Little Mountain (16 page)

But the man with a neck thick as a boar’s went on as if hearing nothing or, rather, as if he didn’t want to hear. It would seem that the major part of his job consists in not listening to what the defendants have to say. Once in a while, one of them is pretty convincing and that’s a threat to the thick-necked man’s job. He’s the head of a large household, after all, he’s got to live and he knows of no other job that pays as well even though all the neighbors think it’s a revolting thing to do. However, as far as he can see, all professions are revolting, they’re all alike, and you can’t beat drinking at the fountainhead. That’s why he sticks to this job. He would not stop. Reading the scroll, articulating every sound. He couldn’t care one way or another about the contents. What matters is the job. In a few moments, this man must be hanged. The actual hanging operation doesn’t take very long, a few minutes to listen to the statement of the accused, then a few more minutes to carry out his last wish. They usually ask for a cigarette and smoke it extremely slowly. But however slowly you smoke a cigarette— and especially an American cigarette —it is quickly finished. Then starts the real work —which doesn’t take very long if he’s prepared the rope properly. Whereupon, the job’s over when he scales up the man’s legs and pulls down hard so he doesn’t suffer too much. The thing he hates most about this job is reading out the scroll. In the past, a magistrate was brought over to read out the sentence. But now he has to do it. He knows it’s not legal, that the verdict hasn’t been handed down by a legal body. But he doesn’t care, legal bodies or not, they’re all the same. And everything leads to one result and that is the continuation of his job.

The man stepped forward, wearing the customary white robe. The square was green, the sky gray. He didn’t request anything, not even that the foul-smelling spray be wiped off his face.

— A cigarette?

He didn’t answer. Simply shook his head.

— Would you like anything?

He didn’t answer. Simply shook his head.

— What is your bequest?

He didn’t answer. Simply shook his head.

What is this new kind of man, thought the thick-necked man. Still, in the end, before the rope, they’re all the same: they tremble and begin to rattle off verses and incantations, begging forgiveness and crying. The man in the white robe advanced. He wasn’t trembling. His right foot trembled just a little maybe. But that isn’t important. He came forward, there were traces of burns on his face and water bled from his ears. He didn’t say anything, went up the steps, put his head through the noose, his body a little bent, trembling slightly. But he went up with a firm step. He could go no farther. He held him up. Lights colored the sky and his body was as a dough of constantly changing tints. He didn’t fall. She took him. His body quivered as though feverish. Then he fell. And it was a very long way. That is the point. The long way, and the long square, and the long rope. But the king was short and he trembled. The obelisk was long. What’s said in books will come true, she said.

But books are far away and it’s a very long way. Ropes are more important than books, I answered.

We were walking, her hand in mine, the sadness blowing across the face of the city buffeting our faces. The man they hanged was sad. Next time, we shouldn’t content ourselves with stealing the rope, we should break it; next time, we shouldn’t content ourselves with overrunning the squares and the buildings, we should destroy them. The essential thing, though, is that there should be a next time.

— Didn’t I tell you? All squares look alike. All cities with tunnels boring through them will be destroyed. Bergis was looking completely haggard now, beginning to slither away inside his clothes until nothing was left of him but clothes in motion, the sweat streaming out of them. He’d started to think about the Foreign Legion again. The Foreign Legion is just a temporary solution, but it’s better than nothing. Clothes in motion and the gesticulations no longer meaning much. The Foreign Legion is the only solution. It’s better than nothing. It may become everything.

I left him and ran for the metro. I didn’t turn to look back, just ran fast. She may still be waiting for me.

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A reference to the culmination of two years of intermittent clashes, from 1968 to 1970, between the Jordanian army and the PLO in Jordan, when thousands of civilians were killed.

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A famous hill on the edge of Damascus.

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Originally a popular term, the word
fahlawi
was used by the Syrian thinker Sadeq Jalal al-Athm in his book
Self-Criticism after the Defeat (al-naqd al-d-hati ba’d al-hazimah)
to portray the Arab personality which substitutes words for action, in other words, an unproductive personality.

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A kind of formulaic poetry which is typical of the oral traditions of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

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The start of a seven-month-long cabinet crisis in Lebanon when there was only a caretaker government. This followed a period of mounting tension between the Lebanese state and the PLO.

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Originally a Turkish word meaning “mister,” still used today in its slightly modified form to address officers, especially in the police force.

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The name of the largest confectionary manufacturers in Lebanon whose workers were in the vanguard of the worker protest movement of the early ’70s. During a peaceful demonstration in 1972, several of them were killed when the army opened fire on the demonstrators.

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An allusion to the unity of Egypt under the Pharaohs, the double crown referring to Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt.

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Jamal Pasha, nicknamed the killer’, was the Ottoman military governor of Lebanon who ordered the hanging of 33 nationalists in 1915-16.