(1)

For two years, I have been living in the suburbs of a European capital and working blue-collar and service jobs. Every day, early in the morning, I leave my HLM and walk towards the Gare RER. The train is at a distance from the HLM; I have to walk a bit to get there. The sky is always beset with gray clouds, and under the sullen sky, a long and dejected street runs straight like a line through rows of public housing. At irregular intervals you can see small stores making cleavages within the crushing columns of HLM: Bar-Tabac, Epicerie, Boulangerie, their shutters opening in sequence for the morning. The business of the material world is beginning once more. I am enveloped by a horde of laborers, clerks, and servants – all workers like me – who are making their way towards the Gare RER. It feels like we are still sleeping, still dreaming, waiting for the bus or metro to open our eyes on the way to our destinations.
        I am waiting at the Gare RER platform. Breaking the gusts of cold wind on our bodies, we must be about fifty people at the platform, each waiting in silence, our faces trenched in our mufflers. Each one is unidentifiable, yet each one maintains the illusion of privacy in the midst of a crowd. In a corner, the young students of the Lycee are loitering, playing pranks, flexing and laughing, insulting each other with their words, chewing each syllable before they spray their machine-gun talk. Compared to their restless chatter, the silence of the other passengers seems pleasing and calming.
        I am entering the RER. The car is packed, chock-full with people stuffed into one another, their friction creating a distinct and specific scent, an emulsion of sweat, alcohol and bad breath. The scent is both bitter and acidic; I look away and try to focus on the window to my side, where some blameless scenes are beginning to exhibit themselves: buildings, bridges, bus stops, stations, factories, all stand with their heads bowed. All are helpless; all are without voice. Fearing the terror of these innocent scenes, I turn away from the external, material world and gaze inside myself. I scratch the surface of my soul with the invisible fingers of my subconscious until certain memories rise from its depths, and when they appear, I sew them with a needle and thread to make a story, a tale, a narrative that writes my unusual life.

I exit the RER to take the metro. I get off the metro after three stations, and then I walk nearly three hundred meters before I arrive at the Pakistani food street of this European capital. It is a narrow street, both sides flanked with two-story buildings that contain Pakistani restaurants. I have been working on this street for the past two years. I must have worked in all the restaurants, on each floor of each building: I washed dishes in the kitchens on the ground floors, bartended and waited tables on the lower floors, inventoried and stood guard over the crates and discarded miscellanea in the basements. I am not a Punjabi, which is why, oddly, my Punjabi boss trusts me more than his own people and delegates all sorts of tasks to me. Before he moved here, my boss was a pimp in Lahore. As a reminder of those days, he keeps his gold chain permanently flashing around his neck, a keepsake, a gift from a besotted prostitute on the occasion of his twenty-fifth birthday. On his wrist, something more local: a sparkling Swiss watch that playfully betrays his affluence. His hair is as shiny as his watch – and why wouldn’t it be? – it is caressed with the lily-white hands of a Frenchwoman who decorates it with gel every day. The boss has no objections to the fact that I do not have legal papers for this country. In fact, it gives him an excuse to pay me less because it is a criminal offence to hire an undocumented person, an offence which can result in the cancellation of his license, penalties and fines, interrogations at the police station, and who knows what else! But I am able to take care of myself and all my affairs on this paltry salary. After all, it is not like I have to send money back home. I have no home. I am a runaway who has changed his name and place of birth, an exile who has no intentions of ever returning to his country.

