Authors: Abdo Khal
* * *
A boy and a girl were the fruit of Mawdie’s seven years of marriage.
Over that period, Aunt Shahla’s health, already at a low, took a turn for the worse. Issa was nearby to comfort her.
‘Life is passing you by, son. Shouldn’t you be thinking of marriage?’ she asked one day, taking his hand in hers.
‘I’m too young to marry.’ His playful response was accompanied by the laugh she so loved to hear.
‘Are you waiting for her?’
He did not answer.
‘Even if you spend your whole life waiting, you’ll never get her,’ said Aunt Shahla. ‘Find yourself another woman to care for and who’ll care for you. Let me tell you a story no one knows,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do you remember that day in the hospital five years ago when you asked me where I was?’
Issa nodded.
‘Do you remember the kind man who was helping me back into the wheelchair?’
Issa brought to mind the old patient at the hospital. ‘Yes.’
Aunt Shahla described the events in detail. The man had bent down to kiss her hand. At first, she thought he was one of their old servants, but his kiss went on too long and he would not let go. When she pulled her hand away, he whimpered as if about to cry. ‘All I need is you,’ he said. ‘You are all I’ve ever desired, dear Shahla.’
That was the moment Aunt Shahla recognised him: he was her sweetheart. He had aged terribly, his hair was all white and he was very thin. But his eyes, with their thick, overhanging brows that protruded like little parasols, were the same. He wheeled her into one of the inner waiting rooms and as he sat before her, all the years of separation fell away in one instant. He took her hand, looked at the wrinkles tenderly and singled out her ring finger. He told her how he used to dream of putting a wedding band on that finger and that he had waited his entire life to tell her that he had never stopped loving her. Not for a day.
He went on to tell her how he had achieved everything he had aspired to: learning, riches, standing. But he never stopped waiting for a time to come when they could be together again and so he had never married.
Aunt Shahla was hard on him. Time was short and she did not tell him how she, too, had suffered, how barely a day passed without her dreaming of seeing him. Just seeing him and nothing else. She said nothing, and he just wheeled her back to where she had been and left.
He disappeared right before her eyes, just as Issa and the hospital staff gathered around her and started asking her questions. Once inside the X-ray room, Aunt Shahla learned from a nurse that he came in regularly to get chemotherapy for cancer of the spine. So she started following his news from afar. There was no time left to have even one meeting or outing.
She had found out exactly a week ago that he had died. ‘I could swear that if anyone had been there as he took his last breaths, they’d have heard my name on his lips,’ Aunt Shahla said. She looked dispassionate, as if she had recounted the story of some other woman unconnected to herself in any way. She took Issa’s hand and patted it gently. ‘If you want to continue loving Mawdie, and be her one and only love, do so from afar.’
Mawdie threw a huge party to celebrate her divorce.
She had vowed to herself that she would marry Issa or die. Her decision convinced Issa to follow his heart fearlessly. Issa did not follow Aunt Shahla’s advice to continue loving Mawdie from a distance.
Their resolve to get married, however, brought them on a collision course with an immovable rock. The Master’s anger awaited them, calculating and devious. He was not willing to renounce his anger as long as Issa remained at the Palace, living in the lap of luxury.
Issa was providing him with new excitement and it brought back the almost feline pleasures he so loved: toying with his prey, pawing it, only to disembowel it later with his claws. The certainty that his dominion was not diminished in the least contributed to his euphoria.
Issa was at a juncture in his life where he could have joined the ranks of billionaires, and the Master exploited his greed by placing a few choice temptations before him. He used the stock market to drive Issa into the ground. The bank manager, Adnan Hassoun, was tasked with luring Issa into the Master’s snare.
Like the serpent that brought the devil into the Garden of Eden, the Master ushered Adnan into Issa’s life. The relationship was built up with demonstrations of affection, gifts and concern for Issa’s welfare in a very volatile stock market. Adnan offered to manage Issa’s portfolio in return for a percentage but Issa was reluctant to hand it over to his friend: he listened to his analysis of the market and followed his recommendations, purchasing shares in companies that were doing well. Issa’s bank balance hit the 100-million-riyal mark.
Issa trusted Adnan to such an extent that he followed his advice to the letter and unswervingly. Adnan offered Issa a matching bank loan: these loans, offered only to the bank’s most prestigious clients, were to enhance their trading potential and basically matched the client’s balance held by the bank. What Adnan neglected to add was that the bank reserved the right to call in the loan following a fifty-percent loss in the value of the portfolio.
Issa showed up at the bank to complete the loan process and was shocked by the number of customers on the bank floor all trying to sign up for similar loans. These were people who had no other work besides trading. Construction projects were at a standstill and investors were opting to get into the stock market, adhering to the prevailing dictum that if you could not make it rich in days like these, you would never make it.
The bank was thronged with borrowers, investors and brokers glued to trading screens. They were all worried they might miss the gravy train. Issa pushed his way through the crowd and past groups of noisy men heading towards Adnan’s office. He repeatedly apologised as he asked to be let through.
Adnan emerged from his office and came towards him, chuckling. ‘As you can see, they all want loans,’ he said.
‘And does the bank have enough money for all these borrowers?’ asked Issa.
‘The bank is like a fountain, my friend,’ replied Adnan. ‘While funds allocated to credit may be fixed, they are distributed here and there and in the end, they all come back to the bank. Not a single piastre ever leaves the vault.’
‘But at the end of the day those people’s bank accounts are growing.’
‘Yes, but that’s just what shows up on the screens. This is a rare opportunity for all our people to strike it rich and it will never recur. In boom times, you have to grab what you can while the going is good. It’s like running a marathon – you’ve got to have good lungs.’
‘That’s what everyone is saying,’ said Issa, nodding.
