Thirst: A Novel of the Iran-Iraq War (4 page)

But … this old black telephone, which looks like something from the Second World War, with its insistent and monotonous bell which cannot be turned up or down, will start ringing. He is certain that, come the morning, at the start of office hours, its insistent ringing will abruptly burst in on the suffocating, damp, grim atmosphere of his sanctuary. Immediately after doing a head-count of the prisoners, this same voice, that of the prison camp commander, will be there on the end of the line, summoning him and
instructing him to wait for ‘the same car to pick you up!’ And at the end of the call, he’ll sign off by saying: ‘
wasallam ya rais al-kottab!
’
^‡
And then he’ll hang up. The prison camp commander has never enquired about how he has spent the night … because he has no idea either of what is going on inside the katib’s head or of what happened on Hill Zero, or of the mental turmoil brought on by grappling with two or three ideas at the same time. He has no real insight into these – as he sees it – inconsequential matters that hold the katib’s mind so firmly in their thrall. A hill and a group of soldiers whose task is to defend it, a healthy, young prisoner whose life was extinguished in the instant it took to fire a bullet, and his well-built body shoved into a pit at the bottom of the hill. And then there’s the other captive with his fearful eyes and coloured headband that’s still tied round his forehead, soaked in blood and mud, so that the slogan written on it is now largely illegible, especially in the inky blackness of the trench at night. What’s more, the prison camp commander is completely unaware of the fate of the people who prey on the author’s mind, the only person who knows what happened to them. He knows their fate alright, but just hasn’t yet been able to plot it properly. Then there’s that firing button, the green or red button – or is it a light, easily flickable switch with a hand outstretched towards it – or maybe there’s a finger poised directly over the button, waiting to press it? Also, the thought of that wandering object going round and round like a nightmare in the night in the mind of the author, and his concern about it flying
or ricocheting; that nightmare has drawn sweat from the brow of the man who has been flatteringly referred to as ‘
rais al-kottab
’, the man whose eyes have been fixed on the two cavorting flies and whose mind is left mired in a sentence which would appear to signal the end of everything, not least the end of the piece of writing he embarked upon. The ending of the work’s beginning. The ink and that phrase written on the paper have been dry for hours, but he’s finding it impossible to venture beyond that point. Perhaps because he knows that the statement ‘prisoners must not be killed’ will be frowned upon and that he will be required to change it to ‘We do not kill prisoners. But our enemies, on the other hand, etc. etc.’, for he has already tried it out in spoken form and come to the conclusion that such a phrase is simply unacceptable to the mind of a military commander. And so it is that the author finds himself ensnared in the sentence he has written; the ink has long since dried and the comfortable fountain pen still nestles, unused, between the fingers of his right hand, while his left hand clutches a cigarette, as if he’s idling, and his gaze is drawn towards the two flies, darting to and fro, occasionally landing on his daughter’s cheek, or on his wife’s hair, or buzzing around the noses of his other children, and for a while his gaze is fixed on the black telephone, a memento of some time around the Second World War, with its insistent ring whose volume cannot be controlled, and a thought rushes into his mind: to hell with this pen, this paper, this text and all publishers. Since time immemorial, we poets have assuaged and mollified the drunkenness of caliphs with our grandiloquent oratory and the tenderness of our
temperament, to the accompaniment of the lute; and now we are expected to use our words to applaud and encourage the insane intoxication of our leaders, leaden words that have to march at the speed of a printing press, draped in military clothes and paraded in front of eyes that cannot stand seeing any bad news in print.

‘Pretty as a bride, Katib! Look at their photos. I took them to the bath-house, to the barber’s and then to the underground solitary confinement cell. I filmed them on the first night and recorded their confessions. Their sentences will be mitigated by these confessions. I’ve given them a promise, man to man, that I’ll save them from being convicted at the trial. Because the way I’ve presented it, they were simply defending their honour – after all, two proud young men will naturally want to defend their characters in front of other prisoners! They say exactly the same things in the film. In it, they speak in fluent Arabic, because it’s been four years since they were taken prisoner and when they were captured they can’t even have been fifteen years old. I can show you the film so that you can see for yourself how easily and freely they speak. There are no signs of pressure or nerves on their faces, and no sign of violence. I extract confessions from every prisoner according to their individual temperament, age and beliefs. I find out the weaknesses of each person depending on their circumstances; and what are the weaknesses of two handsome and proud young men in a hellish situation like this? The answer is, the hope to be freed one day and to live their lives with pride for a long time to come!’

