Little Mountain (13 page)

— I’ll drive you guys.

— But were going to Wadi Abu Jameel. There’s sniping on the way.

— I’m a good driver. Don’t worry. He got into the car, turned on the ignition. Then turned it off… I’m busy now. Never mind, I’ll drive you over tomorrow. They laughed. He smiled at them. He’d made up his mind to decide on the thing he’d been dreaming of for a long time and didn’t dare announce: I must go with them. There, I’ll find cars. But how to go? My wife’s gone mad and the tire still stares me in the face. I must get rid of the tire first. The tire was in the house, in the bedroom. Kamel had bought a new tire for his car even though all four of its tires were fine. A spare, he told his wife; he didn’t tell her that he had bought it because it was going cheap.

— We should put it in the trunk.

But she wouldn’t hear of it.

—The trunk’s too small and it’s for the stroller and bits and pieces. She convinced me. We put the tire in the room. Then the car died. I want to throw it away. But she won’t allow it.

— We’ll take out the inner tube and the children’ll use it to swim at the beach.

She’s ridiculing me. She despises me. Kamel Abu Mahdi grabbed the tire, picked it up, went out of door, and rolled it down the stairs. The tire was going down the stairs, Kamel following behind, with eyes and body. The man screamed. The tire had hit him. Men haven’t got much of a sense of humor these days. He cursed, I cursed back. He drew his pistol. Holding it in his right hand, he came toward me. I didn’t know this man. He came toward me. The tire lay there like a corpse. He advanced, put his pistol up to my face, and begun punching my jaw with his left fist. I didn’t feel any pain, but shook before the gun-barrel. The man went on up. I followed behind, entered the house, didn’t breathe a word.

The confiscations are something else. What a city—a whore of a city. Who can imagine a whore laying a million men and still being there. A city with a million shells falling on it and still there. The city
is
shells. And thirst. A city without water. Never mind the electricity, we can always buy another lamp. But water … Even the sweat on our bodies has become just salt. There isn’t any water left to sweat and dirty the shirts with. The city is salty. I couldn’t take it anymore. Sameer gave me his pistol. He told me he’d come with me, but he never did. I was scared. There were no more policemen and I was still scared. I stuck the pistol on my hip, the way everyone does, and waited on the street. But Sameer didn’t come. I was scared —Beirut is long in the darkness and the noise of the shells. The man was walking through the darkness alone. He lit a match which cast his shadow against the walls of the half-deserted city. Then the match went out and the shadow with it. The noise faraway was getting closer, and the man was walking practically bent in two, hugging the wall. In the streets, the cats were yawning. And the smell welled up alongside the mounds of garbage. The man who walked hugging the wall was trying to find his way through these things. He got closer. It was as though the parked cars were asleep. He went on, then came to a stop in front of a Volkswagen. He lit a match, but it was ugly. The pistol on his hip trembled. He reached the Zokak al-Blatt intersection where you cut across the wide street and reach the entrance of Wadi Abu Jameel with its abandoned cars and destroyed houses. And the war. Beirut, completely still, immersed in darkness. Then the sounds of light sniper-fire began. He felt the street reeling with every shot. Then the heavy machine-gun rang out. He stepped back. Everything was shaking. He decided to go back. He turned his back to the wide street and set off slowly. He felt a gun-barrel was aimed at his back. His neck was heavy now, as though the barrel were up against it. He went a little faster, the sound of his footsteps merging into the gunfire. He was panting and it was still a long way home. Rats springing between his feet and salt spreading over his entire body.

By the time Kamel got home, he was convinced of it. The car had died. But my wife was shrieking. I acted serious. I wanted to mislead her into thinking that I was with the lads. She yelled at me as if I were a little kid. She looked like a goat, letting off the sort of noises a hungry goat does. She marched me to the shelter. I told her I wanted to sleep in my own bed. She refused, she took me to the shelter, and I slept next to her.

