translated by Katherine Van De Vate
In this city both alive and dead, where death has left its mark everywhere, it’s not often you see the small kiosk open its doors and start to hand out its stocks of newspapers, books, magazines, and postcards. The publications are all out of date, of course, but everyone rushes up to snatch them with greedy hands, poring over them as ardently as if they were letters from a beloved. Their peculiar determination to act with such impulsive disregard of all the risks seems to reassure them the situation is perfectly normal, even if it isn’t.
It’s also rare to find a crowd gathered here despite the many dangers lying in wait for the brave soul who dares leave his house, let alone for the masses thronging the kiosk and the fuul seller or clustering around the street vendors, who have spread their goods out on the pavement while their eyes scan the area for whatever horror may suddenly descend.
People have concluded that home is no longer the safe haven it always was, and it’s better to go outside for some air, maybe even take an excursion, jumping over barbed wire, dodging security checkpoints, evading the eyes of informers, and flirting with danger. Anything is better than sitting in darkened, cave-like rooms that echo with the sound of bullets and the occasional explosion, that are no more than grim waiting rooms where everyone passes the time gnawing at their fingernails, hoping for a rumor that will arouse their hopes for a promising new spring, or anticipating the untimely arrival of a deranged missile in the heart of the family home.
I stood in front of the kiosk, leafing with one hand through the newspapers and magazines as my other hand stuffed a loaf of bread and fuul into my mouth. There he was, standing a few paces from me, with his sturdy frame and wide forehead, his bushy white beard and tousled head of white hair.
A dumbfounded look crossed my face as I saw for the first time a picture of Karl Marx in one of the monthly magazines I was holding, while the identical man stood nearby, looking back at me. Staring at the picture in disbelief, I read the caption beside it, but though I read it more than once, I couldn’t find any connection between the words and the picture. I shifted my glance between the photograph and the face of the old man standing a few metres away in his stark white jilbab, his appearance shambolic. Anyone who saw me would undoubtedly have burst out laughing at my slack jaw and bewildered expression as I searched for a difference between the original and the copy.
I didn’t notice the irritation of the salesman in the kiosk or the customers grumbling that I was blocking the narrow space, not moving or buying anything. Like a crazed bee, I flitted aimlessly from magazine to magazine, newspaper to newspaper. I’d long ago given up reading this kind of publication, I’m not sure why; maybe it was life’s cares or one of those sea changes in what matters to us at different points in our lives.
Al-Shabaka. Salwa. Al-Yaqza. Al-Nahda. Al-Jaras. In the past, I’d roam through the magic worlds of these magazines, and here I stand now, scanning the faces and headlines on their illustrated pages as if I’ve opened a door to the past and travelled decades back in time, the Levantine accents of Radio Monte Carlo echoing in my head, evoking a whole range of youthful hopes and dreams that the weight of time has crushed.
What a beautiful world it had been! True, its days had often been marked by pain, perhaps why I hadn’t fully savored their sweetness. I was seized with a sudden, inexplicable nostalgia for that era, maybe because the suffering now washing over me was fiercer and more painful than any I’d felt before.
There comes a point in a person’s life when he realizes he’ll never be better than he was, and the cycle of life doesn’t always bring something brighter than the present. It’s more like an immense roulette wheel on which a person gambles his health, his life, and his future, each time in the expectation that things will improve.
The old man noticed my quizzical look. Picking up the hem of his jilbab, he strode towards me, his broad smile disclosing startlingly white teeth. He reached out one hand in greeting while the other held up the jilbab, exposing, in contrast to his sturdy frame, legs as long and thin as those of a crane. Smiling, he gripped my hand. “It’s a beautiful day isn’t it?” I nodded, forcing a weak smile. The old man plucked the remains of the bread from my hand and led me towards an empty area beside the kiosk. Motioning for me to sit down next to him, he started wolfing down the bread.
“I’m guessing you’re not from here, are you?”
I nodded, surprised, and he continued:
“That’s obvious – the glint in your eye, the way you’re standing in front of this kiosk, like you’ve just parachuted into the city. But this calm won’t last; the storm will return at any moment.” When he’d finished speaking, he let out a laugh.
Feeling insulted, I was about to respond in kind to this irritating fellow, but waving his hand, he stopped the words in my mouth:
“It looks like I’ve upset you. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. Take it easy; take life as it comes, with simplicity. Why complicate things? Life itself is only time that carries us along, a wind that lifts us like a helpless feather. We can’t control our destiny or even the direction we’re going.”