‘So how come they agreed to plead guilty to the kind of accusation that was levelled against them in their confession? Won’t such a confession undermine their self-belief?’

‘No! Because in their own opinions, these young men have defended their characters and honour in one way or another, and consequently committed murder. A premeditated murder, carried out with whatever objects they could lay their hands on, at the exact time of the day when they were sure all the other prisoners would be asleep. And even if a person, or persons, happened to be awake, they pretended otherwise to allow the murder to be committed.’

‘Why would they pretend to be asleep?’

‘Because nobody liked the victim.’

‘Why not? How is it possible for a group of people not to like one of their own?’

‘So many questions, Mr Katib; and I’ve no wish to break your heart or, God forbid, disrespect you in any way. The story follows two distinct paths from here on in: what really happened, which you’d be well advised not to enquire about; and what I’ve already explained to you, at least in part, the rest of which I’m going to tell you now. Take a look at this photograph. It’s of the victim. Neat and clean, with a shaven head and a tidy beard. He has been murdered in the prime of his life. I’ve put his
turbah
^§
and prayer beads on his chest in this photo. As you can see for yourself! Now, I feel sure you’re going to ask me how a prisoner can be so plump and hearty? I will tell you as much as I can – please don’t press me further – but he was given an
officer’s ration. He was chosen as the prefect of his prison wing, so on the night of the murder, like any other night, he knew he didn’t have to shave his beard, dry or …’

‘Or with his face wet with urine from the buckets, in order to shave with one of the two dull razors!’

‘Your attention to detail is beginning to intrigue me. Very well, I will pretend not to have heard what you are implying but merely add that the murdered man had permission from the prison camp to – if required – lead communal prayers and arrange certain ceremonies. Look, I don’t have to tell you this, but I will anyway – you should know, in confidence, that the only way anyone listened to what he had to say was through coercion.’

‘I see!’

‘And what exactly is it that you see?’

‘The truth of the story.’

‘Just hang on a minute … I trusted you and explained a few facts to you in confidence. You know well enough that divulging military secrets in time of war is a serious offence. So, get this into your head: the ‘truth of the story’ is whatever the prison camp office chooses to tell journalists, authors, the Red Cross or any other busybody! And you, my friend, should just listen to the truth I’m impressing on you and take a good look at the face in this photo. Even after suffocation it’s still recognisable. There’s a short pamphlet written in his own hand, as well. I hope you don’t suspect us of having any hand in writing it, or of imposing our view in it – no way! He was trying to pass it off as some sort of religious tract. We have a sample of his handwriting in our archives. We didn’t prevent it from
being written and we provided him with pen and paper, a standard procedure under human rights law. Go on – read it for yourself. Have a look at this little pamphlet. You have my permission. Go ahead and read it at your leisure! The president would like the main points of this pamphlet to be mentioned in your article. We attach the utmost importance to it, since it alone will provide damning evidence against our enemy. What do you think of it?’

‘Indeed! You could easily have got yourself a job at homeland television, sir, no problem! I can see you preparing hours and hours of television for viewers to consume every month.’

‘It’s very kind of you to say so,
seyedi
.
^‖
After all, we do a bit of thinking too in our profession. It’s rather taken for granted in this job!’

‘Marvellous!’

‘You’re not being facetious, I hope?’

‘Absolutely not … twisting the real motives behind an act of violence which has been carried out through the collective will, then fabricating reasons to turn a disaster into a desired outcome – that’s what I call a truly inventive and artistic piece of work!’

‘Well, I think so too. But what is key is that my version of the story is to the benefit of our country and detrimental to the enemy. By publicizing this story we can demoralize enemy troops. It’s indicative of a servile state of mind, even in prison, with a written text as evidence! I don’t expect promotion for myself, but if this event is well publicized
and broadcast by the public media, I’d hope that my – what shall we call it? – “creative input” might be acknowledged in some small way. And, of course, your pen would have the honour of recording all this!’

