoverished in every way. He looked at the high wall of their house, built of small stones and clay, almost indistinguishable from the darkness, despite the stars in the sky. This was his worn out, uneasy, cheap world with its narrow-minded traditions and idiotic morality A world of secret pleasure and acceptable crime. A world where everything was permitted behind closed doors. A world of cowards. His mother came out. He saw her looking towards his room, then turning to the place where he was standing. A world of blind, lachrymose sentiments. She went into his aunt’s room. Individualism precluded anger and irritation. If you were a healthy egoist you didn’t get psychological illnesses. You could make judgments with steady nerves and a clear mind, without hatred or resentment, even condemning people to death and destroying their world.

  He stood at the balustrade feeling that he had discovered something which could be useful to him. The yard was dark and the sky above it very black, shining with stars. The wooden pillars in the big gallery, which supported the roof, looked spindly and on the point of collapse. Would he ever be able to leave these ruins behind? They were kneaded with his blood. Ruins of stone and humanity A series of muffled knocks could be heard at the outer door. But they could become a deadly prison if he decided to stay there all his life. Added to which, this sort of attachment to places and people, as well as being intellectually unacceptable, represented an embarrassing obstacle on the path to being alone in the vast, rich world outside. And then there were women, too, those lethal toys.

  The knocking persisted. Who would think of visiting them at this time of night? He looked at his watch. Past eleven-thirty. He went to his aunt’s room. The women’s voices, merging into one another, were incomprehensible. When he opened the door, they looked at him in fear and perplexity His mother stood up without a word and followed him downstairs. As they reached the end of the passage the knocking grew more rapid and insistent, and he began to feel anxious himself.

  His brother Abd al-Karim rushed in as if he had been propelled over the doorstep by an outside force. He didn’t speak to either of them and hurried away up the passage. His mother went after him while Midhat fastened the big door and followed them in. His brother didn’t seem to be himself, but that didn’t do anything to dispel the annoyance he was feeling. These lost children of the night were stupid by nature. And here were he and his mother following their own spoiled nocturnal child without protesting at his lack of concern for their feelings. He heard his mother saying something which he couldn’t make out, and didn’t reply. He continued to feel annoyed with Abd al-Karim and, although he was worried about him, decided to leave him to his own devices. He went into his room and lay down on the bed. Suddenly he heard his mother shouting his name. He lay rooted to the spot, his heart in his mouth, then jumped up and ran into the next room. There he saw them, his mother and brother clinging together in the glare of the light, screaming at one another. Abd al-Karim had a mad look in his eyes. As he demanded to know what was wrong, he noticed the blood on his brother’s trousers. For a moment he was afraid that he had been seriously wounded. Pulling his mother aside, he knelt down beside him, examining him all over. Between her screams his mother managed to articulate a few breathless words: “He’s not hurt. It’s not him. It’s Fuad. His friend Fuad.”

  Abd al-Karim was waving his arms about involuntarily with a lost expression which upset Midhat suddenly He took hold of his brother’s arms, trying to calm him down, and was talking gently to him when his father burst in on them like a whirlwind.

  “What’s wrong with my son?” he shouted. He would have fallen on top of Karim if Midhat hadn’t caught him. He regained his balance quickly and took Abd al-Karim in his arms and began rocking him to and fro and kissing him. Then Madiha came in wailing, still half asleep. Midhat stood a little apart from the general commotion. He was reassured by the fact that his brother wasn’t wounded and watched them in silence. The unholy family experiencing the delirium of shared emotion. They had inherited celebrations of grief, festivals of lamentation, Down the ages, these had been the distinguishing features of their continuing trivial and sterile existence. And with their children—their livers walking the earth, as someone once wrote—these foolish elements would persist forever.

  He was lying in bed peacefully They had all gone to bed a short time before and the crisis appeared to be over, although he could still hear his brother moaning quietly from time to time. He had told them that his friend Fuad had died after being hit by a speeding car. His tone had been curiously disjointed, his face pale. Somehow Midhat had the feeling that it had not been a simple accident, and his brother’s relationship with the world had hit rock bottom.

  Good. Peace. Justice. God. All mere words. It’s pointless trying to define them. In real life they don’t have any serious meaning. Who am I, or more accurately what am I? What’s the real world? What’s the soul? What’s knowledge? What’s thought? Insoluble problems and unanswerable questions, because any attempt to put them in the context of real life is doomed to failure. So who raises these problems in the it place, if they don’t come into existence by themselves? It’s the intellectuals, or people who call themselves intellectuals, the people who employ their minds for the sake or others, instead of others, most of the time without being directly invited. They’re curious in one way or another, and more often than not they’re people with no job to distract them from thinking.

  In his office that morning, with the raindrops beating hesitantly on the windows, Husayn sat listening to him, his bronze face somber and empty, his cigarette dying between his fingers as he looked at him with surprise and some degree of admiration. Midhat didn’t know why he was talking like this, or for whose benefit.

