Shivan and his daughter finished their meal in the Country Grills. Shivan ordered a tea and a pomegranate juice for Darya. He very much liked the designs on the teaspoon, so he put it in his pocket. Darya asked to go to the bathroom. Shivan helped her. He stood up to wash his hands with soap. He paid the bill and left the restaurant. Then he came to my shop adjacent to the restaurant, a shop that specialised in children’s clothes and toys. I was married with four children. I welcomed them and joked with his daughter, putting on a vampire mask, but I noticed this upset Shivan. I apologised and helped him choose a dress that fitted her. He bought a blue dress with a large daffodil in the middle. Someone suddenly shouted ‘Allahu abkar’ and blew himself up – fires broke out everywhere after the explosion. Shivan was lying on the floor holding the girl’s dress, and Darya was lying nearby, cut in half. Shivan’s head was turned towards his daughter and his eyes were open, as if looking at her. But he couldn’t see her. He was in the land of the dead.

  You didn’t die at the scene of the explosion.

  I suffered horrific burns. My flesh fused with the children’s clothes and plastic toys. One day later, in hospital, I took my last breath.

  Dear Hassan,

  The internet was down today. It just came back. I’m very glad that you’re writing and I hope you won’t hesitate to send me what you produce. I have plenty of time. I might rival the Sleepers of Ephesus! How pleased I am that you understand me, of course.There’s nothing new there and it doesn’t change our situation as poor wretches. Believe me, Hassan, every day I feel more and more that I’m an alien in this world. Why? Because I don’t understand it, and it doesn’t allow the tiniest possibility for it to try to understand us. Of course, I don’t mean this visible world that seems to be all threats and gestures, but the other one: the trap we’ve been pushed into. And my question remains till the end: why put up with all this?

  Although these feverish thoughts never leave me, I find that other thoughts have slipped in among them – thoughts of being affiliated to a spot continually struck by disaster and following its absurdities. Of course, like me, you’re angry about what’s happening in Iraq. Sometimes I think Saddam, despite his barbarity, meant there was hope for stability and that we could escape such horrible experiences. Sometimes I’m drawn to some commitment but it’s always the commitment of someone who’s desperate.

  This morning I finished a new text. I don’t know if there was anything new in it. In fact, there’s essentially nothing new in all the deeds of history. All these humans do, as Cioran says, is give off unpleasant smells.

  Best wishes and my hopes for new creative work.

  *

  My health fluctuates. I feel like I’m in a cauldron made by an unfamiliar devil, not the one we know. The strange thing is that everything happens without any warning, which leads me to assume a somewhat apathetic attitude. I wanted to take stock of what I’ve done in the way of writing in recent months. I laughed a little when I found that I didn’t remember much of what I’d written. You can imagine how it would be in the case of readers, who aren’t necessarily a factor in my formula for writing. I was surprised when I discovered that there were more than ten short stories, several ‘anti-diaries’ and translations. I also laugh when I find that I’ve fallen short, writing-wise.

  There was a health crisis a week ago that lasted about two days, but I emerged from it safely. Maybe the disease turned me into a little griffon! Did you know, Hassan, that what saves me from freezing up and being unable to write is the continuity and daily ritual of writing – the ceremony of it constantly reinforcing a habit bestowed by an unknown god.

  *

  How are you? As I promised, I’m sending you some excerpts from Cioran’s writing, though they’re not complete, because the devil slipped into the computer and swallowed about half of it! I don’t know what else to do other than curse and say what lousy luck I have. I don’t think the devil alone should take the blame, because two days ago I was fighting off a cold of the sadistic kind. I find deliverance only in writing, though I know there are many things waiting to be read.

  My best wishes.

  The Principal of the Cat School

  I wait for Raed al-Suri in a coffee shop in the Place Louise. It isn’t my first visit to Brussels. I came here last year and spent three nights with my four cousins, who are also fellow artists.

  My youngest cousin is doing a master’s degree in theatre in Amsterdam. I’m very close to him. Before he left Iraq he was almost burned to a cinder inside a small bus. The friend he was with at the time died, along with some other people; they were all handed over to their loved ones in coffins that held nothing but charred flesh and bone. They’d both been on the bus together, but my cousin got out and waved his friend goodbye. As the bus moved away, my cousin remembered that he’d left his new shirt in a bag under the seat. He ran a few paces after it, which by now was a short distance away. Then he threw himself flat on the ground. The bus blew up and turned into a human oven.

  The eldest cousin is a painter. We started university together in the same year. He studied art while I studied to be a vet. He was the comedian of my childhood, a hashish-smoker and big-time joker. Despite the years that have passed he continues to laugh like a child. The second-oldest brother is a musician and a kindred spirit. His life is all parties, drugs, music and women. These parties have been interspersed by spells devoted to working on documentary films about his friends and their memories. The fourth cousin is a proper film director. I admire him and am always proud of him. In debates, he can demolish anyone like a steel bulldozer, with such sarcasm that the participants don’t realise the conversation has become comic, and continue to challenge him.