Apart from children and vegetable sellers, everyone’s afraid of artillery shells. It used to be that there was shelling at night and the daytime was for the children. But even this law they desecrated: now there was shelling day and night. The women pretended not to notice and the children were out on the street. Shells flying. A car bursting into flames inside the garage. Where are the children, shrieked my wife.

She ran, I followed behind. The street was all torn up and the children were crowding about. My wife wailed. All women wail. I saw the color red. I looked: my wife was standing in front of the children in the building lobby. I yelled at her to go up home. Come up with us, she yelled back. Her hair was long and she was covered in blood. She was sprawled against the pavement over a pool of blood, like a pretty sheep drinking water. No one came near. All the men stood around the building entrances. Then a boy wearing glasses came along. He picked the girl up. The salt spread. The blood spilled onto his face and clothes. He carried her, put her in his orange car, and went. Then they said that she died and we took to spending the day in the shelter. When Sameer and the lads came along with the blue poster, I couldn’t believe it. The poster was blue and it was the same boy. The glasses, the round face. The red writing. Talal, they said his name was. I looked at the poster, blood spilling onto the glossy blue paper, over the white print and the slogans. The blood of the girl who looked like a sheep covered the walls of the city. I remembered Hani and cried. The boy looked out from the poster as if from a window. His eyes motionless, the blood trickling over them. But they’re like my mothers eyes, I told him. The girl was salty. Even the color of blood isn’t important, it’s just salty and hot. Everything that has a taste has a smell, except salt. Salt hasn’t got a smell but it floods one’s mouth. It grows on one’s hands and shoulders and spreads into the hair on one’s head. The poster, beside the other posters, covering the walls and bleeding like a sheep to a mounting rhythm in the undestroyed city.

I was thirsty. She said, there’s no water. I went a long way, all the way to the public garden filled with flies. I washed my face. Filled the containers. But the salt clung to my clothes.

Kamel Abu Mahdi no longer understands. He’s taken to saying the newspapers are colorless, but he reads like everybody else, listens to the radio like everybody else and believes in God like everybody else. Beirut was sparkling like a ship with its lights turned off in the middle of the dark sea. Everybody sleeping. In a deathlike stillness—the stillness of ceasefires—when suddenly the city was ablaze with light. All the houses lit up together amid bursting gunfire and joy. Everybody woke up and celebrated. Beirut had come home. Kamel Abu Mahdi awoke, sat out on the balcony leaving all the house lights on. And with the electricity, water returned. His wife got up and filled every container in the house. Electricity and water, the essence of happiness, thought Kamel. When he said as much to his wife, she cursed him. Get up and help me carry the water. But he didn’t get up. He was going to enjoy the electricity to the last. He wanted to breathe in the smell of Beirut which they said had died. He had a cup of coffee and stayed up till three in the morning when the electricity was cut off. He went back to bed happy. But he dreamed the car had come home. It was covered in dust and mud. It came back alone, climbed the stairs, knocked at the door and came in. It was full of hair, it looked like a dog. It barked, rubbed its mouth against its paws, circled around him. It had no eyes. He went up to it, found it as he’d left it. He sat up front, held the steering wheel with both hands. It disintegrated and his head crashed against the window. The window broke. The seat began to sound an uninterrupted moan. Wearing the white wedding dress, a red bouquet in her hand, Kamel’s wife was seated opposite him and smiling for the pictures. He wanted to tell her the car had come back and that it looked like a dog but that it had no tail. He wanted to tell her the steering wheel had broken but that it could be repaired. He wanted to tell her everything but she never turned toward him. She was looking at the photographer and smiling. Kamel was pouring with sweat. He opened the car door. It wouldn’t open. His wife was turning red, the color of the girl who died. The woman was opening her mouth to say something, blood streamed out of her mouth and nose. Kamel stuck his head out of the window and saw that the man was naked. But he had no genitals. He screamed. His voice was dry. And the walls of the house were covered in salt. Terrified, Kamel got up. Found nothing. Wife asleep, kids asleep, the whole city asleep. So he went back to bed.

