“It was wrong to do that,” Abu Khalil was saying. “The war is with Israel. Why attack the bank?”
“It’s an American bank, isn’t it? And America is Israel. Whether it’s over there or over here, it’s the same war, can’t you see?” said one of the young men gathered around the shop.
Newspaper in hand, Abu Khalil edged toward the shaft of light pouring out of the shop.
“Listen up, you young ones, Ali Shuayb took an American man hostage — an innocent man — and killed him. That’s not right.” Then he read from the paper: “It was Ali Shuayb who killed the American, John Conrad Maxwell, after explaining to him — with a bit of help from one of the other hostages, as Ali knew no English — that he was going to die because the deadline he’d given the authorities had expired. The American begged for his life to be spared but Ali Shuayb shot him in the back. The American fell to the ground screaming and pleading for his life, while Ali Shuayb and another gunman, thought to be Jihad Assad, kicked him as he lay on the floor. Then Ali aimed at his chest, fired the gun, and the American breathed his last.”
“Tell me now, how can that be right? It’s outrageous,” Abu Khalil added. “We are fighting Israel, aren’t we? So the war’s over there. This isn’t right.”
“Lies, nothing but lies!” Zayn ’Alloul retorted. “Ali Shuayb didn’t shoot the American in the back! He shot him in the chest. We don’t shoot people in the back. It’s nothing but a lie, the government is lying.”
“Ali Shuayb! By God, now there’s a man for you!”
“A man to feel sorry for nonetheless. . He was poor, and it’s always the poor that die!”
And thus it was that Zayn ’Alloul began to recount stories about Ali Shuayb, about guns and weapons, answering this question and that, as if he knew it all. He’d known Ali Shuayb as a child playing in the dirt, and then as a young man, when he and Ali discussed politics. Ali always said that without the armed struggle, there would be no solution. But Zayn hadn’t known that Ali was involved with the feda’iyeen,4 that he was the leader of an armed group, and that he could occupy a bank in the commercial center and kill one of the hostages, and then die like that. Zayn was getting quite carried away.
“I swear to God, tomorrow I’m going down to the village to attend Ali’s funeral. And everyone else should do the same. Ali’s a martyr: a martyr who carried arms, fought, and died for the cause.”
As he answered everyone’s questions, Zayn ’Alloul felt swollen with pride: Ali Shuayb was from his village after all and he knew him very well. Now they would no longer look on him as a mere garbage collector, as someone with a despicable job.
Then the conversation shifted to questions relating to municipal services, and Zayn told them that though work was proceeding normally they needed more trucks, as the city was growing rapidly. He also said that they really should be armed, well he didn’t say that exactly, but he said things that were understood to mean that he was calling for an armed uprising against the government.
That night there was a police raid.
A military jeep drew up outside his house, policemen, with rifles cocked, banged violently on the door. Sleepy-faced, Zayn opened the door in his pajamas. They grabbed him and dragged him out by the arms and legs. His wife got up, frightened, and then his children all woke up, just in time to see him being led away in his pajamas. He didn’t know what was going on; he asked the officer, but they shoved him into the jeep under a torrent of blows, punches, and curses, and took him straight to Internal Security in Badaro.
“But I haven’t done anything. . I don’t know anything!”
They hustled him out of the jeep and pushed him into a dark cell, slamming the metal door shut behind him. Zayn began to wail, he’d done nothing, nothing at all, he had no links to anyone suspect, why had they thrown him in here? He fell into a fitful sleep, dozing and then waking with a start, as if someone had punched him in the stomach. He tried to doze off again but he was desperate for a cigarette, so he began pretending to smoke, bringing up to his mouth the two fingers that usually held the cigarette, drawing them close to his lips and inhaling deeply. Then he tried to go back to sleep again. It was a night he wasn’t about to forget. That’s what he’d told his wife when they brought him home three days later: the three nights in that cell were unforgettable. He didn’t have words to describe it, he told her. “It was revolting. I had to urinate in the same room I was held in — into a little tin can which stayed there for the whole three days.”
Then they took him off for questioning. But there was no questioning, just beating and kicking. There were four of them in the room, with him in the middle, like a soccer ball; first, one would punch him, then the next one would catch him, and so on. After that they gave him a taste of the “chicken,”5 and one of them told him they’d make “mincemeat” out of him.
“Godless wretches! Atheists, Communists, sons of bitches, the lot of you!. .”
“I’m not an atheist…” He could hear the blows but couldn’t go on.
“Don’t talk back, you son of a bitch.”
He was more than willing to talk, but they weren’t asking him anything. Not one question! All they did was beat him, and then they took him to see the officer. Standing behind his desk, he looked like he too was ready to start thrashing him.
“My respects, Sir.”
“Out with it now! And quickly! Tell us everything you know about the organization.”
“What organization?”
“Ali Shuayb’s.”
“I swear I don’t know anything.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
The officer told him they knew everything there was to know about him. They knew that he’d been standing outside Abu Khalil’s shop talking about his acquaintance with Ali Shuayb; they knew he was married to Husniyyah and that he worked for the municipal authority; they knew that he was thinking of selling a piece of land he’d inherited from his father; and they also knew he was involved in smuggling arms from the South to Beirut, and that he kept the weapons hidden somewhere outside his home.
“Where are they, you dog?”
“Sir, there are no weapons.”
It was then that the officer went for him. Zayn stood absolutely still as the officer struck him, shouting and cursing, and spraying his face with spittle. The officer then dragged Zayn back to his cell with a bloody nose.
Oh God, now he’d lose his job with the municipality. In that dark cell of his, Zayn felt very sorry for himself. “If I lose my job, what will I do? Nothing! There’s nothing I know how to do aside from being a garbage collector. And the municipal corporation is a state agency. But I haven’t done anything against the state, I’m not against it, on the contrary, I’m all for it. And I don’t know any Ali Shuayb. Poor Ali, calling him a dog when he’s a martyr. . they’re the dogs. . and even if he weren’t a martyr, he’s dead, and they killed him. . and the dead may suffer only mercy! Some God-fearing officer he was!… Oh, but why won’t they let me smoke?”
In the evening, a man in civilian clothes came and unlocked the cell and told him to come out. Zayn was sure he was in for another beating.
“Sir, honestly, I know nothing.”
The officer in charge of the so-called interrogation had told him that if he confessed and told the truth, the beating would stop. So he made up his mind then and there to confess. He would tell them that he was a member of Ali Shuayb’s organization. And then surely the beating would stop.
“I have something to say,” Zayn said.
“Shut up,” said the man.