Beirut, Beirut

by Sonallah Ibrahim

  A public square in the middle of the city. Dozens of young men standing in circles beat their shaved heads with their hands. Some of them use the edges of swords instead of their hands, and continue striking their heads until blood flows. (The tradition is an expression of the Shias’ remorse over their ancestors’ stance more than 1,000 years ago, when they abandoned Hussein, the son of the Imam Ali, and let him be slaughtered at the hands of his enemies.)

  Latin religious prayers.

  Inside a deserted, dimly lit church. A priest ascends the pulpit and opens the Holy Book. He reads aloud: “Oh that I had in the desert a wayfarers’ lodging place; that I might leave my people and go from them! For all of them are adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.”

  In the dock where the accused sits in a courtroom. A priest stands up. The judges sit below the Star of David.

  Title card:

  In August 1974, Israel arrested Archbishop Capucci, leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem, on charges of belonging to the Fatah organization and smuggling weapons to the fedayeen. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison.

  Capucci declares from the dock: “My nationalism is the foundation for my Christianity. Unless I am an Arab down to my blood and bones, then I am not a Christian.”

  The port of Haifa in the 1940s. A European ship packed with Jewish refugees approaches the shore and drops anchor beside it.

  Title card:

  “It is in our interest that there be several sectarian states in the region to justify the presence of Israel.”

  – Ben Gurion

  The screen is divided into four sections. In each section shots with a distinct point of view follow one another in succession. Altogether, the shots show Israeli tanks and planes in combat. One of the sections goes back in history, showing Israeli soldiers as they raid homes in a Palestinian village with bayonets. In another section, the streets of Port Said appear after their destruction in 1956. In the third section, Israeli planes jealously guard the ruins of the city of Suez in 1967. The fourth section shows the Israeli attack on the Syrian city of Qunaitra in 1973.

  Title card:

  “There will be no peace . . . War will continue between us and the Arabs even if they make a peace treaty with us.”

  – Menachem Begin

  A large field. The side of a country road. An Arab family slowly walks by. The family is made up of women and children, with no men among them. They are all carrying bundles and different items. They look out into the distance in fear.

  The sound of the announcer of the Palestinian radio program which has been broadcast for thirty years: “People can rest assured that everything is well and they are asked to remain calm. I am fine. Please assure us that you are also fine.”

  Title card:

  “When a Jew kills a Palestinian or Arab, he rids himself of his fears and becomes worthy of carrying the mark of manhood.”

  – Menachem Begin

  Corpses of an Arab family that had been playing cards. A murdered child is still clutching a card in his hand. Fragments of the bomb that fell on them are mingled with body parts and bloodstains. A pair of child’s underpants is hanging on a rope. The refrigerator door is open.

  Title card:

  ‘‘Israelis, your hearts should not feel pain when you kill your enemy. You should not take pity on them so long as we have not yet done away with what is called Arab civilization, on the rubble of which we will construct our own civilization.’’

  – Menachem Begin

  A commemorative photo of the massacre of Deir Yasin in 1948. On one side of the photo is a group of European Jews – as is clear from their features and their clothes. They look on in apparent delight at a soldier from the Zionist Irgun paramilitaries. He is carrying on the bayonet of his rifle the head of an Arab, dripping blood. On the other side of the photo, a military truck is carrying a group of naked Arab women tied with ropes.

  Title card:

  “I believe in our moral and intellectual superiority inasmuch as it serves as an example to reform the Arab race.”

  – Ben Gurion

  Beirut Arab University. The enormous Gamal Abdel Nasser Hall packed with delegates. In the front row, before the podium, sits Kamal Jumblatt and the leaders of Lebanon’s nationalist and progressive parties, and the Palestinian factions. Yasser Arafat walks briskly up to the podium. He turns to the audience with a jubilant look on his face. Everyone stands and applauds for a long time.

  Title card:

  Yasser Arafat, also known as Abu Ammar, is the leader of Fatah, the largest of the organizations that make up the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He is the general director of the PLO, and commander-in-chief of the forces of the Palestinian revolution, as he is called in official edicts. He is known as “The Choice”, or “the old man”, by his aides.

  Yasser Arafat in a conversation with journalists: “We ask only that our rearguard be secure, and that you don’t haggle with us, or over us.”

  A commemorative photo of Fairuz and Assi Rahbani on their honeymoon in Cairo in 1955.

  Title card:

  Throughout the civil war, the killing would come completely to a halt at 7 pm every day, so that all the Lebanese could listen to the program of Ziad Rahbani, the son of Fairuz, on Lebanese radio.

  The voice of Ziad: “We’re still alive!”

  Ziad, with his skinny, emaciated face, wears striped pajamas and moves on the stage. Above the theater entrance is a billboard announcing the play that he wrote and acted in: An American Feature Film.

  A title card fills the screen:

  What happened to Lebanon?

  The words stay fixed in place while the film credits roll.

  Antoinette lifted her hand from the Moviola wheel, and the display stopped. She took off her glasses, and rested her arms on the table, while smiling at me in the weak light. Then she got up in one swift motion, walked over to the light switch, and turned it on.

