The Storyteller

by Pierre Jarawan

  He parks at the side of the street and glances in the rear-view mirror. Shabby blocks of flats loom to our right. The walls are riddled with bullet holes, some of them fist-sized. To our left, across the street, is darkness.

  “Where are we?” I ask. When I squint, I can just about make out barbed wire separating the darkness from the street. Below the street lamp a few metres ahead of us, a man in fatigues is on patrol, a machine gun slung over his shoulder.

  “Horsh Beirut,” Rassan says. “Our meeting place.”

  “This area was heavily shelled by Israel in 2006,” says Wissam. “It’s a Hezbollah stronghold.”

  “What exactly is Horsh Beirut?” I ask.

  “It’s the biggest park in the city,” Rassan says, darting a look across the street before he reaches behind the back seat, pulls a leather briefcase out of the boot and gives it to Wissam. “Seventy-five hectares. Closed to the public for more than twenty years.”

  I look over at the barbed wire again. Behind it, dark bushes rustle in the wind.

  “It must be completely overgrown by now,” I say.

  Rassan looks over my shoulder and scans the opposite side of the street again.

  “Yes, it’s been completely forgotten,” he says as he begins counting a wad of banknotes. “It’s right here under people’s noses, but hardly anyone even knows it exists.”

  “Why is it closed?”

  “The official version is that people might trample on the seedlings, that the park needs time to regenerate. But they’ve been saying that for years.” Rassan holds out his hand, and Wissam passes back more banknotes.

  “What’s the unofficial version, then?”

  Rassan stops counting for a moment and looks at me.

  “The park is in a strategic location. It separates major Shia, Sunni, and Christian districts from each other. The government is afraid these communities would run into each other in the park. Though they would never admit as much. Here we are, in front of one of the biggest city parks in the Middle East, and no one’s allowed in.”

  “So they’re afraid the park could become a flashpoint?”

  “Maybe.” Wissam turns around to face us. “But what scares them even more is that the various communities might actually get on. Talk to each other. All our problems, all our prejudices, are rooted in the fact that Beirut has no real public life. Nowhere for people from different backgrounds to mix. Everyone stays in their own part of town, with people of the same religion. People spend a lot of time talking about the other communities, but they never talk to them.”

  “Done,” Rassan says. He flicks the wad with his thumb and puts it into a bag before opening the door and crossing the street to the man with the machine gun.

  “Ready?” Wissam asks. “We’ll have to be quick.”

  I nod.

  Rassan throws the bag into a bin and walks past the watchman.

  “Let’s go!”

  We get out and cross the street. The watchman raises his head and looks at us. For a fraction of a second, I’m terrified he’s going to point his gun at us. But he just looks away and ambles towards the bin. The coast is clear.

  “You’ve got to love the local customs,” Rassan says, giving me a wink as we step through a circular hole in the barbed wire and enter the park.

  Branches snap under our feet as we pick our way through knee-high grass. I’m reminded of the peaceful afternoons spent with Father by the lake: the autumn wind ruffling the fields, the trees creaking under the weight of their fruit, the constant hum of dragonflies in our ears.

  Eventually we arrive at a clearing where there’s a little more light. A half-moon hangs over the city. Dusky, velvety fields stretch as far as the eye can see. The trees extend their branches like tentacles, and the sweet, heavy scent of overripe fruit suffuses the air. The noise of the city has faded away; all we can hear are pigeons fluttering up from behind a rock and cats wailing somewhere in the darkness.

  “This way,” Wissam whispers. Briefcase tucked under his arm, he shines his smartphone torch down a gravel path. Mosquitos immediately start buzzing around the light.

  The park expands in all directions like a dark carpet. The lights of distant buildings glimmer at its edges. After a few minutes of picking our way through a dense copse of trees, we find ourselves in another clearing.

  “Over there,” Wissam says, pointing to a circle of light.

  “They’re here already,” Rassan says.

