The Storyteller

by Pierre Jarawan

  Only a few days earlier, we’d been at the lake with our nutshell ships. If I had to pinpoint a time when his behaviour changed, I’d say it was that day. Or rather, that night. After we’d come home from the lake, Father put on a slide show. That evening is burned into my memory. It is the reason why I remember that summer and the following autumn as if in sepia: every scene is tinged with a nostalgic glow and tightly cocooned by my memories.

  I didn’t even know it existed, the box Father placed on the living-room table in front of us. It never caught my attention when we were moving. Now Father had taken it from one of the shelves, turned to face us, and carried it over with great ceremony.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You’ll see in a minute,” he said, smiling mysteriously.

  Mother smiled too. She still smiled a lot back then. I don’t have many memories of my parents like that. Standing close together. So conspiratorial, so affectionate. I never saw them like that again after that evening. They had clearly planned it together and were looking forward to letting us in on the secret. I was very excited. I noticed that Mother was wearing her perfume, even though it was just us. I knew where she kept it in the bathroom, the little bottle with Arzet Lebanon written on it, and I imagined her standing at the mirror, dabbing a drop or two on her neck. She smelt divine.

  “You smell nice,” I said.

  “Thank you, Samir,” she replied, stroking my cheek.

  At that very moment, there was a knock on the door.

  “Shall I get it?” she asked.

  “No, I’ll go,” Father said, planting a quick kiss on her forehead. Another thing I very rarely witnessed.

  Hakim and Yasmin were at the door. She was wearing a blue dress with white dots and looked like an almost cloudless blue sky. Hakim had his arms clamped around a large object that I couldn’t identify, as it was covered by a dark cloth. It seemed pretty heavy because Hakim practically staggered the last few metres into the living room, where he carefully deposited the object on the table.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll see in a minute,” he said.

  “That’s what Baba said too.”

  “It must be true, then.”

  When I looked at Yasmin, asking with my eyes what her father had just lugged into our living room, she just shrugged.

  Father told us to take a seat. The three grown-ups remained standing. I took my sister on my lap; she showed no interest but was happy to suck her soother. Yasmin sat beside us.

  “Hakim,” said Father, raising his index finger, “drumroll, please!”

  Hakim started making drumroll noises and beating invisible drumsticks. Father approached the table, grabbed the cloth between thumb and index finger, and swept it off the object underneath, like a magician performing his favourite trick: “Ta-da!”

  On the table was something grey that looked a bit like a snouted raccoon or coatimundi. Could it be a coati-robot? It had a rectangular metal base with an oval structure on top from which a longish tube projected like a snout. I hadn’t a clue what it was.

  “What is that?”

  “A Leitz Prado,” exclaimed Father.

  “A what?” said Yasmin, her eyebrows raised.

  “A Leitz Prado,” he repeated, still in character, as if he was about to recite a magic spell. “The best slide projector money can buy.”

  I looked over at Mother, who lowered her head and smiled with embarrassment. If Father was convinced about something, it was the best thing in the world. End of story. He knew where you could buy the freshest lettuce, which second-hand car dealer had the safest winter tyres, and which kebab shop had the best doner in the world. The kebab shop might change, but the doner would always be the best in the world. And now, here in our living room, we were looking at the best slide projector in the world. A Leitz Prado.

  “Why did you buy it?” I enquired.

  “I didn’t. Hakim borrowed it for us.”

  “Why?” asked Yasmin.

  “We wanted to show you something.” Father nodded to Hakim, who plugged the projector cable into the wall socket and turned off the overhead light. Then Father switched the machine on. It projected a large, bright rectangle onto our living-room wall. Dust motes danced in the beam of light.

  “We wanted to show you photos,” Mother said. “Pictures of Lebanon, of us. So that you can see where we come from.”

  “Where you come from, too,” said Father.