  I looked at my watch and found that it was close to 8 pm. As I looked at the two reels of film that had collected in intertwined piles in the cloth container beside the Moviola, I said: “The introduction took us almost two and a half hours. At this rate, I can finish going through all the scenes in less than a week.”

  She came back to her seat next to mine, and asked, “And another week to write the voiceover? Does that sound about right?”

  “Almost,” I replied.

  “Is that a problem for you?”

  I grimaced. “Not at all,” I said.

  She lit a cigarette as she busied herself in winding the film reels and returning each of them to its can. When she was done, I helped her carry the film canisters to her office. She left me for a moment while she fetched a wool coat and her purse.

  “Where are you headed now?” she asked me as she pulled out a key.

  “Home,” I replied.

  “Me, too,” she said, leading me out of the office and locking the door behind us.

  “Where do you live?” I asked her.

  “In East Beirut.”

  Perplexed, I stared at her, and she laughed, saying: “Do you find that strange?”

  “Do you mean you go back there at night and come here in the morning?”

  “Don’t forget – it’s one city,” she said as we went out into the street, which was filled with lights and pedestrians. “During the fighting, I also used to come here every day. I would leave my family wearing a blouse and skirt or a dress, and the moment I arrived I would put on military overalls and carry a Kalashnikov. At night I would change my clothes before going back to my family.”

  “Are they . . .”

  “Yes. They are Maronite fanatics.”

  “So you’re like Ziad Rahbani?”

  “Ziad rebelled against his mother.”

  “And you?”

  “I rebel against the whole situation.”

  She opened her purse and took out a cigarette. I happened to see inside the purse and noticed the barrel of a small
revolver.

  I lit her cigarette for her, and then lit one for me. We walked toward an old Volkswagen.

  “Have you known Wadia long?” she asked me suddenly.

  “We were in school together.”

  She continued pressing me with questions: “Do you know him well?”

  I was at a loss about how to answer. “Ride with me. I’ll take you,” she said as she opened the car door.

  Chapter 9

  The gunfire was extremely close and sudden enough that a glass of whiskey nearly fell out of my hand. I was sitting in the living room with Wadia watching a French movie on television.

  “The top floor, most likely,” Wadia said, without taking his eyes off the television screen.

  I put my glass on the table and asked him, “What do you think it was?”

  He shrugged. “Could be anything,” he replied.

  I stood up, walked to the balcony and pulled open the door. I stepped outside and the cold air brushed my face. I stood watching the quiet street plunged in darkness. I glanced at my watch and found that it was midnight.

  I could sense Wadia behind me and heard him say in a soft voice: “The best thing to do in these situations is nothing at all.”

  I turned around and went back inside. He followed me.

  “This isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last,” he added. “Only two months ago, three armed men knocked on the door of the apartment directly next to mine. When the person inside opened it, they shot him. He was an Iraqi Communist.”

  I lit a cigarette. “And who were they?” I asked.

  “Iraqi intelligence.”

  “They killed him and left, just like that?”

  “The man who was killed was under Arafat’s protection. Lebanese Communists avoided him out of a desire to maintain their relationship with Saddam Hussein. When Arafat learned what happened, he issued his order to Fatah’s security apparatus. It arrested dozens of Iraqi Baath agents. After that, things were even among all sides as usual.”

  The sound of a car speeding in the street rang out. It stopped in front of our building. The sound of a conversation among several people came up to us. The sound of their voices grew distant, then a little later echoed back, muffled, and then broke off. Then a knocking on the doors of the floor below us rang out. Then it was silent.

  Wadia had lowered the volume on the television, and I was about to turn it up again when heavy footfalls approached the door of the apartment and the doorbell rang.

  Wadia’s face grew pale; then he got up and walked toward the door, shouting, “Who is it?”

  We heard Abu Shakir’s voice: “It’s me, Mr Wadia. There are some comrades from Group 17.”

  “Fatah security,” Wadia whispered to me.

  Wadia turned the key in the door, and hesitantly opened up, revealing the doorman accompanied by two young men armed with Kalashnikovs. One of them was of medium height, in his twenties. A look of embarrassment appeared on his face – just the opposite of his colleague, who was older than he. His face was clearly lined with experience and authority.

  The older one politely asked to see the owner of the apartment, and Wadia presented himself. I pulled out my passport.

  “Did the two of you hear the bullets?” he asked, looking back and forth at our faces.

  “We heard one bullet while we were sitting here,” Wadia replied.

  “And you don’t know where it came from?”

  Wadia shook his head, and the young man asked to take a look around the apartment. Wadia stepped back from the door and we went with the man to my room, where he inspected its contents without touching anything. Then we moved to Wadia’s room.

  The gun was still in its place on the bedside table. Noticing it, the young man picked it up and raised its barrel to his nose. Then he brought it out to the living room. He pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and wrote down in it the gun’s identification numbers, then he left the gun on the table. He tore a white piece of paper out of the notebook and wrote several phone numbers on it.