  We wade through thick grass, and as we approach, I see it’s a circle of candles, their flames flickering beneath the night sky. It reminds me of a summer camp in a teen movie: kids strumming guitars and telling stories around a campfire, marshmallows on sticks, an ocean of stars. There must be around a dozen young people sitting in the circle. Their eyes are all on a single shadowy figure.

  Wissam taps me on the shoulder. “Here,” he whispers.

  We sit down. People scooch over to make room. They look me over and give me a friendly nod. Wissam puts the briefcase down on the grass in front of him and turns his attention to the young man speaking in the centre of the circle. It all seems a bit like a secret ceremony.

  The young man is wearing sandals, loose linen trousers, and a tatty shirt. There’s something about him that instantly fascinates me. Maybe it’s the sharp lines of his nose and chin. They give him an air of elegant severity, but there’s a gentleness to his warm tenor voice. Then there are his eyes, dreamy and otherworldly one minute, crystal clear and resolute the next. He’s alarmingly thin, yet he has enormous presence. Every movement he makes crackles with energy.

  “I’m scared,” he’s saying. “I look at us, the students, our country’s educated elite, and I’m scared.”

  A blade of grass blown into a candle flame flares and crackles as it burns.

  “We don’t learn how to think for ourselves anymore,” the young man says, looking around at us. “We’re brainwashed. Our religious leaders do the thinking for us. Young people drive around the streets honking and chanting, ‘We’ll give you our blood, our souls, o Nasrallah, o Jumblatt, o al-Rai.’ And I have to ask myself, when have our politicians ever given their blood for this country?” He stands still, clenching his fist.

  There’s a murmur of agreement. Wissan and Rassan pensively nod as the man continues.

  “The Shia student tunes in to the Hezbollah radio station over breakfast and learns that Israel is the enemy and that’s why he has to go fight in Syria. The Sunni opens his newspaper and reads that he should steer clear of Haret Hreik and Ghobeiry, because that’s where the Shia live, and they want him dead. The Christian watches TV and learns that he should stick to Mar Mikhael and Ashrafieh, because that’s where he can go for a drink with his own people. University students are hurling stones at each other because they disagree on how to celebrate Ashura. Young women are turning their eyelashes into a political statement, tinting them the colour of their party. We’re as divided as ever.” Though his voice sounds so light, it carries on the wind, and his audience hangs on every word. “We’ve no sense of solidarity,” he says, his tone becoming more urgent. “And a nation that hasn’t had a shared revolution of its own will never be able to shape a brighter future.”

  Someone quietly calls out “Yes!” and a murmur starts rippling around the circle again, but the moment the man raises his hand, silence descends.

  “We need this book,” he says. “All the people who were involved in the war have to talk to each other. Our job is to make sure they do that. We must be courageous; only then will others find the courage to confront the past. This revolution is essential, but I know it won’t be easy. We keep meeting with resistance. We ask for documents, photos, papers, and they say, ‘Forget the past’. But how can we forget the past when there are parents who still don’t know where their children are? When there are children who don’t know where their parents are? Whether th
ey’re still alive. Whether they’re buried somewhere.”

  A shiver runs up my spine during the intense silence that follows these words. I lean over to Wissam and whisper in his ear, “Who are all these people?”

  “Students,” he whispers back. “All religions. From various universities, most of them humanities students. They’re all taking part in this project.” He puts a finger to his lips. “We can talk afterwards.”

  “We’re living in a country that’s unable to write its own history because its people can’t agree on a shared history.” The young man moves silently through the grass, looking each person in the eye. When he comes to me, our eyes lock for a moment. “You all know my history,” he says. “I was directly affected. Many of you are still affected by it today. They’re trying to scare us off, but they can’t prevent us from carrying on. They can make things difficult for us, but that won’t stop us. We’ll keep gathering information. We’ll keep talking to witnesses, rooting around in archives. We won’t rest until we’ve got everything we need.” He pauses and looks around again. Then he turns around to face us. “Wissam, Rassan,” he says, and the two of them look up. “Any luck?”

