by Rawi Hage
Joseph held the remaining kid by his T-shirt and swung him like bag of flour. He dragged him to the pavement and pounded him with his feet. Ya kalb (dog), who the fuck are you to stop us? he shouted.
The little kid started to cry, and hid his face in his skinny arms.
I am taking you to the cell to rot, ya kalb.
I walked to an empty building, tossed the hand grenade through a window, and plunged to the ground. It exploded and echoed through the whole world. Then I pulled Joseph away from the kid. The kid’s little head was bleeding, and his nose was smashed. He lowered his eyes, swept the blood away with the back of his hand, and sobbed like the kid that he was.
Where are you from? I asked.
We live here in Al-Aswaq.
Why did you want to open the van? I asked.
We were looking for something to take, he said and spat blood.
To take where?
Something to sell, he said. We did not know that you are militiamen.
Where did you get your weapons?
We took them from a dead Syrian soldier.
How old are you? I demanded.
Fourteen.
What’s your name?
Hassan, he said.
Fucking Muslims in our district, Joseph shouted and pulled out his gun. Let me finish this dirt!
I held Joseph’s arm and pushed him into the van.
When I looked back I saw the kid escaping, limping through the bombed city’s walls.
Back in the van, Joseph laughed and called me Majnun.
We are going to call you Al-Majnun, he said. You could have killed us all with that Russian grenade. It is the worst kind you can choose to open, because it is the most unpredictable; it might take a second or it might take three minutes to explode, and both ways we would have been finished. Majnun. He started to laugh louder . . . Majnun.
WHEN WE ARRIVED at our drop-off, Ali and his boys were waiting for us. While the boys emptied the van, Ali walked toward me and offered me a cigarette.
How are things on the other side? I asked.
Once it was all one side, but now we call it the other side, Ali said and shook his head. Have you ever been to the other side? he asked me.
Long time ago, when I was young. I have a relative on the other side.
Oh yes?
Yes, a communist uncle.
What is his name?
Naeem Al-Abyad.
I know your uncle, said Ali, surprised. We fought together. He is a high commander in the communist party now. Do you two ever communicate?
No, not for a long time.
I saw Joseph approaching us. I winked to Ali, and we changed subjects.
When the boys finished moving the whisky, I told Joseph that I needed to take a piss. I walked behind a wall and called to Ali.
Can you find a way to tell my uncle that my mother is dead? I asked him.
Allah yirhamha (may she rest in peace), he said and lowered his head. I will get in touch with your uncle.
10
I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF KNOCKING IN THE MIDDLE OF the night. When I opened my apartment door, I saw Monsieur Laurent standing in the hallway with a candle in his hands. I invited him in.
I am looking for George, he said.
Did you check his house?
Yes, and he is not there.
Maybe he is on duty, I suggested.
Where? It is urgent.
Check the sakanah (army barricade). Or maybe he went on a mission. He mentioned something about it last week at his party.
We need another fix for Bébé. She is shivering.
I cannot help you, Monsieur Laurent.
It is urgent.
Why don’t you take her to a rehab place?
Yes, I am waiting for a vacancy at the clinic in France . . . A blood change. They do blood changes.
Monsieur Laurent, why do you do this?
Why do I give Bébé everything?
Why do you let her do anything she wants?
Can I have a cigarette?
Yes. Do you want some coffee?
No. But let me answer your question. You see, once, we Lebanese ruled Africa. We were the middlemen. We extracted commissions left and right. We built that place. When I left my native village and took a boat to meet my French uncle in Africa, neither you nor Bébé were even born yet. And all I wanted was to save money, work with my uncle for a while, and come back to the village, to that hill, and build a house and get married to a decent local girl.
But the community got rich. We worked in slums and jungles selling textiles. We became the middlemen for the French, and the Portuguese, and whoever else came. We brought cars and electric fridges to the place, we bribed the policemen, the mayors, the army generals, and we all lived in penthouses. Do you know that all the Lebanese in Africa lived in penthouses?
