s h o u s e t s u k a

Suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, an initiation into a new state.

A baby strapped to either pair of shoulders, Polly and Mr. Fukuoka climbed up through a barely tended citrus grove to the summit of a tiny volcanic island. With each step their legs sank mid-calf deep into a mandarin orange-mulched loam that shimmered throughout with shattered fragments of black obsidian.

To the delight of the babies, hundreds of pink-eyed albino rabbits had been released, and millions of particolored wildflowers broadcast, Lady Bird Johnson-wise, in the first groping attempts of the Prefectural Ministry of Tourism to rehabilitate this notorious islet. The final demolition of its Rape of Nanjing-era poison gas factory was being blocked by some communists on the district council who wanted to make a grisly memorial of the place, second stop on the Hiroshima tourist's itinerary.

The factory ruins resembled a long-defunct Danish castle, except for the banana trees and wild poinsettias that sprouted from every crevice. The gray stone walls were covered with Ukiyoe-quality graffiti, the enormous ceramic vats filled knee-deep with discarded porno magazines. As they passed through the abandoned compound, Mr. Fukuoka tried to divert the children's attention away from the vats, toward the cliffs opposite and the countless minuscule crumbs of geology sprinkled into the middling vastness of the Seto Inland Sea.

Mr. Fukuoka had apparently saved up several weeks' worth of pocket change. Patiently, he'd waited for this rare sunny day, minus the nitrous oxides and hydrocarbon solids that normally palled the archipelago, making it look like Baghdad suffering a windless dawn. He'd arranged for a taxi to a remote dock, a tiny ferryboat, and a rental tandem bike which they could park at the base of he volcano. And, after going to all this expense and trouble, he'd wondered whether Polly and the babies would care to join him, no pressure to accept. He would show them a full-scale example of the reverse-perspective phenomenon observable in miniature on Japanese monochrome scrolls.

"Plus," he puffed, toeing the lip of the crater, "it's best to get the two akachan out in the sunlight from time to time, so they can absorb their vitamin D. They need extra amounts to help them metabolize the scanty nutrients in the local milk. Because of the mineral-poor volcanic soil in which the farmers must grow the grass they feed their cows, Japanese milk has only sixty percent of the calcium of American."

He warmed to the topic. "Did you ever notice how many children in this supposedly first-world country have black teeth?" It's far worse than China."

Mr. Fukuoka shuffled his feet a bit, in apology for his last comment. As a catechumen at Hiroshima cathedral, a new candidate for baptism, he seemed to think it necessary to censor his impulses from time to time.

With averted eyes he said, "Perhaps you notice how I sometimes cringe when I am forced to say 'we' in reference to myself and the other children of the emperor. You see, I have spent much time in America. There are many who would say that fact alone makes me less Japanese—and they are more right than they can imagine."

Polly looked at him closely for the first time, to see if she could detect anything remotely American about him. There was something about the tight-buttocked way he carried himself, his narrow shoulders held as high as possible, almost in a shrug, as if to display an absent bosom, that made Polly wonder—but only idly, in passing, as she enjoyed her girls and the sunshine—about his sexuality.

Though his clothes were inexpensive and modestly styled, there was a certain fussiness in the way they were ironed and otherwise maintained. No buttons were missing, neither collar tip was curled up, and not a speck of any foreign substance was ground into the diagonal weave of this probable bachelor's twill pants.

Considering whose spouse she was, Polly was in no position to judge whether Mr. Fukuoka's fastidious grooming habits were compulsive or just normal. But he even fussed with the babies' clothes, and that struck her as definitely peculiar behavior for—she was forced to be gender-specific in this context—a man. He turned out both tiny collars to see whether, for whatever unimaginable reason, the girl's names had been magic-markered on the labels of garments that, with any luck at all, would be outgrown and passed on to pregnant neighbors in a matter of weeks.

