Zone
Page 21
XX
And now, defeat, the heavy boots no longer move forward. Marwan who didn’t run fast enough to avoid the bullets. Martyrs abandoned on a sidewalk corner. Bodies washed in apartment bathrooms. The city falling and, at the end, exile.
Intissar caresses Marwan with her sponge, one last time. She has never felt so close to him as in this final touch. Half-light and solitude, though. The lives that the Israelis have destroyed, Beirut that the Israelis have destroyed. Sometimes weapons turn against you. You always end up washing corpses. Marwan had promised to be by her side forever. He lied. Rubbing his torso, Intissar guesses why he went on a dangerous sortie with Ahmad the coward. He wanted to know. He was eaten away by doubt. He might have died because of her. He wanted to know. Ahmad the hero of their cause desired her. A year ago, when Ahmad had come home victorious from his ambush in the South, and when Marwan had left to go over to Tyre, she had been a little dazzled by Ahmad’s attentions. He courted her discreetly, always waiting on her hand and foot. He was watching over her in Marwan’s absence, he said. Marwan is dead, his body gleams from the reflections of water on his chest. She never betrayed him. Know that, Marwan, I never betrayed you. She couldn’t tell him, it was impossible to talk about. If he had known Marwan would have taken a gun and killed Ahmad. Now he’s the one who’s dead, dead along with his suspicions.
Intissar’s hand shakes, her eyelids quiver, the memory of shame, so powerful, draws tears from her. She tries to remember a prayer for Marwan. Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim, and what else? She sees Ahmad that night. Ahmad the coward who gets her to drink beer on the Corniche, in the early summer, when Beirut is so beautiful. They talk of this and that, the war little by little grows more remote. Marwan little by little grows more remote, why not acknowledge that, with the effect of the alcohol and the calm night. Let’s go get a bite to eat, says Ahmad. He takes her supposedly to find comrades who won’t come. Leaving the restaurant, Intissar is a little drunk. She drinks very rarely. Ahmad accompanies her back to her place, did she sense the trap, did she know unconsciously what was going to happen that’s making her cry from rage today, why, why, do we know what’s hidden inside us, what we’re capable of, Ahmad pressed her against the wall in the entryway to her apartment building, he kissed her for a long time, she was so surprised, so surprised that she let him do it, or maybe it was desire, she was no longer Intissar the determined combatant, she had disappeared, her will destroyed by alcohol and the confidence she had in Ahmad, it was the image of Marwan that woke her, the difference in the sensation of the kiss, the lips less soft, less pleasant, more violent, she shook herself, she shook herself violently pushed away the man in front of her before climbing the stairs four at a time and locking herself up in her apartment, ashamed, ashamed of her desire for Ahmad the coward, her physical desire, impossible to hide, especially from herself in the intimacy of a deserted bedroom.
•
Defeat has beginnings. The fissures presage collapse, fine cracks predict catastrophe. The will begins to give out, hope wavers. Intissar watches her tears falling onto the dead man’s chest. Her desire had soon changed into hatred. She hated Ahmad. When Marwan returned he guessed something. Her hatred was too visible. The silence. She hadn’t said anything, he had promised to be by her side forever. The war, the front, and disaster. Intissar takes Marwan’s stiff hand as if it were alive. Now you know. She strokes the dead fingers. Her sorrow is so great that it covers everything. Marwan spoke to her often about his mother, his mother’s tenderness, her generosity. So pure. So perfect. She who had loved her husband passionately, always near him, she took care of him when he was wounded, fed him when he was hungry. She cuddled her children, embroidered and sewed for them. She tried not to think about Palestine, not to think about going back. Her country was her family, nothing more. Marwan was like Abu Nasser. He would fight to the end, he said. Die standing up. Like a tree. Not let himself be demeaned by the Israelis. Now he was lying there, beneath Intissar’s last caresses, before joining the roots of trees felled by the bombs.
Urgent knocking on her door snaps her out of her funereal daydream. Probably someone alerted by the smoke in the kitchen. She puts the sponge down and tears herself away from Marwan’s body. She picks up the lamp. The neighbors have to be reassured that the building isn’t on fire. There are so many corpses in the city that no one would be surprised to find one here. But flames make them anxious. She opens the door halfway. A violent shove of a shoulder on the door sends her sprawling onto the floor, half unconscious. She glimpsed Ahmad in the opening. She tries to gather her wits, she has tears of pain in her eyes, her nose aches. Ahmad has closed the door behind him.
“I came to bring you this.”
He throws a piece of white cloth in her face, which she doesn’t immediately recognize.
“You left it on purpose, didn’t you?”
The bra she abandoned in a corner of the post. Ahmad is looking at her legs and her underwear beneath the raised nightdress.
“You’re mine now. Marwan isn’t here anymore.”
Everything has its price. Everything has a cost. If only he could get up. God, make Marwan get up, make Ahmad disappear. She feels exhausted, overwhelmed, aching, powerless. She won’t have the strength to fight. She won’t resist. Ahmad’s real face dances in the orange light.