The Thief and the Dogs

She sat down opposite, moving a pile of scraps of cloth and dress cuttings. "You know what?" she said, "I'd given up hope. I didn't think you'd really come."

Their tired eyes met. "Even after my definite promise?" he said, hiding his frozen feelings with a smile. She smiled back faintly, without answering. Then she said, "Yesterday they kept questioning me at the police station over and over. They nearly killed me.

Where's the car?"

"I thought I'd better dump it somewhere, even though I need it." He took off his jacket and tossed it down on the sofa next to him. His brown shirt was caked with sweat and dust: "They'll find it and give it back to its owner, as you'd expect of a government that favors some thieves more than others."

"What did you do with it yesterday?"

"Nothing whatever, in fact. Anyway, you'll know everything at the proper time." He gazed at the open window, took a deep breath, and said, "It must face north. Really fresh air."

"It's open country from here to Bab al Noor. All around here is the cemetery."

"That's why the air isn't polluted," he said with a grin. She's looking at you as if she could eat you up, but you only feel bored, annoyed. Why can't you stop brooding over your wounded pride and enjoy her?

"I'm terribly sorry you had to wait so long on the landing."

"Well, I'm going to be your guest for quite some time," he said, giving her a strange, scrutinizing look.

She lifted her head, raised her chin and said happily, "Stay here all your life, if you like."

"Until I move over to the neighbors!" he said with another grin, pointing through the window. She seemed preoccupied. She didn't seem to hear his joke. "Won't your people ask about you?" she said.

"I have no people," he replied, looking down at his gym shoes.

"I mean your wife."

She means pain and fury and wasted bullets!

What she wants is to hear a humiliating confession; she'll only find that a locked heart becomes increasingly difficult to unlock. But what is the point of lying when newsprint pages are screaming with sensation?

"I said I have no people." Now you're wondering what my words mean. Your face is beaming with happiness. But I hate this joy. And I can see now that your face has lost whatever bloom it had, particularly under the eyes.

"Divorced?" she asked.

"Yes. When I was in jail. But let's close the subject," he said, waving his hand impatiently.

"The bitch!" she said angrily. "A man like you deserves to be waited for, even if he's been sent up for life!"

How sly she is! But a man like me doesn't like to be pitied. Beware of sympathy! "The truth is that I neglected her far too much." What a waste for bullets to strike the innocent!

"Anyway, she isn't the kind of woman who deserves you."

True. Neither is any other woman. But Nabawiyya's still full of vitality, while you're hovering on the brink: one puff of wind would be enough to blow you out. You only arouse pity in me.

"No one must know I am here."

Laughing, as if sure she possessed him for ever, she said, "Don't worry; I'll keep you hidden all right." Then, hopefully, she added, "But you've not done anything really serious, have you?"

He dismissed the question by shrugging nonchalantly.

She stood up and said, "I'll get some food for you. I do have food and drink. Do you remember how cold you used to be to me?"

"I had no time for love then."

She eyed him reproachfully. "Is anything more important than love? I often wondered if your heart wasn't made of stone. When you went to jail, no one grieved as much as I did."

"That's why I came to you instead of anybody else."

"But you only ran into me by chance," she said with a pout. "You might even have forgotten all about me!"

"Do you think I can't find anywhere else?" he said, framing his face into a scowl.

As if to head off an outburst, she came up close to him and took his cheeks between the palms of her hands. "The guards at the zoo won't let visitors tease the lion. I'd forgotten that.

Please forgive me. But your face is burning and your beard is bristly. Why not have a cold shower?" His smile showed her he welcomed the idea. "Off you go to the bathroom then! When you come out you'll find some food ready. We'll eat in the bedroom, it's much nicer than this room. It looks out over the cemetery, too."

TEN

What a lot of graves there are, laid out as far as the eye can see. Their headstones are like hands raised in surrender, though they are beyond being threatened by anything. A city of silence and truth, where success and failure, murderer and victim come together, where thieves and policemen lie side by side in peace for the first and last time.

Nur's snoring seemed likely to end only when she awoke in late afternoon.

You'll stay in this prison until the police forget you. And will they ever really forget?

The graves remind you that death cheats the living.

They speak of betrayal; and thus they make you remember Nabawiyya, Ilish and Rauf, telling you that you yourself are dead, ever since that unseeing bullet was fired.