* This seemingly senseless statement is the author’s ironical portrayal of what happened in Palestine, where landowners with a title to their land under Ottoman law were often dispossessed by the Zionists who ’proved” to them by a variety of means that they had no such title.
* A yakhneh (see note on p. 101) of dried white beans. It is hearty, ordinary people’s food, not a refined dish.
** The second caliph who ruled between 632 A.D. and 644 A.D. Under him, Islam witnessed its first great expansion from Arabia to the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and Iran. He is thus a potent symbol of all that is best in Islam and a source of pride for those who yearn for a renewal in the Arab world.
* Originally a Turkish word used in much of the Levant to mean stew.
Chapter 5 The KING’S SQUARE
I was walking in my sodden clothes through the damp passages with their moldy smell of rain, looking for the way in the unfamiliar tunnels, cursing and trying not to look ridiculous. Ever since I arrived in this city, I’ve been going from hospital to hospital, from doctor to doctor and all of them — doctors and nurses all — shake their heads. They carry out tests and say: nothing, we don’t know, maybe tomorrow. Results and yet more results till I’m just about overcome by hysteria and anxiety. Since last night, and after a long day of suffering and interrogation, I’ve decided to be very carefuclass="underline" I must not appear ridiculous. I realized this the first time a nurse took hold of my hand. Stretched out on a plastic mat, my arm had thousands of sharp needles stuck into it. There were three nurses around me. A nurse smiled then began to sew my hand down to the plastic mat. Trying to distract me, she asked what I did for a living. I told her I didn’t do anything. The second nurse drew near and said: do you know how much you’re going to have to pay for this medical examination?
— No, I don’t.
— Three hundred and eighty-five francs.
— I won’t pay.
— We’ll put you in jail.
Here, I burst out laughing. The air was charged with something or other so the laughter exploded and the nurses laughed too.
— Buy why are you laughing?
— Because prisons are temporary things, I told her. We’ve abolished prisons. We were even about to abolish hospitals but for some rather complicated considerations. There wasn’t really the time to tell her how the children in our neighborhood once overran the women’s prison and carried off its rooftop — they dismounted the terra-cotta tiles one by one. The atmosphere just wasn’t conducive. Anyway, the important thing then was my arm. Of course, I paid up the entire amount afterward, though not for fear of imprisonment or the nurse, but just like that, because I felt sad. The electric current rushed through my left arm. I groaned, the nerve throbbed fiercely, on and on. Take a deep breath, scream, the nurse instructed. I breathed but my face was all twisted. It is then that I discovered the smiles on the nurses’ faces. Contorted in an ocean of pain, my own face no doubt looked funny. I tried to control my nerves and stop the muscles contracting. 1 stopped breathing but I couldn’t. The pain flooded my body, the electricity annihilating it. Then suddenly, everything stopped. I got up from the chair and walked, tried walking quickly and fell down. Don’t forget you’re sick, the nurse said. She smiled when I paid up the entire amount for the examination.
I abandoned my dash through that roaring jungle. I must find the way: she’s waiting for me and won’t wait very long. Last time, I arrived half an hour early and I sat in a cafe and the hubbub of thousands of voices. But she never came. When I called her in the evening, she answered apologetically. We agreed to meet today but she was threatening: don’t be late, I won’t wait more than five minutes. So here I am trying not to be late. The problem, though, is that I cant find my way through this maze. I’m sick, these metro tunnels are complicated and half the signs have been removed. I walked calmly and stopped in front of the newspaper seller, then felt an acrid smell of wine stealing up on me. He started to embrace me, shouting: how did you get here? When did you come? I looked at him closely and had to laugh. It was Bergis Nohra, none other.
— Tell me, come on, why don’t you come and visit me?
It was Bergis Nohra, none other.
— I wasn’t, I don’t want, I’m in a hurry, tomorrow.
But Bergis Nohra held me fast. Pulling me by the arm, come on. A stockily built man, fair-haired, thick-necked, a little prone to stoutness, talking about twenty different things at once. He was just the same five years ago. Bergis Nohra still yearns for his village. I’m a Maronite, from Bdadoun. He was just the same five years ago. I was penniless, poorer than the poorest of students. Maybe that’s what made me accept his invitation. I went into a house. At last, to enter a house and sit at a real meal. I was starving and ate as if I’d never before seen food in my life. I drank, he drank; we were drinking from twelve noon until the evening. To start with, I didn’t talk. It was hard making conversation as I wanted to be free to eat. After we’d got drunk and I’d been listening for a long time as he reminisced about his village and his father’s bankruptcy and his adventures, he started talking politics. Spare me, I told him. But he insisted. He started talking about the fedayeen and the September massacres.* He spoke in a skillfully mastered military lingo.
— But how do you know all this?
— I’m a fighter. I was a real fighter, he answered.
Of course I didn’t buy his story. The small, over-handing pot-belly and the luxurious restaurant he owns belie his claims.
— But where?
— In Vietnam.
Again, I didn’t buy it. I let him talk and gave myself up to the drops of cognac. He rambled on and I wasn’t listening, until all hell broke loose and his voice began thundering through the room like a cannon. I jumped up.
— What are you saying? The Foreign Legion!
— Yes, the Foreign Legion.
— You mercenary, you less-than-nothing, you savage, you …
I stood up, took the bottle of cognac and hurled myself at him. He dodged. Listen, you’re drunk, he shouted. You shouldn’t let wine stop you treating people properly. Listen to me, I’m on your side, and on theirs, but listen. I couldn’t. He ran to the bedroom and locked himself in. I must have looked terrifying. So let me listen. I calmed down, sat on the sofa, and waited for him. He came back.
— Listen, brother, listen carefully. It’s a complicated question. I was down and out, I didn’t have a residence permit in Paris. The police arrested me and gave me a choice of prison or the Foreign Legion. What would you have had me choose?
— To go back to Lebanon.
— That wasn’t possible. Lebanon wasn’t in the cards then. Prison or Vietnam, so I went to Vietnam. We fought a great deal but that isn’t the point. The point is that we knew our defeat to be inevitable. Yet we stayed on to fight. We’d committed ourselves to the war and we were going to honor our commitment. I’m a stubborn Maronite, I don’t pull out. I knew that the Foreign Legion and all the French army units would be defeated. Yet, I stayed on with them and fought because I’m a stubborn man. Then he began to laugh. Don’t believe this stubborn-man story, I’m only telling it because I’ve drunk a lot. I tried to escape several times or, rather, to be honest with you, I thought of escaping. But it wasn’t possible. War is a meticulously organized thing and the only way out of it is to stay with it. Aside from the fact that I fell in love with a Vietnamese woman and married her. Honestly, I’m not lying. I would go back to the mud hut in the evening and find her there waiting for me with the barrel. She’d put me inside and water would start to flow over me. I’d climb out, practically naked, gobble down my food with some rice wine, then gradually get drunk and just sit there. And I’d sleep with her sitting up, because standing or lying down are out of the question for anyone who drinks that wine. She was a beautiful woman. She stayed beautiful to her dying day. I believe she died when the French artillery was “combing’’ the Vietminh areas before the defeat at Dhien Bien Phu. Defeat was inevitable, despite my wife’s death and that of thousands of others. Though they carried the cannons on bicycles and climbed up the mountains strapping them to their shoulders, surrender was unavoidable. But best of all was the barrel. My relationship to the war was two-sided: a relationship with a beautiful woman on the one hand and with a barrel, on the other.