  I have phoned my cousins – Muayyed, Dhia, Adel and Ankido – and told them I’m coming. They say that the first night we’ll take it easy at home. We’ll all hang out, get some drink and hashish, cook, play FIFA and tell stories till the morning. The next day they’ll let me finish off my work and meetings, and then we’ll hang out, get drunk, and enjoy a beautiful Brussels evening.

  We spent the evening in my flat. All of us were Syrian, new and old refugees – an artist, two poets, a cook and an ambulance driver. There was lots of Syrian food, arak, beer and wine and lots of noisy, angry talk about the destruction of Syria. Mona spoke about the importance of integrating into Belgian society. Mona’s a poet who’s lived in Brussels for more than ten years. Hazem, the other poet, supported her. He owns a successful Syrian restaurant in the suburbs of Brussels. ‘New refugees are shattered,’ I told her. ‘They’re tired and frightened and they don’t yet believe they won’t go back to their towns and their families and their old life back home. Talking about integration often strikes them as some kind of joke, or sometimes as something that threatens a new nightmarish experience. It’s not easy for people to shed their skin. People aren’t snakes.’ I thought the snake metaphor was exaggerated. ‘New refugees are still in shock when they arrive and it’s often too soon to talk about integration. It’s like when someone’s been in a horrible traffic accident and when they open their eyes in hospital, a nurse comes in and says they’re doing a survey on the quality of the healthcare they provide and could the patient please answer some questions.’

  The conversation heated up again. Various opinions were expressed, sometimes seriously, sometimes light-heartedly. Together we sang some old Syrian songs and laughed and knocked back more drink and scoffed the mezzes. Then Said performed his shitty monologue and made me angry, and offended the others. Mona gave him a present, a book by an American writer about the post-modernist novel. Said, a novelist who had written one unsuccessful novel and was trying to write a second one, was drunk. Mona told him that in order to succeed here in Europe he should understand how the novel had developed in the West. He took the book, said, ‘Fuck Europe and fuck the world,’ and went to the bathroom. The ambulance driver told us about his work with the White Helmets in Aleppo before he decided to leave. He could no longer cope with carrying the body parts of dead children in his ambulance. Said came back from the bathroom and, in a loud voice like a mosque preacher, said, ‘O ye believers, men and women, there is no modernism or postmodernism. Only myths are good for this world – gory, frightening, violent myths, stories in which reality dies and delirium is born, stories that set the imagination free like an angry and wounded animal.’ Said tottered and dived onto the sofa like a goalkeeper blocking a shot. A few moments later he was fast asleep.

  Hazem, our friend the cook, came back from the bathroom laughing and said, ‘Listen up, folks. There’s a shitty disaster in the bathroom. Said has blocked the toilet with the postmodernist book. He threw it in there and shat on it.’

  The next day I woke up to the sound of the doorbell, and heard the door opening. I jumped out of bed in alarm. Said was standing at the door. I had forgotten he had spent the night on the sofa after shitting on the postmodernism book. Said introduced a young woman and, with a wave of his hand, said, ‘Please, after you.’

  ‘Good morning,’ said the woman.

  Said threw an angry glance. He wasn’t content with what he’d done in the bathroom the night before. Now he was inviting a stranger into my house.

  He winked at me mischievously and said in his version of English, ‘This Mr Raed, our artist. He too no speak French, but he clever in English.’

  The woman offered to shake hands, saying, ‘I’m Charlotte, sorry to disturb you.’

  The flat was in chaos from the destruction wrought by the previous night’s party. We sat down at a table in the kitchen after Said, behaving like a professional waiter, quickly cleared away the empty beer bottles and the plates of mezze. He poured us some water into two clean glasses and made us some coffee. The woman was uneasy and pale. She was barely twenty. She had a ring in her nose and was wearing black jeans and a sheer green blouse. I was wrong to think Said actually knew her!

  The woman apologised again and said she needed our help, but first of all she wanted to know if we believed in religion or not. Said laughed as he poured me some coffee: ‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ he said. ‘Religion is a rotten old story that we’re done with here.’ Charlotte and I looked at Said simultaneously.

  Charlotte was killed in Syria.

  News of her death remains unconfirmed. She had come that day to talk to us about her boyfriend. He was a young man in his early twenties, born in Brussels to Moroccan parents and called Walid. Her boyfriend only spoke a little Arabic. He was an aspiring boxer and a cheerful young man, until depression and ideas about jihad started swirling in his mind. He went off to Syria and joined the Daesh people. Charlotte was puzzled, lost and devastated because she didn’t understand why Walid had left. She asked us about Syria, the civil war, religion, Daesh and Bashar al-Assad. We talked her through a complicated religious-political-historical labyrinth. Even Said the novelist and I, the master painter, lost our way in it. We exchanged telephone numbers and wished her well. Said stayed in touch with Charlotte until they arranged everything together and carried out their plan.

