“What good are you?” he yelled. “I am stuck with you as a favor to your mother, and you are good for nothing!”
We could not afford for me to take the serviz, a cross between a shuttle and a taxi, so I had to walk there, leaving very early each morning. If I went the long way, I had to get up before sunrise to make it on time. If I went the short way, through certain neighborhoods, the bad kids waited.
2
These were older boys, some teenagers, who did not go to school and hung about on the street corners looking for trouble. They cussed and spit and waited for someone they could harass to come along. I had heard some of them carried big knives, sharp and deadly knives that opened with seven clicks. One stab would put you to sleep.
“What did you bring us today, ya ibn al-sharmouta?” they would taunt, calling me a son of a female dog. I tried to alter my times—to get up before sunrise and still take the shortcut, running to avoid the bullies. Then I would fall asleep at work, and my uncle would beat me.
I remember the day I found my saviors. Summer and fall had passed, and the winter streets were cold and wet from the rain that sweeps from the sea up the mountainsides, only to dapple back down on the city. That morning, I got up very early to make the trip to my uncle’s building. Since the day was cold, I decided on the shortest route. I reasoned that I might escape the gangs by the grace of Allah, but if I was late, a beating from my uncle was certain.
Dressed in a white shirt, hand-me-down black pants, and a black vest I had bought at a secondhand store, I set out that morning with lunch in a paper sack and my father’s good umbrella. He did not usually let me use it, but with the wretched weather, I suspected he judged it better to risk losing it than forfeit my pay. My journey began pleasantly in the misty streets of my own neighborhood. The streets were freshly watered, the air crisp and cold. I headed up Verdan Street past the main police barracks, nodding at shopkeepers as they raised their roll-up metal doors with long hooks and whisked the sidewalks with homemade brooms.
I walked with my head down, zigging and zagging between the rain puddles. This was my quiet time, my safe time, the only time I was able to relax. I used it to try to keep the water from soaking through the lira-sized holes my brothers had worn in the soles of my shoes before passing them down to me.
Soon, though, I passed out of my safe zone onto a wide street, four lanes, two leading in each direction. The buildings were a mix of old and new, mostly houses and apartments with a couple of businesses: Bata, a shoe store, and Coiffure, a fancy hair salon. Also there was a corner bakery that sold a few groceries and was famous for its lamajoun, an Armenian meat dish served on thin, pizza-like dough.
That was the trouble: The Armenians. They were Christians, and almost every time I walked through there, a nasty little band of teenagers stole everything I had. On Monday, they would steal my lunch; Tuesday, the kroosh in my pocket; Wednesday, my shoes. Which is why I was now wearing shoes that had belonged to two brothers before me. If I didn’t take a lunch, so that they could plainly see I had nothing for them to steal, they would make a circle around me and push me back and forth between them, screaming, “What’s the matter, little son of a whore? Doesn’t your whore mother love you enough to make you a lunch? Or did you eat it already? Steal it from our mouths?”
Once, a tall, skinny teenager slashed the palm of my hand with a seven-click knife. I screamed.
That was the time a Maronite Christian lady came running out to rescue me. In her fifties, at least, the woman was standing on the terrace of her home, which looked to me like a mansion with its tall, fluted columns and banisters of stone.
She was slim and elegantly dressed, so I was surprised when she opened her mouth. “Get away from him!” she shouted, peppering the boys with curses. “I will call the police or beat you myself!”
The gang of about five boys laughed at her.
“You will beat us, woman?” said the teenager. “And I will come and visit your house at night!”
But the woman stood her ground until the teenager folded his knife and signaled to the others to walk away. Then the woman hurried down from her porch, through her gate to meet me. She took my bleeding hand in both of hers and examined it for a moment. Then she put one hand under my chin, lifted it, and looked into my eyes. “What’s your name, child?”
“Kamal,” I said through my tears.
