Could he come over now, I asked, though this drew a blank look. When I repeated the request, he peered back, still seemingly not comprehending. Louder, I repeated the words. Finally he nodded, pleaded for a moment, sipped his thick Turkish coffee as he finished a previous conversation with a guest who peered suspiciously at me, then came down to the street. With few words, we were soon on our way, at first shuffling at the stately pace he determined, then, thankfully, catching a ride the rest of the way to the house.
Abu Jean, at seventy-six, defied nature with his full head of hair, combed back and still mainly black. His face was leathery, swarthy, and furrowed by age, the product of years under the sun, but it was as taut as a younger man’s. His chin was sculpted.
I would come to learn that the half-finished cigarette—Cedar, a cheap Lebanese brand—that hung from his mouth was one of his trademarks. Decades of nicotine had stained his mustache. Although only of average height, he seemed extraordinarily strong but also, despite his intense masculinity, a kind of diva. He was, after all, a maalim, a hard-to-translate designation that, in the construction trade, can mean professional, expert, or master—as in master carpenter, master stonemason, master electrician.
Abu Jean was a builder, but more precisely, a maalim of concrete. He brought more than a half century of experience to his profession, a point he would make to me repeatedly—hourly, it seemed some days. As I would come to learn, he made his own rules, casually disregarding anyone, everyone, particularly other engineers, and most particularly younger ones. An artist, he called himself. The equivalent of sixty artists, he would add, voice rising. Abu Jean was not shy. That was simply the way it was. Once inside the house, he raised grandeur to a new height, speaking of the original builders as if he had been privy to their every thought and gesture. “This is how they built the world,” he declared, patting the walls of the vaulted room. “They built walls like this,” he said, pointing, apparently by accident, not to a surface impressive for its solidity, but to a hole where scraps of paper fluttered in the breeze.
At one point, I mentioned that we might need someone who could clean the stone and repoint the mortar. “Do you know people who can do this?” I asked.
Abu Jean, who tended to remain almost theatrically engrossed in his own consciousness, had a habit of not answering questions, for whatever reasons. Even if he deigned to consider the inquiry, he avoided a hasty response, instead offering vague reassurances.
“You should be relaxed,” he said, clasping my shoulder with an iron grip. “Don’t worry.” When I told him I had to finish by May, Abu Jean counted the months, slowly, finger by finger. It was now August. We could work in September, October, and November. Not much would be done in December, January, and February, he said, but we could start again in March.
He looked at me and declared, with utter certainty, “We’ll have it wrapped up by then.
“God willing,” he added, repeating the phrase three times, as if to suggest a special covenant with the divine.
The next morning, Fouad was waiting at the house with Abu Jean. The crucial business that remained was not a small item, and I had lain awake the night before, watching a cockroach parade and agonizing over that haughty disrupter of so many romances: filthy lucre. In other words, Abu Jean and I had not agreed on his fee, and that morning I had a sense of foreboding as we exchanged pleasantries. Soon enough, the conversation turned to money, and Abu Jean once more returned to the theme of his six decades of experience. Then came oaths attesting to his honesty. “Just as there’s a God in the sky” began one.
His soliloquy continued, flowing like a river of superlatives or defamations as we roamed from room to room, upstairs and down, and then we went out to the olive trees in front, where Fouad appealed for me to intervene.
“Abu Jean, I’m not Lebanese,” I said. “I’m American, and I do things a little different. I have a specific budget, and I need to know how much I’m going to spend.”
The pleas were to no avail.
“Let’s see what the work costs, whether it’s a day, two days, or three days. Let’s wait until we put the pen to the paper and record what we spent,” Abu Jean told me. The theme throughout the half hour of conversation: “In the end, you’ll pay me what I deserve.
“Don’t worry,” he said, smiling, “and tell Hikmat that he doesn’t have to worry.”
These assurances were sprinkled with pinches of my shoulders, slaps on my arms, and smiles. He gazed upon me as if staring at a newborn grandson. To keep the mood light, Abu Jean threw out a few honorifics, at one point calling me effendi, a Turkish word for sir, and Fouad sayyid al-ikram, a term probably not used seriously in Beirut in a generation.
When Fouad finally got angry, Abu Jean named his price. “Seven hundred dollars,” he announced. “Around seven hundred dollars.” It was the equivalent of about 1,050,000 Lebanese lira.
