June Rain (31 page)

His name was Samih al-Rami and his parents’ house with its adjoining bakery was in the Semaani family neighbourhood, five hundred metres from the first public senior school for girls, which the green line passed straight through. Neither party was ever able to stay there and set up barricades.

In the beginning he didn’t show any signs of anxiety, as if he depended upon some hidden power that protected him and made him immune to the general danger around him. The Semaani family members themselves, in particular the women, from whom nothing was kept hidden, used to forget he was an Al-Rami. When tensions flared up, the women cursed his family as they rolled out the dough and never expected any response from him. The only thing that bothered him was the voices that called to him from behind the barricades, where the armed men from his family were. Some of the voices, which he recognised, sometimes asked him to leave the Semaani neighbourhood and come to them.

‘They’ll kill you, Samih. They have no conscience and no religion!’

He asked Father Boulos to inform the men of his family over on the other side that he was doing fine, not to worry about him. And he asked him specifically to ask them to please stop calling to him so as not to draw their eyes to him. They stopped asking for him out loud, but there were still people in the nearby Rami family barricades who would sneak forward a few metres, hoping to catch a glimpse of Samih leaving his bakery or entering it and make sure that he was still alive and well.

Not much about Samih’s daily life changed, except for the Sunday stroll, that short strut down to the main road which was no longer the stage for bicyclists with their strange hats and multi-coloured shirts, and which had been abandoned by the young girls and the American and German cars. At the bakery, he stuck closer to the oven than before. He wasn’t just trying to lean away and avoid responding to the women’s talk and what they said about others anymore. Now he shoved his head as far inside the oven as possible so as not to hear the women’s talk at all – especially when news spread of someone from the Semaani family having been killed or even worse, if one of their unarmed young men fell victim to an ambush set for him outside the town. The women didn’t spare anyone from their tongues. Their chatter transformed into prayers for their demise. As a general rule, he didn’t say anything to them, even if one of them looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Yesterday your cousins robbed Elias al-Rami’s house and then blew it up with dynamite . . . God damn all their houses!’

Samih would raise his eyes to the heavens in submission, declaring he had nothing to do with whatever was happening. Samih was an only child, his father had been an only child and his grandfather, too. There weren’t any direct relatives to speak of, no paternal cousins from his father’s brother from the Rami family, no sturdy family tree to be drawn up for them. They themselves knew nothing more than the fact that they were from the Rami family. And they didn’t belong to some junior branch. Some even said they hailed directly from the original Rami family.

Samih used to avoid hearing and avoid speaking even more. If he opened his mouth at all, it was to say something about the bread or the dough or to count the loaves which were the bakery’s entitlement – loaves he’d take out of each portion of his clients’ bread dough to sell – because Samih always counted out loud, as if he couldn’t keep track of the numbers unless he called them out. Or maybe he counted noisily in order to make it clear in front of witnesses that he was taking his fair share and not a single loaf more.

It’s possible Samih was convinced that his safety depended on watching his tongue. If he didn’t speak, he’d be safe. That was the idea of ‘the tepid tongue’ – the importance of words and the harmful nature of words that his father taught him. And perhaps his father’s other advice to him not to listen to the women was related to this idea of the neutrality of speech more than it had to do with being careful that the bread or the trays of
kibbeh
on Sundays didn’t burn inside the oven.

The war broke out and he began watching his movements. He went from the bakery to the house to the shop – he couldn’t do without the shop – reduced his movements to the nearest triangle and nowhere else. And he only went to the shop, which was a bit far and was exposed to people, at dusk, thus limiting the possibility of danger. The shopkeeper was a widow and sometimes he traded bread with her for eggs or goat’s milk yogurt, which he liked to drink cold. He counted the loaves in a loud voice and she counted the eggs as loud as she could, too. Sometimes he’d make a stop at the church.

