I Was a Spy

The regiment's jail was not the harsh kind of prison; torture almost never happened there, and most of the time the prisoners could move about and even go out for hours, and sometimes the jailer let a few of them sleep in their own barracks. I wasn't tortured or mistreated in it either, but there was an instruction from above to be strict with me and not let me leave the jail under any pretext, not even for forced labour with the other prisoners. I had committed a crime that was unforgivable in the regiment commander's eyes: I had insulted a superior rank, Captain Mustafa, whom I cursed on the firing range and threw the "gap marker" at, an iron arrow fixed to the head of an iron rod, after a quarrel in which he tried to humiliate and abuse me. The marker fell on the cab of the Zil-157 truck he climbed into and left in a hurry, fearing things would go further, since I had a rifle on my shoulder and three magazines in my pouch besides the one in the rifle. I took the next truck and we headed to the camp. I had calmed down and regretted what I'd done, knowing the consequences that could send me to Tadmur prison if Captain Mustafa managed to blow it up.

At the camp gate I found the military police waiting for me. They pulled me off the truck and led me to jail on a "detention until further notice" order issued against me by the brigadier, the regiment commander.

Nothing happened in the jail worth stopping over; on the contrary, the stay was more like a pleasant rest, were it not for the foul smell of bodies that hadn't bathed in a long time and, naturally, the smell of socks. But after a few days I got used to it and stopped noticing; it became the natural smell of the jail. What added some pleasure was that we played cards all day, and often until early morning.

I spent nearly seventy days like that, and never felt any need for freedom, since I didn't feel I was in prison. But the number of prisoners dwindled as the days went by, since most of them finished their terms, which ranged from six to forty-five days. So on the seventieth day the last prisoners picked up their blankets and left, and I stayed alone in the cell. Someone had either left or forgotten an old book in a corner of the room. I picked it up; it had no cover, and its first page, the one bearing the book's details, was torn so that only half of it remained. It bore the name of the novel, I Was a Spy, but the author's name was most likely in the missing part. At first I had no wish to read, but in the evening I felt a great emptiness and a heavy boredom, and the silence that had suddenly fallen began to fill me with gloom, and I found my salvation in the book, believing reading would pull me out of this state.

The events revolve around a well-known writer named Ashenden, whom a cunning colonel recruits into British intelligence and asks to travel to Geneva, warning him that in this trade, if he succeeds he will hear no words of appreciation, and if he fails he will get no help, which the writer accepted with pleasure, since it appealed to him, as I discovered. The subject aroused my curiosity, and I turned the page to see what mission awaited him in Geneva, but after turning the page I didn't move on to the next; I jumped nearly twenty pages ahead, because the pages that followed the first had been torn out of the book. It was obvious that the book's owner hadn't brought it into jail for reading but for other purposes to do with hygiene. So I remained ignorant of what Ashenden did later in Geneva.

The next page began with the words: "And Mustapha Pasha is a big, fat man of about forty-five..." Who is Mustapha Pasha? Did Ashenden meet him in Geneva or is he somewhere else now? Questions began to trouble me, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps in an attempt not to give boredom and gloom the chance to creep into me. From the following pages I understood that Mustapha was an Egyptian, perhaps of the ruling family there, and that what brought them together was an elderly English lady who worked as a governess to Egyptian princesses, and that they had been trying to recruit him to work with another intelligence service but hadn't succeeded, then hinted to Ashenden that he should leave, so he went to his hotel room and quickly fell asleep, being very tired. But minutes hadn't passed before someone began knocking on his door without stopping; he got up quickly and opened it to find the hotel's chambermaid, who told him the English lady he had been sitting up with a little while earlier was dying and wanted to tell him something before she died. Ashenden hurried to the old woman's room and found her in bed with the doctor beside her, who told him she had expressed a wish to say something to him. I turned the page to see what the old woman wanted to tell Ashenden, and was shocked again, for I jumped nearly ten pages at once, and so never learned what the old lady said to him, if she said anything, or whether she passed away before saying what she wanted to say.

