Beirut Hellfire Society

by Rawi Hage

  Florence burst into tears. He made me do things, disgusting things, criminal things…Here, you can keep your bag. I poured it all down the toilet. That’s what monsters like him deserve. Now please leave, she said, and never come back here.

  She called her maid.

  Pavlov did not wait. He took the stairs, exited the building, and walked home with the empty bag. At the bottom were a few motes of dust, just enough to mix with Pavlov’s own saliva and paste on his forehead. He walked to a secluded corner of the street, one that smelled like the urine of both man and dog, and danced. Then he threw the bag away and walked home with a mark on his head.

  At home, Pavlov found his pregnant cousin sleeping, but Barbus the dog jumped with joy upon seeing him. Man and dog sat at the window and listened to the voices of the dead beyond the balcony. Do you hear the murmuring and all the talk? the dog said to Pavlov. They are eager to tell stories of their lives.

  Yes, Pavlov said, I hear them all the time. Then he stood and shouted from the balcony, No one is important, none of you! There you all are, lying beneath the dirt, competing with one another, hoping to be remembered. Fools! he yelled, and the dog barked.

  He lit a cigarette and blew smoke towards the stretch of stones across the road, and spat.

  Fools! the dog repeated.

  Dead fools! Pavlov echoed, and he danced.

  The dog drooled and spat, and danced alongside him.

  Then Pavlov remembered that his parents were buried in the cemetery, and he shouted to his father promises of liberation from the weight of the earth. For hours, and all through the night, he shouted and talked to the dead. After a while, he looked down and saw his teenaged cousin Pierre and his brute uncles and their wives staring at him. Then the brutes broke the door down and burst into his house and locked the dog in the bedroom. They gave Pavlov a beating—stomping on him and hitting him hard. Mounir would slap him and dare him to say another word, and Pavlov would mutter something, and a further slap would come his way. The brutes threatened to take him to the psychiatric hospital if they heard him screaming profanity at the dead from his balcony again…Just like your mother, they said…Mad just like her.

  In the middle of this beating, it occurred to Pavlov that his cousin Salwa had lost her laugh. She stood in the corner of the room, cursing her father, cursing her uncle and her brother. The dog threatened them too, growling from behind the door.

  After finishing with Pavlov, the uncles grabbed the hyena by the arm and forced her home with them. You are a whore, they said to her. A whore!

  HAPPY NEW YEAR, PAVLOV!

  In early January, Pavlov went to visit the Bohemian, but he was not at home. He tried on two further occasions until, early one morning, when Pavlov knocked particularly hard on the door, the Bohemian answered.

  The man looked rumpled and his nose was running. He didn’t bother to wipe it. Instead, he sniffed constantly and manically tried to straighten his unkempt hair. His eyes were red, and he had clearly spent the night drinking and smoking. He had answered the door in his underwear, and when Pavlov entered, the house had the pungent smell of cigarettes mixed with unwashed feet and old, worn-down sandals.

  He led Pavlov to the kitchen and said, Did you know that my mother was a loving mother, but she couldn’t tolerate weakness? Yet she married my father, who was a weak man. Well, sometimes weakness is perceived as consideration and goodness. But weakness is selfishness. The greatest fear of the weak is extinction. Weak men fear death, because death excludes them from the grand spectacle of life. The weak are spectators and never participants.

  A coward, my dear Pavlov, has a profound attachment to spectacle. The weak are curious souls who see life as a play. A spectacle, I might add, in which they don’t have to participate, but only watch and assess. The weak want to witness the end of every story, but never want to face their own ending. What the weak ultimately desire is one spectacle after another. They have a childish dependency on entertainment, they are narcissists and fear the void of boredom, they need mirrors to make themselves exist. The weak, my dear Pavlov, are delusional, and they cannot comprehend the concrete.