“Come with me, Kamal,” she said. And putting her arm around my shoulder, she guided me to her terrace. After a brief trip inside, she came out and sifted a little ground coffee onto the wound. “That will take the sting out,” she said. Then she wrapped my hand with a clean white bandage.
After that day, I always walked on the mansion side of the street, and the Maronite lady was always waiting, watching the Armenian boys with a falcon’s eye until I had passed safely out of sight.
Now, walking down the rain-slick street, I made a straight line to her house. And at almost the same moment, I noticed two things: First, the Armenian boys were standing on the bakery corner, watching my approach. Second, the Maronite lady was absent from her terrace.
3
Quickly, I averted my eyes to the sidewalk squares, walking far to the left side of the wide street, heading east, passing with the boys on my right. My stomach jangled with fear, as though I were passing a tiger’s cage and I knew the zookeeper had left it unlocked. I could feel their stares from across the street. They wanted to lock eyes with me, the signal of challenge, but I did not want to exchange eyes with them. My heartbeat quickened and I walked a little faster, hoping they would not notice.
Suddenly, a shout and the sound of shoes on pavement. “Get him!”
Instantly, I threw my lunch sack into the street like bait to wolves and sprinted down the sidewalk, pumping Father’s good umbrella up and down like a piston.
The thunder of twenty feet pounded the pavement behind me. “Get him! Tackle him!”
Homes and stores flashed past. I tried to look for an open shop door, a refuge. But I knew it could not be an Armenian shop. They would only side with the bullies, who were just steps behind me now. From a cobbler’s shop twenty feet ahead, a young man stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked toward our commotion.
“Farouge!” the boys called to the man. “Grab him!”
An Armenian. My heart sank. I tried to dodge to the right, but this Farouge, a man in his twenties, lunged out and snatched me by the back of my collar, dragging me instantly to a stop.
“What did you do?” he asked. It was an accusation.
The boys ran up and crowded around us.
“Nothing!” I said, panting. “I did not do anything! They just want to beat me up!”
“He is lying, Farouge,” said a tall boy who emerged from the back of the pack. I looked up and saw that he was the same one who had cut my hand before. “He stole my umbrella.”
I swung my head back and forth, eyes pleading with Farouge. But he only shrugged and gave me a small shove toward the others. “Take it easy, boys. Don’t hurt him,” he said, and walked back into his shop.
The tall teen’s arm darted forward, and he yanked me toward him by a handful of my hair. “Don’t ever run from us, you little faggot. We will always catch you!”
Laughter broke out around me. My eyes flickered from face to face, hoping for mercy. But I saw only mean grins. I looked at the Armenian boy who held me. He had strange slanted eyes and pockmarks in his face, like the craters of the moon. The other boys pressed in on me. Two grabbed my arms and I felt hands snaking all over my body, searching my pockets, patting down my socks, looking for money.
“I…I don’t have any money,” I said.
A hand dove down into my underwear, a good hiding place for a wallet, giving me a painful tweak when it found none.
I pleaded, still hoping to appease. “I get paid on the weekend. I can…can bring…bring some then.”
“Can—can. Bring—bring,” the tall teen mocked, mewling in a little-girl voice. The oth
ers laughed. The teen drew back his arm and his fist smashed into my face. My back crashed down on the sidewalk. Speckles of silver light swirled before me and a warm jet of blood spurted from my nose, seeping into my mouth.
“That’s for running away,” the teenager said. I tried to get up, but he took one step forward and, with his square-toed black boot, kicked me in the face. Pain exploded through my mouth and nose, and I screamed. Fresh blood sprayed the sidewalk like a fountain.
Feet surrounded me and taunts showered down. “Your sister is a stinking whore! Your mother sells herself at the chalets!”
Then I heard seven clicks.
A knife blade glinted and the hand holding it belonged to the big teenager. He meant to cut me again, mark me as a trophy. Maybe this time on my face. Pushing through the ring of smaller boys, he stepped toward me.
