The Storyteller

by Pierre Jarawan

  “I’m not sure I introduced myself properly yesterday,” he says, holding out his hand. “I’m Nabil.”

  “Samir,” I say as the car pulls off.

  “So Samir, what can I do for you?”

  The question catches me off guard, mainly because I don’t know the answer yet myself. He approached me yesterday in front of the official taxi rank. The night was orange, humid, and warm, in startling contrast to the cool, neon-lit terminal. He came up to me and offered to take me into town for a fraction of the usual price. I hadn’t booked a hotel, so he recommended the Best Western and drove me there. Just before we arrived, I told him I’d need a driver the next day and asked if he could pick me up in the morning.

  Nabil noticed my hesitance.

  “How about I show you the city?”

  We follow the dense flow of traffic. Massive waves of glass and concrete rise up beside us: skyscrapers, banks, hotels, office blocks, and apartment complexes with penthouses, everything ochre-coloured, clean, modern.

  “That there,” says Nabil, pointing through the windscreen, “is the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque.”

  I studied my guidebook during the flight here; the mosque was number six on the map of the city’s attractions. “First time in Beirut?” the blonde woman in the window seat beside me had asked as she eyed my book with curiosity. “Yes,” I answered, feeling like a damn tourist. “This is my fourth visit,” she said. “The first time was in the sixties, before the war. They’ve rebuilt it beautifully. Really, they did a great job. If you’re looking for a good place to go shopping,”—I noticed a reddish-gold bracelet glinting on her wrist as she spoke—“go to Hamra. It’s full of designer stores, boutiques, malls, jewellers …” “Thanks for the tip,” I said, swiftly putting on my sleep mask.

  Bechara el-Khoury Road takes us right up to the mosque. There is something almost obscenely beautiful about the two blue domes rising from the surrounding sea of ochre. In the early morning light, the stone looks golden.

  “I heard the muezzin earlier,” I say, as if that’s a noteworthy occurrence in a city like Beirut.

  Nabil looks at me.

  “Are you Christian, then?”

  I don’t reply. It’s been ages since I prayed in a church. I find the hymns oppressive. The way they echo in the hollow spaces of cathedrals and abbeys, reverberating off the intimidating stained-glass windows and marble floors, it makes my chest constrict, and the congregation’s reverent silence is always a bit too deferential for my liking. The muezzin’s song, on the other hand, has always seemed like the call of home. Anything that sounds, smells, or tastes Arabic has that effect on me. It casts a spell.

  “Rafiq Hariri is buried here,” Nabil says. In front of us, the mosque thrusts its minarets into the Beirut sky.

  I shudder. The assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri changed so much for me personally.

  The traffic creeps towards the Martyrs’ Monument like a reptile made of tin. Traffic lanes seem to be an alien concept here; the cars simply squeeze alongside each other to form as many lines as will fit. I see traffic lights, but none of them work. A man in tattered clothes carrying a bucket and a squeegee appears and, without consulting us, starts cleaning our windshield. Nabil shoos him away.

  “Hariri rebuilt everything. That,” he says, drawing a line in the air with his hand, “was the Green Line during the civil war. Christians to the east, Muslims to the west.”

  The heat is fierce, and we’re moving so slowly that no air is coming in through the windows. I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

  “I can drive you around for the whole day,” Nabil says. “My kids are going to my brother’s place after school. I kept the day free for you—I wasn’t sure where you wanted to go.”

  I’m not sure either. None of this was planned. The last twenty years of my life weren’t exactly planned either. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

  “Can we get out of the city?” I ask abruptly.

  Nabil raises his shoulders.

  “Lebanon is a tiny country, my friend. We can go wherever we want.”

  I swallow.

  “The cedars,” I say. “How far is it to the cedars?”