Fouad turned to me. “Are you okay with that?”
I shrugged my shoulders as Abu Jean declared, to no one and all the world, “Everyone is running after money, and they end up losing their humanity.”
I have to say, I liked his mind.
3. Three Birds
History is sometimes written to buttress the myths that underlie our imagined identities. The myths of Marjayoun and its founding often revolve around accounts of perpetual flight. Tales of war and exodus, told and retold over eighteen centuries, they often make mention of a dam that once enriched a desert and, as the tellers continue their sagas, of three birds, one of which beckoned a frightened group of wanderers toward what would become my family’s home.
This fable of origin starts in the rugged climes of Yemen, in the land of the Queen of Sheba, where the frankincense and spice routes of antiquity snaked through Arabia and Abyssinia. It was here that the famed Ma’arib Dam channeled water to the parched landscape, but its occasional breaches also brought—nearly two millennia ago—what, through tellings and retellings, has become a near-apocalyptic conflagration that drove Marjayoun’s ancestors to the rich fields of the Houran. There, and in other locales, their desert princes and warriors became known as Bani Ghassan, the children of Ghassan. According to legend, they became imperial mercenaries, allies of Rome, guardians of trade routes, a source of troops, and a client state in wars with Persia. The name Rome, or Rum, still denotes their Orthodox Christian descendants in the empire’s former domains.
More exoduses would follow. Among these tales of departure, now much less spoken and repeated, one began with an anxious coterie of subjects seeking sage advice from their leader: Should they flee the strife surrounding them? To solve the problem, the ruler, Abu Rajeh, brought out three birds. He plucked the feathers of the first before cutting the wings of the second. The third he left alone. Abu Rajeh then sat back as his subjects waited, deliberating over their leader’s message. At last they hit upon what they believed it was: The bird with wings can travel as far away as it wants. So they did. They went to the place that became Marjayoun.
Before the arrival of Abu Jean, I had spent many hours in Marjayoun wandering about, reacquainting myself, discovering, absorbing beauties, documenting what was no more. The sights became familiar—thorny rose bushes swirling and madly unkempt, red tiles fallen and crushed, and a once-smashing curl of blue, painted, it seemed, to draw the attention of passersby to some handsomely crafted wooden shutters. Only a few of the traditional lemon trees, which in the not so distant past were planted in almost every garden, marked the path I usually took to the Saha. The bitter juice was once meant to ward off the evil eye.
Marjayoun is set on a plateau of muted and melded grays, browns, and greens, blended in harmony with the land’s past. From high points beyond Isber’s house, its surroundings can be surveyed. Beyond the town’s entrance is the Hula Valley, in present-day Israel, where the finer families once kept prosperous estates. To the west of the town, over a ridge, the Litani River flows, its waters tucked beneath oaks, eucalyptus, and pines. On the other side are Mount
Hermon and its peaks, which serve as borders of Israel and Syria. Beyond it are the Golan Heights and Quneitra, an almost abandoned city since its Israeli occupiers ravaged it as they withdrew in 1974. Farther is the Houran, the expansive plain of the Syrian hinterland, where Isber Samara traded for years in his quest for wealth and reputation.
Facing Marjayoun, on the mountain range’s western escarpment, is Wadi al-Taym and the Arqoub, along with towns that, for centuries, formed a diverse but integrated tapestry of Christians, Muslims, and Druze along its valleys, slopes, and foothills. Marjayoun—historically the largest of them—has one Sunni mosque and a church for each Christian sect: Greek Orthodox, the largest; and Maronite Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Protestant. Next to Marjayoun is Dibin, a mainly Shiite village, as are nearby Blatt and Khiam, across the verdant valley. Between these two tiny towns is Ibl al-Saqi, a village of Druze and Christians, famous for its olives and vineyards. Kfar Shoba, climbing Mount Hermon, is Sunni, as is Kfar Hammam and Shebaa. Rashaya al-Fukhar, renowned for its colorful pottery, is Orthodox and Maronite. Farther away is Hasbaya, with its Druze, Muslim, and Christian inhabitants, their intersections helping blur distinctions.