“What are you doing, you hoodlums!” Through a red haze and a forest of legs, I saw an old man appear on the sidewalk in front of the cobbler shop. “Why do you cause trouble by my shop?”
The teenager dropped his hand down by his leg, hiding the knife from the shopkeeper’s view. I heard a hard whisper from somewhere above my head. “Not this time! He will see you! Next time, if he doesn’t bring money, you can cut him!”
Seven clicks again. My tormentor put the knife away.
Painfully, I stood up, cupping one hand under my nose. Blood oozed through my fingers in huge sticky drops.
“Look at this mess!” the old man fumed. “Who is going to clean it?”
I stumbled down the sidewalk, toward the shopkeeper. He stole a glance past me at the boys and seemed about to reach out to me. But instead, he turned away toward his shop, yelling, “Farouge! Come and see what those hoodlums have done this time!”
4
Tears rolled down my face as I staggered down the sidewalk, blood dripping onto my white shirt. My right eye had puffed to a slit. The metallic taste of blood slicked my tongue and I could feel that my mouth was cut inside. Glancing behind me, I saw the gang of boys skulking back toward the bakery like one animal with many legs. The cobbler was waving his arms at them, berating them, threatening to call the police. I knew he would not. He would not risk having his shop vandalized on account of a Lebanese boy.
Miraculously, I had not lost Father’s umbrella. I put my hand through the wrist strap and took off my black vest. Still walking, still stealing backward glances, I used it to mop the blood and mucus from my face. Soon I had put five blocks between myself and the Armenians, and I began to think the worst might be over. It was full morning now, with a good number of people out walking. I kept my head down, not wanting anyone to see how badly I’d been beaten.
Two more neighborhoods, I thought. Two more, and then I will be at my uncle’s.
At that moment, a pair of boots appeared dead in my path.
“What did they take from you?”
I knew the voice, and it was like a terrible dream. It belonged to a Kurdish boy named Iskendar, the neighborhood’s worst bully, one who loved to shake me down for money. I looked up at his stringy brown hair and slim face. Like the Armenian, he was a teenager, sixteen or seventeen. His skinny lips disappeared into a smirk so that all I saw was teeth.
“I said, what did they take from you?” His tone was that of an old friend stopping for a chat.
“Nothing,” I said.
Iskendar looked me up and down, then craned his neck a bit to see behind me. “What did you do with your lunch?”
I backed up a step. “I threw it away.”
“You’re lying,” Iskendar said. But his tone was warm, as if this was only a joke.
Footsteps fell behind me. Without looking, I could feel a gathering at my back.
“I would like you to give me your umbrella and your vest,” Iskendar said congenially.
With my peripheral vision, I could see that his friends now surrounded me. Still, I tried to bargain.
“You can have my vest. But this is my father’s umbrella and he will hurt me.”
Iskendar let his face melt into a mask of false pity. Then he laughed. “I don’t care!” He snatched the umbrella out of my hand and stuffed it in his back pocket.
Suddenly, a dozen hands descended on me as the Kurds hustled me off the sidewalk into the yellow tile of a stairwell entrance out of sight of the street.
“Please! Don’t!” I yelled, looking wildly around for someone who might see me, might rescue me. No one came.
Iskendar followed us into the stairwell. While the other boys held me, he stood in front of me and slapped me hard across the face. My nose and eyes burst into new pain. I held up my arms to shield my face. The other boys punched me, in the ears, the neck, anywhere they could land a blow. I tried to remain standing; I looked for a way to run, but I was caged in. Some of Iskendar’s gang climbed partway up a flight of stairs behind me, and kicked me through the railing. One boy bent and pulled off my shoes to see if I had hidden money in them.
They beat me until I was lying in a heap. Finally, Iskendar reached down and grabbed the pocket of my bloody shirt, and ripped it downward. “Remember,” he said. “I did that to you.”