The irony of my situation is that I work, day and night, alongside those who are the enemy of my people. All of them belong to that Punjabi race which has looted my brothers and sisters for years, kidnapped them, killed them, and made them disappear. But here, in this foreign country, I am seeing these sons of butchers in a different light. They are ignorant and unprincipled to such a degree that I cannot decide whether I should be angry at them or pity them. A few examples include Asif the Dog from Shalimar Restaurant, originally a cobbler from Gujranwala, notorious for groping female customers while taking their coats, Javed from Kashmir Restaurant, originally a lumberman from Hafizabad, known for stealing liquor from the basement and gulping it down in the bathroom, Mohsin from Rajput Restaurant, originally a gambler from Rawalpindi, shunned for the habit of borrowing money from co-workers in order to bet on horses, Jan from Rajasthan Restaurant, originally a Christian from Lahore, an expert in forging documents, and finally, Shahbaz from La rose du Punjab Restaurant, a student of the Quran from Sarghoda who is now married to an old alcoholic lady for the sake of citizenship.
        Nevertheless, I do my best to stay on good terms with all of them. I haven’t told anybody my true story. I told them I was a resident of Lyari township in Karachi. Nobody asked any further questions. Let alone Lyari, none of them have even been to Karachi. At any rate, I am used to keeping my old affairs secretive because I know that if my truth were to be found out, all of them, perhaps the whole world, would declare me an enemy.
        As for the customers of the restaurant, I have hated them from the beginning. They are specimens of an indulgent and declining civilization. They have no capacity for struggle or hard work. Their men are feminine, their women masculine, and their children spoiled. Nobody ever gives thought to anything but petty entertainment, as a result, their lives are constantly occupied with drinking or fucking. Their eating schedules are erratic. They eat all the time, including all kinds of haram things, which I am grateful we don’t serve at the restaurant. When I am unable to bear the spectacle of their obscenities and waywardness, I ask my boss for a two-hour leave and go to the metro station. I cover all the stations until the very end on Ligne 4. I watch the other travelers with my scowling eyes. The metro travelers, adept at feigning oblivion and nonchalance, are at least more tolerable than the customers at the restaurant. They ignore each other and busy themselves with some unseen wife, partner, or child on their mobile phones, or they wear their headphones and listen to their exclusive music, or they busy themselves reading some book whose cover they have hidden with a gray-colored paper. The metro tunnel is endless. Staring at the tunnel, I often become sleepy, and the general sterility and quiet puts me in such a calm mood that I usually pass out right there on my seat. 
        Then there was this one time when I woke up and it was pitch black around me. There was no one else in the compartment. All the lights were out. I was further than the last station. I was in the train parking for the metro, where my train had come to rest. I began to bang loudly against the window. An annoyed worker came to my rescue. I apologized profusely as he walked me through a series of dark tunnels until we came to the last station. I got back on the metro, and this time, as I watched the other travelers, I felt a sense of superiority because I knew that none of them had ever spent time dreaming in the dark belly, the very Acheron, of this congested and madcap city. Acheron had felt secure and peaceful, like a grave.

Apart from the customers, certain other people also visit the restaurant. For example, once a month, the employees of the Services Sanitaires come for their inspection. As soon as they come, a number of my fellow workers escape, mistaking the inspectors for police officers in civilian clothing. As for the kitchen, the chef and his subordinates throw away a bunch of items from the fridge that they know will never pass the inspection, but after the Services Sanitaires leave, these items are picked out from the trash, brushed lightly, and put back in the fridge. The police also come once every month or so. Some Sikhs rent the room above Shalimar Restaurant; they get into terrible fights when they are drinking and their Arab neighbors are compelled to call the police. The last time the police came, they found that Gorbukht Singh had cut off Kuldeep Singh’s ear in a drunken stupor. They came and handcuffed both the perpetrator and the victim and left. A few times they even caught Jan, the expert forger, but somehow, he came back free each time.
        Every year, on the occasion of Independence Day, a guest of honor pays us a visit. It is usually the ambassador of our country, who comes at the invitation of our boss to deliver us the same lecture in his sophisticated Urdu that the boss himself regularly barrages us with in crude Punjabi. In front of the ambassador, we are forced to wave the national flag, sing the national anthem, chant and applaud at his words. The ambassador’s ending remarks always go something like this: “Each and every one of you – like me – is an ambassador of our estimable country. I hope that you will represent it proudly with your hard work, intelligence, and unwavering principles.” And all of us – thieves, drunkards, gamblers, forgers, people who get married for papers, pimps, and the undocumented – clap heartily at his words. 

