The Network - Jason Elliot [103]
Someone has come in downstairs. I can just make out an exchange of male voices. There’s no time to leave by the window. A light goes on at the foot of the stairs. I close the door silently and go to the adjoining bathroom and feel my way into the shower, leaving the curtain open and pressing myself against the tiled wall. A yellow band of light spreads under the bathroom door as the light goes on in the room, and I hear voices and footsteps.
My heart’s thumping now and feels like it’ll jump out of my throat. I close my eyes and try to regulate my breathing. The bathroom door opens and the light, which seems blindingly bright, comes on for a few seconds and then, to my inexpressible relief, goes off again. They are checking the place but not searching it, and not really expecting to find anyone. They have perhaps seen me follow the path to the entrance of the building, and wonder why I haven’t reappeared. Perhaps I should, to appease their curiosity. Perhaps they have decided I have gone into another apartment. Perhaps they have seen nothing at all, and one of the men who works the equipment has simply come back for something he’s forgotten. But I doubt it.
I leave the apartment via the roof, cross it noiselessly, and climb down by the steps that lead to Jameela’s balcony. A few moments later I am lying at her side. For another hour I can’t sleep.
I half-expected them to come for me, though I’m not sure why, and I’m not anticipating being detained for long. I wonder if Jameela is still officially married, and whether the technicality of adultery will see me expelled from the country. We are lying naked next to each other when the buzzer sounds. I have never heard it before and wonder what it is at first, but the loud simultaneous pounding on the door confirms the unfriendly nature of the visit.
Jameela and I dress hastily and are buttoning our clothes when two black men wearing suits and open shirts enter the room and announce abruptly in Arabic that they are members of the Mokhabarat, the intelligence and security service.
‘I am a British citizen,’ I say in English, holding my passport in front of me. ‘I have the right to contact my embassy.’
The man nearest to me looks me up and down with a scowl, takes my passport and flicks through it. Then he hands it back, and his reply stuns me.
‘You are British. She is not.’ He points to Jameela on the far side of the room and snaps his finger. The other man grabs her arm and leads her to the door.
‘I’m sorry, Antoine,’ she says. She looks utterly demoralised and bites her lips as her eyes fill with tears.
‘Jameela, what is happening? Tell me what is happening.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says again.
The man pushes her though the bedroom door and guides her down the stairs without looking back. The sight of her disappearing has a strange effect on me. I cannot bear the thought of her being harmed. I see the sudden image of the haboob and the boiling wall of sand drawing towards me, and feel myself being swallowed in its immensity. I try to follow her down the stairs, but the other man blocks my way by putting his arm across the doorway.
His eyes have a fierce coldness to them. He looks straight at me and says something slowly in Arabic which I don’t understand, but the language of threat is universal and the cruelty in his eyes tells me the warning is a serious one. Something in me is snapping. It’s as if I can hear it, taking up the final moments of strain before it reaches its limit and shatters into fragments. I don’t want it to, because there’ll be no return when it does. I meet his gaze.
‘Let me go, now,’ I say very slowly.
‘Mister,’ he says, ‘you should not fuck Sudan woman. She make too much noise.’
People will always tell you about the horrors of conflict, but seldom about the exhilaration that so often accompanies it. War is one of the rare performances