The stones of the hills around Marjayoun are a pale gray that blends into the ascending terraces. The land itself is furrowed with creases and wrinkles plunging downward like the lines across Mount Hermon. The roads meld with rivulets, which merge with ravines, which cascade into gullies. Nothing is jagged. Everything is rounded, even the rocks that thrust themselves up from the earth. Perhaps most belligerent is the wind, rarely subsiding.
There are not many young trees around Marjayoun these days, but the older ones, majestic and tall, stand like sentries on the hillsides. Pines litter the ground with needles and cones. Along the roads are groves of olive trees, deferential, mimicking the landscape. The trees resemble sculptures, their trunks wizened remnants of time compressed. A fig tree across the street from my apartment appeared to be big and lush, even tropical. It swaggered almost imperiously as I watched a young girl standing in the street under its canopy of rustling leaves in the midmorning quiet. With a stick she pulled a branch down to pick a fig. Her movements were unhurried and deft.
Gone were the pickup trucks that often rumbled through the town, their bullhorn-style loudspeakers mounted on top. Aluminum, iron, car batteries for sale. There were no sounds but the same wind, caressing the trees.
Two days after our financial negotiations, Abu Jean called at 9 A.M. for me to pick him up. We headed to the Saha, where we met Faez, a thirty-year-old Syrian from Daraa who had agreed to work on the house. Wearing a floppy blue hat, Faez had a quiet, gentle disposition. Adami (polite) they would call him in Marjayoun. Along with him, we brought a green wheelbarrow, two claw hammers, two shovels with the handles detached, a chisel, and the biggest sledgehammer I had yet to see in my thirty-nine years.
At the house, Abu Jean led Faez to the vaulted stone room I had nicknamed “the Cave,” then the kitchen, then the bedroom.
“Use your head and figure out how much it’s going to cost,” Abu Jean told him.
Precisely what Abu Jean had done days before, Faez did, repeating the gestures verbatim and nodding—okay, okay, inshallah, inshallah—as Abu Jean kept at it. “Think what you need, then tell me.” Faez knew the game, and he wouldn’t be trapped. The rule: no commitment until the last possible moment.
“How much do you want, and tell me,” Abu Jean said yet again. “One hundred thousand lira?” Faez laughed. Even I thought the offer was a little ridiculous.
Finally, Faez offered his number. “Five hundred thousand lira.”
Abu Jean acted startled, falling back a dramatic step. “What’s with five hundred thousand?” he asked. Mothers would be insulted, saints blasphemed by this figure. Abu Jean went to the wall, pulling off a piece of plaster with his hand to demonstrate how easy the work was. “You don’t even have to swing a hammer!”
“It’s not all like that,” Faez pleaded. “The rest is concrete.” Faez thought for a moment. “Take off fifty thousand,” he said. “Four hundred fifty thousand is good?”
“That’s a lot, harram,” Abu Jean answered.
Faez was looking to close the deal.
“What’s the last price you want?” he asked Abu Jean.
Abu Jean was silent for a few moments. “Three-fifty,” he said. Then he actually winked at me in front of Faez.
Unbelievably, out of either satisfaction or exhaustion, Faez agreed.
As we were walking out, Abu Jean, a Christian, said something I hadn’t heard since my mother used to say it, before we would depart anywhere in the car.
“Itakalna ala Allah.” It’s in God’s hands.
“Ala Allah,” Faez, a Muslim, answered, the simplicity of the response in itself beautiful.
A few minutes later, I dropped Abu Jean off in the market. He turned to me as he got out of the car. “Phone Hikmat and tell him not to worry about a thing.”
In these first weeks, I often turned to my friends for advice. Dr. Khairalla Mady was a man who was truly respected. Kalim Salameh, an aging resident who had served for a remarkable fifty-five years as mukhtar, a kind of mayor, stared at the floor as he spoke about him. “He wouldn’t take a penny from the poor,” he told me. Kalim then echoed the words that I had heard many times from Hikmat, and even more so from Abu Jean. “The town,” Hikmat would tell me, “no longer has men like that.”
