The Storyteller

by Pierre Jarawan

  My mobile vibrates. It’s a text from Yasmin.

  I’m worried. Text me, please!

  I hear footsteps behind me.

  -

  20

  I bolted upright. I’d been lost in thought, sitting in the dim light shimmering through the closed curtains. Something important was about to happen, I could tell. Hakim avoided my gaze. He’d come back to the room with his head down and lowered himself wordlessly into his armchair. He hesitated briefly before placing the object he’d been carrying on the table. We both stared at the black cloth it was wrapped in. There was shame in Hakim’s eyes.

  It was a sunny day, and he’d been working in the shed when we arrived. Hakim waved. He removed his coarse apron and brushed the sawdust off his clothes before hugging us.

  “Congratulations,” he exclaimed, giving Yasmin a kiss. “I’m so happy for the pair of you.”

  There was an awkward pause. Yasmin and I kept looking at each other as we tried to explain the situation with a minimum of words. Clearly ruffled, Hakim looked at Yasmin’s hand, which bore no sign of an engagement ring.

  “What? No wedding?” His disappointment seemed to grow from one second to the next. He looked at me. “You want to go to Lebanon?” The way he said it, you’d think it had never occurred to him that I might one day want to set off in search of Father.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  Hakim nodded and took a seat on the stump of the cherry tree.

  “It’s not the same country your father spoke of with such passion,” he said in a quiet voice. “Nor is it ever likely to be that country again.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I have to do this all the same.”

  “Where will you begin? Lebanon isn’t a big country, but without a starting point, you’ll be a long time looking.”

  “I’ll start in Zahle,” I said, because it was the only thing I knew for sure. “I might find my grandmother there. If she’s still alive.”

  Hakim avoided our eyes. Sitting there staring at his hands, he looked like a little boy lost in the body of a very old man.

  “Zahle,” he repeated tonelessly. “I’ve often wondered, like you, whether Brahim is still alive and where he might be.” Hakim paused. “At one stage I even wanted to go looking for him myself …” He smiled hesitantly. Then he looked at Yasmin. “And you don’t want to go with Samir?”

  “No,” she said, looking from Hakim to me. “He has to do this on his own.”

  Now I was in Hakim’s flat, a few days later. He’d phoned and asked me to come alone. When I’d taken a seat in the living room, Hakim had disappeared, returning with the object now sitting on the table, wrapped in its black cloth. It all came flooding back, the silence, the cold, and the tiredness I’d felt as I waited on the stairs that very last night. For a long time, it had been just a blurry image at the back of my mind, like a faded painting, but now I could see it clearly again, the object Father had retrieved from the basement and taken to Hakim’s that night.

  Hakim cleared his throat.

  “I lied to you …,” he said in a shaky voice. “When you asked before, about what Brahim had given me that night, I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t ready.” The object on the table looked as foreign and immovable as a standing stone somehow fallen from the sky. “He asked me to mind it.” Hakim’s voice was barely audible. He was genuinely ashamed. “I asked him why he didn’t give it to your mother, or to you and Alina. But Brahim said, ‘I’m giving it to you. If and when you feel Samir needs it, please pass it on to him.’ Then he made me to promise to take good care of it.”

  Hakim was clearly struggling. I knew exactly how he felt. Father had extracted a promise from him. No one knew what that meant better than I did.

  “This is not the photo album you showed me before,” I whispered.

  He shook his head in confirmation. Without a word, he reached for the black cloth and pulled it aside. There on the table lay the diary.

  I could barely hold back the tears. Opening it and seeing Father’s handwriting after so many years was such sweet pain. It reminded me of the notes he used to leave on the kitchen table if he had to go out in a hurry, so we wouldn’t worry. I also had a really clear memory of looking for a note when he wasn’t there the morning after that night. I flicked through the diary pages. Dates and names leapt out: Rana, Hakim, Beirut.

  “I think you need this now,” said Hakim. “Maybe your father foresaw this moment. Maybe he knew you’d go looking for him sooner or later. It’s better to start your search knowing more about him.” He paused. “Maybe this will help you to understand some things better. And maybe Yasmin will say yes when you get back.”

  I kept looking at Father’s writing.

  “Have you read it?”

  Hakim didn’t answer.

  “Does it provide any clues to what happened?”

  I forced myself to look up for a moment, to engage Hakim, but he kept his eyes on the diary.

  “It’s only a hunch. But if he left any clues as to where he is or why he had to leave,” Hakim took a deep breath before finishing the sentence, “I reckon you’ll find them in his diary.”

  -

  21

  Bright lights, throbbing sounds. Beirut by night, a sparkling beauty, a twinkling tiara, a breathless trail of flickering lights. As a child, I loved to imagine myself here someday. Now there’s a knife stuck in my ribs, and the pain shooting through my chest is so intense I can’t even scream. But we’re brothers, I want to shout, as they tear the rucksack off my back and kick me till I sink to my knees. The pavement is warm. The wind is coming in from the Corniche; I can hear the sea lapping at the shore and music drifting out of the restaurants along the street. I can smell the salt in the air, and the dust and the heat. I can taste blood, a metallic trickle on my lips. Fear wells up inside me, and rage. I’m no stranger here, I want to shout after them. Their echoing footsteps taunt me. I have roots here, I want to cry out, but all I manage is a gurgle.

