A Land Without Jasmine Read online

  I commented sarcastically, ‘Even her family hasn’t searched for her this assiduously. Your son seems to be infatuated with her.’

  ‘Sir, one proof of that is my son’s discovery of Jasmine’s bag and notebook.’

  I was so surprised, thunderstruck, that I became tongue-tied.

  He continued, ‘I beg you, by the life of the person you hold most dear, keep this information to yourself and let it remain our secret. If the girl’s family learn this, a calamity will ensue. They will eat my boy alive with their bare teeth and their daggers will shred his body before he has time to utter a word in his own defence.’

  Approaching the case from a new angle, I said, ‘I promise to keep the matter secret. Where are her effects?’

  He said, ‘Safe with my wife. Please wait a moment.’

  He stood and cleared his throat loudly to warn his family to move away from the door.

  Then he left, closing the door behind him. I heard a hushed debate, which was followed by weeping and sobbing. I inferred that Umm Ali was trying to prevent her husband from cooperating with me. Her fears for her son had doubtless caused her to distrust everyone.

  Five grim minutes elapsed while I passed the time watching the wall clock. I shuddered when I saw the second hand flicker in one spot, unable to move forward. It was that rare moment when you see a functioning clock die before your eyes!

  Finally Ali’s father returned with a clothes bag, which he handed to me. Then he knelt before me. Out of an excess of caution, the bag’s contents were in turn wrapped in three more bags. I found a woman’s black handbag and a course notebook with a blue plastic cover. Opening the bag, I found Jasmine’s university ID, some pens, a pencil, coins, a 1,000 riyal note and two fifties.

  I also found a small address book, tissues, a chocolate bar, strawberry chewing gum, some bobby pins, jasmine perfume and dried blossoms, scraps of paper containing references and a lecture schedule. I flipped through the course notebook’s three hundred pages quickly and observed that its owner had recorded her lessons systematically in an elegant hand. I put her effects back inside the three bags and asked Ali’s father, whose brow was dripping with sweat, ‘Where did your son find these?’

  As he attempted to suppress a coughing fit that was racking his body he replied, ‘He says he found them in the trees in the Faculty of Science garden.’

  I pursed my lips and said, more to myself than to him, ‘I must take him there so he can show me the precise location where he found the things.’

  Sighing, as his eyes overflowed with tears, he said, ‘If you went to the Faculty of Science now you might find him hanging out there, searching for more of her belongings.’

  Rising, I said, ‘Don’t worry about your son. We’ll keep an eye on him.’

  I shook hands with him at the door of the apartment and thanked him for the valuable assistance he had provided the police. Many heads poked up behind him, perhaps ten. I left and descended the stairs, my head awash with doubts. Had he actually found these personal effects or was his family concealing the truth and trying to rid themselves of evidence against their son? I followed the back street to the main thoroughfare where my sergeant Muti‘ was waiting for me in a taxi. We shot off toward the Faculty of Science, which we reached in less than seven minutes.

  We stopped near the faculty gate and I asked Sergeant Muti‘ to stay in the car and watch for a young man between seventeen and nineteen years of age. I got out of the vehicle and entered the faculty, heading toward the university’s security office.

  The duty officer saluted me and handed me a report half a page long. I read it but found no useful information. The guards hadn’t noticed anything suspicious. They had searched the faculty’s building four times without finding any clues. I laughed to myself at the stupidity of these blind soldiers who had failed to discover Jasmine’s handbag and her course notebook, which a kid, who had the enthusiasm and dedication for the search, had found.

  Folding the report and putting it in my pocket, I told the duty officer, ‘We’ve found important items in the faculty garden that pertain to the missing girl.’

  The duty officer’s mouth fell open and his eyes bulged.

  I continued threateningly, ‘Consequently, you’ll all have to answer for this lapse.’

  As I left, I could hear the sound of the duty officer’s feet hitting the floor with a thud. Zealously saluting me as I departed was his stupid attempt to apologize for failing to perform his duty. I went to the faculty garden, where the paths were almost deserted now that most of the students had gone home.

  I was overwhelmed by the loud din made by the chirping sparrows and the nightingales, and by the cooing of the turtledoves. My eyes followed them as they flew gaily from tree to tree.

  Feeling a pain in my chest, I turned toward a pomegranate tree about three metres away. I saw a white spectre move and then disappear into the trunk of the tree. My body trembled at this sight and I remained standing where I was, staring at the trunk, not knowing whether to doubt or believe the vision. Were my eyes at fault? Or was I overwrought because of this abominable case?

  I wiped my face with my hand and felt relieved as this demonic notion faded away. I approached the fountain, which was turned off, and sat down to catch my breath. The garden was small, dominated by camphor trees and lofty white poplars. Scattered through the garden’s reaches were arbours with facing seats that accommodated six. No one was around and except for the birds’ love songs and the stirring music the wind wrested from the trees’ boughs, calm enveloped the place.

  I plunged my fingers into the fountain’s still waters, which were covered with yellow leaves, and gazed at my reflection. My face undulated and lengthened each time a falling leaf struck the water’s surface. I was amazed by the extent to which a flimsy yellow leaf could alter my features.