"You know," he obviously and inexplicably lied, "it is an ancient tradition in this country for the father to mark the daughters clothes. You should ask your husband to get a pen and, um—"

He gestured with a discreet thumb toward the neighboring peak. Polly shielded her eyes and peered across the threadlike strait separating this volcano from that. Sure enough, the inhabitants looked slightly larger than the oyster farmers toiling on the foothill beach of her own island.

Polly, with no binoculars at all, could make out a shanty-town of chicken wire, scrap metal, clapboard and lath, rimming the extinct crater. Every hovel seemed to be draped with at least one war-surplus rising-sun banner, the old imperial style that embarrassed most modern Japanese so, with the scarlet radiations slithering out like invading armies to the frayed edges of the map.

This strange encampment was guarded by a regiment of combat-fatigued men of indeterminate age, their skulls shaven, their skins puckered from overexposure, if not to direct sunlight in this befouled archipelago, then at least to the more disease-ridden of its wavelengths. Smoking tiny bowled pewter pipes and tending their scale-model bonfires, they looked for all the world like the boy-sized, desiccated madmen who had dug into the Phillipine jungles and remained after the vaporization of this prefecture's capital city, worshiping and defending Hirohito for two generations after he stopped being God.

Several of them seemed to be fighting over whose turn it was to gawk at someone on this island through a pair of rusty old binoculars—evidently the reverse perspective business only worked one way.

"Those gentleman represent themselves as hunters," Mr. Fukuoka said, a sneer seeming almost ready to sprout on his face. "Their rifles are registered, one hundred percent legal, even though the biggest game around here, aside from the white rabbits, are these—"

He reached out at random and lifted a mandarin orange bough. Polly saw a half dozen of the fist-sized yellow and black spiders which drape their webs from any object in southern Japan that remains immobile for five minutes or more.

"They are the last straggling remnants of the so-called Youth Party," said Mr. Fukuoka. "They build their lives and personalities solely on resenting foreigners like you, Ms. Edwine, and your babies. But they won't bother us because they are cowardly. I'm afraid you will probably just have to content yourselves with jeers instead of bullets today."

But these racist troopers weren't even glancing at Polly. Even though she was conspicuously the foreigner, with saucer-sized eyes capable of flashing clear across the strait, and breasts displaying the salutary effects of a childhood nurtured on American dairy products, it was Mr. Fukuoka whom they found worthy of derision. Not just chapels full of Catholics, but craters full of fascists responded poorly to this man at first sight.

Some kind of unspoken attraction/revulsion was established between the two low peaks; and Polly's island-mate fell right into it, like a peg into the correct hole. He blushed, turning a shade of orange she'd never seen before, a satisfying hue which his brigade of tormentor seemed able to see plainly, for it only increased the volume of their cruel hoots.

Mr. Fukuoka responded to the Youth Party as readily as a damp-rimmed wineglass whines when rubbed by the rough ridges of a big man's fingerprint. He placed both fists on his narrow hips and stomped a girl-sized foot. Striking a petulant, jaw strutting pose, he tightened his buttocks and straightened his short spinal column even further.

He said, in a voice cracking like an aging diva's, "All young men are the same when they get into packs. Fortunately that particular pack is superstitious enough to keep off this island. It's the gas works that repel them."

He stepped into a beam of sunlight and waved his arm down the slope at the ruins, calling the neighbor's attention to the giant mustard vats. And several of them did seem to shrink a bit, to retreat for succor into their huts.

"See?" said Mr. Fukuoka, his voice returning as he gained the upper hand over the enemy. "There were several accidents during the war, and hundreds of schoolgirls, conscripted to stir the phosgene, died horribly. The military officials kept the details secret to avoid insurrections among the local fisherman, who had controlled this whole arm of the sea as privateers not that long before. It's said that many unmarked bone yards are concealed under these orange trees, and until the records are unearthed, the guilt acknowledged, and the girls' remains identified and given proper cremations, this place cannot be consecrated for worship. It is the one island, unique among the eight hundred-plus in this entire godforsaken country, that has no religious structure. In the meantime, it's as unlucky as a volcano can be, short of outright eruption. So we are safe from the stalwart patriots next door."

