The Silence and the Roar (13 page)

I noticed a small cart sliding along an electric rail coming down the corridor from the same direction we had just come from (that is, from my right) and I thought to myself, What could that be? Are there carts down here too? As it approached and then passed by us I could see that it was carrying large piles of the Leader’s picture. The cart continued moving for about fifty yards or so and then veered off toward the right.
Don’t miss this chance
, I thought to myself.
Get up and find out what there is behind that turnoff to the right fifty yards away
. I stood up and, to make the Comrade looking
after me think I just needed to stretch my legs after sitting for so long, slapped my thighs so he could see I was just shaking out the numbness. Uninterested, he let me go as he continued to smoke his cigarette and drink his tea. I walked as far as the turnoff, twisting my torso in an unnatural way, making movements that resembled Swedish calisthenics and slowing down in order to spend as much time as possible glancing down the corridor. The turnoff led to a gigantic storeroom with a large door as wide as the hallway itself. I stared inside and tried to etch what I had seen in my mind’s eye. Then I walked several paces ahead before turning back, staring down that way once more. Once I had captured in my mind a picture of the storeroom and what it contained I walked on, coming back to sit down in my chair and light my pipe once again. The Comrade guarding me was satisfied that nothing was awry.

I now managed to sketch a clear picture of the storeroom and its contents in my mind. It was spacious, well lit with fluorescent lights, and had no windows. Workers emptied the payloads from those electric carts, which were then neatly arranged into identical piles on metal shelves; no disorder was permitted. Finally I had discovered where the millions of pictures of the Leader in all shapes and sizes came from. The shelves were overflowing with reams of pictures and every shelf had a template at eye level that was a guide to the heaps behind it. I saw dozens of sizes and poses of the Leader; not only did those pictures vary in size but in terms of the pose and medium. In one area specifically for oversized pictures there was a huge one wrapped up in a cylinder; only the Leader’s hair and eyes
were visible. Beside it there was another which upon closer examination I could see was actually an oil portrait painted by an artist to look like a photograph. On the opposite wall there were shelves with posters that had slogans and sentences scrawled on them praising the Leader, including one with the slogan that I heard one of the Comrades repeating at the march, “L R, L R, Leader, Leader.” There was a special section for storing the large cloth banners on which calligraphers had inscribed slogans praising the Leader and verses of poetry extolling his intelligence, wisdom and bravery.

After sitting on the chair for another short while, I decided to try and discover what other wonders this level contained, including what turned out to be, without exaggeration, a workshop dedicated to producing propaganda for the Leader. I got up and moved closer to the guardian Comrade who was pouring himself a second cup of tea and asked him, pretending I was suffering from back pains from sitting for too long, “Excuse me, am I allowed to know what or whom I’m waiting for?”

“The Comrade in charge isn’t here yet,” he said, offering me a cup of tea that I refused with a casual flick of my hand. “He’ll be here any minute.”

“But I don’t have time to wait. I’m busy.”

“You can go and come back in the morning if you want.”

“I can’t walk around without my ID.”

“Well, you’ll just have to wait then, another half hour or so,” he said, ending the conversation.

“But I have back trouble,” I told him. “Sitting for too long makes it worse.”

“That’s your problem,” he said, sipping his tea.

I pulled away from him, trying to restore some limberness to my joints, cracking my neck and my lower back. I walked off in the other direction, toward the stairs we had taken down to the basement. I lit my pipe and took some pleasure in smoking, walking thirty yards and then turning around until I saw my guardian Comrade straight ahead of me. He looked at me askance and then ignored me as a number of Comrades gathered around, lit cigarettes and started talking about something else. Before getting bogged down in having to hear their conversation I turned around and walked away from them again.

