by Rawi Hage
Then why are they bringing trucks full of sand and sandbags? asked Pavlov. They are clearly planning fortifications.
A silence ensued, and everyone except little Rima fixed their eyes on the table.
At last his sister, in a low voice, continued. In any case, we won’t be here for long. We’ve decided to leave the country. I’ve been meaning to let you know but never got around to it, with all the work and the kid…We have our visas and are just waiting for Joseph to fix the car and sell it, and then we will be gone. It’s for our girl, for our Rima.
Pavlov smiled a brief ambiguous smile and gave a long nod as he reached for a piece of bread. He broke it but didn’t eat it.
Joseph’s brother and his family are already in Sweden, Nathalie said. There is a large Syriac community in Stockholm now. His brother has a good business and he asked us to come. He sponsored us. It’s better for the future.
And the house? Pavlov asked.
Oh, we will be back one day, when the war is over.
His little niece approached Pavlov with her book, and he lifted her onto his knee. He opened it and she pointed to a page, and he read to her.
* * *
The next morning a large explosion was heard, followed by gunshots, the movement of military trucks, and shouting. Suddenly bombs started to rain down.
Pavlov’s sister rushed to her daughter’s room, wailing. Joseph ran out of the house, bewildered, looking for an explanation. He crossed the road in his thick cotton pyjamas, running barefoot towards the gate, and waved to a car with four militiamen inside, their rifles sticking out of the windows.
Pavlov stood just outside the front door, trying to determine where the shots had come from. His sister stood behind him in an opaque wool nightgown, her child weeping in her arms.
Joseph charged back to the house. He seemed angry—not fearful but angry—and paced back and forth between inside and outside. Finally he said, There is an attack on the village.
Pavlov’s sister clutched Rima in panic, and her daughter quickly became drenched in tears. Joseph took Rima and ran outside once more. Nathalie followed, taking the old stone stairs that led through the garden and down into a cave beneath the house. Pavlov stayed above for a while, listening to the proximity of the shots, watching as the valleys produced little mushrooms of smoke that seemed to burst from the earth itself. Then a bomb landed very close by and he heard his sister screaming to him, begging him to join them in the basement. He grabbed a quilt and bottles of water, opened the fridge and gathered some food, scooped up his niece’s doll and books, and went underground with the rest of the family.
All day and night, into the next morning, mortars and guns exchanged fire. Pavlov and the family were stranded, ignorant of what was taking place in the village above. When Joseph attempted to leave the basement, Pavlov’s sister stood at the door begging him to stay and wait for a ceasefire. After a while Rima began calling for their dog, Barbus, who was missing. The butcher pushed past Nathalie and went outside, and came back with more food and two weapons, a hunting rifle and a handgun. He reported that the dog was nowhere to be seen. He stood just outside the door to the cave, and Pavlov joined him. They looked out at the valley, searching for clues about what was happening. Bullets and small artillery landed close by, but Pavlov and Joseph remained where they were, feeling protected behind a pillar and beside a large oak tree that partially covered the entrance. The back-and-forth movement of trucks and tanks could be heard, climbing the road.
The militia is on the move, Joseph said. Uphill. Towards the monastery.
They felt the vibrations of tanks and watched as these vehicles passed beside the house, raising dust and bending the branches that overhanged the narrow village roads. Joseph propped his hunting rifle against the wall of the cave and ran to meet the tanks. Pavlov followed, and they both ducked into the yard and stopped by the gate, waving and shouting at the jeep behind the tank. What’s going on? they shouted, but the soldiers were distracted and didn’t reply. At last one of them answered, but Pavlov and his brother-in-law couldn’t hear because the tank was so loud as it passed along the small curved road. They both stood stupefied, staring at the tracks the big machine had imprinted in the asphalt.
We should leave, Pavlov said, but as the words left his lips more bombs started to fall, and he and Joseph fled back towards the cave, retreating like miserable hunched foxes at the coming of a storm.
