7

The Compass of the Heart

A FAINT LIGHT SHONE THROUGH A crack in the window. Inside his car, in the local square, Rafik was monitoring any possible activity, but in no hurry to go up to the apartment, although it was already the third night he had spent on watch there, awaiting the reappearance of the man who had disappeared. The world is full of mysteries—real ones and fictitious ones, but what had really kept him busy over the past days was trying to find the missing man or at least find out what had happened to him. This time he arrived later than on the two previous nights. He saw that faint light coming from the sitting room, but he didn’t budge an inch.

He knew the apartment. He had been inside it and searched it thoroughly. It was on the top floor and yet he remained hesitant to go up. The night was blacker than it should be. He kept his eyes wide open so that no one could go into or come out of the building under cover of darkness without him seeing them.

For some reason he had come to see the search for the missing man as a very personal matter, more important to him than anything else. He had lived deprived of things he could be interested in. There was his work, his car, his house, which was more like a fancy prison cell, his family in the west of the country, friends, playing sports. But all those things didn’t always give his life any savor or meaning, and deep down he felt an emptiness that nothing could fill. But that wasn’t the fatal defect. Most people live meaningless lives. Their lives may be full in many ways, yet they lack meaning. He would not lie to himself and say that he sympathized with the man, since he didn’t know him and they had never met or exchanged friendly words. He didn’t know whether the missing man was sane and in good health, or whether he was mentally deranged or had some incurable disease, or whether, with money he had earned working in fields or building sites, he had boarded a boat with other illegal migrants and the sea had swallowed them all up. Curiosity, or a desire to be defiant and uncover the man’s secret, if he had a secret. He wasn’t sure of anything about him, except that he would keep looking for him.

He asked for some compassionate leave but his request was rejected. He put in another request, accompanied by a report from a psychiatrist at the central police hospital, saying he needed to stay away from the pressures of work for a while so that he could work properly later. Any other officer could easily have accepted an unexpected failure such as this. Life is full of failures and a superman has never been born. Yet after resting for two days, he had decided to keep looking for the missing man on his own initiative.

He looked back and forth between the window and the door of the building and wondered what compelled him to fill his time doing all this. His room for maneuver was shrinking: the later it was, the more difficult it would be for him to go and take him by surprise in the apartment. He might make a noise or there might be a confrontation between them if the man thought he was a thief. He thought of phoning Kada to come and help him, then decided against it. It started to rain. Kada lived nearby but he had a thousand tricks he could use as excuses for not coming to help. Rafik knew him well: he was as slippery and unpleasant as a toad.

Was this a life or some kind of competition organized by fate? How many concessions does a man have to make in order to adapt and conform? Defeat and obligatory subjugation of the self are more polite than other terms and have less psychological impact, but the substance remains the same. Hoda contacted him and he didn’t answer. She loved him and he worried about the effect his fate might have on her. His relationship with her was a task that was supposed to be complete, an effort at self-subjugation that had not yet produced any result. He loved her too, that’s how he judged his feelings toward her at the time, and he would have been mortified if she had to make a sacrifice for his sake—that’s what he expected and he couldn’t deceive himself with the idealistic view that love works miracles. His previous experience taught him that love isn’t everything. Hoda was already mother to a boy who would come to him ready-made and Rafik would adopt him as an antidote to his childlessness. He was about to fill the long-standing emptiness in his life, but then he decided against it and his journey came to an end only one stage after it began.

A love that is mature, that has come to terms with circumstances and that is half a sacrifice, might create a certain happiness. A happiness that is a quarter short of fulfillment. He had trained himself some time ago to challenge fate. Everything or nothing. It was a nihilistic logic but it would keep him as he was. Endless subjugation makes a travesty of one’s self, so he decided to die as he was and not to be buried as a monster, and that was that. Hoda called again and he deliberately ignored her. In a text message she told him that his selfishness would be the end of him and she wouldn’t make any sacrifices for his sake. The only things that would really kill the two of them were his delusions. She continued to trample on her own dignity, saying: please don’t abandon me, let’s be together and leave the rest to me. In response, he told himself there could be no more illusions. Consciousness is a form of torment, living powerless is double torment. A man like him, without recourse to drugs, has to swallow torment to the last drop. A cat hid under his car to get away from the wet, the cold, the night, and the loneliness. It started to meow to give voice to its loneliness, its sufferings under a light rain that had been falling since the afternoon. Its sufferings were probably pleasant: without consciousness anything is tolerable. The faint light was still on, the rain was falling lightly and sometimes pouring down. He felt the pointlessness of what he was doing. He was tired, drained, bracing himself to fill a deep abyss inside himself. He was tracking a man, but the traces had been almost completely erased. Maybe the mystery man was like him, a version braver than he was in refusing to submit or to pursue a life that didn’t live up to his beginnings. He preferred to leave without a trace. He jumped into his inner abyss and wouldn’t let anyone stuff him or weigh him down with endless trivialities. Here was fate offering him an example to emulate. He should learn from the man’s disappearance and follow a different path in life, in order to end up, like the missing man, forgotten and at ease. Disappearing is more generous to one’s self than a phony and deceitful existence with distorted features, where the lucky ones survive. No one mourns for rebels of his kind.

