Little Mountain (10 page)

— Who are you?

Talal ran, Nazeeh ran. They took his rifle.

— Who are you?

His voice was trembling. He spoke without having to say a single word.

— Who are you?

— A shepherd.

— And the rifle? -I’m lost.

Nazeeh shouted, a prisoner, hold him fast. Tie him up with rope. He stepped forward and hit him in the face. Welcome Mr. Fascist, the message has been received. Don’t hit him, Salem yelled. Talal came running, grabbed him by the arm, come on.

I’m a student, he said. We’re the new shift. They left me on the mountain. Don’t kill me.

He was trembling, as prisoners do, Nazeeh was trembling, as conquerors do, and Talal trembled. I held the prisoner by the right arm and Talal held him. We took him to the tent, gave him a glass of hot tea. What happened to the four prisoners, Talal asked me. Nabeel came, we should kill him on the spot. Sons of bitches. Fascists!

The prisoner quaked. We’re not going to kill him, said Talal. He’s poor, just like us.

— Why is he fighting on their side?

— When will the poor fight their own wars?

—There’s no war that’s special to the poor. Buildings must tear down buildings, and shacks buildings and cities cities. And out of the destruction will rise the poor’s special war.

Talal sat beside the prisoner and started talking. He told him about the South, about the poor in Nabaa, about Tall al-Zaatar.
^*
He told him that Amman had been ablaze, that the orange hadn’t died. He told him the story of the prison and of our friendship with the four prisoners. The prisoner was convinced. Prisoners are always easily convinced.

— But why are you fighting with them?

Don’t kill me, I beg you, the prisoner says. We won’t kill you, Talal says. But talk. I’m convinced, the prisoner says. Always, prisoners are convinced easily. And prisoners die easily.

The last option is me, I told her. The last option
is
death, says Nazeeh, walking behind the white mule which stumbles as it makes its way across the rugged hills. And Talal sleeps quietly, swaying on the mules back. One bullet in the head. Drops of blood fall, trickling onto the mules white belly. The last option is death, he said to her. The four prisoners, they’re still dreaming of rifles. And the mountain trembles under our footfalls. The last option is death, I tell her. The loaf goes dry in my hand. Talal sleeps, surrendering like a real king. And Sanneen doesn’t answer.

*
Beshara al-Khoury was the first president of independent Lebanon. His statue, on one of Beirut’s main arteries, was a major point of convergence for demonstrators during the worker and student protest era of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

*
Serhan was the young Palestinian who assassinated United States senator Robert Kennedy in 1968.

**
Abu Ahmed and Imm Ahmed, literally father and mother of Ahmed; it is common in many parts of the Arab world to refer to people in this way, and even childless or sonless married men and women may be given such a
laqab —
agnomen or nickname —as a sign of respect.

Hajjeh is the feminine of
haajj,
i.e., someone who has accomplished the required Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Such people are often credited with
baraka,
a special sort of blessing, a favorable influence or touch to which children should be exposed if possible, especially if they have experienced some misfortune, illness, or disability. The term is often used to precede a name in deference to a person’s age or perceived wisdom even if the pilgrimage has not actually been undertaken.

*
Any of a variety of long flowing robes worn throughout the Middle East by men or women. Although originally used to designate the long, woolen cloaklike wrap worn especially in the desert where the nights are cold, it has become a generic term for any kind of floor-length, loose garment.

*
Thyme. In Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, it is dried and crushed then mixed with other herbs and spices, such as sumac, sesame seed, salt, and cumin, and is eaten in a paste made from adding olive oil to the mixture. It is widely used as a breakfast or dinner condiment with bread and tea.

**
Kaak,
singular
kaaka,
is a generic term used for a variety of slightly sweet or savory, always dry, baked goods in the shape of a bracelet, similar to pretzels.

*
That is, there is no God but God, part of the
shahada,
the Muslim creed. Often used as an incantation to ward off evil in circumstances of misfortune or to express jubilation.

*
Because a loaf of Lebanese bread is completely flat and round, it is possible to cover one’s face with it.

*
A corruption of company, the word used by the native Palestinians to designate the early Zionist settlements. The small colonies were assimilated to some kind of compound which might have belonged to a company.

