All people talk about the calm the proceeds the storm, but nobody talk about the calm the follows it.
Khaled sat in his cell in the prison. He was alone. His two cellmates were asleep…or apparently asleep… Khaled was thinking of the stormy events he went through. He barely believed that it was only few weeks since all these events started.
He was enjoying his solitude in the prison despite his internal torment. He was enjoying his solitude and the quietness of night in the prison.
He sighed remembering that everything started when his forefinger retreated one millimeter away from the mouse button. He wondered, “What would have happened had he deleted Huda from his friend list? How would his life be?” No matter how it would have been, he wouldn’t be sleeping in the same cell with a murderer and a bandit.
Who knows? The outcomes could have been the same but with different events and causes…can anybody escape their fate?
And Huda…where was she? Since she guided him to the forum hall on the first day he did not see any trace of here. He gave her phone number to Mahdi and asked him to call her to check on her and assure her about him, but her phone was always out of reach. Her Facebook account was also a wasteland; there were no new posts, nor did she respond to any messages.
The feelings of anger, confusion, and anxiety were mingled in Khaled’s breast, and his heart was in turmoil. Was their relationship destined to be like this short “rendez-vous” followed by long absences for unknown reasons?
Anyways, it was a relationship that was buried alive when he was imprisoned, but at least he was aware she was alright. She could continue her life without him if she needed. It was better for her to need that. Imitating the Turkish and Mexican TV series was not good for her or him.
He always had this obsession, ‘Do people really feel love, or do they roleplay it?’
Modern media are have almost destroyed all emotions. They impose on people the kind of love they should feel so that they roleplay the state consciously or subconsciously. Women need men to all time carry flowers for them like the character ‘Muhannad’ in the Turkish TV series, and men want women to cry their eyes out day and night like the character ‘Lamis’ in another Turkish TV series. They fake and roleplay love…real love existed between Antar and Abla and their likes of loyal lovers. It was love when they themselves were able to discover their feelings. They did not hear about love before experiencing it as if it is an emotional duty. You have to turn off the TV and never listen to a song. If you feel love, congratulations! You have done it, and now you are rightfully called a ‘lover’.
Khaled sat straight because he felt that his thoughts had some weight, and they were heavy on him. Despite the darkness, he tried to discover the content of the bundle Aziza had brought.
Thought haunt him again. Who framed him? Whenever he thought of that deeply and logically, he felt he would go crazy. He tried to organize his thoughts as hypotheses on sheets of paper in the candle light not to get lost in the swirling thoughts in his head.
The first hypothesis was that someone put it in his bag somehow when he was in Tangier to use him to smuggle it. The question here was how could not the security scanner in the airport detect it? They perhaps took a precautious measure when they tucked it in that tiny layer where it was found …or was it the Maruja chocolate that distracted the security officers?
Initially the two possibilities were very probable, distinct possibility. Nevertheless, they face one crucial question, why did they not come to take the paining in Belgium? A gang of that professionality could have entered and retrieved the painting easily and quietly. Why did they take so much time until it all happened?
The second hypothesis was that there was somebody who wanted to take revenge from him, and they schemed to enjoy seeing him behind the bars. It was an unreasonable hypothesis, but it was not impossible. Who would take all that trouble only to see him in prison? There were easier ways to reach that goal, and he could not remember having any enemies of that kind; further, he never committed any crimes worthy such a revenge. His foulest crimes were killing the flies in his room when he was a child and stealing pens some of his school mates. There were also some books he borrowed from his friends, and he did not return them out of laziness rather than an intention not to.
He laughed at how he let his thought loose and continued scribing his thoughts on paper. The first hypothesis was the strongest; the gang perhaps in a way or another was late and could not retrieve it. Who would then have informed about it? That was the tricky, vague question.
What about Huda’s position in everything? Huda was an innocent person. He did not need to see her otherwise. It was not an idealistic behavior or stupidity on his part, but all realities suggested that. Huda had more than one chance to take the painting whenever she needed especially that she knew the timetable of the forum, and when he would be in the apartment or outside, so it was illogical that she slackened until the end of the forum until the painting was discovered.
In addition, his insight suggested that Huda did not have a hand in the whole thing. In all his rendez-vous with Huda, he did not notice any deceptive looks.
Liars, exactly like lovers, are unmasked by their eyes. There should be a gesture…an instance of confusion. There should be a moment when the sight turns right or left, so you would suspect the other person’s ill intentions. Huda never displayed such signs.
Khaled’s line of thoughts got disrupted when his hand hit something solid when he was searching the bundle Aziza brought with her. He extracted it and found it to be an expensive mobile phone.
What did you bring me, Aziza Rahma? Where did you get it from?
The truth was that it looked familiar. He squeezed his memory to remember where he saw it, and he remembered buying it cheaply for few dirhams from an addict in his neighborhood.
When he returned home late one night, the addict was as importunate and insistent as a fly. To get rid of him Khaled told him,
It surprised him that the addict agreed instantly despite that the price of that mobile phone was approximately a hundred time more than that. He thought then that the addict should definitely have robbed it. He bought it and intended to call its owner in the morning to return it. When were Khaled’s mornings lately normal for him to remember such a thing?
It seemed now that the old woman Aziza Rahma found it forgotten and thrown somewhere among his stuff, so she brought it with her. Mobile phones were banned in the prison according to an unwritten law. The old woman knew well what she was doing, whereas he, the young, modern man, did not know what to do. Had anyone seen it, a prisoner or a jailor, they would have coveted for it, and he was not then ready for any confrontation of that kind.
He pressed the power button. It surprised and delighted him to find that it did not have a pin number. The mobile lightened the darkness of his loneliness and removed the shadows of the gloomy candle. This phone would be his source of entertainment for days until whatever God had ordained would take place.
He touches its keys, and when he pressed the messages icon, his conscience popped up above his head ordering him, ‘delete… these are the secrets of other people’. His thumb went towards the deletion order firmly. It stopped one millimeter away. It retreated, and he postponed it until another time.