“You can’t possibly tend the olive trees under these circumstances.”
But she simply doesn’t understand.
“I’m going anyway, my dear,” she tells him, reclining in bed.
A partial stroke has left her bedridden, with a strangely lopsided face, a twisted mouth and a semi-paralyzed arm. And then there’s Husniyyah, his wife, constantly complaining that it’s becoming intolerable to live like this, and him trying to calm things down.
Honestly, all this talk about life being intolerable! Zayn thanks the good Lord that they all managed to escape Naba’a 3 alive during the fighting — before it was overrun, and all those atrocities took place. Initially, they fled to the village, and when they returned to Beirut, they found a place to stay in Hamra. Now, honestly speaking, how could Naba’a possibly be better than Hamra? True, there they had their own house, even though it was a rental, and here they’re only refugees… But at least now there’s no rent to pay, and what’s more, here it’s a building, a high-rise — even though there is the landlord, damn him and his petty ways, . always coming around to “inspect” the building, casting sideways glances at everybody, as if we had the plague, and disapproving of the laundry hanging from the balconies! What does he expect, that the clothes should remain unwashed? He says it mars the beauty of the building! I suppose he thinks we should be dirty so the view can remain unspoiled! Still, when all’s said and done, Hamra’s better than Naba’a: there the house was small, just one room and a poky kitchen; here it’s large and airy. There are three rooms — two bedrooms and a living room — plus it’s furnished. . fridge, stove, armchairs, all the modern conveniences you could want. . All of that, and still Husniyyah says that life in Naba’a was better!
“There, people were human beings at least!”
Well, what to do? They can’t return to Naba’a, and living in the village is out of the question.
The only thing that bothers Zayn ’Alloul about their new home is the movie theater on the first floor of the building: its lurid posters of naked women, and the laughter and raucousness into the early hours, they’re truly a thorn in his side. “We’re decent people, we are with young daughters!”
The smoke from the American cigarettes envelops the front cabin, as the truck plods along the blue-gray and seemingly endless shore. Joggers, in navy track suits or shorts, gradually emerge, some running, others walking briskly, with their heads held high and their arms swinging vigorously back and forth. The early-morning stillness is broken only by the noise of the passing truck and the rolling sea.
“What do they do out here every morning?” the driver asks.
“Exercise, man, exercise,” Zayn tells him. “I’m no expert, but doctors say people should jog so they won’t get fat. . It’s just another fad of these cursed times!”
“You know Jameel? The son of Imm Mohammad as-Saqa — he was big as a bull, they thought it was his glands, but the doctor told him the only solution was jogging… So out he went out and bought one of those navy track suits. . What a wimp he turned out to be: he did it a few times then stopped, because he couldn’t face getting up that early — at any rate, that’s what people said!”
The truck comes to a halt beside a mound of garbage. Mohammad al-Kharroubi and Saleh Ahmad jump down and start shoveling the trash into the back of the truck. Zayn remains seated next to the driver — he doesn’t like working this strip of the Manara Corniche: it’s littered with empty beer cans that make him feel nauseous so early in the morning; and anyway, he’s the most senior man among them, he’s been a garbage collector for twenty years, and he’s entitled to a rest. Glancing out the window, he sees al-Kharroubi ogling a young girl wearing blue jogging pants. She’s blonde and fair-skinned, clearly a foreigner. Strange creatures they are, these foreigners. . Fancy getting up at the crack of dawn to jog!
The girl is alone. There’s no one else around. Mohammad al-Kharroubi goes up to her.
“Mmmm. . hot stuff!” Then he wolf-whistles, and intones “Allah-u-akbar! God is great who bestowed this morning on us!”
The girl steps back as al-Kharroubi draws closer and leans nonchalantly against the front of the truck, baring all his teeth. Then he edges closer and makes an obscene gesture. All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, a young man appears and grabs the girl by the wrist. He glances menacingly at al-Kharroubi, who continues his approach undeterred until the young man releases the girl’s wrist and comes right up to him.
“Looks like we’re in for a bit of trouble,” the driver says, watching the scene impassively and puffing on his cigarette.
Zayn hops out of the vehicle and tries to pull al-Kharroubi back.
“Leave them alone, man.” And looking at the young man, he adds: “Really sorry about this, my apologies, brother.”
The young man turns toward the sea and goes on his way with the girl.
The truck rumbles on. Zayn ’Alloul doesn’t like trouble, he’s sure the young man escorting the foreign girl must be in some position of responsibility or else he wouldn’t dare to be out with her so early in the morning; what’s more, he was armed. If this Mohammad al-Kharroubi had persisted, the man would surely have fired the gun and al-Kharroubi would have died like a dog, without anyone even bothering to ask after him!
He’s got to be someone important, Zayn is sure of that. A neighbor of his in Hamra, a young man about the same age as this one, with a senior position on a newspaper, told him once that the best thing about his job was the foreign women. “They come as reporters to witness the revolution, the toiling masses, and the armed struggle,” he said, “and when we take them to the training camps and the military outposts, they go nuts — they start feeling the guns and firing them. God only knows what gets into them, all they seem to want is to bed the boys… Maybe it’s so they can feel proud that they’ve slept with a revolutionary, or that they can tell everyone back home how they’ve participated in the national struggle, or that they. . this or that.”
“We only just averted trouble there,” says Zayn ’Alloul out loud. Not that he was scared. Not him. Even at the height of the Israeli shelling of Sharqiyyeh, when everyone in the village was running helter-skelter, screaming and shouting for dear life, his heart was like granite. . he absolutely refused to leave the house with the rest of his family that day, despite his wife’s entreaties.
Still, though, Zayn hates trouble: meddle in something that doesn’t concern you, trouble is bound to follow — and you end up with a bruised face. Zayn ’Alloul feels his face gingerly.
Like that day when he got back home — they were still in Naba’a then — and instead of jumping for joy that he was safe, his wife started wailing, “Ya msibati, ya sh’haari! Oh, that such a fate has befallen me!” He tried to calm her down but she went on and on about his face. He knew how it looked, even though he wouldn’t look in the mirror, he knew his face was swollen and black and blue all over. That was his mistake. He should have kept his big mouth shut. .
Zayn ’Alloul hadn’t done anything. The air battles were raging and people were huddled around their radios listening to the Cairo broadcast. Everyone was incredulous that the Egyptian army had managed to cross the Suez Canal and that the Arabs were now poised to defeat Israel. Zayn and a few other men were standing outside Abu Khalil’s shop, drinking tea and talking, when the conversation shifted to the Bank of America incident. A unit of the Lebanese police had launched an assault on the bank after an armed group had taken some hostages, demanding that the bank contribute to the Arab war effort. As a result of the operation, two gunmen had been killed, two others arrested, and the hostages released.