Qissat (10 page)

As children, our way of life in the neighbourhood was at odds with Abu Ahmad’s disposition, and it follows logically from this that his disposition was at odds with our life. Thus our days were connected by the thread of stories built upon our mutual hatred. He would throw at us anything that came to his right hand and we would outdo each other in elaborate theories concerning the possible reasons for his proclivity to sleep during the day. When we grew weary of the violent responses our actions provoked from Abu Ahmad and from our parents, we looked for more indirect ways of testing his sleeping patterns. We would devise strategies that no one could pin on us. Our most reliable colleague in this line of work was Abu Ahmad’s donkey. We nicknamed it al-Az’aka, which is a Hebrew word for ‘alarm siren’. We only had to pull its tail or hit it twice or thrice with a hose for it to emit the most formidable braying, and then each child would escape at high speed to the safety of his house. The poor donkey served as means of transport for Abu Ahmad to travel who knows where, and despite its service its braying would be recompensed with stones that should have been destined for us, and the effect of the throwing was usually to intensify the braying. Finally Abu Ahmad would be compelled to call one of his sons to lead the donkey away and tie it up somewhere at the other end of the quarter.

A fine mess

Her name was Arrasan and we did not know her by any other name. At the time, we associated this name with a vague concept of authority. This connotation was necessarily derived from the woman’s overbearing manner and her physical strength. The connection will become clear with a little explanation. Arrasan means ‘the bridle’, the contraption that comprises a component called the bit, a metal piece that is inserted into a donkey’s mouth when it is harnessed, and which is used to rein the animal. Now if one considers that Arrasan was the wife of Abu Ibrahim, the owner of the shop, the yoke of marriage therefore bonded Abu Ibrahim to her, and if she was the bridle, then he was the donkey, and not only did she harness him for her purposes, but also all their numerous offspring. We didn’t know much about Abu Ibrahim, except that he was the bald old shopkeeper who spent his days sleeping in front of his shop, propped up in a chair with his hands resting on his substantial belly. It was because Abu Ibrahim slept all the time that what happened did happen.

We woke up that morning, along with everyone else in the neighbourhood, to the sound of terrible screams. All the children of the neighbourhood, together with the boys, the men, the young girls and the women, all had but one wish: to be spared from the wrath of whoever was behind those screams. In a few minutes the children and grandchildren of Arrasan swamped the streets of the quarter, running around like headless chickens. Like the giant superhero in a street theatre, Arrasan emerged amongst them, holding a black whip and hitting everything within reach.

The news of this event spread with amazing speed, and on its path it acquired added information gathered from the confessions of the children who were caught and who proclaimed their innocence in a loud voice, who hastily divulged all they knew of the plot, or who screamed out about their share in it. The children had conspired to steal the grandmother’s money that was guarded vigilantly by Abu Ibrahim sleeping in front of his shop door while Arrasan was supervising the cleaning of the family house in preparation for the approaching religious celebrations. That day ended with a strict ban on the grandchildren entering the shop, and the cutting of the pocket money Arrasan granted to her sons. For seven days we did not see any of the grandchildren, who disappeared from the public eye, embarrassed by the bumps and bruises sustained by their battered bodies.

The impact of this incident on the neighbourhood was tremendous. Nothing in the world could induce the neighbour hood’s children and youngsters to approach Abu Ibrahim’s shop anymore. Kids would avoid mixing with the indicted grandchildren for fear of being accused of involvement. Above all, no one dared to walk down the street if Arrasan’s cane was heard knocking on the pavement.

All this explains Basim’s going into hiding in a closet on the afternoon of the Purim holiday.

Most of the residents of the neighbourhood would watch the Purim carnival from the vantage point of the large boulder called Azzinar. The rock was flat like a stage from the side of the town, but steep like a mountain from the side of the rubbish dump and the trees toward Sultan Suleiman’s Springs. Because the show was fun to watch and the spot was conducive to the exchange of gossip, curses and jokes, all the children would scramble to squeeze themselves in among the crowd of onlookers, and to reach the front of the stone for the best view.