As he spoke, his voice and eyes exuded scorn for Japan. This was unprecedented in any Nihonjin of Polly's acquaintance. Embarrassment she'd seen, even shame. Sadness and regret, certainly, and hatred as well. But never had she encountered contempt for his or her homeland in a Japanese.

But the wince of the entire left side of his body indicated regret that he'd mentioned that place, and a deep reluctance to discuss it further. Not surprisingly, he'd allowed himself to have bad times there.

Polly realized that she'd been assuming, in the back of her guilt-ridden American mind, that this sad little man was not only a native of Hiroshima City, but a hibakusha—one of those who'd been within a kilometer of the epicenter, who must, twice yearly, for the rest of their lives, report to the Radiation Effects Research Foundation on top of Mount Hijiyama for agonizing liver biopsies. She hadn't studied enough of the local dialect to be able to identify Mr. Fukuoka's origins strictly from his speech.

As if he'd read her mind, he waved his arm into the blue distances and said, "Nobody heard a thing except for a couple of fisherman out there." He pointed to a broad quadrant of sea water at their feet, its greasy surface writhing, pleasure-launches and tuna boats bobbing, over the indigo maneuvers of a Self-Defense-Forces submarine, silent and bat like.

"I wonder if you could see the mushroom from this spot," said Polly, watching his face, learning nothing.

"I'm sure you could. The boilers in the, ah, munitions factory wouldn't have been stoked that early in the morning."

He began to stare so unblinkingly long and hard at the babies that Polly wondered if he'd had a sudden stroke or something. She wanted to see if it was still possible to get his attention, but shrank from touching his shoulder.

She thought it might be a good idea to say his first name loudly and firmly into his ear, but she didn't know it. So she decided on a kind of compromise.

"If it's not too personal a question, Fukuoka-san," she almost shouted, "I'm curious as to what you've chosen to be christened."

He broke his baby-gaze long enough to glance self-consciously at her. He murmured, "Philip."

He selected a baby to lift onto his shoulders, piggyback style. But first he primly sniffed for a soiled diaper. This brought a resumption of jeers from the crater next door, accompanied by a couple of flashes of light and puffs of smoke.

from Jazz— Jail and God

Meanwhile Bob—

        on the roofs, parked cars, crashed on floors, hallways, park benches, your eyes skinned to watch and note the first shift in the hollow center of self, that first hint of softness that he was living his brain away, watching it burn off before his eyes to fuel the responses to all the questions he was asking, the glimmer of what's in there down near bottom and beyond, a mirror to reflect the crusting hard sore building over youth and innocence, his skeptic bruised head shows it's bones and it becomes harder to connect as he exchanges identities with what he sees and edges of questions begin to melt and lose the thrust and the mass of all of it reaches up around his thighs with a massive weight of sea undertow and he pushes forward slower, steady, eye of the eagle with the hidden compass holding its course.

There you are—
        Under those rags, resting in the gutter on the edge
of a great smear of light.

        Patient and waiting.

        Still as a Chinese vase you know the movement of the universe you feel under you nakedness is propelling you towards the approaches of knowing— ride it out, laugh louder into the mouths of demons and take shade in the wings of Angels surrounded now by forces that erase the dark, consumed by fire past in the total burn.

        Kickass survivor.

        Eyes open but still asleep?
        Asleep with eyes open?

        Booze, grass . . . music.

        An unyielding weight on his chest, spits up nicotine and smoke and grabs for straws in the clouds, crawls against the bedroom, against bed, against furniture, against wall and stills himself there in the corner until there is no wall and the moves begin again, over last night's noise still playing on his personal system, through the words meshed with faces and mouths without tongues and fingers played up and down his spine piano.