But the war didn’t come to an end. All those who said that the war had ended knew this war wouldn’t end. Darkness returned to the city along with the sound of the shells. War comes back all of a sudden. It comes to a halt slowly, after long negotiations and interventions and prominent figures and the radio and the favorite newscaster all the employees like because he’s an employee like them. But it comes back all of a sudden. The electricity goes off, the shelling starts and people rush to corridors and shelters, to the safe rooms and to the houses overlaid by houses.

I don’t know how I woke up. The building was shaking. Smoke and voices. My wife screamed. I screamed. The kids everywhere. We ran. The ground gleamed. We stood in the corridor next to the kitchen. The children were crying. My wife said let’s go down to the shelter. She ran, flung the door open. We went down. The crush of people. The whole world’s tenants on the building stairs, rushing for the shelter. I carried my little daughter. The two boys were in front of me and my wife was holding the bawling, half naked baby. I didn’t ask her why the child was half-naked. They all looked like ghosts, running with their matches and candles. The women in nighties and the men barefoot, and the children falling over and picking themselves up. Dust and smoke. I started coughing. My wife clutching my sleeve. The two boys clutching her legs and I clutching the wall. The wall was shaking, moaning, smoking. I tried to go faster—but the crush of people, what can you do. Everybody screaming. You, he shouted. I said to myself I don’t know, it’s not anything to do with me, I’m just an ordinary citizen. He was standing on the stairs in front of me.

—Why did you throw the tire down?

I told him it fell. He raised his pistol. It glimmered. He held it with both hands, a terrifying noise came out. Never mind, I told him. He advanced, placed the pistol between my eyes. I could no longer see. He hit me with his left fist. I fell to the ground. Got up. He hit me again and I fell once more. My mouth was bleeding. I’ll bash your head in. I didn’t look up. I went back to the house and didn’t tell my wife I was scared.

I’m scared, she yelled. I didn’t answer. These stairs are so long, I told her. And it was dark. Everyone had vanished.

—Where’s the box of matches?

— I forgot it. I’ll go up and get it.

— Don’t leave me alone, I’m scared.

I told her, I’m scared, where have they gone? There wasn’t a soul left. My wife clutched my sleeve and the children were crying.

— I forgot the baby’s bottle at home.

I didn’t say I’d go and get it. The baby fell from my wife’s arms and cried. I didn’t hear her crying. The blood. The shells getting closer. The smoke creeping up on us. And the thick darkness. My wife screamed and then began to sob. We went on down. Silence and smoke. The shelling had stopped. But the smoke. In the dark, you can’t see anything but smoke. We went slowly down, the steps quite firm. Interminable stairs.

They were six living things, going down the stairs slowly. Darkness enveloping the stairway and smoke enveloping the darkness. The woman crying silently. Interminable stairs. Kamel Abu Mahdi knows these stairs well. Eighty of them. He counts them going up and counts them again going down. But he’s forgotten to count with this shelling. We’ve surely gone beyond that. He can taste salt all of a sudden. There’s salt on my lips, he told his wife. Where did the salt come from. I said to her there’s salt in my clothes. I heard her moan. Going down very slowly, descending these interminable stairs. I leaned against the wall. It was salty and making sounds like those of distant trains. Down, down slowly. My wife next to me, the kids between our legs and the stairs slow. Where’s the water, I signaled with my hand. No one saw me. I went on down the stairs very slowly.

*
An Egyptian singer and popular film star throughout the Arab world where he is still something of an idol. A young girl committed suicide when he died, prematurely, of bilharzia in 1977.

*
This seemingly senseless statement is the author’s ironical portrayal of what happened in Palestine, where landowners with a title to their land under Ottoman law were often dispossessed by the Zionists who ’proved” to them by a variety of means that they had no such title.

*
A
yakhneh
(see note on p. 101) of dried white beans. It is hearty, ordinary people’s food, not a refined dish.

**
The second caliph who ruled between 632 A.D. and 644 A.D. Under him, Islam witnessed its first great expansion from Arabia to the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and Iran. He is thus a potent symbol of all that is best in Islam and a source of pride for those who yearn for a renewal in the Arab world.