We threw parties in our private clubs. As a young man I worked hard and learned how to buy and sell. I travelled with suitcases filled with bills that smelled of African soil and humid mattresses. We swallowed stones in African bathrooms and walked into Swiss hotels and defecated diamonds. We had mulatto women under our feet, dancing on our tables to Arabic songs that made us decadent and nostalgic. You see, the Lebanese ruled these places without guns, without an army, without slaves.
But then the time passed. And that little hill where I left a virgin bride kneeling in a church pew until her thighs wrinkled and her knees turned to soap — all those years, that little hill stayed on my mind. You see, I, too, lost and gained, and took private planes, and bet on blackjack tables until the gamblers’ nails tore the green table’s lawn . . . We worked those corrupt generals, we had them in the palms of our hands.
We sucked the locals’ wealth, and offered their daughters as gifts. You see, no one liked us, but they all needed us. And then it happened, that day when the poor walked barefoot into the city, with guns and machetes in their hands, and chased us out of our penthouses. They stumbled over our long chairs, defecated in our mosaic pools, snapped our argilahs (pipes) in half, camped in our marbled saloons with large windows that looked over their primitive villages, their shanty towns that we never noticed, their running sewage that we never smelled, their chocolate-skinned sisters whose bellies we used as pillows, whose pale palms we used as towels for our Semitic semen, for our sweating foreheads behind circled walls and guardian dogs.
So I escaped, leaving behind my resorts that once shone with Europeans’ and Afrikaners’ red-burned skins. I left the cars, the soap factory, my mixed-race, illegitimate descendants. I ran and came back here, looking for that virgin, looking for that childhood hill.
I am an old man now, so forgive my sentimentality. When I met Bébé she was alone. I met Bébé on the top of a hill, and I took it as a good omen. I bought her everything she needed, everything she asked for. Why? you ask. I am afraid I have nothing else to offer her, and now she is a home, a daughter, and a wife. Forgive my tears, but I am afraid that she might ask me if we can leave this place. And all I am trying to do is to spend my last days close to that hill.
Now, could you seek George for me? S’il vous plait.
THE NEXT DAY, I walked through the neighbourhood. I entered a grocery store.
We have fresh green almonds, the grocer, Julia, said to me. Good for a kass! Do you want a kilo?
No, I’m not drinking much these days.
Do you have any empty bottles to return? I will send my daughter Souad to get them.
I am not sure. I will look in my mother’s kitchen.
Allah yirhamha, your mother was a lady. May God cut their hands . . .
I bought some bread and labnah, thanked Julia, and left.
On the way back, I came across a jeep driving the wrong way. It was packed with young militiamen in green suits, and with bands wrapped around their foreheads, who pointed their rifles toward balconies and the French abat-jours. The jeep pulled up next to me, and George got out of it. He looked tired and dirty.
We just got
back, Bassam, he said. Ten days without a shower. We ate canned food, and my boots are cutting the back of my ankle. Akram Seiff, you know him? We call him Alnasek, the brother of Jean Seiff.
Yes, he lives above Antoun’s Laundromat, I said.
He got hit under the arm, and he bled to death. There are fucking black Somalis fighting with those Palestinians. Did you know that? The whole ‘ummah is here fighting us.
We walked toward my house. George’s boots were rimmed with brown soil, and his beard had grown in with straight black hair. He lifted his Kalashnikov and manoeuvred with difficulty through the cars that jammed our narrow streets; he was like an American soldier with his arms above his head, advancing slowly and half-immersed through the swamps of Vietnam. On the way, we stopped at the grocer’s and picked up few green bottles of Heineken. We took the stairs up to my apartment, because in Beirut, that crowded city, the electricity came and went as it pleased. Hardly anyone used the elevators any more, and those who did risked getting stuck and spending hours in small mechanical boxes that hung from metal ropes as old and decayed as the last French soldier who left this place.
George dumped his gear and rifle on the chair in my living room. He took off his boots and lay down on the sofa.
Where did Al-Nasik die, I asked?
In Kfar Al-Wali.
How?
Open the beer and sit down. It is a long story. Are you going somewhere?
No, not yet, I replied. I opened two bottles of beer and extended one toward his chest.
No work at the port today?
Yes, but there is still some time before I go. Speak, I said, I am listening.
George took a long first sip and stretched out on the seat. He said: Warm beer. He paused, and then he talked without stopping, and I did not interrupt him.
