Sarab Read online

  Raja Alem was born in Mecca and now lives in Paris. Her works include ten novels, two plays, biography, short stories, essays, literary journalism, writing for children, and collaborations with artists and photographers. She has received many awards in the Arab world and in Europe, including from UNESCO for creative achievement in 2005, and from the Lebanese Literary Club in Paris in 2008. In 2011, she became the first woman to win the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction, also known as the “Arabic Booker,” for her novel The Dove’s Necklace.

  Leri Price is a literary translator based in the UK. In 2017, her translation of Khaled Khalifa’s No Knives in the Kitchens of This City (Hoopoe, 2016) was short-listed for both the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)’s National Translation Awards and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

  Sarab

  Raja Alem

  Translated by

  Leri Price

  This electronic edition published in 2018 by

  Hoopoe

  113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt

  420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

  www.hoopoefiction.com

  Hoopoe is an imprint of the American University in Cairo Press

  www.aucpress.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Raja Alem

  Protected under the Berne Convention

  English translation copyright © 2018 by Leri Price

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 9789774168765

  eISBN 9781617978982

  Version 1

  Day One

  The gas bombs forced the revolutionaries to abandon their positions guarding the huge gates and retreat to the cellars of the Grand Mosque. There, they hunkered down and prepared for the fight to the death.

  Squadrons of paratroopers poured in torrents from the helicopters until they covered the courtyard of the Grand Mosque. They reminded the city of the flock of birds described in the Quran which cast handfuls of death on Abraha’s army as it marched with an elephant at its head to destroy Mecca, but this modern flock proclaimed an unparalleled, modern horror. Soldiers in gas masks fanned out instantly to comb the halls and corridors of the mosque for pockets of resistance, and they opened the gates to the troops of the National Guard who were waiting outside.

  That was on November 29, 1979. Thanks to the clouds of gas that hovered in the air over the Holy City, the National Guard had successfully regained control of the rooftops and halls of the Grand Mosque, despite the heavy losses they had sustained earlier in the battle.

  Utter chaos gripped the revolutionaries when electrified water gushed in and swamped the cellars where they had taken refuge. With distorted vision and blood spouting from their eye sockets, the remaining members of the resistance scattered to seek out some form of protection in the network of cellars and prayer cells. The men stumbled away like blinded insects, defeated by the length of the siege and the severity of the battle. Its impending conclusion, and their own end, was clear to all; they were aware their desperate war was only a postponement of the inevitable. The interconnecting cells hindered the spread of the electrified water, lengthening the hours of endurance—or, more accurately, prolonging their demise—but the fighters weren’t permitted to catch their breath.

  On December 3, they were woken by a thundering over their heads, and at once realized colossal drills were consuming the ceiling above them, creating a pit so deep and dark not even the sky would be visible. Soon containers of poisonous chemicals armed with timed detonators were dropped through these holes, one after another. The fighters were dispatched in pieces—fragments of darkness, limbs, the smell of warm blood, and remnants of skin stuck in the teeth of anyone destined to escape that rain of bombs.

  The soldiers continued to vary their drilling sites, distributing holes like musical notes on a stave and dispatching containers of chemicals that blinded the revolutionaries. Even so, the resistance rushed to discharge fountains of bullets upward, riddling the workers’ bodies with holes. The soldiers crawled forward to extract their bodies and free up the entrances to the hell below, but despite their caution a soldier’s eye exploded here, another’s skull there. A bullet hit a package of poison and gas erupted among the soldiers. The streams of blood and poison pouring downward were answered by renewed volleys of bullets rocketing upward, creating a violent and terrifying pandemonium, but it didn’t take long for the chemical powder to resolve the battle to the advantage of the soldiers, and the hail of gunfire from the resistance disappeared. The coughing of the choking men escaped from the holes, along with hisses of rage and the souls that had perished by the dozen. Below ground, the sense of defeat was tangible. Truly, it had been the most elegant, ingenious move in the battle since its beginning; the bombs propelled the terrified combatants out of the cellars like puppets and hounded them through the maze of subterranean vaults pumped full of poisonous chemicals, bullets, and hand grenades. Hell itself was driving them out from behind their impregnable barricades in the cellars, and as soon as they emerged into the courtyard, they were met by the sniper bullets. Stunned by daylight after days of darkness, the revolutionaries fell to the ground even before the hail of bullets annihilated them, and they died in total blindness.

