A Word For Love Part 19

INTERVIEW.

ADEL'S FATHER HAD TOLD HIM, You're a policeman, you can always do something.

These were the things Adel could do: He could knock on the door and ask for Madame: he had watched Nisrine with this family, he knew who the real trouble was.

Policemen didn't involve themselves with families.

He could come to Nisrine's rescue some other way, a fire hose like they'd once joked about. Find her money (what money? his mother's?).

He could do nothing.

Qais had done nothing.

He did what he could.

At the end of the week, Adel went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt where he did his questioning. He watched the line of ex-prisoners each take a number from the red dispenser. He didn't call the next one in line from his steel desk, he called out of order. Baba sat down in front of him. Adel measured and weighed him, like a nurse at the hospital, and rewrote his physical description as he always did, to make sure Baba had not paid someone else to come in his place.

"Work?" Adel asked.

"Bookbinder," Baba told him.

"People seen?"

"Too many."

"People seen?" Adel asked again.

"Mohanad al Hasbi."

"Context?" said Adel.

"His house, a small party."

"Others?"

"I didn't know many at the party."

"Others?" said Adel.

"Haisam Marwani."

"Family?" said Adel.

"My brothers were there with me."

"Business?" said Adel.

"We're in bookbinding. I own a small factory."

"Immediate family?" said Adel.

"What?"

"Immediate family?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Wife?" said Adel.

"Don't you talk about my wife."

"Wife, son, daughters. Servant!" said Adel.

Baba stood up. "I said it once. I'll say it again. I come here, I answer your questions. Don't you talk about my wife, don't you talk about my family."

"You have one servant," said Adel.

"She's like family."

"Sit down!" said Adel. "We're not finished."

Baba sat back down.

"Wife?" said Adel.

"You asked me about my business. I told you, we bind Qurans. You asked me where I went. I told you, a party. You asked about my brothers, I told you about them, too."

"Wife," said Adel.

Baba kicked the steel table. It made a deep ringing.

"Servant," said Adel. "Where has your servant gone? She went away, where did you send her? She came back two hours later, and your wife hates her. What has she done to deserve this?"

"Get me a man," said Baba. "You are not a man, I won't talk to you. Get me a man, I'll talk to him."

"Sit down," said Adel.

Baba sat down. Adel hit him.

"That's right, hit me." Baba stood up. "You're not a man. Hit me again."

Adel felt himself grow large, his head and heart expanding. He hit Baba again. Baba sat down hard, as if the hit hurt him.

"Servant," said Adel.

"I don't have any servants. My wife does."

"Nisrine," said Adel. "What have you done to her? She's miserable, she wants to leave, what have you done?"

ADEL WAS ALWAYS MOVING. In his stories, he was always jumping up on his toes, or sitting down against the wall to show something: How he hugged his mother. How, when they found out about his accent, the border guards teased him. When he talked to Nisrine, he wanted her to hit him, hard, like the police did, because he wanted to feel her hands on his stomach. Of course, she wouldn't, she couldn't reach from across the balcony.

Hit me, Nisrine! Hit my belly!

After the fight, Adel went up to the rooftop. Blood was pulsing. His mind raced. He called his mother. The interview kept playing in his head, his hand against Baba.

"Mama, have you ever seen a fight?"

"Yes."

"How'd you feel when you saw it?"

"Disgusted."

"You got a really sick feeling, didn't you, when you saw that fight?"

"Yes."

His hand, today, against Nisrine's kind Baba.

"You're right, I don't like to fight."

"You don't?"

"You get that sick feeling when you're in the fight, too. Not at first. At first there's a lot of adrenaline and you're going to beat the guy. But afterwards. It seems pointless and you get that sick feeling."

His mother sighed. "Well then, Adel, don't fight."

What else could he have done?

He remembered her when he had first met her, the perfection of her lips, her little hand when she gave him apples. He had loved that hand first, later the rest; it had once brushed his, the closest he had come to touching her.

She would be in more trouble now, once the family found out. What could he do for her?

He thought of their joke, Run away with me? in her high voice. They had been joking, hadn't they?

On the phone, his mother waited. "Adel? I said, don't fight."

The blood that had filled him slowly left. Fear, like b.u.t.terflies, replaced it.

"It's just, sometimes you have to fight. You're in love, she's in trouble, you have to do something."

JAIL.

"DOGS," BABA SAID when he got home, and he meant the police. "They get the stupidest men to interview you, really. They treat you like a donkey. Animals!"

The children and I were eating in the kitchen. Madame had prepared us yogurt. Nisrine was in the hallway, dusting. Baba jumped on me, as if I had done something.

"You foreigners think everything is so easy. You think you can befriend anyone you want, and b.u.t.t in anytime, and it doesn't leave consequences."

I didn't know what he meant. I didn't know where I'd b.u.t.ted in.

"You know, anyone who has done anything in this country has worked and they have suffered for it. There aren't friendships without consequences, here. There isn't work without suffering. I know a cultured man with three books and they decided to call him for his army service. A cultured man and he was called away in his prime to be treated like a dog. But he didn't give up. He came back, and he wrote some more and then they exiled him. His father died and he couldn't come back to see him. This was his reward, for persevering. I have a friend-Amal knows him. He was jailed last week. He posted on the Internet. You think I can have a business like my factory and not suffer for it?"

"No, Baba, I don't think you can."

"I suffer for it."

Madame said, "Don't yell, Ha.s.san. Bea hasn't done anything to you."

"But she liked a policeman, didn't you, Bea? She's so in love with a policeman, she can't see the problems it causes. She thinks our police are like hers. She doesn't know their history."

I felt a sinking feeling. "I'm sorry, Baba."

Baba wasn't interested in sorry.

"There was a ma.s.sacre up north. You know my first wife was from the north? The army came in and burned her town. It's on a river. Even the river looked like it was burning. After that, we all had to recant. We had to sign a statement and give ourselves in, but of course no one wanted to give himself in, and so they jailed us. Even the ones who recanted, it didn't matter, they jailed them. Just like now. The police, Bea, the ones you think are pretty, they jail men. You think there's a resistance? There's no resistance. The police jailed or exiled or killed all the resistance. They killed anyone who thought. There are young boys now, but they have no experience and no plan. The president, he knows who they are, he makes friends with their friends. He puts them in jail for six months or a year and when they get out, their political career is done. They don't want anything to do with politics after that. They just want to have a family and eat and live in peace. It's humiliating. They treat you like a dog, it's humiliating."

Madame said, "Then quit, Ha.s.san. Quit, and live in peace. Don't be humiliated."

"It doesn't matter, I must continue. It makes the small things very important, doing them here. Very important!"

Baba brought his fist down on the table and accidentally hit my cell phone.

"Ow," he said. He lifted his hand. The phone's screen was cracked. There was blood on one side.

Madame said, "Ha.s.san, look what you did."

I said, "It's OK."

Baba was holding his hand.

"I'll fix it. Here, Bea, see if it still works."