For three more days, they were trapped in the basement. His sister prayed and wept, and Rima clung to her mother, falling asleep occasionally. At other times she would wake and sense the tension and fear in her mother’s body, and she would cry and call the dog’s name again and again. The few trips Pavlov managed to make up to the house to fetch food almost got him killed. The fighting was closer now, and he had to crawl on his hands and knees into the kitchen.
In his preoccupation with collecting food, Pavlov had forgotten to grab the radio, so at last, after nightfall, he crawled back up the stairs and re-entered the house. It was pitch-black, but to strike a match or press an electric switch would bring a hail of bullets and bombs. He crawled along the floor, feeling for walls and the edges of furniture, his hand reaching beneath tables and counters. Finally he stumbled upon wires and, following them, he located the fridge, stove and even a blow-dryer. Broken glass lay everywhere. A fragment pierced his palm as he reached for the radio, but he grabbed it, bleeding over its dial. He carried it down to the basement. There he turned it on, and an old song played, the sound resonating inside the concave walls.
Finally the news came on. Two Christian factions had started fighting each other up in the hills, and their battleground was the village. A moment of pride came to Joseph upon hearing the name of his little, barely known village, Kfaroumeh, but this was cut short by fear.
Now we know, he said. Two Christian factions. He lit a cigarette. What for? Fighting among ourselves. It’s time to leave. Maybe we could walk down the valley. Leave the house and car and just walk down.
Pavlov objected, as did his sister, whose voice came out from an invisible, dark corner. The only sound was her faint protesting voice, and her child’s breathing.
Pavlov turned the radio off. To save batteries, he said.
Soon, the battle escalated. Bombs fell with an unprecedented frequency, and all noise, songs, voices, murmurs and complaints were subdued, crushed by the sound. The family moved deeper within their cave, to the farthest corner, and crouched in silence, oblivious to the dampness of the walls. In their helplessness, they assumed an instinctive frozen posture, the still form of rabbits in the presence of a predator. Other than the bombs, there was utter silence.
At dawn on the third day, Pavlov felt briefly reassured by the arrival of a crack of light—but this moment was interrupted by the sudden entrance of a fighter into the cave.
The man rushed in and fell to the floor, his back against the damp, cold wall. He was panting and moaning in pain. The morning sun shed a faint light on the side of his face, and the first thing that struck Pavlov was the sharpness of his long nose that was channelling air in urgent and fast intervals. Then he heard the man’s cries. Pavlov stood and approached him. The fighter was bleeding from the neck. Pavlov retreated, grabbed the little water that was left in the family’s bottle and offered it to him. The man tried, but couldn’t swallow. He rejected the liquid that entered his mouth and coughed. Pavlov poured water into his hand and washed the man’s face. The water revealed the fighter’s youth, his boyish looks, his regret and fear. His eyes showed that he had been crying for a long time—and being touched with such care made him cry more. He was bleeding from his arm as well as his throat. He pulled a photo from his pocket and put it against his chest. He tried to talk but had no voice, and only a few obscure, weak whistles emerged, accompanied by drooling blood and tears. Then he stopped moving, took a final short breath and ceased.
Pavlov laid him flat on the ground. Now the fighter looked more dignified. The dead, when lai
d horizontally beneath whatever happens to be above, can face anything, he thought. A panorama of high-rises, chandeliers, high or low ceilings, solemn faces—rain and sometimes clouds, or blue skies if they were fortunate enough.
Joseph grew angry again. What for? he said. What are they killing each other for? We can’t leave the body here.
Pavlov’s sister wept when she heard the word body—and Rima, too, started to wail.
We can’t leave him here, Joseph repeated.
Hours later, when the fighting seemed to have paused, Pavlov began to drag the corpse out of the cave. Joseph grabbed the dead fighter’s hand, and together they carried him outside the cave.
The wild dogs will come at night, Joseph said. My daughter will get sick. She is already half-dead and traumatized and she hasn’t seen the light in days. We could bury him, but it will take time to dig the grave and we will be exposed to snipers and mad fire. They will take us for soldiers and shoot us, and the shovels in our hands will look like weapons…they will shoot us…What for? Joseph said once again. What for?