        He reaches for balance and the wall moves out from touch and he hangs like that suspended between the shapes of the room and outlines his mind has conjured and the wind tunnel of the morning blows upon his searching face with all the force of his hangover imagination until his body vanishes leaving only his mind trying to decode the sensations surrounding him in the invisible airwaves of space.

        Splat!

        He falls, dissolves.

        Sunlight upon a mattress.

        An arm slings an arc of shadow across his eyes. Naked—only his shoes and socks—one sock. Crumpled pages torn from a kid's school notebook.
        Wine-stained pages. POET IN NEW YORK. Underlined. Crossed out. Memorized. Lying down he falls again with nothing to catch and the long drop into nothingness is cool chute of release past certainty into the fears of noise shutting out the words assembling themselves across the blanks of mind with a fierce wind blowing, wind turning to smoke, and sound, sounds from the next room, lips around vowels making words, words bubbling from the head of the woman sitting at the table with the small black instrument pressed to her head, growing out from her head, black shiny wand of voice and response with a long trailing snake winding down her arm to a coil at her feet, pressed into her head, naked at the table, long view though the opened door, the angled arc of distance out of focus yet the voice less garbled pushes invisible words back to him, words, then laughter, then silence, words, naked, with just a small towel pressed against the front, blowing, twitching in the airwaves of the room, fluttering towel melt around her body like the prophesy of ice.

Fanny Adams. Brit. informal. Noun (also sweet Fanny Adams) nothing at all (Origin : early 20th cent. : sometimes understood as a euphemism for fuck all.)

Granted, it could have been an airport, say, or any other point of departure for that matter, not necessarily a railway station. Then again, I would not want you to go thinking that his choice had been totally arbitrary, although he was, admittedly, no stranger to acts of random behaviour. It did not have to be an overcrowded railway station, but it sort of made sense somehow.

It's like this: your train is due to leave any minute now. You look up from your book or paper if you are reading, that is, but I think we can safely assume that you, mon semblable, mon frère, are reading at least one or the other, possibly even both, one after the other, or, better still, simultaneously. You check the time on your wristwatch, the kind that they advertise in The Economist and suchlike publications, something Swiss or German with knobs on (the more, the merrier) which exudes manly sophistication. Just as the Red Sea parted for Moses, the door slides open, blissfully pneumatic, to reveal a stunning Mary Poppins stacked, stockinged, sorted in a comely knicker-skimming skirt: entrancing entrance. Being the proud possessor of a Y chromosome, your eyes make a beeline for her A-line, zooming in on silken thighs, NordicTrack-toned. While she fafs about with her umbrella (which will be left behind, of course, accidentally-on purpose like), you are at leisure to divide her putative weight in kilograms by her hypothetical height in metres squared, thus reaching the satisfactory conclusion that the young woman¹s Body Mass Index slots into the ideal 18 to 20 range.

Stocky stoccado, scatty scattato, she click-clicks her way towards the only vacant space (which just so happens to be facing you) aloft a pair of chichi cha-cha heels, whereupon her petulant posterior takes a pew. As she crosses her endless legs with a hushed swish whoosh, the bright young thong hitches up her skirt a notch, pinching the flimsy fabric on either side of broad hips between manicured thumb and forefinger. At this juncture when you are about to abandon wife and children, sail the seven seas or commit genocide because men cannot help acting on impulse you notice that those are tear-and not rain-drops irrigating her tanned, yet still unblemished, features.

Ever the gentleman, or simply embarrassed, you interrupt your ornithological study and peer out of the window which, being in dire need of a good clean, forces you to squint in the most unsightly fashion. Now is when it happens. For a few split nanoseconds, another train pulling into the station tricks you into believing that your train is pulling out.