*
Originally a Turkish word used in much of the Levant to mean stew.

I was walking in my sodden clothes through the damp passages with their moldy smell of rain, looking for the way in the unfamiliar tunnels, cursing and trying not to look ridiculous. Ever since I arrived in this city, I’ve been going from hospital to hospital, from doctor to doctor and all of them — doctors and nurses all —shake their heads. They carry out tests and say: nothing, we don’t know, maybe tomorrow. Results and yet more results till I’m just about overcome by hysteria and anxiety. Since last night, and after a long day of suffering and interrogation, I’ve decided to be very careful: I must not appear ridiculous. I realized this the first time a nurse took hold of my hand. Stretched out on a plastic mat, my arm had thousands of sharp needles stuck into it. There were three nurses around me. A nurse smiled then began to sew my hand down to the plastic mat. Trying to distract me, she asked what I did for a living. I told her I didn’t do anything. The second nurse drew near and said: do you know how much you’re going to have to pay for this medical examination?

— No, I don’t.

—Three hundred and eighty-five francs.

— I won’t pay.

— We’ll put you in jail.

Here, I burst out laughing. The air was charged with something or other so the laughter exploded and the nurses laughed too.

— Buy why are you laughing?

— Because prisons are temporary things, I told her. We’ve abolished prisons. We were even about to abolish hospitals but for some rather complicated considerations. There wasn’t really the time to tell her how the children in our neighborhood once overran the women’s prison and carried off its rooftop —they dismounted the terra-cotta tiles one by one. The atmosphere just wasn’t conducive. Anyway, the important thing then was my arm. Of course, I paid up the entire amount afterward, though not for fear of imprisonment or the nurse, but just like that, because I felt sad. The electric current rushed through my left arm. I groaned, the nerve throbbed fiercely, on and on. Take a deep breath, scream, the nurse instructed. I breathed but my face was all twisted. It is then that I discovered the smiles on the nurses’ faces. Contorted in an ocean of pain, my own face no doubt looked funny. I tried to control my nerves and stop the muscles contracting. 1 stopped breathing but I couldn’t. The pain flooded my body, the electricity annihilating it. Then suddenly, everything stopped. I got up from the chair and walked, tried walking quickly and fell down. Don’t forget you’re sick, the nurse said. She smiled when I paid up the entire amount for the examination.

I abandoned my dash through that roaring jungle. I must find the way: she’s waiting for me and won’t wait very long. Last time, I arrived half an hour early and I sat in a cafe and the hubbub of thousands of voices. But she never came. When I called her in the evening, she answered apologetically. We agreed to meet today but she was threatening: don’t be late, I won’t wait more than five minutes. So here I am trying not to be late. The problem, though, is that I cant find my way through this maze. I’m sick, these metro tunnels are complicated and half the signs have been removed. I walked calmly and stopped in front of the newspaper seller, then felt an acrid smell of wine stealing up on me. He started to embrace me, shouting: how did you get here? When did you come? I looked at him closely and had to laugh. It was Bergis Nohra, none other.

—Tell me, come on, why don’t you come and visit me?

It was Bergis Nohra, none other.

— I wasn’t, I don’t want, I’m in a hurry, tomorrow.

But Bergis Nohra held me fast. Pulling me by the arm, come on. A stockily built man, fair-haired, thick-necked, a little prone to stoutness, talking about twenty different things at once. He was just the same five years ago. Bergis Nohra still yearns for his village. I’m a Maronite, from Bdadoun. He was just the same five years ago. I was penniless, poorer than the poorest of students. Maybe that’s what made me accept his invitation. I went into a house. At last, to enter a house and sit at a real meal. I was starving and ate as if I’d never before seen food in my life. I drank, he drank; we were drinking from twelve noon until the evening. To start with, I didn’t talk. It was hard making conversation as I wanted to be free to eat. After we’d got drunk and I’d been listening for a long time as he reminisced about his village and his father’s bankruptcy and his adventures, he started talking politics. Spare me, I told him. But he insisted. He started talking about the
fedayeen
and the September massacres.
^*
He spoke in a skillfully mastered military lingo.