  My father was weak. What he admired most was the courage of others, the performance of others. He would go to church even though he was a closet atheist. He loved to watch the spectacle of pious worshippers, engrossed in their own subservience and slavery. He would come back and describe to us the people who kneeled, who climbed the stairs on their knees, who confessed, who drank the blood of Christ and then mingled it with their own. Do you know what fascinated him about Christianity? The elaborate rituals of sacrifice and the symbolic re-enactments of violence. He believed that society ought to appease its own inner violence by designating scapegoats. He was fascinated by the bystanders who stood and watched the flogging of two criminals and a rabbinical rebel who claimed to be the son of a God. He wanted to know: Who were these people who watched the Crucifixion? What were they wearing? How did they find out about this event? He would say that, if he had been alive, he would have followed too, eager to see the procession of pain and torture. Does that sound familiar, Pavlov? My father envied those fortunate people who stood on the sidelines to watch the flogging. He admired those spectators who spend their lives watching from windows and balconies…Over dinner, he would repeat the same words ad nauseam. What a scene! my father would say, what a scene!

  He followed my mother every day and watched what she did. He would rush home from work just to be glued to her, and his biggest thrill was when she punished and beat us. He would stand still, pretending to frown, but he was watching, not feeling anything for our pain or suffering. He was hiding behind a mask of wrath, but really he was watching our mother acting. Do you know what she called him for as long as I can remember?

  Pavlov took a drag from his cigarette and puffed smoke towards the kitchen ceiling.

  Dog. She called him perro, which is Spanish for dog. It was only when she finally hit him that he bit back. He killed her because she ceased to be a spectacle. Because he refused to turn himself into an actor. Now, in his eyes, she had become real, not a spectacle. She had brought corporal pain to the spectator, to one of the mob, and now he, as the spectator, had turned into a sacrificial subject, against all rules of the game. She became death, his own death. There is nothing more visible than death. She was no longer useful to him because it was impossible for him to simply watch himself being beaten. He couldn’t be on a safe, separate plane, watching. Corporal pain is disruptive to the gaze. She became death. She carried a stick, a broom, and beat him like a dog. So, yes. Death—and what better way to get rid of death than death itself, don’t you agree, Pavlov?

  Pavlov looked away.

  Do you know why I take photographs? It’s because, unlike my father, I deplore the narrative of spectacle, and the lies that come with it. When I take a photograph, I don’t just stand there, neutral, and gaze. I am taking an action. With each click, I am cutting the flow of the spectacle into something still. Into fragments. I am shredding these human stories that are far too bloated with deceit and self-indulgence. Fragments, that’s what I do. I hack away at humanity’s delusions and I interrupt the long walk towards the cross. I shoot to abolish all beginnings and endings. Fuck this circus, I say. Let’s reduce everything to little interruptions, like birds do when they cut the flow of a sky. We only kill each other to see ourselves as heroes in our fathers’ stories. We tell ourselves stories that we can believe. I chose the medium that is the most disruptive to being a spectator. I render everything into slices of space and time. The world should become a series of unrelated histories, a collection of particles. We should deny the world its interconnectedness. Otherwise, we are nothing but a sick species who imagines that we are part of an eternal spectacle, a never-ending continuum.

  I, dear Pavlov, unlike my father, am not a spectator. I slice up everything, all that he hungered to watch. My coward of a father deserved his own death. Once, I showed him a photograph of a boy mutilated i
n an accident, and all he wanted to know was if anyone had witnessed the moment of catastrophe. I told him, I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t remember. And he told me, But you were there! You were lucky. I ripped up the photograph and said, I was there, but I didn’t notice the spectators.

  I know you, Pavlov. They say you belong to a secret society, but I know you are alone in this world. You enjoy the warmth of cadavers. You are torn between the spectacle and participating in it. But you killed Faddoul, so I guess you’re no longer just an observer. You are only half-delusional, and I admire you for that. Now, where are these falling bombs?

  The Bohemian went out onto the balcony with his camera in hand. Let’s stop their narrative of death, he said. Let’s catch the bombs and stop them from falling.