Sunday is usually my day off, and all my Sundays are molded in the same routine. I wake up at nine in the morning, wash my clothes, and hang them from the clotheslines in the bathroom. I leave the HLM at noon. Around one in the afternoon, after having travelled through the RER and metro, I arrive at the Luxembourg Garden, and walk around until darkness falls. The Luxembourg Garden is made for immigrants like me. All are exiles here: statues, birds, trees, and pedestrians. The Kings and Queens cast in stone have been banished from their empires. The birds are far from their habitat, the trees from their forests, and the pedestrians, walking-walking, are remembering their lost homes. Other than these, there are three kinds of creatures that are always present in the Luxembourg Garden: the running creature, the romantic creature, and the poetic creature. The running creature can be witnessed panting and sweating in t-shirts and shorts. The romantic creature sits on benches and holds hands as it professes undying love. The poetic creature wanders with a book of sad poetry nestled under its arm. I sit in the Luxembourg Garden and observe all the different creatures. When it gets too dark to see, I walk out of the Garden and measure the Boulevard Saint Michel with my steps until I reach the edge of the Seine. I stand on top of the bridge and watch the flowing water. Then I make my way towards Gare de I’Est, from there, I get to Gare du Nord and take the RER back to my HLM. In the meantime, night settles and the streets empty out. Sometimes, you can spot a group of Black or Arab laborers. They stand on the footpath and argue with each other. You can always find an orator amongst them, one who speaks louder than the rest, one whose speech thunders more. Others nod in agreement with him. These orators are laboring, working-class people like their audience. But they get a chance to shine and bully on their day off. Sundays outside the Luxembourg Garden are reserved for rowdy meetings of immigrant laborers.
        After returning to the HLM, I eat with my Punjabi roommates who have shared this space with me for the past two years. Then we take off our clothes from the clotheslines and iron them. Finally, we fall down on our mattresses and sleep. To distract myself from my roommates’ snores, I direct my attention towards the infinite regions of my memory. The blank screen of my mind alights with lost and forgotten scenes from my past, and there are scenes at the appearance of which my exiled eyes weep.

(2)

I was born in a small, dusty town in the Mastung district of Baluchistan. I was five when my father passed away. He was a laborer at the harbor in Karachi. A heavy container broke loose from a crane and fell on top of him, flattening his body. After his death, my mother was suddenly responsible for providing for me and my four brothers. She began to work at the house of a prominent and wealthy man in the community. She was occupied with her work day and night. I and my brothers became vagabonds, wandering around the streets of our town and the surrounding sands. We began to scare and snatch things from other children. We would even strip off their clothes and rob them. Our mother began to hear of our exploits, so she got rid of all of us. One by one, she sent us to Karachi, Quetta, and Gwadar to find work.
        I was thirteen years old when she sent me to work in an auto-workshop in Quetta. Most of the people working there were dry, reserved Pathans from Chaman. I became their apprentice; I was paid two thousand rupees a month. My job required me to be drenched in oil and diesel twenty-four hours a day. My two pairs of shalwar-kameez were perpetually greased with a stubborn stain that wouldn’t come out even after hours of rubbing with soap. I shared a small room with two other workers. Both of them smoked joints through the night and told each other stories of their valor and sexual exploits. I was young, so I wasn’t offered a hit off the joints. But the smoke used to leap at me and make my head spin. My mind would begin to pop and burst; I would lose control over my senses and fall into a deep sleep, where I would see all sorts of colorful, fantastical dreams. 
        My training was complete when I turned eighteen. I quit the workshop with all the Chaman workers and found work at a Baloch workshop. My salary was now three thousand rupees. I shared one of the upstairs rooms with three other workers. All of them hailed from northern Baluchistan. Each night, they would whisper amongst themselves about political issues. They told each other stories of their radical leader, the Nawab, as well as discussing the conditions of their region. Words like State, Chinese, Punjabi, Military, and Secret Intelligence Agencies cropped up in their conversation. They complained that their home was occupied by the military. Not only looting and corruption was going on, but active war was taking place. The Nawab, having worked for the government for a while, had declared revolution and formed his own militia, which was skirmishing with the military regularly. I was far more interested in these conversations than those of the Pathans from Chaman. I was sympathetic to the cause of my fellow Balochis. Gradually, my sympathy turned into support. I took leave from the workshop and went to meet the Nawab along with my fellow workers. Hundreds of supporters were congregated inside the Nawab’s fort, listening to him with rapt attention as he delivered a speech. I was galvanized from the instant I heard his voice. I felt like his words set my whole body on fire. It was impossible to listen to him without being effected. His words were like flames directed at our hearts, setting the audience ablaze with fury. We all came to the conclusion that freedom was Baluchistan’s inherent right. It was of utmost importance to rid our land of the clutches of the Military, the Chinese, the Punjabi, and to do so, we had to pick up weapons and fight. All the workers from the auto-workshop joined the Nawab’s militia that very day.

