From atop the roof, the wooden boxes were thrown up with the greatest possible force. I threw them. Before he closed his eyes, Nazmi was looking at me, repeating that same question he always did: “Can I throw just one box? Just one? I want to throw one box to the stars.”
“No, you’re not ready for this yet.”
“But I’m older than you. I asked my sister and she said that I’m older than you.”
I didn’t want to risk it though. For fear that his big hands, powerful like his questions, would crush one of them. The most important thing for me was that he keep his eyes closed while I threw them in the air.
“Be careful not to open your eye, even a little crack. If the boxes know that you’re looking at them, they will change course and come back to us. After that we won’t be able to send any other boxes up.”
Then he took my hand and put it over his eyes. His face was large and his bones very prominent. Because of this I preferred not to touch his face. “Squeeze your hand over both my eyes. Or on the eye you think I will open. Throw all the boxes, except one, let me throw one box. Just one box.” But I kept refusing. I always refused. I refused and was afraid. I was afraid that he’d get angry. That I’d get angry. That he’d come down to the building entrance and bash his head against the wall.
The small wooden boxes would sometimes settle on the balcony of one of the building’s apartments after I sent it up. One time, Nazmi and I were listening to the sound of them colliding before opening our eyes and he asked, “What’s that sound?”
“Perhaps it’s the box we threw colliding with a distant star,” I answered.
“But the sound is very close. Does the sound of the stars resemble the sound of the banisters?”
“Exactly, especially if it’s colliding with a small wooden box. That’s because of its shape.”
“Its shape? What’s the shape of a star? Is it like a cube of white cheese?”
“Exactly. Bulgarian cheese with anise. Intensely white. You can see it in my geography book. But stars don’t have sharp corners, all of their edges are curved and smooth.”
“How can you ensure that the box will reach the star that you want it to? What if another one lured it?”
“It’s possible. The sun can lure a box or birds or even clouds. Once I threw a box but some white birds grabbed it at a great height and put a bird who’d died of fatigue during flight inside it. Then they set it free. Afterward, the box smashed into the glass protecting the cockpit of a giant boat somewhere else. That cracked the box. But the crack went from here to there. And also to all the other boxes that I had already prepared. Because of this I realized what had struck that box. I spent the night sealing up the cracks with tape. I wasn’t angry and I didn’t feel too stressed. Sometimes, Nazmi, the box doesn’t reach the star that we want, so we have to keep throwing boxes into space every evening. We have to throw them from the same place, with our eyes shut tight. Every evening.”
Originally written in Arabic.
Rupture
by BACHIR HILAL
Tallet al-Khayyat
I won’t sign this report.
I am George, son of Abbas al-Majrouh the builder, nicknamed “The Boss” for the skill he claims he has in sculpting and building with stone, unmatched by anyone in Beirut, as he used to say and still does, all the more so when he’s been drinking a lot: “I should be awarded a higher degree in engineering. God will never forgive my parents for not sending me to university; their own ignorance and helplessness meant they couldn’t see my potential.”
When I first became a Communist, he took my side and started speaking out against feudalism, the shaykhs, and the bishops. It wasn’t unusual for him to insult Shaykh Pierre, saying he couldn’t understand him because he “speaks like a fish” and needs to learn Arabic. Though my grandfather would get annoyed at that. “Give us a break, Abbas, must you anger the Phalangists and ministers and deputies?”
My mother Philomena was the sixth daughter of Father Tanios—son of Father Sam‘an, son of Father Tanios al-Ha’er—who only had one son, my uncle Elia, who didn’t even finish middle school. All he ever did was go fishing, play cards, drink, memorize local poetry, spend time with the wives of men gone abroad and the new widows who weren’t too old, and help with the liturgy. According to people in the village, he didn’t work, didn’t marry, wasn’t called to the priesthood, and would never die, despite his many accidents in the Italian cars he acquired one after the other. And despite the bullet that hit him in the foot hours after arriving in Beirut’s hotel district at the head of a Phalange Party detachment from the village, causing him to withdraw injured—and half a hero—before he was transferred to office work in the central headquarters.
He learned about my communism two years before the war and didn’t hesitate to tell me, “Someone whose grandfather and grandfather’s grandfather were respected priests in the region—isn’t it crazy for him to be a Communist? Tell me who you spend time with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
He’d memorized this saying in school and repeated it every time he spoke to me: “He who spends time with sinners sins, and he who spends time with the devout is devout. Do you and your father need more misfortune? Had he not married into our family, no one would have acknowledged him in the village or the region, and no one would have given him work. You should leave politics and be successful, not because degrees are important. Look at me, I didn’t study for a higher degree—that would have been a waste of time—and my social and financial positions are good. It was best for me to enter the school of life straight away. As for you, you need to study so we can find you a good government job later on. But you floundered even in choosing a specialty. Really, let me understand . . . what does sociology even mean? If you remain a Communist, you’ll regret it. Your diploma will be worth as much as a pillowcase.”