  I liked the sound of that. I, German-born Samir, was going to learn more about my family’s homeland. Father had explained it to me once: “It’s called nationality based on parentage. You were born in Germany but your mother and I are Lebanese, not German. That’s why your passport says you’re Lebanese.” I had accepted this with a simple “OK” and hadn’t given the document a second thought.

  Now Father was putting the first slide in. The projector rattled. A colourful image of my mother appeared on our wall. She was sitting on a chair, wearing a magnificent wedding dress.

  “Wow,” said Yasmin. “That’s beautiful.”

  Mother rarely wore make-up and hardly ever accentuated her eyes as much as on the photo. It looked like a very expensive portrait commissioned from an artist; there was something fragile about her, but also a special aura. I had never seen her in such finery. She really was very pretty.

  The next slide showed Father standing beside a woman I didn’t recognise. She had black, curly hair and very straight, dignified posture. Her air of gravitas was compelling, even in this old image. Father was noticeably taller than her. She had her arm linked with his and wore a thin-lipped smile.

  “That’s your Teta,” he said, in response to my questioning look.

  “That’s Grandmother?” I took a closer look at the picture. “She doesn’t look sick at all.”

  Father lowered his head but smiled.

  “No. But she’s sick these days, you know that.”

  I nodded.

  “When was that picture taken?” Yasmin wanted to know.

  “1982,” said Mother. “It was our wedding day.”

  In the picture, Father had a smart suit on. Grandmother was wearing a blue dress and a lot of lipstick, which made it hard to tell her age. I reckoned early forties, maybe. I was struck by her enormous earrings, which were all the more eye-catching because she wore her curly hair short. Father’s smile looked a bit strained, but then he’d never liked having his picture taken.

  “Now, here it comes,” said Hakim, all excited. The projector rattled.

  Yasmin and I were amazed by the next slide. It showed my parents standing facing each other. And behind them was Hakim.

  “You’re playing the guitar!” I exclaimed.

  “It’s a lute,” said Mother. “Hakim played beautifully for us.”

  In the photo, Hakim’s eyes were fixed on some point in the distance, as if they were following the notes that soared out of his lute.

  “How come you knew each other?”

  “From another wedding,” said Father. “Hakim played at lots of weddings.”

  “And where is Yasmin’s mother?” I asked.

  No one seemed to be expecting this question, and I realised that I’d never asked it before, of Hakim or of my parents. And in all the hours I’d spent playing and dreaming with Yasmin, all the times we’d gone in search of a secret to share, I’d never asked her this question either. Now it hung in the room like a heavy ball that could fall on top of us any minute. The three grown-ups looked at each other. Yasmin looked at me. I felt uncomfortable, partly because I didn’t get any answer.

  Several more slides followed, mainly of the wedding feast and of guests enjoying themselves, until Father said, “This is the last of the wedding photos,” as he put another slide into the projector. There were so many people in the picture that it took me a minute to figur
e it out. It showed my parents in front of a tree, a magnificent fig tree. They were obviously dancing the wedding dance, with the guests gathered in a semi-circle around them, clapping. The women were all wearing lots of jewellery and make-up. It must have been a warm, sunny day. The sky was a glorious blue. The women were in colourful dresses, the men in suits. Some of them had their jackets slung over their shoulders, like film stars. Something struck me: there were other men too, men we hadn’t seen in any of the other photos. They were standing in the background, in front of a brick and mud wall. Some had their arms folded, watching the dancing. They were wearing brown trousers and khaki-coloured T-shirts. They had a cedar embroidered on the left breast of the T-shirt. A cedar with a red circle round it. There was a gun propped against the tree.

  “Who are those men?” I asked.

  “Guests,” said Father.

  “Friends,” said Mother.

  Hakim said nothing.

  A brief silence ensued.

  “We’ve plenty more slides,” Father announced, rubbing his hands. “Now I’m going to show you your country.”