We were trained. First in horseback riding, and then in operating different kinds of weapons. After that, we were divided in different groups. Each group had its specific task. My group was considered to be the most intelligent and loyal. Due to this, we were often given sensitive missions. We would leave the Nawab’s fort and head towards our target, avoiding streets and populations on the way, travelling through mountains and deserts, spending the nights in ditches and caves. We would explode the particular tower, railways track, or gas pipeline that was assigned to us. We would lay landmines on streets. We would station our group in mountaintops and bombard army caravans with mortar shells. From time to time, we were given a select assignment: we would be tasked to kidnap a businessman or government officer and hide him until ransom was paid. After the ransom payment, we would get a hefty paycheck and travel across the border to purchase guns and explosives from black-turbaned Pathans.
        I took well to the radical life. Horseback riding, target practice, and nomadism were characteristic of such a life. I was starting to sense that my days were as beautiful and dignified as those of my ancestors. I was the servant of my own soil and neither state nor military nor capital had any power over me. My life was a long celebration of freedom and it was all due to the leadership of my Nawab. I was ready to sacrifice anything at his command. 
        Soon, the state intensified its efforts to rout the Nawab and bring him under its power. The military attacked his fort. The Nawab escaped along with my group of soldiers. Overnight, we left the glorious life of the hunter and adopted the meek patterns of the hunted. The military was perpetually on the lookout for us, helicopters were continually on top of us, satellites were broadcasting signals of our locations all the way from space. How weak and powerless we were in front of our oppressors! Like soldiers from bygone times, we were riding horses and armed with muskets. We were constantly on the move, travelling during the night, hiding in caves during the day. It was abundantly clear that we wouldn’t escape our hunters’ traps. I was hopeless; I could feel death hovering over me, getting closer and closer. Sooner or later, we would be blasted by a missile, or worse, captured and put through unimaginable torture. The permanent terror made me a coward. I decided to abandon the Nawab.
        One night, the Nawab wanted to take a rest. We located a cave and I was appointed to stand guard. The Nawab and the other soldiers retired and fell asleep. No one was awake other than me. I left my gun and ran. I walked the whole night and reached the outskirts of a town towards morning. One road ran through the middle of the town. Buses going to Karachi would stop on this road to load passengers. I was lucky; I boarded a bus, and in twelve hours, I was in Karachi. As soon as I got there, I read the newspapers and learned of the Nawab’s and his soldiers’ martyrdom. They had slept through the night after my escape. With the first rays of sunlight, a missile had hit them, burying the Nawab in the embrace of that cave where he had only intended to rest for a few hours.

Before arriving in Karachi, I had never seen a city except Quetta and Mastung. I had no idea what a metropolis was supposed to be. I dispersed in the surroundings of the city like so much dust. I wandered the streets for many days. Then I remembered my elder brother who had come to Karachi and found work as a coolie at the harbor. I went there and asked around. I found him after a little effort; he embraced me as soon as he saw me because he thought that I had died with the Nawab. He agreed to keep me at his place in a neighborhood of Lyari for as long as I needed.
        Every morning, my brother would leave for work. I would wake up late and roam around the neighborhood aimlessly. Our neighborhood was controlled by a group of people of African descent, Makranis, from the coastal areas of Pakistan. They would guard the neighborhood with their Kalashnikovs. Under their watchful eyes, gambling was organized, hash was smoked, and porn movies were screened. For a while, I wanted to join their group. I had acquired many skills as part of my radical past. I could rob, kidnap, and shoot accurately. I knew I would be worth their while as a member. But my brother forbade me to do any such thing. He asked me to earn money doing something decent and legal, threatening to kick me out of the house otherwise. So I began to leave Lyari to find work wherever I could get it. I lugged sacks of grains in Kemari, drove a rickshaw in Shershah, sold snacks on the street in Lee Market, repaired cars in Golimar, baked bread at a clay oven in Patelparey, but everywhere, without exception, I was demeaned and humiliated by both employers and customers. I was abused, insulted, paid little, and I was expected to take it all without complaint. I often wondered why it was that a life of decency was invariably a life of disgrace. Was it impossible to live a good life any other way? I had no answer to my question.
        I made acquaintances with many people, even some of the Makrani gangsters. When the humiliations of daily labor would become unbearable, I would join them in looting one or two of the cars leaving Karachi for the shipbreaking yard in Gadani. I would get paid a little bit and avoid having to work. I would keep my brother quiet by giving him a cut of the money and savor my few weeks of unemployment. I would spend those days loitering around the neighborhood’s broken down streets, hanging with the gangsters, addicts, playing snooker, smoking cigarettes emptied and filled with hash. But these simple pleasures were only temporary. My whole being was in stasis, suspended in inactivity. My past was unmentionable, my present unhappy, and my future uncertain, and this status quo would have continued if it wasn’t for the tragedy that sent me into permanent exile and eternal repentance.