His patience wasn’t limitless. He had expected a day would come when it ran out, and then it happened. He decided not to go on feeding his hopes with more empty delusions. It was clear he was sterile. The doctors claim to know everything. With the confidence of the ignorant, the last doctor he consulted had told him he had to be patient and he didn’t have any physical problem. He had heard something similar from Mounira, his wife, when they came back from the doctor’s. Reality is well able to show what’s real, while hopes remain mere hopes. Was there hope after ten years? Mounira was generous with her patience and told him she liked living with him, with or without a child. She commiserated with him while he did his best to torment himself, taking her to stores that sold children’s clothes and toys and wanting to buy a bicycle or a doll, or he would stop his car next to a kindergarten or a school and keep looking at the kids as they came out or went in. She often cried for their sake. He became the permanent object of her pity. They spoke little each time and their days passed drily and monotonously. Love isn’t the cure for all problems. They understood that time would bring them closer together, but it is fruitful love alone that lasts long. She loved him. He didn’t doubt that, but he didn’t like to exploit her love for him any longer, and he didn’t want her to pay the price for his bad luck before it was too late. You don’t have the right to decide this on your own, Mounira said. She stated her objection, but he didn’t reply. He thought her sacrifice for him was trivial. He loved her and protected her jealously. She was intelligent and she wouldn’t remain a nun after him, and logically, in order to fulfill her maternal instincts, she would get over him and find another man. Jealousy has never killed a man, but childlessness, oh yes it has. Deeply hurt, he took the trouble to face her anger and then, sad and solicitous, he left her alone in the apartment to pack up her things at her leisure. In court she didn’t ask him for anything. He felt relieved of the sense that he had wronged her in some way, and when he went back to the apartment at night he found it like a grave. He went back to being a bachelor, got used to living alone again, and never felt a moment’s remorse, because he had saved her from his fate, albeit very belatedly.

He gave up waiting, out of necessity, and immersed himself in his daily activities. He felt relieved of the stress of looking into her eyes when he came home every evening, and of seeing in them an implicit accusation and hope that God would not deprive them of children forever. He signed up for a training course at the municipal swimming pool, bought various books, become more involved in work. He faced a double emptiness after divorcing her but he thought he had achieved some success. How had he allowed his passion for anything to play tricks on him again? Some stories begin with minor incidents. He slipped in the swimming pool and twisted his ankle, which required medical attention. In the hospital fate opened for him another door for a different form of waiting. He met Hoda Ouannas, a physiotherapist whose husband had died a year ago. He had left her with her boy Ouassim and some unpleasant memories. Less than a month after her husband’s death, mourning him was just a mask she wore in the presence of others for the sake of appearances. Rafik thought he would finally have a child he could buy a bicycle for, a child he could adopt and whose company he could enjoy for a while. Half-deprivation is better than total deprivation. His divorced wife had suggested they adopt a child but he had flatly refused and replied accusingly that what she said about living with him even without children was nonsense. For your sake, she explained to him, we could ask my sister for her youngest daughter before she grows up and gets used to her, she added as he listened, embittered about everything. He wanted to get rid of her on the pretext that she shouldn’t go without children because of him. This is what he admitted to himself on his first night after she left, and maybe he had noticed something in her eyes. She wasn’t completely dismissive, her outburst was cold, he expected her resistance to be more forceful, and since she had left she hadn’t called to ask to come back or to beg him to go back on his decision, or even to ask him how he was managing without her. He opened the door for her to go out of his life and she went out without looking back, as if she had just been waiting for the opportunity.

