June Rain (10 page)

That particular accusation had not been levelled at Munir that same day. He was unburdening himself of all the insults he’d been subjected to.

‘Who says that to you?’ my father asked him with the tone of a vanquished man. He quickly understood what was happening.

‘My friends . . .’

‘They said this to you today?’

‘No. They say it every day.’

‘Which children?’

‘The first one is George, my cousin.’

‘And what do you say back?’

‘I don’t know.’

My father got upset, but his anger didn’t last long, as usual.

‘How could you accept that? How could you say nothing? Didn’t you tell them that you were a Semaani before any of them?’

‘They say we follow the milk,’ he said, sobbing and giving up. ‘We’re from Al-Mazraa.’

‘What else do they say?’

Munir was silent. It was as though he’d got enough off of his chest. But my father wasn’t satisfied.

‘What?’

‘They say you’re not a man.’

He pronounced the word
rijjaal
, the Arabic word for ‘man’, with a double ‘j’ of course. The plural of
rijjaal
is
rjaal
, with no vowel after the ‘r’ and a long ‘aa’ vowel after the ‘j’. It takes a common masculine plural form, as opposed to the plural of
abadaay
(tough guy) which takes the common feminine plural form that ends with ‘
aat
’,
abadaayaat
. The word for ‘men’,
rjaal
, is also pronounced
rjayl
, again with no vowel after the ‘r’. The word is open to several derivations and has various related verbs, among which are the verbs
rajjala
(to take on manly characteristics) and
tamarjala
(to act tough).

Some of those men who enthusiastically accompanied their headmen to the anniversary mass commemorating that ill-omened event were suited to the verb
rajjala
very well. The sudden and the unexpected have a way of revealing people’s true mettle. However, those men who participated in the Burj al-Hawa incident did not deserve the same title of
rjaal
(men) that their ancestors who fought with Yusuf Bey Karam against the Turkish Army had earned. Perhaps that was because their ancestors who fought against the Turkish Army had confronted strangers rather than firing their bullets at one another. Or, as people like to boast, ‘Jails were made for men,’ but it should be pointed out that while the incident sent a lot of people to the grave, it sent hardly anyone to jail.

The etymology goes even further. Another plural form,
rjaalaat
(men), was also used but these men were few and far between. The term referred specifically to the men who had fought for Lebanese Independence fourteen years earlier.

For every man who
rajjala
(took on manly characteristics) there was one who
ajbana
(behaved like a coward). That is, he had the opportunity to destroy the enemy but did not. And also, there were men who
tahaayadu
(remained neutral), meaning they chose not to participate in wielding their weapons and firing them because their familial blood-solidarity was weak, in the sense that they did not belong to the heart and soul of the family but rather to its extremities. It goes without saying that
ibn
al-‘aa’ila
(the true son of the family) cannot be neutral because his neutrality would be interpreted as defeat. The epitome of manliness is expressed in these homonym verses:

Neither behind me nor in front of me nor next to me
(
hadd-ay
)

The dust of horses’ hooves gives me pleasure and so do heroic verses (
al-hid-ay
)

O saddleback, you are my cradle and my grave
(
lahd-ay
)

Whenever my country is threatened

As for the regression of the era of manliness, that can be summed up by saying that men themselves turn into women, are infected with the feminine
‘
adwa al-mu’annath
’
when they lose their manliness. Some might say that the era of manliness disappeared with the expansion of the state’s influence and military power which caused the appearance of
al-frari
, plural
frariyyeh
, meaning fugitives, also referred to as
tuffaar
, in nearby areas. These were the clever tough men running from the law. Others say that the revolver, or even the automatic version of it, had not threatened the existence of the
rijjaal
(real man) even if it had opened the door to attacks from behind and cowardly ambushes, up until the hand-held automatic rifle appeared. No one could act tough around the Kalashnikov with its thirty rounds, and that was the primary cause for the waning of the age of tough guys. The final word now belonged to guns rather than men.