  And he did. Whenever he got a chance to talk about Lebanon, he was in his element. We saw photos of the sea, of Beirut and its tall buildings, of the Pigeon Rocks, standing just off the coast like the city’s sentinels. He showed us a photo of the six remaining columns of the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek. It was after dark, but they were illuminated and very impressive. When he showed us a photo of a port, he said, “See that? That’s Byblos. Where our ancestors, the Phoenicians, invented the alphabet. Not many people know that. They all say, ‘Look at the Egyptians and the amazing pyramids they built—such a highly developed Arab culture!’ But let me tell you, if we’d followed the Egyptians’ example, we’d still be reading picture books today!”

  I saw Mother and Hakim exchange glances. They knew there was no point in interrupting Father at this stage. But we kids were infected by his enthusiasm. He didn’t just show the pictures, he told the stories behind them as well. At times he went into full lecture mode.

  “Lebanon is the only Arab country with no desert,” he informed us as he showed a slide of Lake Qaraoun in the Bekaa Valley. Its surface shimmered bright blue, reflecting the mountain chain behind it. “There is so much fertile land there, and so many vineyards.”

  “Especially in Zahle,” cried Yasmin, her eyes sparkling.

  “Exactly,” grinned Father with pride. Then he reached for the next slide. The one that changed his behaviour.

  Looking back, I think he just picked up the wrong slide in his excitement, because he wasn’t watching what he was doing. My guess is he meant to pick the one next to it. The slide he actually showed us had been moved to the back of the bunch on purpose. He had filtered it out so that it wouldn’t end up in the projector, so that we wouldn’t get to see it.

  The projector rattled.

  My mother glanced at the photo, looked away, then back again suddenly, as if she had to convince herself it was really there.

  At the right-hand edge of the image stood my father, beside a good-looking young man with thick black hair, dark brown eyes, and an engaging smile. They were posing beneath a chandelier in a large foyer, a wide carpeted staircase with a gilt banister behind them. Opposite them, at the left edge of the image, was a photographer. He had a camera held up to his eye and the others were looking at him. Curious onlookers had gathered around the photographer—more uniformed men, a young woman, people who looked like waiters. The man beside Father was wearing a uniform and had a gun tucked into his belt. There was a cedar stitched onto the left breast of his shirt. A cedar with a red circle round it. Next I studied Father. He was very young and seemed almost shy. The look in his eyes—today, I’d describe it as dreamy—didn’t quite match the rest of the scene. Father was smiling a dreamy smile and saluting. He was wearing the same uniform as the other man, and he too had a gun tucked into his belt.

  There are moments in life when you experience something that makes you wonder. Then more of those moments follow. But it’s only much later, when you barely remember those moments, that they acquire new meaning, because in the meantime you’ve learned more about someone or something, more than you knew before. All the inexplicable gestures, looks, movements, and behaviour suddenly make sense. Like finding a piece of a jigsaw and fitting it into the unfinished puzzle you’ve kept for years in case you’d one day manage to complete it.

  There are moments when you think about asking a question but decide not to. Your antennae sense a barrier. Your intuition tells you it’s not the right time for that question. Adults can sense this. Children too. But years later, when you know more than you did then, you regret it. You regret not asking the question. The one question that might have explained everything. Why he was wearing a uniform, for example. Why he had a gun. Who the man was beside him. It would have made things so much easier.

  Father stared at the picture as if he didn’t recognise himself. There he was on our living-room wall, large as life, standing beside a man who looked as if his uniform was a second skin, as if he’d been wearing it his whole life. I can only speculate now what thoughts went through Father’s mind in that moment. What feelings the slide must have triggered. What memories. What pain, even. We all stared at the picture. Nobody said a word for what seemed like an eternity. Then my sister began to squirm and cry on my lap. Mother snapped out of her stunned silence and took the wriggling bundle from me. She left the room, rocking the baby in her arms. Hakim signalled to Yasmin that they’d better go. She gave me an uncertain look, slid off the couch, took his hand, and they left. Father turned off the projector and slid out of the room with his head bowed. I stayed behind. A second earlier I’d wanted to ask him the story behind that picture. Now I’d decided not to.