He had repeated meetings with Hoda, came to know her better, and fell in love with her. Her arrival on the scene helped him to understand that what had tied him to Mounira in the last years was obstinacy rather than real love. Hoda played chess very well. She beat him the first time they played in the hospital, and after that he never grew tired of being defeated by her—defeated as he always was, but this time when he was a king in her heart. Men have to go into the battles of love defeated from the start, otherwise their love won’t succeed. He learned a new lesson from life. He almost forgot Mounira. Memories of ten wonderful years could fade away and then be effaced completely. Hoda offered a whole emotional meal to his hungry heart, which was sated with emptiness and trivia and saw life as a dark block. His priorities changed, and straight after work he went to wait for her outside the hospital. He gave her a ride to her family’s apartment or she came out to see him and they spoke a little and then she went back for her night shift. He followed her Facebook page and resented anyone who, unaware of the fires raging in his heart, gave a “like” to a picture of her. He would accuse her of flirting with her Facebook contacts, and she would laugh at him, and with a single conversation they could feel they were twenty years younger. He remembered Mounira and her severity, her measured behavior, her morbid obsession with cleanliness, and her smiles calculated to suit every situation. She was serious and more logical than she should be. He liked the spontaneity of the chess-playing doctor, her flexible attitude toward life, and how she wasn’t a prisoner to the past in any way at all. He had to go along with her and drop his act as a policeman, a detective who looked into everything. With her he had to let the world take its course in the way she liked to run it. She was better at the art of life than him and he gave her free rein in everything. Her son Ouassim didn’t take to him as well as he might. She told him that “Uncle Rafik” was like a father to him, but the young boy rejected the comparison, while Rafik complained that she was singing the praises of her late husband to him. He wanted her to see him as distinctive and special, just as he saw her as the kind of woman that a man might not meet more than once in a lifetime. Love wears tinted spectacles.

They got married quietly and he waited for her to finish off some things before she moved in to live with him. Finally he started to look forward to something other than children. No one has everything, that’s what he convinced himself. He did up his apartment as best he could. He removed Mounira’s severity and her schoolmarmish touch. Then it was ready to receive a woman like Hoda, who lived life with as little forethought as possible. They inspected the apartment. He remembered by heart the things she asked to be changed, and they merged like any couple. She spoke to him about colors, curtains, the kitchen, and the living room, and finally about the bedroom. He spoke to her about his love. He looked deep into her eyes, melted into her, and they had sex earlier than they had planned, since they hadn’t had their wedding party yet. It was a little early, but also belated, given the highly charged glances they had exchanged since the first day they met. Overwhelming elation. That night he told her how happy he was with her and how he had always hoped that when they were together they would produce a child. She was offended and responded more harshly than she appreciated at the time. “I’m not a breeding machine,” she said. Their love shrank, diminished. They were silent for seconds before she left. He had hoped she would want to make him happy. Love isn’t everything. She didn’t understand that at the time. She apologized to him in the morning, but when she moved on to talk about other things, his silence showed he was sad and frustrated. That day, maybe, he decided not to take his dreams too far, to act his age again and leave it to fate alone to run his life. He came to terms with his childlessness and kept his dignity intact. A chess player might not be much good for love. She needed to lose to him sometimes and obey him even if he was misguided, mistaken, a dreamer who followed the word of doctors and resisted the clear will of God. In order to be king over the chessboard of her life, he would sweep everyone else away, so that in the end she would submit to him alone.

It was midnight and he didn’t notice when the rain stopped. The cats fell silent, succumbing to the stillness. He watched a silhouette on the balcony right opposite Mourad’s apartment as it appeared and disappeared. He thought it was probably someone with insomnia. He nodded off and his eyelids drooped. Then he opened his eyes to see two spectral figures coming out of the building. They disappeared within a few seconds. Maybe it was just a dream or maybe he just hoped that three whole nights on watch would produce something more than a meager harvest. He would have followed the two figures if he hadn’t seen them at a time when he was halfway between waking and sleeping. The rain and the darkness didn’t help. The streetlights were faint and some of them had burned out. He got out of the car, walked a few steps, and then stopped. He found himself in the middle of an open space with cars parked in lines along the sides. Nothing but him. He looked up at the window and saw that the light had gone out. He felt belittled and powerless toward the stupid situation he had put himself in. You should have burst into the apartment, he said in exasperation, reproaching himself. Then he had second thoughts and wondered whether the person inside was the person he was looking for. But he had seen two figures coming out of the building and then disappearing, not just one . . . Had he really seen anything? He turned and saw the silhouette on the balcony, opening the shutters wide. He was sure it was a woman. There was something he didn’t understand. His watch showed it was twenty minutes past midnight. He played around aimlessly, reread Hoda’s messages on his phone. He drove off, determined not to go back there again. His enthusiasm hadn’t waned, but he had reconsidered his approach. The search for that man had to resume somewhere else. Aimlessly, he drove around the almost deserted streets of Rouïba for a whole hour, going over everything he had heard about him and what he had managed to find out about him. He tried to imagine what he looked like. He wished he could meet him without any preconceptions. They would have a chat and he could learn from him how someone can erase almost all the signs of their existence. Did he really exist? He was born just like anyone else. He had parents and a family. He went to school and the teacher punished him because he hadn’t finished his homework. He grew up and harassed girls in the street. He desired women and masturbated in his adolescence, then he grew older and was dumped by a woman who didn’t deserve him. He couldn’t afford to enjoy life in the same way as his friends did. He went to the barber’s, he had fights with friends on the beach, he watched soccer matches, and sometimes he was reckless and made countless stupid mistakes. He graduated from university and lived frustrated, filled with rancor against the damned government, so he tried to emigrate illegally by boat. All of this or none of it, and he did almost all of it, so why did he feel that it made almost no difference whether he existed or not?

