Beirut Blues (28 page)

While Ruhiyya and I began to feel drowsy again, the visit, especially the food, had fired Jawad’s enthusiasm and he questioned Ali eagerly.

The car drew up at a checkpoint. Half-asleep, we heard, “Would brother Jawad kindly accompany us?”

In a split second your spirit reigned supreme again, and it was as if it had never gone away. Ali turned to us and the militiaman had his face inside the car studying us, while he
kept a tight hold on Jawad’s passport and the papers for Ali’s car. Another man squeezed in beside him and looked at us too. “Mr. Jawad, please come with us.”

Ruhiyya screamed, clutching Jawad’s arm disbelievingly. “We came a route which nobody knows. How did they track us down?”

Ali yelled at her to keep quiet. She must have begun to doubt him; I certainly had, but Jawad tried to calm her. At the sound of his voice we both went wild and began screaming uncontrollably at the two men. Ali shouted at us to be quiet. “Can I get out and have a word with you?” he asked them.

“Go ahead,” said the man who still had his head in the car.

As Ali opened the door to get out, he turned towards us. “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

Ali took the man by the arm and walked a little way off with him. Another one stuck his head in at the window for a moment, then straightened up again, resting his hand on the car. We peered out and the sight of Ali with the cigarette still in his hand as he talked seemed to allow us to draw breath for the first time. He drew on the cigarette, and we took another breath, but when he slowly approached the window, we realized that he hadn’t managed to have his way. I guessed there was some real danger as he said in a resigned tone, “Mr. Jawad, it looks as if the boys want to talk to you.”

Jawad got out with difficulty because Ruhiyya was screaming and hanging onto him. Ali opened the other door and began pulling her away while Jawad put his arm around her in an attempt to soothe her. “Take me instead,” she
wailed. “Kill me. Do what you like to me. Isn’t he the same religion as you even if he does live abroad?”

I got out of the car too and caught up with them. One of the fighters was trying to talk to her as she grew more and more hysterical. “Listen to me,” he shouted. “We just want a word with him. We’ll give him a cup of coffee in the office and he’ll be back.”

Ruhiyya appeared to listen for a moment, then started to wail and shout and chase after Jawad again. She clung to him as he comforted her and patted her on the shoulder. Nothing would persuade her to stop until in the end one of them came up and asked me to calm her down, swearing they would have him back shortly.

They didn’t take him into the little room adjoining the checkpoint but went off towards the jeep with him. At this Ruhiyya began shouting again. “See, Asmahan, they’re kidnapping him. They’ve kidnapped him right under our noses. They think he’s a foreign spy.”

One of them was still sticking to us like a shadow and he started to reassure her. “He hasn’t been kidnapped at all. There’s nothing to worry about. He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The sight of Ali climbing aboard the jeep ahead of Jawad set us off again shouting hysterically despite the militiaman’s repeated assurances. “Don’t be afraid. I’m with you. They’ll be back very soon.”

Our voices and his wove together in my head and passed into Ruhiyya’s, then back into mine, so that we became like trees growing so close together that their branches intertwined and they no longer knew which fruit was whose.

“Please get into the car. It’s better if you don’t wait on the road.”

We needed no further incitement to action. Noticing the keys were still inside, I shouted at Ruhiyya to get in, started the engine, and went after the jeep, which was still in sight. Ruhiyya was squirming uneasily like a thirsty plant, but suddenly the life spread through her veins and she started encouraging me as I flew along, my hand never leaving the horn, until the jeep’s passengers noticed us. Ali began giving us directions, and the sight of Jawad’s head from behind reassured us: I wished we were following the jeep to the bank of a stream we’d never seen before, where we would spread out our picnic and put the melon to cool in the water. Then I found myself shouting and swearing. Crying, laughing. I’ve gone crazy living among these madmen whose sterile ideas provoke their frenzied outbursts of noise and activity. What will their interrogation of Jawad achieve? Again I shout, swear, cry. Yes, we’re at war. Gang warfare fought over religion, politics, money.

Once we had entered the small town where there were people and cars and shops, the forlorn emptiness of the plain fell away from us and a sense of calm flowed slowly back. When the jeep drew up in front of one of the many-storied buildings, our optimism grew.

