I’m a student, he said. We’re the new shift. They left me on the mountain. Don’t kill me.
He was trembling, as prisoners do, Nazeeh was trembling, as conquerors do, and Talal trembled. I held the prisoner by the right arm and Talal held him. We took him to the tent, gave him a glass of hot tea. What happened to the four prisoners, Talal asked me. Nabeel came, we should kill him on the spot. Sons of bitches. Fascists!
The prisoner quaked. We’re not going to kill him, said Talal. He’s poor, just like us.
— Why is he fighting on their side?
— When will the poor fight their own wars?
— There’s no war that’s special to the poor. Buildings must tear down buildings, and shacks buildings and cities cities. And out of the destruction will rise the poor’s special war.
Talal sat beside the prisoner and started talking. He told him about the South, about the poor in Nabaa, about Tall al-Zaatar.* He told him that Amman had been ablaze, that the orange hadn’t died. He told him the story of the prison and of our friendship with the four prisoners. The prisoner was convinced. Prisoners are always easily convinced.
— But why are you fighting with them?
Don’t kill me, I beg you, the prisoner says. We won’t kill you, Talal says. But talk. I’m convinced, the prisoner says. Always, prisoners are convinced easily. And prisoners die easily.
The last option is me, I told her. The last option is death, says Nazeeh, walking behind the white mule which stumbles as it makes its way across the rugged hills. And Talal sleeps quietly, swaying on the mules back. One bullet in the head. Drops of blood fall, trickling onto the mules white belly. The last option is death, he said to her. The four prisoners, they’re still dreaming of rifles. And the mountain trembles under our footfalls. The last option is death, I tell her. The loaf goes dry in my hand. Talal sleeps, surrendering like a real king. And Sanneen doesn’t answer.
* Beshara al-Khoury was the first president of independent Lebanon. His statue, on one of Beirut’s main arteries, was a major point of convergence for demonstrators during the worker and student protest era of the late ’60s and early ’70s.
* Serhan was the young Palestinian who assassinated United States senator Robert Kennedy in 1968.
** Abu Ahmed and Imm Ahmed, literally father and mother of Ahmed; it is common in many parts of the Arab world to refer to people in this way, and even childless or sonless married men and women may be given such a laqab — agnomen or nickname — as a sign of respect.
Hajjeh is the feminine of haajj, i.e., someone who has accomplished the required Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Such people are often credited with baraka, a special sort of blessing, a favorable influence or touch to which children should be exposed if possible, especially if they have experienced some misfortune, illness, or disability. The term is often used to precede a name in deference to a person’s age or perceived wisdom even if the pilgrimage has not actually been undertaken.
* Any of a variety of long flowing robes worn throughout the Middle East by men or women. Although originally used to designate the long, woolen cloaklike wrap worn especially in the desert where the nights are cold, it has become a generic term for any kind of floor-length, loose garment.
* Thyme. In Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, it is dried and crushed then mixed with other herbs and spices, such as sumac, sesame seed, salt, and cumin, and is eaten in a paste made from adding olive oil to the mixture. It is widely used as a breakfast or dinner condiment with bread and tea.
** Kaak, singular kaaka, is a generic term used for a variety of slightly sweet or savory, always dry, baked goods in the shape of a bracelet, similar to pretzels.
* That is, there is no God but God, part of the shahada, the Muslim creed. Often used as an incantation to ward off evil in circumstances of misfortune or to express jubilation.
* Because a loaf of Lebanese bread is completely flat and round, it is possible to cover one’s face with it.
* A corruption of company, the word used by the native Palestinians to designate the early Zionist settlements. The small colonies were assimilated to some kind of compound which might have belonged to a company.
** Also known as the Army of Deliverance (jaysh al-inqādh), it was the ill-fitted, poorly trained, army of Arab volunteers formed in 1948 in the last-minute pan-Arab response to what was becoming the inexorable ascendancy of the Zionists in Palestine. It was the first pan-Arab effort to face the Zionist challenge and is a subject of both sadness and derision.
* A village or town headman or mayor.
* The former was a run-down area for poor migrant workers who constituted Beirut’s lumpen-proletariat in the “boom’’ years of the ’60s and ’70s; it was situated on the outskirts of what is now East Beirut, not far from Qarantina and Maslakh. Tall al-Zaatar was a Palestinian refugee camp, also in an outlying area of East Beirut, which was besieged for months in the first year of the war in Lebanon; it finally fell in a fierce battle in the summer of 1976.