When the debates raged and he got angry, he often said to me, “You’re still a boy who needs a lot of schooling in politics. Your social position is still that of a cockroach.”
Me . . . a cockroach? That hurt. It reminded me of how small I was and how weak my father’s standing was. I went away upset and sad, not wanting to insult my only maternal uncle. My mother kept saying that he wasn’t reproaching me alone and that he’d only joined the Phalangist forces to protect her and the rest of the family after they were scandalized by me fighting alongside the armed Palestinian and Muslim groups. During the rare moments that she came to West Beirut to see me after the war started, I didn’t ever share with her my suspicion that he’d wounded himself so that he wouldn’t have to fight.
* * *
I was born in 1951, the thirteenth entry in the village register that year. Philomena told me I was born on the way to Mar Yusuf Hospital, after she spent two long, painful nights pushing me out despite my grandmother’s prayers, incense, and the efforts of Zulaykha al-Zalaa, the midwife who’d delivered five sisters and brothers before me. Whenever someone asks her about me, Philomena repeats what she has always said when I’m in earshot, ever since I started disobeying her: that when I was born she’d anticipated my strange destiny that I’d be terrible, mad, or—and she would say I hope before the last word—a leader. And I would always answer her sarcastically that the family made a mistake in accepting the jinxed number thirteen for me in the registry.
* * *
He had chestnut hair. It was long and shaggy before Margot—the thirty-something French wife of Dr. Jalal al-Bahri, a well-known doctor from an important Beiruti family. He was also one of the people responsible for the party’s clandestine organization. Comrade Abu Khalid, its main military leader, reported this to me, asking me to keep it to myself because of the sensitivity of the mission I’d been assigned.
Before this, I had never met Jalal or known him as a comrade. He had two clinics: one in the building which he owned and lived in, in the mostly upscale Tellat al-Khayyat neighborhood, which he opened up to inhabitants of less rich areas, serving the least rich of them;
the second in a building facing the American University for his rich and paying clients, as Abu Khalid whispered to me when we went there two months before I became responsible for he and his wife’s personal security.
“You must repeat only what everyone knows about him—he’s an independent personality close to the national movement who was a candidate in the last parliamentary elections. Just so you know, we asked him to do this. Sunni Beiruti people are conservative and not very interested in politics, especially openly Communist politics. Most of them are businessmen, there are only a few literary and union names.
“Back to the issue I’m concerned with: this is what’s useful from your nun’s school education—you can speak to his wife in her native French to give her peace of mind. She’s started going out less, fearing armed men in the streets and bombings and some of the gangs. She isn’t like Lebanese women. I wish he’d never married her, she’s one of his weak spots. He met her when he was studying in France. His family’s like us, they don’t care for her much, not only because in their view she’s difficult and moody, but also because she hasn’t had any children even though they’ve been together seven years. She also hasn’t learned our language. She’s only mastered a few words from a dictionary of food and drink, as well as greetings and farewells. Comrade: since the war intensified, he’s taken care to accompany her when she meets her friends, to not let her go out alone. He’s had to constantly deal with balancing his duties and meetings and her demands. He fears for her and she fears both for herself and him too. And while she’s generally with the left, she isn’t a Party member—and if she had been in a party, she might have chosen a radical leftist group who’s against us. In truth, I feel she’s searching for a sort of ideological luxury in the left, which the bourgeoisie to which she belongs hasn’t been able to offer her. She made an aggressive critique of the Soviet comrades, saying that their regime is a failure. We have our critique too, but not to the extent that we would say that some of its small failings are reason to reject the collapse of the Socialist camp. Must we sacrifice socialism just for some jeans, rock and roll, and the bourgeois freedom of the individual? I mean, what do you want, the Soviets giving freedom to their class enemies and the Americans? Sometimes I wanted to ask him why the state, as a bourgeois state, authorizes the Party if we’re its enemies. Is it because our opponents give us what we fight them with?”
In order to maintain his trust I don’t answer him, and also because I already know his answer: they were obliged to—if we left them to their own devices the Party would still be illegal.
He continues, “We can’t just introduce Margot to our comrades who have French education and culture, her influence on them could be negative. Comrade Jalal just laughs about this and tells us she can’t be changed, saying, We each have our own opinions and our independence and it’s enough that she accepts me as I am. His idealism sometimes annoys me. She doesn’t know if she is living this war or living in it. She’s started affecting Comrade Jalal’s functioning, causing him to reduce his political commitments. Starting today, I’ll send Abu al-Izz to accompany him wherever he goes—to his clinic and his meetings. You’re responsible for guiding him, but you also must pay attention to the area around his house, the roads and streets leading to it. You’ll be our permanent link, our connection to him. You’ll send and transmit letters and other written messages. I want total precision, you must pass by the center whenever I call you, and you’ll accompany his wife wherever she goes and help her with everything she asks from you. She’s a little bit demanding; she’s from a rich family like the doctor is. I’m sending you because I trust you and because you know French better than the other comrade-fighters.”
