Let us turn the enigma on its head and view it from a slightly different angle: in whose interest was it to kill Khalil Ahmad Jaber? Logically, nobody’s, for Khalil Ahmad Jaber had no enemies, nor was he involved in anything remotely shady. He was a most transparent man.
So then, it could have been suicide. While that is a distinct possibility, it has been set aside on two counts: first, the forensic pathologist’s report, which clearly demonstrates that the victim could not have shot himself, given the position of the corpse when it was found. Even assuming that Khalil Ahmad Jaber had discovered some novel and unprecedented way of killing himself, it is impossible that he would have mutilated himself in that cruel way. The forensic pathologist’s report is quite unequivocaclass="underline" the martyr was clearly tortured; his body bore the telltale marks.
Second, the rarity of suicides in Beirut: I don’t know of a single Arab writer who has committed suicide, aside from Tayseer Subool. Oh, they despair alright, their writings are full of ranting and angst, but they don’t commit suicide. . even though the suicide of a writer might have a huge impact. Anyhow, I shouldn’t be going off on tangents: Khalil Ahmad Jaber was not a writer, I mean he didn’t have that particular sensibility that writers and artists possess, and if writers aren’t committing suicide, surely ordinary law-abiding citizens — without any of the writer’s heightened sensibility — aren’t about to do so.
That said, I knew a man who committed suicide. But he wasn’t a writer, he was a tailor. I barely remember the story, I was six years old then. I was out playing on the street with the kids from my neighborhood. We were playing shalleek, a somewhat complicated game where you start by throwing a sharpened pole, like a stake, right into the middle of a circle drawn on the ground with a stick. The one who succeeds in doing that goes first; he has to hit the stake hard enough with a stick to make it catapult into the air and fall as far away as possible. My father forbade me playing this game because it was dangerous, especially for our eyes. Anyway, there we were playing shalleek, when all of a sudden we heard all this screaming and carrying-on coming from the tailor’s house. Everyone ran — the entire street, including us children, ran to see what was happening.
As I stepped into the house, I saw, in the middle of a crowd of men and women in tears, my father holding the tailor’s wife by the hand. As soon as he caught sight of me, he let go of her hand and came towards me.
“Go home,” he said.
When I asked him what was happening, he replied that the neighbor had committed suicide.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“That means he committed suicide, that he’s dead. Now, go on home!”
Later, I heard him tell my mother that the tailor had committed suicide in Rawsheh — he’d plunged off the waterfront road and his bloated corpse was found floating off Ouza’ï.
What did he mean, “committed suicide in Rawsheh”? I thought people went there to swim, around and under Pigeon Rock — the way I did many years later, with my beautiful girlfriend, Surayya. We would paddle together on a hasakeh to swim around the Rock. Poor Surayya, she’s married and fat now, nothing like she used to be. When I ran into her outside the American University Hospital, I hardly recognized her.
The tailor committed suicide in Rawsheh, where everyone swam! I used to imagine my swimming there one day and bumping into a corpse, but when I eventually did, there were no corpses. There was just Surayya. Surayya was everywhere: beside me, around me, with me. She would plunge underwater and swim away, and though I chased her, over and over again, I could never catch her — although, Mr. Nohad, the barber, did. He came along and caught her alright, and he transformed her into another woman.
Anyway, getting back to the point, Khalil Ahmad Jaber did not commit suicide: ergo, he was killed. But we don’t know who killed him. And if, to this day, we do not know who killed the political strongman and powerful leader, Kamal Jumblatt,11 how will we ever find out who killed Khalil Ahmad Jaber?
It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. I spent months investigating and reading to try and establish the facts. I must have smoked thousands of cigarettes sitting at my desk, with an aching back, trying to figure out what happened… to no effect.
So now, dear reader, you too may feel as bewildered as I do. Faced with the impossibility of discovering the truth, you must doubt, as I do, the reported incident itself, as well as people’s accounts. I’m sure one of those clever literary critics is going to say that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. I can just hear him saying, but surely Beirut is just like any other city, full of ordinary people leading ordinary lives, going to work, eating, sleeping, having sex, having children, dying, celebrating festivals, buying chocolate eggs, sugared almonds, and maa’moul. While all of that is true, I don’t know how one can reconcile that assertion with my story.
If it weren’t for fear of being told that I have been blowing things out of proportion, and that I am full of doom and gloom, indeed that I invite misery — and that such a negative stance merely “serves the interests of the imperialists”-I might have told you the barber’s tale, or written the story “white masks.” But if I, who have witnessed all these events and lived through them, cannot believe my own eyes, how could anyone believe this story who hasn’t shared our experience of this beautiful city called Beirut? And I will no doubt be accused of exaggerating, of only seeing the tragic side of life, of being unable to behold the sweep of history, the importance of geography, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. .
The truth is I now have to admit my mistake: I should have used a more serious incident as my point of departure. After all, how significant is the discovery of a corpse, especially that of an unremarkable man, just an ordinary citizen? And what does the phrase — an ordinary citizen — mean anyway, in light of the government’s “extraordinary powers” and the conduct of summary justice? It makes no sense whatsoever, and the critic is right. So, it’s a meaningless story, I admit it. Had I been looking for meaning, I should have taken a different tack and told the story of… Genghis Khan, for example.
However, if after all that’s happened to us, you expect me to tell that kind of story, you’re mistaken — as was I.
Had I been looking for meaning, I should have started differently. I should have told the story of the Palestinian man who was found dead in an airport restroom after committing suicide; or maybe the story of my friend, the doctor, Ajjaj Abu Suleiman, and his countless love affairs; or perhaps the story of our neighbor, Imm Mohammad, and how her husband died. Maybe if I tried again, I could lend some meaning to our story here, and bring it closer to the happy ending that we all secretly yearn for: the resolution that would shield us from the debilitating pessimism we all feel — isn’t that the whole point of a story?
As for the Palestinian who was found hanging in the airport restroom, well, that’s a very ordinary story really, with a straightforward narrative, and no stylistic flourishes whatsoever — no magic realism, flashbacks, or literary cadences. . It’s the simple story of a young man who realizes that he has lost everything and commits suicide. Just like the tailor.