  They say of a man whose time has come that his leaf has fallen. A small yellow leaf succumbs to the force of the wind and floats down. We are like that too: in a moment of despair we submit to death and give up the ghost.

  I felt a spiritual presence in the garden and began to look around. Then I spotted a young man sitting in one of the arbours. His head was bowed and he was rigid: a lifeless statue. I won’t deny that he spooked me a little. He seemed almost to have sprung from nowhere, becoming visible after being invisible.

  I gained control of myself and walked toward him. I found myself involuntarily fingering my revolver and checking to see if it was in its holster at my waist. He heard my footsteps but didn’t raise his head. He was staring at an invisible point somewhere beyond physical existence. His pupils were focused on the void, on a cavity not of this world. He was regarding something that has no name in our language, something we had never previously considered.

  I cleared my throat and greeted him but he remained transfixed and oblivious. I sat down opposite him and asked gently, ‘How are you, Ali?’

  He raised his head and began to study my face, scrutinizing my features. I felt like fleeing his glance, which resembled damaging rays that penetrate deep beneath the skin.

  Attempting to command his respect, I told him, ‘I’m an inspector from Criminal Investigations and I’ve come to interrogate you.’

  His eyes clouded and I sensed that his spirit’s rays were fading and retreating. I continued in the gruff voice of an interrogator, ‘Tell me, where did you discover Jasmine’s handbag and course notebook?’

  An unbearable minute of silence followed. His breathing quickened and his chest began to heave as if he were experiencing extreme difficulty getting enough air.

  He stood up suddenly and walked off; I followed him, noticing for the first time that he was tall and plump, which made him look older than he was, even though he was still a boy, wet behind the ears, fifteen perhaps. Standing near the pomegranate tree he pointed to a cavity in its trunk.

  I believed him right away.

  I told myself: so that vision wasn’t meaningless. An existential system governs
matters like this; it’s a system that remains beyond our ken.

  Ali knelt and began to weep loudly while I was overcome by a terror I had never experienced before. I felt a holy presence and shook with fright when I heard the roar of water. The fountain had suddenly come back to life and begun to work; the water spilled out of its basin onto the ground on all sides.

  I realized that my back was sweating, my ribs were trembling and my teeth were chattering. I felt ashamed of my weakness and failure of will. For the first time in my life I sensed that I was in the presence of a supernatural spiritual power, that my senses were on the blink and that my limbs were paralyzed.

  I experienced a weird, incomprehensible state in which I was both inside my body and outside it at the same time, seeing it while it saw me, regarding it from every direction, as if I were a neutral external observer.

  My intellect was crystal clear, free of emotion and feeling. The world around me twisted in spirals and spatial distances faded away as if I were experiencing an alternative form of existence.

  The sun set and the shadows darkened gradually. Sergeant Muti‘, who had grown tired of waiting in the taxi, came to look for me. (I knew this because at this moment I was outside of my body, watching everything.) He spotted me standing in front of the pomegranate tree, sunk in a sublime state of contemplation.

  He called to me from a distance but didn’t dare approach. (Later he told me that he had felt an intense terror.)

  I barely heard him. Then my worldly concerns returned. With sad, slow steps I withdrew from the garden, which was almost devoid of light, leaving behind me that boy and the pomegranate tree in a private reverie unspoiled by the presence of an interloper like me.

  3

  A MAN BLINDED TO THIS DISCONCERTING WORLD BY SUPERNATURAL DELUSIONS

  My name is Nasir Salim al-Utmi and I’m the proprietor of the snack bar in the Faculty of Science; it’s beside the wall and overlooks the garden.

  I’ve earned my living in this location for twenty years. I’m as well versed about everything that happens in the administrative offices and the lecture halls as a judicious man is about his own home. I’ve got the lowdown on the professors and students – stuff their own families don’t know. I’m the Faculty of Science’s real archive!

  As a result of my lengthy experience with the types of human beings who cause the floorboards of this scrap of earth to creak with their steps, I’ve learned to predict the fate of each person. This is an expertise gained from the experience of thousands of days and isn’t knowledge that can be explained in books or taught to anyone else. A person wishing to emulate me would have to pursue my profession for twenty years.

  All the same, the man has yet to be created who could boast that he can control his own fate or change it. Our destiny is manifest in our clothes, our conduct and our body language, which are the most obvious visible characteristics.

  From my observation of simple things like these I can predict the unseen future, discern a trend and understand how a person strives to discover his fate. All science students who have chosen to wear bright yellow shirts, for example, have eventually ended up going crazy.

  By selling sandwiches, juice and fries, I’ve been able to marry and buy a house for my family in the village. At the beginning of each Islamic month I send them their living expenses. I’ve been granted ten kids: four boys and six girls. I’ve educated all of them till they finished the junior high school diploma. I’ve definitely not encouraged them to complete their education and have plucked from their minds any notion whatsoever of attending the university.

  What I’ve observed in the university bears no relation to real knowledge. Behind the glittering academic façade, what students reap is shit. Do you know what our university’s greatest achievement is? It’s turning the human being who registers here into a donkey!