  The city flies past us like a sandstorm. We’ve taken the Ahmad Moukthar Bayhoum motorway southwards from the mosque. Huge billboards line our route, forming a gaudy avenue—Pepsi, 7up, Armani, Chanel, Rolex, Montblanc, Middle East Airlines, and colossal posters advertising American movies. The further we drive, the shabbier the buildings become. Nothing remains of the warm ochre lustre of the city centre; instead, all I can see is drab grey sandstone. Corrugated-iron shacks are dotted between tower blocks, knots of cables dangle from windows like bird’s nests, faded laundry hangs on rusty iron grilles between water canisters and piles of rubbish. The contrast between the glamorous billboards and their surroundings soon becomes absurd. On the footpath, I see three women shrouded entirely in black. Above their heads, a massive poster on the wall of a tower block shows a model lounging seductively in transparent lingerie. VICTORIA’S SECRET, it reads, 25% OFF BRAS AND PANTIES. A few metres on, when I get to see the front of the building, I realise it’s little more than a skeleton. Bombed out and empty, the former apartments like missing teeth in the crumbling facade.

  Nabil follows my gaze.

  “Not everything was rebuilt,” he says.

  We keep heading south. The city centre shrinks in the rear-view mirror. Soon entire towers fit within its frame. The sea is to the right, but I only catch the odd glimpse of silvery blue, as the road is still densely lined with buildings. Almost every tower block here bears scars; the craters made by rocket launchers disfigure the facades like an ugly rash. I recline my seat, close my eyes and feel the wind stroking my face. All I want to do is sleep.

  “Stupid jackass, son of a camel!”

  I jump.

  “May thousands of flies fart into your father’s beard!”

  Nabil pounds the steering wheel and beeps the horn.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He didn’t indicate,” Nabil complains, pointing to the silver Mercedes with tinted windows that’s overtaking the cars ahead of us.

  I stare at him. He shrugs.

  “I try to set a good example for my kids. I say, if you must go joyriding in my car, then at least follow the traffic laws. That means you have to indicate. Then they look at me and say, ‘Traffic laws?’ Do you know how many road fatalities there are here every year? Nearly eight hundred. No one in this country indicates. Most people think that little stalk is an ejection button or something.”

  “Do you curse like that in front of your kids?”

  He shrugs again, but this time he’s smiling. It makes him look much younger, almost impish, an adult fenced in by responsibilities and routines who makes the most of the little moments when he can break out.

  “Your Arabic is pretty good,” he says, nodding at me approvingly.

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you Lebanese?”

  Now there are hardly any high-rises to the left of the motorway. They’ve been replaced by run-down buildings bordering heaps of rubble, and by smaller shacks, with children playing football between the piles of rubbish out front. Dogs doze in the shadows.

  “Is this still Beirut?” I ask.

  Nabil nods.

  “Refugee camps.”

  “Syrians?”

  “Palestinians. Third or fourth generation by now. Syrians too, but there aren’t as many of them. Over there,” he says, pointing out his window at the corrugated-iron roofs melting into the horizon, “that’s Sabra and Chatila.”

  Sabra and Chatila. Their very names send a chill down my spine.

  We drive on in silence. I don’t know what to say, and Nabil seems to be reluctant to badger me with too many questions. He has pulled down the sun visor and is staring resolutely ahead. When he c
atches me looking at him, he glances over and smiles. I turn away in embarrassment. After a while, he starts squirming in his seat. The silence seems to unnerve him.

  “So, Samir, what are you here for? Business?” he eventually asks, making an obvious effort to sound casual.

  The question was bound to come up sooner or later. Still, it makes me uneasy.

  “No.”

  “Holidays?”

  I think about whether to lie or not.

  “No. I’m looking for something.”

  “For a nice hookah?”

  “For a person.”

  He takes his eyes off the road and peers at me.

  “Are you a private investigator? Like Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  “I love Philip Marlowe.” I believe him; he sounds like a boy squealing, “I love water slides!” He drops his pitch to an unexpectedly gravelly drawl and says, “Heat cloaked the city like melted cheese on a Hawaiian pizza.” He draws an arc with his arm as he speaks, as if he’s standing on a hill and gesturing at the valley below. “Crazy guy, Philip Marlowe!” he says, laughing.