Around four in the morning I heard some shots coming from the next village, George began. I woke up, and woke the platoon. It was freezing, with that morning mountain cold. We arrived at the village around four-thirty, maybe five. Hanfoun, the commander, was on leave. I was second in command. I split the platoon; I sent Joseph (your partner, he added, with a wink) and Alakhtabout to hold a position up the hill. We parked the jeeps at a distance, turned off the headlights, and went on foot. We moved toward the village main street. I asked Abou-Haddid to come with me, and we ran ahead of the platoon. When the day started to break, we could see more clearly. I saw a few women and kids exiting from the back of an unfinished concrete building. They were rushing down toward the valley. They carried plastic bags and wool blankets. We ran toward them. I asked them where they were going. The eldest among them, a woman with a black headscarf, told us, We are going down. Where down? I asked, snatching one of her bags, throwing it on the ground, and prodding it with my boots. They were all trembling with fear. One of the kids started to cry quietly.
I asked the woman, Where are the men?
She was silent for a moment. Then she said that she and her companions did not live here, that they were refugees looking for a place to stay but had been kicked out of the building this morning.
Who is in the building? Who kicked you out?
Men.
What men? I asked .
She fell silent again.
How many?
Two, she mumbled.
I said, Go walk, and don’t say a word or look behind you. If one of you gives a sign, I will aim at the kids first.
The women grabbed the children and rushed down into the valley, slipping and falling down the hills. All the women were in black for mourning, so I figured they must have been all related. I asked Abou-Haddid to go back and give a sign to the rest of our guys to advance.
As soon as Abou-Haddid walked back, pressing himself against the edge of a stone wall, bullets showered on him from the top of the building. He dug into an irrigation canal that crept all around the village. The water must have been freezing. When they heard the shots, the rest of the guys rushed toward us and started to fire back at the building. I was left alone under the building, you see? I was thinking: I’ll take the stairs, and engage the two men upstairs, and finish them off. But I had no sign from Abou-Haddid. I was waiting for the firing to cease so I could cross and see if he was still alive. But I tell you, this Christian man is like a frog. He slid into the water and disappeared. The whole thing was a set-up. You see, while the two men in the building got our attention, an enemy jeep was advancing from behind the platoon. A classic ambush, right? The two men in the building were planted to distract us. The only thing that saved us was that Joseph and Alakhtabout were rushing down from the hill and saw the jeep coming behind us. They engaged the men in the jeep and it was enough to warn the others. I knew something was not right when I heard fire from a different direction. I sensed it was an ambush.
Meanwhile, Abou-Haddid crawled in the canal and, like a wet rat, showed up on the other side of the building. He was shivering with cold. He took off his shirt and I gave him my jacket. Then we decided to go up to the building and finish the two men, and then go back and join the platoon. I went up first, in case Abou-Haddid’s machine gun was too soaked to fire. But, you know, the Kalashnikov is rugged; water or dust does not affect it. Fuck the M-16. It feels like a toy. An AK-47 is still the best, I tell you. That is why I switched rifles myself. Even Israelis wanted us to trade AK-47s with them.
It was hard to locate exactly where the firing was coming from because every shot echoed through the empty concrete. But we knew there were only two men, right? So AbouHaddid and I waited. Then, when the fire intensified, we rushed up the stairs so they couldn’t hear us coming. When we got to the third floor, I heard one of the shooters changing his magazines. I opened a rummanah (a hand grenade) and threw it inside the room, and we both dug down behind the wall. The fucking explosion was so loud it made our ears whistle for days. They still do now, and sometimes I still get a strong headache and ringing in my ear. The building was under construction, so the dust blew and wouldn’t settle. Not only were we deaf, we were blind: We were lost in a thick cloud of dust, and dust filled our breathing. We became deaf, blind, and breathed with difficulty. Still, we had to get up and comb the room to make sure there were no survivors. AbouHaddid started to shoot in the direction of the room. I started to shoot as well, but there was nothing. Abou-Haddid said he saw a shadow, but it must have been the effect of his wet, cold testicles that made him see things.
As George said this, he laughed, and I laughed too. Then he continued.