Samih longed to go to church, but he wasn’t very consistent with his religious duties, especially because the bakery kept him from Sunday mass. He yearned to go to church, and would go inside for a split second, dip his fingers in the holy water, kneel alongside the wall beside the icon of the Virgin with a dark complexion and Indian features, which the donor who funded the building of the church and was an émigré to Mexico insisted be placed in a special spot inside the church. Samih quickly muttered his prayers and got up to leave. He hardly saw a single man during his day, only those who walked past. If he was afraid of anything, he was afraid of the women. And so he concluded that danger would come to him from the women.

But death came to him from the men.

The day one of their well-educated young men was killed, they came.

There were three of them who came along with the victim’s uncle.

They waited outside while the uncle came to the door.

He stood in the doorway, blocking the light from coming in. He had very broad shoulders.

His nephew had been in the Baccalaureate II class at the Frères School, preparing to take the government exams that had been postponed due to the fighting. He spent all his time studying.

‘They killed him with a book in his hands,’ his mother said, mourning him.

Maybe she meant to say figuratively that her son was a student unversed in the language of guns, or maybe he really had been reviewing his lessons out on the balcony where he thought bullets from the other side couldn’t possibly reach him. It seemed as if the Rami family had slipped into places where they could now make out back courtyards and houses whose inhabitants, believing they were out of their bullets’ reach, moved about freely. They would take advantage of them and hunt one of them down. Afterwards, the residents would avoid that exposed location or they’d build a makeshift wall to protect themselves from bullets coming from the opposing barricades.

The uncle was broad-shouldered and had rough features. He hadn’t sent his children to school. His brother had done that, and this had been his reward. He rushed to his brother’s house the moment he heard the news, leaned over his shoulder and said, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to educate your children?’

That was all he said.

As if his nephew’s education had caused his death.

In any case, the sun wouldn’t set on his murder. He swore on his mother’s soul. That’s what the uncle with the rough features said to himself. He grabbed one of his sons – one was plenty – and two fanatic relatives.

They knew about Samih’s presence in the neighbourhood. Everyone in the Semaani family knew of Samih’s presence, but they ignored him, saving him up for a rainy day.

They didn’t start with him. That would be too easy a prey, perhaps. They picked up their rifles, got in a car and hid around the bend. But soon they turned back.

It was more than likely that they didn’t get the chance they wanted. Maybe they waited and waited and no one passed by. They headed for the bakery.

The man stood in the doorway. Rarely did another man besides Samih come to the bakery. Samih didn’t look up. Maybe he thought the man was calling for his wife or some female relative for some urgent matter.

The man didn’t speak and didn’t come inside. He stood in the doorway, blocking the light from outside.

The news of the boy’s murder out on his balcony as he studied his lessons hadn’t spread yet, which is why the women didn’t pay much attention to the fact of the man standing in the doorway.

They kept on rolling and stretching the dough and dusting it with flour, but they stopped talking as a cautionary measure.

The man’s right hand was behind his back. He lowered it and the revolver appeared. It was cocked and ready as it shone in the bright sunlight.

He raised his arm to aim, mumbled some incomprehensible words, and shot three bullets. All three hit Samih, who was not paying attention to what was going on in the bakery doorway. He probably didn’t want to know what was going on.

He was waiting for the right moment to remove the loaf of bread from the oven, waiting for the onset of the burning smell and to see the little black spots appear.

The man said something out loud that the women didn’t hear. The sound of the three bullets exploding into the little bakery deafened their ears.

The man tucked his gun back inside his belt and left – he and his relatives, too. Daylight streamed back into the bakery.

Samih didn’t fall to the ground.

He fell into the chair he always kept beside him.

He sat down with a slight look of rebuke in his eyes, looking at the women, one by one.

Chapter 18

‘Pardon me for receiving you dressed this way. I’ve lived alone many, many years and rarely leave the house. The woman who cleans for me hasn’t come this week. I don’t know where she disappeared to or what I’ll do without her . . . Come closer, come closer, don’t be shy. I’ll tell you what you what to know. I don’t know who led you to me, but I remember you from a long time ago when you were just a small child running about the quarter and Kamileh would yell to you: “Eliyya!”