  A person has a beginning; this is when he becomes deliberately conscious of life. He does this on his own. His end is death, which is personal in the extreme. Between this uncertain beginning and sudden ending, within this very specific time period, something complex and mysterious comes into being. This is what is sometimes known as the life of the individual. Individual. But even when he repeated this word several times, Husayn didn’t respond. He extinguished his cigarette and lit another, and looked uncomfortable, as if he couldn’t settle. Nobody had interrupted them, and Midhat didn’t know why he himself had also begun to feel uneasy while he was talking.

  Husayn had arrived about an hour before. He had developed the habit of coming to his office over the past few weeks. He sat calmly in a corner, once he had asked after Abd al-Karim, and told him that there were brief showers every now and then and it was pleasant outside, then began drinking his tea with assurance and obvious relish. Midhat was temporarily distracted by some papers in front of him, but he wanted to ask Husayn where he got his self-assurance and equanimity As it turned out, he forgot and began talking about ideas that he considered his personal secrets. First he wanted to tell him briefly about his projects which were the sort of projects anyone had, but the anxiety which appeared on Husayn’s face and the exaggerated interest he showed, although it kindled Midhat’s enthusiasm, annoyed him at the same time. It seemed forced, although this only made Midhat want to talk more.

  The time passed. They chain-smoked, the tips of their cigarettes glowing fiercely, to the accompaniment of sudden short sharp downpours. Husayn fidgeted in his chair as if he was sitting on nails: “Look, Midhat, this is a dangerous premise. Where’s it going to lead us, th
is extreme egotism? I mean, if everyone thought like that it would be a problem. Wouldn’t it?”

  His hand holding his cigarette remained frozen halfway to his mouth. Midhat answered him in the negative and Husayn’s hand moved on, he sucked on the stub, then the smoke burst from his lips like a sigh.

  “These ideas aren’t for everybody” said Midhat. “What’s the point of doing other people’s thinking for them? They’re for a certain type of person, with clearly defined attributes and abilities. Such ideas exist separately from the world, history, evolution. Those are all circumstances, decor to round off the picture.”

  Husayn’s expression changed. His eyes were red as he coughed and stubbed out his cigarette. “That’s impossible, irresponsible,” he said. “We live in this society and it provides us with basic services. We should work to preserve it, too. Do you mean we should just think of ourselves? That would be cheating.”

  Before embarking on the subject of cheating, we should define the society we belong to. Generalizing won’t achieve anything. This is Iraq in 1962. An unstable society with no future; a society on the edge of the abyss; a society of indigestion, stupidity, fear, hatred, hypocrisy; where you eat when your stomach’s full, don’t know what’s going on in the world, can’t avoid sexual complexes, and are obsessed with poverty It’s a society which has no relationship with its true members and offers you nothing in exchange for the stupid conditions it imposes, because in fact it’s not a society but a period of time. That’s why talking of cheating in your dealings with it doesn’t make sense. There’s no cheating involved when you’re trying to save yourself.

  He found himself shouting angrily: “Look, Husayn, I’m not interested in this rotten society. I don’t want to belong to it. I’m attached to it by chance, and I’m not the first or the last.”

  Husayn was looking at him with trepidation. It occurred to Midhat that Husayn had perhaps reached similar conclusions when he’d given up his home and job and gone off the rails. A vague idea, close to his own, could have formed in the depths of Husayn’s mind and pushed him towards this semi-suicidal way of life.

  He watched him holding his cigarette in his grubby, trembling fingers and lighting it. Perhaps Husayn had judged the world before him, condemned it and was now working hard to turn his life into a lament for mankind. All things considered, was Husayn not his mad twin? His double who had been formed by the same ideas, but then lacked the will, the determination, the sharpness of vision to put them into practice, and so had abandoned everything and let himself be carried along by the current, a bloated body floating on the surface of the water?

  He had an exhausted look, as if the life was draining out of him: prominent cheekbones, dark sunburned complexion, black circles under his eyes and this blank expression in them every now and then, devoid of any reflection of the world around him.

  The janitor came in with a pile of papers and files and Husayn asked him for a tea. When they were alone again he turned to Midhat: “These ideas of yours, Midhat. They’re very individualistic. They’re rebellious or revolutionary up to a point, but they’re completely egotistical. They don’t have a future. I mean, they don’t have a place in the societies of the future. You know, socialism and that kind of thing. What do you want out of life, Midhat? What kind of plans are these? They won’t achieve a change for the better. Don’t you agree?”