  I don’t really want to tell Nabil what I’m looking for, and he seems to have picked up on my reticence. But now the topic is lurking in my head like a spider in a web, and I can’t stand the silence any longer.

  “I want to get married,” I blurt.

  “Ah, so you’re looking for a woman! Why didn’t you just say so?” Nabil bangs on the steering wheel, accidentally sounding the horn. “Would you like me to introduce you to my sister?”

  “No,” I say. “No thanks … I already have someone.” I pause before adding, “It’s a bit complicated.”

  I can practically see it right in front of me: the pretty blush my proposal painted on her cheeks. I see us standing on the riverbank and her giving me back the ring. I think about the task she set me. About her ultimatum. “We both know you’re not ready for this yet,” she said. “You need to sort your own life out first, Samir. I don’t know what you’ll find there or whether you even know what you’re looking for. But if this is what you need to do, then do it.”—“Don’t you want to come with me?”—“No.” She paused and added, “There’s nothing there for me.”—“But I don’t know how long it’s going to take,” I said. “Will you still be here when I come back?”—“It doesn’t matter when you come back. The question is how you come back.”

  “It’s always complicated,” Nabil says, nodding as if he’s just solved a difficult equation. So simple, a universal sentence capable of ending any awkward conversation.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Didn’t we decide to drive to the cedars?”

  “Yes, but I mean where exactly?”

  “Maasser el-Chouf.” He nods towards his side window. I hadn’t noticed how much the traffic had thinned. The sparkling blue sea is to our right, and a mountain towers to our left. We turn off into a badly tarred, potholed side road, and soon we are lurching our way up a winding mountain pass.

  It takes me a moment to realise the song isn’t playing in my head. How strange to hear it again here, now. It’s disconcerting. I force myself to keep my eyes open, because I’m afraid that images of a happy childhood will start to flash before me: walks on summer days, singing together. My body rigid, I stare at the radio as it broadcasts first the melody and then her voice: Sa’aluni shu sayir bi-balad al-’id, mazru’ata ‘addayir nar wa bawarid, ‘iltilum baladna ’am yakhla’ jadid, lubnan alkarāmi wa al-sha’b al’anid.

  “That’s Fairuz,” Nabil says, adopting the tone of someone who has just had their first sip of an exceptionally rare wine. He turns up the volume. “The Harp of the Orient.”

  “I know,” I say. There’s a hairpin bend in the road ahead. Cold sweat breaks out on my forehead, reminding me of the many nights I’ve woken up screaming. “I know this song.”

  -

  2

  We waited forty-eight hours before calling the police. I knew from films that you’re supposed to wait at least twenty-four hours before reporting someone missing. We waited twice as long. I remember the sealed emptiness of the flat as I walked around in my pyjamas the next morning. The kitchen tap was dripping, and there was a bowl of oatmeal and a carton of milk on the table for me. In front of the bowl, a note from Mother: Back soon. I remember her returning a little later with Alina in her arms, putting down her shopping bag and casually asking where Father was, her brow furrowing when I shrugged, pointed to the key rack beside the door, and said, “I don’t know, but he forgot his key.”

  It’s painful to think that we went tobogganing again after breakfast. We took the car this time, just as Hakim had promised. Yasmin and I giggled and played around in the snow while he sat a little apart and watched us pensively. And it’s painful to look back now and understand why his behaviour was so different that day: why he barely spoke a word, said yes to everything we asked for. In my childish excitement over the snow, I didn’t give a minute’s thought to his tears the night before.

  I remember that Father didn’t cross my mind the whole day. I had no doubt he’d return that evening, maybe even with another story for me. But it turned pitch-dark outside and I stayed up way past my bedtime, and still he didn’t come back. When I finally fell asleep beside Mother on the couch, she carried me to my room. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realised his shoes still weren’t in their usual place in the hall and his jacket was still missing from its hook.