Alyas was a known and respected mujahid from our neighborhood. He was a middle-aged, bearded man who had served the jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan. He had been wounded and taken prisoner of war countless times. After fifteen years of fighting, his commander had ordered him to retire. Now he taught the Quran to neighborhood children in one of the religious schools in our community. But he still kept in touch with the mujahidin and helped them out from time to time. I had good relations with Alyas. He was genuinely troubled to see me wasting my life, squandering the skills I had once mastered. He asked me many times to become a mujahid. I refused his offer each time, explaining that I was not ready for such a commitment. I told him that though my life was imprisoned in stasis, frozen and paralyzed, disgraced with menial jobs, it was only within this stagnation that I had any guarantee of security and survival.
        Then one day, Alyas came up to me while I was playing snooker. He looked troubled. He said he had work for me. I had just quit a coolie job at the harbor a few days ago. The work had shattered my back and desensitized my brain. I told him anything was good as long as it was not a coolie job. He told me he needed to talk to me privately. We went to one of the empty rooms in his religious school. He said: “Some of my friends need your help.” I said: “How many days?” He said: “A week, ten days. You’ll get a big amount, but the work is sensitive.” I said: “I’m ready. What’s the job?” Alyas looked around, then said: “It’s very sensitive. That’s all I can say right now. I will contact them. They will explain the rest to you. Are you sure you are ready?” I was in a strange dilemma. I knew when mujahidin said “sensitive”, they really meant “dangerous”. But it was also impossible to find a bearable job at the time. The daily labor was destroying my health, while my monetary circumstances were sinking lower and lower. I was broke, living with my brother, and fresh out of a job. Alyas’s work was temporary and it was sure to pay extremely well. I said: “Absolutely! Go ahead and contact them and ask them how much money I will get.” 

