Her route home from the souk in the Medina took her past the old Berber house on the Corniche. No one remembered now why it was called the Berber house, for it showed little sign of traditional Berber homes, with its filigree balcony windows, and its tall central arch. For a generation or more it had been occupied by the family of the old judge Faisal Masraoui Abdulaziz. Fowzia was used to hearing music as she passed the house, as she did this day. She detected the strains of the song, the thin string accompaniment, carried by the light breeze off the sea to her left, while still twenty yards from the door. A familiar song, an old recording of Om Kalsoum. Half of the words would be unintelligible now to an unfamiliar ear, through the scratches and cracks, but Fowzia effortlessly supplied what had become obscured. Years pass, governments come and go, presidents arise and fall, other people’s wars may wash around the bay, but Faisal Abdulaziz and Om Kalsoum continued, an unbroken line from a past age, weathered and eroding with the passing of time.
These old echoes spoke to Fowzia of loss, of what had been robbed from her by the years. It brought to mind especially her husband Hameed, lost to cancer eight years before, Hameed, who loved the old music as much as the judge did, jovialHameed, who would never argue with her. She pictured his face, his dark eyes, the brown of them so rich as to appear black. Such a gentle, caring husband. She missed him still, every day, and the memory was made poignant by the music, by Om Kalsoum. Sweetness and pain mingled in that voice, emotions rich and raw, calling as freshly as ever to anyone who cared to listen.
And from behind that memory of Hameed another figure emerged, a young face, with similar deep, dark eyes, and an amused smile that displayed even white teeth: her son Amr, dead at 28, two long decades since, a son who should be present to care for her in her age. The unnatural fact of outliving her own child was a wound that had scarred over but never fully healed.
Old and overweight, the climb tired her, and as she passed the house she stopped between two of the short, barrel-trunked palms that lined the roadside of this affluent street. She put down her bag of shopping for a moment, and slowly straightened up, listening to the music. She heard the brittle trill of the oud, and then that compelling, evocative voice as it repeated and modulated lines, the sudden push to a surprising high note, the familiar words, ‘Laa, ya habibi’, No, my love. The sun was dropping, but the day remained warm in spite of the light breeze off the bay.
She was there for little more than half a minute when an old man bustled his way from under the central arch of the house, his hands spread wide before his shoulders, palms towards her. The old judge Abdulaziz was a small man, smaller than memory allowed, dressed in black trousers with a striped jelabiya and a little waistcoat over the top, and sandals. She had never before seen him in other than a Western suit, or the black gown of the court.
‘Ah, madam, it’s a pleasure to see you.’ He sounded genuine,and she didn’t understand. They had known one another distantly for many years, but not spoken. It had never been a pleasure before. Her surprise only grew as he invited her in. Refusal came as immediate as a reflex, but he pressed her.‘Come, we are not strangers you and I, our families have been of this town for generations. We have both grown old here. Come.There is something I wish to tell you. You can spare a few minutes. You must have refreshment, come, we shall have a sherbet before you go, or perhaps you would prefer coffee?’ And with that the old man stooped to pick up her bag of shopping.
His manner was commanding, and it disturbed her to realize she was persuaded before she had time to reason with herself.Suspicious of this man, she followed, but hung back as he kept turning to shoo her on. They passed under the portico, through an open iron gate, and entered a courtyard, tiled blue and white, with a small fountain in the centre, now dry. Potted palms stood in the corners, dusty and failing, and she noticed too the old gramophone, a tall wooden cabinet, with doors open to reveal the cloth covering of the speaker. Several old shellac 78s lay near it, as scarred and lined by the years as the old judge himself.
He insisted she should sit, and she looked around. A reclining cane chair to one side, cradling a book and a pair of spectacles with tortoiseshell frames, must be where he was sitting. She chose a chair which offered a view of the gateway to the street, and sat, brushing down the dust from her plain black robe, and adjusting the headscarf around her broad face. A few minutes rest in the shade had its appeal after her strenuous walk, but she would not let that feeling show.
The judge busied himself gathering up his book and records, and moved to lift the stylus arm off the record. ‘No, let it finish.’ He was pleased.