  All the while, Mujan continued to hold out in the hidden vaults. He mowed down attacking soldiers without mercy until the siege was concluded and he was seized.

  The prayer cells belowground had become a fermenting slaughterhouse, its shadows reeking of human bodies. But in one of the sections the National Guard had already liberated from the revolutionaries, behind an abandoned minbar, there appeared a ghost, masked and smeared with blood. Suddenly it perceived a blue light piercing the screen of darkness like a scalpel and cautiously approaching the door. The ghost froze, eyes sparkling maliciously. It held its breath, waiting for the prey to approach its inevitable fate. The strip of blue light widened and a huge ghost in a blue military uniform appeared in the doorway, casting an interrogatory look inside. He advanced a step into the pitch-dark room, and directly in front of him, in the heart of the darkness rent by the blue light, he caught sight of the ghost squatting on the ground. At that moment, a body fell from the ceiling. The squatting ghost watched in terror as a supple piece of darkness detached from the ceiling of the pitch-black prayer cell and landed on the giant officer. As their bodies collided there was a sound of stone hitting stone, and the officer fell to the ground unconscious, as if struck by lightning. The light went out and darkness closed over the scene once more. It hadn’t been a human body, but was more likely a piece of ceiling, or maybe one of the angels of punishment come to dispel the gas clouds and the darkness. The ghost was certain of this as the small piece of darkness disappeared within the greater darkness and its rescuer vanished as if it had never been. While the officer was incapacitated, the ghost seized the opportunity to leap up, confiscate his FAMAS rifle, and point it at his head. The ghost forced the officer to lift the drain cover, pushed him through first, and closed the cover behind them. Their masks were plunged into darkness.

  As they set off in the pitch black, the ghost kept the gun aimed at the other, huge shadow. The slim ghost, lost inside in a stained National Guard uniform, urged the huge blue-suited officer forward. They hurried on like a stream bubbling in silence, fleeing the horror of Judgment Day, lost in the bowels of the earth. They panted, inhaling mold and the putrefaction of death as they stumbled blindly through the suffocating network of sewage tunnels that seemed to branch off at random.

  At any sign of hesitation, the slim ghost would drop the rifle onto
its victim’s shoulder, threatening to blow his brains out and forcing him to hurry up and flee the death pursuing them both. Bombs were still falling from the ceiling according to an infernal plan, cutting off communication lines within the network of prayer cells. The last straggling remnants of the revolutionaries were isolated from their leader and exterminated one small group at a time. The stench of charred human flesh and mashed body parts made the shadows of that underground hell even darker.

  The two fleeing ghosts burst out of the sewage tunnels to find themselves in the middle of Suq al-Mudaa, outside the confines of the Grand Mosque and the hellfire of battle within. They reeled as clean air rushed into their lungs, under the confused impression that the stinging sensation was the effect of the gas.

  The two ghosts fled, groping their way through the narrow alleys of Suq al-Layla. The ominous silence of the normally bustling marketplace absorbed their footsteps, which seemed deafeningly loud here. Compelled by sudden panic, the ghost shoved forward its prey, still staggering from the effects of the gas, so that they disappeared into a narrow alley that turned off the suq. They entered a wooden doorway and walked into the shadowy vestibule of the abandoned house. Every door facing them on the lower floors was closed and they were driven up the stone stairs. An upper floor opened, welcoming them to a kitchen and one other room.