I heard laughter, and my body felt the pounding of feet on the concrete. Every spot on my body hurt. Skull, neck, back, chest. Throbbing and stabbing pain everywhere. I looked down the length of my legs and saw that my feet were bare. The bullies had taken my shoes. And my father’s umbrella. For a few minutes, I simply sat and cried.
Anguished confusion tore at me. I could not go back the way I came and risk facing the Kurdish and Armenian boys again. But if I went forward, I might run into the Shia gangs. It had happened before. In the end, I based my choice on simple arithmetic: It would be better to pass through one battlefield than two. Maybe I would get lucky.
Struggling to my feet in the yellow breezeway, I peeked out. The street was empty of people. Hobbling quickly, I stole to the edge of Kurdish turf, cowering close to buildings, my bare feet slapping the wet winter pavement. At each corner, I hunched like a hunted rabbit, my one good eye ticking left and right, looking for the Shia.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
2007
The first time I met Zakariah Anani, I saw a thousand stories in his eyes. I walked into an airport hotel room in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and saw him, his back bent like the branch of a cedar tree. Zak had already joined Walid Shoebat and started speaking out against radical Islam. I had done some speaking on my own, taking leave from my job as IT manager for a large nonprofit. But this would be my first time speaking with both Zak and Walid, and the next day we were booked at the University of Michigan. When I walked into the hotel room, Zak stood to greet me, using the back of a chair to support himself. His eyelids drooped as though heavy with secrets. His skin was rough as though etched with many tears.
I stopped just inside the doorway. “You are Kamal Saleem?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Where are you from?”
“I am originally from Lebanon.”
“Really? Me, too.”
I thought about his family name. “Anani…Anani. Are you not Shia?”
“No!” Zak said, sounding almost offended. He stopped to cough, hacking violently into a cloth. “We are Sunni.”
“But the Ananis live in the Shia area.” In Lebanon, you can know a family’s tribe by where they live.
He lifted his chin, resolute. “Yes, but we were Sunni.”
“Who did you fight with?”
“The Muslim fragments.”
He meant militia. In Lebanon, there were the PLO and Fatah—major groups with hundreds or even thousands of soldiers. But small bands of warriors often sprang up to join the fight. When they got enough people to make a noise, they became recognized as a party or a faction.
For the first time in more than twenty years, I felt the bond of kinship. Here was someone like me, who had come out of the darkness. I crossed the room and embraced Zak like a long-lost brother. We began speaking in Lebanese, my tongue skipp
ing happily over my native language like feet revisiting a beloved country. For so many years, I had altered my manner of speaking, concealing it behind an Arab dialect or speaking mediocre French or snippets of Spanish. Now, I babbled along with Zak, letting my heritage shine.
Zak did not tell me which militia he fought with. I assumed immediately that the militia was Shia and that he was ashamed to say it. For a Sunni to fight on the same side as the Shia is the ultimate shame, and the same is true in reverse. If you are Shia and you fight alongside the Sunni, you are never trusted, never included in the inner circle. If there is a security leak, you are the first to be suspected. If someone is to be sent on a foolishly dangerous mission, you are the first to go.
Zak told me about his first kill.
“The fedayeen knocked on my door,” he said. “‘If you are going to join us,’ they told me, ‘you have to prove yourself.’ They said they had cornered a man on a rooftop nearby, and they wanted me to go and take care of him.”
So, Zak said, he climbed up to the top of a high-rise and threw the man off. Zak was only fourteen years old.
This story rang true with me. The factions were often like American gangs. In order to belong, you had to “make your bones,” as they did in the Mafia movies.
This trading of our histories was the way we verified each other. If I was going to be in league with him, to stand on the same stage and claim a former life in jihad, then I wanted to know who he fought with, what he did. He wanted to know the same thing about me. Each of us would know instantly whether the other was lying.
Zak told me about his daughters, how proud he was that they were excelling in school. He was raising them on his own because his wife left him when he converted to Christianity. He also talked about his medical problems, which included severe diabetes.
The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption Page 5