3

Baba Ali

10:15 p.m.

WE’RE PLAYING CHECKERS, BENGHAZI AND me, although my mind is busy and my ears are focused on the outside. We’re playing in one of the two rooms on the other side of the casbah. It’s an old casbah of Pasha Glaoui, or some other pasha, with a number of wings, like a small city. Every wing has its own courtyard, rooms, and kitchens. The commander lives in the wing where the pasha used to live. He’s a soldier and doesn’t like to appear without his military clothes. Ben-ghazi and I occupy the slaves’ wing. There are a lot of ruined rooms crammed into it, some of them on top of each other. If you see it from above, it looks like a well. Our two rooms are at the bottom. Two old and ravaged rooms where we eat, where we sleep and play checkers, Benghazi and me. We’re not friends. Even though he tells me: You’re my friend and my brother. His words are sometimes unintelligible, like he never learned to speak. His sentences are incomplete, and even when he finishes them they’re meaningless. He says he speaks like this because he didn’t go to school. I say that’s not a reason. I’m also not educated but my speech is clear and understandable. That’s why I don’t trust him. That and other reasons. He’ll come to a bad end in any case. He’s a big gambler. He borrows money from everyone to bet on horses and dogs and to play the lottery. He borrows to pay back a debt and he doesn’t pay it back. This won’t end well. The people he owes money knock on his door and his wife has to tell them he’s traveling. And on top of this, he’s a salesman. He tells the commander everything that happens in the casbah, even though nothing happens. The commander barely leaves his office. He tells him what isn’t happening so he can stay with him in his office. The commander listens to him because they’re both from the same village.

We play checkers but my mind’s busy with the sounds coming from outside. From time to time I hear what sounds like crying.

I turn to Benghazi: “You don’t hear anything, Benghazi?”

Benghazi’s absent. He’s busy too. He has a black-and-white checker in his hand and instead of playing it, he tosses it in the air, catches it, and says if it’s white side up, it’ll be a boy. If it’s black, it’ll be a girl. The commander’s dog, Hinda, comes in.

Benghazi calls the commander uncle to endear himself to him. Benghazi loves to be submissive and meek. The crying continues outside. I ask Benghazi if he hears it.

“You don’t hear anything, Benghazi? Like someone crying?”

I listen closely again. But the crying has stopped. It’s as if Benghazi hasn’t heard what I said. He’s busy with the checker he thinks will indicate the baby’s sex. Instead of putting it on the board so we can keep playing, he tosses it in the air. The lamplight around the table dances back and forth. The features of Benghazi’s face are also dancing. Busy with his wife, who’s about to go into labor at home. He puts his hand on the dog’s back, as if he’s remembering his wife. And his son who hasn’t arrived yet. The dog moves away. She flees from his hand, which was about to touch her back. She runs out.

This time, Benghazi looks at the checker, eying his future in its two colors. He puts it on the board.

“Benghazi, you don’t hear someone crying?”

“Where?”

“In the courtyard.”

“That Rifi, as they call him, who . . .”

“The crying’s coming from the courtyard. The Rifi died last week.”

“Or Aziz. Even he’s got two cries left.”

“It’s coming from the courtyard, Benghazi.”

“Or the owl.”

What’s the man saying? Owls don’t cry.

“They sound like they’re crying.”

“Someone’s crying, Benghazi. And it’s not an owl.”

We play for a while. The light dances between us. The face of Sergeant Benghazi dances. I wait for the sound to return. His features are dancing. I see some of them. I wait for the sound to come back to see if it was an owl, as Benghazi said. Or something else. The sergeant starts laughing, in an unexpected way. His face, half lit up, keeps laughing. I tell him to play as he laughs. I’m talking to the dark half of his face while the other half keeps chuckling. The dog comes in and sits down, looking at him. Benghazi laughs to disturb the game. I know him and his tricks. He keeps laughing to confuse me. In the end, he says: “I beat you.” I tell Benghazi: “This time, whether you beat me or not, this time you’re the one who’s going to check out the prisoner, not me.”

He doesn’t hear me. We play for a few more minutes.

“You know my wife’s about to . . .”

“Play.”

“Tonight, I told myself. My wife’s going to give birth. Today or tomorrow.”

“Play, Benghazi. You’re not going to confuse me.

We play for some time. I tell him he won’t trick me by talking about his wife and he laughs again. “What’s wrong with you, Benghazi?”

“I beat you.”

