I heard of his suicide on a down day . The weather is like our people, either laughing or 

...weeping, sad or happy

I phoned (the Arabic Youth) newspaper, promising the editorial board, in earnest, to write my detailed report on the incident, but could not grasp the ends of the threads—like someone 

. running after a mirage

***

I recall : We were three . We packed and took off after our golden dreams, aiming for London, but never reached the “core” of the illusion . We had to put the world between the jaws of a nutcracker to break the hard testa . Khalil, one of us, was nicknamed Hood, after a prophet with a similar name, because both were very tall . He used to work in a restaurant—washing dishes during the day, reading Nabokov at night . How fond he was of that sober Russian immigrant . When he sits down to read (Lolita), or even (The Trial)—a negligible novel—you

. see a sort of complicity in his eyes 

***

I recorded that in my first report but couldn’t finish it . Perhaps the fire of our time together

. was still flickering

I recall : How Fawaz had chosen to write his fate himself . I was content to see fate as fragile and not as strong as human nature . We can change it if we lose our faith in blind justice . But does Fawaz have any idea of justice and compassion ? I think—because of this alone—he took his life with his own hands . First, he grew very thin . He turned into something like a famine victim . I asked him, kidding : Where did your bones go, man ?

. He said with a smile : My good-luck mouse gnaws at it while I'm asleep

I thought : Beneath this ash, for sure, there’s a burning ember . But I couldn’t have predicted

. the way he died

***

Fawaz didn’t commit suicide. I wrote these words thinking they were a good start for a report that I’ll finish today,  before sunset . I tore the paper up after only a few lines, just to throw it in the dustbin. On another page I wrote : Was Fawaz able to assassinate his golden dreams with some poisoned liquor, or to put an end to his life in a fascist way like heroes or fools at the end of the road ? I thought of Khalil Hawi, Hemingway, and Kawabata. All ended their lives in a radical style—like someone who writes a new story . I didn’t finish my work .  Soon fatigue and failure took over, choking me with torrents of thoughts and memories, in certain cases with tears . In only half a day I tore up a whole pack of a fluffy snow-colored paper. How many trees, do we think, died to produce every mute sheet—an orchard or a whole

? wood

Within an hour the table, with writing tools on it, transformed into disturbed carded wool, into a world of chaos and incomplete sentences . It was hard to seal the breaths of a lifelong friend within a few lines. Our friendship stretched over twenty years. Twenty years of fooling around and crazy plans between frivolous talks we don’t want to reach the ears of a stranger now—such shortsighted political discussions, We call it these days the “childish lefty.” We didn’t know at the time that London was the end of our road, the last leap before falling into an abyss of existential death. Too cold, this denial of directions and aims. We became like orphans in a

. thick fog

***

Fawas, at that time, was working with a print shop standing before a roaring heavy machine. He named that noise “the bellowing cow .”  Even after he had gone home he could hear the noise whistling inside his head like a train . Naturally I shared with him our troubles and pains : I was busy with London’s muddy side . And we ought to search for salvation, I thought—a

. tunnel offers ways to escape

I recall : When I started as a professional journalist, he moved to work in an unknown little hostel where he met Charlotte. The affair was too brief. It reached its end quickly . She disappeared from his life without a trace . But I never saw her face . Today I am wondering : Was she real or only a part of his sick, imagined world ?. I have to confess, though, he had a photo with her in it . She posed with her arm across his shoulders and a smile for the camera . I was about to ask him for the name of the photographer to make sure the photo was genuine, not a collage of some sort . But I couldn’t do it, not wanting to hurt his pride or his

. contentment. Fawaz was a romantic soul. Maybe he couldn’t take the embarrassment

Those were dreadful days! I passed by the hostel on many occasions. Most of the time, I stood for a while contemplating the byzantine engravings on the gate and the closed double-glass French windows. We called it in our country “insulated glazing . This building certainly draws ones attention. It was a broken sort of a structure, with a folding or obeying personality. It moved your feelings keeping them inside a frame of unnatural politeness. Hadn’t we all heard of Freudian sublimation?  After her departure. the place lost its character. Charlotte went away. The place to him looked like a paradise from the past. Soon he lost his patience and moved to

