Zone
Page 4
IV
Intissar raised her right fist. She shouted, cried, angrily wiped away her tears and leaned on her rifle like a cane.
Defeat begins with the feet.
It insinuates itself first into the same boots that were supposed to lead to victory, the ones you’d gotten ready, for years, for the last parade. Defeat begins with the boots that you polished every morning, the ones that grew misshapen, covered with dust, the ones that kept the blood from your toes as well as they could, that crushed insects, protected you from snakes, withstood stones on the path. Physical at first, like a cramp that makes you limp, defeat is a weary surprise, you begin to stumble, in war you totter on fragile feet. Suddenly you feel what you’d never felt before, your feet can no longer run, they refuse to carry you into the attack—suddenly they’re paralyzed, frozen despite the heat, they no longer want to serve the body that owns them. And then the rifle, Intissar’s cold staff, no longer fires straight, instead it gets jammed, begins to rust in the soldier’s imagination; you hesitate to use it from fear of breaking it completely and finding yourself without any support in a world that is starting to sway dangerously because your feet, inside the shiny boots, are beginning to bemoan their weariness and their doubt.
Suddenly your comrades avoid looking at each other, their eyes no longer settle on anything, they sink to the ground, their heads lowered to their weird feet and the mute sensation of defeat that fills their entrails, from the bottom up, from the legs, and then you see many of them dying, sadly, for no reason, whereas they used to die handsome and sleek and gleaming in the sun: now you know, you feel that from here on everything is pointless, if your feet, your legs, your stomach, your rifle yield to the defeat that is seeping in everywhere and is suddenly replacing the rightness of your cause, the songs, the anthems, the sharing of food and caresses, you’ll never be able to cross the mountain, never reach the top of that hill; the wounded are unbearable mirrors and the dead become strangers about whom you wonder, day after day, defeat after defeat, what will become of them—they’re no longer heroes, brothers, just victims, conquered people that history will hide on its bad side in that earth pounded now by the heavy feet of deserters, the boots of abandonment and fear. Everything follows quickly after that: after walking slowly at the front you find yourself walking silently in town, under the betrayed stares of civilians who blame you for their desperate grief, those women in front of their empty houses, those men, who recently, too recently, used to cheer you on, now they all are getting ready to cheer the new conquerors as from the ground they watch the fierce shadows of planes, doing their funereal work and finishing the defeat.
Tonight, Marwan died, boots on his feet, near the airport. He must have smelled the scent of the sea as he died. The heat is unbearable. Apparently Arafat is negotiating. In Hamra, turbulence is at its height. No one understands a thing. The ones who were supposed to be fighting are no longer fighting. The Lebanese left is still defending West Beirut. Marwan is dead. If he had died the day before yesterday, or in May, Intissar would have collapsed. But today she has a ball and chain on her feet, conquered by heat, thirst, and the bombs. The city is suspended in air, no one knows on which side it will fall.
This morning in headquarters there was motionless turmoil. The planes have destroyed a whole group of buildings in Chiah.