The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  “Come on. What’s it like out there?”

  “It was lovely out here until now. I’m going to come home.”

  “I don’t think you should. Give this a couple more days to die down.”

  “No, Ethan. I’m not going to sit on my ass a thousand miles away while they decide whether or not I’m expendable. I don’t intend to be a scapegoat.”

  “Nobody’s going to make a scapegoat out of you, Pierre. You’re too important to the outfit.”

  “I’ll catch a flight back tomorrow. Can I call you? Maybe a late drink?”

  “Yes, of course. But I think it’s a bad idea, coming back.”

  “Just don’t tell anyone I’m coming.”

  Why had he gone back, a third time, to this hole in the wall, the Only Café, this memory hole, this wormhole, to a place that he had consciously, strenuously, sealed off? An instinct told him it was a mistake to go, but the instinct didn’t tell him why. Was it futility, a waste of time, or actually perilous? So he returned.

  Blocked memory is a product of the mind’s resilience, a benefit of a healthy mental immune system. This was what he told himself. But his immune systems were breaking down. Rogue cells in the body. Rogue memories threatening the soul.

  Maybe Ari wouldn’t be there.

  But this time Ari was the first person he saw, leaning on the bar, talking to Tal, the young bartender.

  When he came through the door they both stopped speaking and looked in his direction. Ari nodded and walked toward him.

  They shook hands. “It’s Pierre, yes?”

  “It is. I felt I was a bit abrupt the last time. I think I owe you a drink.”

  Ari’s expression was impossible to read. “Sure, sit,” he said.

  They picked a table near the large window at the front.

  “So?”

  The drinks arrived before Pierre had ordered. Two double Scotches.

  “It’s supposed to be my turn,” Pierre said.

  “There will be another time, I think? You’re a lawyer?”

  “Yes. I work for a mining company. Perhaps you saw our name in the paper? Some controversy about an incident in…Asia?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I sometimes get these nagging feelings that I’ve been somewhere before, somewhere I know I’ve never been, or met somebody before who I couldn’t possibly have met. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Déjà vu.”

  “Yes.”

  Ari chuckled. “So maybe you feel we’ve been here before, in the Only Café, maybe in another life?”

  “Yes,” Pierre said. “Something like that. But not here.”

  Ari’s face was blank. The music seemed louder than usual. The din of lubricated, shouted conversation. Ari shook his head, then raised his hands in supplication.

  “Beirut city stadium,” Pierre said.

  Ari shrugged. Looked with clear annoyance up at a speaker on the wall above Pierre’s head. “Come outside,” he said.

  On the sidewalk they were caught between the diminished inside sounds of music and the rushing street sounds, the distant city cries of sirens. Ari lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke toward the traffic. When he looked back at Pierre his face was serious.

  “You said where?”

  “The city stadium. Beirut.”

  “Really? And when would that have been?”

  “It would have been September ’82.”

  “Not possible.” Ari chuckled. “September ’82, I remember. If you saw me at the stadium in September ’82 neither of us would be standing here now, would we.”

  Pierre smiled. “I hear what you’re saying.”

  “September. A very difficult month in ’82. The Green Line, remember? The stadium was west of the line. Yes?”

  “But on the eighteenth of September…the Green Line was gone.”

  “Ah. September eighteenth. Yes. I remember that date. A very sad day. Impossible to forget.”

  “So you were at the stadium that day.”

  Ari frowned. “Oh no, no, no. I couldn’t have been at the stadium. I was at home. I had been in East Beirut. I was called home on the sixteenth. My mother. I remember the eighteenth because it was the day we buried her.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry,” Pierre said.

  “It was twenty-five years ago,” Ari said. “But days like that you don’t forget.”

  “Yes,” Pierre said, disoriented. “I met your namesake there.”

  Ari frowned. “My namesake?”

  “Ariel Sharon.”

  “Aha. Arik, the minister of defense himself. I heard that he’d been there. How interesting. So you were there in West Beirut that week? And you were at the stadium on the eighteenth?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was your involvement at the stadium?”