  Midhat looked at him in silence. He didn’t think the question needed an answer. Then he said that he didn’t want to be considered a rebel. What was the point of that? Apart from the fact that it would hinder his plans, it involved confrontation and struggle, and he had a horror of all that. He wanted to achieve his goal by advancing like a snake with deft, silent twists and turns, and in the maximum possible security He definitely had no illusions about being a rebel. This spurious word did nobody any good and he’d never been able to bear it. The moralities of the time didn’t stand in the way of selfishness, exploitation, enjoyment at another person’s expense or getting rich by any means but, in reality, none of this appealed to him. He wasn’t temperamentally inclined to commit crimes for the sake of having it all. But you only had one life and you shouldn’t waste it, so you had to organize it, and as far as possible ensure that it was easy, pleasant and full.

  Husayn was sipping his tea and smoking avidly. A beam of white sunlight fell on his face. He didn’t appear to be listening to him and Midhat saw a mysterious look of happiness spread over his features as he looked surreptitiously out of the window at the bright sunshine. He put his glass carefully down in front of him and stubbed out his cigarette, his normal prelude to leaving.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Midhat,” he said. “Come and have a drink one day. We could spend an evening together. I’d like to hear what else you have to say. Will you come?” He had a sudden fit of coughing and turned red in the face. He pulled out his kaffiyeh and began wiping his eyes, nose, and mouth. “Sometimes it helps to talk,” he went on, once he’d recovered. “I don’t know why. It’s soothing.” Midhat smiled at him. “Of course most of the time it’s just chatting into the small hours. All the same, try to come one evening, Midhat, won’t you?”

  “Does talking really help you, Husayn?” asked Midhat.

  Husayn was about to get to his feet but he checked himself and looked oddly down at the ground for a few moments. Then he leapt up energetically. “Yes, why not?” he said, buttoning his jacket, “I’m someone who benefits from an honest conversation.”

  “How, Abu Suha?”

  As he walked slowly towards the door, he turned round. Uncertainty showed on his face and then for a moment Midhat saw his eyes gleam and his lips curve. “You know. And now, instead of dying on the pavement and annoying people, I’m going home to die in my bed.”

  His crooked mouth parted in a smile expressing a mixture of confidence and embarrassment. He raised his hand in farewell, opened the door, and vanished.

  Midhat was sitting with his father on the wooden bench in the corner of the yard, listening to him talk. After lunch they had had a short nap in the small basement room, then woken up around four and were waiting for someone to bring them tea. The sky was pale blue, still bathed in sunlight. His father was talking about his life. He had begun with his childhood and still had plenty of memories left.

  “My father, God rest him, loved company His social evenings were never ending. Friends, drink, women, cards. Life after death didn’t interest him, God rest his soul. He was very handsome. Tall, dignified, large eyes, an elegant moustache.” He paused and began telling his prayer beads more quickly. “I remember once,” he paused again, staring into space, “I was fourteen, perhaps less, and my father hadn’t been home for two nights. We were completely dependent on him. I was at home with my mother, God rest her, and your Aunt Safiya and my grandmother. My poor mother was almost out of her mind with worry, but she didn’t complain. On the third day my grandmother got hold of me and said, ‘You must go and see what’s happened to your father. He’s in the Naqib’s orchard.’ I wondered how I would get there. It seemed miles away to me at the time and I was still a young boy, not used to going out of the house after sunset. Anyway, my grandmother hired a carriage belonging to someone she knew and entrusted him with the task of taking me and bringing me back.”

  Nuriya called from the first floor.

  Her husband looked up at her: “What?”

  “Tea’s ready. Come up and drink it in the alcove. There’s nobody to bring it down. I’m staying here in case Karumi wants anything.”

  He nodded and turned back to Midhat.

  “Where were we? Ah, yes. The carriage owner turned out to be an honest chap and delivered me and waited for me, as promised. I was very scared when we got there. It was late afternoon in spring. The sun was low in the sky and the thickly growing trees in the orchard made it hard to see where you were going. I walked for a quarter of an hour like a lost sheep until in the end a black man jumped out of the shadows and shouted, ‘What are you doing her
e?’ Dammit, I’Ve never been so scared in my life as I was of that black man. I swallowed hard and said, ‘Please, Uncle, I’m Sayyid Ismail’s son. My family sent me to look for him.’ He towered over me, his eyes like burning coals. ‘Stay where you are and don’t move,’ he said and vanished. I stood shivering like a drenched sparrow, afraid to move my little finger. They didn’t keep me waiting long. I heard footsteps and caught a glimpse of my father’s shirt among the branches. I le emerged in front of me and stopped when he saw me. I was speechless. He was so tall, God rest him. His shirt was undone, his hair fell on to his forehead and his eyes were red, but looked as if they were outlined in kohl. ‘Razzaq!’ he shouted to me. ‘Why are you here?’ He leaned against a tree trunk. I was dazzled by the sight of him. ‘My grandmother was worried about you, Baba,’ I said. ‘She says how are you.’