That day Basim and I took up our habitual place in the front row and we didn’t let anyone get in front of us. This caused one of Arrasan’s grandchildren to become somewhat agitated and to light within him the fire of revenge, as he considered we had violated his right to the hereditary position of dominance. The poor boy decided to confront the head of the trespassers, and to demonstrate his power over us he pretended to gently push me overboard so as to frighten me a little, and then caught me before I fell over into the rubbish heap in the ditch under the rock. I didn’t cry out. I tugged at his shirt and gave him such a fierce glare that he gripped his uncle’s leg in fear. Yet my counteraction did not satisfy Basim, loyal deputy to the gang’s chief, and he decided to do what had to be done. I didn’t quite catch the precise sequence of events at that point, but then suddenly I heard a scream and a malignant chuckle. I automatically looked around for Basim, but he was nowhere to be seen. Luckily our house was not far from Azzinar. When it dawned upon me what had happened, I ran home with all my might, especially when I caught a glimpse of Arrasan’s skirts approaching at the top of the street and the cries of her grandson filled the neighbourhood. It was clear that a hurricane was about to be unleashed. My brother had pushed the child into the rubbish dump under the rock, which caused him some physical, and even greater psychological, discomfort. Azzinar’s children had nothing but their sharp tongues to wag and their bare feet to dance on the main square of the neighbourhood in glee when someone fell for a trick or into a trap.

As usual, my mother was diligently weaving wool on her machine when she saw me burst in with an expression of horror stamped on my face while I desperately fumbled with the lock before Arrasan could reach the door. My paralysing nervousness prevented me from successfully operating the lock, so I resorted to shutting myself in the toilet, while my mother was left standing in front of Arrasan trying to understand what had brought her fury down upon our house. Arrasan spoke but one sentence: ‘Where is he?’ My mother attempted to prevent Arrasan from searching for him under the mattresses and behind the kitchen door, and from breaking down the toilet door because she mistook me for him, hiding inside. I emitted a horrified scream to the effect of ‘Aren’t you ashamed, opening the door of the toilet while I’m in here doing my …’ I don’t know how my mother managed to assuage Arrasan’s rage, and to persuade her to sit down a minute for a cup of coffee. Arrasan didn’t stop threatening, ‘I’ll roast him alive when I find him; I’ll chop him up into little bits and feed him to the hyenas; I’ll mop the rubbish heap with him; I’ll make him eat the dirt in front of the whole neighbourhood; I’ll…’ And my mother continued to calm her, and turn her thoughts to other matters such as how her daughters were doing and how their marriages were turning out, and how many children did they have, and whom did Arrasan choose as appropriate suitors for her granddaughters, and who was totally inappropriate, until finally I heard my mother’s voice assuring us that all was clear, the woman had left and we could come out of our hiding places.

Our encounter with Arrasan landed us in one fine mess, and as a result we had to remain indoors for several days, following the situation in the neighbourhood closely through the walls of the courtyard.

I would never have known had I not opened Amin’s ‘old chest’ and found it crammed full of weapons …

‘A dreamer and idealist’. That’s how Amin would introduce me to his friends. He said it when I first met him at the magazine where I worked as a film critic. He was dressed in dirty clothes that day and had long hair. I heard he had just been released from jail, having been locked up on political charges, and was looking for somewhere to live. He looked wretched and I felt moved to shelter him. I suggested the idea to him.

‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘I’ll gratefully take you up on that until I arrange somewhere for myself.’

‘A dreamer and idealist’. He was right. He moved in with the old chest that very same day. ‘It contains my day to day things,’ he said timidly. ‘Idealist’ turned out to be a fitting description. I didn’t doubt him for a moment, in spite of the pamphlets that entered the house with his friends. Even when he confessed to having spent two years in jail as a political prisoner and was absent for three days in a row during the week the explosions intensified, the idealist believed …

Could Amin be involved in the fighting behind the cordon? Could he be a sniper firing shots from a window of a building? Could he be planning the next battle?

