My Friends

by Hisham Matar

It is, of course, impossible to be certain of what is contained in anyone’s chest, least of all one’s own or those we know well, perhaps especially those we know best, but, as I stand here on the upper level of King’s Cross Station, from where I can monitor my old friend Hosam Zowa walking across the concourse, I feel I am seeing right into him, perceiving him more accurately than ever before, as though all along, during the two decades that we have known one another, our friendship has been a study and now, ironically, just after we have bid one another farewell, his portrait is finally coming into view.

When I was growing up, he had to me the reliable air of one who believes in time, in the human initiative to measure it, but also in its supremacy over human affairs; that everyone, their deeds and character, will not only yield to time but be revealed by it, that the true nature of things is concealed and the function of the days is to strip away the layers.

I continued reading, feeling a peculiar effortlessness in doing so. The sentences, which were now disembodied from the man who had written them, seemed suspended, so light on their feet that I hardly noticed my progress through the pages.

It is difficult to kill a man, he told himself. Far more difficult than one suspects. And that is a hopeful fact: that life is on the side of life.

Men and women walked in different directions, dressed for the workday, which was to them, as it was still to me, a day like any other, open, familiar, a variant of all the other days that had come before and those yet to follow, exciting exactly for its familiarity, for being both new and predictable, uncharted and known.

“When I’m old and everything is done,” he once told me in Edinburgh, “I want to speak only about three things: ideas, food, and dreams.”

I had my own words, blades packed in the mouth, capable of cutting my tongue wide open. I feared speaking them and feared not speaking them, and I knew that, like all things of consequence, they could not be postponed or stored away for later use. If I missed my opportunity now, I thought, I would have to carry those words unspoken forever. Sounds in the dark.

They would be happy to supply details that, in retrospect, predicted the event: our keenness on reading, that we were on the side of books, were always seen walking around with them, clutching them under an arm, that even on weekends we were seen in cafés reading and would never go out at night without a slim volume dug deep, like a weapon, in a jacket pocket. They would say we were fearful of reality. And, as everyone knows, too much reading can disturb the balance of a healthy mind, lead it astray, and so on.

I wanted him to collect all our grief, from the beginning of the dictatorship in 1969 to the present, and hold it there for the world to see. I wanted the silence to be broken, the silence that surrounded not only the deaths and imprisonments and disappearances but also the minor acts of cruelty and humiliation, perceptible, from as far back as I could remember, in everything and everyone around me—the architecture, the very tarmac, a loaf of bread, the voices of the singers and the poets—particularly the poets. I never did know how to be released from it and wanted this writer to do it for me.

And let the others think what they will. After all, what does it matter what people think? All that matters is one’s sanity. Besides, nothing is changed by slogans. The truest opinions are never uttered. Most people live their entire lives with what they truly believe buried deep in their chests.

My father answered. His voice was astonishingly beautiful. I remember being surprised by it, by how broad and hospitable it was, the shade of a well-rooted tree. Given the chance, I thought, I would confide to it all my secrets, spread myself like a rug beneath it.

The talented historian who managed to remain independent, part of that silent army that exists in every country, made up of individuals who had come to the conclusion that they live among unreasonable compatriots and therefore must, like grown-ups in a playground, endure the chaos until the bell rings, resigned to the fact that this may come long after they are gone.

I was eighteen and in desperate need of someone to instruct me. Independence, which I had up to then held in very high regard, indeed revered it, was now to me a curse, the devil himself. It is dependence that a sane mind should seek; to depend on others and be in turn dependable.

I walked off feeling an emptiness well up inside me. It seemed, for all the emptiness that it was, a presence. It made me want to run away, dive deeper into myself, into that cold desolation, to the very bottom of it, out of whatever it is that attracts us to pain, which tempts us, when we know that a complaining tooth should be left alone, to bite on it.

