XX
And now, defeat, the heavy boots no longer move forward. Marwan who didn’t run fast enough to avoid the bullets. Martyrs abandoned on a sidewalk corner. Bodies washed in apartment bathrooms. The city falling and, at the end, exile.
Intissar caresses Marwan with her sponge, one last time. She has never felt so close to him as in this final touch. Half-light and solitude, though. The lives that the Israelis have destroyed, Beirut that the Israelis have destroyed. Sometimes weapons turn against you. You always end up washing corpses. Marwan had promised to be by her side forever. He lied. Rubbing his torso, Intissar guesses why he went on a dangerous sortie with Ahmad the coward. He wanted to know. He was eaten away by doubt. He might have died because of her. He wanted to know. Ahmad the hero of their cause desired her. A year ago, when Ahmad had come home victorious from his ambush in the South, and when Marwan had left to go over to Tyre, she had been a little dazzled by Ahmad’s attentions. He courted her discreetly, always waiting on her hand and foot. He was watching over her in Marwan’s absence, he said. Marwan is dead, his body gleams from the reflections of water on his chest. She never betrayed him. Know that, Marwan, I never betrayed you. She couldn’t tell him, it was impossible to talk about. If he had known Marwan would have taken a gun and killed Ahmad. Now he’s the one who’s dead, dead along with his suspicions.
Intissar’s hand shakes, her eyelids quiver, the memory of shame, so powerful, draws tears from her. She tries to remember a prayer for Marwan. Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim, and what else? She sees Ahmad that night. Ahmad the coward who gets her to drink beer on the Corniche, in the early summer, when Beirut is so beautiful. They talk of this and that, the war little by little grows more remote. Marwan little by little grows more remote, why not acknowledge that, with the effect of the alcohol and the calm night. Let’s go get a bite to eat, says Ahmad. He takes her supposedly to find comrades who won’t come. Leaving the restaurant, Intissar is a little drunk. She drinks very rarely. Ahmad accompanies her back to her place, did she sense the trap, did she know unconsciously what was going to happen that’s making her cry from rage today, why, why, do we know what’s hidden inside us, what we’re capable of, Ahmad pressed her against the wall in the entryway to her apartment building, he kissed her for a long time, she was so surprised, so surprised that she let him do it, or maybe it was desire, she was no longer Intissar the determined combatant, she had disappeared, her will destroyed by alcohol and the confidence she had in Ahmad, it was the image of Marwan that woke her, the difference in the sensation of the kiss, the lips less soft, less pleasant, more violent, she shook herself, she shook herself violently pushed away the man in front of her before climbing the stairs four at a time and locking herself up in her apartment, ashamed, ashamed of her desire for Ahmad the coward, her physical desire, impossible to hide, especially from herself in the intimacy of a deserted bedroom.