  Pierre paused. “It doesn’t matter if you weren’t there.”

  “True. It doesn’t matter. Let’s finish our drinks. We can talk about something else. The years have been good to you. You have good health, obviously.”

  Pierre shrugged. “Outward appearances can be deceptive.” He waved, caught Tal’s eye. Held up two fingers.

  When he rose to leave Ari stood and embraced him. “I admire your outlook,” he said. “There is nothing we can’t overcome, going forward, with the proper outlook. Even cancer. Not such a big deal anymore, cancer. Yes? But looking backward? Regret, remorse, guilt? Such a waste of time. There is nothing we can change.”

  He could never forget the date. September 18, 1982. In so many ways it was the day he died, or perhaps, like an insect, metamorphosed from one life into another. September 18. Shatila camp. Beirut. A charnel house. And in a quiet place, in the midst of the devastated camp, the beautiful young woman prostrate, as if asleep, laundry basket on its side, children’s clothing scattered, soaking up her blood. Images now back in the forefront of his memory because of a video recorded a quarter of a century later in New Guinea, Indonesia.

  The day came back to him with clarity and he now struggled to recall particular details of the less important moments. Two men talking quietly over coffee at a small table in a darkened room somewhere in the bowels of Beirut stadium. Who was the Israeli having coffee with Pierre’s commander, the Phalangist, Elie Hobeika? He had a mental image: shaved head; five-day stubble; surprising corpulence for a soldier in a special unit. An officer, in all likelihood, although he could clearly remember thinking that the uniform lacked certain insignia that might have identified the Israeli rank. What was the name of the unit?

  Hobeika might even have said the soldier’s name, which would explain Pierre’s lingering impression that the soldier had been an officer. But the name, the soldier and the unit, had swiftly fled his mind because of what Hobeika said next.

  “Those two over there,” he said to Pierre. “Take them away. Take them back. We’re finished with them.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Such questions.” Hobeika laughed. The Israeli laughed. The men were hooded, hands tied. They seemed young. They were gasping.

  “What will I do with them?”

  “You know exactly what to do. Why must you ask such questions? Elias will go with you.”

  It would be the last time Pierre ever questioned Elie Hobeika. It was the last time he ever saw him. But it would not be the last time he thought of him, or heard of him, or thought he saw him, or turned away from strangers who resembled him.

  The sun broke through a sudden gash in the cloud, reminding him that it was noon already. He craved a drink but knew it was the last thing that he needed.

  How rare it is that we recognize an unexpected moment as the beginning of an ending. We are almost always taken by surprise by events that, in retrospect, could so easily have been avoided. A moment on September 18, 1982, was such an ending. An instant nearly six years before September 1982 was such a turning point. An unplanned, unforeseen occurrence that transformed everything, set the course for everything that followed.r />
  Remember this, he thought. Do not forget again.

  7. January 8, 1976

  It was two days past the Epiphany. The beginning of the annual family excursion to Damour for the reunion of his mother’s clan. It would be of an indefinite duration this year because of the unsettled situation in Saida. Who could have known on that quiet morning, January 8, 1976, that shots fired on local fishermen on a noisy day a year earlier would start a war that would last more than a quarter century? Who could have predicted that this thriving, ancient city would become a slaughterhouse?

  Brittle winter sunshine. The little yellow car was piled high inside and out with boxes of belongings, heavy carpets tightly rolled and strapped to the roof rack. Mother amid the baggage in the back seat. Miriam, her baby and her husband in the front. He and his father were staying back, afraid to leave their home unoccupied. And there was work to be done at the harbour, fishing gear and boat in need of repairs for having missed most of the autumn fishing because of the political unrest, the rising throb of violence all around.

  Freezing drizzle fell that evening as he and his father made their way home from the shore. He can’t remember conversation, perhaps because there was none. His father was a quiet man, taciturn and unafraid. They took no particular notice of the Fatah gunmen. For weeks they’d been venturing out of squalid Ain el-Hilweh. Wolf packs on the prowl, flexing their authority. But his father saw no need for caution. He belonged here. These men with guns were aliens.

