Between Beirut and the Moon

by A. Naji Bakhti

  ‘It was not,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a lie,’ he said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘What does it matter now?’

  ‘It matters,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘Is my son a coward or not? It matters.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I stood up. My father was still taller than me. He did not tower over me anymore but he would still look down at me when he spoke.

  ‘Life isn’t a fat, old bartender with a motorcycle injury.’

  The implication was that life, unlike the fat, battered Captain, would catch up with me. I wanted to smile because I knew it would infuriate my father, but I could not.

  ‘Why are you bringing this up now?’ asked my mother.

  ‘Because he has nowhere to go.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I began, and I stopped when I saw my father place his index finger over his lips.

  ‘You don’t want to go to the moon. You never did. You want to run away, that’s all. You want to smash windows and run away and never have to face any consequences.’

  He stopped because my sister was crying and because we could hear the gunfire getting closer. My father looked up again but nothing happened.

  ‘I want to go,’ I said, making a fist with my right hand.

  My drenched back arched forwards and began to shake. I made another fist with my left hand in a failed attempt to control it.

  ‘Don’t mind your father, he’s just blowing off some steam,’ my mother said, then she bit the side of her lip and waved her hand dismissively.

  ‘Then go, leave,’ he said, ‘show me how you are going to run out onto the street with bullets and RPG rockets whizzing, mother and father, past your ears.’

  My mother blocked the door with her body. She did not stand up. She crawled towards the door and placed her body between it and the rest of us.

  I squeezed past my father, unbuckled my belt, unbuttoned my denim shorts, undid my zipper, sat on the toilet seat and let go.

  No man ever remembers the good old days when he used to shit himself daily,. If he did, he would be infinitely more modest.

  My mother and sister looked away. My father did not.

  He looked straight at me. He did not shout or stomp his feet. He did not say anything to the effect that he would make me wish I was never born. He did not take out his black leather belt, or his Arak. He did not even call upon ‘Jesus-Mohammad-Christ’. He allowed himself a half snigger. He removed the An-Nahar from under his arm, unfolded it, and then offered it to me. We had run out of toilet paper. I took the newspaper and flipped through the pages. It was five days old and, I assume, my father must have read every page twice, particularly the obituaries section. I looked for his article, I knew it was in there.

  ‘…I am reminded of Ziad Rahbani’s answer to a journalist who insisted on prodding him to provide words of advice for the “coming generations” of Lebanese youth. Without skipping a beat, the sardonic musical genius said “do not come” and I am increasingly inclined to agree… To be Lebanese today is to take small steps home, with one hand on your heart and another firmly planted against the wall. It is to wave to the wars as they pass by, so that you can plan for a tomorrow that is already gone. It is to be jilted by sleep, and consumed by fear over everything and nothing. The world sleeps and wakes, and you float in a permanent state of restlessness between sleep and exhaustion. It is to jump to your feet at the slam of a bathroom door, or clap of thunder in the sky. It is to act natural in unnatural circumstances; neither a hero nor a victim nor a martyr, just ordinary. It is to miss your country when you are in your country, like you miss your children when they are not. It is to dream the same dream, night after night, that, like in the Ziad Rahbani song, “our country becomes a country”. And you worry about being arrested on charges of dreaming. It is to wake up every morning as if it were the first and last time, to recount your name and age and account number and walk on coal and fire with the blessings of others ringing in your ear, all the while repeating this phrase to yourself: “I am a human being, I am a human being”. It is to know that you are alone, without land or sky or borders and that it is up to you to recreate the republic, every day. It is to pay the heavy price of living and being, and not cower under the weight of it all. It is to learn from time, hollow wisdom and from space, scathing cynicism. It is to reinvent hope, when you know you will have to reinvent it again tomorrow. It is to set up a place for the ‘good old days’ on the comfortable couch next to you, feign a yawn, place your arm around it and say to it: “you should visit us more often”.’

  When I was done, I wiped my ass with the words of my father.

  Gunfire. Silence. Rebellion. Rebellion, at last. More silence.