I continued to watch him as he licked his fingers and picked up bits of fuul that had fallen onto his jilbab. Summoning up my courage, I responded: “What you say is true in principle, but practically speaking, I don’t think simplicity can solve all our problems.”
He reached out his hands towards me with a broad smile.
“Be happy with what you have, my son. Contentment is an inexhaustible treasure.”
Growing irritated with his chatter, I snapped: “What do you mean by contentment, mister? Contentment can’t provide us with everything we think we need in life.”
Wagging his finger at me, he said maliciously: “Just like freedom.”
“Exactly!” I replied in astonishment.
The old man’s face suddenly grew serious, and he looked towards a point on the opposite side of the square. I followed his gaze but saw only a group of cars, both military and civilian, parked in front of the Central Bank building. A group of soldiers descended from the cars, making a racket. The old man said sadly:
“Fear has erased everything of beauty in this country. The language of evil has replaced all the values we were brought up with, even decent behaviour. Resentment and hatred have swept like a torrent over everything, covering it in blackness – the ground, the sky, the flowers, even the rain runs black. Nothing is as it was, and it doesn’t seem it ever will be.”
No sooner had he finished his sentence than a violent explosion flung us to the ground. Fragments of iron and stone rained down, and a cloud of smoke and dust enveloped the area. Lifting my head slowly, I saw dozens of corpses strewn on the ground. Cries for help rang out, mingled with screams of pain. A huge fireball was engulfing the Central Bank building and the cars parked in front of it.
I had scarcely grasped what had happened when heavy gunfire broke out, rising to a terrifying pitch, accompanied by the shriek of sirens coming from a distance. I could not tell what they were – ambulances, fire engines, or military reinforcements dispatched to the area? I was sure of only one thing – Hell had flung open its gates, and the hour of total chaos had arrived.
The place was in an uproar. I don’t know what I was feeling; I’d suddenly become numb. In stupefaction, I watched events unfold in front of me without reacting, as if I’d been transported to a Hollywood studio and dropped into the heart of a violent film scene, filled with death and destruction.
As my head swam and my ears rang, I caught sight of a man seated on the ground. He was leaning against the wall of a flowerbed, his clothes drenched in blood. I found myself crawling towards him through the rubble, my gaze fixed on him. His slight body and eyeglasses seemed familiar, and I remembered he’d been standing next to me at the kiosk. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose, leaving no doubt he was severely wounded.
The old man caught up with me and raised his voice in surprise: “Are you out of your mind, man? Where are you going?” Looking at the man on the ground, he said with concern: “Do you know him?” Ignoring his question, I approached the injured man, who was clutching his throat with his hand. When he released it, a fountain of blood erupted from his neck, spurting in time with his heartbeat.
“He looks in a very bad way,” said the old man. “He urgently needs medical help.” Looking around, he asked doubtfully: “What can we do for this poor fellow?”
I spotted another deep wound on the left side of the man’s abdomen. His intestines were protruding, and blood bubbled around the opening of the wound. A cold shiver ran through me, and I said nervously:
“His injuries are really bad, that’s obvious. Let’s move him to a safer place and see how we can help him.”
The old man shook his head as he watched the man struggle to breathe.
“We can’t do anything for him now. Moving him with these injuries would be really risky. It’s better for him to stay here until the ambulance arrives.”
The wounded man began screaming in pain and terror. Behind the blood-spattered lenses of his glasses, his eyes bulged with fright. With a feeble, twitching grip, he seized my arm with one blood-soaked hand while pressing the other to his neck. He gathered his breath in an effort to say something, but the words deserted him, vanishing in his throat and emerging instead as bubbles of blood from his nose and mouth.
Trying to raise his voice above the mayhem, the old man said:
“Let’s go! We can’t help him. It’s dangerous to stay here any longer; we need to get out this minute and leave him in the hands of his Maker.”
Hearing this, the injured man released my arm, coughing up blood with a rhythmic despair like the sound of sobbing. The old man pounded my back with his hand, and over the sound of gunfire, urged me: “Come on, son, let’s leave!”
He turned around and began crawling away on his hands and knees. As if under a spell, I crawled behind him. But after a few feet, I stopped to look back at the wounded man, who was following us with his eyes. His arms had fallen by his side in bitter resignation, while the geyser of blood spurting from his neck had dyed the book, newspaper, and bag of bread next to him deep red. As long as I live, I will never forget that man’s look of despair as he gazed into the face of death. Nor will I ever forget those who were waiting – waiting for those loaves of bread soaked in the blood of innocents.