Clapping his hands, he called, and a leathery man with a turban and a large moustache appeared. The judge peremptorily orderedsherbet, and the servant wordlessly withdrew. Fowzia was quiet, watchful as the judge rattled on, ‘This is indeed a happy coincidence, to be able to receive you madam. I have been thinking of this, and when I saw you passing, well, it appeared auspicious.’
What possible motive could he have for inviting her? She narrowed her eyes and looked askance at him. His round head was quite bald now but for a thin ring of colourless hair running above his ears and around the base of his skull. Without his glasses his eyes appeared small and watery. The skin below them fell in heavy bags onto his cheeks, and the downward movement continued to jowls beneath, giving his pale face an effect like melting wax.
The servant entered with a small silver tray, carrying two glasses of sherbet and a plate of dates. After showing this for his master’s approval he approached Fowzia, with a slight bow.
‘Take, dear lady, take,’ the judge said. ‘We have had no contact in far too long, let us be neighbours as we once were. Ah, but in those days your dear husband Hameed was still with us. I am aware of course of your loss. He was a good man. We were great friends at one time, you know, and of course after my own dear wife departed this life …’ The old judge turned his palms upward, and spread his arms
Fowzia knew her husband wanted nothing to do with Faisal Abdulaziz after the trial, and made it clear that any friendship between the two men counted for nothing.
When Amr was arrested Hameed was working as the Head of the Transport Commission for the district. His superiors put pressure on him to disown his son, but he would not, nor denounce his views. Following a fierce confrontation with the town mayor, in the company of the intelligence service, Hameed was deprived of his post, which meant he was blacklisted, and would also be deprived of his government pension. With no income the family had to make economies. First they lost the two servants, and eventually the house went too. Hameed never made any public show of regret or anger, and only Fowzia knew how deeply he was hurt by the loss of Amr.
Unable to obtain government work, Hameed tried to convert some old family land into a productive business, but the areawas small, and they never prospered. Some eleven years after the trial Hameed died, leaving Fowzia dependent on the charity of family, but she had taken up the fight for Hameed’s pensionentitlement, and it had at last been approved. It was meagre, but she was no longer dependent.
‘It has been a long time; what, 15 years? Ah, 20, is it? So many things have changed. We have lived through momentous times, you and I, but here we are.’ He smiles. ‘But you must not think I forget about your boy Amr either.’
Yes, you have reason to remember, she thought.
‘How is he? What did he do later? Moved away, I dare say.Went abroad, did he, like so many of the best? Haven’t heard of him lately. A promising young man, I always thought, such a shame he fell into bad company.’
Was he being deliberately disingenuous? Had he chosen to believe that Amr was manipulated, not acting out of a deep commitment? Or was he merely condescending, saying what he thought fit a mother’s natural reaction? Did he think sheunderstood nothing of what Amr stood for? Fowzia closed her eyes, and leant back. She preferred to remember her sonlaughing, happy, the youngster with a mischievous sense of humour and a passion for ice cream. But the judge’s comments pierced her, bringing back the pain of the trial and its aftermath.
Amr was a teacher, a poet whose work still appeared in anthologies, and a prominent campaigner in the days of the old regime. He spoke out against injustices and abuses of the security laws, both in his writing and in a rousing speech to students at the University. Until the night of the raid on the house in the small hours. Armed, masked members of the security service pushed their way in to arrest him. His parents tried to intervene, and Hameed was clubbed by a rifle butt to keep out of the way. Months would pass before they saw their son again, on the day of the trial. These memories, stirred up like mud in a pond, clouded Fowzia’s thoughts. Sheremembered, with bitterness, but said nothing.
A further picture intervened, of Amr as he was in court. As she recalled the shock of seeing him, a shadow of himself, thin, gaunt-faced and stooped, helpless tears appeared on her cheeks. The image of that day, the last time they ever saw him, remainedburnt into her memory. Convicted on charges of incitement to sedition and endangering state security, he was sentenced to fiveyears imprisonment.
Those five years were to be served not in a city jail but in the extreme conditions of the southern desert, where temperatures rose above 40 degrees, a distant exile in a prison where the government could forget its unwanted, make them disappear into a controlled banishment, far away where no family were able to visit, or to provide the additional food prisoners in city jails depended upon.