My father smiled bitterly and said, ‘OK, so I’m not a man. It’s OK. Open the door, son. Open it!’ He went on with a muffled voice as if talking to himself, ‘Put your mind at ease. You won’t hear that kind of talk after today . . .’

Exactly two months later, my father picked us up and brought us here. We took every precaution to leave without making any noise or raising any suspicions. To avoid people’s stares, we moved our furniture at night. Getting out of there was my mother’s dream come true and our second betrayal of our relatives. My father rented this house for us because it overlooks the bay. We were able to buy it after a number of years. When we first arrived we used to sit here on an old squeaky porch swing that the former owners had left behind. The four of us would sit on it, side by side, watching the fishing boat lights as the moon glimmered on the surface of the water on those warm summer evenings. And if for some reason we woke up in the middle of the night, we would always find our father standing outside, seemingly counting the stars as he smoked.

We made a lot of friends here, but every time we were asked where we were from and we told them from
there
, our new friends would open their eyes wide in disbelief. How could we be from there and have such a refined demeanour and hardly any accent?

My father opened a small shop that carried carpentry and painting necessities. He made a lot of friends here and our neighbours were always very nice, but my father continued to pine for his cousins and his hometown. The moment one of them turned up, he rushed up to them. He ran after them. Sometimes he recognised them by their features and would call them by their family names; their blond colouring and tall stature gave them away. He would accompany them to wherever their errands led them – to government offices or the Australian consulate to apply for immigration visas. He would go with them to Beirut, where they would have been lost without him, and he would help them with their transactions. He’d invite them to lunch at the Qubrusli Restaurant where he’d order his favourite meal –
kefta
,
hummus
, and two glasses of
arak
. He’d sit with them, tête-à-tête, and never allowed them to pay for anything from their own pocket. He told them he didn’t want to impose on my mother by inviting them to the house. He warmed up to asking them for news about everyone by name.

My father is dead now. One afternoon, he went into his room to take a nap, taking the newspaper with him, and didn’t wake up. We took him up
there
in a small procession of cars and after praying over him in the church, buried him under the first cypress tree to the right of the cemetery entrance. They congregated around us – relatives we had stayed in touch with and people we didn’t know who never missed a funeral or reception for condolences. The women were covered in black out of respect for my father. They sat next to us, asked about us, invited us to their homes. I felt we were indebted to them. From that day on, if I came across any of them lost in the city, I would rush after them and do everything to help them and invite them to visit us. I used to say to my mother that I sometimes longed to go to the town. That didn’t surprise her; she felt my feelings were normal. As for her, I think
we
were her hometown.

We sold our house there, the same house whose door my mother always insisted we close behind us when we came in. But under that first cypress tree to the right of the cemetery’s entrance, we still have a place, a place to which I bring a bouquet of flowers at least once a year, a place I don’t think anyone can buy from us.

Chapter 6

Ever since Muntaha read me your letter, going on and on and getting on my nerves before I cursed her and she finally came out with it – that you were coming to visit me – I’ve been scared to death about your return. Nothing gets past me, Eliyya. I’ve been onto you from the start, from the moment we drove back from Beirut airport and you sat beside me in the back seat of the car doting on me like a little child, patting my cheeks and wrapping your arms around me the whole way. When I asked you what you were planning to do now that you had come back, you changed the subject. You asked me about the accordion, as if to mock me. But I went along with you and we reminisced about how for three years you had been in love with that instrument of yours and rarely took it off your shoulders, and how you hadn’t wanted anyone to touch it, fearing it would get scratched. And as you see, I kept it for you, hanging on the wall there in the living room, despite my getting fed up with all the stupid neighbours, especially the women, who came in and out of the house asking what that instrument was, of what use was it, why had I hung it on the wall, and was it worth a lot of money . . .

