The Dictator's Last Night. Yasmina Khadra

you miss them?’

      ‘As much as our people miss their Brotherly Guide.’

      ‘I have not gone anywhere.’

      ‘That’s not what I meant, sir.’

      He is shaking, though not from fear. This man worships me. His whole being is trembling with reverence for me.

      ‘I am going to ask Hassan to send you home.’

      ‘Why, sir?’

      ‘Your daughters are crying out for you.’

      ‘A whole people is crying out for you, Brotherly Guide. My family is just one drop in the ocean. To be at your side at this moment is an absolute privilege and joy.’

      ‘You are a good boy, Mustafa. You deserve to be with your daughters.’

      ‘If you send me I would disobey you for the first time in my life, and it would wound me so badly I would die.’

      He means it. His eyes gleam with the tears that are only ever found in the pure in heart.

      ‘But go you must.’

      ‘My place is at your side, Brotherly Guide. I wouldn’t exchange it for a place in paradise. Without you there is no salvation for anyone, let alone my daughters.’

      ‘Sit down,’ I say to him, pointing to my armchair.

      ‘I could not possibly do that.’

      ‘I command you.’

      His face is twisted in acute embarrassment.

      ‘Show me your tongue.’

      ‘I have never lied to you, Brotherly Guide.’

      ‘Show me your tongue.’

      He gulps again and again, his face slightly turned away. His lips part to reveal a tongue as white as chalk.

      ‘How many days have you been fasting, Mustafa?’

      ‘Excuse me?’

      ‘Your tongue is the colour of milk. It proves that you have not eaten for a considerable time.’

      ‘Brotherly—’

      ‘I know that my meals are made from your rations and that many of my guards are fasting so that I can go on eating.’

      He lowers his head.

      ‘Eat,’ I tell him.

      ‘I could not possibly do that.’

      ‘Eat! I need my faithful servants to stay on their feet.’

      ‘Strength comes from the heart, not the stomach, Brotherly Guide. If I was starving or dying of thirst or had my legs cut off, I would still find the strength to defend you. I am capable of going to hell and back to fetch the flame that would reduce to ashes any hand daring to touch you.’

      ‘Eat.’

      The orderly attempts to protest, but my expression stops him.

      ‘I am waiting,’ I say.

      He sniffs noisily to work up his courage, clenches his jaws, and a feverish hand comes to rest on a hard biscuit. I sense him digging deep into his soul to find the courage to close his fingers around the biscuit. I hear him breathing shallow staccato breaths.

      ‘What happened, Mustafa?’

      He is choking on the biscuit and still trying to chew it. He does not understand my question.

      ‘Why are they doing this?’

      He grasps the meaning of my words and puts down the biscuit.

      ‘They have lost their senses, sir.’

      ‘That is not an answer.’

      ‘I don’t have any others, sir.’

      ‘Have I been unjust to my people?’

      ‘No!’ he exclaims. ‘Never, never in a thousand years will our country have a more enlightened guide or a gentler father than you. We were dusty nomads that a good-for-nothing king treated like a doormat, and then you came and made us a free people that the world envied.’

      ‘Should I imagine, then, that those rockets exploding outside are no more than firecrackers from a party I cannot quite locate?’

      The orderly hunches his neck into his shoulders as if, all at once, he finds himself having to carry all of the traitors’ shame.

      ‘Surely they must have a reason, do you not think?’

      ‘I can’t see what it is, sir.’

      ‘You must have gone home when you had leave. To Benghazi, right where the rebellion started. You went to the café, to the mosque, to the parks. You must have heard people criticising me.’

      ‘People weren’t criticising you in public, Brotherly Guide. Our security services were listening in everywhere. I only heard people say good things about you. In any case I wouldn’t have let anyone show you a lack of respect.’

      ‘My security services were deaf and blind. They failed to see anything coming.’

      Confused, he starts wringing his hands.

      ‘Very well,’ I concede. ‘People say nothing in public. That is normal. But tongues loosen in private. You must have been completely detached from reality if you did not hear, at least once, someone in your family, a cousin or an uncle, saying something bad about me.’

      ‘We all love you deeply in our family.’

      ‘I love my sons deeply. It does not stop me disapproving of them sometimes. I do not dispute that I am loved by your family. But some of your family members must have criticised me for small things, hasty decisions, ordinary mistakes.’

      ‘I’ve never heard anyone in my family challenge anything at all that you’ve done or said, sir.’

      ‘I do not believe you.’

      ‘I swear to you, sir. Nobody in my family criticises you.’

      ‘It’s not possible. The prophet Muhammad himself has his critics.’

      ‘Not you … not in my family anyway.’

      I fold my arms and study him in silence for a long moment.

      I return to the charge.

      ‘Why are people rebelling against me?’

      ‘I don’t know, sir.’

      ‘Are you a complete idiot?’

      ‘I’m just the person who looks after the car park, sir.’

      ‘That does not exempt you from having an opinion.’

      He is sweating now, and short of breath.

      ‘Answer me. Why are people rebelling against me?’

      He is desperately looking for the right words, the way people look for shelter in a bombing raid. His fingers are nearly knotted together and his Adam’s apple is bouncing wildly. He feels that he is caught in a trap and his destiny depends on his response.

      He ventures, ‘Sometimes, when things are too quiet, people get bored, and some of them try to stir things up to make their lives more interesting.’

      ‘By attacking me?’

      ‘They think the only way to grow up is to kill their father.’

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘They challenge his birthright in order to—’

      ‘No, go back to the father … You said “kill their father”. I would like you to develop that idea further.’

      ‘I don’t really know enough to do that.’