And without another word, Joseph rushed to his car and returned with a tank of gas. Pavlov helped him carry the body to the field and they laid it out, facing the sky. Joseph poured gas on it.
Go back, Pavlov said, before someone notices the flames and shoots us. Joseph nodded and headed to the cave.
Pavlov took his time. He gathered hay, twigs and broken branches and piled them over the fighter’s body. He lit the branches and stood watching the birth of fire, and then he circled the pyre, mourning and dancing for the unknown.
That night, when the fighting had quieted and the bombs had paused, Pavlov went to look for his bag in the darkness of the kitchen above. He found it, picked up his car keys, left the house, walked through the gate and downhill on the village road. He held his keys firmly in his hands, not in his pocket, for fear that the jingling sound might awaken the killers. He passed the few stores of the village, his brother-in-law’s butcher shop, the grocery and a café. All were empty, bombarded or looted, and broken glass was everywhere, on the sidewalks and in the middle of the road. A long spire-shaped rowan tree blocked the moonlight and its reflection drew an oval, dark figure, boat-like, across the scattered shards on the ground. He continued down the slope towards his hearse. In the dark, he didn’t notice its shattered windshield until he sat on the broken glass on the seat. A piece pierced his thigh, but he kept quiet, calmly inserted the key, started the engine and drove up the road towards his sister’s house.
When he arrived, he took the flashlight from the car and went down to the basement. Joseph was snoring, and Pavlov’s niece’s body had slipped out from under the quilt. Rima looked cold, hungry and thirsty against the blackness of the wall. His sister lay beside her, and Pavlov imagined the expression of devastation on her face. He turned the flashlight on and woke them.
Our father’s car is here, he told his sister, we must leave now.
The butcher objected, but Pavlov’s sister immediately started to pack, mumbling, Trust in the will of God, trust the mercy of the saints…With no food or water, we are buried here anyway, she said. We might as well take our chances outside.
Nathalie covered her daughter with the quilt, and went quickly up the stairs. Meanwhile, Joseph entered the darkness of his house, grabbed the family’s passports and stuffed a bag with clothes. They all hurried into the hearse. Pavlov’s niece was awake now and asking after the dog. No one answered her. Nathalie sat with her daughter in the back and they drove down the hill.
It was a cold mountain morning, and the broken windshield let the air into the quiet interior, ventilating the vehicle, which was full of the odours of these unwashed humans. Nathalie huddled with her daughter, and Joseph sat anxiously in the front passenger seat, looking around and through the open angles of glass in the window. Upon passing the stores in the village, he murmured, The business! Everything is gone, all is destroyed…What for?
Pavlov drove the deathmobile down the hill until he met a checkpoint marked by flickering torches. He stopped, and two fighters with AK-47s approached and skimmed their flashlights over the faces in the car before tracing the forms of their bodies and the inside of the hearse. One fighter recognized Joseph and greeted him. The fighter was a kid, barely sixteen, and he and Joseph were distantly related. The butcher asked him which road was the safest, and he advised the family to take the northern road and go east until the next large town, and from there head south towards the city.
Do you have any food? the fighter asked. Pavlov’s sister, her voice rising from the back seat, told him to go to their house and take anything he could find.
The butcher guided Pavlov along the roads until dawn, when the sun revealed all and little Rima began screaming the name of her dog, pointing at a stray creature at the side of the road. Pavlov stopped. The dog was trotting aimlessly. It looked thin, dirty, hungry and fearful, its skin peeling. Its eyes were sunken in its head and its nose pointed at the earth, as if defeated and ashamed. Barbus, the girl called, Barbus! And the canine turned, and wagged its tail with happiness. It rushed back to the car and settled in the back of the deathmobile and rested, filthy and smelly, in the little girl’s arms.
* * *
The hearse arrived safely back in the city and the family stayed for a couple of weeks in the home that looked out over the cemetery road. One day the butcher and his wife walked to the grocer’s to buy food. Rima stayed at the house with her uncle and sat with her dog on the sofa. She asked if Pavlov was coming to Sweden with them.