Alyas handed me over to a mujahid friend of his. The mujahid drove me on his bike to an unpopulated area of north Karachi where the mujahidin had set up a make-shift shed in the middle of nowhere. Inside, there were four young mujahidin guarding an abducted white man. According to the young mujahidin, he was a spy for the Jewish people.
        I was dumbstruck; it was the first time I was tasked to guard a white foreigner. I was fairly experienced when it came to locals; I could keep them under control. But what did I know about a white man! How was I supposed to keep him in check, keep him scared, keep him calm? On top of that, the white guy was pretty combative. He had tried to escape two or three times already, audaciously fighting off the guards. He was kept chained and handcuffed all the time and he relentlessly begged to be released from his bonds. He promised never to plot his escape again. His body was shivering and the veins in his face were throbbing with stress. Sometimes, his heart would beat so fast and loud that everyone was convinced he was about to die any minute, which was a serious concern, serious in the sense that there would be no ransom in the case of his death. I tried a trick: I asked the guards to undo his handcuffs and gave him a special Morven, the same special cigarette that is sold openly on the streets and alleys of my neighborhood. The white guy smoked the whole thing in the blink of an eye, coughed a few times, and then fell asleep. I looked at my fellow guards with a triumphant smile: “See? The cigarette was filled. Now this white guy won’t annoy us for at least ten hours.” The guards looked back at me with a mixture of awe and pride.
        The abducted guy got along better with me than the rest of the guards. He begged them or fought them, abused them and threatened them. With me, he was always civilized, on his best behavior. He would ask me for a Morven and go to sleep after smoking it. Then he would wake up and tell me his story. His wife and son were waiting for him in his country. How could they live without him? His brother lived in Paris. He was rich; he owned a lot of real estate. He would do anything for his abducted brother, anything at all to save him, even if it meant selling all his property. I knew the abducted man’s words were coarse attempts at manipulating my greed and sympathy, still, to an extent, I did sympathize with him. I felt pity for him; he was being punished for no reason, for being born in a Jewish family. His simple tricks certainly didn’t qualify him to be a spy for the Jewish people or whoever.
        When he would fall asleep, I would sit next to him and stare at his face. He seemed like a child; he even spoke in his sleep, kicked his hands and feet like a child. Many times, watching him sleep like that, I felt a desire to free him and run away myself. But the thought of betraying the mujahidin stopped me in my tracks. They would never forgive me for such a traitorous act. No matter where I ran, they would find me. So I kept staring at the man’s face, trying to breathe normally, but there was a knot inside my stomach that kept me gasping for air. 
        The situation worsened. The demands of the mujahidin were completely ignored. The police were escalating their search missions. All kinds of unwarranted arrests were being made in the city. A substantial reward was announced by the state. It wouldn’t be long before people would start talking, wagging their tongues in front of the authorities. After that, it would be a matter of hours before the police would find us. And then what? If we were lucky, that is if we managed to stay alive through the interrogations and torture, we would be sentenced for life. The other guards were beginning to look at me suspiciously. I wasn’t a mujahid like them. Moreover, I was on good conversational terms with the white guy. They were distrustful, apprehensive that I would betray them for the reward. The white man could sense that his end was near. His shakes and tremors were becoming more frenzied. He was slowly losing his mind, all his senses unravelling; he would either laugh uncontrollably or weep. Even the Morvens couldn’t put him to sleep anymore. I was regretful. I realized I had put myself in a real fucked up situation by agreeing to Alyas.
        The situation worsened even more. The abducted man was on all the newspapers, radio programs, and television channels. The reward announced by the authorities was tripled. Some of the mujahidin’s friends had been arrested and we estimated that the police would be at our doorstep within twenty-four hours. It was clear that there was no further benefit to keeping the abducted man around. We should either shoot him or set him free. The mujahidin had contacted their leader. He had informed them that he was still thinking on the matter, promising to get back to them. We were eagerly awaiting instructions. Then the leader sent the following message: “In an hour or so, a few guests will arrive at your place. You must co-operate with them. Do whatever they tell you to do.”
        Three people arrived at the make-shift shed. All three differed from each other in their height, body type, and age, but they all spoke in Arabic with each other. Each of them carried a large bag. Two of them opened their bags and brought out a rope, a camera, two pencils, and a few papers. The third, who seemed to be their leader, was reluctant to open his bag, which was making me increasingly curious. What was he carrying? 
        I took them to the room where we were keeping the abducted man. The three of them tied him with the rope and then stuck one of the pages on his chest. It had his name on it. Then they handed him a page with a declaration and asked him to read the declaration word-by-word to the camera. One of them took the camera and sat in front of the abducted man. The second one grabbed his legs, and the third, the leader, stationed himself behind him. His bag was still with him, safe under his elbow. The white guy kept looking at me with desperate eyes.
        The camera was switched on. The shooting began. The white guy read the declaration in a fragmented whimper. Initially, the one holding the camera was having a hard time operating it and his leader kept scolding him. The white guy continued to stare at me with imploring eyes. I kept trying to avoid looking back at him. I was admonishing myself. I had made a huge mistake. Now this guy’s life was about to end. If I had tried, I could have prevented it. Why did I not try? 
        As the abducted man was reading the last few words of the declaration, he started to choke. The camera was still on, suddenly, the leader opened his bag and brandished a glistening sword. He asked his companions to step back and beheaded the white guy with all his strength. I screamed involuntarily; the abducted man’s head plopped to the floor and rolled in my direction. A stream of blood flowed across the floor, spots of blood sprayed on the walls, the atmosphere was suffused with blood, the clothes soaked in it. The cameraman wiped the blood-drenched lens of his camera with a tissue paper. 

The three men vanished out of sight. The rest of us buried the corpse in a hurry and went our own way. Alyas was in charge of protecting me. He hid me in the basement of his house for a few days while he arranged for my migration. Within a week, I had a fake passport. A mujahid travelled with me to the national border where a man was waiting to pick me up. I travelled with this man to the next border where another man was waiting for me, and so on, until I was in Europe.
        In a few weeks, after a journey through plains and mountains, rivers and seas, I arrived in the European city where I now live. The residents of this city are the same people as the abducted man who was beheaded in front of my eyes. Most of the men in this city resemble him in their skin color and body type. At first, the feeling of guilt wouldn’t let me be. Whenever a pedestrian would look at me, I would break into cold sweats. I saw all sorts of insults and threats in the faces of these white people. As if I had watched the brother of each man in the city die in front of my eyes. Then, gradually, the condition passed away by itself. I am still troubled by the memory, but only sometimes.