  They approached quietly. He remembers that there were seven, weapons casually slung.

  They stop, the barrels of the weapons slightly raised. The leader beckons. He is young. Come. Papers. Pierre’s father is sullen as he removes an ID card from his pocket, hands it over.

  A boy a little older than Pierre now stands before him, a hostile barrier that separates him from his father. The boy is perhaps seventeen. His voice is raw. Fuck your sister. Kess ikhtak!

  Pierre understands instinctively the need for silence. He has grown accustomed to existential peril since this pestilence began, the expanding menace from the south. Ain el-Hilweh. Mieh Mieh. He has heard his father speak of the peace and the civility before the Palestinians arrived, this flood of garbage, flushed into Jordan by the Jews, and now into Lebanon, fugitives from King Hussein. Fuck your sister and your mother, the boy repeats, waving the barrel of the AK-47.

  The leader speaks sharply to the boy. Ekhra! Shut your mouth.

  Pierre suddenly feels more secure, even though he can hear the rising indignation in the conversation between his father and the leader. And the angry voices of the others adding to the tension. His father shouts back at his accusers, accusing them. Pierre feels panic but senses there is still an element of reason that will turn down the flame before this pot boils over. The leader: he is slim with dark hair clipped short; he has the drawn, bewhiskered look of poverty, but also a certain commanding dignity.

  Pierre stares at the boy in front of him. There is something unusual in his face. And then he realizes: one eye is seriously out of sync with the other. One eye looking left, the other right and slightly tilted toward the sky. He is suddenly less menacing. Pierre feels a sudden, crazy impulse to mock him. Eban sharmouta. Ahwal. Cross-eyed motherfucker. I wouldn’t touch your sister if she looks like you, fucked-face.

  He feels better, redeemed by his own aggression, if only in his imagination.

  The boy in front of him is sneering, as if he reads Pierre’s mind. Piece of shit. Afraid to say it. I will show you.

  He cranks the weapon. Clack-clack.

  Stay with him, the leader says to the boy. One of the others shoves Pierre’s father roughly and they walk away, propelling Pierre’s father before them until they are gone from view.

  The wall-eyed boy now looks uncertain. He looks behind him to see where his companions have gone. Then he turns back to Pierre. Run, he whispers.

  Pierre hesitates, straining to see where they have taken his father.

  Fucking run, the boy says, now angry. Pierre backs away, hands raised. The boy raises the assault rifle. Pierre turns and runs on legs that are perilously unsteady, knees of jelly nearly buckling beneath him. Behind him, a sudden burst of gunfire. He stumbles, then recovers and sprints around a corner just as a second burst of gunfire sends a spray of concrete fragments into the side of his face and down the right side of his body.

  Down a darkened alleyway, he sees a cellar door ajar. He shoulders through, down a stone stairway into darkness. He slips, falls backward, and reaches instinctively to break the fall, but his hand is now plunged into what he knows is human shit. Overpowering stink. He realizes he is not alone. A child whimpers. A baby starts to wail. Two women in the darkness, children huddled round them. He flees back up the stairs, furiously wiping his contaminated hand on his pant leg, too terrified for nausea.

  The streets are silent. There is a rising wind and the icy drizzle stings. He stoops, scrubs the befouled hand in a puddle. Fights an impulse to go looking for his father. In his heart he already knows the futility.

  He makes his way in the darkness back through the port, through passages and byways familiar to the fishermen, until he finds his father’s boat among the others on the beach, upside down. He crawls under.

  In the cabin of the Miriam he filled a glass with water. He opened a can of sardines. In the cooler there was bread and cheese and beer. The phone had been silent for what felt like hours. This was what security should feel like. Yes, he told himself. I feel safe here.

  Perhaps Kennedy was right: give it a few more days. He thought of his son and had a sudden overwhelming urge to call him. But he had no idea how to start the conversation.