The old man seized my hand and pulled me into a run as bullets flew around us, striking the walls and piercing bodies. The shop windows were spattered with blood and broken glass lay everywhere. We ran until we reached a street that was blocked at one end by an armoured car, around which soldiers were setting up medium and heavy machine guns behind a barrier of barbed wire. The old man dragged me towards an alley that led off the street. Going back the way we had come would be suicide, and we had no idea what would happen if we asked the soldiers for help.
Once we entered the alley, we stopped to catch our breath. I warily surveyed the street behind us. The cars were leaving, their tires squealing on the asphalt. My hand trembling, I pointed at the old man’s face, and he wiped some blood off it. Looking at his hand, he said: “It’s not my blood; it’s someone else’s.” I nodded, recalling the bodies we’d run past and the rain of bullets splashing their blood in the air and on our faces.
As the pandemonium grew, the sounds became increasingly jumbled and chaotic – cars honking frantically, terrified screaming, the rattle of heavy gunfire destroying windows and shop-fronts – a violent, unendurable mixture of sounds. I seemed to be living in a nightmare where a pair of hands wrapped themselves around my neck and prevented me from breathing. I looked over at the old man, who was still talking, I could tell from his lips, which hadn’t stopped moving since we’d entered the alley, or maybe since the moment I’d met him. I was about to collapse from dizziness, and the sounds in my head had all fused into one maddening, unbearable buzz. I squatted down and surveyed the street, which was rapidly emptying out. Suddenly the noise subsided, replaced by total silence. The old man continued to watch the street closely. Clutching my stomach with both hands, I asked him weakly: “Why didn’t we help that fellow?” I could still feel the injured man’s twitching grip on my arm, and his imploring gaze squeezed my memory like a vice, forcing it to focus it on the smallest details of the scene. The old man raised his bushy eyebrows and answered gravely: “What could we have done to save him? Are you a doctor, for example?” I shook my head, exasperated, but he ignored me and went on: “If you are, let’s go back and save him, and all the others!”
The pain in my stomach had increased, and I struck the wall with my fist. Suppressing a wave of pain that threatened to twist my face, I retorted: “At least we could have gotten him out of that hellhole, and even if we couldn’t help him, we would have eased our consciences.”
The old man knelt in front of me and put his hand on my knee. Gazing me straight in the eye, he said heatedly: “And after we got him out? Where would we take him – to hide with us in this alley?!”
I had begun to loathe this old man and the way he spoke, and I couldn’t stand him staring into my eyes any longer. Shaking off his hand, I jumped up and said irately: “We could have tried! We could at least have tried!” The old man gripped my shoulder and I turned towards him. His face was glowering, and his eyes bulged fearsomely like a lion preparing to attack its prey. In a voice so angry it seemed he was about to spew the contents of some imaginary hell into my ear, word by word, letter by letter, he growled: “All we could have done was move him from the square to die here in this alley among the piles of garbage, that’s all. Do you think you’re on a picnic, young man, where you can take what you want, leave what you don’t, and make any decision you like? We escaped that square by pure luck, and it may not happen again.”
Gesturing angrily, I interrupted him: “Enough of your jabber, old man! I’m sick and tired of you, of staying here and listening to your ranting and raving, and I’m fed up with your miserable face. I can decide and I can do what I want. You’ll see – I’m going to get that man, no matter what, and don’t you dare try to stop me!”
Brandishing my finger in his face, I finished speaking. He looked down at the ground, then placed his hand on my shoulder and said soothingly: “All right, all right, as you wish, let’s go get him. But we’d better wait a little while; it’s still dangerous out there.” I brushed off his hand and said determinedly: “I’m going now.” His voice harsh, he responded: “I told you, not now. Wait!” I turned away with indifference. Heading towards the street, I said furiously: “I’m going! Just try and stop me.”
No sooner had my feet touched the asphalt of the street than a strong hand yanked me from behind back into the alley and flung me onto the piles of garbage. I’d hardly landed among them before stones and chunks of asphalt came flying into the alley. I buried my head between my knees to protect myself from the barrage. Stealing a glance at the scene, I saw that the old man had thrown his arms over his head. The onslaught continued for several seconds. When it subsided, I slowly raised my head. The alley was choked with dust and the smell of gunpowder, and tongues of flames flickered on the walls. The old man stood up, brushing dust from his hair, beard and jilbab. Eyes flashing with anger, he exclaimed: “You idiot! You nearly got yourself killed.”