Pavlov told her that he and Barbus would stay behind, because the dog would not be able to take the boat to Cyprus with them when they left. Pavlov promised that he would protect Barbus and feed him well.
The note of a trumpet sounded, and Pavlov went to the window. The girl stood beside him. She said, The dead are coming.
The dead are coming, Pavlov repeated.
But where do they go?
To Hades, Pavlov said.
Who is there in Hades?
Pluto, Pavlov said.
Is he nice?
He likes to live in the underworld, Pavlov said.
And where is God? Rima asked.
There is no God, there are only humans who imagine the possibility of gods.
When the music started, Pavlov went to the middle of the room and moved his feet. The dog joined him. He extended his arms to his little niece, and all three of them danced to the tune of the dead.
AU REVOIR?
Throughout December, rain and bombs continued to fall on Beirut and its inhabitants. Mortals sought the shelter of the underworld: people slept in their underground garages, in utility rooms, next to meters and electrical boxes, in commercial storage spaces, in factories and church crypts, and in hell. Bombs carpeted the roofs, spliced little streets, landed on coiffed heads and leather-clad feet, spilled human entrails and turned their bodies into butcher’s meat—chuck steak, rib, lower sirloin, flank, shoulder. Bombs sharpened the edges of windows and pierced the smooth surfaces of walls, scattered an apocalypse of stones and furniture. Glass covered the street and gleamed in the sun—glitter with the motion of oceans. The wrath of the Gods fell even on the dead. The lawns of the cemetery across from Pavlov’s window were prodded by bombs and thunderous explosions, and mortars landed on graves and ploughed the ground. Skeletons, like playful dolphins, flew out of the earth and pirouetted through the air to land again in the mud. A buried grocer’s bones were resurrected and piled in the manner of a vegetable display. A real estate agent’s body flew in the air and landed in the next lot of land. A pharmacist with a headache found oblivion in an open field, a long-dead fighter was wounded once again, and still the bombs persisted, falling in a pitiless avalanche, excavating the ancient Roman city under the surface. The names of the deceased were misspelled on bombed headstones, statues of virgins were riddled with holes and lost their reputations for immaculate conception. The dead screamed in terror, from the end of the stree
t came a loud hyena laugh, and in Pavlov’s rooms the memory of Rex the dog’s howl echoed.
With the end of the bombing came the second burial of those long dead and forgotten, those whose rest in peace, slumber and decomposition had been rudely interrupted by the impudence of the living. Pavlov left his sister’s family at home, and walked with his uncles through the burial grounds, gathering bones and human remains and returning them to the earth. Broken headstones were restored to the tops of their proper plots. The shredding of wreaths had scattered flowers and petals on the ground, filling the cemetery with Indian summer colours. His cousin, the hyena, arrived with her brother and sniffed the earth. She looked at Pavlov with grateful eyes, and he observed that she seemed broken and somewhat older now. The shape of her face no longer had the geometric perfection of eternity. Worry and sadness had thinned it into the shape of a triangle. The Pythagorean cult and its trinities can be seen everywhere in this land, Pavlov observed—in triangular noses, triangular chins, triangular mountains…The hyena’s little brother walked the rows with the familiarity of a child in a playground, and both siblings softly hummed old, folkloric songs to appease the cadavers.
When his work was done, Pavlov returned home. He washed his hands, his face and neck, and the sink filled with earth and the pale colour of bones and the brown of his own skin. Now, he said to himself, it is time for my sister and her family to leave. They ought to leave now.
The next day, Pavlov drove his sister’s family to the port to catch the boat that would take them to the island of Cyprus. From there, they would fly to Sweden and join Joseph’s family. Nathalie cried as they drove. I always hated this car, she said to Pavlov. Sell everything and come with us.
His niece begged him to bring Barbus with him when he came north. The butcher, smelling of sweat and with tears in his eyes, hugged and kissed Pavlov, emitting heat from his large body.