Ashenden told many other stories whose endings I never learned, and others whose endings I learned without their beginnings. But what gripped me most, perhaps out of sympathy with the character, was the story of the Indian lawyer, considered one of the leaders of the Indian liberation movement calling for the use of arms to free India from English occupation, whom shared interests with the Germans pushed to cooperate with them, and they showered him with money and weapons. He was a great annoyance to the English, for his activities, besides disturbing their peace in India, aimed at obstructing the transport of their troops to the western fronts to reinforce their lines in the First World War. A great reward was posted for his capture in India, so he fled to America, then Switzerland, then Berlin, where he began propaganda to influence the Indian soldiers fighting in the English army and push them to mutiny. According to the novel, Chandra Lal was the most dangerous man to the English in India, and eliminating this source of danger was a priority among the other tasks, which is what intelligence entrusted to Ashenden, who noticed in the written report on the man that he was careful and took no unplanned steps, and that it was hard to find gaps through which to get to him.

I sympathised with Chandra Lal; he was, after all, a patriotic rebel against the occupier of his country. I paid no heed to the charge brought against him by British intelligence that he was a German spy; I saw in it only an attempt to smear this rebel who had cooperated with the Germans because that served his ultimate goal of freeing his country from English occupation. And I was glad that Ashenden found no thread to lead him to Chandra Lal in the report the colonel gave him. But afterward the colonel presented a dozen love letters Chandra Lal had exchanged with an Italian Spanish-style dancer named Julia Lazzari, who had danced in Berlin where Chandra Lal met her, and who was expelled from there and then arrested and, as a form of blackmail, accused of being a German spy so that she would yield to British intelligence's blackmail and cooperate with them to catch Chandra Lal. Julia refuses at first, but under pressure decides to cooperate despite her intense love for Chandra Lal.

Chandra Lal's story gripped me, perhaps because of my sympathy for him, and I read hoping that the owner of this unknown book hadn't gone to the toilet before the end of the story. Ashenden met Julia, Chandra Lal's beloved, took her over from French intelligence, and set off with her for the town of Thonon on the French side of Lake Geneva. Ashenden tried to build a friendly relationship with Julia so as to influence her more, and gave her freedom to move about the town, and went to a house he had rented there, and in his absence Julia tried to escape to Lausanne in Switzerland, the city facing French Thonon on the shore of the same lake, but the French police assigned to watch her forced her back to the hotel. Chandra Lal was in Holland at that time, so the colonel had earlier forced her to write him a letter telling him she hadn't been able to get a visa to Holland and suggesting he come to Lausanne, where he would be safe since Switzerland was neutral, which Chandra Lal gladly agreed to, and he came to Lausanne to await his beloved. And now, with Ashenden, the moment had come to carry out the final stage of luring the loving rebel to Thonon, where English intelligence waited for him on hot coals. Ashenden forced Julia to write a letter telling Chandra Lal she hadn't managed to get a visa to Switzerland and asking him to come to Thonon, assuring him it was a safe town with no danger in it. The letter was sent, and Julia received the reply that Chandra Lal refused the suggestion because it was a very dangerous gamble. Julia breathed a sigh of relief, and I did too, honestly, because I did not want this rebel to fall into the hands of British intelligence or anyone else. I imagined the amount of humiliation he'd be subjected to if that happened, the humiliation intelligence would make him taste, ending all his hopes and perhaps his life. From Ashenden's words about him, his contempt was clear, even for his outward appearance and thus for Indians in general, and we can imagine what would befall him once he fell into the clutches of British intelligence. I pitied him, to the point of the despair that would strike him when he learned that his beloved, whom he adored, had been a partner in the plot to lure him and had been the bait for it. But thank heaven, Chandra Lal turned out to be too clever to be lured this way.