Amr never made it back. Like many others, he died in the prison. She told the old man so, and the smile left his face.
‘Ah, a great loss, I dare say. I’m so sorry for you.’
Should she believe him?
He continued. ‘Not something a judge could influence. And we are all at the mercy of fate, are we not?’
Mercy, Fowzia felt, was a quality Abdulaziz was poorly equipped to discuss. She looked at him, but did not reply. It wasenough to look him in the eye, as she could not at Amr’s trial.She would not look down, as her upbringing might expect: there was no call for her to show respect to this man. The judge brokeeye contact, and she turned to the doorway, then looked to her bag of shopping.
He followed her gaze, and told her ‘Stay. There is no reason to hurry. Time is the privilege of age,’ and he smiled, though this time it passed quickly. ‘We have much in common: our love of the old music, the times we have lived through, we have lost our closest, our memories.’
Fowzia remained silent, holding her gaze, while her eyes and the muscles around her mouth expressed what her voice did not, that she saw next to nothing in common with this man.
‘He was a headstrong young man. He could have made it easier for himself, he could have cooperated, but he chose not to. I did what I could to help, to make things easier for him, this you must appreciate.’
It was far from clear to her why she must. She continued to gaze in his direction, but her eyes became unfocussed. The man before her grew insubstantial, she was looking through him, back into the past.
She remembered Abdulaziz in his black robe, conferring with court lawyers, taking no notice of the prisoner until he read out his judgement. It was evident that Amr never recanted, nor confessed to any crime. Some did, and their ‘confessions’ were staged for the public. No one doubted the same methods were used to try to break him. A mother could only wish that he did nothing to prolong or worsen his suffering, but Hameed was quietly proud of their son, even as he suffered for Amr’s treatment. She had disagreed with Hameed, but would not argue, and knew if he were in Amr’s place he would do the same.
‘Your husband, too, though it pains me to say so, madam, could have done so much more. The world is not a perfect place. If we are to come to Paradise it will not be in this life. The world is what it is, and if we would seek to better it we must work with its imperfections. For my part I might have remained a magistrate of first instance, adjudicating on small disputes. In such a place one has little influence.’
Her husband, she knew, saw things differently. Back then, Hameed went to speak to his former companion about Amr’s case, and see what could be done. He returned to say Abdulazizwould do nothing, claiming all that could be done had been. ‘He is unyielding,’ Hameed had said. ‘He speaks only of his office and the imperative of the law. He knows the charges are false. He understands perfectly how the law is manipulated and corrupted for the benefit of those in power but he won’t move.’
This was enough. This time she stood and moved to pick up her shopping. His eyes narrowed as he told her ‘Sit, I have not finished,’ in a tone as sharp as to the servant earlier. This, she thought, is how he would speak to a witness in court, and realizing this she said nothing. He was trying to bully her, but all the trappings of his office had gone, and she was looking at a man, not an emanation of the state. They met as two people, without the barriers of office and the law. She would hear him out. Curiosity for his motive was still with her.
The judge removed his tortoiseshell glasses and polished them in the cloth of his jelabiya, then spread his arms wide. It was a gesture imploring her, expecting something, but she was determined to give nothing. Let him feel annoyed. So much hadbeen given already, of which this man had no understanding.
He talked of a time when he and Hameed studied together… but she stopped listening. This was not why he wanted her there.Why did the old man want to talk about Amr? The years hadburied anything they might have shared about him, and now he was trying to exhume the remains. He was usurping the power of memory, and defiling it. She hardened her heart to this man.
Fowzia waited, her broad, black-clad bulk impassive. Facing her, the judge had one hand supporting an elbow, the other holding his chin and for a moment silence fell between them. Then, raising his head, he removed his glasses with a slow, deliberate movement, and in a firm tone declared he hadsomething to tell her about her son. It seemed he had come to some decision.
‘First, I must explain how this comes about. You perhaps do not know I served also as the examining magistrate before he came up for the hearing. All the evidence, all the allegations the security service might use against Amr was presented to me to draw up a case. That was my role, you understand, my duty to the country. Not to choose, but to ensure that things were done correctly.’ He paused, and gazes upwards. ‘There was a notebook, but it never found its way into the case.’