I did not tell him that I spent most days in the library because it quieted my nerves to be lost in a book. I did not say that I had begun to read more systematically, that I would select an author and make my way through their entire work. I did not say anything about the mania of my progress. Nor that there were moments, fleeting and abstract but as vivid as existence, when everything I was and everything that had happened vanished, and I found myself lost inside an imaginary life.

“The entire history of humanity is reliant on people earning their keep,” he said. “Let that be a comfort to you.

I will never have the words to explain what it is like to be shot, to lose the ability to return home or to give up on everything I expected my life to be, or why it felt as though I had died that day in St. James’s Square and, through some grotesque accident, been reborn into the hapless shoes of an eighteen-year-old castaway, stranded in a foreign city where he knew no one and could be little use to himself, that all he could just about manage was to march through each day, from beginning to end, and then do it again. I did not know how to say such things then, I still do not, and the inarticulacy filled my mouth.

This, I now know, is what is meant by grief, a word that sounds like something stolen, picked out of your pocket when you least expect it.

I worried about not having strong opinions. The truth was, I did not care much for opinions. I wanted instead to be in the silent activity of a good book, to observe and feel.

And when she was in the middle of telling a story the lines in his face eased and gave way. I remember thinking, this must be what it is like to be in love. Love as a place of rest.

His entire face was fastened in place by his eyes, which held you with force. Two deep wells. It was as if a trace of everything they had ever witnessed was retained within them.

We need our families and the obligations of others to silence the unsaid and the unsayable. I imagined children. I imagined a variety of voices. I imagined rituals and routines. I imagined cooking not for myself alone and I imagined being cooked for. I wanted, more than anything else, the wants and demands of others. Those are versions of myself that continue in the dark.

It amazed me how none of the features of my life changed and yet everything was made different by Hosam becoming my neighbor. I was put back together, accompanied, and my life in London, which I cherished with a quiet pride, now had the feel of being part of a family, where a drink, a meal, a coffee, a walk could be shared spontaneously, without the tiresome need to plan and arrange.

“But to have an endless number of books sit on the shelf just because one has read them or might one day read them is absurd. Besides, is there anything more depressing than a wall of books? But you, my dear, disagree. Like Montaigne, you believe that the very presence of books in your room cultivates you, that books are not only to be read but to be lived with.” When he would visit me upstairs and his eyes would fall on my wall of books, something resembling delight and regret would pass across his face, as though what he secretly found troubling was not the sight of a large number of books but the stability that such an acquisition assumes. Reading requires one to be still. So does writing.

Outside of this, he hardly ever ventured beyond the thirty or so volumes he owned. I got the impression that this was not only out of the desire to be frugal, to remain light, to be able at any moment to move, but also to be, if not rooted in a physical location, habitually residing in the same literary terrain, with its familiar quarters, loved lines half forgotten, and to know, over a lifetime, as much as possible about a few books, until they came to seem like native land.

Pilgrimages have never interested me, but it was impossible not to be fascinated by the practical fact that Woolf had once lived here, walked into the world out of this exact door, and retreated away behind it. It made her books even more miraculous, that they managed to exist in a world of so much variance, where with one wrong step everything can change.

As our ways diverged and distances grew between us, and regardless of how undesired or natural those gaps were, we each secretly accused the other. One of us was always to blame. What I did not realize was that all the while the silences were doing their work on us, gradually driving us apart, until the places where we connected became few and slender. If friendship is, as it often seems, a space to inhabit, ours became small and not terribly hospitable. This was wordlessly acknowledged and lamented by both of us.

My students are not interested in literature; they are not convinced by it. They are perpetually at risk of falling off the edge, and therefore one’s task is less to teach them and more to serve as a barrier, in the hope that one day, by sheer will of practice, they will no longer require us. My colleagues felt this too. We were all so overstretched that, paradoxically, we often felt superfluous.

