“It was you who decided to emigrate.”
“You could’ve convinced me to stay.”
“I tried but you were determined.”
“Why didn’t you come with me?”
“I can’t leave Egypt.”
“If you’d really loved me, you would’ve come with me.”
“It’s absurd to disagree now about what happened thirty years ago.”
“Do you still think I am a coward?”
“Why do you insist on bringing back bad memories?”
“Don’t be evasive: am I a coward in your opinion?”
“If I considered you a coward, I wouldn’t have had a relationship with you.”
“The last time we met you said: ‘I regret to tell you that you’re a coward.’”
“We were quarreling so I had a slip of the tongue.”
“That sentence gave me pain for years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think it was a slip of the tongue.”
“What exactly do you want?”
“Your real opinion: am I a coward in your view?”
“Duty dictated that you stay in Egypt.”
“You’ve stayed; what was the result?
“I wasn’t waiting for any results.”
“Not one goal that you struggled for has been accomplished.”
“But I did my duty.”
“To no avail.”
“At least I didn’t run away.”
Her words had a heavy impact. They both fell silent until she whispered in an apologetic tone, “Sorry, Salah. Please don’t be angry with me. It was you who insisted on talking about this.”
Chapter 33
It was as though a muscle in Dr. Ra’fat Thabit’s face had contracted forever, giving his features a look of indelible bitterness, as if he were carrying a heavy burden that slowed his steps and crooked his back, replacing his former sprightly athletic gait. He lost his ability to concentrate and seemed most of the time to be staring at nothing. Only one question weighed down on him: Where had Sarah disappeared to? He looked for her everywhere to no avail. Had she escaped with Jeff to another city? Has she been attacked by a gang in Oakland? There were crimes in Chicago’s poor black neighborhoods that were discovered only by chance; some might never be discovered. He asked himself: What has happened to you, Sarah? I will never forgive myself if anything bad happened to you. How cruel I was with you! How could I have insulted you like that?
After a few days of strenuous searching he decided to inform the police. He was met by a polite black officer who listened to his story with interest, then sighed and said, “Sorry, sir. I’m a father like you and I appreciate your feelings, but your daughter is now an adult and, under the law, is a free citizen who has the right to go wherever she wants. So there’s no legal justification at this point to look for her if she’s missing.”
Ra’fat went back home, despondent, and found Michelle lying on the sofa in the living room. She looked at him blankly and asked him, “What did you do?”
He told her in a soft voice, then sat next to her and held her hand. They looked at that moment like an old couple whose long life together enabled them to communicate without words. The ordeal had brought them closer, and they had stopped fighting. They were brought together by an instinctive solidarity, like that uniting people facing a fire or a natural disaster. She removed his hand gently and said as she got up, “Is there anything we can do?”
“I’ll publish an ad.”
“You think she’d read it?”
“I remember that sometimes she read ads in newspapers.”
She looked at him for a long time then hugged him. He felt her body shaking, so he tried to console her and calm her down. He walked her to bed then returned and threw himself on the sofa. He had a splitting headache, and a heavy sense of dejection was choking him. Since Sarah’s disappearance he couldn’t sleep without a sleeping pill and was unable to do anything, night or day. He repeatedly missed his classes, and the chairman, Dr. Friedman, called him to a meeting and said to him with a smile, “Ra’fat, all of us in the department understand the situation. Please let us do something to help a little. If you feel you’re not up to giving a class, all you have to do is let me know beforehand and we’ll manage.”
It was a magnanimous gesture from colleagues that he had worked with for twenty years, but he knew that such magnanimity was not going to last forever. His contract with the university would end in April, and if he went on like that they wouldn’t renew it no matter how sympathetic they were. Work was work, and many professors with degrees and experience like his, and maybe better, would love to get their hands on his position. He got up slowly and took the sleeping pill. He had forty minutes to fall asleep. What was he going to do? Deep down he knew that he would do what he did every night: he was going to pour himself a double drink (in defiance of his doctor’s warning against combining liquor and sleeping pills). He would take out the large photo album that Michelle kept in the living room next to the piano. He would drink and look at the old pictures. The happy days were all there: days of love and youth, a picture of him and Michelle embracing in Lincoln Park, another on New Year’s Eve at Davie’s Club. What year was that? He’d find the date stamped on the back of the photo. Soon Sarah would begin to make an appearance in the pictures: first as a baby, then in the blue navy suit he had bought her for her fifth birthday, then an entrancing picture of her playing with her bike in the garden. He looked at her laughing face: how beautiful she was! Where was she now?
A strange idea occurred to him as he studied her picture: Did a human being have his fate etched on his features from childhood? Could we, with some concentration or strong foresight, read children’s futures on their faces? To know from the beginning that this little girl would die an untimely death or be unhappy in her life? Or that little boy who looked ordinary and lazy would achieve illustrious professional eminence or make a huge fortune? In the pictures Sarah was laughing and had a sunny face filled with joy. But he could somehow see what was happening to her now, imprinted on her little face; there was a darkish cloud hovering between her smile and her innocent, astonished look. There was an almost imperceptible look of defeat in her glance, a premonition of a sad destiny that she couldn’t avoid. He put the album aside and got up, as he did every night when sorrows ganged up on him so much that he couldn’t look at any more pictures. He would have another drink in front of the window until the sleeping pill worked in conjunction with the whiskey, plunging him in a dark, heavy, deathlike sleep.
Ra’fat suddenly imagined that he was hearing sounds coming from another part of the house, a door opening and closing, steps squeaking on the wooden floor. He listened carefully. Oh, God, was the doctor’s warning coming true? Was the mixture of alcohol and sleeping pill making him hallucinate? There, he was hearing the sound again. It wasn’t hallucination. He was certain this time. Someone was moving around. Had Michelle woken up and come downstairs to do something? He put the drink on the table and hurried to the bedroom. He opened the door as gently as he was able and in the dark could make out that Michelle was still asleep. He was now fully alert. His sense of danger brought back his concentration. The sound persisted; it was defying him. The person who had broken in did not even try to conceal his movements. He was not moving stealthily like a thief; perhaps he was drunk or high or perhaps he was carrying a weapon that made him sure that he could handle the situation at any moment. Who said it was one person? Most likely it was a group of armed men. What did they want with him? Unfortunately he didn’t have a gun like Salah. He had always refused to own a gun. The idea of shooting somebody, no matter what the circumstances, seemed strange and frightening to him. He opened his cell phone and readied it to dial the police emergency number. He was going to go to the first floor, confront the intruders, and at the right moment call the police. He held on to the wooden banister very carefully, and then stopped. It took him a few moments to absorb what he saw. The door of the room was wide open. In the soft light of the corridor he saw a