But Ashenden was not to be glad, like me and Julia, that Chandra Lal hadn't fallen into the trap, and he insisted she write him a new letter confirming that the place was safe and that she would never have told him to come if she had any doubt that there was danger for him. Julia refused at first but gave in at last, the letter was sent, and anxiety took hold of Julia and of me again. But Julia's anxiety had one source, that Chandra Lal would believe her letter and come. Mine had two: the first the same as Julia's, the second that the owner of the book might have gone to relieve himself before I learned Chandra Lal's fate, and on that hope I went on reading. Julia said she was ready to offer herself to the boatman if he helped her reach Lausanne, but the boatman assured her that was impossible. Then Julia wrote Chandra Lal a letter asking him not to trust her letters and not to do what she asked in any circumstances. Once again I breathed a sigh of relief that Julia had found a way to tell Chandra Lal not to react to her letters, even if she had given herself to that boatman, for Chandra Lal's life was worth that price, especially since Julia, to tell the truth, was not hard to get, and Chandra Lal had met her in a nightclub, and there are hints in the novel that she was a half-prostitute. In any case, when this letter reached Chandra Lal the full stop would be placed at the end of the line, and the danger to the Indian rebel's life would be over.

But our joy, mine and Julia's, was premature, for the cases held by intelligence services don't end so simply. The boatman who worked between the two countries was, as it later emerged, an agent of the French security service, and the letter soon reached Ashenden, who went and surprised Julia by having obtained it, and asked her to write another letter asking her lover to come, but Julia flatly and fiercely refused despite the threat in his words. Ashenden gave her five minutes to change her mind, but she refused and showered him with a torrent of foul curses. Ashenden left, assuring Julia he would return. He went down to the lobby and wrote a note that he asked the shoeshine boy there to take to the police station, then went up and sat in the room of the sick, half-collapsed Julia, who lay in bed and paid no attention to his entering. A little later two French policemen arrived, sent for to take her and hand her over again to British intelligence, where she would be tried for espionage and spend the rest of her life in prison, and Julia collapsed and gave in to Ashenden's demands. Despite his sympathy for her and his wish that she would hold out in her refusal, the intelligence man in Ashenden defeated the human being inside him and made him dictate to her the second letter to lure Chandra Lal. This time Ashenden made Julia address Chandra Lal in phrases that stabbed at his manhood and courage, which stirs the lover and the rebel alike, so he began the letter with: "I did not know I had loved a craven coward..." then had her appeal to him that she was ill and doubt his love, and used everything that could be used to provoke Chandra Lal's feelings.

Ashenden went to the harbour quay, sure that Chandra Lal could not withstand these provocations of his feelings, but Chandra Lal did not come, as the agent had expected, though I didn't allow myself a sigh of relief, for despair had not seeped into Ashenden, who resorted to another trick and sent the boatman as a messenger to Lausanne to convey to him Julia's distress and anger at his lack of response, and that she was packing her bags to leave. That was on page 182, and over the next two pages I expected the story to reach its conclusion, either with Ashenden surrendering before the Indian rebel's steadfastness or with Chandra Lal falling into the trap. But when my eyes fell on the next page number, 221, I realised the owner of the book had made use of the pages between them, and I cursed him with foul words, threw the book at the wall and kicked the door of the room, and that night I couldn't sleep; I spent it tossing on the blanket from my left side to my right, grinding out cigarettes, thinking about the fate that befell Chandra Lal: had he fallen into the trap, or discovered the plot through his revolutionary instinct, through the revolutionary vigilance a rebel must have? And I felt a great hatred for that scoundrel, the owner of the book. Had he found nothing but the pages of a novel to please his backside? Our tents and barracks were full of copies of The Arab Soldier and The People's Army, stuffed with articles, stories and poems that nobody reads. I understand his fear of accidentally using a page bearing the commander's picture or some slogan, but he could have chosen pages free of pictures and slogans. Many do that; the trenches scattered around the camp's edges are full of such scraps, used by soldiers during ambushes or guard duty. In any case, there's no use in this talk now; the owner of the book used the pages and that was that.