‘That’s because it’s the truth, and everyone can see it. Look around. They’re all government employees, either borrowing or trading, that is, buying and selling. Everyone believes that the index will go up to 30,000 points,’ he said. ‘That’s a five- to ten-fold growth in profits.’
Inside the office, Issa relaxed while two of Adnan’s staff completed the paperwork for the loan. As the signature process began, Adnan held forth on the guaranteed profits that would accrue to Issa’s portfolio and reminded him to be diligent about repaying the loan as soon as he had doubled his investment.
‘The Master
controls dozens of companies, so if you want the best yields, my advice is that you invest in those companies. Wherever he puts his money, just follow suit, eyes closed.’
This counsel bore fruit and Issa’s profits were mind-boggling. His bank balance jumped to 250 million riyals – an astonishing return that he reaped in only four days of trading. Thus assured that Adnan was truly a reliable and sound source of advice, he finally entrusted him with managing his portfolio and just followed the progress of his fortunes. These soared day after day.
Issa’s ambition had grown in line with his wealth and he would have taken over the country if he could have. He was willing to grovel and abase himself, and do whatever else was necessary to feed his ambition. The accumulation of wealth was predicated on abasing oneself, he felt; to do otherwise would be counterproductive.
Issa had already reached the point of prostration before Mawdie, ignoring the fact that prostration is an inescapable part of enslavement.
Financially speaking, he was already on his knees since the Master held him in a vice-like grip inside the stock market. When the bubble eventually burst and the value of shares collapsed, the bank hastened to liquidate Issa’s portfolio and recover its loan. His entire account was wiped out in one stroke, down to the last piastre on the paper statement. Issa was left to wander the streets naked and deranged, hurling abuse at the high and mighty of the city.
* * *
By the time he was fifty-eight years old, Hamdan Bagheeni had managed to become a security guard at the Palace. While he would always have difficulties with the alphabet, particularly the letters
noon
and
jeem
, he felt that he had now made it in life. Hamdan swelled with pride as he stood to attention with his rifle propped up beside him, marvelling at the sight of the gates to Paradise, which, for most of his life, had been a distant vision.
The only thing that marred his enjoyment of this new position was that his father-in-law had not lived to see it. He would have liked to witness the old man’s ridicule turn into pride: his father-in-law had little good to say about him and all the bad-mouthing had eventually driven Hamdan’s wife to leave him. Had he lived just a little longer, Hamdan would have been able to repay him with a few choice words of his own. He had endured all the disparagement silently because the responses he would have liked to make would have been considered inappropriate to utter in front of a woman. So he said nothing and she had eventually given up on him.
After twelve long years of intellectual exertion and perseverance, Hamdan had finally obtained his primary education certificate. His motivation was very nearly destroyed by the repeated failure of several years, but he found new resolve every time he saw his father-in-law coming or going. With every passing year, his father-in-law got closer to the grave and when he died, Hamdan described him as a mean man because he had passed away before he could witness his success.
Hamdan had gone on to obtain his primary education certificate the same year, with a mark of ‘fair’. When he proudly showed it to his estranged wife, he told her that her father had deliberately sought to annoy him by dying when he did.
He stood proudly in front of the Palace gates, with nothing on his mind besides gazing at the high and imposing walls, and occasionally allowing his eyes to stray towards the interior of the compound. He sensed that with a little more persistence he too would be able to get actually inside Paradise.
The guards were on notice to prevent Issa from entering the Palace compound under any circumstance. Hamdan could not really get his head around that and he voiced his misgivings. ‘Issa, who brought everybody in through these gates, is now forbidden from crossing its threshold? Why is that?’
No one knew the reason for this sudden reversal in Issa’s fortunes and no one had expected it. Issa had kept his secret buried so deep that when he decided to act everyone was caught unaware.
* * *
King Abdullah Street runs through the heart of Jeddah, with more recent neighbourhoods flanking it on either side. It is the main thoroughfare into which secondary and intersecting streets feed and is plagued by permanent traffic congestion that only adds to the sticky humidity.
I wondered what the Master could want at this time of day when I set off to his other palace on the shores of Sharm Abhar.
I had stopped running like a racehorse that gallops off at the first sound of the firing gun and I had honestly contemplated not responding to his summons now.
I stopped at a cash machine to check on my bank balance and was relieved to find that it still stood at twenty million riyals. I was worried that it might just evaporate one day, as had happened to Issa. The Master’s moods were erratic and unforgiving. This servitude had gone on too long.
I had reached the autumn of my life and had nothing to support me except for this bank balance acquired at the price of humiliation and abuse. Thankfully, I had been too slow and despondent to trade shares and had narrowly escaped the stock market crash – otherwise I would not have had a pot to piss in.
The main reason for my hesitation, however, was probably Joseph Essam, who had counselled restraint. ‘Don’t over-expose yourself,’ he had warned. ‘You know he’ll skewer you.’
Seeing me perplexed, he spelled out what he meant. ‘Look, you have no children, so why kill yourself to get even richer? You already have more than enough.’
His words also reminded me that I was wasting what was left of my life in unnecessary servitude. It was a reminder I did not want and I pushed it from my mind, clinging to my old conviction that nothing but rubbish would be dumped on my head regardless of whether it was a holiday or not. Once we are immersed in what is, to all intents and purposes, disgusting and filthy, no matter how much we yearn for something pure, we are stuck in the putrid rot.
I was not used to disregarding the Master’s orders, no matter how onerous. I was, after all, at his mercy, and he could destroy me any time he chose to. I wondered what was stopping him. I had observed him for years and knew his vicious streak intimately: the people he surrounded himself with were kept on a tight leash and the day inevitably came when he simply crushed them.