Adil Uliyyan — according to what I’d heard of him — did this. I heard that he was extremely reckless and killed more people with his own hands than all the rest. He once walked up to a customs officer in the Beirut port and emptied a cartridge of bullets into his head in front of a group of people. From that time on, no one dared oppose him anymore, even his comrades started to fear him like they would a god. He had killed a man in cold blood and he did it for show. His aides completely submitted to him out of fear; in the beginning, their way of thinking united them. Of course, a way of thinking is only useful as an excuse, an empty excuse. What really unites and equalizes people is fear. The one who inspires fear is the master — but this equality is frightening, since no one knows who will be the first to initiate something, who will be the first to transgress. Adil Uliyyan was the first, and it cost him just one murder. From that time on, he profited from everything. A relatively guaranteed sum came to him from every operation; it was protection money from the aggressors, the ones who extorted money through their racket.
One day, fear caused someone to raise a gun and empty it into Adil Uliyyan’s body. The man went into hiding after that. It was said that he had fled to Brazil, but afterward Adil Uliyyan was bedridden and when he recuperated he was no longer himself. He staggered when he walked, his body shaking violently, his limbs trembling. Despite this, the person who shot him didn’t come forward and feared him even in this state. He had no doubt that Adil Uliyyan could still kill him. His disability made him even more terrifying: those trembling limbs could strangle a person, suck out his bone marrow, squeeze his heart. People waited for him to do something but he didn’t budge. In this way, he remained the very image of fear itself. He was fear trapped in a shaking body — his fingers quivering; his two eyes open and ready.
Samir Uliyyan told me that after they found something in Adil’s stomach, he moved from Beirut to Sanawbariyeh to rest there. I didn’t know if I should visit him; it is true that we had been... I don’t know how to put it... friends. I’d meet up with him from time to time, until we both left Sanawbariyeh. We were friendly when we were first becoming men; but we were comrades, nothing more. Every day we’d cross the village together. He was a liar and I wasn’t. He was outgoing and I was shy. But those were the days of our innocence. Even in all his lies and exuberance, Adil was innocent back then. Who would think that an idle lie could transform into a crime? Who would imagine that shyness and indecision could transform into intrigue? But innocence can show through lies, it can show through shyness. It can be idle chitchat, it can boast, it can rave deliriously and go into a coma. No one knows what it will lead to.
I didn’t know if I should visit Adil Uliyyan, or if we should even meet again. After all that time that had passed, it would be like a conspiracy, a meeting of the smuggler and the thief. What would the two of them have to say to each other? What could members of the war generation have to say to one other? Who will they accuse if time turns against them, if they end up as miserable criminals, miserable smugglers, miserable thieves? They won’t accuse either God or destiny, since they know that they are acting without either of them. They won’t accuse anyone of treachery, for this is what they have to expect. They have gone so far with their own treachery that they have even forgotten what treachery is.
Despite all this, I still wanted to visit Adil Uliyyan. I thought that perhaps he had something to give back to me. I thought that he owed me something; I didn’t know what it was but the time we spent together had somehow indebted him to me. When I first met him, he was writing, or imitating really, using the very same hand to do it that he’d used to empty bullets into the customs officer’s head. I had a shameless desire to hear him narrate this... a shameless desire that I was ashamed of when I realized it. I wanted my roaming comrade to narrate it to me as though it were a lie that I couldn’t possibly believe even if we’d been sitting in a holy place that compelled us to tell the truth. To tell it like he invented his love story with the curate’s daughter.
Can we go back to those places that prompt us to the truth, and still lie? Can we narrate our lives as though they didn’t happen? They did happen, but what is left of them in our souls is no more than a lie.
I decided to go visit Adil Uliyyan.
Rweiss isn’t far away; it’s a rocky cliff at the edge of the village. When I arrived, I didn’t have to ask where Adil’s house was. There were three floors with wraparound balconies and tinted glass, crowned with red tiles. Inside the flower garden was a wall and in front of the wall was a square of pavement where three cars were parked — a Cadillac, a Chevrolet, and a Peugeot. I rang the bell and a Sri Lankan servant looked down at me from the balcony. I asked her to tell Mr. Adil that Jalal Mazhar was here. After that, the gate opened and I entered, walking toward the house on a path paved with cobblestones.
The servant opened the door and led me to the spacious living room, which was surrounded by plate-glass windows on all sides. The sofas, tables, and walls were all gilded. After a bit, a taller-than-average, well-built woman, wearing a tight-fitting green dress, came down. Her black hair hung to her shoulders. Scrunching her eyebrows, she said that she was Rosette — Adil’s wife. When she realized that I didn’t know who she was, she said that she was from the village and had heard all about me from Adil. She’d married young, moved to Beirut, and from that time on seldom returned to the village, so she’d never met me. But she knew who I was. She sat down in front of me on a gilded sofa, crossed one leg over the other, and offered me a cigarette from her pack of Kents. When I refused, she took the cigarette herself and lit it. She told me that Adil was in his room on the second floor; he’d just finishing shaving and would be down shortly. I mumbled a nervous question about his health and she replied that the doctor had reassured them — it would definitely be a long process, but the illness had been found early and he was responding well to the treatment.
Rosette showed me around, answering my questions about how the house was organized. As I had guessed, the first floor was essentially a huge living room with groups of sofas scattered throughout with a bar at the far end. The second floor was for the family — bedrooms, a dining room, and a family room. The third floor had a large kitchen, a pantry, a sitting room, and guest rooms. We went up in a glass elevator. This was a vacation home, Rosette started to tell me. I could only imagine what kind of palace the family lived in during the rest of the year. We didn’t encounter Adil on our tour around; he was still in the bathroom. Back on the first floor, I expressed the desire to wander around the flower garden, and Rosette seemed eager to accompany me. I looked at the flowers; the gardener readily volunteered to name the ones I couldn’t identify. We went back inside and sat down in the living room.
After a while we heard the elevator door open. Rosette and I stood up and stared at it. A tall man I didn’t recognize stepped out. I assumed that this was Adil Uliyyan. He was the same height and had the same dark coloring that I remembered. But those two things were all he still had. He was mostly bald with little hairs scattered across his head. His face was covered in wrinkles; deep trenches in his face gave it a permanent scowl. He walked extremely slowly, one step after the other. He made a great effort to lift his torso, though this couldn’t hide the fact that his back was starting to hunch over. Rosette hurried to his side but when she tried to hold his hand he rejected her with a wave. I felt hesitant about approaching him, so I let him walk over to me. When he reached me, he stopped for a second to secure his footing. He extended his hand to me with the same deliberateness. That’s when I noticed how emaciated he was.