Jacob wakes up next to Yassim in a dark room, the only room in the apartment that doesn’t have translucent walls. In fact it’s the opposite of transparent thanks to thick blackout curtains. Despite the darkness, he can still make out Yassim’s face, eyes closed, mouth half open. He’s so still right now, unlike earlier in the night when he tossed and turned in his sleep so much that Jacob woke up and turned towards his stern face. Yassim’s mouth was moving in his sleep, as if he were speaking or praying, but without words, and Jacob gently pressed close and waited for him to calm down.
This is the fourth night in a row he’s slept here. The fourth day he’s come here directly from work, and they’ve collided in desire in the hallway, could barely make it to the bedroom, the fourth night they’ve eaten among the lights of the city in the living room, while Yassim insisted that they stay away from windows and balconies.
‘We’re ghosts, darling,’ he said. ‘We can’t let anyone see us. This is only happening between you and me.’
And then he pulled Jacob deeper into the apartment and kissed him until no thoughts were in his head, no other need except his need for him. Until the memory of his betrayal faded almost completely.
Because this is happening only between them.
Every morning on his way to the embassy, Jacob calls Myriam to report while betrayal burns in his throat and chest. Just to keep her at a distance, he thinks, just to save the crumbs of his life. And every morning he hears her frustration growing.
‘Jesus Christ, you can’t just spend all your time fucking,’ she says. ‘You have to get the password to his computer so you can load the thumb drive. Do you understand? You have one task here. Focus.’
Each call forces him to confront and conquer himself, his doubts, his worries. Every conversation with Myriam forces him to harden himself to what she’s saying. It can’t be true; Yassim can’t be who she says he is.
But what if it is true?
What proof does he have that Yassim isn’t a terrorist? What proof does Jacob have that Yassim couldn’t be both the person Myriam says he is, and the person Jacob knows.
The thumb drive burns inside his pocket. He knows he has to do what Myriam says. There’s no other way out of this. He has to because she’s forcing him to, but also because he can’t be sure. Because there are limits even for him, even for his naivety, his desire and his infatuation. Because no matter how much he doesn’t want to face it, no matter how wrong it feels: he doesn’t know who Yassim is.
*
Jacob sits up, careful not to wake Yassim. He pulls on a pair of underwear and tiptoes barefoot over the cool concrete floor into the living room, where he’s dazzled by the morning light falling through the huge windows.
He fills the moka pot with coffee from a jar in the cabinet and turns on the gas stove. While waiting for the coffee to brew, he sits down at the table in front of the computer. He bends forward hesitantly. With trembling hands he pushes the screen up and is met by the blurry photo overlaid by a dialogue box asking for a password.
He sighs, closes the computer again and pulls his phone out of his pocket to check his messages and the news, but it gets stuck and drops onto the floor. He throws a foot out reflexively to soften the fall, and somehow manages to kick it under the table.
He swears silently and crawls under the table. He hits his head against something cold and angular, and stifles a moan of pain as he turns his head.
It takes him a moment to understand what he’s looking at. Duct-taped to the underside of the table, there is a large, black gun. He gapes at it and runs his fingers along the barrel.
He can hear Yassim moving around. He turns around, grabs hold of the phone and backs out from under the table. When Yassim comes out of the bedroom, he’s back on the chair again.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Yassim says, going over to the stove. ‘Ah, you already put on the coffee!’
There’s a gun under the table; it’s the only thing Jacob can think of. He knows it’s not unusual for people to be armed here; it’s not like Sweden. But still, how could there be a gun under the table?
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I slept great.’
Yassim pours coffee into two small cups and puts one on the table next to Jacob, before bending down and kissing him on the cheek. ‘What is it, my darling?’ he says. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Jacob clears his throat, tries to collect himself, takes a small sip of the strong, black coffee. What do you say when you’ve just discovered a gun under the table of someone who you’re inexorably drawn to, but who you suspect might be a terrorist?
‘Didn’t I?’ Jacob says. ‘You’re my ghost.’
He takes Yassim’s hand and kisses it with Myriam’s message ringing in his ears: ‘Don’t forget – he’s not who he says he is.’
But who does he say he is? Jacob doesn’t know anything about Yassim. Just that he’s more attracted to him than anyone else he’s ever met. And that it’s mutual. Yassim can’t keep his hands off Jacob either, can’t be without him. What exactly have they been up to the last four nights?
Jacob has come here late, straight from work where he stayed as late as possible despite a near complete lack of tasks, because Yassim supposedly had meetings with clients into the evening. They’ve eaten and slept with each other. It doesn’t sound like much when you put it like that. But there’s so much more to it than just sex and takeout. But what has Yassim actually told him about himself? His family is from Syria, but lives in England. He’s a photographer.
Myriam’s voice is in Jacob’s ear. The gun’s cold against his fingers. Doubt and worry and confusion.
‘Sometimes I think you really are a ghost,’ Jacob says. ‘It feels like I don’t know anything about you at all.’