The two men were already on the floor. After we combed the room with shots, I could hear that one of them was still almost breathing. I looked at his face and I saw a Somali or African of some kind, right? I stuck him with my bayonet and finished him right away. They are coming from all over the world to fight us, Bassam, here in our land. Palestinians, Somalis, and Syrians — everyone has a claim on this land, right?
Abou-Haddid and I rushed back to join the platoon. By that time, Elnasek, who was positioned in the back and closer to the jeeps, was already hit under his arm. I tell you, this guy was wounded and still he held off the enemy for about fifteen minutes. We covered for Zaghlloul, who rushed and pulled Elnasek back. We tried to get to the jeeps, but the enemy forces held the road. Elnasek was still bleeding. I think he could have been saved if we had got him to a hospital on time, but the other side held us for a few hours before we had some reinforcement. Only then could we engage them and make them retreat. So Elnasek bled to death. Before he lost consciousness, he held the zakhirah and an icon of Saint Elias that he always had wrapped round his arm with a rubber band. We detached the icon and gave it to him, and he kissed it and started to pray. Then a few minutes later he went unconscious, and he died in Zaghlloul’s arms. He was a pious man.
Here George paused. Then he asked, Is the water running?
You can go check. By the way, Nabila is asking for you, I said.
Yeah?
And Monsieur Laurent is asking for you as well.
I know what the o
ld man wants; he did not pay for Nicole’s last fix yet.
What the fuck are you doing, George, hooking that girl?
That impotent is loaded. He has African diamonds up his ass, George said.
He went to the bathroom, poured water in a bucket, washed his hands, splashed water on his face, and then he took off his socks, examined the blisters around his ankles, and poured the rest of the water on his feet. He borrowed some of my clothes and lay down on my sofa.
George and I ate together that day. I smoked a cigarette to help me digest the food I ate with him.
After the meal, I left the fighter asleep and drove his motorcycle to the port. I worked all night. At the dock, the sea breeze splashed against my sweat. I drove the loading machine in the salty wind, lifted its arm, and stocked merchandise inside warehouses.
In the morning, at the end of the shift, I walked to the office of Abou-Tariq, the foreman. Each morning, a few men gathered in front of Abou-Tariq’s container. His container was transformed into an office, and we all sat on plastic chairs and empty ammunition boxes in front of it, sipping coffee and talking. Abou-Tariq was an old combatant who had fought in the battle of Tal-Alzatar, and who prided himself on knowing the high commander, Al-Rayess, personally. He played with his moustache and informed us that a large ship was arriving next week.
We need more men to unload, Abou-Tariq said. He suggested that the security men should go to Dawra and pick up Egyptian or Ceylonese workers to help with the unloading.
Chahine, a young security man with a thin face and a dark complexion, chain-smoked with an air of boredom. Now he stood up, lit yet another cigarette, and said in a low, quiet voice, These poor workers stand in the sun all day waiting for an employer to hire them for construction work and other manual jobs. But now, when they see our militia jeeps coming their way, they start running. They do not want to work for free. Sometimes the forces even forget to feed them. The last time we needed workers, I had to run after an Egyptian from Dawra to Burj Hammoud. I tell you, this guy had plastic slippers, but he ran like a gazelle. Finally, I was out of breath, so I stopped, took my gun, and started to shoot in the air. He thought I was shooting at him, so he stopped. I dragged him to the jeep and we drove up to the mountains. We needed men to fill sandbags for a new military position we held. It was April, and was warm down here in the coast, but when we got high up into the mountains it was cold, especially at night. These workers were in short sleeves and without shoes or jackets. They huddled next to one another in the back of the jeep. We made them fill sandbags, then in the evening the temperature dropped even more. In the morning, we found one of them frozen to death. His friends were all crying. One of them was in tears next to his friend’s dead body. Chakir Ltaif, nicknamed Beretta, approached the fellow and asked him for a cigarette. The man stopped crying, and he looked Beretta in the eyes, and said, Danta, ya beh, mush ayiz iddik cravata harir kaman? (Your highness, do you want me to offer you a silk tie as well)? I tell you, since that day, I refuse to force these people, or run after them or capture them. They have a ruh (spirit) as well. I will not do it, khalas.