Gate of the Sun (41 page)

“There's no such thing as Classical English,” I said.

“What are you talking about, man? All the languages are the same. There's colloquial Arabic and Classical Arabic and there's colloquial English and Classical English, am I right?”

“No,” I said, “but it doesn't matter.”

“Do you want some shampoo?”

He got up and fetched a black leather case, opened it, and took out a number of bottles.

“I sell shampoo to keep myself busy.”

He went over to the actress and indicated that she should buy some. Catherine took a bottle and seemed embarrassed, not knowing what she should do.

I snatched the bottle from her and gave it back to Salim.

“Forget it. Try it on someone else.”

“Let them make up their own minds, brother. Maybe they would have bought some.”

“Leave it alone, Son. Forget it,” I scolded him in a loud voice.

“Why don't you buy some, Doctor, and dye your hair,” said Salim.

“What's he saying,” asked the tall man.

“He's selling dye,” I answered, and quickly told him the story of Salim's white hair.

“Don't tell him,” said Salim. “If you want, I'll tell him myself. But did you believe my story? I only tell it to sell shampoo.”

I looked at Abu Akram and saw his lips curling in a kind of smile, and his small white teeth – as white as those of a young child – appeared.

“What? What?” asked Catherine.

“Buy the shampoo, and I'll tell you,” said Salim.

The girl took the bottle of shampoo and asked how much it was.

“It doesn't matter,” said Salim. “Pay whatever you want.”

Catherine took a hundred-franc note out of her little purse and gave it to Salim. Salim took the note, looked at it for a while, then handed it back to Catherine and turned to me, “No, Brother. I was just joking.”

“Which part was the joke,” I asked him, “the shampoo or the white hair?”

“You guess.”

Salim took the bottle from Catherine, put it back in his leather case, said goodbye, and went off.

Abu Akram then explained that Salim joked around all the time, treating his tragedy as comedy; he is alone in life and needs work.

“What did he study?” I asked him.

“Nothing, my friend,” he said. “We're all children of the revolution, and what can you study in the revolution?”

“Tell him to come and see me at the hospital. Maybe I can find him some work. But is his story true?”

“Of course, of course,” said Abu Akram. “He's the only one of his family to have survived.”

“What about his mother?” I asked.

“His mother died, but he insists on saying she picked him up and escaped with him. She didn't pick him up. They found him under the bodies; they pushed the bodies away and took him to the hospital, and there they discovered that every hair on his head had turned white.”

“And America?”

“What America, Brother? His aunt lives in Detroit, that's all. Do you think someone like Salim or like us can get a visa for America? Out of the question! He just loves the cinema. He sees Al Pacino's films dozens of times each and learns the dialogue by heart. He puts the films on the video machine and says the words along with the actors. That's how he learned English – monkey see, monkey do.”

“And the shampoo?” I asked.

“That's a different story,” he said. “The shampoo came after the Ekza.
Do you know what he was doing for a living last year? He'd go out to al-Fakahani with a bunch of small bottles, stand in the middle of the road and shout, ‘Ekza for pain! Ekza for rheumatism! Ekza for impotence!' He'd invented a medicine he called Ekza and he'd package it in empty bottles and sell the bottles for three thousand lira each.

“‘Ekza!' he'd shout, opening a bottle and drinking the contents in front of everyone. ‘Drink and get well! Rub it on where it hurts and the pain will go away!' And people bought the stuff. Then they arrested him.

“They took him to the police station on the new highway, where he confessed that Ekza was a mixture of water and soya oil, and that it was harmless. The officer smiled and told Salim that he'd overlook it this time on condition that he didn't do it again. But instead of leaving, Salim took out a bottle and offered it to the officer saying he'd give him a good price and sell him the bottle for two thousand, now he'd become his friend, and that Ekza cured everything, especially constipation.

“The officer lost his temper and ordered him to be beaten and put in jail. They practically beat him to death and left him to rot for more than a month.

“When he returned to the camp, he said they'd released him because they were scared of him and his hair that had turned white overnight.

“After his ordeal in jail, Salim decided not to leave the camp. He stopped making and selling Ekza and started selling shampoo. Yesterday, if you'd seen him, you'd have understood how he works.”

“And is it real shampoo?” I asked.

“I don't know,” said Abu Akram, “but he stands in front of the mosque, washes his hair, and people buy.”

“What's he saying?” asked the tall man.

As I told him the story of the shampoo, I was looking at Catherine, expecting a reaction, when we heard a racket outside the door. The bodyguard Abu Akram had sent to look for Daniel had returned with him. Daniel came in with three children larking around while he handed out chewing gum and chocolates and they argued over them.

“Get the children out of here!” shouted Abu Akram.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Walking around,” he said. “And, as you can see, I like children.”

The tall man stood up and Catherine got ready to go; it seemed they'd lost interest. They didn't ask for more information about Salim.

Abu Akram asked if I'd taken them to the mosque-cemetery.

I said no.

“I'll take them,” he said. “Thank you, Doctor.”

I was on the verge of leaving when Catherine asked me what Abu Akram wanted.

“He'll take you to the cemetery,” I said.

“But we've already seen the cemetery,” said the tall man.

“The one at the mosque,” I said, and explained how we'd turned the mosque into a cemetery during the siege.