After fifty or sixty paces, a nondescript door to my right opened and a young man came out to light a cigarette. Apparently they were forbidden to smoke inside. At that moment, before the door could swing shut automatically, I saw what was going on inside. It was not a small room but a vast chamber filled with computers and lots of young men and young women working at them. As the door closed I continued walking, taking very slow steps. The young man was watching me. I approached him and asked if I could use his lighter, which he handed me with extreme courtesy. I relit my pipe. I wanted to say something but he pre-empted me, with greater politeness than any of the other Comrades had shown me, asking, “Excuse me, but aren’t you the writer, Fathi Sheen?”

To encourage him to keep talking, I responded immediately, “That’s right, and you are?”

“I work here, my name’s Nooh. You don’t know me but I know you. I’ve read some of your work.”

“Did you say you work here? Do you mean to say you’re not a Comrade?”

“I’m a member of the Revolutionary Youth but I work here. I mean, I’m not a volunteer. I work for a monthly wage.”

“In computer programming?”

“No, graphic design.”

“What do you design?”

“We design everything. Posters. Pamphlets containing speeches and sayings of the Leader. We touch up pictures of the Leader in order to eliminate imperfections, correcting them and making them more beautiful. Other odd jobs.”

I stood so that I could see the guardian Comrade and he could see me, in case he happened to think of me and wonder where I was. He was immersed in conversation with his other Comrades. Pointing toward where I had seen the motorized cart, I asked Nooh, “So you print the posters and the pictures here, right?”

“Yeah, right here. It’s the most sophisticated press in the whole country. The computers are connected to the press on an internal network and we do amazing work.”

I nodded, and the young man went on, “From this chamber, we upload files of the Leader and his speeches to approximately fifty Internet sites that are specifically about the Leader. We make them,”—and he said this in English—“
up to date
.”

“Fascinating. You’re doing amazing work. But who’s in charge of all of this?”

“You mean, who decides which pictures to print? There’s a committee that oversees our work. They send us thousands
of pictures. We touch them up, crop them and then send them back so they can select the best ones. They might ask for a poster portraying the Leader with a factory or a farm or a mosque or all those things combined in the background.”

“But I mean, who comes up with the sayings and the slogans that you put on the posters?”

Pointing toward another room, he said, “There’s a special team whose members are specialists in psychology and education. Comrades, intellectuals and poets who work twelve hours a day coming up with slogans or writing poetry for the masses to recite at marches, which are then printed on posters or published in the media and online.”

“That is very special work.”

“Indeed. It’s tremendous educational and emotional labor as well because the matter involves affection, that is, the affection the masses have for the Leader. It’s never easy work. There’s a room here specifically for focus groups studying the proclivities of the masses, where they invite various segments of the population to come and have slogans and poems recited to them. They figure out which ones are closest to the hearts of the people. Then they have them memorized, and the slogan the people have the most difficulty with is immediately trashed and erased from the list. The best poems and slogans are those that somebody can remember after only hearing them once.”

“It’s an important consideration in choosing slogans.”

“There are slogans that take a long time to prepare. Typically their role is to convince the masses of a specific issue regarding the Leader but it can be difficult to
manufacture this in a simple slogan or in a basic verse of poetry. Sometimes they have to stay up late at night in this room, coming up with hundreds of alternative poems and slogans. From there they’re sent up to a higher committee that works in the Leader’s palace. Almost every proposal gets sent back for editing.”

“What are they supposed to do?” I asked.

“Prime the masses to be convinced of certain changes that are about to be implemented. Or to make them demand some change that is going to happen anyway just so that it can appear as though it happened because of popular will.”

Nooh put out his cigarette, reached out his hand toward me and said, smiling, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Fathi. I’d been hoping to meet you for some time. I’ve heard for a while now how they’ve got too much work in this room and are facing many new challenges and that they’re thinking about asking you to come work with us. I’m glad to see you here because this must mean you’ve agreed. I have to get back inside now. See you later.”

I was astonished by what he said but shook his hand as he left to go back inside. I wasn’t able to say goodbye, though, because I was so shocked by the notion that they wanted me to work with them fabricating the general mood, mobilizing the masses. The horror! Lama had been on to this when I complained to her about Mr. Ha’el’s plan to marry my mother. She had told me,
They want you to join them, and they won’t just let you remain silent. They want to put your mind to work on their issues
. Instinctively I turned around to head back and bumped into my guardian Comrade who had come just then to bring me back.

