Fear of Mirrors by Tariq Ali

Author:Tariq Ali
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

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*Unified Marxist party, strong in Catalonia. It was sympathetic to Trotsky. Its leader, Andres Nin, was assassinated by Stalin’s agents.

Sixteen

To: Professor Vladimir Meyer,

Berlin

From: Sao,

Moscow, 1994

Dear friend,

I have suffered a terrible blow and I want to share the pain with you. None of my other friends will understand, perhaps because none of them are friends like you and I. Before I start, I want you to know that I’ve been thinking of you a great deal for the last few months. I have not forgotten your request, but I have been out of Moscow for most of the time since we last met. Buying and selling. Helping the flow of commodities from one market to the next. Does anything else really matter these days? Please don’t reply to this question. I’m not in the mood.

I wanted to write from Beijing, but your refusal to let me buy you a fax machine made this impossible. Letter writing is so boring these days and such an effort. Only the fax machine has revived this lost art, but your hostility to new technology means that I will fax this to Suzanne in Paris and she will post it to you.

When I return to Berlin, I will give you a detailed account of my adventures in Mongolia and how the North Koreans wanted to pay me in bags of heroin … Incidentally Pyongyang, too, is full of prostitutes. I wanted to try one just to see whether she would commence her activities by citing some ‘on-the-spot guidance’ she had received from the Great and Beloved Leader Kim-il-Sung or his son and heir, the ‘Dear Leader’, Kim Jong Il, but you will be pleased to hear that I resisted the temptation.

And now for my story. I returned to Moscow a month ago. Three days after my arrival, I went to the old flat which I had shared with my friends. We had never relinquished this flat, partly out of sentimentality and partly because it was still used to house visitors from other towns. The lift wasn’t working. I climbed up five flights of stairs. The front door was unlocked. I knew immediately that something was wrong.

I went in and saw their dead bodies on the floor. No blood. No trace of a battle. Two of my oldest and closest friends, with whom I had first started on our business enterprise, had been murdered. Think about it, Vlady. We survived the war. The Americans couldn’t kill us with all their bombs and napalm. Russian gangsters walked in and strangled them. Took them by surprise. Nothing was taken from the flat, not even the dollars hidden under the mattress. Nothing was touched. The killers must have been expected. They were obviously men my friends had traded with. Who were they?

At first I was scared. If them, why not me? I thought of my two children in Paris. My friends, especially you. I wanted to get a taxi to the airport and get the first plane out, leave this sick, dying town forever.

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