. Soho

***

The events demanded that our tragedies were one . Our falls—the three of us—were similar . I failed the test of the city . I won the first medal of despair and self-destruction . My dreams fell apart ; my ambition and brain were boiled down into portraits on the walls next to wood

. works and icons reminding me of the tortures of souls and the pains of a shattered body

I recall : Whenever I come closer to finishing his report, some doubts blew into my vision. The easy and soft pen betrayed me. Eventually I could not write about the disaster I felt and

. foresaw

***

But how had I heard the news of his suicide? From Khalil. I was going to bed when the phone bell rang. I picked up the receiver and heard his voice. He said in a heavy tone: I have some

. bad news

I interrupted: The usual O’ crow.

These exchanges were normal. It was part of our marginalized life. You can say it was dust carried by a soft and pleasant breeze. He used to respond by swearing at me.

This time he said: Please, behave yourself. The news is serious. About Fawaz….

I asked with the same sarcastic voice: What? Has he committed  suicide?

A mad silence fell, interrupted by his coughs. Then he asked: How come you know about this?

It was a shock. A first stroke of any luck in my life. But it was a black one.

***

I excused myself from the ceremonies, the funeral and burial. I wasn’t eager to share in this infanticide. I hung up the receiver back and tunneled deeper into my thoughts. Then I broke involuntarily into a whirlwind of weeping. Is destiny kidding us in the way it’s fooling our countries? We die in a grey, cheap manner. After I calmed down, I decided to visit his last station. Physically, I would not see him. But I could pay his soul a last salute. A sober person like Fawaz can’t disappear without any notice. He would leave behind a fingerprint, a shadow, a choke.

Anything. Anything.

He was working in a “lost dreams” bar on the brink of Soho from the Piccadilly side. What a strange pun. Did the bar choose him intentionally to put a stop to his spiritual wellness? Nobody cares for a life like his in this city. Everybody runs behind illusions consuming the remains of his days. I couldn’t find the bar easily. I searched for it within this maze we stumbled through together. I found it when my last green shoot of my heart had extinguished itself, falling in ruins of memories.

Fawaz and London.

The watch suggested nearly nine o’clock. The weather was too cold. Inside the bar I took my hands out of the pockets of my full-length grey coat. I knocked off also the black woolen scarf covering my neck. I looked around with eyes trenched by cold, smoke and distress. I saw a muscular man serving some customers. Beside him, a young blond woman stood behind the counter. I ordered an energy drink with a shot of cherry syrup. While she was serving me,  I her with some trepidation if she had a minute.

She gave me a doubtful look. For sure, my eastern face was not comfortable in her gaze.

Then  she said: What do you need?

I said: I want to ask about Fawaz.

She repeated absentmindedly: Fawaz?

Then added: You mean the foreigner who...

I helped by saying: Yes, who took his life...

I hoped to untie this tragedy, the knot of her tongue saying a word or two for him, but she asked with a cold voice: Are you a police officer?

I said with even more unease: No. Never. I am only a friend ...

She made a face saying: Your friend was a puzzle.

 . She added : I did not like him

. And continued like someone talking to herself, glad to be rid of him 

I did not expect her answer. It was like she stoned me by not telling me the truth. I took my drink and sat alone. It was in my hands like Socrates with his hemlock. What did Fawaz do to

? deserve all this hatred

***

. I wrote: We made a big mistake . We corralled Fawaz to kill himself

I didn’t like this beginning. It didn’t quite catch the hatred and distrust I swallowed instead of 

? the cherry syrup red as our blood. I flipped the page and wrote

Fawaz is not among us. One of the three knights who disappeared altogether. I felt like I was elegizing myself. When writing, the picture of the waitress with her indifferent manner never left my head. Nor did the other faces with masks and different expressions on them. Some solid, senseless thing stood in the middle.  A Sisyphus rock? The stray dog of wounded civilization? Bleeding pride?  Maybe. I froze in the middle of that line. I ejected the pen from

. my hand, dropping it on the page

: Believe it or not

Nine years have passed since the incident, and I am still incapable of writing this story

2005

* From my collection Like Stories. Alef Magazine publication. Damascus. 2010. Modified version. Translated by the author with Scott Minar (minar@ohio.edu)