After I calmed down a little I went back to reading, hoping some detail in the remaining pages might hint at Chandra Lal's fate, but found no such detail, and because I cared for nothing else, the content of the remaining pages didn't stay in my mind. Two or three days before leaving jail I saw Chandra Lal in a dream that was a nightmare: I saw him crammed into a Peugeot 404, British intelligence agents around him slapping him on the back of the neck as he tried to protect himself; my imagination could not summon any other image of intelligence. I woke from sleep breathing heavy air, drank water from the canteen I had with me, and wished Chandra Lal's story would not end as I had seen it in the dream.

The first thing I did on leaving jail was look for a novel titled I Was a Spy, and I didn't find it, nor did I find anyone who had heard of such a title. Days passed, though my thinking about Chandra Lal's fate did not, though less than before. After finishing my military service I travelled to the Soviet Union with a great desire to know the end of the story, for Chandra Lal had kept his place in my mind, awake and asleep. At least every two months my subconscious would ask me about his fate or bring him into my dreams; it seems the subconscious I own is more curious than I am. I asked about a book titled I Was a Spy in Russian and found no book with that title; perhaps if I had known the author's name it would have been easier. There were hints about the author's nationality, English, since Ashenden was a British agent, but English writers are many and I'm no expert in English literature to guess. I met Indian students and asked them if they knew the name Chandra Lal, and everyone denied knowing it; I asked if they had any information about an Indian rebel who loved a dancer named Julia Lazzari or something similar, and everyone denied knowing that. I also searched the encyclopaedia for the name and didn't find it, and searched the national library for the book's title and found no matching one, until I despaired of reaching a result and left Chandra Lal to his unknown fate, and nothing of him remained in my mind but a distant memory that teased my curiosity from one year to the next.

Forty years or a little more later, as I wandered among the shelves of the Jarir bookstore in Doha, a title flashed before my eyes like lightning: my God, there among the books was a book titled I Was a Spy. I picked it up at once and looked at the author's name, and it was the well-known English writer Somerset Maugham. I should have guessed; Somerset Maugham had been an agent in British intelligence, and the information in the book could only have been delved into by an agent who saw it up close, and he himself is the novel's hero, Ashenden. As soon as I found the book, before buying it, I sat at a table set aside there for reading and began looking for the page that would tell me the fate of the Indian rebel Chandra Lal. I found what satisfied my curiosity about his fate on page 185, where the French police told Ashenden that Chandra Lal had come and that the policemen had arrested him in the waiting room, where Ashenden went at once and found a crowd of people around Chandra Lal, "lying on the ground, his eyes bulging, foam gathered on his lips, his body rigid and horribly contorted. He was dead." It turned out that when Chandra Lal felt he'd fallen into the trap, he took poison from a flask of potassium cyanide he always carried in his hand, and Julia was released. I felt sad at the fate of the Indian rebel, but I was glad he had denied British intelligence the chance to humiliate him and carry out the death sentence against him, and Ashenden felt glad at this outcome too, for despite working to lure Chandra Lal, he sympathised with him inwardly. As for Julia, she nearly danced for joy when she learned he had managed to take the poison, and it turned out she had known he always carried poison, but had never revealed this secret to British intelligence so as to let him die with dignity. And so the Indian rebel's story ended in my mind, and my curiosity no longer pressed me to know the ending. I had imagined every ending except the one that came in the novel; I expected he'd be killed or shoot himself, but I never expected the ending by poison.

And finally, once I knew the author, I searched among his books for the title and found that in English and the rest of the world's languages it is called Ashenden, or the British Agent, except in Arabic, where it was called I Was a Spy. Truly, Arab translators and Arab publishers have their worn-out traditions, despite the appeal of the title they chose for the novel.