— But how do you know all this?

— I’m a fighter. I was a real fighter, he answered.

Of course I didn’t buy his story. The small, over-handing pot-belly and the luxurious restaurant he owns belie his claims.

— But where?

— In Vietnam.

Again, I didn’t buy it. I let him talk and gave myself up to the drops of cognac. He rambled on and I wasn’t listening, until all hell broke loose and his voice began thundering through the room like a cannon. I jumped up.

— What are you saying? The Foreign Legion!

— Yes, the Foreign Legion.

—You mercenary, you less-than-nothing, you savage, you …

I stood up, took the bottle of cognac and hurled myself at him. He dodged. Listen, you’re drunk, he shouted. You shouldn’t let wine stop you treating people properly. Listen to me, I’m on your side, and on theirs, but listen. I couldn’t. He ran to the bedroom and locked himself in. I must have looked terrifying. So let me listen. I calmed down, sat on the sofa, and waited for him. He came back.

— Listen, brother, listen carefully. It’s a complicated question. I was down and out, I didn’t have a residence permit in Paris. The police arrested me and gave me a choice of prison or the Foreign Legion. What would you have had me choose?

—To go back to Lebanon.

—That wasn’t possible. Lebanon wasn’t in the cards then. Prison or Vietnam, so I went to Vietnam. We fought a great deal but that isn’t the point. The point is that we knew our defeat to be inevitable. Yet we stayed on to fight. We’d committed ourselves to the war and we were going to honor our commitment. I’m a stubborn Maronite, I don’t pull out. I knew that the Foreign Legion and all the French army units would be defeated. Yet, I stayed on with them and fought because I’m a stubborn man. Then he began to laugh. Don’t believe this stubborn-man story, I’m only telling it because I’ve drunk a lot. I tried to escape several times or, rather, to be honest with you, I thought of escaping. But it wasn’t possible. War is a meticulously organized thing and the only way out of it is to stay with it. Aside from the fact that I fell in love with a Vietnamese woman and married her. Honestly, I’m not lying. I would go back to the mud hut in the evening and find her there waiting for me with the barrel. She’d put me inside and water would start to flow over me. I’d climb out, practically naked, gobble down my food with some rice wine, then gradually get drunk and just sit there. And I’d sleep with her sitting up, because standing or lying down are out of the question for anyone who drinks that wine. She was a beautiful woman. She stayed beautiful to her dying day. I believe she died when the French artillery was “combing’’ the Vietminh areas before the defeat at Dhien Bien Phu. Defeat was inevitable, despite my wife’s death and that of thousands of others. Though they carried the cannons on bicycles and climbed up the mountains strapping them to their shoulders, surrender was unavoidable. But best of all was the barrel. My relationship to the war was two-sided: a relationship with a beautiful woman on the one hand and with a barrel, on the other.

This conversation took place five years ago and though I don’t remember much, that’s when Borgis Nohra became my friend. As far as I’m concerned, friendship is something quite specific, it means we get drunk once a month. For him, it was an opportunity to oust his French wife from the house and to speak Arabic. Still, when I came over this year I didn’t want to see him. The civil war hasn’t left a relationship unscarred and the news that the
feda
yeen
had entered Bdadoun on one of those war nights had surely reached him. That’s why I didn’t want to see him. But there he was, standing in front of me, the personification of strange coincidence.

—Why don’t you come and visit me. Come over right now. I want to hear your news and news of the war in Lebanon. Impossible to convince him otherwise. I’m busy now, my good Bergis. Let’s get together tomorrow. As you wish. We’ll talk about everything. Just when he seemed to have yielded, he started up again, as though delirious.

— Look at the metro. Look at these tunnels. What it means is that civil war is inevitable. A civil war in the passages and tunnels of the metro, it’d be mythical. Every expectation would be confounded and the earth would revert to its entrails. Something amazing!