In this country corruption is rampant. It’s part of people’s lives and they have grown used to it. It’s a whole philosophy of government. The state is pretty much a giant free-for-all. That’s what he heard from his friend the last time they spoke. His friend was frustrated and decided to emigrate to Canada. He said goodbye to Rafik and urged him to join him soon. On the edge of the city, when he drove past on his night tour, he saw the piece of land that had caused him so much trouble. His car itself, and what happened to it, showed that their threats were much more serious than he had expected. Some big shot had appropriated part of the piece of land, which had been allocated to a farmer as a franchise. The big shot was planning to build a hotel and night club. Out of fear or because he was complicit, the farmer who held the lease made no objection. Preparations began and the foundations were laid, although building permits had been completely suspended in the capital. A routine patrol by the building police filed a report for submission to the courts. One sunny Friday morning he had parked his car and gone to a sauna to relax. While he was there, someone emerged through the steam to tell him that his car had been smashed up, and the next day the commissioner summoned him to find out what had happened. A large-circulation newspaper picked up the story. Where had they gotten the details from? Respect for the law should not stand in the way of a good deed, so he had called an old friend from student times who worked as a journalist, Soufiane Thabti, who was one of the free voices campaigning against the tide of public corruption. Rafik told him what had happened and a story was published. A committee of inquiry from the provincial administration was dispatched, building work on the hotel was stopped in the early stages, and the lease was withdrawn from the farmer. Excellent steps, unless they were merely part of a tit-for-tat feud between rapacious people intent on plunder. ِA senior official had lost out on some deal and sought revenge on his rivals. The incident suited his purposes and through it he was able to do his rivals down. The provincial governor suspected Rafik, though he didn’t have any proof he had leaked anything to the press. The gangs fought, struck out at each other, and they didn’t lack sources of information they could use as weapons against their rivals. He had won one round, at least that’s what he thought, but Mounira advised him not to stand in the lion’s mouth. Courage alone is not enough. He knew she was right but her advice came too late. Days passed and someone asked to meet him. He went downstairs from his office and there were two men waiting. They said it was a private matter “if you would be so kind,” and he set off with them toward a nearby café. One of them spoke to him with exaggerated politeness. They walked some distance from the police station and before they reached the café the tone began to change. You’ll pay the price, said the man, who abandoned his civility and whose eyes bulged, while the other broke his silence to warn him that “he had dug his own grave.” They got into a fancy car that was waiting for them and left him standing on the pavement. After that he realized that smashing up his car was just a token gesture, and the next day Mounira’s car disappeared from outside their building. She reminded him that she had already warned him. She had to walk to the secondary school where she taught for a week, until her father bought her another car. That day he called Soufiane Thabti and, judging by his voice, Soufiane seemed to regret having challenged them. They were a real mafia, he said. Everything has a price, Rafik replied, and then Soufiane advised him to ask for a transfer from Rouïba to somewhere else in the capital until the affair was forgotten.

Some time passed after the incident. The security directorate opened an inquiry, the purpose of which was not exactly intelligible, but it was clear someone important stood behind the person whose interests had suffered and was protecting him. This was just speculation but it turned out to be true: building work on the hotel resumed and the concrete framework rose as if nothing had happened. In the meantime Rafik asked to take his annual vacation and obtained approval immediately. He kept away from work and separated from Mounira and then had more time for Hoda, until the commissioner called on him exceptionally after the old man’s body was found in the apartment in the station district. But Rafik no longer paid attention to anything. The mischievous child and then the ambitious stubborn young man that he had been had both disappeared, clearing the way for the apathy that had overwhelmed him. Lions can’t be milked, but they can be tamed and can perform in the circus to amuse the naïve and the cowardly. He would die before that happened. So he would just end up waiting, nothing but waiting, and yet he was really lucky. If he had had a child, they could have broken his heart by harming the child.

It was one hour short of dawn. Frustrated, he went home to sleep. He wished he could lose himself in a place where no one recognized him, and where he had forgotten his childlessness and disappointment. Ever since he was young he had been accused of loving heroism and showing off. Moments before falling asleep, his greatest wish was to disappear or become invisible, to fade away and not leave any trace of himself, as the man who had become Nobody had managed to do, achieving complete heroism.