  Wissam picks up the briefcase and holds it up.

  “It wasn’t easy. They asked a lot of questions. I imagine that it’s going to be harder from now on to get stuff there, but it’s a start, at least.” He reaches into the briefcase and pulls out two sheets of newspaper. In the candlelight, the paper gives off a yellowish glow. I’ve spent enough time in archives to know that the pages are originals. Wissam stands up and clears his throat, and everyone turns to look at him.

  “We went to An-Nahar and As Safir,” he says, adding, possibly for my benefit, “An-Nahar is the Christian newspaper, based in east Beirut; As Safir the Muslim one, in west Beirut. That’s where we found these.” He lays the two pages out on the grass, and the students cluster around to examine them. It’s as if, after years of teetotalism, a drop of vintage wine has fallen on my tongue, triggering a desire for more. I feel faint when I read the newspaper’s date: 14 April 1975. The day after the civil war began.

  I lean close to Rassan’s ear. “You’re writing a history book?”

  His eyes gleam in the candlelight.

  “Lebanon has no coherent history book. We’re writing the first one. And it’s going to include the issues that have been taboo until now, that have never been addressed. We want to reveal the contradictions.” He points to the newspapers.

  The coverage in both refers to the previous day’s event, the event that triggered all-out conflict in Lebanon. Armed Christians had ambushed a bus full of Palestinians in east Beirut in retaliation for Palestinian guerrillas opening fire on a congregation gathered outside a Christian church earlier that day.

  The front page of the newspaper on the left, An-Nahar, says, “27 Palestinian Guerrillas Killed in Bus Ambush in East Beirut.” The page on the right says, “27 Martyrs, Our Palestinian Brothers, Killed Yesterday in Christian Attack in the East.” Two voices. Two views.

  “Thanks, Wissam and Rassan,” the young man says. “Could you take the documents to our archive in the next day or two? The amount of material we have is growing all the time, so it’s really important that we’re well organised. We can’t just throw everything into a pile, as that will cost us months when we get down to the writing part. We need people to sort what we’ve got chronologically and thematically. Missing-person ads, reports, witness statements, confessions, tape recordings, videotapes. We need to label everything, archive it, keep it all in order.”

  All eyes are on him. But I keep staring at the newspapers on the grass, pieces of history that so clearly illustrate what went wrong, what’s still going wrong. I observe the young man commanding his audience’s attention with the tiniest of gestures. I see the zeal in their eyes, their conviction, their faith in what they’re doing. A realisation has been creeping up on me the last few days, and now I’m forced to face it, a realisation that the Lebanon Father told me about no longer exists. While I was growing up and grieving, it disappeared. I would’ve had to come here years ago to see Father’s Lebanon. Though perhaps the Lebanon he loved had disappeared long before that; perhaps it was already gone by the time he left for Germany. Father came back here, though—I can feel it, deep down. The question is why, when he knew his country would never be the same again? All the young people gathered in this forgotten park in the heart of the city are light years ahead of me. They grew up after the war, in a Beirut that had been reduced to rubble. While I’ve been visiting archives to look back, they’ve been digging up the past because they want to look forward.

  By the time the last candle goes out, almost everyone has left. The moon looks down on the park with a lopsided grin, and a flattened circle in the grass is the only sign we were here. As Wissam and Rassan talk to the young man, he notices me watching him and raises his index finger. Wissam falls silent and turns to look at me. The young man walks over. He has dark brown eyes, and when he smiles, little dimples appear on either side of his mouth. “You must be Samir.” He takes my hand, squeezes it, and places his other hand on top. “Welcome,” he says. “I’m Youssef.”

  -

  4

  Beirut, 15 August 1982

  7:30 a.m.

  Everyone I meet wonders

  what the sense of it all is.

  And I want to call out to them: Lebanon doesn’t make sense.

  This country is a mystery to those who love it.

