When I first became a Communist, he took my side and started speaking out against feudalism, the shaykhs, and the bishops. It wasn’t unusual for him to insult Shaykh Pierre, saying he couldn’t understand him because he “speaks like a fish” and needs to learn Arabic. Though my grandfather would get annoyed at that. “Give us a break, Abbas, must you anger the Phalangists and ministers and deputies?”
My mother Philomena was the sixth daughter of Father Tanios — son of Father Sam‘an, son of Father Tanios al-Ha’er — who only had one son, my uncle Elia, who didn’t even finish middle school. All he ever did was go fishing, play cards, drink, memorize local poetry, spend time with the wives of men gone abroad and the new widows who weren’t too old, and help with the liturgy. According to people in the village, he didn’t work, didn’t marry, wasn’t called to the priesthood, and would never die, despite his many accidents in the Italian cars he acquired one after the other. And despite the bullet that hit him in the foot hours after arriving in Beirut’s hotel district at the head of a Phalange Party detachment from the village, causing him to withdraw injured — and half a hero — before he was transferred to office work in the central headquarters.
He learned about my communism two years before the war and didn’t hesitate to tell me, “Someone whose grandfather and grandfather’s grandfather were respected priests in the region — isn’t it crazy for him to be a Communist? Tell me who you spend time with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
He’d memorized this saying in school and repeated it every time he spoke to me: “He who spends time with sinners sins, and he who spends time with the devout is devout. Do you and your father need more misfortune? Had he not married into our family, no one would have acknowledged him in the village or the region, and no one would have given him work. You should leave politics and be successful, not because degrees are important. Look at me, I didn’t study for a higher degree — that would have been a waste of time — and my social and financial positions are good. It was best for me to enter the school of life straight away. As for you, you need to study so we can find you a good government job later on. But you floundered even in choosing a specialty. Really, let me understand... what does sociology even mean? If you remain a Communist, you’ll regret it. Your diploma will be worth as much as a pillowcase.”
When the debates raged and he got angry, he often said to me, “You’re still a boy who needs a lot of schooling in politics. Your social position is still that of a cockroach.”
Me... a cockroach? That hurt. It reminded me of how small I was and how weak my father’s standing was. I went away upset and sad, not wanting to insult my only maternal uncle. My mother kept saying that he wasn’t reproaching me alone and that he’d only joined the Phalangist forces to protect her and the rest of the family after they were scandalized by me fighting alongside the armed Palestinian and Muslim groups. During the rare moments that she came to West Beirut to see me after the war started, I didn’t ever share with her my suspicion that he’d wounded himself so that he wouldn’t have to fight.
I was born in 1951, the thirteenth entry in the village register that year. Philomena told me I was born on the way to Mar Yusuf Hospital, after she spent two long, painful nights pushing me out despite my grandmother’s prayers, incense, and the efforts of Zulaykha al-Zalaa, the midwife who’d delivered five sisters and brothers before me. Whenever someone asks her about me, Philomena repeats what she has always said when I’m in earshot, ever since I started disobeying her: that when I was born she’d anticipated my strange destiny that I’d be terrible, mad, or — and she would say I hope before the last word — a leader. And I would always answer her sarcastically that the family made a mistake in accepting the jinxed number thirteen for me in the registry.
He had chestnut hair. It was long and shaggy before Margot — the thirty-something French wife of Dr. Jalal al-Bahri, a well-known doctor from an important Beiruti family. He was also one of the people responsible for the party’s clandestine organization. Comrade Abu Khalid, its main military leader, reported this to me, asking me to keep it to myself because of the sensitivity of the mission I’d been assigned.
Before this, I had never met Jalal or known him as a comrade. He had two clinics: one in the building which he owned and lived in, in the mostly upscale Tellat al-Khayyat neighborhood, which he opened up to inhabitants of less rich areas, serving the least rich of them; the second in a building facing the American University for his rich and paying clients, as Abu Khalid whispered to me when we went there two months before I became responsible for he and his wife’s personal security.
“You must repeat only what everyone knows about him — he’s an independent personality close to the national movement who was a candidate in the last parliamentary elections. Just so you know, we asked him to do this. Sunni Beiruti people are conservative and not very interested in politics, especially openly Communist politics. Most of them are businessmen, there are only a few literary and union names.
“Back to the issue I’m concerned with: this is what’s useful from your nun’s school education — you can speak to his wife in her native French to give her peace of mind. She’s started going out less, fearing armed men in the streets and bombings and some of the gangs. She isn’t like Lebanese women. I wish he’d never married her, she’s one of his weak spots. He met her when he was studying in France. His family’s like us, they don’t care for her much, not only because in their view she’s difficult and moody, but also because she hasn’t had any children even though they’ve been together seven years. She also hasn’t learned our language. She’s only mastered a few words from a dictionary of food and drink, as well as greetings and farewells. Comrade: since the war intensified, he’s taken care to accompany her when she meets her friends, to not let her go out alone. He’s had to constantly deal with balancing his duties and meetings and her demands. He fears for her and she fears both for herself and him too. And while she’s generally with the left, she isn’t a Party member — and if she had been in a party, she might have chosen a radical leftist group who’s against us. In truth, I feel she’s searching for a sort of ideological luxury in the left, which the bourgeoisie to which she belongs hasn’t been able to offer her. She made an aggressive critique of the Soviet comrades, saying that their regime is a failure. We have our critique too, but not to the extent that we would say that some of its small failings are reason to reject the collapse of the Socialist camp. Must we sacrifice socialism just for some jeans, rock and roll, and the bourgeois freedom of the individual? I mean, what do you want, the Soviets giving freedom to their class enemies and the Americans? Sometimes I wanted to ask him why the state, as a bourgeois state, authorizes the Party if we’re its enemies. Is it because our opponents give us what we fight them with?”
In order to maintain his trust I don’t answer him, and also because I already know his answer: they were obliged to — if we left them to their own devices the Party would still be illegal.
He continues, “We can’t just introduce Margot to our comrades who have French education and culture, her influence on them could be negative. Comrade Jalal just laughs about this and tells us she can’t be changed, saying, We each have our own opinions and our independence and it’s enough that she accepts me as I am. His idealism sometimes annoys me. She doesn’t know if she is living this war or living in it. She’s started affecting Comrade Jalal’s functioning, causing him to reduce his political commitments. Starting today, I’ll send Abu al-Izz to accompany him wherever he goes — to his clinic and his meetings. You’re responsible for guiding him, but you also must pay attention to the area around his house, the roads and streets leading to it. You’ll be our permanent link, our connection to him. You’ll send and transmit letters and other written messages. I want total precision, you must pass by the center whenever I call you, and you’ll accompany his wife wherever she goes and help her with everything she asks from you. She’s a little bit demanding; she’s from a rich family like the doctor is. I’m sending you because I trust you and because you know French better than the other comrade-fighters.”