“Another cemetery!” exclaimed Catherine, and her lower lip started to tremble. “I don't want to, I don't want to. I want to go back to the hotel.”

I told Abu Akram that our friends were tired and it would be better to take them back to the hotel, but Abu Akram insisted and asked me to translate what he said. He started talking about death, and about how we as a people regarded the dead as holy, and that if Shatila hadn't stood fast during the siege, the Gaza and West Bank
intifada
^*
would never have happened.

I interrupted and said I wasn't going to translate. “Can't you see, my friend, the woman's crying and the man's trying to calm her down, with his pale face and his bald spot shining with sweat? Drop it and let them go.”

I heard the girl whisper to the tall man that she wouldn't do the part: “I'm scared. I won't do the part, and I want to go back to the hotel.”

I translated this to Abu Akram, and the fat man said he understood and went over to pat her on the shoulder. The moment his hand touched her, she trembled and pulled back, as though she'd received an electric shock, and I saw a sort of fear mixed with disgust in her eyes.

I left them there and walked out without saying goodbye.

Shit!

Is this what things have come to? They're afraid of the victim! Instead of treating the patient, they fear him, and when they see, they close their eyes. They read books and write them. It's the books that are the lies.

But why does the image of Catherine stick in my mind? Perhaps because she's young and inarticulate, or perhaps because of her short hair, cropped like a boy's. I must have felt something for her, especially when her lower lip started trembling. It started when I translated parts of the anecdote about Salim, and especially the part about how he used to stand in front of everybody and dye his hair in order to sell the shampoo. Catherine didn't laugh like me and Abu Akram and the tall man. Her face seemed obscured by a dark veil, as if she'd seen us playing out our own deaths. I think she thought we were beasts. How can we take all that and not implode?

In fact, Father, wouldn't it be better if nobody saw us? Otherwise, why would they want to build a wall around the camp? The Lebanese journalist I told you about spoke to me about the wall. He said the government would soon complete the rebuilding of Sports City, which was demolished by Israeli planes, and that Beirut was going to host the next Arab Games, and it would be better for the Arab athletes if they didn't see.

They solve the problem by covering their eyes. And maybe they're right! In this place, we're a kind of a dirty secret. A permanent dirty secret you can only cover over by forgetting it.

“I'd like to forget, too,” I told Baroudi when he invited me to Rayyis' restaurant.

I'd prefer to forget, and my encounter with Boss Josèph changed nothing because I'm not seeking revenge.

Can you believe it? The man invites me to meet with one of the butchers of Shatila, and I tell him there's no point because I don't hate them.

“There is a point,” said the journalist. “I want you to come because I'm going to write about reconciliation and forgiveness.”

“But I haven't forgiven him or the others,” I answered.

“Never mind, never mind. What matters is how you feel.”

“And what about how he feels?” I asked.

“About what who feels?” he asked me.

“This Josèph that I don't know.”

I went out of curiosity, since I don't know East Beirut, and I'd never had the chance to meet someone we'd fought. The civil war had become a long dream, as though it had never happened. I can feel it under my skin, but I don't believe it. Only the images remain. Even our massacre here in the camp and the flies that hunted me down I see as though they were photos, as though I weren't remembering but watching. I don't feel anything but astonishment. Strange, isn't it? Strange that war should pass like a dream.

What do you think?

If you could speak, you'd say that the whole of life seems like a dream. Maybe in your long sleep you're floating over the surface of things, as eyes do over pictures.

We went to Rayyis' restaurant and waited, but he didn't come.

We sat at a table for four. The journalist ordered two glasses of arak and some hummus and tabouleh, and we waited. Then a group of young men came in. Their hair was cut like youths in the Lebanese Forces.

“Nasri!” yelled Baroudi, who jumped up from his seat to embrace him.

“What are you doing here?” asked Nasri.

“What am I doing? I'm getting drunk,” answered Baroudi.

“Come and get drunk with us,” said Nasri.

“I can't. I have a guest. And we're waiting for Boss Josèph.”

I found myself at their table. There were six young men and a young brunette in a very short skirt and a low-cut blouse. It seemed to me she must have been Nasri's girlfriend because whenever she got the chance she'd put her hand in his.

They laughed and drank and ate and told jokes. I tried to match their mood, but I couldn't, it was as though my mouth were blocked with a stone, or I was ashamed of my Palestinian accent.

Baroudi broke the ice and told them who I really was: “I forgot to tell you that Dr. Khalil works for the Palestine Red Crescent in Shatila.”

“Welcome, welcome,” said Nasri. “You're Palestinian?”

“Yes, yes.”

“From Shatila?”

“Yes. Yes, I live in Shatila, but I'm originally from Galilee.”

“I know Galilee well,” he said, and he started to tell me, to the delight of his companions, about a training course for parachutists that he'd taken part in in Galilee.

“Have you visited Palestine?”

“No.”

“I know it well. You have a beautiful country. It's a lot like Lebanon, but the Jews have fixed it up, and it's in good shape. The way it's organized is astonishing – gardens, water, swimming pools. You'd think you were in Europe.”

He said they'd done their training in a Palestinian village. The village was just as it had been, but weeds had sprouted up everywhere.

“What was the name of the village?” I asked.

“I don't know. They didn't tell us, and we didn't ask.”

“It was a small village,” said another youth, called Maro. “In the center of it, there was a big rock.”