  “God forgive me . . .” The slim rebel opened the door of a room that seemed like a playroom. The wall was papered in lemon yellow and decorated with photographs of a girl about seven years old. She appeared to have been photographed from different angles as she leaped gleefully upward, and her short red skirt sailed through the air in harmony with the flying tendrils of her short black hair.

  In the middle of the room a rocking horse stood a meter high. It neighed enthusiastically and soundlessly, facing the terrifyingly huge television screen. Row upon row of huge plastic dolls, in striking contrast to the smaller handmade cotton dolls, were scattered around the room. The gleaming white cotton faces stared ahead expressionlessly. They had large bulging eyes, decorated with large black buttons sewn on with black thread, and their eyebrows arched upward in mockery of the two ghosts who had rushed panting and uninvited into their forgotten world.

  The ghosts trembled, thunderstruck by the peculiarity of the scene before them, and they drew closer together. Death rustled over the rebel like a second skin; like death itself, the ghost directed a powerful blow to the head of its victim, which sent him to the ground. His unconscious body stoked the rebel’s kindling anger, and the stiff boots of the National Guard, which seemed a little too big for the feet wearing them, began to aim a series of kicks at the center of that masculine body. Vicious sadism overwhelmed the slim rebel, who appeared so overcome with bliss that he shuddered with every blow to the male member, so delicate and so vulnerable to violence. Every hatred, every fear that had disturbed the rebel while among the fighters was embodied in that organ; pulverizing it meant surviving the death that waited belowground.

  The kicks escalated into a frenzy that could only be satiated by the annihilation of that masculinity.

  A boot flew off the small foot of the rebel, who proceeded to kick the prone body with bare feet, giddy with the pleasure of crashing a foot directly into that symbol of masculinity and virility. He kicked in a feverish trance until woken by splashes of blood on the blue uniform; blood was gushing from wounds in his feet, which had been slashed open from wading barefoot through death, even before losing that shoe.

  The rebel felt the huge body had surrendered like a bag of clay, and the satisfaction of kicking it abated. Driven by bloodlust, he knelt beside the body of the enemy, gazing at it blindly, unable to control the fingers that were trembling from his hunger to tear at his opponent’s virility, at the chest webbed with muscles, to drink this enemy’s blood and extinguish the hatred kindling within. But instead of ripping the officer to shreds, the rebel began to rip the clothes from the enemy’s flesh, beginning with the blue military trousers.

  Somewhere between unconsciousness and delirium, the French officer perceived the humiliation his body was being subjected to while a brutal hand ripped his shirt and peeled it away from his hidden survival kit: his wireless radio, his compass, headlamp, maps, grenades, ropes, emergency rations, and most importantly, his pride and the internal war machinery that kept him calm. When the claws reached his underwear, they froze suddenly. Without logic, they allowed him that last shred of dignity. The officer was inflamed; with a desire that tore deep into his guts, he craved more of the humiliation meted out by this violence, which was unlike any sexual gratification he had ever experienced before. Then, at last, he passed out completely.

  The rebel knelt there, overcome with confusion by what he had done to that body; its splendor and perfection had been unexpected. The officer lay nearly naked, and the rebel’s turmoil increased; none of the other revolutionaries had had these fiendish muscles braided with vice, or these slim hips. None of the other revolutionaries’ bodies had borne this ominous danger, its inherent wickedness unalleviated by being unconscious. It occurred to the slim revolutionary to fall on those muscles and tear them apart fiber by fiber, to send them back to the hell they had come from. That would be a magnificent sacrifice to add to the victims left in their wake; that would make him worthy of joining the comrades who had achieved martyrdom in the past few days and doubtless found the gates of Heaven open to them.

  Suddenly, the rebel was snatched from this blissful fantasy by the array of staring eyes; row upon row of doll’s eyes were watching the scene without blinking. With a colossal effort the rebel dragged his body upright and, careful all the while to avoid looking at the dolls, he moved forward defiantly to close the door and the four windows overlooking the walled roof terrace.