  You hear stories every day. About people who’ve been kidnapped, murdered. You read about them in the paper, hear first-hand accounts. You look out at the destruction, broken windows, blown-up pieces of concrete. Yet you still feel as if it’s got nothing to do with you. As if the war is happening miles away, as if you’re not right in the middle of it. You hear that they’re stopping people randomly on the streets, checking their IDs and religions—and shooting anyone who happens to have another faith. It’s dreadful, you think, but it won’t happen to me. Or anyone I know. Until one day it does happen and you’re completely blindsided.

  This is one of the stories I was told: Early on the morning of 3 August, a young man—a Muslim—left the flat he shared with his mother. She was sick, so his sister had come round to look after her. The man went up onto the roof of a building a few streets away and took up his position. He was a sniper. Late that afternoon, as the sun was sinking, he spotted an unveiled woman hurrying across the street. He pulled the trigger. Smiling, he watched her sink to the ground and bleed to death on the concrete. No one came to her aid. When the young man returned to his flat that evening, it was filled with neighbours and friends of the family. They told him his sister had been killed by a sniper as she was on her way to the pharmacy to pick up medicine for her mother. She hadn’t worn her veil so as to escape the attention of the Christian snipers who’d been firing on this part of town for weeks. The young man broke down. He’d murdered his sister.

  There’s nothing I can say to console Hakim. He has buried Fida, his wife. He wants to leave the country. That’s what he told me. It might be irrational, but the war suddenly seems more real than it did before. The press didn’t pay much attention to her death. It was just one of many. Another sad statistic, another notch on the wall. But for me, the war now has a face I know.

  6:15 p.m.

  Abdallah is still apoplectic over the cancelled wedding. I say that deliberately: he’s apoplectic over the wedding, couldn’t care less about the rest. He’s been stomping through the corridors, purple with rage, telling us how much money we’ve lost him.

  This is what happened on the evening of 3 August: Two men charged in and opened fire in the lobby. Yunus, the kid at reception, was killed. He only started here a couple of weeks ago. A little earlier, I’d come downstairs to the lobby to find militiamen kicking up a stink because they hadn’t been able to get into the cellar. The door was locked, they said. They
saw it as an affront. They ranted and raved for a while and then stormed off. Not long afterwards, though, two of them returned and started shooting.

  Abdallah is determined to find out who locked the door. He spits venom, screams at us all, even me. Lines us up, shoves his scaly face right into each of ours, and snarls, “God help whichever one of you useless parasites locked that door.”

  Two things have been on my mind since that day. First, what will I tell Hakim if he asks me to leave the country with him? And second, while I was bending over Yunus as he lay bleeding behind the desk, I felt a hard object in my pocket. It was the key to the cellar.

  The problem is, there’s only one key.

  -

  5

  Lights throb and bodies writhe in time to the music. Everything’s dancing, twirling. Strobe lights flashing, bass, shoulders rubbing against each other, sweat, a frenzy of movement on the dancefloor, the steps, the tables, the sofas. Colour everywhere: low-cut sequined tops, lipstick on collars, glittery fingernails, frozen-fruit daiquiris.

  “You can’t leave Beirut until you’ve had a night on the town,” Wissam said earlier, handing me one of his shirts as Rassan nodded enthusiastically.

  An American girl is standing in front of me, blonde, soft-skinned. She’d be kind of hot if she hadn’t spent the past five minutes yelling in my ear in English, “Beirut is awesome!” and jerking her head to the music like she’s having an epileptic fit. “The country is really fucked up, but the nightlife is crazy! I’ve been to a lot of countries, but there’s something special about the vibe here, isn’t there?”

  I nod.

  “Where are you from again?”

  “Germany.”

  “Oh, I love Germany! Are you here for the nightlife too? Berlin has awesome clubs, but you can’t compare …”

  I take a sip of the drink Wissam bought me earlier. Beats thunder from the speakers. It’s “International DJs Night,” and right now, DJ Hammer from Wuppertal is on the decks.