(3)

It is a rainy winter Sunday. People walk hidden in their raincoats, spreading the veined wings of their umbrellas over their heads. Their shoes are caked with mud and their clothes are damp and dewy. Black clouds crowd the sky. Dark fog falls on the four corners of the world. You cannot tell day from night.
        I have come to the Luxembourg Garden due to my routine, but there is no one to watch or observe today, nobody to distract me. The poets have migrated, the lovers’ benches are forsaken, and the runners are nowhere to be seen. I scan my favorite corners, looking for something to focus on. Nothing, there is nothing. The petanque lawn is vacant, the tennis courts deserted. The swings in the playground are empty. The tables of the café host raindrops. The birds do not sing and the trees stand with their heads bowed against the onslaught of rain. People are holed up inside their houses. Only the statues remain, shivering in the cold, waiting for warm clothes. A man stands in front of a statue, staring. Perhaps he is a poet. I want to see his face, so I walk by him, looking at him levelly. He turns. I freeze; I break into a cold sweat in the middle of the rain. He looks exactly like the abducted man who was killed before my eyes in Karachi. He looks like he has been standing here waiting for me.
        I keep walking. The man keeps his gaze on me. He doesn’t know me. I walk forward and find shelter under a tree. I try to observe him from a distance. Questions buzz in my head: Is he the dead man’s double? Has he been sent here to remind me of my sins? Is he the dead man’s Parisian brother? I need more information to arrive at a conclusion. I decide to follow him. He leaves the statue and walks towards one of the garden’s gates. He crosses the road and turns right, he walks straight and crosses another road before turning left. He arrives at a residential building. He punches in the code on the machine to the right of the gate. He disappears inside. I walk up to the gate. There are buttons on the side of the gate with the names of the inhabitants. I rush through the names. One of the names matches the dead man’s surname. I have no doubts anymore regarding his identity. I think to myself: maybe I am the one who has been standing here and waiting for the bewildering coincidence of locating a dead man’s brother in a city of millions. 

So our paths have crossed! Destiny has finally brought us together. But what does destiny want from me? Why has it crossed our paths? Does destiny want me to drown in shame? Or send me a message? How am I to know? At any rate, I want to stay close to him. Perhaps he will be a messenger for me, a medium, a deliverer of some sign. I hope that by staying close to him, I will understand destiny’s intention.
        I ask my boss for a month’s leave, which he grants gladly, considering the fact that I have been working for him for two years without a day off. I go straight to the building where the dead man’s brother resides. There is a café across from the building. I set up camp on the café’s terrace and begin to keep note of the brother’s comings and goings. 
        I have come to realize that the brother has a strict schedule, day in and day out, he follows the same routine. Every morning, at precisely half past seven, he leaves for work in a Mercedes. He comes back at seven in the evening. On holidays, he spends his mornings touring the Luxembourg Garden. By noon, he is back at home and he spends the rest of the day inside. He never goes out in the evenings. Sometimes, his wife and young daughter accompany him. They are also bound to a strict schedule, but I am not aware of all its details. My sole concern is the brother.
        When the brother goes on his tours of the Luxembourg Garden, I get ample time to study him. It has been two years since the beheading. The brother does not appear to be immediately affected by the trauma. By now, the trauma has settled in his being. Anyway, the man is a closed book. His blank face never betrays any hints of worry or happiness. His solitary life does not display any performance of grief. How am I to decipher a revelation from such a grave and colorless life? Most people here are not fond of socializing. They do not get together often and are happier in the confines of their four walls. But I have no other choice. I am bound to this man. Whether it takes two days, two weeks, two months, or two years, I will have to wait. I will have to remain a companion to his shadow, his invisible guardian. And I will have to pray for a sign in the wilderness. I will have to wait for my instructions.

