‘The next evening, I turned the radio back on. I couldn’t deprive myself of it for more than one day, but I did move it closer to this red couch right here and I put my ear nearly up against it so I could hear it without letting the sound travel to any other person. It was a very dark night, no moon and no light. I remember I was listening to the Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab song ‘Love and Youth’ when the electricity went out. My mother shouted out, saying that was the last thing we needed on that disastrous day. It was dead silent in the neighbourhood and all through the town, after two days of misery and a long, sleepless night. The time for bodies to go limp had come. The whole town was like a team of runners who’d just finished a gruelling race and were so exhausted they fell to the ground trying to catch their breath. We were the least affected. Though we knew many of the dead, none of them were our relatives. There was Farid Badwi al-Semaani, the tailor, who was a handsome young man my father was always teasing and never responded except with a sly smile. And we knew Yusef al-Kfoury, your poor father. He loved life and loved evening gatherings… and women, too, which Kamileh knew about though she never complained.
‘And so here I was, sitting here, when the electricity went out and the radio stopped singing. What could I do? I sat in the dark, smoking and waiting. It was a rare silence that was only interrupted by the sound of frogs croaking near the river, and total darkness pierced only by the flash of fireflies. I remember listening closely to the silence that night after the day’s noise and heartbreak and weeping. I stayed there that way for more than two hours wishing the calm would last a long time. But suddenly the electricity came back on and in a matter of seconds something occurred that I can never forget. I’ve never told anyone about it, actually, except my mother. And now that my mother is dead, no one but me knows what I saw and I want to tell you about it. I don’t know who sent you to me. I didn’t move from here, from this velvet sofa, the whole time the electricity was out. The only movement I made was to light a match every half hour to light a cigarette. But when the electricity suddenly came back on, I saw a very strange thing, which I will tell you about because it’s been forty years since then.
‘The lights came back on in our house and here in the sitting room, and with the surge of electricity the radio came blaring on, too. It came on very loud despite my having lowered the volume so no one else could hear it but me before the electricity went out. The electricity and the loud blare of Um Kulthum’s voice into the night surprised me. My first reaction was to look towards your house to determine if your mother or anyone there had heard the song. In fact, I did that even before reaching over to turn the volume down. In any case, it all happened in a matter of seconds. The image was stamped in my mind but I didn’t think much of it the moment I saw it because I was so concerned with the radio and the high volume and the shame of it all and what my father might say about my negligence and the scandal of my listening to the radio despite all our fallen neighbours and friends. Once I was able to turn the radio completely off and make sure no one was going to pounce on me and complain because they’d all finally fallen into a deep sleep after two nights of sleeplessness, I went back to my spot here on the red sofa. I noticed in that moment what I had glimpsed happening in your house and was still unfolding before my eyes. I saw Fuad and Butros al-Rami on the balcony, like in the old days. I thought I must be mistaken about the timeframe, that I was witnessing a scene from a long time ago that was still stamped in my memory. You know who Fuad and Butros al-Rami are, right? True they were your father’s closest friends, but how could they be here? They were from the Rami family!
‘We knew Fuad and his brother Butros. They used to have drinks sometimes on the balcony with your father, and Kamileh would bring them mezze. We could smell the grilled meat and hear their laughter from here. Some evenings Fuad al-Rami would persuade Kamileh to sing. Your father would encourage her and she would send out her ataaba and mijana tunes into the night, followed by a shy laugh and a long round of approval.
‘We were told later on that they had come to offer their condolences to Kamileh and that someone had brought them to her under cover of darkness. We weren’t able to hear what they were saying there on the balcony. They were whispering… When the electricity came back on, the light bulb on Kamileh’s balcony lit up. The two men were sitting with your mother and her friend Muntaha. I stayed in my spot on the sofa until morning, until my mother woke up and tugged my shoulder telling me to go sleep in my bed. All the time I sat there, in between nodding off, I would lift my head and look in the direction of your house, and actually I’m no longer certain exactly what time I looked and didn’t see anyone on the balcony anymore.’
Chapter 19
Everyone reached wits’ end as the fighting dragged on.
Yusuf Saeed al-Rami reached his wits’ end, too.
He had been forced to stop ploughing his olive groves and pruning his trees with his rough hands and spraying them with the sprayer he carried on his shoulder. His grove in the lower village of Al-Hariq was exposed to the enemy. Yusuf had received a warning from one of his old friends, a childhood friend, though childhood was a very long time ago now that Yusuf was almost seventy. His friend sent him the news secretly with Father Boulos, which was to tell Yusuf that the last time he went to look after his olive trees his enemies spotted him from behind the barricade set up on the roof of the monastery, and next time he wouldn’t be able to escape their bullets.
‘They’ll kill you, Yusuf,’ Father Boulos told him. ‘Stop going up to Al-Hariq. You all have suffered enough.’
His enemies were waiting for a new German rifle with a telescope to arrive any day.
Yusuf didn’t have anything left in the world except that olive grove.
He was at odds with his neighbours and his relatives. They didn’t like him and he didn’t like them. He started throwing stones at them one day because of how much they mocked him. He’d pass by them without greeting any of them. And he was at odds with his wife Salimeh and with his five sons — four of whom he still had and one who’d been hit. They never asked for his opinion and he never offered one. They ate without inviting him for lunch. They died and didn’t ask him anything. Their mother was in charge of them.
He had planned to build a room for himself in the olive orchard where he could sleep and get away from Salimeh. He hadn’t had any friends for a long time. His old friend in the Lower Quarter, who sent him the warning about the German rifle with the telescope, was connected to Yusuf more by the memory of their friendship than by the friendship itself.
He used to go to Al-Hariq in order to flee the house and the neighbourhood. He’d stay there until nightfall, battling the thorns and building a stone border he had no need for, by himself, with his own hands — just to avoid going home too early.
And now here he was stuck at home. He was too old to fight and didn’t want to fight, either. He counted the days until he could go back to the olive orchard.