  I see my father’s face. His silhouette framed in the bedroom door, that last shared moment before my sleepy young eyes closed. I wonder whether time and regret have haunted him.

  I remember the verse the old man with the beard had muttered: … then no one responding to a cry would be there for them, nor would they be saved.

  Then I remember the rucksack. But it’s not the money or my passport I’m thinking of—they’re gone. It’s the photo in the inside slip pocket. And his diary. All gone. The pain is so bad I almost pass out.

  I am responsible for a man’s death, I think.

  Then, as the blood seeps out of my chest: Pull yourself together. It must mean something. A sign.

  The men’s footsteps fade and I am alone; all I can hear now is my own heartbeat.

  A strange sense of calm comes over me. If I survive this, I think, it will be for a reason. My journey won’t be over yet. I’ll make one last attempt to find him.

  -

  III

  You’d have to be blind not to see what’s going on. Something terrible is about to happen.

  -

  1

  The first thing I notice is the absence of noise. For the first time in ages, I’m surrounded by fresh air. The scent of orchids wafts by, and the smell of soil is so strong I can practically taste it. There’s something bright and cheery about this place. A few olive trees here, a row of cypresses and pines there, shading the benches underneath them. Everything faces the sea. A rugby team is training on a pitch. To the left, where sea and coast meet, a lighthouse stands tall. Winding paths form a network of arteries running through verdant lawns lined with neatly clipped hedges. An oasis hidden behind ochre walls, guarded by a security man dozing at the gate. From his little gatehouse, a path flanked by flower beds leads past stone buildings to a large green, where young people sit beneath palm trees, their heads buried in books. />
  I sit on a step, squinting into the sunlight, and watch the orange spots floating behind my eyelids.

  Four nights ago, I found myself in a strange bed. The wind had carried the sound of people partying in through the window, jolting me awake. The apartments across the street cast light into the room, turning my fingers silver as I ran them along the bandage wrapped around my chest. It hurt so much to breathe that I winced. Piles of books and a laptop on a large desk, notes on the wall, a poster of the Vitruvian Man. I hoisted myself into a half-upright position, resting my lower back against the pillow, and tried to remember how I ended up here.

  Now I hear footsteps behind me and feel a hand on my shoulder.

  “What did the doctor say, Samir?” Wissam asks. He’s wearing shorts and an Abercrombie T-shirt, a pair of sunglasses pushed back into his hair.

  “The wound looks fine,” I say. “He praised your handiwork.”

  Wissam shakes his head. “You were lucky. A couple of inches in the other direction and they’d have got your lungs.” He gives me his hand and pulls me to my feet. As I stand in front of him, the sun hidden behind his head, I have a flashback of him bending over me on the street, a street lamp behind his head, just before I blacked out. “Shall we?”

  I nod and turn to face the building I’ve been waiting outside: “AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT—MEDICAL CENTER,” it says above the sliding glass doors. Wissam is a medical student in his fourth semester. God knows what would have happened to me if he hadn’t come along. He managed to stop the bleeding there on the street before taking me back to his place, where he disinfected the wound and stitched it up. I didn’t come to until that evening.

  I asked him why he hadn’t just taken me to a hospital. “You didn’t have ID and I didn’t have much cash on me. They’d have sent us away,” he said. It was him who set up the appointment at the university clinic. “We need someone else to take a look at you. You can stay here until you’re sorted,” he said, gesturing at the apartment. “Stay as long as you like, ahlan wa sahlan.”

  His apartment is big: two bedrooms, a modern kitchen, and the bathroom faucet has far better water pressure than at the Best Western Hotel. Downstairs in the foyer, a security guard keeps an eye on the people coming and going. Wissam lives in the middle of Hamra, west Beirut, in a sparkling glass complex just a few minutes’ walk from the American University.

  We stroll across the campus. Near the main gate, the bell tower of College Hall extends its long neck. A row of pointed lancet arches marks the entrance to the hall: Moorish-style architecture, elegant and sophisticated. The entire campus exudes an air of gentility and self-assurance.

  “We’ve had your credit card blocked,” Wissam says. He’s taken out a piece of paper, a to-do list. Some of the items are already ticked off. “I wasn’t sure what to do about your mobile phone. Have you got a contract?”

  “No,” I say, “Prepaid.”

  “OK.” Wissam ticks another thing off. “I called the embassy. They’ll need a passport photo. We can take care of that later—there are photo booths here on campus. We’ll go to the embassy with the photo tomorrow, you’ll have to sign a few forms, and they’ll issue you with a temporary passport in around ten days. Your fiancée will need to fax the embassy copies of your ID and birth certificate.”

  “Thanks so much, Wissam.”

  He shakes his head. He always does this when I try to thank him.

  “It’ll give you a little more time to find your father, won’t it?” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say and think: ten days. My new deadline.