Yassim laughs and takes a sip of coffee. But Jacob thinks he hears some sadness there, something more than just amusement at how adorable Jacob is. ‘What do you want to know? I’m an open book.’
Jacob shrugs. Then he pushes up the screen of the computer in front of him. ‘I’d like to see the pictures from your Syria trip. You’re so far away sometimes. I want to see what you see.’
Yassim takes another sip of coffee and sits down at the short side of the table. ‘There’s nothing to see yet. They’re not ready. I have to go through them and edit them. They’re for a magazine, and I don’t need to turn them in for a few more days.’
This is how it’s been every time he brought up something about Yassim or his job. There’s always an excuse. He hears Myriam’s voice in his head again.
‘I don’t care if they’re not ready,’ he says, frustrated now. ‘I know we can’t be a couple outside these walls. But I’m interested, Yassim. I want to know what you’re working on, what you experience, where you come from.’ He pushes the computer towards him. ‘Just a couple of pictures, okay? Just something?’
Yassim doesn’t move, just stares at Jacob without saying a word. It’s a test. Both of them feel it. Jacob didn’t mean it like that, but that’s how it turned out.
But he doesn’t have the strength to hold out, doesn’t want a confrontation, doesn’t want to upset this fragile magic.
‘Forget it,’ Jacob says, sliding the computer back. ‘It’s not important. If you don’t want to tell me, then…’
But Yassim leans over, and grabs the computer out of Jacob’s hands. ‘Okay, okay,’ he says. ‘If you’re so fucking curious then you might as well see. But only a few.’
Jacob nods and moves his chair closer to him. For a moment he thought there were no pictures. That there was only this blinding passion, Myriam’s version, and guns taped under tables.
Yassim’s fingers fly over the keyboard, putting in his password, and Jacob focuses on memorizing what he types. Just numbers. 201207… He doesn’t see the last two. Fuck!
The background is a solid blue. There’s only one nameless folder on the desktop. Yassim quickly clicks on a Photoshop icon in the dock and the screen fills with tiny pictures. He also finds a folder on the left side that Jacob didn’t see at first and clicks on it. Eight thumbnail images appear on the screen and he clicks on the first one. It’s of a small, dirty boy sitting in the back of a truck with a blank stare. Around him is only rubble and ruins.
‘Western Aleppo,’ Yassim says, and clicks on the next picture.
A house that’s lost its whole front wall, so that you can see straight into people’s apartments, like a doll’s house. Armchairs and sofas and beds. Yassim enlarges the image.
‘The table was still set,’ he says.
He shows a few more pictures of civilians, ordinary people in the midst of indescribable destruction and misery. Then he stands up and shares the rest of the coffee between them.
Jacob takes out his phone and takes a picture of what’s on the screen. ‘Terrible,’ he says. ‘I honestly don’t understand how you have the strength to face it. Or the bravery to go there.’
‘What are you doing?’ Yassim says and turns around. ‘Stop taking fucking pictures of the screen, okay?’ His voice is suddenly empty again, like the first time Jacob was here. Like when he said if he had secrets he’d hide them better.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jacob says. ‘I’m deleting them. I didn’t know I couldn’t, just wanted something of yours.’ Was that the reason he was photographing them?
‘Delete them,’ Yassim says. ‘The resolution is shitty, and they haven’t been published yet.’
Jacob opens the Photos app on his phone, marks the pictures and holds his thumb above the trash icon. But he doesn’t press. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You have to ask me first,’ Yassim says. He’s at Jacob’s side now, staring into his eyes. He slowly bends forward and grabs Jacob’s chin hard. ‘We’re not married, no matter how much you like me. Do you understand?’
Jacob nods. He feels stupid and naive again. At the same time it makes him horny to be reprimanded by Yassim. He’s attracted to his violence, for better or worse. And he hasn’t deleted the pictures.
‘I’m just impressed by you,’ he says quietly. ‘I can’t understand how you can go back and forth to Aleppo, that you can do the things you’re doing.’
Yassim lets go of his chin and laughs weakly. He shrugs and drinks his coffee.
‘You do what you have to do,’ he says. ‘I know the city now. Have my contacts. I just don’t have the energy to discuss it when I get home. It’s two different worlds. Sometimes it feels like even more than that.’ Yassim bites his lower lip and looks at him with those eyes Jacob has never been able to hide from. Then he stands up and walks over to the kitchen area.
‘There’s so much…’ Yassim begins again with his back to Jacob. ‘So much I can’t share with you. Especially not here in Beirut.’
He turns around and looks at Jacob with bottomless eyes. Their expression equal parts tragic and terrifying. Jacob wishes he hadn’t pushed him to the limit, wishes they could just have gone on like before, without any of this, without forcing them here. But this is where they have ended up.
‘What kind of things?’ Jacob asks. ‘What do you feel like you can’t share?’
But the moment has passed, Yassim has covered the abyss in his eyes, forced it away again, and replaced it with a slanted, somewhat annoyed smile. ‘Don’t you have to work today?’ he says, moving towards Jacob. ‘Say no.’