Adam Horton, 33, Caucasian, 5' 6'', underendowed, thinning on top-viewed this sensation as a perfect metaphor of his stumbling through life like a sleepwalker on a treadmill, a pet hamster on a wheel, or a commuter on the Circle Line. Hence the choice of a railway station over any other leaving place. But which one? Paris offered un embarras de choix. Gare de l'Est was a definite no-no for some obscure reason. Gare d'Austerlitz was likewise ruled out. Adam, you see, had a passion for Waterloo Station. Watching the workers munching their lunch-break baps at the bottom of the up escalator, eyes cast skirtwards all the while, never failed to microwave the cockles of his little heart.

Since childhood, he had conceived of Austerlitz as a sort of counter- or even anti-Waterloo; it was enemy territory. This still left Gare de Lyon, built in the grandiose style—probably the most pleasing, aesthetically. Gare St. Lazare, caught between the red-light district and the posh department stores, scored a few brownie points. Proust's lycée was close by, as well as the Opéra Garnier (a fine example of architectural eclecticism) and, more importantly, Marks & Sparks with its large lingerie section where Adam often did a stint of lingering among the petticoats and suspender belts. There was also Gare Montparnasse, where the muses hung out, free and easy. They rode round like BMX bandits astride expensive Dutch bicycles, wearing a saucy look on their freckly faces and precious little else, serpentine locks flailing the air.

     The area never failed to remind him of the time when he micturated on the tomb of Jean-Paul Sartre after burying his late goldfish (Botty, short for Botticelli) in the shadow of Baudelaire's corpse. Such fond memories. In the end, however, he had plumped for Gare du Nord which houses the Eurostar terminal. Adam's grasp of French had greatly improved over the past twelve months, but he was looking for a lady who spoke the mother tongue. Besides, the word "terminal" had a certain ring to it, the finality of a full stop.

     The air hung heavy with Chaucerian expletives; dropped aitches were strewn about his feet. Here and there, young men sporting crew cuts were reading redtops from back to front. In the distance, a posse of senior citizens was doing the hokey-cokey. If I should die, Adam muttered, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign railway station that is forever In-ger-land. And there she was.

     Sweet Fanny Adams.

     Sweet Fanny Adams and no mistake.

     Although he had never actually seen her before, he recognized her at once, and once he had recognized her, he realized he would never see her again. After all, not being there was what she was all about; it was the essence of her being, her being Fanny Adams and all that. As he walked towards the bench where she was sitting pretty, Adam missed her already. Missed her bad.

The imperfect stranger looked up from her slim, calf-bound volume and flashed him a baking-soda smile, all cocky like. Their eyes met, pairing off at first sight. The earth moved, orbiting at half a kilometre per second around her celestial globes—a couple of scalloped cupfuls with peek-a-boo trimmings—in what can only be described as a return to the much-maligned Ptolemaic system. For the first time since Mrs. Horton¹s belaboured parturition, when he was forcibly sprung off into the world, Adam did not feel at the wrong place at the wrong time: he was back in the bountiful bosom of Mummy Nature. A gaggle of gurgling putti glided overhead to the strains of syrupy muzak and departing trains. All in all, it was an auspicious overture, fraught with the promise of premise.

Still reeling from that initial, blinding smile, let alone the handshake, he struggled to regain his composure.

"Is that the one which ends with an epic battle between gangs of pre-pubescent herberts bouncing around on orange space-hoppers ?"

"Well, it¹s all about this Mr. Soft Scoop geezer, right, who comes from Italy and settles down in South London where he falls in love with a girl called Margarita."

She was fiddling with her umbrella, a faraway look on her face. "Like you, like."

"I know: that's the attraction," he sighed sotto voce, before getting a grip on himself. "Anyway, you should check it out some time—if you're into lolloping lollipop ladies, lesbians from Lisbon, the romance of ice-cream vans, that kind of thing."

"Dying on our footnotes are we? One footnote in the grave, eh? How long have you got left ?"