I stood up, dazed and staggering, staring blindly into the old man’s face. I tore my eyes away and looked at the wall. It was pierced with deep holes from the rain of bullets and one side of it was still on fire. Gritting his teeth, the old man pointed at the wall and said angrily: “Look! Those bastards are using incendiary bullets. By now, you would have been a burning corpse in the alley entrance. Are you still determined to go out there?”
Numbness and lethargy overcame both my mind and my body. I could not absorb what had happened. My God! I had been standing in the face of death, prevented from falling into its grip by only a fraction of a second.
The old man’s voice grew fainter and fainter until it vanished completely, together with all the other sounds. His lips resumed their rapid, angry movement, as he continued to speak with agitation, wagging his forefinger in my face from time to time. Was he warning me, berating me, or threatening me? I couldn’t tell.
The pain in my stomach redoubled and the alley seemed to shake. The old man’s features undulated as if they were the surface of a still pond into which someone had thrown a stone. Suddenly the sound of his voice returned, and this time it was rough and painful to my ears. I could not understand what he was saying and I doubled over, covering my ears with my hands to lessen the pain.
Without warning, I found myself suddenly emptying the contents of my stomach onto the feet of the old man as he stood in front of me. I tried to stop myself, but the contractions in my gut were stronger than my will, stronger than the hand with which I tried to staunch the deluge from my insides. I continued vomiting convulsively, wave after wave. Through eyes filled with tears, I saw the old man lift up his jilbab and tiptoe away on bare feet, his face a thundercloud. His lips were still moving rapidly, voicing anger or perhaps insults. I could glimpse him from behind my curtain of tears as the taste of acid rose in my throat.
Everything in front of me faded away and darkness swallowed me up. The infernal, maddening ringing in my head had resumed, and I clamped my hands over my ears. I slumped to my knees and closed my eyes.
***
When I opened my eyes again, my gaze met the blue of the sky. I was lying on the ground in the alley. I sat up. The old man was stretched out at the side of the alley, leaning on some bricks he’d pulled from the wall that the gunfire had shattered. He was absent-mindedly chewing on some leaves of qat and facing the opposite wall in silence. He said calmly:
“Finally, you’ve woken up from your blackout! It lasted for ages. In any case, it’s still dangerous out there. It looks like you’re having stomach problems, aren’t you?”
My head was still throbbing and my body was wracked with pains of every kind. I asked him anxiously: “Will we stay here much longer?”
He turned towards me with indifference, not answering, then resumed staring at the same point on the wall. I spotted a bottle of mineral water. Clutching my throat, I pointed at the bottle and said weakly: “Water…. I need some water….”
Without looking at me, he threw the bottle of water over to me. I picked it up and drank until I’d satisfied my thirst. When I put it down, I saw green scum on the bottom. Lifting the bottle to eye-level, I peered at it, then spat with disgust and flung it back at the old man. Spitting again and again, I said in a rage:
“Damn you, old man! Don’t you know how to drink properly? You spat the contents of your mouth back into it!”
Unruffled, he turned towards me and said coldly:
“I thought you’d thank me for saving your life and taking care of you after you’d passed out. It’s true that your generation has no manners at all.”
In fact, the water bottle was filled with the remains of the qat he’d been chewing, which filled me with disgust and revulsion. But his response made me feel I actually was ill-mannered, a feeling that increased when I noticed the pages of newspaper scattered around us and realized he had used them to clean my vomit off his feet. Mortified, I stammered: “Thank you. Forgive me; I was confused and didn’t realize what was going on. I’m deeply grateful; I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
The old man’s only response was a dismissive wave of the hand he was resting on his knee, which further increased my embarrassment. Trying to suppress my feelings, I asked with concern: “What’s happening out there? Is there anything new?”
He turned to me with the same expression he’d worn since I regained consciousness. Wordlessly, he picked up a mid-sized empty paint can lying beside him and hurled it into the silent, still street. No sooner had the can hit the ground than a volley of gunfire struck it, flinging it into the distance and scattering chunks of burning asphalt around us. His expression unchanged, he looked at me and continued in a frosty tone:
“What’s new is we’re stuck here. Someone’s watching us and knows we’re here. They don’t know exactly who we are, just that someone is hiding in this alley. They’re holding their breath till we come out, and they have time on their hands. The operation at the bank today has driven everyone – whether attacker or defender – out of their minds and increased their appetite for the awful bloodshed you just saw.”
