The Tobacco Keeper Read online

  ‘Have you ever worked in Sudan?’

  ‘I’ve been there a couple of times,’ I said.

  Then she told me about her experience of spending a whole year in Darfur.

  ‘Does the Middle East situation frighten you?’ It was a question she might have posed to a politician. She went on to say that what terrified her was the fact that Middle Eastern countries were on the brink of disintegration and collapse or might splinter into pieces. But before she could finish what she was saying, a waiter came to take our order.

  We drank some more while Nancy talked and Faris looked at me from time to time, without speaking. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, nervously pulled one out and lit it with a match which he shook to put out the flame. Then he carelessly threw the matchstick away, not bothering whether it landed in the ashtray or not. He placed his glass of Scotch in front of him, took a quick sip and put it down again. When he spoke he would look you directly in the eye, and when he discussed something, he would not allow his interlocutor to finish a point. That had been my first impression of him. What was more important, however, was related to work: the way he wrote his reports.

  I loathed his reports. He exaggerated so much in an attempt to draw attention to what he was saying. He hadn’t the least sympathy for the people who were suffering from the devastating effects of war. He wrote in order to demonstrate his total mastery of his subject, however cruel. In fact, he wrote about people with utter disdain, caring little for people’s feelings, especially his readers. He often lingered over rough, bloody, cruel and callous scenes. Whenever he talked about what was happening in Iraq, he would speak in a loud voice as he drank and laughed.

  For example, he once mentioned an Iraqi soldier he’d found lying on the floor with his ribcage crushed. He described the intestines spilling out of the stomach like spaghetti between his fingers, with an eyeball lying a metre or so from the body. This was how he’d described an image of war, totally unconcerned about its impact on others. He never left a scene of carnage, be it an explosion in a market or the aftermath of a battle, without taking a photograph. He didn’t mind photographing scattered, charred bodies, plastic shoes strewn all over the place, blood coagulating on the asphalt or human guts that resembled the shreds of food. He simply stood there and took the shot.

  I knew little about his love life, although everyone knew he was having a relationship with a Brazilian girl called Paola, who worked for a local TV channel in Sao Paolo. She was a very tall mixed-race woman, with a strong, young body that was always in a state of arousal. I saw them together more than once, in Damascus, in Beirut, and in Amman. After 2003, I saw them together in Baghdad, where they’d created a furore at the hotel where we were staying because he didn’t care where they made love. In spite of the state of unrest in Iraq during the war, the widespread insurgency, violence and murder, the formation of political parties and societies, and the overall chaos, he used to take her to the nearest bathroom to make love.

  The first time I sat at a table with him was at Katania House in Damascus, where he was drinking Scotch non-stop and lecturing a group of lodgers about his earliest sexual experience. It was when he’d been a soldier at the front. Although I hadn’t heard the story from the beginning, I caught up with it in the middle. He said the woman had seemed submissive as she went down the stairs with him. He was using his torch to show her where to tread. After a few moments, he started running the torchlight over her body. The light on her dark thighs filled him with desire. When she’d raised her dress again on her way down the stairs, he’d touched her thigh with his hand. She’d sworn at him softly, with two words intended to arouse him. He was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable desire to possess her, and he pressed himself against her. Because there was space only for two people and his torch was pointing down, he reached out to touch her body. She let herself glide towards him, her hands on his shoulders. She didn’t seem to be at all distressed; in fact, her smile had broadened invitingly. Rather than pulling back, she touched his neck and drew her face towards his. Swallowing his saliva, he devoured her with his gaze. She reached down with her hand and undid first the top button of his trousers, then the next. With his own hand he explored her body underneath her raised dress. It felt warm and soft, and quivered at the touch of his fingers. His breath became shorter as she leaned against the wall and pulled him towards her.

  This was all I had to go on about the journalist that I was supposed to work with.

  I took refuge in my room at the Select. It was small and clean and located on the upper floor of the hotel. It looked out onto a wide courtyard that had a huge, old pine tree in the middle. I sat by the window, staring at a beautiful church located two streets away. I opened my laptop and wrote a couple of paragraphs, inspired by my latest meeting with Nancy. But I was in total despair; I was afraid to miss this opportunity. It wasn’t money that I was concerned with this time. I love this kind of work, but I was waiting for a better time to write a novel and also hoping it might prove both successful and financially rewarding. If it also got translated in the West, it might turn out to be a good source of income for me. But I still haven’t managed to write it. The reason is mainly to do with my work as a journalist, but also because my connections and friendships with journalists and documentary film-makers were much stronger than those with writers. If truth be told, I hated the dead look on writers’ faces and the lifelessness of poets. I couldn’t stomach talking to literary figures, who sat in smoke-filled cafés, puffing on hookahs and speaking in hoarse voices about semiotics and structuralism. I couldn’t stand their boring, incomprehensible babble.

  I once said to Nancy, ‘I hate writers …’

  ‘What?’ she said in a slightly disapproving tone.

  ‘I hate their ironed clothes and clean-shaven faces. I hate their lazy, boring lives. I’ve always preferred the lives of reporters who confront life head-on and go to dangerous places.’