Adam caught a fleeting glimpse of the dark, gaping twilight zone between Margarita's parting thighs as she uncrossed her legs to get up. That topsy-turvy Bermuda Triangle twixt skirt and stocking exerted a gravitational pull of such magnitude that he was sucked in, there and then, never to re-emerge. He picked up her bulky suitcase, l'air de rien, but in his mind's X-ray eye he could see her neatly-packed unmentionables. He was big on smalls was old Adam Horton.

"It's a burden I feel I've been carrying all my life." He turned to face her, fair and square. "This may sound potty, but you are the hollowness inside. At last, I have found my sense of loss."

"I"m flattered," she said in Estuarine undertones, blushing a little. Her dimpled cheeks resembled two squashed cherry tomatoes, only bigger. "I always like to be of assistance to strangers."

"After you," said Adam, bowing theatrically and showing the way with her suitcase like a truncheon-toting gendarme stopping the traffic for pedestrians.

He could not help noticing the shaft of light that fell on Margarita's top bottom—proof positive that the sun shone out of her behind—before leaving the station, hot on her high heels.

They repaired to a small, dingy restaurant nearby (which Margarita praised on account of its "atmosphere") where Adam poured out his heart and a couple of cheap, albeit potent, bottles of plonk. Whining and dining, in medias res.

"Couldn't agwee maw," said Marwgawita, making a mental note never again to shpeak wiv her mouf full. Frankly, she did not have a clue what he was going on about.

"We are the first generation to know full well that love doesn¹t last, and yet we cling to the ideal like shit to a blanket."

She turned up her already-retroussé nose. How more retroussé can it get? he wondered.

"Maybe it's just me. The whole thing's very Oedipal, I know." Adam cringed at his attempt to laugh it off.

"I'd rather not if it's all the same with you," he replied rather primly, his flushed face a slapped-arse crimson, "but thanks for the offer. Might even take you up on it some other time. Except . . ." Adam paused for effect. ". . . . there won't be another time."

He sighed, staring into his bowlful of miniature bow-ties, topped up their glasses and cleared his throat. "Love stories are like fairy tales . . ."

". . . in that we know the end from the start. Only it¹s not and they lived happily ever after, is it?"

"You know, someone should write a different kind of love story for the new
millenium. It would start with the foregone conclusion and work its way back towards the unknown: how it all started in the first place."

"I'm writing the first pages even as we speak—with your assistance, of course."

     Margarita seemed in a hell of a hurry all of a sudden, even her nose was running. Where is it running to? he wondered. To by-corners Byzantine, I¹ll be bound, and wondrous Wherevers, to the end of the earth, at the end of its tether. Then he shrugged to himself and at it all because it did not really matter anymore, it really did not. Whatever, yeah, right. She had relieved him of a burden, that much was clear. In the circumstances, it did not really seem appropriate to give her a hand with the luggage, it really did not. The suitcase constituted a clear case of unsuitability, plus he could not be arsed. There was that too.

     It was raining when Margarita stepped out of the restaurant. Adam watched her amber umbrella disappear from view, a Belisha beacon of hope on a dimmer switch. He scribbled a few words on the paper tablecloth. D'elle, il ne reste que ces tagliatelles.

     The door slides open which is where you came in. You assess her golden-delicious breasts as if you were picking apples on a market stall. You think that a man should never trust a woman who offers him an apple, let alone two. You think that this woman's tits are perfectly identical, for Christ's sake. Like bookends.

God knows what happens next. God and you.

GETTING BACK

Musahab Kinjawi, ducking, climbed into the empty microbus, took a seat in the rear, and waited for it to fill up before leaving for Lattakia. He had come up the night before and spent the day with family and friends in Slunfeh, his hometown in the mountains. Now he was going back to the city where he had a job in his uncle's shop, fitting and selling eyeglasses.

