But the Armenians are so distinguished by their “broken” Arabic that this became a general way for Lebanese people to refer to Armenians, since most of the elderly people from Armenia would masculinize the feminine and feminize the masculine, and squeeze the word baba into their speech, a sign of affection perhaps.
After visiting many apartments, my father chose one in a building that was modern, relative to the other houses and buildings nearby. It wasn’t located in Bourj Hammoud or deep inside it — on the al-Nabaa side, for example. It wasn’t even in Doura, an area bordering it and stretching out from the coast to the Northern Metn. It was along the big highway from which we could see Karantina and, in the blink of an eye, the “West Side” of the capital at the time. So were we really on the “East Side”? I don’t know because on the right side there was a little old mosque which worshippers frequented all the time, as well as that modest church with its round domes on the north side. The building was located right between them and even the news reports — from radio or television stations, which we started to follow when bombardments on our area intensified — weren’t able to determine once and for all which area this building that Amer chose as the location for our new home belonged to.
I couldn’t count the number of explosions that had gone off and bombs that had fallen, either on people or on buildings, when we found ourselves on the threshold of our alleged youth. That’s how we used to measure our lives in Beirut, not in years at all. Some of us, when we wanted to remember happy or sad things, started to connect them to an endless, bloody series: the War of the Souqs, Tel al-Zaatar, the Battle of the Hotels, the murder of Bachir Gemayel, the entry of the Deterrent Force, the Hundred-Day War on Ashrafieh by the Syrian army, the Mountain War, the War of the Camps, the Israeli invasion... Sabra and Shatila... There was no need to count the years here, as I said, our lives were made of gunfire, random bullets shot by depraved snipers.
However, our days were not free from periods when there were truces, long ones sometimes, and then we would forget that this multifaceted Lebanese War, which never held to a fixed stance on anything, hadn’t yet finished and had itself forgotten that it hadn’t yet come to an end. This perhaps goes back to the fact that from our childhood it was a reality that peace had merely become a word — always tenuous and elusive — and if it were able to prevail here one day, it would seem artificial. Despite this, I didn’t neglect my studies. Indeed, I was actually working hard and Harut nicknamed me “The Genius.” But on summer vacation I would fulfill my violent desire to discover everything. Entertainment began in the cinemas and Harut and I would move around between the Sevan, Carminique, Arax, Florida, and Canar (theaters with the names of Armenian towns and villages) to choose what suited our mood: westerns, documentaries, horror flicks, romantic comedies, and adventures. We wouldn’t hesitate to leave a film at the beginning if we heard people whispering that another cinema was showing an exciting sex movie.
My talent in the subjects of science and mathematics became evident. My head worked like a little computer, absorbing information, memorizing numbers, and solving problems effortlessly. I used to help Harut with his lessons and he would repay me by letting me into the depths of his Armenian world, boasting about me in front of his comrades in “the Party” — that I was the only one able to disassemble a Kalashnikov and put it back together again in seconds, that I was also the only one who memorized the names of the explosives found in shells and bombs, like the back of my hand, and that I could make hundreds from it if I wanted to... I was his friend and his treasure and he was my only friend who I was proud of, so I didn’t refuse when he asked me to join the party. This ensured I would stay with him and accompany him on the local neighborhood security patrols and surveillance in the area.
Before the war broke out there were Armenian leaders and strongmen too, who ruled streets and neighborhoods with a tight grip, just like the prominent Lebanese ones who became famous. However, the war dampened their fires, put an end to their roles and their near-mythical legends. New leaders and strongmen took their place, imposing a military reality under the influence of armed parties and militias.
The neighborhood, home to so many Armenians, remained for the most part distant from the thunder of bombs and exchange of incursions, which the combatants undertook to seize strategic buildings and areas beyond those already under their control. But no matter how it was contained, the sparks of the war would undoubtedly escape from time to time, afflicting many people’s hearts with greed in the absence of both law and the authority of the state. But the Party, as Harut said, was ready and able to impose its will, with a kind of autonomous governance and stringent reverence, so that things wouldn’t “get out of control,” as was happening in other regions of Lebanon. Behind an old government building, Harut took me to see this one night; he showed me with my own eyes how the death penalty was implemented for hooligans, anyone tempted by heroics or who strayed from the will of the party and obedience to it.
Would my friendship with Harut and his love for me, my ability to understand the Armenian language, and my belonging to the Party (and this is a tricky if not impossible matter for a non-Armenian person, and perhaps what made my mother constantly repeat that my grandmother’s late mother was Armenian) intercede on my behalf? Would all these factors intervene one day and enable Abu Harut to accept me as his son-in-law and allow me to marry his only daughter Tamara? Tamara, who was blossoming like magic with the beauty of a wild red rose and whose splendor and uniqueness Farah had been always proud of in the village. Tamara knew that I loved her and that I was sure I lived in her heart and her two sweet eyes... But Armenian fathers, in spite of everything, don’t consent to marry their daughters to “sons of Arabs,” except reluctantly. And yet I presumed there was still time, and that I would be able to add to the list of my good qualities later... so I thought.
The naked women at the Dixino nightclub no longer excited me as much as the poker machine at Paradisio, one of the many amusement centers that sprouted up like mushrooms during the war spreading all over. Perhaps I’m not being precise enough about describing my feelings: I spent an entire week in the embrace of “Raquel,” not leaving the room, obsessed with all the sexual pleasure that I discovered. However, it is possible to say that a different, fleeting exaltation possessed me when I entered this place, accompanied by Harut, out of curiosity. It was the same exaltation as the one that overwhelms a child who’s entering an amusement park for the first time. Was the reason the lights, the music, or those intoxicating sights which deceived the eyes of the people occupied by their games, fixing their attention on the numbers and symbols cascading before them on those graceful machines, making us pass by right near them, invisible like ghosts? Was I enticed by the relief on their faces at the moment they won, knowing that I was not a money-collecting enthusiast? Or was it the direct challenge that my mind formulated at that moment to discover the secret of those machines’ programs? What is the right time to start ejecting money after the pockets of so many people have been exhausted? Would I be able to decode the mystery and be the cleverest and luckiest player? Or is this the time in which I smelled it burning — like in our teen years — and which passes with a delightful slowness, here in this place that seemed outside of time, without thinking about the death lurking in the very molecules of air that we breathe in Beirut? I don’t know what reason to give for my attraction, nor do I know what gripped me, but I do know that I was suddenly a child again and desperately wanted to play with that machine.