I heard the girl whisper to the tall man that she wouldn’t do the part: “I’m scared. I won’t do the part, and I want to go back to the hotel.”
I translated this to Abu Akram, and the fat man said he understood and went over to pat her on the shoulder. The moment his hand touched her, she trembled and pulled back, as though she’d received an electric shock, and I saw a sort of fear mixed with disgust in her eyes.
I left them there and walked out without saying goodbye.
Shit!
Is this what things have come to? They’re afraid of the victim! Instead of treating the patient, they fear him, and when they see, they close their eyes. They read books and write them. It’s the books that are the lies.
But why does the image of Catherine stick in my mind? Perhaps because she’s young and inarticulate, or perhaps because of her short hair, cropped like a boy’s. I must have felt something for her, especially when her lower lip started trembling. It started when I translated parts of the anecdote about Salim, and especially the part about how he used to stand in front of everybody and dye his hair in order to sell the shampoo. Catherine didn’t laugh like me and Abu Akram and the tall man. Her face seemed obscured by a dark veil, as if she’d seen us playing out our own deaths. I think she thought we were beasts. How can we take all that and not implode?
In fact, Father, wouldn’t it be better if nobody saw us? Otherwise, why would they want to build a wall around the camp? The Lebanese journalist I told you about spoke to me about the wall. He said the government would soon complete the rebuilding of Sports City, which was demolished by Israeli planes, and that Beirut was going to host the next Arab Games, and it would be better for the Arab athletes if they didn’t see.
They solve the problem by covering their eyes. And maybe they’re right! In this place, we’re a kind of a dirty secret. A permanent dirty secret you can only cover over by forgetting it.
“I’d like to forget, too,” I told Baroudi when he invited me to Rayyis’ restaurant.
I’d prefer to forget, and my encounter with Boss Josèph changed nothing because I’m not seeking revenge.
Can you believe it? The man invites me to meet with one of the butchers of Shatila, and I tell him there’s no point because I don’t hate them.
“There is a point,” said the journalist. “I want you to come because I’m going to write about reconciliation and forgiveness.”
“But I haven’t forgiven him or the others,” I answered.
“Never mind, never mind. What matters is how you feel.”
“And what about how he feels?” I asked.
“About what who feels?” he asked me.
“This Josèph that I don’t know.”
I went out of curiosity, since I don’t know East Beirut, and I’d never had the chance to meet someone we’d fought. The civil war had become a long dream, as though it had never happened. I can feel it under my skin, but I don’t believe it. Only the images remain. Even our massacre here in the camp and the flies that hunted me down I see as though they were photos, as though I weren’t remembering but watching. I don’t feel anything but astonishment. Strange, isn’t it? Strange that war should pass like a dream.
What do you think?
If you could speak, you’d say that the whole of life seems like a dream. Maybe in your long sleep you’re floating over the surface of things, as eyes do over pictures.
We went to Rayyis’ restaurant and waited, but he didn’t come.
We sat at a table for four. The journalist ordered two glasses of arak and some hummus and tabouleh, and we waited. Then a group of young men came in. Their hair was cut like youths in the Lebanese Forces.
“Nasri!” yelled Baroudi, who jumped up from his seat to embrace him.
“What are you doing here?” asked Nasri.
“What am I doing? I’m getting drunk,” answered Baroudi.
“Come and get drunk with us,” said Nasri.
“I can’t. I have a guest. And we’re waiting for Boss Josèph.”
I found myself at their table. There were six young men and a young brunette in a very short skirt and a low-cut blouse. It seemed to me she must have been Nasri’s girlfriend because whenever she got the chance she’d put her hand in his.
They laughed and drank and ate and told jokes. I tried to match their mood, but I couldn’t, it was as though my mouth were blocked with a stone, or I was ashamed of my Palestinian accent.
Baroudi broke the ice and told them who I really was: “I forgot to tell you that Dr. Khalil works for the Palestine Red Crescent in Shatila.”
“Welcome, welcome,” said Nasri. “You’re Palestinian?”
“Yes, yes.”
“From Shatila?”
“Yes. Yes, I live in Shatila, but I’m originally from Galilee.”
“I know Galilee well,” he said, and he started to tell me, to the delight of his companions, about a training course for parachutists that he’d taken part in in Galilee.
“Have you visited Palestine?”
“No.”
“I know it well. You have a beautiful country. It’s a lot like Lebanon, but the Jews have fixed it up, and it’s in good shape. The way it’s organized is astonishing — gardens, water, swimming pools. You’d think you were in Europe.”
He said they’d done their training in a Palestinian village. The village was just as it had been, but weeds had sprouted up everywhere.
“What was the name of the village?” I asked.
“I don’t know. They didn’t tell us, and we didn’t ask.”
“It was a small village,” said another youth, called Maro. “In the center of it, there was a big rock.”
Nasri said he’d fired at a tree, to amuse himself, and the Israeli trainer had scolded him and told him that he was lucky he’d missed because in Israel they loved trees and forbade anyone to cut them down or do them any harm.
“They’re taking care of our trees,” I said.
“If only you could see it, the whole area is planted with pine trees. God, how lovely the pines are! You’d think you were in Lebanon.”
“Pine trees! But it’s an area for olives.”
“The Jews don’t like olive trees. It’s either pines or palms.”
“They killed the trees,” I said.
“No. They uprooted them and replanted.”
Nasri would throw in a few Hebrew words that I didn’t understand to prove that what he was saying was true. He said he’d been a fool because he’d believed in the war, and that this war was meaningless. He was leaving for America soon to continue his studies in computer engineering.
The strange thing was that I listened to this young man who’d jumped with his parachute over Galilee without feeling any hatred. I’d imagined that if I ever met one of those people, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back, but there I was drinking arak and laughing at their jokes and watching the girl as she tried to hold Nasri’s hand and he pulled it out of hers, while Baroudi observed me and looked at his watch and grumbled because Josèph was late.
“That Josèph of yours is full of shit,” one of them said. He started telling tales of Josèph’s cowardice, telling how during the battle of the Holiday Inn,* he threw himself from the fourth floor to escape and ran on a broken leg.
“A dopehead and an asshole,” said another.
“Look how he’s ended up — calling himself a boss, just when there aren’t any bosses left,” said Nasri.
I felt a desire to defend Boss Josèph. I thought it wasn’t fair to talk about him behind his back and that if he were there, he’d show them what being a boss meant. And as to his being a coward, I didn’t believe it, especially after what my writer friend had told me about how particularly brutal he’d been during the Shatila massacre. However, I preferred to remain silent. I was in a strange position. How can I describe it? I really can’t say there had been no crimes. We, too, killed and destroyed, but at that moment I sensed the banality of evil. Evil has no meaning, and we were just its tools. We’re nothing. We make war and kill and die, and we’re nothing — just fuel for a huge machine whose name is War. I said to myself, It’s impossible. Especially with this Nasri, I felt as though I were standing in front of a mirror, as though he resembled me! If I’d been able to talk, I’d have talked more than he did, but a big stone stopped up my mouth. Then the stone started crumbling to the rhythm of the girl’s hand that reached out for Nasri’s hand and then pulled back. He was drinking arak in a special way: He’d suck the glass, leave a little of the white liquid on its lip and then lick it off. He had fair skin and broad shoulders. I think he must have been a body builder because his chest rippled under his blue shirt. He kept coming back to the story of the parachute training and what he’d felt while flying over Israel.