  My father and I walked past Saeed and onto the main road. Saeed informed us that the corner shop at the end of the street would be open. He said the gunfire had subsided and that he was fairly certain everyone had gone home because they were tired and because it had rained momentarily. This was odd because we had not heard the rain and because it was May, and it rarely rained in May.

  ‘You won’t be able to get any bread and the prices will be hiked up a bit, but you can count on Abou Abbas’s shop being open,’ he said, shutting the gate behind us.

  My father’s footsteps echoed throughout the hollow street. The smell of dust and gunfire mixed with that of the fresh but feeble rain occupied the air. Black flags and banners featuring the red vortex lined the narrow road on either side. They hung from trees or poles, and across the shattered windows of looted shops. We marched straight down the middle, avoiding the broken glass along the pavement and altering our course only once to circumvent an abandoned sky-blue Nissan Sunny. As yet untrodden German cockroaches scurried around our feet, seemingly lost, daunted by the sudden reemergence of water from the sky.

  My father made a fist with his left hand, but not his right, and swung it forward as if to guide his path. The flesh on both sides of his plain gold wedding ring leapt out of his finger and enclosed the ring itself. The ground was littered with empty shells of bullets which had been launched up in the air at no one. I bent down to pick up two or three, always jogging afterwards to catch up with my father’s longer strides.

  His stronger right foot sank into the asphalt and the cement. I thought that if I got lost or if I could no longer see his soaked blue shirt out of the corner of my eye or smell that whiff of sweat and newspaper, I would retrace his footprints all the way back to our house.

  Outside the corner shop stood a tank. Abou Abbas noted that it took up about as much space as the old White American.

  ‘How much for a gallon of water, Abou Abbas?’ asked my father.

  ‘Ten thousand liras,’ said Abou Abbas.

  He was around sixty now, with a white moustache and a belly that meant his face was never within reach of anyone else’s.

  ‘How much for the toilet paper?’ asked my father.

  ‘Ten thousand liras,’ said Abou Abbas.

  ‘Ridiculous.’

  ‘If you don’t like it leave, Najjar,’ said Abu Abbas, his voice quivering, some words only beginning and ending aloud but holding their silence right in the middle.

  ‘You’re no better than they are, out there,’ said my father.

  ‘They’re killing people,’ he said, ‘I’m risking my life to bring you toilet paper. I’m better. Do you want the toilet paper or not?’

  ‘How much for the Cadbury Fruit and Nut?’

  ‘Ten thousand liras,’ said Abou Abbas.

  ‘You’re a thief.’

  Abu Abbas shook his head and bit his lower lip which I now noticed was also quivering.

  Two armed militiamen emerged from the abandoned T-54. The tanks had been given to the Lebanese army by the Soviet Union at some point, possibly because they had very little need for models that were in use during the Second World War. The militiamen wore black tops and army trousers and had bandanas hiding their mouths and noses. But you could see their eyes, a
nd that was enough. Each of them had an AK-47 in one hand and an Almaza and a Cedars in another. The taller one jumped off the tank. The significantly shorter man opted to stay on top of the tank, dangling his legs off the edge.

  ‘Is this man giving you trouble, Abu Abbas?’ asked the former, staring intensely at the vendor. ‘Do you want us to teach him a lesson?’

  His was a more demanding presence. The eyes were wide and large and green but only in the way that the grass throughout a sweltering Lebanese summer is green when there is not a single drop of rain to moisten the earth or wash the dirt off the cars or the windows or off tall buildings almost entirely made of glass.

  ‘No,’ said Abou Abbas, ‘he was just going to buy a Cadbury Fruit and Nut and be on his way.’

  ‘God speed,’ said my father, placing a hand on the man’s arm. It was the arm that held the gun. A black armband with the red vortex superimposed clung to his biceps.

  My father carried the plastic bag with the toilet paper and the gallon of water over his right shoulder, placed the Cadbury in his back pocket and his left hand on my shoulder.

  ‘I’ve never tried Cadbury,’ said the militiaman, as we turned to walk back home.