They got out of the jeep one after another like friends on an outing. Ali looked towards us and gave a wave and a smile. Jawad did the same. Then they all went into the building. A pharmacy was tucked away to one side of the entrance, a butcher’s to the other, and on the first floor were the offices of a big bank. The fighter whom we’d left behind
on the plain suddenly appeared and put his head in our car window, so that his face was almost touching mine, and reproached us for running away from him. Then he asked if we wanted something to drink.

I declined, but Ruhiyya answered eagerly, “Quickly, please! Something fizzy to cool me down. God bless you!”

He nodded and stared at me ominously. When he’d gone, Ruhiyya turned to me and said irritably, “Let’s be friendly to them. Please, not another word until our darling’s back with us.”

“That fool’s stoned.”

“I only hope the ones up there are too.”

The youth returned with a bottle of water and stood there holding it. He asked why my eyes were the color they were and pressed my hand as I took the bottle from him. I clutched it, feeling the coldness spreading through me.

“Come on, give me a drink of water. I’m dying of thirst,” said Ruhiyya as if we were two small children.

I loosened my grip on the bottle and passed it over to her. “Struggle. Heroism. Progress. Victory,” the fighter said expressionlessly, like a recording which had been played again and again.

“That’s right, love, God grant you victory, and victory to the people of Muhammad and Imam Ali, Lord,” responded Ruhiyya. She assumed an air of affectionate concern. “Who wants to question him, dear? Get into the car, dear. It’s better not to stand out in the sun. Who is it wants to question him?”

“The lads upstairs.”

“That’s obvious. I mean, what side are they on? We’ve
got connections.” Then she added in some agitation, “I swear we know people who’ll kill anyone who touches a hair of his head. Who do they think he is?”

“Don’t be afraid. Do you think we’re savages or something?”

Fearing she’d insulted him, Ruhiyya backtracked. “Not at all. No offense. I still respect you with all my heart. Just go up and see what’s happening. Please. We want to know.”

“Okay,” he muttered, softening at her tone.

He went off laboriously into the building. We both fastened our eyes on the entrance. Ruhiyya’s seemed to have glazed over suddenly: she neither blinked nor breathed; her face was immobile. After a time I fidgeted uneasily. I looked at her but she didn’t notice me, although she wrinkled her forehead occasionally. I waved my hand in front of her face, but she ignored me or didn’t see me. Her eyes were about to burst out of their sockets. Then Ali suddenly came out alone.

The moment Ruhiyya opened her mouth to speak, Ali cut in: “Jawad’s coming. He’s coming.”

He smiled at me, exposing yellow teeth and a chin like a pit of thorns.

“Please go back to him,” screamed Ruhiyya. “I know he’s coming.”

“Well, Miss Asma. You’ve got some admirers. There’s a young man wanting to marry you but I told him you were already engaged.”

“Why did you say that?” cried Ruhiyya reproachfully. “Say of course you can have her. Then when Jawad’s back with us, we can put one finger up at them and say that was your lunch and this is your supper.”

I laughed, and Ali shook his head. “You’re crazy,” he told her.

“I’m not crazy at all. I brought you down from up there. Mind over matter. When my head began to buzz and hum, I knew you were coming. And if I’d been alone without this ape Asma and all the noise in the street, I could have told you to come much sooner.”

“You’re really crazy.”

The minute we noticed Jawad we jumped out of the car and rushed over to where he was shaking hands with all the men who had escorted him downstairs. Ali took him by the arm. “Thanks a lot, lads,” he said to the fighters.

Ruhiyya threw herself on Jawad and tried to drag him to sit next to her in the back, but he went in front with Ali. When the car had traveled a short distance, she burst into tears. “May God deprive them of the health and strength to do their evil work.”

She embraced Jawad’s head from behind, sobbing as if the enormity of what had happened had only just struck her. Instead of pushing her away, he allowed his head to rest on her hands. Then he turned around to her and stroked her headscarf soothingly. I hesitated a little before resting my hand on his for a moment. He glanced at me and smiled.