I leave the room. Where’s the sound coming from? From the kitchens? The courtyard? Behind the palm trees in the courtyard? The well to the south of the casbah? A big wing extends south of the casbah. The pasha’s kitchens. The dog follows me. She doesn’t like Sergeant Benghazi either. I don’t hear a sound from the kitchens. Or from anywhere else. I say: In the name of God the Merciful and the Compassionate, and step forward. I don’t like crossing the courtyard at night. It’s full of the dead. I don’t like the night here. I like the day. During the day, I see the sky. And the palm trees. I’m calm. But at night? You don’t know what you’re treading on. There isn’t a spot you can put your feet without there being a dead body underneath. Or dead bodies. We’ve been burying them for twenty years. One on top of another. Dead on top of dead. For twenty years or more. No one knows how many. Because we don’t bury them as they bury the dead in cemeteries. We toss them on top of each other. You can’t be sure about this kind of dead. They can leave their holes at any moment. Tfu! May God curse them at night. This dog’s following me. She slips between my thighs, almost throwing me on the ground. She’s scared too. She also knows the dead leave their holes at night. They leave from every place, since they’re everywhere. Under every palm tree. In every hole and in every crack. Without graves, as in the rest of the world.

I stand in the middle of the courtyard. As if someone put his hand on my shoulder, I stop. Something like a high-voltage current travels through my body. I take refuge in God from Evil Satan. I stop. The damned dog jumps back and forth and circles me. I don’t know if she feels what I’m feeling. Did some of the current lighting up my blood and making the hair on my head stand on end hit her too? I try to grab her but she flees. If I’d grabbed hold of her, I’d feel safer. Me and the dog, it’d be two of us. But she took off. I kicked at her to make myself feel better, but only hit air. I left Sergeant Benghazi smoking his hash pipe and blowing smoke on his dreams. And here I am in the courtyard, kicking the darkness. Even the dog’s disappeared. I turn in a circle and say: I take refuge in God from Evil Satan, and I step toward the kitchens.

This time, it’s as if the ghost passes in front of me. The ghost’s shadow passes before me. I stop again. It does the same thing and it stops too. What I see I don’t see. I mean, I can’t grasp its details. As if I see only its shadow. Something’s shadow. The shadow of a body not of this world. The shadow of a person who died but didn’t die completely. There remained of him the essential. The important. The hair on my head stands up. The blood freezes in my veins. Every thought disappears from my head. Should I run toward the kitchens or go back to the room? The kitchens are safer and closer. My legs abandon me at that moment. They refuse to move from their spot. Should I ask for forgiveness from the dead man? Even if I don’t know if I was the one who buried him. Should I ask forgiveness from them all? The ones I tossed into their holes as well as those I didn’t? For twenty years. Benghazi and me. Benghazi in the room, lighting up hash pipe after hash pipe. The dead don’t scare Benghazi. He’s not interested in anyone’s forgiveness. And the noise that sounds like crying? Is it the crying of the shadow? Do shadows cry? Am I crying? Tears swell in the corners of my eyes. Instead of crying, I call the dog. Hinda? Hinda?

My tongue’s heavy. I don’t know how the sound came out. Did I really call out as you would call to a dog? I don’t think so. I didn’t hear my voice clearly enough to say the call was convincing. And the dog doesn’t come. Hinda! Hinda! I’m not hoping she comes. I’m thinking about the shadow. My voice might scare it and it might disappear. I keep shouting as I run toward the building. Hinda! Hinda! As I run.

Aziz is still on the bench, just as I left him. The bench is a cement slab that in the past was a basin for washing dishes and utensils before the kitchen was turned into a cell, before the casbah kitchens were all turned into cells. The door is narrow. There are lots of cracks in it. I look at the prisoner through them. He looks more emaciated than before but he isn’t crying. It’s as if he’s shrunk a bit. He’s less than what he was yesterday. A child not yet ten years old. He was bigger yesterday. He was moving. Spread out on the bench, his body was moving. Today he’s shrunk even more. And his movements have disappeared. The little energy and the good intentions his body showed yesterday have disappeared. His eyes are open. But they’re frozen. Like the eyes of the dead. Should I go in and touch his hand to see if he still has a pulse? For twenty years, it’s been enough for us to look at him through the cracks. And at the others when they were alive. His eyes are open but is his jugular throbbing and pulsing with blood? He’s the last prisoner. Relief will come to him soon. We’ll all relax after he’s buried.

I look for the key as if I was meaning to go in. I don’t find it so I don’t go in.