‘My pen! Yes, of course!’

‘Yes … I’m sure you’re well aware that throughout our history, the pen and the sword have always been close companions.’

Sword, sword, sword … yes, the movements of the two flies begin to look a bit like swords too, as they criss-cross one another in the air – and then suddenly both of them land on the black telephone, and become invisible against its background. Sword and pen. It could be that, up until then, Katib had not paid much heed – or really focused his attention – on the colour of his fountain pen. Now he spent another moment contemplating his fountain pen and turning it between his fingers. Homeland! Homeland, he thought. And suddenly he remembered that he hadn’t given any thought to where exactly the hill in his story was located in his native land. Hill Zero, Hill Zero. And the soldiers who had been ordered to defend the hill with their lives, how many had they been to start with and how many were left now? Seven, maybe, there were originally seven of them, he decided. He reckoned seven or even five men would be enough to defend a small hill, maybe even as few as three; and in this situation, when should he deploy the reinforcements that were waiting in the rear, still all standing and fully equipped? What was their situation right now? He felt lost. ‘I’m confused, confused,’ he muttered
to himself. The two flies would not let him concentrate, and … he thought that he ought perhaps to describe a false dawn appearing behind Hill Zero, and in order to move on, finally, from that repetitive sentence that seemed to lose its meaning with every passing moment, a blot on a white surface, it occurred to him that he should fetch the bilingual captive out of the trench. Maybe he’d then be unshackled. Having thought that, the author immediately fell to wondering whether his pen might even be able to prevent the prisoner’s death. And again he wiped the sweat off his brow with his colourful handkerchief and laid the tip of the fountain pen on the paper after the quotation mark and proceeded to write: ‘thirst, hunger, the feeling of being threatened, and the jumpiness of men who for a long while have been digging foxholes into a hillside and repeatedly having to take cover while carrying full or empty flasks …’ He reflected on the fact that it might not be clear from this whether they were still alive or not. What a dead end! And now I’ve completely lost track of my characters!

MEANWHILE, THIS IS THE SCENE
that is played out on the other side of the border, on the slopes of the Alborz Mountains. Here we find another man, bent double, a man whose whole body is twisted, from his wrist to his neck and his back, so much so that he can’t sit straight anymore, can’t stand up straight anymore, and can’t walk straight anymore. And as he opens his eyes today – like every other day – this man reflects that he is not, nor has he ever been, the kind of person who thinks much about what shoes and clothes he should put on. This man spends his nights considering and marvelling at the cultures of these two tribes and the blending of their languages, which gave voice to enmities, humiliations and disputes fomented on the one hand by the caliphs and their appointees and duly responded to on the other side by those who were intent on confronting the Abbasid caliphate. For instance, Ya’qub the coppersmith seized control of the area between Ahwaz and Baghdad.
^*
Whereupon the caliph sent Ya’qub’s brother Amr a missive, requesting that he withdraw from the border and settle in Neishabur, where he was to await a succession of gifts and presents from the caliph, including slaves and all the
other things that make life pleasant and worth living; and it seems as if the blood on that tract of land has never dried up, for the people on this side of the border have never accepted the presence of outsiders, and never will. It was always so, and so it shall remain. As a prime example of this attitude, there is a famous quotation from that most revered and cunning vizier, the grand Khwaja,
^†
who once complained that ‘no matter where you go, the Batenians are known by a different name or term; hence at every city and in every region they are called something else, though they all amount to the same thing: in Aleppo and Egypt they are called Ismaili; in Qom and Kashan and Tabaristan and Sabzevar, Sabii; and in Baghdad and Transoxiana and Qazni, Qarmati; in Kufa, Mobaraki; and in Basra, Ravandi and Borqa’i; and in Rey, Khalafi; in Gorgan, Mohammereh; in Damascus, Mobayyezeh; in Morocco, Saeedi; and in Lhasa and Bahrain, Jannabi; in Isfahan, Bateni; while they refer to themselves as Ta’limi or by other names. But whatever they are called, their sole intent is to confound the populace and cast them into a state of ignorance!’