Jacob shakes off the feeling he had a few seconds ago. He thinks of the pictures on Yassim’s computer. Of the interviews he should transcribe. But nobody cares, of course. It’s just an activity to fill the time.
‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing I can’t reschedule.’
Yassim grabs his cheeks and kisses him on his mouth. ‘Good!’ he says. ‘You know what people who want to see each other without being seen in Beirut do, don’t you?’
Jacob shakes his head. ‘What?’
‘They go to Byblos.’
*
They take off in Yassim’s VW Golf, head north over the uneven highway under the autumn sun, make their way out of Beirut, past the beaches and the casino in Jounieh, in between the mountains and the sea.
‘They say it’s the oldest city in the world,’ Jacob says. ‘That people have been living there for seven thousand years.’
Yassim just nods and puts a hand on his thigh. Jacob has been reading about Byblos, and he remembers Agneta saying that Byblos was a place to get away from the watchful eye of one’s family, a temporary retreat for a date or affair. Nevertheless, it feels strange to be with Yassim outside the apartment.
It takes only half an hour to get there in such light traffic, and Yassim has a completely Lebanese attitude to parking – he has no problem leaving the car halfway on a sidewalk close to an intersection.
A short walk between historical ruins among a few school field trips and tourists, and they’re sitting down at Pepe’s, close to the harbour with the sea in front of them shining like brass in the afternoon sun. Jacob orders a glass of white wine, Yassim only water, and then they go to the refrigerated counter to point out what fish they want grilled up. It’s expensive, more expensive than Jacob was expecting, but Yassim just waves off his attempts to object.
‘My treat,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
They’re in the middle of their appetizer – hummus and bread, always hummus and bread – when Yassim’s phone rings and he apologetically rises and heads for the stairs that lead to the fishing boats in the marina. Jacob watches him go. Yassim’s face is tense again. That abyss in his eyes is back; he can see it even from this distance. Jacob takes a gulp of cold wine when he hears a voice he recognizes all too well right behind him.
‘It’s lovely here at Pepe’s, isn’t it?’
Jacob swallows the wine far too fast and starts to cough. When he turns around, Myriam’s leaning back comfortably in one of the plastic chairs at the table behind him. Black jeans and sneakers. A pair of large black sunglasses. He fumbles for a napkin, his hands trembling. He didn’t call her this morning.
‘What are you doing here?’ he whispers.
‘You didn’t tell me you were coming here,’ she says.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ Jacob whispers. ‘I mean I’m with him. Please… Leave me alone.’
She nods calmly and lifts her glasses, looks into his eyes. ‘It’s all about trust,’ Myriam says, shaking her head. ‘Such an unreliable friend. You’d better not forget that I see everything. That we see everything. It’s not just me, Jacob. Not just Swedish interests involved in this. There are many people waiting for you to do what you’re supposed to.’
Down at the harbour, Yassim’s call seems to be over. He nods and gestures. Myriam stands up and takes a step towards Jacob. ‘It’s time now, you get me?’ she says. ‘You’ve had days to take care of this. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think you were trying to avoid your job.’
‘But how the hell should I do it?’ Jacob has raised his voice in desperation. ‘His computer has a fucking password!’
He anxiously turns back to the harbour again and sees Yassim take the phone from his ear and turn back towards the restaurant. He raises his hand in an apologetic greeting. Jacob waves back before turning back to Myriam again.
But she’s disappeared as if she were never there. There’s just a napkin lying on the table next to a half-eaten plate of hummus. He turns it over.
YOU HAVE UNTIL TOMORROW.
That’s it.
‘Who were you talking to?’ Yassim asks and sits down on the chair opposite him.
Jacob grabs his glass of wine, his thoughts racing, the whole restaurant shaking around him.
‘Nobody,’ he says. ‘Just some British lady who wanted to know how to get a taxi back to Beirut.’
‘Maybe she thought you were cute,’ Yassim says with a smile. ‘Not so strange.’
Jacob forces out a smile. ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘I’m popular with women.’
Yassim leans over and grabs his hand, stares deep into his eyes. ‘I have to go back to Syria,’ he says. ‘Soon.’
Jacob is so relieved that there are no more questions about Myriam that he doesn’t even understand what Yassim is saying at first. When he does, the air rushes out of him. ‘Okay,’ he says stoically. ‘But you just got back.’
Yassim nods calmly. ‘But after that,’ he says. ‘Do you want to go to Europe with me? In a few weeks.’
Jacob shakes his head and lets go of Yassim’s hand. ‘What?’ he says. ‘What do you mean?’
‘A job,’ Yassim says. ‘I just got asked to do a job in Europe in about a month and I don’t want to go without you.’
The napkin with Myriam’s command is turning damp in Jacob’s hand. He looks at the face in front of him, remembers the cool of the pistol beneath the table against his fingers.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, I want to go.’