Chapter 4 The STAIRS 1
The woman drops down from the ceiling. My eyes cling to the feet. A woman dangling from the ceiling. I no longer understand anything. Really, I no longer understand a thing. I’ve been afraid of the ceiling for years. The ceiling is low. Buildings are high and ceilings are low. I used to tell my wife I was afraid of low ceilings. But she’s a modern woman; she likes modern buildings and won’t live in the village. And what will happen to our children, I tell her. Nothing, she answers. They’ll live in nice modern houses, not like this house, mangy as your bald patch. But they’ll live in even more run-down houses and become like rats. A modern woman is right. And I too am a modern man and am right. I bought the car and used to drive it the way other men do, my wife by my side and the children, looking like domesticated animals, in the back. And then we all like modern things. Beyond that, I don’t know. But the woman’s dangling from the ceiling as if she were falling. No, she’s not falling. I’m standing still, I can hear voices, I’m trying to make out the meanings of the words. But I can’t. Yet, we should understand things precisely. I no longer understand this “precisely” in spite of the fact that I’m a law-and-order man and all for the police. Crazy Hani, what’s he doing now in the grave? At least, he’s not asking questions and his eyes don’t wander off when he’s talking. His eyes were remote as two drops of water. The physics teacher always talked about the drop of water and I never understood what he meant until I looked at this man’s eyes. Two, circular, depthless drops of water. He would disappear into his eyes when he talked and stay there, transformed into two drops of water, and curse the police and the state. I’d stand beside him and say nothing. What would I say? There’s no police now, Hani’s dead and the situation isn’t any better. And this woman’s dangling from the ceiling. Her leg is white and her thigh is white. No, not white. Something like white. And her foot’s as big as a man stuck to the wall. I go up to the wall and press my body to it. But the man is moving, he’s shaking. The whole room’s shaking. My hand is shaking and the white liquid spilling onto the ground. I put a bit of water in my mouth but don’t swallow; I hold it, letting my right cheek swell. I go up to the chair and try to lean against it. But the shadows, the shadows are swaying as if we were inside a city made of thick cardboard. Colors dark and things receding. My hand drops but I try. I’m really trying. I stand in front of the woman who looks like a thick rope. I extend my hand toward the rope. I hear a scream, step back a little. I brace my back against the wall. The wall shakes. I feel the wall is about to fall on my face, it can’t stand upright. I see the cupboard and smile. You can’t but smile when you see the cupboard. My aunt loved that cupboard. When she died, the first thing I did was to go to the cupboard and weep in front of its doors. What can a woman do? A woman who spent her life in her brother’s house, sweeping, washing dishes, and feeling like an outsider. She used to cry. She’d tell me about the young suitor whom my father rejected because he was crazy and didn’t love her. I know the truth, my aunt would say. He was a drunkard, played around with chicks, and then got drunk out of his mind. Your father was always getting drunk. When the suitor visited him to ask for my hand in marriage, he was drunk, and he advised him not to marry me because I’m ugly. When the man insisted, my brother cursed him and told him not to marry because marriage is a calamity and threw him out of the house. And then he came to me, told me, apologized and started to cry. I said nothing. My aunt would cry and look at the cupboard. The best thing’s the cupboard. It doesn’t feel anything, she’d hit it, my aunt would hit the cupboard violently, but it wouldn’t cry because it didn’t feel anything. My aunt would cry. I want to become a cupboard. I’d sit beside her and cry. Then I thought of becoming a cupboard. The woman dangling from the ceiling contorts herself like a circus woman. I met my wife many years ago. A million years ago. When I got married, I told my father that the first woman resembles the last. He laughed then looked at his wife; she smiled. It was the first time I felt that my mother was the wife of this loathsome man. They fool around in bed together, then he beats her while making love to her to heighten his pleasure. I used to think that I couldn’t lie next to a woman on the same bed without making love to her the whole night long. How could I fall asleep while a woman, a complete woman slept beside me. My eyelids wouldn’t so much as blink when I used to put a picture of a naked woman next to me in bed. I’d stay wide awake, me and the picture and other things. Then I’d get out of bed, fold the picture carefully, put it inside the book and sleep. But now, a million years later, I sleep with her beside me without folding her away or putting her into a book. Of course, I don’t know. My father’s laugh, and his glance at his wife, are still in rny mind. I know nothing about women save the last woman who’s called my wife and who loves me the way she loves cake. As for the first woman, and the second and the third, they’re still in the magazines that I started to buy on the sly and looked at or read at the office. Until a colleague caught me. He stole the magazine from my drawer and went around to the secretaries with it. I was so embarrassed my bald patch blushed. I felt my head ablaze with blood. From that day on, I became shy of the secretaries and their impertinent looks and laughs. As for the men, they would whisper among themselves.