**
Also known as the Army of Deliverance
(jaysh al-inqādh),
it was the ill-fitted, poorly trained, army of Arab volunteers formed in 1948 in the last-minute pan-Arab response to what was becoming the inexorable ascendancy of the Zionists in Palestine. It was the first pan-Arab effort to face the Zionist challenge and is a subject of both sadness and derision.

*
A village or town headman or mayor.

*
The former was a run-down area for poor migrant workers who constituted Beirut’s lumpen-proletariat in the “boom’’ years of the ’60s and ’70s; it was situated on the outskirts of what is now East Beirut, not far from Qarantina and Maslakh. Tall al-Zaatar was a Palestinian refugee camp, also in an outlying area of East Beirut, which was besieged for months in the first year of the war in Lebanon; it finally fell in a fierce battle in the summer of 1976.

The woman drops down from the ceiling. My eyes cling to the feet. A woman dangling from the ceiling. I no longer understand anything. Really, I no longer understand a thing. I’ve been afraid of the ceiling for years. The ceiling is low. Buildings are high and ceilings are low. I used to tell my wife I was afraid of low ceilings. But she’s a modern woman; she likes modern buildings and won’t live in the village. And what will happen to our children, I tell her. Nothing, she answers. They’ll live in nice modern houses, not like this house, mangy as your bald patch. But they’ll live in even more run-down houses and become like rats. A modern woman is right. And I too am a modern man and am right. I bought the car and used to drive it the way other men do, my wife by my side and the children, looking like domesticated animals, in the back. And then we all like modern things. Beyond that, I don’t know. But the woman’s dangling from the ceiling as if she were falling. No, she’s not falling. I’m standing still, I can hear voices, I’m trying to make out the meanings of the words. But I can’t. Yet, we should understand things precisely. I no longer understand this “precisely” in spite of the fact that I’m a law-and-order man and all for the police. Crazy Hani, what’s he doing now in the grave? At least, he’s not asking questions and his eyes don’t wander off when he’s talking. His eyes were remote as two drops of water. The physics teacher always talked about the drop of water and I never understood what he meant until I looked at this man’s eyes. Two, circular, depthless drops of water. He would disappear into his eyes when he talked and stay there, transformed into two drops of water, and curse the police and the state. I’d stand beside him and say nothing. What would I say? There’s no police now, Hani’s dead and the situation isn’t any better. And this woman’s dangling from the ceiling. Her leg is white and her thigh is white. No, not white. Something like white. And her foot’s as big as a man stuck to the wall. I go up to the wall and press my body to it. But the man is moving, he’s shaking. The whole room’s shaking. My hand is shaking and the white liquid spilling onto the ground. I put a bit of water in my mouth but don’t swallow; I hold it, letting my right cheek swell. I go up to the chair and try to lean against it. But the shadows, the shadows are swaying as if we were inside a city made of thick cardboard. Colors dark and things receding. My hand drops but I try. I’m really trying. I stand in front of the woman who looks like a thick rope. I extend my hand toward the rope. I hear a scream, step back a little. I brace my back against the wall. The wall shakes. I feel the wall is about to fall on my face, it can’t stand upright. I see the cupboard and smile. You can’t but smile when you see the cupboard. My aunt loved that cupboard. When she died, the first thing I did was to go to the cupboard and weep in front of its doors. What can a woman do? A woman who spent her life in her brother’s house, sweeping, washing dishes, and feeling like an outsider. She used to cry. She’d tell me about the young suitor whom my father rejected because he was crazy and didn’t love her. I know the truth, my aunt would say. He was a drunkard, played around with chicks, and then got drunk out of his mind. Your father was always getting drunk. When the suitor visited him to ask for my hand in marriage, he was drunk, and he advised him not to marry me because I’m ugly. When the man insisted, my brother cursed him and told him not to marry because marriage is a calamity and threw him out of the house. And then he came to me, told me, apologized and started to cry. I said nothing. My aunt would cry and look at the cupboard. The best thing’s the cupboard. It doesn’t feel anything, she’d hit it, my aunt would hit the cupboard violently, but it wouldn’t cry because it didn’t feel anything. My aunt would cry. I want to become a cupboard. I’d sit beside her and cry. Then I thought of becoming a cupboard. The woman dangling from the ceiling contorts herself like a circus woman. I met my wife many years ago. A million years ago. When I got married, I told my father that the first woman resembles the last. He laughed then looked at his wife; she smiled. It was the first time I felt that my mother was the wife of this loathsome man. They fool around in bed together, then he beats her while making love to her to heighten his pleasure. I used to think that I couldn’t lie next to a woman on the same bed without making love to her the whole night long. How could I fall asleep while a woman, a complete woman slept beside me. My eyelids wouldn’t so much as blink when I used to put a picture of a naked woman next to me in bed. I’d stay wide awake, me and the picture and other things. Then I’d get out of bed, fold the picture carefully, put it inside the book and sleep. But now, a million years later, I sleep with her beside me without folding her away or putting her into a book. Of course, I don’t know. My father’s laugh, and his glance at his wife, are still in rny mind. I know nothing about women save the last woman who’s called my wife and who loves me the way she loves cake. As for the first woman, and the second and the third, they’re still in the magazines that I started to buy on the sly and looked at or read at the office. Until a colleague caught me. He stole the magazine from my drawer and went around to the secretaries with it. I was so embarrassed my bald patch blushed. I felt my head ablaze with blood. From that day on, I became shy of the secretaries and their impertinent looks and laughs. As for the men, they would whisper among themselves.