  ‘You wouldn’t like it,’ said my father, squeezing my shoulder.

  ‘That’s what I used to think about this,’ he said, raising the Almaza as if to make a toast then slipping it under his bandana to take a sip. ‘But I have now learned to keep an open mind about things. Where I come from, we didn’t get these fancy English chocolates. We just had Ras El Abed, and that was it.’

  ‘Tarboush,’ said my father.

  Ras El Abed is a cheap, Lebanese variation on the chocolate teacake. It is a chocolate covered, cream filled treat that has been popular among generations of Lebanese children since the fifties. The actual meaning of Ras El Abed is ‘head of a slave’ and when Gandour, the Lebanese chocolate company, tried to launch a marketing campaign to rename Ras El Abed, the Lebanese public simply ignored the whole thing. Tarboush, or Fez, was the proposed alternative, due to its close resemblance in shape to the traditional Lebanese headwear famously worn by the first prime minister: Riad El Solh. ‘Because everyone has tried it on’ was the slogan pushed throughout the campaign, as opposed to the implied slogan of the initial name: “Because it is black”.’

  ‘What?’ asked the militiaman, scratching his neck with his thumb only.

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘I think I’ll try some of that English Ras El Abed.’

  ‘Leave it, Adel. We’re not here to sample foreign chocolate,’ said the short one, slamming his heel against the tank, ‘do your job and let’s get out of here.’

  ‘I’ll just have one bite,’ said Adel.

  My father instructed me to reach for the Cadbury Fruit and Nut in his back pocket and offer it to the man. Adel removed his bandana. He looked barely my age.

  He took the first bite, he let the chocolate melt in his mouth. He laid his gun against the wall and spat the raisins and nuts out. Then he took a second bite, this time he did not spit anything out. Then he took a third and fourth and fifth and sixth. When he was done he stuffed the wrapper in my father’s shirt pocket and he took a sip of his Almaza.

  ‘That was alright,’ he said, his voice going up a pitch, ‘I want more.’

  ‘I don’t have more,’ said my father, ‘Abou Abbas does.’

  ‘Then go in there and get me some more,’ said the unhinged militiaman, bringing his nose close enough to my father’s that he could smell the Cadbury.

  The former resident of the Ottoman house, which throughout my childhood would have been visible at the end of the street, died on the eve of his centenary birthday. Builders and cranes and drilling rigs and ripped jeans and concrete mixers and dust and construction trucks came and went. In its place stood a sixteen-storey-high building with no balconies and double-glazed glass where the walls should be. This happened while my father and Adel stared at one another.

  The glass was not a good idea. The architect was French-Lebanese. She had never lived in Beirut. Though I am certain that my father would have struggled to launch the foldable chair onto the roof of that particular glass tower.

  Past Adel, you could see a small part of the Mediterranean which was discernable still from our balcony on the sixth floor. It was forever in the background. And past the Mediterranean, you could see the sun setting. There was a fine golden line now telling the sea not to encroach upon the sky’s territory, and telling the sky that it is not as boundless as it might have believed but finite and limited and terminable. And when my father spoke again, the Azan had sounded off and his voice was drowned by that of the muezzin singing God’s praises. It was the loudest I had heard the Azan. As if the muezzin believed that if he sang louder, if he made more noise, then maybe he could turn God’s attention to Beirut, because perhaps the gunfire and RPG rockets were not loud enough and all he needed was a bearded man with an amplifier to make him stand up and take note.

  But Adel heard my father because he picked up his gun by the barrel and swung it at him. My father shielded his face with his arMs Adel put his knee through my father’s gut which knocked him on his back. My father raised his hand but Adel swung his AK-47 again, this time in the opposite direction, landing a heavy blow above his left eye. Blood dripped down his moustache and he wiped it away with the rolled up sleeve of his oversized blue shirt.

  ‘I am a human being,’ mumbled my father, as he rolled on the ground.