  -

  6

  Could I possibly have guessed how much that moment would change our lives? How the seeds of disintegration became slowly and imperceptibly embedded in our family from then on, like a malignant growth discovered too late. It’s only a photo—that’s what I thought back then. A picture of my father with a gun. How was I to know I’d be haunted by that photo forever?

  What happened over the next few days is as I’ve described already. Father’s behaviour changed. I sensed that it had something to do with the photo, and several times it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him about it. But I got the feeling that he didn’t want to talk about it, so I held back. I was only seven. I found the world of grown-ups terribly confusing, and when it came to making decisions, I often felt like I was lost in a huge building with way too many doors and corridors, out of which I was supposed to pick the right one. Gut instinct told me it would be better not to ask Mother or Father about the photo. So I trusted my gut.

  Now, some twenty years later, I frequently tell myself I should have listened to my head rather than my gut. People tell me it wasn’t my fault. “You were only a child,” they say awkwardly, because that’s all they can think of. “A child can’t read those kinds of signals.” They say that he abused my trust when he made me promise not to tell anyone about the strange phone calls. And that I wasn’t deceiving Mother when I kept quiet about it all. They say this because they don’t know about all the times she shook me and begged me to tell her the truth. They say, “Even if you had done everything differently, what difference would it have made?” But the truth is, their words mean nothing, because I know better.

  Even though Father’s behaviour scared me, I still wanted to be close to him. One day I decided to collect him from work at the youth centre. When I set off, the sky was clouding over and the air was so humid that my skin felt clammy, but there was no sign yet of the storm that broke just minutes later. First, big fat raindrops hit the street and a wind gusted up, whipping the newspaper right out of a man’s hands at the bus stop across the road. Waiters came scurrying out of cafés, holding trays over their heads, and glancing suspiciously at th
e sky or clearing away outdoor tables and chairs while the awnings flapped like startled pigeons. Then the intervals between the raindrops grew shorter and shorter, and seconds later everything turned grey. The rain came down in sheets of lead—and my clothes were far too thin. A cold wind whistled round my ears, and rainclouds trailed across the sky like giant turtles. There was no point in turning back; I was nearly there. I hurried along the pavement, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed into my pockets, trying to avoid the spumes of dirty water sprayed by passing cars. Near the entrance to the youth centre, a bunch of teenagers were sheltering under an overhanging roof, waiting for the storm to pass before going home. One of them—a guy with a striking horseshoe-shaped scar on his forehead—spotted me and held out a packet of cigarettes the way you’d offer a chimp a banana; the others burst their sides laughing. I entered the building. The empty hallway was quite a contrast to the noisy street. The air was stale, the oxygen all used up during the day. I walked past glass cabinets displaying photos of kids playing football or sawing big planks. Father was in some of the pictures, and I recognised the guys from outside too. My shoes left a wet trail on the lino floor. My father’s office was behind one of the last doors on the corridor. Beside his name plate was a registration sheet for a night hike. I went in without knocking. I knew he had a desk with stacks of files on it and expected to find him half-hidden behind them. But he wasn’t. He was standing in front of the desk. And when he saw me come through the door, he hung up the phone in shock.

  “Samir! What are you doing here?” The way he said it sounded slightly cross—it wasn’t Samir, what a nice surprise, or Oh dear, you’re all wet.

  “I wanted to pick you up from work.” Suddenly I felt like a complete idiot, like someone who turns up at a friend’s house for a surprise party but got the dates mixed up. I felt way too small for this big room I was in, soaked to the skin, and didn’t know what to say.

  He looked at me blankly for a minute, as if I’d addressed him in some rare language like Tofalar and was expecting him to decode it for himself. Then he muttered an “Oh,” followed by, “Right. I’m finished here. Let’s go.”