Jawad made no comment on the events, even when Ruhiyya composed herself enough to ask him what reason they had for questioning him. When Ali had a chance to ask him what had happened, Ruhiyya interrupted, “You expect us to believe that you don’t know, Mr. Ali?”

Taking one hand off the steering wheel, Ali turned to face into the back of the car. “Muhammad and Imam Ali are
my enemies if I’m lying. Ask Mr. Jawad. They made me wait outside. I stayed right by the door and didn’t move an inch, although the man in charge promised me Jawad was safe.”

Jawad didn’t want to talk about what had happened; they must have threatened him. A long time seemed to pass before we all returned to normal. Staring out through the car windows helped each of us to pick up the thread of calm interrupted by this episode.

We were still caught up in the snarls of your making, in spite of the calming effect of the rocks and mountains and neat stacks of firewood. There was a flock of sheep driven by a shepherd of eight or nine years old; when our eyes met, he held up a black-eared lamb in greeting. A woman sold melons by the roadside. I opened my eyes wide like Ruhiyya and gazed at everything, then closed them so that the sound took over, and when it grew regular, I went over what had happened step by step and arrived at the questions and answers. They were always there, and yet I never paid them any attention before.

Why do people go on doing your work even though they have discovered that it involves nothing but death and destruction and that the politics is not about parties but symbols? I know the answer: because people have a desperate need to enter any conflict which has become familiar and acceptable to them to save them searching further afield and investigating the mysteries of life and death. Therefore, they let your conflict take them wherever it wishes. In spite of the danger, they find they have stopped being uncertain. You give them confidence and a kind of serenity; people make this precious discovery and play your game.

What shall I do with these ideas? Expose them to the light so Jawad can latch onto them and publish them for all the world to see, or discuss them with Kazim and the Modern Sheikh and Ricardo? I recalled the desire in the eyes of the young men, Ricardo, Kazim’s brother, and others, some less than twenty, as they passed around an M16. To them it wasn’t an instrument of death, but something they’d always wanted, like a woman, and now they were in her presence even if they hadn’t all held her.

I confess that I’m living an anxious life in a city of anxiety because of you, but haven’t you exposed and strengthened the core which was so hard to find when the country turned around itself, glorying in its glittering protective shell?

But there I go again describing you as if you are water which has been filtered until it is pure despite all the germs at the bottom. How can I connect the way I have arrived at the essence of things, thanks to you, with my friend whispering to me as I studied her husband’s sculptures, “It’s all a lie”?

I didn’t understand what she meant until she told me the tale of how some militiamen had attacked their neighbors. The man’s wife was cut to pieces and let out a cry which shook the building. When she had called out for help, my friend and her husband, the sculptor, had hastily switched off all their lights and crouched behind the door. She said the sound of the woman’s screams tore at her flesh, but at the same time the desire to save themselves prevented them from doing anything to help.

Jawad talks with his face almost flying out through the car window. I see the pulse in his brown neck. I have never
felt as close to him as I feel now. He’ll continue to be ignorant of what’s happening, even though he has heard and read about you and tried to suffer with those who suffer at your hands, but his imagination can’t grasp the ruins and the deserted shops he’s passing now and he seems to swallow his sentence: “As long as there are people, there is no ultimate destruction.”

His words trail off and he catches his breath with the rest of us at the sight of houses without doors or windows, apparently inhabited only by the cry of birds and the sigh of the wind, although a vine trellis, a television antenna, a clothesline, suggest otherwise.

We approach Beirut. Jawad reads on a wall, “No bread. No fuel. We’re going to die.”

I seem to see Beirut with its soul and guts hanging out, then I see it strong and unyielding and am filled with affection for it. Life appears normal, despite the collapse of its outer trappings. A couple of days before I left, I started writing letters to Hayat and the kidnap victims, not only because most of my friends had gone but because I and those around me no longer talked or listened to ideas which would shake us out of our stupor.

I wonder regretfully now how you managed to make us hang onto you like a baby’s pacifier, and allow you to divert our attention from what was going on in the rest of the world. We crouched listening avidly for news of you from one day to the next, waiting for you to collect your belongings and move on.