  I still remember this statement that I made to Nancy that day, although she couldn’t work out why I felt like that. It might have been my love of travelling. I loved moving around and couldn’t stay in one spot for long. I loved going from place to place, seeing the variety and vitality of life itself. I was as passionate about life as writers are about gloves, shoes, money and hatred. Writers’ hatred smelt like tar. It was a smell exuded by the words of those whose souls had rusted away. They were prisoners in their stuffy rooms, in spite of the bustle of life on the streets, the delicious fragrance of a small flower on a table and the clean, ironed clothes they wore.

  ‘But journalism also attracts some ghastly writers,’ she said, ‘and their numbers are on the increase. There are even more of them than authors. They fall into many types. There are the fake journalists who watch a massacre in cold blood and talk as though they’re social reformers or sex therapists. There are others who write reports as though they’re in possession of absolute and irrefutable truths. There are those who try to solve ethnic problems in a mathematical manner, and those who view democracy in the light of the agendas of sheikhs and clerics. And then there’s a faction who might commit murder or go mad if a word of criticism is directed at them.’

  Nancy’s voice on the phone was like a divine intervention, injecting a dose of tenderness into my miserable night. It was dawn, around four or five in the morning. I’d been shaken abruptly out of my dreams by the sound of the phone. It rang many times before I opened my eyes and fumbled for the receiver. Her sharp and confident tone startled me: ‘Don’t hang up …’

  Her voice had an imploring tinge. ‘I need to have a word with you,’ she said and then stopped.

  ‘Nancy, I can’t work with that person. I can’t!’

  ‘Listen. You can’t go to Baghdad by yourself. It’s too dangerous for you.’

  ‘I’ve been there dozens of times.’

  ‘But the situation now is much worse …’

  ‘I’ve been through all kinds of situations, Nancy. I know exactly w
hat it’s like.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody smug.’

  ‘And what can this person do that I can’t?’

  ‘My dear, he has an unbelievable capacity to deal with armed groups. He sometimes takes on the task of smuggling journalists in and out of Baghdad. He has shady connections, everyone knows that, but he knows how to deal with the militias. He’s the one who leaks what they want the press to know. He sometimes passes militia recordings and information to the TV channels, like information about a foreigner who’s had his throat cut. In return, he enjoys privileges. You’ll be safer with him …’

  ‘Safer with a journalist who brings films of militias killing some reporter or hospital nurse? What do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately, my friend, that’s what he does. But he’s kind and useful. I won’t let you go alone this time. The situation is much worse. You can’t. This isn’t just my opinion, but the agency’s as well.’

  I was happy that she really cared about me. The more insistent I was, the more I sensed her anxiety.

  I hung up. But for the remaining hours I couldn’t close my eyes. I stayed in this state of dismay and dejection until I saw the pale and hateful light of dawn in the Amman sky, coming through the curtains of the open window.

  The following day, the three of us met at Fakhr el-Din restaurant. This was a swanky place located on Jabal Amman, designed like a huge palace with spacious gardens. The tables were situated in interconnecting rooms, and there was always a warm and intimate atmosphere. Faris sat on a black leather chair facing me. He was unexpectedly quiet, something I’d never witnessed before. He spoke gently and was extremely polite. He even raised his hands as if praying to the waiter to pour him some wine. His strange looks reminded me of a famous Hitchcock character, the detective in Rear Window.

  At that particular moment, two explanations jarred in my head. On the one hand, Nancy might have been responsible for his state of calm. She might have convinced him to stop his silly babble. On the other hand, it was possible that my view of him had been wrong and based on a misconception. He might have been a very different man from the image he projected.

  On that day, Faris seemed to me like a modern peasant responding to social challenges that he craved. He was not really a likable person, but he did display a kind of wild passion and an amazing love of food and drink. He was very tall, though not excessively. He wasn’t the kind of man who was immediately appealing. He would express his views rather slowly. And in this meeting he revealed his alter ego, that of Asaad Zaki.

  ‘What! You’re Asaad Zaki?’ I asked him, as though trying to arrest the slippery Asaad.

  ‘Yeah, I’m Asaad Zaki,’ he said proudly.

  ‘But Asaad lived in Brazil,’ I objected.

  As soon as he’d uttered the name Asaad Zaki, my conflicting and hostile emotions subsided. In fact, they disappeared almost entirely. Why was that?

  Jacqueline Mugharib had told me about Asaad Zaki when I saw his photograph in Kull al-Arab magazine. He was a thin young man with a squirrel-like face and sunken eyes, an excellent, intelligent reporter who had good connections with Latin American journalists. He lived, if I wasn’t mistaken, at Katania House, in the same room that was occupied later by the two sisters from Latakia. He stayed for a while in the house before leaving for Beirut, where he worked briefly as a journalist and then as a TV reporter. This was all I knew about him. Although I hadn’t met him in person, I’d already heard dozens of his news reports. Those who’d worked with him spoke highly of his talent and exceptional abilities – he was a cameraman, editor, commentator and analyst all at the same time, a whole crew in one person. Moreover, he was greatly admired for his courage and daring.

  But how had he created this new image and new life for himself?