It’s true that I can barely see my hand in front of my face anymore. All I know is that daylight starts flickering from behind the high mountains, and so I make myself a cup of coffee to drink with the morning. I can sense when darkness starts to come from the direction of the sea and envelops the world. But I am not stupid. That’s right, not stupid. People say that you’re smart. You got this from your mother, not from the Kfoury family. Ask about
me
. If you love your mother, why don’t you ask about her? Ask all the people in town. They all know me and know my story. They’ll tell you as much as you want to know about me. And if you press them, they will fabricate some preposterous stories about me. Any story they can weave together will fit me well, my son. Stories become me. Stories seem to become some people, and I’m one of those people.

My father took me out of school against my will. One day I lifted my head from my Arabic language book, and there he was, all of a sudden, standing in the classroom doorway. I don’t know why he removed his red fez as if entering a church. He called to me, after seeking permission from the teacher, and told me to get my school bag and follow him. Just like that, out of the blue. He put his fez back on his head and started walking, so I walked behind him along the road, my feet reluctant to go forwards as I looked back, crying. When we reached the house, he kissed me. He kissed me maybe for the first time in my life. He kissed me on my forehead and said in a sharp tone, ‘That’s enough. From here on, education becomes harmful to girls. Tomorrow you help your mother with the housework.’

I didn’t sleep that whole night. In the morning I begged my mother to ask the nun to persuade my father to change his mind. My school was run by the Lazarite nuns and the headmistress was a French woman named Mother Angele. She had asked her noble and rich family to send her share of her inheritance so she could finish building the school in our town. She loved me very much. She spoke to my father but didn’t get anywhere with him. Rarely did my father make decisions. He left all the decisions about household matters and children up to my mother. But if he did ever make a decision, he would stick to it to the end, as if his whole life depended on it.

That’s right, I’m not stupid. I know you’ve been going around asking people questions and recording what they say. Don’t laugh. Tape recorders have become so small nowadays you can put them in your shirt pocket. No, I don’t want to search through your clothes. Record as much as you want. I myself have a tape recorder here in my room, next to my pillow, that I turn on when I’m having trouble sleeping. There’s only one tape in it, of my own voice. My voice is still as beautiful as it was years ago. I recorded some Baghdadi
mawwaals.
It is said that prisoners used to sing those
mawwaals
to cheer themselves up.

I raised you as a child, why have you left me?

Is this the reward of a good deed, O light of my eyes?

As you can hear, my voice is still beautiful. I learned those
mawwaals
from my mother. I’ll let you hear them if you wish. I play the tape over and over until I’m able to fall asleep.

I like to sleep to the sound of my voice.

If I had been more determined, I would have written down my story myself when I still could. And I tried after you left. I bought a new copy book and sat at the table. I remembered the school desks and it made me so sad and sorry for myself again that I almost cried. On the first page I wrote one sentence:
This is the story of Kamileh al-Hajj Abayd . . .
I like to use my family name. We’ve always been known to be either very intelligent or crazy. They say that one of our ancestors in the distant past was returning from Jerusalem to his town in Syria when he happened upon a girl whose beauty enchanted him, and so he spent the night in that town hoping to see her the next day. He couldn’t bear to be without her, and he stayed there for days on end until he married her and people gave him the name ‘Al-Hajj’, the pilgrim. On the first page in my copy book I wrote:
This is the story of Kamileh al-Hajj Abayd, starting with the day she left her father’s house wearing her bead-embroidered wedding dress and, for good luck, they lifted her up to stick a ball of dough over the door of her husband’s house, which didn’t stick well, up until the day her only son boarded a plane to America and didn’t return.
But writing that sentence tired me out. It took me half an hour, which is why I have it memorised. I reread it and said to myself, ‘It’s a difficult task for you, and at any rate who will even care about your story, Kamileh? Your problems are nothing compared with other people’s problems. No one wants to burden himself with other people’s problems. It’d be better to stop.’ I often thought about doing it afterwards as I sat here by myself on the porch. When the day came when I could only hear people and not see them anymore, I thought about telling it out loud, just like I’m telling it to you now, and I would ask Muntaha to write it down for me. Muntaha is all I have left. My companion and my neighbour who comes to visit me almost every day. She never married, and I had become a widow so young.