  Wissam said I was calling out for Father in my sleep that first night, so I told him all about my search. About why I’m here. He’s been so kind, the way he’s taken care of me, but I hate feeling so helpless. Wallet, passport, ID, everything’s gone. I’ve even had to borrow a T-shirt from him.

  “Where are we headed?” I ask. The doors of the building on the right have flung open, and students are streaming out.

  Wissam puts his list back into his pocket.

  “Rassan’s waiting for us at the main gate.”

  I’ve only seen Rassan once. Last night, in Wissam’s apartment. He called around to see how I was doing, and because there was something the two of them wanted to talk to me about. Rassan is studying here too, sociology, fourth semester. His parents live in the US, where his father is an architect. These two students were the first to rush over to me after I was attacked. Rassan helped Wissam get me back to his apartment.

  “I’m glad you’re doing better,” Wissam says, putting a hand on my shoulder. His relief is palpable.

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” I repeat. “What would I do without the two of you?”

  Wissam smiles nervously.

  “It’s the least we can do.”

  After our talk last night, I know what he means.

  The sea is to our left. The water glitters, a light breeze blowing up the hillside and rustling the leaves of the olive trees. The campus is like a catwalk: men and women dressed to the nines in designer clothes accessorised with expensive bags. I’m surprised at how much skin some of the female students show. They wear miniskirts with high heels and T-shirts slit open at the sides to reveal their bras. In their midst, veiled women are also making their way to lectures. Students of all religions attend the university. There’s a vibrant mishmash of cultures, a babel of languages: Arabic, English, French—sometimes all from the same mouth.

  I wonder if Nabil was ever here. If he dreamed of sending his sons here. If he’d have been able to afford it.

  “How much does it cost to study here?” I ask.

  “Depends on what you study.” Wissam puts on his sunglasses as we reach a large square. “Between six and eight thousand US dollars.”

  “Per semester?”

  Earlier, in the car park, I noticed the Porsches, the Jaguars, the black SUVs. This, the top university in the country, is reserved for the financial elite, and they don’t try to hide how rich they are. I imagine all the students here live in apartments like Wissam’s. He’s been paying for everything. Over breakfast today, I promised I’d pay him back as soon as I could, but again, he just shook his head. “What happened to you is our fault. I want to make it up to you.”

  Last night, we were sitting in Wissam’s dimly lit apartment, an untouched plate of sandwiches and sliced tomatoes on the table between us.

  “We’ve got something to tell you,” he said, in a tone that made me sit up and pay attention. “Rassan and I didn’t just happen to be nearby when you were attacked on Tuesday.” The two of them glanced at each other and then at me. Rassan nodded silently. “We were in the bar across the street.”

  “I know,” I said. “You already said.”

  Wissam’s hands were clenched into fists, his knuckles white.

  “Right …” he said. “But we were there … for a reason.” He hesitated. Was he embarrassed about something?

  “Go on.”

  “And when we saw what had happened and ran over to you … Well, at first we thought …” He looked over at Rassan, who finished the sentence for him.

  “At first we thought you were someone else.”

  “Someone else?”

  Wissam ran the back of his hand across his nose. “We’d arranged to meet a friend. It was too dark to see you properly, and you’re about the same height as him, similar hair. Your clothes weren’t really his style, but we figured it might have been a disguise.”

  “Why would your friend come to meet you in disguise?”

  Wissam got up and started pacing the room. Rassan watched him in silence and then turned to me.

  “Because he had a feeling it might happen.”

  Wissam went over to his desk by the window and looked down at the street.

  “What might happen?”

  “The atta
ck,” Rassan said quietly. “We thought our friend had disguised himself to avoid being recognised.”

  “Recognised by who?” I kept looking back and forth between the two of them. Slowly, very slowly, it began to dawn on me. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re telling me I was mistaken for someone else?”

  Wissam nodded from the window, half of his face in the dark.

  “It may not have been you they were after.”

  “Who were they after, then?”

  “Our friend,” he said.

  “But why?”

  He turned away from the window and looked at Rassan.

  “We’d better not say any more,” Wissam said curtly. He looked like a stranger in his own room. “Not here, anyway.”

  They feel guilty, I thought. They’ve been going out of their way to help me because they think they’re partly to blame.

  “What’s wrong? Why can’t you just tell me the whole story?”

  Again, it was Rassan who answered.

  “You never know who might be listening in.” He seemed much calmer than his friend. “Stand up.” Tilting his head, Rassan signalled that I should join Wissam by the window.

  “See the car?”

  A silver Mercedes was parked in the pale beam of a street lamp. Through the tinted windows, I could make out the silhouettes of two men.

  “They’re here every night,” Wissam said. “They never get out of the car. When I come back from uni every day, the space is empty, but they always arrive shortly afterwards and stay for hours.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Could be anyone,” he said tonelessly. “Hezbollah, Amal, Forces Libanaises …”

  “They’re spying on you?”

  Rassan came over to the window and stood on the other side of me.

  “Yes, they’ve had us under surveillance for a few weeks now. Wherever we go, that car follows us.”