  He said he’d fabricated the image, and the life too, in order to avoid falling prey to Iraqi intelligence. I soon discovered that the name Faris Hassan was also an invention and a fabrication. So what was his real name? His father’s name was Mahmoud Zaki. He’d worked for a long time as a lawyer. Being a highly cultured man, he’d been accused by the authorities of belonging to the Communist Party, a very serious charge at that time. He’d been arrested and imprisoned for more than a year as part of the notorious campaign against communist elements carried out by Saddam Hussein. During his time in detention, he’d been subjected to brutal torture. A short while after his release, he’d managed to escape with his family to Syria and from there to Warsaw.

  Unable to find regular employment, he hadn’t stayed long in Poland. He’d also sensed that the socialist regime was on the verge of collapse, due to devastating inflation, massive unemployment and defeatist attitudes. So in order to avoid sinking into the depths of despair like other immigrants, he’d decided to return to the Arab world. He’d soon settled in Beirut, where he’d worked first as a sales assistant in a small bookshop in Riad al-Sulh Square. Then he’d found a rather unusual job that had proved quite lucrative: he’d begun carving tombstones and other marble objects, such as memorials, that provided him with enough funds to emigrate to Brazil.

  In Sao Paolo, the father had worked in trade and had been hugely successful, becoming one of the wealthiest Iraqis in the small Iraqi community that lived on the margins of the larger Lebanese and Syrian communities and mingled with them. It was in Sao Paolo that Asaad (whose real name was Emad Mahmoud Zaki) had studied journalism at Brazilian universities. He’d then worked for Brazilian television as a correspondent, moving between Beirut, Damascus, Amman and Casablanca.

  So I found myself poised between two opposite personalities, one that I admired and the other that I loathed and couldn’t stand. This brought me back to the characters of Tobacco Shop.

  The situation was not easy for me to accept. But Nancy exerted great pressure to bring another personality out of Faris, different from the one I knew. On that day, Nancy was like a dramaturge, trying to extract from this great actor his best ever performance. She quizzed him about himself. She asked him about things she might have heard from him dozens of times before and perhaps even knew by heart. But she was determined to gather up all his pearls and put them on display before me.

  She asked him about his work as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, particularly at the end of the Taliban era. He described to us in detail his visits to Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, and the detention centres where many Arab fighters were held. Although I’d also been in Kandahar at the same time, we’d never actually met there. So I frequently found myself finishing off his statements and he mine, to the point that we spoke with one voice.

  Faris spoke of many things. But to be fair, although I’d also lived in Kandahar, Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, I didn’t know those places as well as he did. He had an extraordinary ability to remember the tiniest details, things that should be impossible to retain for long. He would talk about the drizzle on fighters’ helmets or his visits to some Tajik camp buried beneath layers of snow. He knew the name of every single hill and didn’t omit a description of the mules carrying jerry-cans of water up the mountain. Nor did he forget the camel caravans entering Kabul. When he talked about Mazar-i-Sharif, he gave a detailed description of the mausoleum where, according to the Afghans, Imam Ali is buried. He charmed us with his description of the white doves on the domes of the mausoleum and the sparkling letters carved on its walls and arches by the best masons of the region. He also spoke of the names of squares, the remains of statues, the traffic lights, the horse-drawn carriages and the types of camels and donkeys that were employed in transporting heavy loads. He told us how he’d ridden in a Jeep with armed Afghans and entered their camp.

  He had access to many secrets there that were completely inaccessible to me. He had contacts with the prominent warlord General Majid Rozi as well as with General Atta Aswad. He was the man entrusted to carry a message from Atta Aswad to the Uzbek leader Abdel Rashid Dostom. Then he talked about the civil war, the warlords and the militarization of the country. He was always ther
e, and seen everything, and he’d occasionally carried out tasks and missions beyond his duties as a journalist.

  He sometimes oversimplified things, but at other times told us secrets we knew nothing about. His analyses had a tone that was neither journalistic nor scientific.

  He spoke very simply but analyzed matters with remarkable accuracy. When he talked about himself, however, it was with a tediously self-congratulatory manner. Nancy must have told him my opinion of him, and he tried that day to present an image of himself that was different from the one we all had of him. It must have pleased Nancy to prove to me that what little I knew about him was nonsense and that he had other, unusual talents that I’d never suspected. At any rate, it was the first time I’d been able to put up with this pompous journalist among whose personalities I was lost, one of which I admired, and the other that I utterly detested.

  But who was he?

  He spoke that day about his memories and the reports he’d published in foreign newspapers. It was a funny coincidence that he’d also worked in advertising, writing commercials for Mexican rice, swimming pools and saunas in five-star hotels. He talked of services during the tourist season, of swimming pools and fishing tackle. He’d worked for a while making kids’ cartoons. Perhaps this was the reason, he said, that he became so popular with children. This was before he started writing articles for a number of Arabic and foreign newspapers, and before moving on to work for well-known television channels. But all his writing was done under a pseudonym. I discovered that there was something else we had in common. Faris Hassan also wanted to write a novel. At least he regarded himself more as a writer than a journalist. This was a common feature of many journalists, who viewed writers as having a higher status than journalists.