  “Please call one of these numbers if you learn anything,” he said, handing the paper to Wadia.

  Wadia took it from him. “I know the number,” he said. “Will do.”

  The two men expressed their regret for having disturbed us. They left the apartment and joined Abu Shakir, who walked ahead of them to the next apartment.

  Wadia closed the door while I poured myself a glass of whiskey.

  “Pour one for me, too,” he said, flinging himself into a chair.

  I filled his glass and handed it to him. He raised it to his lips, then returned it to the table, saying, “Now I remember. I’ve met that gunman before. At the time he was in the Popular Front.”

  “Why did he leave it to go to Fatah?” I wondered.

  He shrugged. “Who knows?” he replied. “Maybe he got into an argument with his superiors, or he disagreed with them ideologically. Or he made some mistake that they wanted to punish him for. Maybe the salary was the reason. Fatah pays its fighters more.”

  I reached out for the gun and picked it up. I turned it over carefully.

  “Do you know this is the first time in my life I’ve touched a real handgun? I was well trained with Russian rifles during the Suez War. An old soldier trained us. He was harsh with us because of our political opinions. When we went to prison, he was transferred there. By coincidence, I believe. He enjoyed being in charge of tormenting us. He would have us gather in front of him and order us to squat down and call out ‘Long live Gamal Abdel Nasser!’ As though cheering for Nasser required all that distress.”

  I put the gun back. I happened to look at the television set and saw that the film was over; the presenter was reading the latest news bulletin. I turned up the volume.

  The situation in Beirut was quiet. The situation in the Gulf was just the opposite. Iraqi and Iranian forces had begun destroying petroleum facilities in the two countries, and the number of war refugees from the two sides totaled over a million.

  The final news item came from Egypt, the gist of which was that an American transport plane had been destroyed in the early hours of the morning on its descent into the Cairo West Air Base, during training for the US Rapid Deployment Force. Thirteen American soldiers were killed.

  I felt a little elated and poured myself another glass.

  “You’re drinking a lot,” Wadia said, as he slowly sipped his drink.

  I turned off the television. “I can’t sleep,” I said.

  “I’ll give you a Valium.”

  “That makes me spacy in the morning. You know I need to be fully alert when recording the shots.”

  A sly smile played over his lips.

  “I see you’ve become enthusiastic about the film,” he said. “Generally speaking, Antoinette is a fantastic girl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s not complicated. She goes to bed with men quickly.”

  As I lit a cigarette and approached the bookshelf, I told him: “That’s completely the opposite of what I want. I go to bed with women slowly.”

  I flipped through the few books on the shelf and picked an old one by Colin Wilson.

  “Read it,” said Wadia. “He claims that prolonging orgasms will lead to eternal happiness for humanity.”

  I put the book back and took another one.

  “That’s not a problem for me,” I said.

  “So what is your problem?”

  “What do you feel during orgasm?” I asked him.

  “Sometimes I haul with pleasure.”

  “Lucky you.”

  I picked up my notebook and my pack of cigarettes from the table.

  “I’ll try to sleep. Goodnight.”

  I went to my room, took off my clothes and lay down on the bed. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling, and I thought about my ex-wife. Then I thought about the first girl I loved, or to be exact, the first girl we loved. Wadia and I and two other friends of ours were in love with her at the
same time. That was at the university, at the beginning of the 1950s, when the wealthy and the aristocratic were the only ones who could break the hidden barriers erected between the sexes. We stood around her all the time and walked with her for hours on end. When it got cold, we would play the hand-warming game, and she would put her right hand in my left pocket and her left hand in Wadia’s right pocket.

  I also remembered the first time I masturbated, and the time that Wadia and I drank a bottle of wine, and we masturbated in front of each other. I remembered the first girl I slept with. Wadia and I and a third friend from the hand-warming group succeeded in pooling our money, and we picked her up from a shady spot along the banks of the Nile – the same place where Anwar Sadat’s mansion and the Sheraton now sit. We brought her back to the house of one of our friends, and when it was my turn, I found her fast asleep. I woke her up, but then I didn’t know what to do. So she laid me down on my back and got on top of me. It didn’t take more than a few seconds, and while it was happening, the only thing I felt was that I was producing a great deal of semen. When I left the room, she had already gone back to sleep, and resumed her rhythmic snoring.

  Chapter 10

  The morning papers didn’t mention anything about the gunfire incident. While we were having our breakfast, Abu Shakir knocked on the door to let us know that the bullet had been fired accidentally while a gun was being cleaned by one of the top-floor residents.

  I was busy cleaning my dark-blue suit with a brush. Then I ironed the shirt I had washed yesterday. I shined my shoes with a piece of cloth I found in the kitchen. And finally, I hung my briefcase over my shoulder and set out behind Wadia.

  A taxi took us to the Ain Mreisseh neighborhood, near the checkpoints for East Beirut. Wadia asked the driver to stop in front of a modern building that had scorch marks at its entrance. I got out of the car, which made a U-turn to take Wadia to his office.