One by one the passengers got on the microbus. Most were young men like himself. Some he knew and greeted warmly; others were strangers. Nearly all the spaces had been taken when Musahab saw a very familiar man, dressed in suit and tie, rushing toward the bus, briefcase in hand. It was his former history teacher at the university. Ustaz Joz al-Hindi, or Professor Coconut, as everyone called him, playing with his real name. The man stooped and stepped into the microbus, muttering "Salaam aleikum." The eyes of the Professor met those of Musahab, for a brief second, betraying a hazy recognition.

A minute or two later the bus was full. The door slid closed with a thunk, and the bus began its descent to Lattakia. Musahab collected ten lira apiece from the two other passengers in his seat and passed them forward.

While the Professor might not have been able to place Musahab, Musahab knew the Professor well, having spent, with hundreds upon hundreds of other students, hours upon hours listening to his dry, pedantic lectures on the history of Arab peoples. In fact, the sight of the Professor revived his spite and anger. He recalled the Professor's superior manner and tone, as though he were some kind of unapproachable God. The memory of one particular incident, however, acted as an even more powerful irritant, swelling his anger to rage. One day in class the Professor was talking about the early days of Islam, offering the standard narrative, as though it were the only story. Finally, Musahab, in an attempt to break the boredom and stimulate debate, raised his hand and, when called upon, stood up.
"But sir, this is not the only way of viewing the split between the partisans of Ali and the Sunni's."
Before he could continue, the Professor broke in angrily, "What is your name? Are you challenging what I am saying? How old are you? What do you know? Don't dare to question me until you have read more and gotten your degree!"

Musahab sat down, silently bearing the shame of the insult. It had not been fair. He had been beaten, and there was no recourse. Thus, very early in his life, Musahab learned that independent thinking was rewarded with scorn, suspicion, threats and intimidation.

These matters revolved in Musahab's mind as the small white microbus wound around the rocky steep hillsides on a warm Friday early in June. He looked, from time to time, at the back of the Professor's head, and fumed silently.

Within fifteen or twenty minutes, as the bus approached the village of Daklhi, the road began to flatten. Ahead, in a sultry haze, lay the coastal plain; beyond that, the Mediterranean. The air here was heavy and moist, unlike the cool, fresh air in Slunfeh.

Just past Daklhi the microbus slowed to a stop. The passengers looked out the windows to find the reason and, seeing a few Peugeot police cars, uniformed policemen, and quickly concluded that this was a checkpoint. One of the policemen got on the bus and began to check passenger's identification cards. It was merely a formality, nothing very unusual in a country where, for security reasons, people's activities were carefully monitored and controlled.

Musahab could see that the Professor squirmed nervously as the policeman asked him for his card. "It must be here somewhere," he said, fishing through all his pockets another time.

The policeman and the other passengers became impatient. "Come on, we don't have all day!" the policeman said, visibly showing his irritation.

"I don't seem to have it. I must have left it in the pockets of another pair of pants. I'm sorry."

"I am a professor in the history department at the university. You perhaps have heard of me. I have written a number of books on early Islamic history."

"No. We have not heard of you or your books. How can we be sure you are who you tell us you are?"

Just then the Professor remembered the fellow he had seen when he first got on the bus, and turned around.

"There! Ask this young man!" he said hopefully. "He knows me. He will tell you who I am."

Musahab scrutinized the Professor carefully, shrugged his shoulders, and answered. "No. I'm sorry. I've never seen him before today, when he got on the bus."

The Professor looked again at the young man. He was sure he had seen him. He had probably been one of his students. But he could not place him exactly. What class had he been in, when? He had never known his name, so it was hopeless even to try to respond.

"I'm afraid we are going to have to hold you for questioning, Mr. Who-ever-you-are," the policeman said to the Professor. "You can travel no farther until we are able to confirm your identity."

As the Professor got off the bus he cast one last glance at the young man in the back seat. He thought he detected a smile on his face.

