Authors: Abdo Khal
She was getting worked up and I feared she would change her mind. I cajoled her and pretended to be joking.
I was just about ready to strangle her when she shuffled over to the neighbours’ houses to bid the women farewell.
‘I’m off with my nephew, Tariq. Goodbye!’ she shouted, knocking on each and every door.
The farewells to the various neighbours were long and drawn-out despite my repeated calls for her to hurry up.
To her closest neighbour, Aunt Khayriyyah said, ‘If Ibrahim comes looking for me, tell him I’ve gone with his brother.’
Women crowded around to bid her farewell and convey a few parting words. As we took our leave she asked me whether she should leave the keys with one of the neighbours to look in on the place. I told her she could come and do so herself any time she wanted.
It was only when she was seated next to me in the car and we drove away that I knew for sure that I had finally prised her out of the Firepit. Her eyes were practically popping when she saw the car, and she fired off a salvo of questions at me.
‘Where in the world did all this come from?’
I had to field a stream of phone calls from women at the Palace and Aunt Khayriyyah eavesdropped on the conversations. She tried to get a question in at the end of each call but was interrupted every time by my cell phone ringing again.
I drove to my new villa and when Aunt Khayriyyah stepped inside, she was visibly astonished and her eyes scanned every inch of the place.
‘Is all this yours?’ she wondered. ‘Only thieves and drug dealers have stuff like this.’
There was an uncomfortable silence while she looked searchingly into my face. Eventually, she asked, as if dreading the answer, ‘You’ve become a pimp, haven’t you?’
* * *
Hatred has an odour, just like love.
Smells are alive. They are born and grow in our memory after becoming associated with a specific time in our lives. Regardless of its nature, a smell is for ever linked to the time we first experienced it. Smells can be associated with all sorts of things, a sweet from childhood, new holiday clothes, the chairs in a particular classroom, even a teenage song or our first love. When a smell triggers our memory, we recollect all the attendant history and context of its first occurrence and are left aching with grief or sorrow.
I had forgotten how much I hated my aunt. The full extent of my loathing and hostility came back to me as I breathed in her smell.
Whenever I came home to the villa, the air inside was redolent of my aunt and hung so heavy I felt suffocated. Our past history lurked in every corner of the house like swarms of locusts, aggravating me as I tried to cultivate patience and a measure of goodwill towards her. After all, the reason for coming to my aunt’s rescue had been to give myself a little breathing room, a place I could escape, even if only momentarily, from the Master’s clutches.
At the Palace, I hated the smell of the victims. I loathed the smell of the Master and of Osama. I hated my own smell and was sure that to someone, somewhere, I also smelled revolting. Would Tahani be nostalgic for my smell? Nothing remains fresh for ever, whether real or remembered.
After six years of uninterrupted service at the Palace, I had felt stuck and had turned to Issa for help. He said he would do whatever he could to help me move into a place of my own. I had to remind him more than once that my aunt’s situation was becoming urgent, and he finally obtained exceptional leave for me to go and live with her.
‘But I can’t go back and live in that neighbourhood,’ I protested.
‘You don’t have to,’ Issa said. ‘You can rent a villa in Zahra or Naeem. Or buy one.’
‘That would be nice.’
‘OK, let me speak to him.’
Months passed and Issa was frequently away. I followed up with phone calls and text messages until he finally got back to me.
‘I’ve spoken with the Master about your situation, and he too thinks you need a break. However, his stipulation is that you must find a substitute and that you remain on call. And the list of prohibitions stands.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Have you thought about who could replace you?’
‘Yes, Osama.’
‘He’s been given other duties. Forget Osama.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll find someone.’
‘Of course, you can only live with your aunt and no one else,’ Issa reminded me. ‘You understand that, right?’
Looking for a substitute who would satisfy the Master was not going to be an easy matter. I had to rack my brain to think of someone who could do the job without complaining. It occurred to me that I could approach the former members of the disbanded Punisher Squad. But after what they had endured as a pre-emptive punishment, it was unlikely any of them would even consider an offer from me. They would probably want to give me a taste of my own medicine before listening to what I had to say.
I was able to arrange the purchase of a villa and to move there with my aunt. I spent the next few days looking for a substitute and settled on someone from my sordid past.
I found Mustafa Qannas just as I had left him: nursing his moonshine in an alleyway and improvising poetry about the boys he was infatuated with. He was not working and spent his time loitering around the neighbourhood schools, feigning interest in the young boys’ progress in class and exhorting their teachers to take good care of them, like some kind and attentive uncle. He had a love interest in each school, whom he wooed with his verses and protected from other predators in the area.
‘Hey there, Mustafa,’ I called to him.
He was leaning against a wall, eyes glazed.
At the sound of my voice, he squinted to see who it was and jumped to his feet to welcome me. We fell into each other’s arms; it felt like he had not embraced anyone in a long time. I noticed how he still smelled the same. Our lingering hug revived the memory of that night when we had our way with Yasser Muft. He stepped back, keeping his hands on my chest, and looked into my face, smiling broadly.
‘It’s been a long time, kid,’ he said.
‘Not much of a kid any more,’ I laughed. ‘Don’t you see how old we’ve grown?’
He shook his head. ‘We’re young at heart no matter how much we age.’
I told him why I had come to see him but he seemed unable to grasp what I was saying, as if he had gone soft in the head. I wondered whether he had any juice left in him. But my job was to find a replacement, not to assess his potential to perform.