  This work isn’t easy; not even the expert sleight-of-hand of the conjurers in our rural areas can turn such a huge number of human beings into asses. In my village there’s a weekly market on Tuesday (al-Thuluth) where normally no more than five to ten donkeys are sold. Here, however, we have a far larger market for donkeys and the cool thing is that each donkey carries an ID so they won’t confuse him with the other asses! That’s not necessary in our village market because each donkey there is easily distinguishable from the others.

  The professor in our university gulls the students and gives them summary lectures that are more like magician’s tricks. Then the students cheat the professor, using his own methods, and pass.

  No genuine scholar or inventor has ever graduated from here. Even if one of them tried to accomplish something, the numbskull majority would be propelled by ruinous envy to drop him from their group and to destroy him psychologically and physically. Anyone who displays any genius here is digging his own grave. His gifts will turn everyone around him into loaded revolvers pointed at his chest.

  My kids are really bright and that’s why I’ve forbidden them to pursue a higher education, because I fear the anger and vengeance of slackers against them. I’m not joking or exaggerating.

  With my own eyes, over the course of twenty years I’ve seen dozens of born geniuses destroyed and devastated by fiendish spite. Moral depravity is so endemic here that a man can almost smell it in the air! Prostitution rings scout the female students, harvesting an abundant crop, and brokers for ‘touristic marriage’ offer their services in broad daylight.

  What’s amazing is the way a male student gazes at a female classmate. It’s an inappropriate stare devoid of respect. He relates to her not as a fellow student of science but as a student of copulation!

  Most of the professors are cultured and ethical but even in the teaching corps there are some rotten apples. Last year, Dr. Aqlan was the perpetrator of a moral scandal that ended in a grievous tragedy. We had a student here, Waddah, who was exceptionally bright. Of his peers he was the only one who did well in almost all his subjects. But even though he was extremely smart he wasn’t able to retain the top place because he failed one course, the one taught by Dr. Aqlan.

  Do you know why? Because he was too good looking!

  The girls flocked around him and competed for his attention because his appearance transformed him into a legend in their eyes. They could talk about nothing else.

  My snack bar has a section reserved for girls. It’s screened from sight by curtains so students who wear a face veil can remove their niqab and eat in comfort. I’m the only man who has the right to go in and out of their nest, see their faces and hear their chatter. They take my presence for granted and drop their guard, perhaps because I seem as old as their fathers.

  This privileged position has provided me with an inside knowledge of what happens in the closeted world of girls, allowing me to gauge how fond they were of Waddah. I even heard one of them say brazenly that Waddah was the only man in the faculty to rouse her passion and that when she saw him, she felt a tremor in her vagina and a quivering of her labia. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her demonstrate to her classmates how her labia had trembled. She stuck her hand out horizontally and then placed her thumb over the four other fingers, which she had clenched, thus creating a model. Then she waggled her thumb against the other fingers lightly and swiftly for two minutes.

  We all used to tell ourselves – us guys – how lucky he was. But his luck ended when Dr. Aqlan’s eyes spotted him. Then his good looks became a curse. The poor boy tried various means to revise his examination paper, but Dr. Aqlan had only one request for him and threatened to fail him in every subject he taught if Waddah didn’t comply with this demand.

  Dr. Aqlan’s family lives in the countryside and he lives alone in the apartment the university provides for him. Dr. Aqlan entices his victims – male and female – to this empty apartment, where he takes sexual liberties with them.

  To that depraved apartment Waddah slunk and yielded to his professor’s pressure. Only a few days afterwards, Dr. Aqlan posted a form on the division’s
bulletin board to announce a change in Waddah’s grade. He gave him 100 per cent for the subject!

  This announcement created a scandal that destroyed Waddah’s reputation; it constituted a blemish to his character and offered conclusive evidence for anyone who wished to condemn Waddah’s conduct. All the students – male and female – knew that Waddah had compromised his pride and slept in the same bed as this homosexual.

  It was the talk of the faculty. Even the janitors – male and female – talked trash about Waddah, mocked him and sang songs about him with altered lyrics. His male classmates, who already hated him secretly because of the girls’ infatuation with him, condemned him and spoke contemptuously about him, alluding to this deviant relationship.

  His life became a hell and he lost his self-confidence, which had once been high, till he could no longer look anyone in the eye. He fell apart and was slaughtered by our eyes when we gazed at him coldly and vindictively as if he were a cockroach surrounded by a battalion of shoes ready to crush him.

  He couldn’t take it. I happened to hear a conversation between some friends, one of whom shared Waddah’s room. He said some rude, disgusting stuff, claiming that Waddah had fungal infections on the upper portions of his ears and that on the inside repulsive growths showed that his skin was putrescent. He claimed that Dr. Aqlan’s saliva was to blame. He had allegedly placed Waddah’s ear in his mouth, licking it with his tongue. Then he had nipped the ear and greedily sucked blood from it. This may have been a slanderous comment and false. When a scandal erupts, people love to share figments of their imagination, like guests at a banquet. On this occasion, the banquet was Waddah’s body, that angelic form they had long envied.