The glass was swaying in my hand as if it wanted to fall. The white liquid had a pungent smell and darkness was falling slowly. That’s the way darkness comes. You think it’s coming down slow, then suddenly without you feeling a thing you fall into darkness and turn on the lights. But in these black days, there’s neither electricity nor anyone who turns lights on for that matter. Everything was quivering. Even the stars are only seen quivering in this cursed city called Beirut. The heat is stifling. The sound of gunfire coming over distantly. How can they fight in such heat? How can they not just sleep on top of the sandbags? It’s impossible. The noise heats the air even further. And of course, the dust from the shells fills the air with clouds. So it’s raining in summer. Yesterday there was rain. Hot air with rain. Like in miracles. The sky’s sweating, my wife said, thinking she was being witty. But it’s God’s wrath. How can they? I don’t know. These new shells that howl like wolves. But best of all is this yarn about Vietnam. They want a new Vietnam! There’ll only be wars afterward. War means Vietnam and to have Vietnam you need a war. And Hani is content. I don’t understand this man. Poor thing, he died. My wife cried, as all women do, when he died. But me, I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry over that man. Then they told me he died by mistake. No, I figured as much. They said he was out getting supplies when this shell came and killed him. That’s a mistake in my view. He shouldn’t have been getting supplies. Even in war, we don’t know how to arrange death. But he held the stick by the end. He’d say: you can’t hold a stick by the middle. Anyone who holds a stick by the middle can’t fight. If you held the stick by the middle … here, his face would go red as a tomato and his eyes would wander off, and you discovered that this man had turned into two drops of water … and the enemy attacked, how would you fight? The stick would then be against you. You’d have to put the stick up your arse and surrender or get killed. He went and held it by the end, but he died. He, too, died. Whichever way we hold the stick we’re going to die. That is the wisdom I have arrived at. And then, there are things one can’t hold by the end. How do you make love to a woman? You’ve got to hold her by the middle, to hold her tight, then you do it to her. The middle is sex and sex is life. So where’s the wrong and where’s the right and where’s life?

The voices were growing louder and there was the shuffle of feet and of the wooden clogs that have become the fashion these days. Wooden clogs suit women. But people forget. They forget everything and think only of bread. I, too, forget but the bread doesn’t forget a thing. There’s bread in the streets. I don’t know why I dreamed and why I did that. I woke up in the morning, smiling. We’d been sleeping in a shelter crammed with people and smells. The women’s voices buzzed all night as if we’d been condemned to listen without being able to object. The loaves, white as nurses’ coats, were piled on the pavements. My daughter and I stood amid thousands of people who’d come from everywhere and started to eat the bread, putting it in little bags and going off. My daughter laughed and pointed to a white loaf. But the crush of people prevented me from reaching the pavement where there was all the bread in the world. Abu Issam was shouting at the top of his voice, the bread turning into white froth around his lips. He tried to stop the crush of people advancing. My little daughter’s tears flowed white, the color of the loaves. And I just stood there, unable to move forward. When I opened my eyes, inside the shelter, my daughter was in her mother’s lap and Abu Issam was shouting and cursing his wife. Then he got up. I went with him to the bakery, where there were thousands of people. But the black bread was in plastic bags and people were shouting to the sound of the distant explosions and the nearby shooting. Everything that’s happened and hasn’t happened was there on the face of the baker, taking the banknotes, crumpling them up and putting them in the drawer all the while cursing the electricity, the water, and the impossibility of working under such conditions. By the time I got back home, the sun was high in the middle of the sky, the smell of cooking filled the house, my wife was beating the children and there wasn’t enough bread, and reading the papers was forbidden.