He resumed chewing his qat, but when he saw the look on my face, he added: “I know you’re suffering from stomach problems, and stress is making it worse. Stay calm and we’ll try to find a way out of this mess.”
I looked back and forth between the old man and the far end of the alley. It was a dead-end, with no windows on either side. I muttered anxiously:
“The way is blocked; it’s blocked. Dear God, why have you gotten me into this situation?”
Resting my back on the wall, I wrapped my arms around my knees. A stream of images flowed through my mind: we were back in that market square, where life was proceeding normally, or so it had seemed at first. How had Death flung his cloak over that time and place so fast? It’s terrifying to find yourself thrown unexpectedly straight into a vortex of death and destruction. I could not believe what had happened, or how quickly.
Death is like the hand of a skilled surgeon, its scalpel slicing cleanly and quickly, with absolute precision. It’s hard for us humans to grasp or even to predict where it may slice next. It leaves in its wake blood, a sweeping torrent of destruction, unimaginable mountains of sadness. Measured against eternity and what the future may hold, these remains of death’s magnitude and its impact on us are trivial. But despite that, we all accept this outcome as inevitable, as inescapable.
“This flood of evil – we’ve forged it with our own hands, with our endless greed. But, my son, the Holy Qur’an tells us that one thing is certain: ‘Only what God has decreed will happen to us.’” With these words, the old man picked up the water bottle and drained it to the dregs before tossing it into the street, where bullets consumed it, leaving in their wake a storm of stones and the smell of burning asphalt.
Jumping to his feet, the old man tucked his jilbab around his waistband and, with great effort, began prying bricks from the wall that had been riddled by gunfire, sometimes pounding the bricks with his palm, sometimes with another brick. Looking at me in surprise, he asked: “Don’t you want to get out of here?”
I stared at him with astonishment for a few seconds before replying: “Yes!”
His face pale with anger, he bellowed so loudly that I jumped in terror: “Well, get to work then!”
I leapt up, tripping over the bags of garbage, and began prying bricks out of the wall one after another, occasionally glancing at the old man’s face. He was serious, consumed by his task, his body covered in dust. The ghost of an enigmatic smile hovered on his lips as he asked me loudly: “You haven’t asked me where I got the water bottle and the qat leaves?”
I turned towards him, understanding what his question implied, but I responded only with a faint smile. In the distance, I heard a motorcycle gunning its engine, or so I surmised from the high-pitched sound. This was followed by a volley of gunfire that drowned out the sound of the motorcycle. Moments passed, and total silence reigned again.
From time to time, bursts of gunfire erupted in different rhythms and loudspeakers blared announcements that there was a curfew until further notice. The smell of gunfire was overpowering; it destroyed any hope of living or even the desire to. The past had been painful, but the present we were enduring now was worse than the past in every way imaginable.
It doesn’t seem the roar of gunfire will end soon or resolve anything. For when the wheel of death begins to roll, no one can stop it. Even if the killing and destruction come to an end, their trail of devastation strikes at people, ideals, and morals, breaking families apart, rupturing the ties of compassion that bind society together, and transforming people into savage two-legged beasts, selfish creatures who fight desperately to survive one more day on this earth, whatever the cost. This destruction will not bring about any systematic reform, not for decades. What is destroyed in our souls during a day cannot be repaired for years.
Yemeni writer Badr Ahmad, born in 1979, is the author of several novels and short story collections. His 2018 novel Bayn babayn (Between Two Doors) was published by Poiesis Editrice in 2019 in Federica Pistono’s Italian translation under the title Tra Due Porte. HIs 2021 novel Khamsah ayyam lam yasma’ biha ahad (Five Days Unknown) will appear in Christiaan James’ English translation in the winter of 2021, published by Dar Arab in London. A translated portion of his novel Amtar Sawda (Black Rains) received a commendation in the 2021 John Dryden Translation Competition, which is sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association.
Ahmad lives in the Yemeni city of Ibb, where he co-founded Mu’assasat Riwaq al-Adab al-Arabi, an organization that supported young Arab writers before its work was suspended due to the political unrest in Yemen. Through his writing, Ahmad seeks to portray the futility of armed conflict and its capacity to destroy both our physical and social worlds.
Katherine Van de Vate translates modern Arabic fiction into English. She served as a U.S. diplomat in the Middle East and as a curator of Arabic books and manuscripts at the British Library and holds a master’s degree in translation from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Her work has been published in Words without Borders, Asymptote, and Arablit Quarterly. She is currently translating a novel by Omani writer Badriyah al-Badri.