* * *

Within a few hours, after calls had been made to his wife and the dean of faculty, and the identity card had been brought to the station, the Professor was released. During the embarrassing and humiliating situation the face of the young man had, over and over again, appeared in his mind. "He is the source of my troubles," the Professor said to himself. "He did this purposefully, as some kind of malicious prank, and must not be allowed to get away with it."

Thus, he began to plot his revenge. He had first to determine the identity of the young man. This he did, using the customary, available channels at the university. The report soon came back to him:

Musahab Kinjawi, a member of the party, graduated from the History Department three years ago.
Working now at Kinjawi Optics.
Living at ______________.

The Professor became obsessed with the idea of revenge. He took a reconnaissance mission, under the cover of night, finding the room the young man lived in-a single-story ramshackle house down a dirt road, on the outskirts of town. He was careful not to be observed as he scouted out the scene.
But what to do? All he wanted to do was scare him, he concluded. Nothing more. Let him know he has enemies, but conceal their identity. That, the Professor knew from his own experience, produced a most unnerving psychological condition, one that virtually paralyzed all thought and action. There was no way to combat it, or protect yourself.

The Professor made preparations. One night, with gloves, a knife, and note reading "watch your step," the Professor made his way to the home of his quarry. He climbed over the wall and crept toward the open window of Musahab's room. The light was on. From a radio or a tape came the seductive, melancholy voice of Feiruz. Fortunately, nobody else seemed to be at home, or in the vicinity. The Professor put on the pair of gloves, carefully punctured the note with the point of the knife, and slid it down to the hilt. He then peered over the window ledge. The room had a distinctively yellow tint. A small bed with crumpled covers was against the left wall; on the floor to the right laid a few piles of dirty clothes, and scattered books and papers beside a small desk and chair. Directly ahead was a place to hang clothes, and the door leading into the hallway. The walls were bare except for a poster of Arnold Schwarzeneggar, with sharp jutting jaw and bulging biceps and crotch, and what appeared to be a car advertisement with three bikinied blondes sitting on the hood of a red convertible, a sandy beach in the background. Musahab was sitting on the bed, bowl in hand, eating a kind of "maqlubi," a dish of rice, chicken and eggplant, with nuts scattered on top. Waiting for the young man to finish his meal, the Professor reviewed in his mind his getaway plans. Leap over the wall, jog to the right, down a dim alley, to the right again, then left, then right, backtracking to a main artery where he could hop a bus or hail a cab. Musahab would be stunned, and it would take him some time to collect his thoughts and begin his pursuit. This, at least, was what he was counting on.

Musahab finally finished his dinner, put his plate down, and walked to the other side of the room. This was his chance, the Professor determined. He stood up, holding the knife in his right hand like a paper airplane, and took aim at the Schwarzeneggar poster. The muscular chest. Just as the Professor let the missile fly, Musahab stepped to the left, as though to shield the powerful paper image. A horrifying scream punctured the quiet night as the knife blade struck and penetrated a taut surface of skin, driving deep into the heart of the body.

Dazed by fear and horror, the Professor turned to escape. "Oh, my God!" he thought. "What have I done?" What will happen to me now? This is not what I intended!"

He leapt over the wall, to the back, and slipped down the alley, under the cover of night. Right. Left. Then right again. Quickly, but not so much as to call attention to himself. He felt the remnants of a scream, yet could not tell whether the ringing was in his ears or in his throat. Perhaps someone was already there by now. He didn't think anyone had seen him, but was not absolutely sure. Fear seized him. What had happened to the young man? What if he was dead? This sickening thought made his stomach tighten.

He would have to wait until tomorrow and see if it was reported in the papers. And, would anyone suspect him? Had he left any tracks? There were the questions he had asked about the young man. He thought of running away, leaving Lattakia, but only concluded that would only draw attention to him. He would simply have to wait, wait and try to act as normal as possible.

An empty cab was approaching as the Professor reached the main street. He put his arm out and the taxi slowed to pick him up. He might just get away with it, he thought to himself as he got in the cab and gave the driver his address.