  I watched Adel swing his AK-47 in the direction of my father’s red-stained forehead. It did not belong in his hand. He knew it, my father knew it, I knew it, Abou Abbas knew it, Mohammad knew it, Jesus knew it and God knew it.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I am a human being,’ mumbled my father, as he stumbled to his feet, ‘I am a human being.’

  Except he did not say human being, he said baniedam. It means son of Adam.

  He clutched at Adel’s army pants. But he did not look at Adel. His eyes were fixed on the sky. Adel grabbed my father by the collar and dragged him upwards.

  Once my father stood upright Adel aimed the back of his gun against my father’s kneecap and the sound of the Azan stopped long enough for me to hear it break.

  ‘Jesus-Mohammad-Christ,’ said my father, clutching his thigh and falling back.

  I did not cry. I said something about Cadbury. I sat down and scraped my knees against the melting asphalt. I said I have some or I can get some or that it is not that good. I wrapped my arms around my knees. I said that I like Ras El Abed more, or that I did not think that raisins or nuts had any business being in a chocolate bar anyway. Cannonball. I said that he should try Swiss chocolate or Belgian chocolate, because that is what chocolate is about. Cannonball. Not Cadbury. Cannonball. Not fucking Cadbury.

  ‘That’s enough. Respect your elders, boy,’ shouted Abou Abbas, flailing his arms and hobbling out of his shop.

  Adel placed the gun between his thighs and slid his unbuttoned shirt off his back to reveal his tattoo of the spinning swastika on his bicep. Even amidst the chaos, I remember thinking that the armband and the banners and the flags had rendered the tattoo redundant.

  Adel wrestled the gun out of Abou Abbas’s hands, who had made a symbolic attempt at seizing the weapon, and pushed the grocer’s sizeable frame to the side. Abou Abbas shouted abuse at him, telling him how worthless he was, how he would never amount to anything, how incompetent he had made himself appear and how ignorant and immature it had been of him to beat the blood out of a man for a Cadbury Fruit and Nut.

  ‘Your grandmother must have been raped by the dumbest fucking Crusader of the whole lot,’ I heard myself stutter, as I wiped the snot off my upper lip.

  It was a schoolboy retort and my father, who was looking up expectantly, grimaced and dug his nails into his thigh.

  ‘Not him,’ shouted the other militiaman when Adel aimed his gun at my mouth, ‘he’ll kill you if you harm him. Not him.’

&nb
sp; I saw the chaos in Adel’s eyes, the sense that all was not well with the world, I saw that paradox of youth which Mr Abu Alam had once ranted about many years ago in Ms Iman’s office, the black hole and those young stars at the centre of the galaxy. And I waited for an explosion, I cleared my head. I believed in a Big Bang, that’s how I believed it would end, with a bang. I pressed the palm of my hands against my ears. Adel swiftly pointed the AK-47 at my father instead. Had I not gone to the toilet earlier, I would have wet myself and my father would have cringed and looked Adel straight in the eyes and told him to pull the trigger.

  A cockroach slithered past my foot, and with no recourse to bodily fluid or excrement, I instinctively stomped on it with my heel. It was, I had hoped, a sacrifice of some kind so that my life and my father’s would be spared in return for that of the cockroach.

  The shorter man pulled at his khaki vest. Bits of skin protruded from the gaps between the strained buttons. He climbed up into the T-54 and whistled for Adel to follow him. My father groaned through gritted red teeth.

  Adel, now standing over him, leaned in and whispered someone else’s words into his ear, and smiled. He, too, had dimples.

  I could not hear the entire line, but I managed to make out the words ‘Ninnette’ and ‘done for good’. And due to my dumbfounded state of mind in that instant, all I could think about was that poor old cat and why these militiamen had gone through such lengths to murder the zucchini-loving, Cadbury-Fruit-and-Nut-licking, former inhabitant of a broken down Oldsmobile. The rest, in a twisted way, seemed to make sense. After all, my father was a known Ninnette sympathizer, and if these men had had it in for the cat then they would have naturally opted to go after my father next.

  Then the unhinged Adel fired his AK-47 in the air and flung his visceral, black army boot through my father’s head. My father went limp but he did not die.