  Apart from the absence of these two items, there was nothing to suggest he wouldn’t come back. I simply did not grasp—and in fact, would never fully grasp—that he’d disappeared. When I took Alina from Mother and walked around the apartment gently rocking her, it never occurred to me that she would grow up without a father. Or that he wouldn’t see Alina take her first steps, wouldn’t hear her say her first word. That he wouldn’t be there for her first day at school, wouldn’t sit in the audience and clap at her first school play. That he wouldn’t be around when she brought her first boyfriend home and danced at the school prom.

  Nor would he ever know how I cut my chin the first time I shaved. How my first kiss was with a girl called Hannah, how it was sloppy and tasted of cola-flavoured Hubba Bubba. I’d never have dreamt back then that I’d come to curse my own father for what he did to us, for what he continued to do to us every day in the years that followed, even though he wasn’t around anymore. I didn’t grasp that life as we’d known it was now over. Even on the second day after he went missing, I had no doubts he’d return. The story he’d told me had been a declaration of love, a vow that nothing comes before family.

  The police were perfectly friendly. Two officers stood in front of Mother, questioning her in calm but insistent tones, one of them noting down her answers. Had anything like this ever happened before, had he had an argument with her or anyone else? Did he have friends he could stay with, had he mentioned anything about wanting to go away? And could she provide them with a recent photo? Mother answered all their questions patiently. I sat on the floor in the corner of our living room, eyeing the men and their heavy boots and uniforms. They knocked on Hakim’s door afterwards, but I don’t know what he told them. Half an hour later, I peeked out the window and saw them get into their patrol car and drive away. Needless to say, the neighbours had spotted the police car and knew that something was up.

  Brahim the storyteller had gone missing—the news swept through our neighbourhood like a tsunami. I realised then just how popular he’d been. The baker put a few extra bread rolls and a stick of rock candy into my bag, and strangers stopped me on the street to tell me how their paths had crossed with my father’s. Their parting words were always, “I hope he comes back soon, I really do,” or “He was—I mean, he is—a great guy, your father.” Months later, copies of his photo were still hanging on almost every streetlamp and traffic light
. It was as if he’d merged with the town itself. It was as if he’d left not just Mother, Alina, and me behind, but every single person in our neighbourhood.

  One day, a group of teenagers stood in front of our building. I recognised them; one was the boy with the horseshoe-shaped scar. When they rang the bell, I opened the window and looked down.

  “We’re going to look for your father,” they said. “Want to come?”

  In their black bomber jackets, their arms folded, they stood there in a semicircle like a gang. In reality, they were puppies trying to convince themselves they were bulldogs. We each carried a stick and tramped through a dense little wood, poking around in the snow as we went. That’s what you do when someone goes missing; the boys had seen it in films. We walked side by side in silence, the cold air making our noses run. The only sounds came from the frozen ground crunching beneath our feet and our sticks prodding the snow but failing to find anything.

  “Remember the time Brahim organised a table-tennis tournament?” one of the boys said after a while. His name was Milan, I think, and he was Czech.

  “Yeah,” said another boy. “He even got a trophy, engraved and everything.”

  “I still have it at home,” said the boy with the scar. “I thrashed you all.”

  “Only cos you kept spinning the ball, you moron.”

  “So? There’s no rule against that.”

  A few more anecdotes about my father followed. They told stories and nodded along like old friends sitting around a campfire remembering the good old days.

  I listened, biting back the tears. It had soon become apparent that they never really expected to find Father out here. They’d just wanted to do something, contribute in some small way.

  The police came by a few more times to ask questions. They even searched the wood themselves, and a few weeks later, when a walker found a jacket similar to Father’s near the lake where we’d launched our little ships, they sent out divers, who found nothing. No one found him. There was still no sign of him after the snow melted, uncovering the fields and the first snowdrops, nor when spring dotted the same fields with crocuses, bluebells, hyacinths, and later lilies of the valley; still no sign of him come summer, when children played football in those fields; and no sign when autumn leaves began to cover the grass. He remained lost without a trace, like a sunken ship.