  His diary was on the table beside the cellphone. He opened it. There were two hundred pages left in his 2007 journal, one hundred and ninety-one days, nine blank pages for significant addresses, notes. He would use them all. A letter to a stranger. Cyril Bashir Cormier.

  He wrote: I would rather be remembered as an interesting father than a good one.

  He set the pen down, rubbed his face. Picked the pen up, bent the journal back until it cracked, then set it down, now flat. Wrote: Maybe we will talk. Yes? Would you even want that? Someday, perhaps, if there is time. If so, remember this. And tell me that I’m wrong, that it wasn’t enough for me to have been an interesting parent and a bad one. I am open to persuasion. But you will have to tell me first—what are the qualities of a father who can accurately be described as “good.” That is the deal. Because if I can believe that it might have been possible to have been a good father then it might be possible to believe that anyone, father, mother, sibling, stranger can be considered “good” in any role. At this moment, I have doubts.

  Then he wrote: To understand your father, you must know and understand another man. His story is, in many ways, my story. I cannot tell you with any confidence even who he is. Is he a “good” man or a “bad” man? I do not know. He lives in a world of unreality. He is close to who and what I was. He goes by “Ari.”

  8.

  Cyril could only think of one phrase to describe what he was seeing on the screen. Freaking out. The women, terrified and terrifying, were freaking out. The sound was a high-pitched warble punctuated by screams.

  They all looked the same. Head scarves covered their hair and foreheads, and black shapeless robes made them all seem bulky and uniformly old. There were soldiers but he could only see their backs. They seemed to be restraining the hysterical women, but he could barely hear their shouts because of the screams and that godawful warbling. Then a bare-headed soldier who looked American or European appeared in front of the camera waving some kind of pistol and he was shouting in unequivocal English: Get out of here or I’ll shoot the lot of you. Then he raised the gun and fired a shot in the air. Crack. The women howled. And then they started dancing, faces drenched in sorrow, dancing and chanting, hysteria barely in control. The soldier fired off three more shots. Crack, crack, crack. They ignored him, his gun, the c
amera and crew. And they danced as the scene dissolved.

  The picture went black for a moment, then came up on what appeared to be a heap of garbage mixed in with clothing and shoes. The camera zoomed slowly and he realized he was looking at dead bodies. There might have been five or six. There might have been a dozen. Some seemed huge, black and bloated bursting out of clothing. Some were only little piles of rags. Up close flies were swarming on the empty faces. There was narration but he didn’t recognize the language. Then a voice behind him said, “Norwegian,” startling him. Hughes was standing behind him, hands in pockets, jingling his change. He removed his headset.

  “How could you tell?”

  “I know that piece. You know what that hollering is?”

  “No,” said Cyril. “There’s an English transcript but I haven’t read it yet.”

  “Those women…Palestinians. They were ululating. It’s how they grieve. You hear it in Africa too.” Hughes turned to leave.

  “What was it about?”

  “A massacre. The women had a lot to scream about.”

  “You know this place?”

  “Lebanon?” He chuckled. “I grew up there.”

  “But you don’t look or sound…”

  “Because I’m not.”

  “So what happened here?”

  “It would take me all day to explain. When did you say your father left Lebanon?”

  “1983, I think.”

  “I’m sure he knew all about it.”

  “You grew up in Lebanon but you’re…?”

  “Irish, I suppose, if I’m anything. I’m not much for ethnic labelling.”

  He turned. Just outside Cyril’s cubicle, he stopped. “Tell me sometime, if you want to—why would anybody name a kid Bashir?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t spend too much time with that stuff.”

  The images stayed with him, and the sounds. Riding the subway north he noticed silent women wearing head scarves in the car and he couldn’t suppress a feeling of anxiety. The unavoidable linkage between the images and sounds of the wailing, dancing women and the heaps of silent human refuse, no longer recognizable as individuals and all the more appalling because of that. The animated grief of the women, who were being restrained so roughly by the frightened soldiers, contrasting with the quiet squalor of the dead. The still reality of these women, sitting in this subway car in the middle of Toronto, staring into nothingness, faces partially concealed. He looked away, turned his mind back to his own life.