Beirut Hellfire Society

by Rawi Hage

  Pavlov rushed inside the house and reloaded his gun; and, dancing for his father, in tears, he lit the cremation oven. Then he took his gun, used it to break the glass in the nearest window, and held the brothers from advancing for three hours as his father burned. The battle was fierce and Pavlov howled and barked from inside the cremation house, jumping from one window to another as the brothers closed in on him, their pistols in their hands. In the last exchange of fire, Pavlov was hit just above his heart. He staggered back, wounded, to the cremation room. Holding his dog in one arm, he pulled the hose from the bonbon and gave it fire with his other hand.

  First there was fire. Then there was wind. And then there was dust that rose from where the house had stood and spread into the valleys.

  That night, echoes of a howl rose from the valley and up into the clouds, and towards the elsewhere of the stars.

  TROJAN HORSE

  The Bohemian, before his death, had told a fellow fighter about the killing of Faddoul by the son of the undertaker. He had also revealed the whereabouts of the body.

  Faddoul’s family had gathered up his burned remains and vowed to avenge the killing.

  A week after the burning of the cremation house on the mountain, on the night of Faddoul’s wake, Hanneh and Manneh picked up Faddoul’s body from the morgue, laid it in a coffin and drove in Pavlov’s hearse towards the garbage dump. There, they dumped Faddoul’s body. Then they drove Pavlov’s hearse to Faddoul’s home.

  Both Hanneh and Manneh had cut their hair and each wore a black suit. Manneh delivered the casket to Faddoul’s family home for the beginning of the wake. When the family had gathered around the coffin, Hanneh leapt out of it, a pistol in each hand, and Manneh stepped forward from behind the open gate.

  Blood flowed through the house and screams reached to the dark sky.

  Manneh and Hanneh escaped through the back gate, got into Pavlov’s deathmobile and drove it towards the seaside. There, they parked it and set it ablaze. Then they found their parked motorcycles and drove towards the mountains. They drove up Sanine mountain and then down shepherds’ paths to reach the Bekáa Valley, and then they flew their machines in the direction of the west side of Beirut.

  They stopped at a small hut to have a manousheh and drink Pepsi. Finally, they drove up to a funeral home. The sign on the door read:

  Big Moustafa’s establishment: Burial night or day. Our light forever burns.

  We’re here on behalf of the Society, Hanneh and Manneh called out as they entered. And they each glanced in the mirror and fixed their hair.

  The war ended.

  The house across from the cemetery stayed empty for years. Eventually, the cemetery was bulldozed and a three-storey building containing shops was erected in its place. The uncles’ land was confiscated by the government under a legal loophole to expand the road, and because the uncles had neglected their tax payments, and later a mosque was built on it.

  After many attempts by Pavlov’s sister to find him, Pavlov was officially declared missing. Nathalie lived through many harsh winters in Stockholm and, after the death of her husband from a heart attack, decided to return to Lebanon to the house in the village. She turned her husband’s butcher shop into a grocery, grew older, and eventually became sick and died in a home run by the nuns of the nearby convent.

  On Nathalie’s deathbed, one of the nuns came into her room and said that she knew what had happened to her brother. Pavlov’s sister was breathing her last as the nun told her that her brother had set the cremation house alight and blown himself up. And, the nun added, the heathen deserved his hellfire. The final word Nathalie uttered was fire.

  Pavlov’s niece, Rima, came from Sweden during her mother’s illness. Afterwards, she tried to sell Pavlov’s house in the city, but Pavlov’s death certificate was required. After engaging lawyers and experiencing gruesome Lebanese bureaucracy, with its corruption and expense, she at length decided to give up the legal procedures and returned to Sweden.

  Years later, on a spring day, a young woman pushed open the door to Pavlov’s abandoned house in Beirut and entered it. Over the course of a season, she hired Syrian refugees to paint the walls and repair a few necessities, in order to render the house habitable once more.