* * *
After our introduction, Jalal told me that he’d assigned Abu al-Izz and me an apartment as luxurious as his own on the first floor of his building. Then silence. So Margot turned toward me, ignoring the presence of Abu Khalid, and informed me of a decision that I guess she’d made, that I would have to be inconspicuous to succeed in protecting them. Therefore I’d have to change my clothes and remove all obvious signs of belonging to the Party and my time in the trenches. Then with a nervous smile she turned toward Abu Khalid and said, “I don’t know what you do in this Party, but I maintain my right to choose what I believe is appropriate for my security and my life.”
I was speechless for a while that day, as the juices of anxiety and confusion seeped into my blood. It was the first time since my primary school days that I’d been subjected to restrictions on the way I looked. I’d considered this insignificant and trivial for many years. This was the first time since I’d grown up that I was taking an order not coming from my Party commander but from a woman who associates with people who I hate. Yet as soon as the interview finished and she and Jalal led me to a big apartment, with what I thought was calculated and patronizing kindness, I was unsettled by her raspy voice, which had become friendlier in the absence of Abu Khalid, and by the shape of her body. A flush of embarrassment rose to my face from recalling what we fighters used to repeat to each other—that the best way to break an uppity woman is to approach her sexually like a Soviet steamroller, to collect and disseminate massive force at one point and at one time.
“You have to be the lord of the raid, Abu Sakhr.” That’s what Comrade Abu al-Layl used to say when he came to the apartment to offer us a screening of erotic French films on his Super 8 camera or to meet one of his girlfriends. He was two years older than me, a student at the Faculty of Arts. We were squashed together with Abu al-Izz and other comrades in an apartment we used to call the Serail, in Cola, not far from the party headquarters in Tariq al-Jdeideh.
He would always say, “Let her fade away in your hands, like Yumna, Laure, and Lubna do in mine. Come on, don’t you always hear them roar like wounded lionesses before one of them falls like a ripe apple and then treats me like a god? Oh Abu Sakhr, Newton could have learned from me.”
When he’d say this I wouldn’t tell him that my luck with women had been limited, because I wasn’t handsome or brave. I’d only ever gotten to know women who my comrades didn’t care about and had left to me.
* * *
My grandmother, the priest’s wife—who I preferred to think of as senile and who favored my siblings and cousins over me from the time I was young—never stopped reminding me: “Look at your maternal uncle—tall and blond. He’s like a superior-quality spear. Your shortness is inherited from your father and his father. God’s wisdom created him to be near to the ground so he wouldn’t tire himself from always bending over to lift up stones and carve them. Your mother wasn’t lucky . . . she and her sisters, and there were a lot of them, they had to get married. Your grandfather the priest and I couldn’t put everything we had toward the girls’ dowry and leave your uncle with nothing.”
I recalled Margot’s incipient presence and would repeat to myself every evening: “I won’t be a god for any beautiful woman.” Indeed, if I think the opposite I risk transforming from a brave and faithful Party member whose nerves are calm in battle into an ordinary beggar for passion. Where’s your revolutionary commitment, comrade? I need to stop thinking about her completely: Wife of important comrade + beautiful + Western + rich + misfortune = zero luck.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been attracted to wives or relatives of comrades and friends. I must start a private journey to get control over myself before I show my hand. Hey, Abu Sakhr, what do you think about living in this apartment? The class enemy, even when he’s a comrade, still loves his luxury—and you’re enjoying it. How will you deal with a spacious apartment, decorated with the latest Western furnishings, instead of the trenches? Instead of feeling satisfied with ordinary filth when the shower’s been cut off for days on end? Hey, Abu Sakhr, haven’t you been given this fancy apartment, like some other comrades on the party’s orders, to protect it from being burgled or occupied by other factions and gangs—or because it belongs to rich friends and comrades who left the count
ry fearing for their families, their lives, and their jobs, or because its inhabitants were known enemies?
A fancy apartment belonging to a class enemy and Party comrade: what’s the problem, Abu Sakhr? The Party is powerful. Intellectuals betray their class because they know that this is a historical trend and because they’re good people, honorable people. When the time comes, everything will be in place: doctors, important government employees, and politicians from other parties whose army units we used to infiltrate. The Party is everywhere. Sometimes it’s visible and some of what it does is underground. You’ve loved secrets for a long time. You are primarily a secret to yourself. Don’t worry, you and Abu al-Izz won’t have any trouble finding a cover. In front of your comrades in the Emergency Task Force, you’ll say what Abu Khalid told you to: “The Party protects nationalist personalities to prevent assassinations undertaken by isolationist groups, the no-good Palestinian factions, and the Syrian regime—its commandos and the Baath party.”
Beirut Noir Page 15