Mustafa came with me to the Palace and I handed him over to the Filipino manservant, pleased that I could now go and enjoy my life relatively unburdened. But my elation proved to be short-lived; Mustafa categorically refused to do what was expected of him with a video camera running. I never saw him again and went out of my way to avoid him after that, since he swore he would kill me if it was the last thing he did.
* * *
With my move into my own living quarters, I began to believe I had escaped from the Master’s clutches.
I started to host soirées at the villa to which I invited people who could be trusted to be discreet. I stopped attending Palace parties on the pretext that I was having trouble with my old aunt.
One night, the Master stopped me and, looking me in the eye, asked, ‘So, how is your aunt these days?’
‘Very well, thank you. She is grateful to you and always singing your praises.’
He started to laugh viciously. ‘Singing my praises, eh?’ He found that so amusing that it took him a while to stop. ‘Singing my praises,’ he repeated with a final chortle. ‘Tell me, did you have to reattach her tongue so that she could sing my praises?’ That set him off again.
I was nailed to the spot. His sarcasm had undone me and I felt panic-stricken. How did he know? No one was there when I did what had to be done.
Her tongue-lashings had become intolerable.
Every one of her body parts had deteriorated with age except for her tongue. Aunt Khayriyyah would launch her invective in the midst of social gatherings, insulting the women in the room and showering me with obscenities.
Initially I had wanted to show her who was boss and that I could do whatever I pleased. I would bring her down from her room so that she could witness the posse of young women at my feet. I even went so far as to kiss and flirt with them while she looked on. I regretted that later, though, because it only provided more ammunition for her vile tongue.
No sooner did people arrive in the evening than she seated herself with us in the reception area and let loose on the poor guests. I would tell her to return to her room but she would ignore me and continue to buzz around like a mosquito on the trail of fresh blood.
Some of the women would leave early, unable to stand her constant griping. The less sensitive ones simply moved to another part of the room or to another part of the house. Those sitting by the swimming pool outside swore they would not come back inside until she had been silenced. They hovered around listlessly just long enough to be paid.
Even without women visitors in the house, my aunt’s tongue overflowed with venom. She would attack the men for their conduct and call them pimps and perverts. She often tipped their drinks on the floor or threw them in their faces, threatening to report their debauchery to the authorities if they did not leave immediately.
My patience was running out.
One night, Aunt Khayriyyah hurled an ashtray at a guest, inflicting a deep cut in his forehead. On the pretext of having to take him to the hospital, most of the guests fled the scene. A few women stayed behind just long enough to collect their pay, swearing never to return even if I offered them their weight in gold.
Once the house was empty and Aunt Khayriyyah had spat out every foul word in her lexicon, she crawled up to her room like a snake returning to its lair. She had tasted blood. Feeling no remorse for injuring the guest, she threatened that anyone coming to the villa from now on would be taking their life into their hands.
I was livid with rage and went after her. I burst into her room, grabbed her by the hair and threw her on to the floor. Ignoring her screams, I tied her hands behind her back with a telephone wire and stuffed a wad of tissues into her mouth.
I was determined never to hear that voice again. I ransacked the bathroom for a razor blade and came back into the room with a handful of them. I propped her up across from me.
‘This is your day of reckoning,’ I shouted in her face. ‘You do remember what you did to my mother.’ I showed her one of the razors. ‘I’m going to put your tongue in the freezer – that way you can stand in front of the mirror every day and dream of reattaching it.’
I had never seen her in such a state, her eyes bloodless and bulging with terror.
‘No, better still. I’ll get a cat, starve it for three days and then give it your tongue.’ I leaned in towards her and hissed, ‘Poor kitty will have to swallow all your bile.’
I pulled the wad of tissues out of her mouth and she immediately started to scream, ‘You stink to high heaven. You came from a filthy belly. That’s why you stink to high heaven.’
This was the last thing I ever heard her say.
I slapped her and clamped a hand over her mouth to stem the flow of bile pouring out of it. Any more of her insults and I would lose my mind completely. Still she carried on and, despite the words being muffled and unintelligible, I knew she was cursing everyone who had anything to do with my coming into the world.
I had hoped that she would finally relent and invoke our family ties – that she would beg me to honour my father’s memory, show remorse or say something, anything, rather than carry on with her insults. But only venom poured out as if she feared that if she did not get it all out of her system, she would never have another chance.
I moved my hand off for barely a second and, with her mouth gaping open in mid flow, I reached in deftly to grab hold of her tongue with my fingers. I held on tight, making sure I had it firmly in my grip. Then I pinned her head down with my leg and, in one swift motion, I used the razor in my other hand to slice off her tongue.
I held on to the amputated portion as blood bubbled out of her mouth and streamed down her face. She lay completely still.
I thought I had killed her, and for a while all I could do was stare at the body, terrified. I flipped her over and felt her frail bones but was unable to feel the slightest sympathy for the old woman. I wanted her to wake up and listen to what I had to say without, for a change, being able to talk back. I did not want her just to go and die like that. I needed her to hear me out, to hear what she had never heard before. Now what was I going to do?
My meeting with the Master occurred several weeks later, well after the doctor’s visit to administer first aid and soon after I had hired two women to look after Aunt Khayriyyah.
The Master had stopped laughing. ‘She wasn’t really the type to sing praises, was she now,’ he commented as he handed me a video tape. ‘She had a filthy tongue and it deserved to be cut off.’
I was rooted to the spot.
‘It’s not what you did to your aunt that upsets me.’ He paused and then added, ‘Actually, you’ve got talent for crime.’
Head lowered, I silently awaited his next command.