  Ingrid, Rima’s daughter, was in her twenties. She had long black hair, and owned a dog named Barbus Jr. Her favourite pastime was to sit on the balcony and read, smoke, drink beer from a bottle or, in the evening, have a glass of wine. She walked barefoot most of the time, and wore shorts and loose, translucent clothing. When summer came, she would often go up onto the roof and lie topless on a towel, sunbathing and reading. On weekends, a young man with a sports car would pass by and honk his horn, and she would disappear until the early morning hours. She would come back with high heels in hand, joyfully singing and dancing, often a little stoned or drunk.

  One day, she heard a knock at the door and went to open it. The two women on her step asked if she spoke Arabic. She replied that she mostly spoke Swedish and English, and could understand some French, but had very little Arabic.

  The women spoke to her in perfect English. They said they had come on behalf of the mosque across the street.

  Ingrid invited the women in.

  They were polite but hesitant, and insisted on staying at the door. Finally one of the women asked if she was the owner of the building.

  This is my family’s home, Ingrid said. I have the inheritance papers, she added.

  The second woman said, We are here on important business. We would like you to ask your parents if the house is for sale.

  I am not sure that we could sell it, Ingrid said. One of the owners, my great-uncle, is still officially missing and obtaining a record of his death is proving a nightmare in this country.

  God willing, the sale could still be arranged, said the second woman. We have contacts in the government. There are ways around this issue. Many people went missing during the war. We all lost loved ones.

  I rather like it here, Ingrid replied. I am thinking I might come here more often—or even move over here and stay.

  The first woman seemed to hesitate. Then she told Ingrid that some people in the neighbourhood were complaining that her behaviour was immodest, and potentially offensive.

  What do you mean, offensive? asked Ingrid.

  The women replied that she was often seen sunbathing half-naked on the roof, and drinking alcohol on the balcony. She was heard playing loud music.

  In my home, I am free to do as I wish, said Ingrid.

  The ladies politely agreed with her. They assured her that they respected her Western manners, and her belief in another religion…

  Or non-belief, Ingrid added.

  We acknowledge that this is your home, and your life, the women said. But we ask that you be more sensitive to your surroundings.

  Ingrid didn’t answer. The second woman added, Your people are no longer here. They vanished, they moved away.

  And some are buried here, Ingrid said. She gently closed the door.

  That night, she played loud music and stood at the window, smoking and drinking a glass of wine. She stepped out onto the balcony and looked at the large cement structure across the street. She lit another cigarette and held its fire between her fingers. Then she blew smoke toward the sky, and danced above the cemetery road.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For the dead:

  One reaches an age when death visits more frequently, accelerating with the speed of a bullet. For my uncles Aounie, Elie, Farid, Simon and Victor, for Gloria Jureidini, for Martin Thien, and for all those whose inevitable deaths shall follow.

  For the living:

  For my loving partner Madeleine Thien, and for the following, who are dear to me:

  My father Antoine Hage, my mother Thérèse Hage, my brothers Mark, Merdad and Ralph.

  For Ramzy Rachdaoui Hage.

  For the Hage family here and elsewhere, the El-Diri family, the Jureidinis, and the rest of the a
ffiliated tribes.

  For Lynn Henry, Sarah Chalfant and Charles Buchan.

  I am thankful, too, for Smaro Kamboureli, David Chariandy and Sophie McCall; Simon Fraser University; Conseil des arts et des letters du Quebec; and Massey College, notably Amelia Marin, and the young man with whom I discussed the play “Antigone” that day at Massey Hall.

  Although all characters in this novel are fictitious, this is a book of mourning for the many who witnessed senseless wars, and for those who perished in those wars.

  RAWI HAGE was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s. He immigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world in a given year, and has either won or been shortlisted for seven other major awards and prizes, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Cockroach was the winner of the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. It was also shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award and the Giller Prize. His third novel, Carnival, told from the perspective of a taxi driver, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Award and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. His work has been translated into 30 languages.