I couldn’t believe it!

At night, as the city slept to the sound of bombs exploding all around, I’d sit with him drinking araq, whose smell he so detested. When I was drunk he would tease me. ‘The araq you drink every evening, you just use it to escape the political reality.’ I would deny the charge and go on ‘dreaming’ that only art has the power to change the political situation. Artists are revolutionaries too in their own way, revolutionaries who sully their hands with art instead of weapons, blood, and … and …and …

Could my only friend have sullied his hands with blood? Why? What for?

I couldn’t believe it!

Could Amin be setting the city alight while I watched its leftover corpses, dead or alive? I’d watch, not callously like Nero, but as Cavafy viewed Ithaca or al-Siyab regarded the village Jaykur; she was like a lush green field whose beauty we do not appreciate until we are separated from it. Years away in Paris taught me what it means to belong to a city and here I was watching it being destroyed.

‘You don’t believe in this war. Why don’t you leave?’ Amin once said to me.

‘When Beirut was a beautiful princess promising love and sunshine everyone adored her,’ I replied. ‘But when the cancer we call “Civil War” took root in her everyone fled, even her own children … But for me she has become more beautiful through her illness, with more dimensions. Today her body is eaten with tumours and pus, yet I lust after her more than ever.’

‘When the war is over and the guns have gone quiet the tumours to which you refer will be all that is left. Beirut’s peace is more noxious than her war,’ said Amin.

His words had no effect on me … I was too proud to be one of the select few destiny had singled out to witness firsthand important events in their homeland’s history … I was living the history my children would read about in books … What a crown to wear! I’d make my mark on the city by not leaving her when she ceased to provide me with peace and safety … Yet for all that I thought only of myself, of my day-to-day needs – securing food, drink and survival. Intelligence now meant keeping your head clear of the knife. My relations with the outside world diminished. Amin became my world, his presence, his words, his sounds. ‘I’m made for bachelorhood … Most of my friends have married since the war began. Maybe I should have done the same and married Huda. But Huda is miles away. She chose “the wealthy emigrant”.’

How I long for a woman, for the touch of skin, for springs of affection. How I yearn for a woman. A touch would release my fear and desire … But the lack of one meant Amin could invade my life and take it over – him, his friends and their noisy debates … till I’d escape to write poetry. I just about made ends meet with my salary from the newspaper while it lasted. I would spend half of it and hide the other half. As for Amin, he was excessively austere. Gazing at the chest one day, he commented: ‘Man could live on very little if greed didn’t consume him. The problem with people today is they want too much!’

I couldn’t believe it!

The chest was full of weapons. These, then, were man’s bare essentials, instruments of murder. As for the pretext for his absences, he claimed he was editing articles for the party newspaper, for which he received a trifling sum of money, and stayed there overnight.

‘Why do you work so hard for so little when you could do so many other things?’ I once asked him.

‘I won’t discuss ideologies with you as you detest them…’ he replied. ‘But look at the map of our country. You’ll see it is vast and full of political problems…’

Amin objected to my escapism. Art was just a way of avoiding the ‘real issue’ and I was just another dreamer who cared a great deal about the nation’s disappointments but had found a means of escape in journalism and writing film reviews. It was the same with all our people… Everyone found his own way out. But that day our debate exploded into an argument.

‘I’ve chosen my path and you won’t succeed in changing it. So leave me in peace!’ I threw back at him viciously.

And from then on he did indeed leave me in peace. Our conversations were limited to women, art and memories of before the war … If I asked him about some political event or consulted him about what would happen next, he would say, ‘Read the newspaper. It has all the details.’

One day, I secluded myself in my bedroom and tried to write a poem. When I finished I was surprised to find it packed with the language of war, blood, conspiracy, explosions and bullets. I knew Amin was right. People cannot escape the reality in which they live. I heard the sound of his friends in the other room debating as usual. I felt the urge to join them so went and knocked lightly on the door. I opened it to find a set of alarmed faces. ‘It’s you! You frightened us,’ one of them shouted.