My Friends, page 34
I reach Shepherd’s Bush Green. My phone makes a sound. A message from Hosam. A photograph of the inside of the Gare du Nord train station: fuzzy, taken quickly, flushed with green and blue light. One word attached: “Arrived.” I take a similar one of the green, and the sky above is filled with the night’s sulfur light, the trees naked against it. But I do not send it. I keep walking home. I am suddenly overcome with the desire to be home, to walk into my flat, take off my coat, and sit in the warm familiar atmosphere. And I know, even before getting there, that it will be like a book closing, an undramatic end, and that I will sleep tonight and wake up and take my Sunday, my day of rest, like the gift that it is. I slide the key into my door. The place is unchanged. We left in a hurry. I collect the cups of coffee Hosam and I drank and place them in the kitchen sink. I fold away his blanket. And before I take off my coat I make my bed.
To my late friend and publisher Susan Kamil, who believed in this book well before a word of it was written and whose memory helped me to write it.
Acknowledgments
This is a book that I have been thinking about ever since the Arab Spring of 2011. Or so I thought, until I recently discovered a note, written on the back of an envelope from 2003, where I had scribbled an idea for a novel about friends in exile and the emotional country that certain deep friendships can come to resemble. I am indebted to all my friendships, the abiding ones and those which, for whatever reason, ran their course. If friendship is an education, it is, at least in this one regard, similar to literature.
Thank you to Gini Alhadeff, David Austen, Devorah Baum, Rachel Eisendrath, Keren James, Patrick Morris, Kevin Conroy Scott, Mungo Soggot, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, and Paul van Zyl. Thank you to Bashir Abu Manneh, Ibrahim Al Moallem, Ibrahim Al Sharief, Josh Appignanesi, Chloe Aridjis, Roser Ballesteros, John Banerjee, Linda Bell, Andrea Canobbio, Peter Connor, Sonali Deraniyagala, Jacobo, Diego, Carla, and Sofia Gil De Biedma, Mary Doyle, Mohamed Elewa, Lara Farah, Grazia Giua, David Gothard, Johanna Hamilton, Rebecca and Alistair Hicks, Hazem Khater, Nathalie Latham, Safwan Masri, Jaballa, Tarik, Mariam, and Mohamed Matar, Andrea Milanese, Mariana Montoya, Anna Nadotti, Kate Norbury, Sondra Phifer, Adam Phillips, Judith Ravenscroft, Steven Rhodes, Philippe Sands, Natalia Schiffrin, Robyn and Linda Scott, Kamila Shamsie, Fiona Shaw, David, Mary, and Kathleen Smith, Jabu, Teddy, and Louis Soggot Scott, Emile Sun, Rupert Thomson, Carlota and Martina Vásquez, Layla, Theo, and Max van Zyl, and Gregory Warren Wilson.
I am hugely grateful to Hakim Naas and Jalal Shammam for all that they shared with me. Thanks also to Leslie Pariseau and Felix Bazalgette for their good hunting and help with research.
I am eternally grateful to my late friend and publisher, Susan Kamil. My thanks to my excellent editors, Andy Ward, Mary Mount, and Isabel Wall, for their intelligence, generosity, and good humor. Thanks to the whole team at Penguin Random House, in London and New York, for their commitment and passion. And thanks to the exceptional close eye of my copy editor, Donna Poppy.
Heartfelt gratitude to my agents, Georgia Garrett and Zoë Pagnamenta, and their teams, for always being there for me.
And, although it is perhaps odd to thank a city, this book owes much to London, as do I.
Immeasurable thanks to Moza for what can never be counted, and Ziad for being my first and oldest friend.
This book, as everything I have written and will ever write, owes so much to my heart’s companion, my most intimate friend, Diana.
BY HISHAM MATAR
In the Country of Men
Anatomy of a Disappearance
The Return
A Month in Siena
My Friends
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in New York City to Libyan parents, Hisham Matar spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his adult life in London. His debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won numerous international prizes, including the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, a Commonwealth First Book Award, the Premio Flaiano, and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, published in 2011, was named one of the best books of the year by The Guardian and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in London and New York.
To inquire about booking Hisham Matar for a speaking engagement, please contact the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com.
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Hisham Matar, My Friends
