The Taste of Freedom

A knuckle raps at the closed bedroom door – discreet, deferential, a knock such as he is unlikely ever to hear again. A muffled voice says, “Thirty minutes, sir.” Through the half-opened jalousies in the windows, hard sunshine throws a latticework of shadow and light into the bedroom. “I asked you to wait for me in the street, Major.” The golden slats warp and crack on the chaotic bed-sheets before splattering shards into the closet open before him. “Surely you can grant me that.” “We mustn’t be late, sir.” The major’s voice conveys no hint of apology. “Late, Major ? But it’s already too late. For everything.” No reply is offered but he senses that the tall, thin major is still there at his door, chewing at his pipe stem, worrying his string of ivory beads with his fingers. He senses that the major is weighing his options. His attention to duty has been impeccable over these two months : protecting him from others, protecting him from himself. He is probably wondering whether prudence now requires a show of force so far unnecessary. The slats of sunshine suddenly dim. Shadows close in. He doesn’t need to look out to know that storm clouds are veiling the sun. He’s lived in the little house long enough now to read the quality of the light that enters different rooms at different hours in different weather. At a glance, he can recognise the burning gold of morning, the white glaze of midday, the shattered incandescence showering late every afternoon over the dome of the neighbourhood mosque, the radioactive phosphorescence of sunset slowly consuming itself until only darkness remains. Cloistered in the house, unable to expose himself at a window for fear of distant crosshairs, he has learned to interpret the humour of the day outside in this way, to draft its aspects, sense its moods. The front door of the apartment thuds shut – confirmation that through the weeks of accompaniment and guard duty, the major has come to know him well enough to trust him with these final moments of solitude : there will be no single shot, no rope roughly woven from bed-sheets. He raises his hand towards the rank of suits compressed in the closet. They are numerous, more than he has ever owned, more than he could ever use. Greys, browns, blues, subtle greens, one with a suggestion of the burning henna he remembers from the dunes in the western desert just before sundown. After a moment of hesitation, his palm lunges in among them, stirring up their scent of factory newness, shattering the slats of light. The jalousies darken. He guesses a gathering of storm clouds. In the closet, his fingertips graze the coarse fabric of uniform pressed tight between two suits. They identify an epaulette and the hard insignia of rank. He takes a firm hold of it, eases it out. It has been laundered, his medals and campaign ribbons pinned neatly back into place. He sets the tunic aside, smoothing it out on the bed with his palms. He is undoing the first button of the khaki shirt when, without warning, his fingers freeze and he becomes aware of the second-hand on his watch slapping the seconds away. His fingers had frozen that night too, a couple of month before, as he laced up his boots in the concrete desert bunker five kilometres from the invisible border. He had remained there for a long time, bent over in the egg-yolk light of the single bulb, incapable of knotting the laces, the watch on his wrist counting …