  For a few moments, he was silent as he took photos of the sky. Then he said, Pavlov, I want to become like you. I need to take action. I know these frozen images won’t stop anything. Symbols are useless. I have some reassessments to make. I have to take action. One has to periodically change one’s life. The illusion of the spectacle can only be stopped by exercising violence. In Christianity, the only moment of truth is when the Roman soldier’s spear pierces the dangling heathen on the cross. I have to become that Roman soldier, my dear Pavlov. I have to wear a helmet, exchange my camera for a rifle and take part in the killing.

  He turned back to look at the sky, but this time he did not raise his camera.

  * * *

  Two days later, the Bohemian joined the militia and was sent for two weeks of training in a camp on the outskirts of the city. Like all new recruits, he slept in a tent, was taught to dismantle and clean a rifle, and was warned not to shoot his peers from behind when advancing towards enemy lines; so many soldiers were killed in friendly fire, he was told. He learned how to crawl under barbed wires and to yell in response to orders. He was also instructed how to inject bullets into rifles and handguns, and shoot at a target from afar. The Bohemian proved to be an excellent sharpshooter. He was given a nickname, Abou Bohemia, by the trainer at the camp—but Abou Bohemia was repeatedly punished for insubordination. He couldn’t sleep during curfew hours, he stole cigarettes from his peers’ bags, he was caught masturbating in the woods, and in the showers he was caught staring at a fellow fighter’s penis. Late the same night he was beaten while sleeping, under the covers of his bed.

  But the Bohemian’s marksmanship redeemed him. One night, he was taken to the commander’s tent and asked if he was willing to kill. The Bohemian said yes without hesitation.

  We need snipers, and that might involve killing everything and anything that moves. Everything is a target!

  Everything is a target, Abou Bohemia repeated.

  Every morning after that, he was trained on special equipment. The transition from the camera lens to the sniper rifle seemed effortless to him. During the rest of his indoctrination he managed to kill two snakes and ten lizards. He refused to shoot birds because, he declared obscurely, they were capable of migration and flight.

  At the end of his training, he was taken to the front line. He met two sharpshooters, one by the name of Asswad, who had a permanent black ribbon on his forehead, and the other by the name of Abou-Aadem, or Father of Bones, because his specialty was shooting people in the tibia first to immobilize them. These shooters handed him a long rifle with a binocular that he immediately proceeded to calibrate by focusing on a discarded Marlboro cigarette package.

  After this introduction, the shooters were sent to the sixth floor of an abandoned building. They settled in an apartment that, on one side, had a direct view of the ocean. On the other side was a hole in the wall where the snipers aimed their rifles towards the opposing faction in the city.

  Asswad said to the Bohemian, No one should cross that road. No one. Not cars, not humans, not even a dog, nothing. You have to be diligent and patient and shoot whatever tries to cross that road. Now, we have three shifts here. Yours starts at noon and ends at eight. I am here at night and Abou-Aadem is a morning person. He likes to be here early, before he starts his job at the hospital. Here is something that you should be very careful about. Listen to me very carefully. This is a matter of life and death. Your shift takes in the sunset. Towards the sunset hour this house is lit up, because the sun hits it directly. During this time you must calibrate the binocular and not move. If you move, the light will go through the hole to the outside, and when you move back, your body will cover the hole again. So, tell me what happens, Abou Bohemia, when you move back and forth over the hole?

  The hole will emanate a beam of light, signalling our presence to the enemy outside, and they could spot us. It would operate just like a light chamber. A sort of camera obscura, Abou Bohemia said and laughed.

  I don’t know what you mean by obscura, I don’t know or care who obscura is, but bravo, you guessed it. The enemy is always watching for clues. They will know where we are hiding. So don’t move a muscle at sunset. Cover the hole with your body and your rifle and don’t move.

  During his first sunset, the Bohemian looked over his shoulder and saw that the room shone with a soft orange light. The light cast rays of magenta and red that brought the Bohemian close to tears.

  He looked at the wall behind his back and stood up and walked away from his gun and faced the large ball of fire that was sinking into the Mediterranean Sea. Mare nostrum, he said, and he wept and bade farewell to the light and to the ball of fire.