  Gathering what remained of his flagging strength, the rebel dragged the captive to a wooden column in the middle of the room by the television set, sat him on a flowery quilt, and began to tie him to the pillar using some electricity cables he had found. Feverishly, even hysterically, he covered the dolls’ faces with anything he could find at hand: scraps of paper, napkins. At last the rebel allowed his body to fall onto a spongy exercise mat that had been left in the room. The two men were sunk in a stupor, surrendered to the paralysis of the gas. The smell of the sweets in the piles of cartons in the corner wafted overhead, a delightful scent that contributed to the strangeness of the scene. Around them there rose a droning sound as giant flies, of a neon color somewhere between blue and green, buzzed among the cartons of sweets and the faces of the two men.

  Day Two

  The officer, raphael, was woken by the twitching of his extremities and he released a string of curses in blunt French when he failed to free his hands from their restraints. With an iron will, he ignored the agony in his crotch, which had been crushed by the vicious kicking he had received. His eyes rested on the unconscious body lying on the tattered blue mat, and he was struck by the long black plaits slipping out from beneath the red-and-white head covering.

  “Either these rebels are growing their hair to be like their ancestors or I’ve been tortured by an extremist fag.”

  He felt he was floating in this unreal reality, as if his naked body were immersed in self-contempt and mockery, incapable even of sweating and drawing out the fever building within. He was blinded by a splitting headache from the blows of the rifle butt; the numbness creeping over his genitals indicated that he might have been made impotent; the gas was making his brain ring with frightening absurdity. His throat was as dry as ash, while his heart and lungs erupted with lava, promising the destruction of that skinny rebel who had wounded his colossal ego and then tied him up like a broken-down dog.

  Prodded by the thunderous glare of the officer, the rebel suddenly emerged from sleep. He hurriedly covered his braids and tucked them inside his head covering as he jumped up from his bed. With steadily increasing attention, the giant officer observed the graceful movements of the rebel’s slim body, stoking h
is anger toward himself and his adversary.

  Under the eyes of his captive, the rebel headed to the roof terrace the room looked onto. He walked doubled over so that his head was no higher than the wall, careful that no watchful eyes from the surrounding terraces should catch sight of him.

  Fear and rage flared up inside him whenever he looked toward the Grand Mosque through the holes in the wall made by the decorative brick pattern. He was hunting desperately for information about the outcome of the siege, but the only indication he had that the siege was over was the cooing of doves mingling with the police and ambulance sirens; the gunfire at least had definitely ended. He could no longer prevent his body from convulsing as he realized that all his companions had been silenced forever.

  Deranged with terror, Sayfullah rushed back to the room and headed straight to the cartons piled in the corner. Maddened by an attack of hunger, he tore off their covers blindly, dug out their contents, and began to gulp down the various sweets and biscuits. Officer Raphael was shocked at the contrast between the elegant little biscuits and the death manifest in the face of the rebel, the result of the long siege, starvation, and the final counterattack of gas and electrified water. Sayfullah’s wandering gaze seemed unable to settle on anything, haunted as it was by the corpses of his fellow rebels and the piles of hostage victims.

  Raphael glared at Sayfullah in fury; how the hell had such a worthless nothing managed to knock him down and strip him of his weapon?

  Those Bedouin are possessed by jinn when they fight. He recalled that phrase from the hasty training sessions he and his comrades had attended in France before they were transported to break the siege on the Grand Mosque. That day, they had greeted the idea of jinn with roars of laughter; he and his iron-hard comrades considered the jinn an insult to their rock-solid Superman muscles and their sophisticated weaponry. The Groupe d’intervention de la Gendarmerie nationale, or GIGN for short, were sent all over the world to negotiate counter-terrorism and hostage rescue missions. They laughed at the idea that they could be scared by invisible beings.