I am following the brother at a distance while he strolls the Luxembourg Garden. He is carrying an umbrella in his right hand. As usual, he is lost in his thoughts, and as he is walking, suddenly, the umbrella slips from his hand and falls on the ground. I leap towards the umbrella, gather it from the ground, and hand it to him. My heart is racing. He seems surprised at the extraordinary courtesy on my part. He looks into my eyes….our unequal eyes! My eyes recognize him, but his eyes do not see me, they do not know me. Then he says, indifferently: “Merci monsieur” and walks away. Even his voice is exactly the voice of his brother. But this similarity doesn’t worry me. What worries me is his offhand gratitude. If he knew the role I had played in his brother’s death, would he express the same gratitude?
        Initially, I mistook the encounter as a sign. Later, as I thought about our run-in, I realized it was only the indication of an approaching revelation, not the revelation itself. I continued waiting and observing. One day, early in the morning, as I am sitting on the café’s terrace, I see the brother leaving his building with a newspaper under his arm and walking straight towards the café where I am camping. Before I can move, he sits on the table next to me, asks the waiter for a noisette, and buries himself in his paper. For the first time, I am so close to him for so long. Time seems to open up to hold us together. I can feel the warmth of his body descending into my body. I can sense his breath mixing with my breath. I begin to detest the proximity of his being. It is reminding me of the dead man’s last moments. I close my eyes to shield myself from my memory, but when I open my eyes, I see splotches of blood everywhere. Bold spots of blood are sprinkled all over the street, the table, the walls and the footpath. Disoriented, my eyes search wildly for the brother, when I find him, I see that his head is separated from his body, lying next to him, staring at me with huge, hollow eyes. I get up from my table and run towards the Luxembourg Garden. When I get there, I sit down on a bench to catch my breath. I try to cool my head under the trees’ shade. After a while, my terror diminishes and I am able to reflect on the inexplicable event. What has happened to me? Then I realize that I have received the sign I was waiting for. I saw the strange vision because it was showing me that there was no difference between the dead man and the brother. It was telling me that I should speak to the brother and say to him all that I was unable to say to the dead man. I should express sympathy, console, and most importantly, ask for forgiveness. I turn back towards the café. I need to talk to the brother as soon as possible. But by the time I get back, his table is empty. He probably left for his home already. I sit at my table in the café, ask for a noisette, and stare at the building in front of me until night begins to fall. 

Night has fallen. Streetlights are glowing; windows are beginning to light up. There is no sign of the brother or his family. I feel tired today. I begin to get up from my table when I suddenly hear blaring sirens. A SAMU ambulance is rushing towards the brother’s building. The building’s door opens. Two men climb out of the ambulance and carry a stretcher inside. A minute later, they are walking out of the building with a man on the stretcher. They load the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Two women come running after them. I recognize them instantly. They are the brother’s wife and daughter. They get into the back part of the ambulance along with the stretcher. The blaring sirens come back on and the ambulance hurries out of sight.
        I am completely fraught. I spend the night waiting outside the building on the footpath and praying for the brother’s recovery. It is essential that he stay alive. If he dies, I would have no other chance at salvation. Who else would I ask for forgiveness? Who else would I console? Who else would I confess my sins and mistakes to? The prayers keep coming to my lips and I keep reciting them. 
        Morning dawns. The streetlights are dimmed out. The sun is beginning to dawn. I am still on the pavement, still praying. A cab pulls up in front of the building. The brother’s wife and daughter step out. Their faces look teary and melancholic. There is an old man accompanying them, gripping the wife’s shoulders. He must be the brother’s father-in-law. I get up from my spot on the footpath and walk towards them. I inquire in my broken French: “Le monsieur l’est mort?” (Did the man die?) The women look at me with hostility, but the old man replies kindly: “Oui. Cette nuit meme. Vous le connaissiez?” (Yes, tonight. Did you know him?). Blood is rushing to my brain. Beads of sweat break out on my forehead. The ground is about to slip from under my feet. I can feel an abyss opening up underneath me. Before the earth swallows me, I mumble to the old man: “Lui pas…son frere, oui” (Not him. His brother) and escape.

For an hour, I have been running through the streets. My legs are beginning to numb. I have run through countless footpaths, avenues, corners, bus stops and stations. I have crossed innumerable schools, café’s, stores and offices. My run is now unhinged, directionless, the run of a wounded dog, or maybe the run of an accursed man before he faces the wrath of his destiny. Divine judgment has been delivered. Appeals are impossible. I am condemned to hell. I look around me and see that I am far from the center of the city. The streets here are wide and the buildings remarkably tall. All are HLM. It must be the outskirts of the city. Right now, I do not care where I am. All I want to know is where the river is. A pedestrian is approaching me. I ask him: “La Seine l’est ou?” (“Where is the Seine?”). He tells me to keep walking straight. I keep walking. I can hear the river close by now. I am lucky. I can feel life in my legs once more. I begin to run again. It must be my last run. The path is ending. The Seine is flowing in front of me…
        The river’s water is cold, like my heart. My blood will stop flowing in this flowing water, commanded by my despotic destiny. Each and every fiber of my body is becoming numb. The river’s water is impure and soiled, like my sins. My lungs are filling up with refuse, with shit, with garbage and excrement from the river. The river’s water is sorrowful, like me. My sorrows are getting absorbed in its sorrows…
        Tomorrow, they will find my corpse in my final home, this black water.