“I told you go back to shoe shining. Take care of your shoe shining.”
Dr. Atef left and Little Gandhi didn’t see any more of him. They said he stopped going out of his house and no longer opened his door to anyone. His wife was having fainting spells but he refused to take her to the hospital. “God is the only healer,” he’d say.
And Alice couldn’t sleep anymore.
She had insomnia from the time she took up residence at the Salonica Hotel.
It’s been a long journey, I told her.
So she asked me what journey I was talking about.
Nothing, I said. The book.
What book? she asked.
I didn’t answer. She said she wanted some sleeping pills, but she was afraid she’d take them and die and they’d say she committed suicide, and suicide is a sin.
“Suicide is a sin, my son.”
And Alice, who could no longer sleep, became a maid. She lost her job at the Blow Up after al-Askary’s murder. Then she lost her apartment in Ayn Mraysi. Gandhi helped her get a job selling flowers at the Montana, but finding a suitable place for her to live was difficult. She slept at the Montana for two years, and there felt her joints would collapse from the humidity. Then she met the white Egyptian in the bar. He was looking for something. Even now Alice was not sure exactly what. She thought he was looking for prostitutes, that he wanted to set up his own network. He saw the possibility of using her as bait and so he suggested the hotel to her. She asked him why.
“I need you as an adviser, Madam. You can stay here for free. You’re a gold mine.”
So she started sleeping there. The war raged on, contrary to the Egyptian gentleman’s predictions. The gold mine evaporated and the hotel turned into a meeting place for retired prostitutes and soldiers. Alice became a simple maid and nobody cared about her.
5
Alice said he died.
“I came and saw him, I covered him with newspapers, there was no one around, his wife disappeared, they all disappeared, and I was all alone.”
Alice said she took him to the cemetery, and she saw the people without faces. “People have become faceless,” she told me. She spoke to them and didn’t get any response, then she left them and went on her way. That’s how the story ended.
“Tell me about him,” I said to her.
“How shall I tell you?” she answered. “I was living as though I were living with him without realizing it. When you live, you don’t notice things. I didn’t notice, I just don’t know.” She shook her head and repeated her sentence. “All I know is, he died, and he died for nothing.”
I recall Alice’s words and try to imagine what happened, but I keep finding holes in the story. All stories are full of holes. We no longer know how to tell stories, we don’t know anything anymore. The story of Little Gandhi ended. The journey ended, and life ended.
That’s how the story of Abd al-Karim Husn al-Ahmadi al-Mughayiri, otherwise known as Little Gandhi, ended.
Death is black.
The newspapers covering the body of the little man dissolved under the light September rain. The color black oozed from the body, and the body swelled. The light rain poured down silently, and the newspapers got soaked and became transparent, the black words seeped out of them. The color black rolled onto the street to the curb filled with black trash bags.
Everything was black. Soldiers’ boots, their rifles, their faces, their screams in the streets, and the hissing of bullets as they tore out buildings and windows.
Bullets, and silence. A dawn of light rain and boots, the city awakened as if it were asleep.
On Madhat Basha Street, a few meters from Saydani Street, Ahmad Sunbuk was running. On top of a garbage heap he found a wrinkled army uniform. He picked it up, put on the khaki pants over his own blue pants, and the army shirt over his own green one. He took off his brown shoes and put on the black rubber boots. Then he put a cooking pot on his head and went running in the streets.
Ahmad Sunbuk was looking right and left and laughing, baring his broken yellow teeth, and went running in the streets. He bent down, picked up a piece of wood, and put it under his arm like a machine gun. He aimed it at the street in front of him and started shooting. He started running and spraying bullets all around and making machinegun sounds. He jumped over the trash bags and the little puddles that formed in the potholes in the road. He jumped up and fell on the ground, then got up again and continued his battle.
At the entrance to Saydani Street, Ahmad Sunbuk was hit with five bullets. The blood poured from his back, but he kept on running. Alice, who was standing over Little Gandhi’s water-logged corpse, said he continued running as if he hadn’t been hit. He was running, with the blood gushing from his back, and he didn’t look back. His running began to slow down. He walked as he ran, then he fell to the ground as if he were acting. He fell on his knees and his head fell back and out came the cry “Allahu Akbar!”
It was Abu Saeed al-Munla who screamed. He came out onto the balcony and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” His voice was loud and hoarse, as if he were clearing his throat. And the cry “Allahu Akbar!” echoed from the minarets and balconies. Suddenly, the abandoned, demolished city began to shout from its minarets in a unified voice. The Israeli soldiers who occupied the streets, and who shot at anything and everything, aimed their rifles at Abu Saeed’s balcony and fired. Abu Saeed was hit, the blood gushed from his chest like a fountain. He fell onto the floor of the balcony with a thud, and “Allahu Akbar!” sounded from all the minarets. The soldiers heard, fired, and then their rifles became silent. All of a sudden they began to retreat as if they were frightened. They bent down beneath the balconies, leaning their tired bodies against the walls, and kneeled with their knees to their chests on the ground. And Ahmad Sunbuk remained in his place, kneeling, his head thrown back as if he were praying.
Alice wept and wailed. She wasn’t sure if she was crying over Gandhi or Sunbuk or Abu Saeed, or because she heard the calls of “Allahu Akbar!”
I asked her about Sunbuk. She smiled and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex, as though she wanted to show me she was about to cry. She said everyone knew Sunbuk, and no one knew who he was or where he came from. He was the local idiot. He’d stand in the middle of Hamra Street with a piece of gray cloth in his hand, using it to polish the windows of cars stopped in traffic. The people in the cars would get impatient with him, because when he’d wipe the glass he’d get it all dirty instead of cleaning it, leaving behind little black smudges. The drivers would pay him and accept his dirty piece of cloth to avoid upsetting him. Sunbuk wouldn’t allow anyone to make fun of him. One time a man got out of his car, paid him, and asked him not to clean the windshield. The only thing Sunbuk could do was break the windshield of the car with one swift blow of his fist. Sunbuk changed after that incident. It was no longer enough for him to wipe windshields; now he’d stand up and whistle, direct traffic, and give orders.
Nobody knew anything about him other than that he came from a small village in the Beqaa. He never told anyone the name of the village, and he was all alone. He lived in a wooden shanty next to Ramal al-Zarif High School. He’d drink Pepsi out in front of his shack and sing in a soft voice.
What happened to Ahmad Sunbuk the morning of September 15, 1982? Was he a part of the river of blood the city was to drown in? Or was he its hidden cry amidst the fear that flattened the city’s joints during three months of bombings and blockades?
Abu Saeed al-Munla said in the hospital while listening to the news of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, and of the collective fear that overtook Beirut, he said something hidden inside him had made him scream. He didn’t know why the call to prayer rose out of him, for it wasn’t time for prayer.