A patient, he said, would come to Dr. Khairalla with six eggs as payment. Others would bring cheese, or a creamy yogurt known as labneh. “So as to not hurt their feelings, he would accept them,” Hikmat recalled. I eventually tracked down Dr. Khairalla’s phone number. It was an awkward introduction; he was unaware of me. Yet he volunteered to pick me up, and a few minutes later arrived at the apartment. Hardly any conversation could begin in Marjayoun without an exploration of origins: The family would be recalled and characterized, with its labyrinth of relationships carefully delineated. Abdullah—the name of my grandfather on the Shadid side—gave the good doctor little to go on. Abdullah had departed Marjayoun too young to leave a legacy in the town, and even after all these weeks, I had yet to learn where his house had been. But when I mentioned his father, Ayyash Shadid, Dr. Khairalla gave a nod of recognition.
I knew less about the Shadids than about the Samaras, the family of my grandmother, so Dr. Khairalla took me to the old Shadid neighborhood. There—he pointed across an undulating street—are the Dahers. Over there, around the corner, are the Jabaras. Next to them are the Eids. And here, he told me matter-of-factly, is your grandfather Shadid’s house.
It was quite a contrast to Isber’s impressive villa—a simple, two-story concrete affair, next to the Serail, the old headquarters of the Ottoman government. This locale had none of the formidable stone of Bayt Samara; there was neither wealth on display nor arches attesting to taste. This neighborhood lacked grandeur and, in fact, spoke more of poverty, where flat roofs were once rolled with a stone in winter to keep the rain from pouring through heaving mud.
Dr. Khairalla lived down the street, and once inside, we sat and had coffee with his wife. Our conversation unfolded in four languages—English, French, Bulgarian, and Arabic. The doctor, trained as a urologist in Eastern Europe, had, in 1985, become director of Marjayoun Hospital, which had been founded in 1960 by a distant cousin of mine, Dr. Michael Shadid, who had raised $30,273 for the project from 203 donors in Oklahoma, Kansas, and elsewhere. (My grandmother was one of them.) A black plaque inscribed in gold still hangs at its entrance: “The Haramoon Charity Hospital conceived by Dr. Michael Abraham Shadid and realized through the contributions of the emigrants from Wadi al-Taym and Marjayoun.”
Dr. Khairalla had managed the hospital for sixteen years, through a difficult time for Marjayoun and Lebanon, years that spanned war, isolation, and the Israeli occupation. It is a testament to his administration that today residents look at his tenure, hardships aside, as the facility’s golden age.
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sp; Dr. Khairalla, I would learn, personified Marjayoun as it was, before war had taxed its charity, before change had disturbed what had once been its proud conduct. Now sixty-five years old, Dr. Khairalla no longer worked at the hospital but remained distinguished, with gray hair and glasses suggesting intellectual pursuits. Age had not expanded his lean build or obscured the line of the chiseled jaw framing his thin face. Yet as we talked until sunset, his words had begun to dwindle, and I realized he was tiring. I had heard he was very ill, news confirmed by his obvious fatigue. A little gingerly, with hesitant steps, he walked me to the street. I looked at his garden as we left. Some of the fruit trees were desiccated, others looked unpruned and unmanicured, abandoned to their fate. Patches of the terraces were overgrown with weeds, tangling in what he had planted. Here and there, stones had given way in the retaining walls that once held them up. I thought of a proverb Hikmat had told me: “The blessing goes with its owner.”
Cancer is rarely spoken about in Marjayoun; the name itself is a harbinger of bad luck. To mention it is a grim omen, as if inviting its onset. “That disease, may God save us from it,” people might say instead. Hikmat called it al-marad al-khabeeth, the wicked disease. “Most people don’t talk about it,” he told me. “They keep it confidential.” He shrugged as he explained the doctor’s lack of acknowledgment of his illness. “He’ll tell you he’s sick, but he won’t tell you what it is.” Dr. Khairalla had cancer of the prostate, and though he didn’t mention it, I knew it was serious.
The dignity of Dr. Khairalla lingered with me for days as I turned to books he loaned me, really no more than folders of photocopied papers passed on from one hopeful friend or relative to another. Through the blurred words was the history of my adopted community that was unfolding before me, arrayed as it was in celebrated stories and vestiges of stone. In these weeks my spirit ebbed and flowed. I was not in a war zone, but I was not quite home. With little regret, I was enjoying the respite from work as a journalist, and all the dread that all those deadlines inspire, but I was missing my daughter Laila, just six years old. To her, I was an untethered voice on a cell phone, which in Marjayoun never worked all that well.
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