My father’s gun hadn’t returned that day, and no one asked to have it back, out of embarrassment. My father had been told that whoever had been using it tossed it onto the ground when it ran out of bullets, in order to pull out his second gun, and then it got lost. Then later someone came and told him that his gun was not actually lost but was still with one of his relatives. He didn’t think anything of it. Of course, the suspicions surrounding Ayyoub continued, but Ayyoub was immune to questions because of the wounds he suffered: three bullets to the body.
At any rate, my father was willing to forfeit his gun as the price for his absence.
Munir resumed his pounding on the wall. We found out that his friends didn’t want to play with him. They wouldn’t let him play war, the only game they knew and which they played with weapons made out of reeds and gun sounds made with their mouths. They wouldn’t allow him to be a soldier, of course, or even an outlaw, on the basis that his father was scared to shoot his own gun. He even begged them to let him be a guard at the prison they made for outlaws trying to escape justice, but they were adamant. He stamped his feet in anger, burst into tears and hurried home to take it out on us.
We girls, in turn, divulged everything that had happened to us. They had accused my mother of ceasing to wear black mourning clothes after only three months of bereavement and they complained that none of her daughters wore mourning clothes at all, even though we were mature ‘young women’, as they would say.
My father came home a little later. We told him Munir had locked himself in the bedroom. He smiled and went to the door.
‘Munir?’
‘What’s my name?’
My brother’s question surprised us all. My father laughed and answered him pompously, ‘Munir Hamid Jirjis al-Semaani.’
‘No it isn’t…’
‘What do you mean, no it isn’t?’
‘No it isn’t.’
‘What’s your name, then?’
‘They say we are not Semaanis…’
That particular accusation had not been levelled at Munir that same day. He was unburdening himself of all the insults he’d been subjected to.
‘Who says that to you?’ my father asked him with the tone of a vanquished man. He quickly understood what was happening.
‘My friends…’
‘They said this to you today?’
‘No. They say it every day.’
‘Which children?’
‘The first one is George, my cousin.’
‘And what do you say back?’
‘I don’t know.’
My father got upset, but his anger didn’t last long, as usual.
‘How could you accept that? How could you say nothing? Didn’t you tell them that you were a Semaani before any of them?’
‘They say we follow the milk,’ he said, sobbing and giving up. ‘We’re from Al-Mazraa.’
‘What else do they say?’
Munir was silent. It was as though he’d got enough off of his chest. But my father wasn’t satisfied.
‘What?’
‘They say you’re not a man.’
He pronounced the word rijjaal, the Arabic word for ‘man’, with a double ‘j’ of course. The plural of rijjaal is rjaal, with no vowel after the ‘r’ and a long ‘aa’ vowel after the ‘j’. It takes a common masculine plural form, as opposed to the plural of abadaay (tough guy) which takes the common feminine plural form that ends with ‘aat’, abadaayaat. The word for ‘men’, rjaal, is also pronounced rjayl, again with no vowel after the ‘r’. The word is open to several derivations and has various related verbs, among which are the verbs rajjala (to take on manly characteristics) and tamarjala (to act tough).
Some of those men who enthusiastically accompanied their headmen to the anniversary mass commemorating that ill-omened event were suited to the verb rajjala very well. The sudden and the unexpected have a way of revealing people’s true mettle. However, those men who participated in the Burj al-Hawa incident did not deserve the same title of rjaal (men) that their ancestors who fought with Yusuf Bey Karam against the Turkish Army had earned. Perhaps that was because their ancestors who fought against the Turkish Army had confronted strangers rather than firing their bullets at one another. Or, as people like to boast, ‘Jails were made for men,’ but it should be pointed out that while the incident sent a lot of people to the grave, it sent hardly anyone to jail.
The etymology goes even further. Another plural form, rjaalaat (men), was also used but these men were few and far between. The term referred specifically to the men who had fought for Lebanese Independence fourteen years earlier.
For every man who rajjala (took on manly characteristics) there was one who ajbana (behaved like a coward). That is, he had the opportunity to destroy the enemy but did not. And also, there were men who tahaayadu (remained neutral), meaning they chose not to participate in wielding their weapons and firing them because their familial blood-solidarity was weak, in the sense that they did not belong to the heart and soul of the family but rather to its extremities. It goes without saying that ibn al-‘aa’ila (the true son of the family) cannot be neutral because his neutrality would be interpreted as defeat. The epitome of manliness is expressed in these homonym verses:
Neither behind me nor in front of me nor next to me (hadd-ay)
The dust of horses’ hooves gives me pleasure and so do heroic verses (al-hid-ay)
O saddleback, you are my cradle and my grave (lahd-ay)
Whenever my country is threatened
As for the regression of the era of manliness, that can be summed up by saying that men themselves turn into women, are infected with the feminine ‘adwa al-mu’annath’ when they lose their manliness. Some might say that the era of manliness disappeared with the expansion of the state’s influence and military power which caused the appearance of al-frari, plural frariyyeh, meaning fugitives, also referred to as tuffaar, in nearby areas. These were the clever tough men running from the law. Others say that the revolver, or even the automatic version of it, had not threatened the existence of the rijjaal (real man) even if it had opened the door to attacks from behind and cowardly ambushes, up until the hand-held automatic rifle appeared. No one could act tough around the Kalashnikov with its thirty rounds, and that was the primary cause for the waning of the age of tough guys. The final word now belonged to guns rather than men.
My father smiled bitterly and said, ‘OK, so I’m not a man. It’s OK. Open the door, son. Open it!’ He went on with a muffled voice as if talking to himself, ‘Put your mind at ease. You won’t hear that kind of talk after today…’
Exactly two months later, my father picked us up and brought us here. We took every precaution to leave without making any noise or raising any suspicions. To avoid people’s stares, we moved our furniture at night. Getting out of there was my mother’s dream come true and our second betrayal of our relatives. My father rented this house for us because it overlooks the bay. We were able to buy it after a number of years. When we first arrived we used to sit here on an old squeaky porch swing that the former owners had left behind. The four of us would sit on it, side by side, watching the fishing boat lights as the moon glimmered on the surface of the water on those warm summer evenings. And if for some reason we woke up in the middle of the night, we would always find our father standing outside, seemingly counting the stars as he smoked.