  He walked back and put his right eye to the binocular. A bullet from the enemy flew towards the hole, through the binocular, and entered Abou Bohemia’s eye. He fell on the ground, on his back, with one socket bleeding and the other wide open, witnessing the end of a day.

  ALL THINGS CHANGE TO FIRE

  The night after the Bohemian was buried in a modest grave, Barbus the dog awoke suddenly and began to howl. Pavlov’s uncles’ house was burning, going up in flames. Pavlov rushed out in the cold, barefoot, tripping on pebbles and mud. His cousin Salwa stood in front of the house with a biretta in one hand and the green-eyed priest’s long-lost head in the other. She was screaming her loudest hyena laugh.

  Pavlov tried desperately to enter the house to rescue his uncles, their wives and his cousin Pierre, but the wall of fumes prevented him. His cousin had poured gasoline in every room, on every floor. In the funeral home, she had saturated the wood and coffins and the chemicals used for the bodies. She had locked the doors from the outside and set fire to the house as she ran outside, half-naked, her round belly and her breasts exposed.

  Pavlov screamed and she laughed even louder. She swung the priest’s head in her hand and hurled it into the fire. Pavlov rushed forwards again, blinded, bewildered, shouting. The house blazed, while in the distance bombs continued to fall.

  When it was clearly hopeless, Pavlov grabbed Salwa and went home, her chilling laugh echoing in the stairwell. She stood in his living room, almost naked, and he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Her belly was bigger now, and her body was covered with marks and bruises. They both stood at the window, helpless, and watched the house burn to the ground.

  The next day, a jeep pulled up at Pavlov’s door. Three militia asked to come in. Pavlov recognized one of them from the day he had retrieved Son of Mechanic’s body from no man’s land. He led them upstairs. They looked around, and informed him they were investigating the fire. They entered Pavlov’s parents’ room, where they saw his cousin and recognized her as the girlfriend of their comrade, the Martyr. They asked her to step outside with them.

  Pavlov said from the doorway, without moving an inch, If you miss your dead friend, you can come and lay your hand on her belly and touch his baby.

  The men were silent for a long moment. Then their leader nodded, and they left.

  A week later, Hanneh and Manneh appeared at Pavlov’s door. Salwa put on her shoes and filled a plastic bag with her few belongings. Pavlov gave her all the money he had earned from the Hellfire Society, and together they drove to the port.
Hanneh and Manneh promised Pavlov that they would escort Salwa to Turkey before turning back. From there, she would go to Stockholm to join Pavlov’s sister.

  The boat sailed and Salwa, like a siren, laughed her way across the Mediterranean and into the Aegean Sea. A few months after her arrival in Stockholm, she gave birth in Södersjukhuset. She named her son Narr, the Arabic word for fire.

  * * *

  In time, Barbus the dog grew old and died.

  Pavlov kept Barbus in his fridge for three days and three nights. On the fourth day, at dusk, he proceeded to excavate his father’s remains. He carried the remains to the hearse and placed them beside the dog’s body. Then he drove towards the cremation house high in the mountains.

  On the way, Pavlov noticed a car following him. He confirmed his suspicion when he veered onto the rough road towards the mountain. The car followed him onto the small village road, closing the distance between them. He looked in the mirror and saw three men: the brothers of Faddoul. He drove over the hills, speeding towards the cremation house. He knew the terrain well, so he let the brothers follow more slowly on the narrow curved roads.

  When he arrived at the cremation house, Pavlov quickly carried his father’s remains inside. He opened the oven door and let his father rest there. Then he rushed to his father’s old bed and pulled out the hunting rifle hidden underneath. He loaded it with bullets and went back out to the hearse to pick up the dog’s body.

  The brothers had arrived by then and were getting out of their car. Pavlov picked up Barbus and shot two bullets towards them. The gunfire took the brothers by surprise. They ducked their heads below their car doors and shouted at each other.