— Even when you come to visit me, you’ve got to come with me to the metro. I know you’ve seen it. But look, look! The city penetrated by metro tunnels is shaking, it is going to cave in. Civil war here is inevitable. I’ve been on the metro a great deal and have visited a lot of cities but I’ve never uncovered the relationship between metros and tunnels and between tunnels and civil war. Cities, all cities, are alike: Some traversed by a metro, others not. But all that has nothing to do with war. In Cairo, there’s a metro but it’s above ground. People dart back and forth between the metro cars, the buses, and the narrow alleys. They burn tires or stop burning them. In Beirut, there’s no metro and there are no tunnels. In Milan, demonstrators overturned the metro cars and the police had to close off the subway entrances to prevent people from joining the demonstrations. In Damascus, there are no such things as metro tunnels but Qassioun
^*
is being dug up and destroyed so that they can turn it into pretty—or ugly—villas. That is the point. Cities above ground and cities under ground. After Ottoman Beirut was destroyed, they started looking for Roman Beirut under the rubble. In a nutshell, all change is geological, like earthquakes, like volcanoes. They bore through the bowels of a city to install means of communication and means of residence. But all these means serve but one end —war and death.

There we were in the middle of the metro passages, Bergis’s voice soaring and me standing still, unable to do anything. That is the point, he was telling me. The point is that this city will be destroyed in a civil war. All cities will be destroyed. I was trying to say something. The point was something else but I’d started to feel frightened and said nothing. This time, I, as well as Bergis and the sound of the metro, the metro itself, all seemed ridiculous. I wasn’t able to do anything not to. True enough, I’m sick. But this man just won’t stop hallucinating.

— Do you see? Civil war is inevitable. People will annihilate one another. Cities will collapse. Its inevitable and I see it as clearly as I saw the pictures of the war in Beirut.

— But Bergis …

—Just imagine what might happen in these endlessly ramified passages with modern destructive weapons. The civil war will be the metro war. You agree, of course you do.

I don’t know why I began to agree with him. It’s not that the words were convincing. Nor was it the sight of Bergis ranting on feverishly, rapturously about war. His constant turning to me and taking me by the hand lest I run away were not convincing either. The truth of the matter is that I wasn’t the least bit convinced by Bergis’s argument, but I began to be convinced nonetheless. A man in his forties, his clothes stinking of alcohol, standing in a cacophonous jungle. People rushing about as if they were late for some appointment and I looking at my watch for fear of being late. And this man completely indifferent. Just talking on, with his hands, with his voice, with his stocky little body, swaying to and fro, prophesying devastation. And those others, rushing about, they’ll rush again but for different reasons, because life cannot go on like this. Everything’ll turn topsy-turvy—guns, cannons, war. Bergis rambled on and I was trying, one last time, not to appear ridiculous. But that isn’t the point.

The point was over there. A woman, glowing. I held her hand and we went to the smallest room in the world. Terra-cotta tiles, white wood, yellow curtains. And she, in the center of the room, naked, laughing. Slipping from my hands to the bed, from the bed to the floor and from the floor back into my hands. A woman, glowing. Milky white. Her two eyes small, but elongated, like the eyes of the Chinese. I was holding her by her hair and drowning in the place where the pain flowed from her shoulders. I was holding her, she was falling. But not breaking. She was folding in two, I was her third half and her voice rang like a tropical garden.

I approached her, my feet dragging on the floor, grating against the wooden floor-boards. I was swaying, cleaving, getting closer. The rubescence, and her smell, spreading across the floor. I was not saying anything but was not quiet either. The apogee of sadness. She cried, sitting at the edge of the room, holding her breasts. I went toward her, frightened. No, I wasn’t frightened. I was looking for something or other, for a word. But she remained on the edge of the room. Then stood up, came toward me. I held her, she dropped to the floor and broke, and the room filled with pieces of shrapnel. I bent down to pick them up, blood began to flow and the walls were covered in mud and trees. I was going up the stairs, my foothold quite firm. I could go no farther. I held her. Lights colored the sky and her body was as a dough of constantly changing tints. She took me. My body quivered as though feverish, then I fell. And it was a very long way.