  The film The Principal of the Cat School won several prizes and Said is still travelling from one festival to another.

  Said and Charlotte went to Syria. Said was of Kurdish origin. The Kurdish fighters were protecting their towns and engaged in vicious fighting with the Daesh people. Said wanted to help Charlotte get in touch with Walid. It wasn’t easy because her boyfriend was in the territory held by the Daesh. Charlotte found out about the lives of the Kurdish men and women fighters in the town, which had been bombed several times. Said spent all his time contacting friends and acquaintances for any news of Walid. The locals worked together to supply the fighters with food and water. Charlotte volunteered to work with them and the locals loved her and she won the trust of the fighters. After three months Said learned the full story of Walid the mujahid. After a year with Daesh, Walid had lost his enthusiasm for jihad and helping the oppressed. The children of Allah terrified him. He was stunned to see Daesh slitting the throats of friends and enemies, brutally and without mercy. They were like automated slaughtering machines that did not operate by emotions but by sucking blood. Walid made a plan to escape from Daesh and headed to Turkey. He managed to get out of the town but villagers loyal to Daesh caught him and handed him back to the knives of Daesh and they cut his throat.

  Said had been recording their journey daily by video camera, from when they started in Brussels. He filmed the lives of the people, the children and the fighters and the daily activities of Charlotte. After the shock when her friend and lover Walid was executed, Charlotte became introverted and reluctant to talk. Then she started looking after the frightened stray cats that were everywhere in the town. She looked for a place to give them shelter. Said suggested the abandoned children’s school. Half the school had been destroyed by shelling. Charlotte fixed up the principal’s room as her own. They cleaned up some of the classrooms and corridors, removing the dust and the shattered window glass, and took the cats into the school. The locals were sympathetic. They donated food for her and her cats. Some of them offered candles. Others gave them flower pots and curtains decorated with flowers. The cat school became a spiritual refuge for the local people and the fighters. They would drop in there because the now tame cats together with Charlotte’s kind eyes took the edge off the harshness of their lives. In one of the scenes in the film that I liked most, Charlotte was sitting at a school desk, reading a book by the light of a candle while the cats meowed and played and squabbled around her.

  The Kurdish fighters’ first line of defence collapsed and the remaining fighters evacuated the civilians. They gradually withdrew in the face of a ferocious attack by the Daesh people. In the chaos of the withdrawal, Charlotte disappeared. Said went back to Brussels. He had excellent film material. He signed a contract with a small production company to complete the film, which was a great success. Could we stop here? Let’s go for a walk. The weather’s wonderful.

  Okay.

  I think you’ve heard of Stromae.

  Of course! I love some of his songs.

  Look! Here in this square, Place Louise, he filmed an amazing music video.

  I remember the video well. Yes, right. This is the same tram stop. You told me you’d stopped drawing.

  I think all the disastrous violence and destruction has crushed my desire to express myself. I feel like my fingers have been charred black. I no longer believe in imagination. The world’s too dirty and too insignificant for anyone to depict it with lines and colours. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go back to drawing one day.

  Your charred fingers might yet produce many exciting pictures. When wasn’t the world dirty and brutal? In his film Said didn’t refer to what happened to the cat school afterwards.

  True! It would have been better if he’d done that. The Daesh people took over the school and used it as a place to teach kids sharia and fighting skills. Imagine: they had a new maths book published, with sums like one bullet plus one bullet equals two bullets.

  Fuck G–. Okay, fuck the bastard.

  Haha. So you’re frightened of blaspheming. Blasphemy for you Iraqis is an art form, a way to exercise. Sometimes I don’t understand how you managed to have a sectarian civil war, and before us too! Fuck ignorance and injustice. It’s ruined the lives of generation after generation. Tell me, as I understand it, you’re doing interviews only with artists and writers living abroad?

  Mostly. But not just expatriates. Also some people who still live in their countries. Well, Iraqis who stayed in Iraq, at least. You know, going to all the countries involved would be very expensive, more than I can afford.

  When are you flying?

  I have some time. Tonight I’m hanging out with my ‘brothers in art’, and tomorrow I’m visiting the Van Gogh exhibition. Then I’m flying.

  I’m reading Alice in Wonderland again. It’s a precursor to Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Both books are brilliant analyses of the dreaming mind. In both, the grammar is directed towards the dream and its rhythm – that immersion or infiltration, slowing down, repetition and sudden shift of pace, then monotony, and then snatching snippets of this vision or that. The surprising thing is that all this applies equally to the events and the language. Of course, this otherness in relation to the waking world is definitely not confined to these external matters. And so one of the best examples of human inquisitiveness is the attempt to solve the puzzle of dreaming and find out why such a system should arise that has its own logic. And what is the source of this chain of cause and effect that is outside the control of the dreamer? As Alice says, ‘It’s rather hard to understand. Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are!’

  *

  Dear Hassan,

 

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