‘And you wouldn’t turn to look. I can still hear the sound of her calling to you. “Eliyyaaaaaaa . . .”

‘I’ll sit here, right here in my spot on the red sofa. I like the feel of the velvet even though it makes you feel even hotter in the summer.

‘Where did you get that picture? I know Davidian. He used to have a studio in the square. And I also know another photo­grapher not many people know named Jorge al-Indari who especially liked to take pictures of women. He took the nicest portrait of me. I still have it. But he died in vague circumstances. Yes, that’s your father. That’s Yusef al-Kfoury. He had a sweet face. I remember how he’d always say to me whenever he saw me, “How are you, son of Al-Aasi?” He was the only one who called me “son of Al-Aasi”.

‘Look. Through that window. Come closer to me. Closer. What do you see there? The grapevine and the rusty roof tiles, right? That’s your house. Maybe you’re not used to seeing it from here. And those are your mother Kamileh’s flowers and her grapevines. People think our house is far from Yusef al-Kfoury’s house, but they’re wrong. Look – it’s less than a stone’s throw away. You are our closest neighbours. But nowadays if we had to go and see you for some reason, we’d have to go all the way down the main road and up around the church. A long way, and frankly I don’t like walking that way. All day long and into the middle of the night during the warm summer nights there are kids everywhere, and they’re rude kids, no respect for anyone. Their mothers are even worse than they are, sitting on low chairs in front of the houses and the shops with their legs and jaws wide open, waiting for anyone to pass so they can say something negative about them. They mock me saying I walk on my tiptoes, but I don’t pay any attention. That’s the way I walk and I’m not going to change it just to please them.

‘In the old days, to go up there we used to cut through the garden between us on foot – along a dirt road at the edge of the garden. It didn’t bother anyone and saved us a lot of time. And actually sometimes on the way up or the way down the path some of us would pick a tangerine or a loquat because we knew that at the end of the season everything would die on the branches in that vacant garden. Then one of those bratty kids told the property owners on us. They were old-time émigrés to Mexico. He wrote them a letter making it sound as if their land here had become a free for all. So these people, who were very rich – people called them the cotton kings – sent after one of their relatives asking him to put up a fence around the garden to stop us from using it as a shortcut.

‘Your mother knows the story. Ask her. At any rate, if anyone made a sound out on your balcony, we could hear it over here perfectly clearly. I used to hear you playing your accordion. You liked French tunes a lot, I remember. If someone as much as coughed on the balcony, we’d hear it. On quiet nights we could hear conversations from there, even if it was just Kamileh talking about everyday matters with Muntaha, her friend ever since the day she moved into the quarter. Sound travels at night. Your balcony was a popular destination for the neighbours. I was happy in the past when I saw them return to your house to congratulate your mother on your arrival. Kamileh wasn’t always such a recluse. Circumstances changed over time, though, and in recent years she’s stayed by herself the majority of the time. She prunes her flowers, waters them, talks to them. Your mother gets mad at the flowers if they droop or start to wilt. She chides them and sometimes she sings to them. We can hear her voice from here singing her
mawwaals
. We look forward to hearing her sad voice nearly every night.

‘I used to be amazed by her beautiful voice, which was powerful despite her age. But then we found out one day, not too long ago, that she had recorded her voice on a tape. Did you know that? She recorded her voice so she could play it back. All along we’d been listening those nights to the tape recorder. Kamileh acquired a tape recorder before we did, but we bought the radio before you and nearly everyone else in the neighbourhood. You hadn’t been born yet when I started sitting here. My mother used to bring me a cup of coffee every morning to this little table because she knew I’d come here as soon as I got up, to this place where I spent most of my time listening to the radio and smoking cigarettes.