Now he looked at her again, and when she did not answer, spokewith vehemence. ‘Do you understand?’ He waved a finger at her. ‘He was held by the State Security Service, and it wasalleged that he was involved with a terrorist organization, giving them support.’
Fowzia shook her head vigorously in negation, making her silver earrings rattle. She knew Amr was not connected with any such group.
The judge continued. ‘You do realize the Emergency Powers allowed them to hold him for as long as they wanted, don’t you? Do you know how such prisoners are treated? Until the matter comes before the court there is nothing a judge can do. Once your husband made the application to challenge the detention Amr was brought before my court to be charged. Hameed came to me, and I was able to ensure that terrorism charges were not laid. I could not tell him, but it was on my intervention that those charges were dropped. Those are most serious charges. If convicted, he would have been shot.’
But he was no less dead, Fowzia thought, and it was because ofyour judgement. And not for the first time she wonderedwhether he suffered far longer by the imprisonment, whether a death sentence might have been more merciful.
‘But I could not simply set him free. I could not make a special case for your son. I’m sorry if it hurts to hear it.’ His tone hadchanged again, and she saw his shoulders droop.
She had been silent long enough. ‘We never sought special treatment, only justice. Why should we make excuses for a boy who did no wrong?’ Her hands shaking, she sipped at her glass of sherbet to distract herself; she had not touched the dates.
Still slumped in his chair, the old man looked at Fowzia fixedly, as if about to say more, but then turned away with a sigh. He levered himself to his feet, and grabbed at the back of his chair to steady himself. ‘Wait,’ he said, and this time it was more plea than command. She waited, as he hurried away, and soon returned carrying a battered old book with a black cover.
‘This is the notebook. I want you to have it.’
Fowzia was unimpressed, and made no move to take it from him. She did not wish to receive anything from this man.
His face betrayed his shock at her rejection. ‘You will see. It would have been most damaging for him at that time, most dangerous. I decided it must not be put in. Inflammatory words, even one scurrilous piece about the king.’
None of this moved her. She didn’t want the book. She had her memories and they were her own. This notebook would be tainted by the years in the judge’s hands. How could it be other than a constant reproach to her, a reminder of the arbitrary power the authorities wield over life and death? She preferredher private memories, even though the sight of the object in his hand was bittersweet, something of Amr she did not know.
‘What did you think, that it would restore my son to me?’
‘There was little that could be done. Those were the times, and he was stubborn. I did what I did for the good of all. Your boy could not be put above the law. The law may be good or it may be bad, but we must all live by it. It is all that a society has to bind us together. And it is the function of a judge to uphold order to the best of his ability.’ His words appeared certain, but his face belied them: his brows were furrowed and his eyes carried a plea. ‘He was a poet, I know. There are poems here. I think completed ones, and probably unknown, but of that I am no judge.’
Why now, Fowzia wanted to know, after all these years?
‘I am old. My retirement I consider releases me from certain professional obligations.’
She blinked: in other words, you no longer have much to lose.But the thought passed quickly, to be replaced by another, which struck her as so odd, so ridiculous she repressed an urge to laugh. As she looked at the judge, hunched by the passage of time, it occurred to her that what he wanted was her forgiveness.He had told himself he lived by a code of principles, but with age had come doubt. Perhaps he truly had remorse, but all shewould offer was ‘May Allah forgive you,’ and her implication was clear.
He was silent, immobile; he seemed to have run out of words. Itwas over, and she made to leave. The judge was still standing, holding out Amr’s old notebook, and in that moment she felt the rush of years like a strong wind off the sea. He was right, so much had changed, and there were things they had in common. The hallowed memory she had of Amr faltered, flickered, a candle in a shrine blown by that wind. In his death Amr became a public figure, and she could not hold him wholly as her own.She took a step back, and had to pull the book from the judge’shand. It was as though he had forgotten he was offering it.
She saw him then as a small, ordinary man. He suddenly lookedvery old. So we all come to this, she thought: true understanding so rarely arises in this life. The small approximations along the way are trouble enough.
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