— You waste all your money on newspapers and then you spend your time listening to the radio. Since you listen to the radio, what are the papers for?

Women don’t understand politics. You can’t convince a woman that what’s happening is important, that our fate hangs in the balance.

— But you sit at home all day.

But she doesn’t understand. The truth is I can’t … At work, I used to feel I was part of something, of the institution. But now, I don’t even feel I’m part of my wife. There’s nothing left but noise. Hearing is the only sense that has any meaning. Everything else is meaningless. Hani didn’t agree. God exists, it’s inevitable. I’m a believer, but I can’t. Even faith has become an object of ridicule for my wife. Stop getting drunk then I’ll listen to you. She doesn’t give due consideration to my circumstances. Ever since I’ve stopped going to work, I’ve felt oppressed. The newspaper I read oppresses me. The black letters flow over my face and clothes.

— Don’t leave the papers lying around in front of the children, my wife screams. Why don’t you throw them away? You pile them up in the house, the children play with them and the house stinks of ink.

Even reading the papers is forbidden now. She does whatever she pleases. She chatters all day and cries all night and she’s afraid. This modern woman, who when I married her I thought I was marrying the 20th century, is worse than my mother. And I bow down before her like a he-goat who’s had his horns cut off. My father laughed before he died; I laughed when he died. Our customs are incomprehensible. A man dies, they lay him out on a bed; then the women gather round, douse his corpse with cologne and begin their lamentations and wailing. My father laughs and whispers in my ear. Really, they wait for a man to die then they have this sexual celebration right there in front of his corpse. Wouldn’t it be better if they gathered around him while he was alive? When my father died, I couldn’t conceal my mirth. He was at the center of the sexual celebration in an old neck-tie my mother got him God alone knows where, cologne all over —and under —him, and the woman ululating. As soon as I entered, the wailing intensified and I burst out laughing. The women stopped crying and looked at one another. And my mother, she started quivering with embarrassment and muttering unintelligibly. Then the wailing resumed, my father neither speaking nor moving.

The ceiling from which the woman dangles is moving closer to my head. Things are purple and the candle’s white. But the candle has a smell. The ceiling’s getting closer. And the white liquid is trickling down from my hand onto the floor and the smell is spreading. Salt doesn’t have a smell. The air was stifling. They said they could. Of course, I didn’t believe it. I have no faith in superstition and magic. But it danced. The small table hovered in the air and danced. They shut the doors and windows. We were sweating as if we’d been in a Turkish bath. Speak. I looked and saw the small table flying through the air. It was small, the size of a hand, but it flew. I was very frightened. They said they’d try the glass; the spirit of the dead would come, enter the glass, move among the letters, and tell all. I told my wife when I got back home that I was afraid. I was surprised by her sudden enthusiasm and her desire to be acquainted with every detail. I can’t, I told her. She made fun of me. I didn’t tell her that I’d turned down their offer to conjure up the spirit of one of my friends. Hani was before me. I saw him, full-bodied and tall. But I was scared by him. I came home running. The streets were full of darkness and fear and my mouth was salty. The dead and the living coexist in a remarkable way in this city. The dead have become more numerous than the living. I slept all night, at home. I told my wife I felt I was suffocating so I wouldn’t go down to the shelter. I begged her to stay beside me.

—And the children, what shall I do with them? What if a shell hits the house?

Anyway, she left me there and went down to the shelter with the children. I stayed alone, with the sound of the shells and the darkness. I said to myself, I’ll sleep in my own bed, it’s allright. But the shells whistled as though they were coming out of my ears. I got up and sat in the corridor. I said to myself, I’ll sleep sitting up. My body ducked with every shell, incoming and outgoing. I spent quite a unique sort of night. I wished I were a little child. Even our fantasies have become ridiculous. I slept sitting up, then awoke in the morning to a tremendous clamor. I don’t know what happened exactly, but the shell fell near the house.