“The Comrade in charge is back.”

I nodded, put my pipe back in my pocket and followed him. He opened the door, allowed me to enter and then shut the door behind me.

There was a cluster of desks inside a medium-sized room, occupied by Comrades who looked alike and were all dressed the same. There was a computer on every desk that the Comrades worked at in silence. They were transferring the announcements from papers to computer. The walls were covered with pictures of the Leader and posters with selections from his speeches. I didn’t know which desk was the one for me. Everyone raised their eyes to me, staring without volunteering so much as a hint about which way I was supposed to turn. I stopped in the middle of the room and looked around at them. I had never seen people so socially detached. One of them shouted for me to approach his desk. He barked an order—“Approach!”—without saying please. I sat down on the chair in front of his desk, the seat designated for interviews. I sensed that this Comrade had not just arrived but had kept me waiting this whole time for no reason, or perhaps for one reason in particular—so that I would wait outside—without realizing that I was going to be able to acquire important information about this propaganda mill on my own.

Comrade Rashad’s name was printed on a square block attached to the front of his desk. He asked me what I wanted, as if he still did not know, so I told him, “I want my ID card back, the one the Comrades took from me at the march today.”

“And why did they take it from you? What did you do?”

“I stepped in to save a young man they had jumped on and started beating.”

“Why did this young man concern you at all?”

“He concerned me because they were beating him.”

“And since when are you a defender of those who evade the marches?”

“It’s my duty.”

He stared at me callously, revealing the extent of the hatred that Comrades of his kind reserve for me. I glanced at the others and saw they were watching us even as they pretended to be working away on their equipment. I turned back toward him as he asked me, “So you were at the march?”

“I don’t go out much for marches but I was—”

“So you’re a traitor, then?” he interrupted, the expression on his face plainly marking out his hatred for me.

“You can call anyone you want a traitor as long as you’re the one holding the pen.”

My words provoked him. His face turned all red and he wiggled his bum in his chair. He pulled the keyboard closer and I noticed his hands tremble slightly. I crossed one leg over the other and pulled out my pipe, glad that I could make him turn red.

“Your full name!”

“Why are you pretending you don’t know my name? Anyway, I’m Fathi Abd al-Hakim Sheen.”

He plunked on the keys and then stopped to read what appeared before him on the screen. He was trying to play some kind of role but he was not a very good actor. He wanted to insinuate that I was a nobody but he proved the
very opposite, that he was the unknown one. I took out my lighter, hoping to enrage him even more. I still had the upper hand. I wanted to mess with him even if it meant that I never got my ID card back. He became conscious of the pipe and the lighter, and with the hilarious displeasure of a nursery school teacher, he said, “Smoking is forbidden.”

“I know, but as a pipe smoker I’ve got used to habitually holding the pipe and the lighter. I won’t light it.”

I nodded at the computer screen that I couldn’t see because I was sitting behind it, and asked him, “So, what have you come up with?”

“Your ID card isn’t here.”

“Where is it then?” I asked, amazed. “I can’t just walk around this country without it. Everyone has started asking me about it.”

“It’s at one of the security services. It seems they want you to pay them a visit.”

“What does security have to do with my ID card? They didn’t take it from me. One of you took it from me.”

“They have it.”

He wrote the name and address of the security apparatus on a scrap of paper and dropped it into my hand. I held the paper and saw that in addition to the name and the address he had written a kind remark and drawn a line underneath it:
My apologies, Mr Fathi
. I raised my head to him and saw that he was trying to pretend to get back to work on his computer. I continued staring at him in disbelief but when he turned toward me there was a completely different look on his face. He looked away and started tapping on the keyboard. Writing a response on the other side of the scrap
of paper before handing it back to him, I asked, “Do you want me to leave?”