So as the next few days passed, I realized that I had a clear idea of how vital my well-being was to the tranquility of the Budayeen: I could have died and been buried inside a brand-new mosque in Mecca or some Egyptian pyramid thrown together in my honor, and nobody would even know about it. Some friends! The question arises:
Why did I even entertain the notion of sticking my own neck out for their well-being? I asked myself that over and over, and the answer was always: Because who else did I have? Triste, mm? The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them.
The end of Ramadan came, and the festival that marks the close of the holy month. I was sorry I was still in the hospital, because the festival, id el-Fitr, is one of my favorite times of the year. I always celebrate the end of the fast with towers of ataif, pancakes dipped in syrup and sprinkled with orange-blossom water, layered with heavy cream, and covered with chopped almonds. Instead, this year I took some farewell shots of Sonneine, while some religious authority in the city was declaring that he’d sighted the new crescent moon, the new month had begun, and life could now return to normal.
I went to sleep. I woke up early the next morning, when the blood nurse came around for his daily libation. Everyone else’s life may have gone back to normal, but mine was permanently doglegged in a direction I could not yet imagine. My loins were girded, and now I was needed on the field of battle. Unfurl the banners, O my sons, we will come down like a wolf on the fold. I come not to send peace, but a sword.
Breakfast came and went. We had our little bath. I called for a shot of Sonneine; I always liked to take one after all the heavy work of the morning was finished, while I had a couple of hours before lunch. A drifty little nap, then a tray of food: good stuffed grape leaves; hamid; skewered kofta on rice, perfumed with onions, coriander, and allspice. Prayer is better than sleep, and food is better than drugs … sometimes. After lunch, another shot and a second nap. I was awakened by Ali, the older, disapproving nurse. He shook my shoulder. “Mr. Audran,” he murmured.
Oh no, I thought, they want more blood. I tried to force myself back to sleep.
“You have a visitor, Mr. Audran.”
“A visitor?” Surely there had been some mistake. After all, I was dead, laid to rest on some mountaintop. All I had to do now was wait for the grave robbers. Could it be that they were here already? I didn’t even feel stiff, yet. They wouldn’t even let me get cold in the tomb, the bastards. Ramses II was shown more respect, I’ll bet. Haroun al-Raschid. Prince Saalih ibn Abdul-Wahid ibn Saud. Everybody but me. I struggled up to a sitting position.
“O clever one, you are looking well.” Hassan’s fat face was resting in its shabby business smile, the unctuous look that even the stupidest tourist could spot as too deceitful by half.
“It is as God pleases,” I said groggily.
“Yes, praise Allah. Very soon you will be wholly recovered, inshallah.”
I didn’t bother to respond. I was just glad he wasn’t sitting on the foot of my bed.
“You must know, my nephew, that the entire Budayeen is desolate without your presence to light our weary lives.”
“So I understand,” I said. “From the flood of cards and letters. From the crowds of friends that mob the hospital corridors day and night, anxious to see me or just hear word of my condition. From all your many little thoughtfulnesses that have made my stay here bearable. I cannot thank you enough.”
“No thanks are necessary—”
“ — for a duty. I know, Hassan. Anything else?”
He looked a little uncomfortable. It might have crossed his mind that just possibly I was mocking him, but usually he was impervious to that sort of thing. He smiled again. “I am happy that you will be among us again tonight.”
I was startled. “I will?”
He turned over one fat palm. “Is it not so? You are to be discharged this afternoon. Friedlander Bey sent me with a message: You must visit him as soon as you feel well. Tomorrow will be soon enough. He does not wish for you to hurry your recuperation.”
“I didn’t even know that I was being released, and I’m supposed to see Friedlander Bey tomorrow; but he doesn’t want to hurry me. I suppose your car is waiting to take me home.”
Now Hassan looked unhappy. He didn’t like my suggestion at all. “Oh darling, I wish it were so, but it cannot be. You must make other arrangements. I have business elsewhere.”
“Go in safety,” I said quietly. I laid my head back on the pillow and tried to find my dream again. It was long gone.
“Allah yisallimak.” murmured Hassan, and he was gone, too.
All the peace of the last few days disappeared, and it happened with disturbing suddenness. I was left with a pervasive feeling of self-loathing. I remembered one time a few years ago, when I had pursued a girl who worked sometimes at the Red Light and sometimes at Big Al’s Old Chicago. I had worked my way into her consciousness by being funny and fast and, I suppose, contemptible. I finally got her to go out with me, and I took her to dinner — I don’t remember where — and then back to my apartment. We were on the bed five minutes after I locked the front door, and we jammed for maybe another ten or fifteen minutes, and then it was all over. I lay back and looked at her. She had bad teeth and sharp bones and smelled as if she carried sesame oil around with her in an aerosol. “My God,” I thought. “Who is this girl? And how am I going to get rid of her now?” After sex, all animals are sad; after any kind of pleasure, really. We’re not built for pleasure. We’re built for agony and for seeing things too clearly, which is often a terrible agony in itself. I loathed myself then, and I loathed myself now.
Dr. Yeniknani knocked lightly on my door and came in. He glanced briefly at the nurse’s daily notes.
“Am I going home?” I asked.
He turned his bright, black eyes on me. “Hmm? Oh, yes. Your discharge orders have already been written. You have to arrange for someone to come and get you. Hospital policy. You can leave anytime.”
“Thank God,” I said, and I meant it. That surprised me.
“Praise Allah,” said the doctor. He looked at the plastic box of daddies beside my bed. “Have you tried all of these?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. That was a lie. I had tried a few, under the supervision of a therapist; the data add-ons had been pretty much of a disappointment. I don’t know what I’d expected. When I chipped in one of the daddies, its information was sitting there in my mind, as if I’d known all of it all my life. It was like staying up all night and cramming for an exam, without having to lose any sleep and without the possibility of forgetting any of the material. When I popped the chip out, it all vanished from my memory. No big deal. Actually, I was looking forward to trying some of the daddies that Lalla had in her shop. The daddies would come in very handy now and then.
It was the moddies I was afraid of. The full personality modules. The ones that crammed you away in some little tin box inside your head, and someone you didn’t know took over your mind and body. They still spooked the hell out of me.
“Well, then,” said Dr. Yeniknani. He didn’t wish me luck, because everything was in the hands of Allah, Who knew what the outcome was going to be anyway, so luck hardly entered into it. I’d learned gradually that my doctor was an apprentice saint, a Turkish derwish. “May God provide a successful conclusion to your undertaking,” he said. Very well spoken, I thought. I had come to like him a lot.
“Inshallah,” I said. We shook hands, and he left. I went to the closet, took out my street clothes, threw them on the bed — there was a shirt and my boots and socks and underwear and a new pair of jeans that I didn’t remember buying. I dressed quickly and spoke Yasmin’s commcode into my phone. It rang and rang. I spoke my own, thinking she might be at my apartment; there was no answer there, either. Maybe she was at work, although it wasn’t two o’clock. I called Frenchy’s, but no one had seen her yet. I didn’t bother leaving a message. I called a cab instead.