My mouth was full and empty all at once. Empty because everything in it had no shape or sound or form. And full of everything that I felt then and feel now. That what I want to return to I cannot return to because the place and I have changed and what I have built here might be feeble and meek, but it took everything I had and I fear if I leave I will not have the will to return and then I will be lost again and I have been lost before and will do everything not to be that again and that I do not know if it is cowardly or courageous and I do not care and I have decided without deciding, because it is my only option, to keep to the days, to sleep when it is good for me to sleep and wake in good time to attend to my work and the people who depend on me. I wanted to tell her that I like being dependable.

I realized then that I had always somehow anticipated this, perhaps even from as far back as when I was fourteen and first heard his story read on the radio, that he would be a medium, that we ask of writers what we ask of our closest friends: to help us mediate and interpret the world.

“My ideal man,” Malak said ponderingly. “I’m not sure what that means. I don’t want the ideal. I want complexity. I want passion. I want imperfection. My ideal man is not ideal. But,” she said, leaning forward, “I’ll tell you about him.” Mother was smiling. The entire room was held in attentive silence. “I want him to have lunch at home. I want him to help me with my own mind. I want him to be bookish, wise, cunning, and exemplary. I want him to be a good storyteller, and always on my side.” She paused, blushed a little, enjoying the room’s attention, but also receding inwardly, aware of her own vigor, perhaps surprised too, discovering as she spoke what she actually desired. And then, as if responding to a silent accuser within her, she said, “Yes, I suppose I am greedy,” her eyes taking us all in. At that moment, hers was the face of one engaged in the noblest of battles, when we reach for what we dream of, throwing caution to the wind.

“Yes, I want him to be near me. A good conversationalist, proud, not afraid of the lofty heights.” “Beautiful,” Mother said, and said it more to herself. “I want him to be a singer, one who knows and loves a good song, can play an instrument, the oud or the ney, and preferably both. I want him to be a good mourner, know how to attend to the pain of others, a consoler who could assuage the grief I have for all those I loved and befriended and who are no longer here. I want him to be a healer, an expert in all that troubles me. I want him to be a fire that annihilates all danger that lies ahead and behind me and that which I have, somehow, without his help, found a way to avoid. I want him to be faithful—” “Faithful,” my mother echoed. “Incapable of deception. I want him to be constant—” “Constant,” several now echoed, as if in agreement that Malak’s words had launched themselves into poetry. “Constant in his love and in his prayers and, when those prayers are not answered, I want him to change reality with his own hands. I want him to be my lord—” “My lord.”

“For all the world to see. I want him to make me proud, to make vanish old and fresh longings, new and unremembered regrets. I want him to be vigilant—” “Vigilant.” “To protect me from sorrows even once their great heights have passed. I want him to know how to deal with the past. I want him to be occasionally gripped by fear—” “Fear.” “The fear of losing me. I want him to be patient, to help me to endure the injustices visited upon the houses of those I love. But I also want him to be impatient—” “Impatient.” “To lose all reason and hurry off, forgetting his shoes and hat, and ride—” “Ride.” “His horse flanked by wings of angry dust, galloping, if need be, all night to find the traitorous, to change my fortunes and avenge me.”

Only then I realized I was alone again, the only one who did not remember the famous poem she had been quoting from, or the one she had merged her words with, one familiar to the gathering, for now they too began to murmur along with her the lines. And because I, the one who had been away, was the only one who could not join in, I blushed a little, and therefore came to seem as though I were the subject of Malak’s words. And then I want him to return to me, to prosper by my side. I want to take him to the clearest stream, one only I know the way to, and there quench his thirst. I want him to look at me sometimes as if he does not know who I am. But I want to be forever recognized by him, come what may, to point me out in a crowd when, after the passage, we are reunited. I want him to see me when I cannot see myself. All exploded with cheers. Several clapped. Mother pulled Malak to her and kissed her, tears now streaming from Mother’s eyes. “Gorgeous,” she said, and repeated the word three times.

It’s London, I told myself. The place is infected with irony. Cynicism here is not only tolerated but essential to one’s survival. I accused London of this and other ills and the accusations hardened my anger.

She had a vague disappointment about her, as though a part of her always worried that things might not turn out well.