The Storyteller

by Pierre Jarawan

  “OK,” she said. “It’s OK for you to think that.”

  But I could see it wasn’t OK. If my words really had been arrows, Mother would have bled to death. Unable to return my glare any longer, she looked at the floor in stunned silence and waited for me to stop screaming at her. I paused for a moment to make sure my next sentence hit its mark.

  “I loved him. You never did.”

  A whack landed on my cheek. Searing pain exacerbated by shock.

  “It’s my life,” she said. Her lips were quivering, her eyes brimming with tears. “I have a right to live it,” she whispered.

  I turned on my heel, ran to my room, packed my rucksack, stormed past Alina as she stood there staring, and slammed the door of the flat behind me.

  After sleeping with Mathilda at the party, I went back to drinking, and when I got to the point where I couldn’t drink any more, I kept drinking anyway. I danced, flailing my arms and staggering among the bodies flashing in the strobe light. I could smell their sweat, the alcohol on their breath. I danced until I collapsed and fell asleep on the floor. When I eventually woke up, I scrabbled around for my jacket unsteadily and lurched out of the flat, the frostiness of the November night taking me by surprise. The bus driver eyed me as I unsteadily held up my monthly ticket.

  “Don’t even think about throwing up in my bus,” he said. I grabbed a hanging strap and dropped into a seat. The city sped past me, a slumbering creature, pitch black save for the odd illuminated window and the white beams of approaching headlights. I kept dozing off and jolting awake the moment my head tipped forwards. It was while I was being sick in a bush in front of our house that I noticed the light in our living-room window and cursed.

  I tried to slip into the flat without waking anyone, but I knocked over the umbrella stand right behind the door and dragged Alina’s jacket down from its hook. It was nearly four in the morning. I just wanted to go to bed, but as I was creeping down the hall, I noticed Hakim sitting on the living-room couch. Beside him was a man I’d never seen before.

  Later, I lay on my bed, watching the lights from passing cars dart across my ceiling, and tried to make sense of the hollow feeling spreading inside me. I thought of Alina, asleep next door. It would be a few hours before I could tell her. Lying there, hands clasped behind my head, eyes wide open, I wondered what would happen now, what social services would do with us. And I thought of Mathilda, how she had bitten her lip as she took my hands and guided them over her body. I thought about her hair falling into my face when she bent over to kiss me.

  Mother hadn’t found anyone to take care of Alina. She’d called practically everyone she knew: friends, customers, and, in the end, Hakim. He contacted his boss, found someone to cover his shift and stayed with my sister while Mother went off to teach her sewing course. It had taken so long to find a babysitter that she’d had to cancel her MRI appointment. If I’d stayed at home, everything would have been fine. The bleeding in her brain would have shown up in the scan, they’d have performed emergency surgery and saved her. But I’d stormed off. Just as she was getting into her car, I’d been cursing the world and feeling sorry for myself. A cerebral aneurysm, the doctor called it a few days later. He’d been talking to Hakim, not me, but I heard him.

  It was damp and cold all through November. It had rained, hailed, snowed. The only day the sun shone was the day we buried Mother. It felt like a joke at my expense. I wore a black suit that belonged to Hakim and was far too big for me. Alina stood beside a woman from social services and cried. A few people came and shook my hand, people who’d been fond of her. The man who’d been waiting in our living room with Hakim the night she died was there too. He was very tall and broad-shouldered with grey hair, a few wrinkles, and a kind face. He seemed grief-stricken and awkward, reluctant to approach us, shifting from one leg to the other as the priest spoke. Afterwards, he told me to get in touch if I ever needed anything. “Are you a policeman?” I’d asked that night, after Hakim had told me everything. “I … em … no …” He’d looked at his hands, as if the answer was written there. “Your mother and I … we … we knew each other.” The hospital had called him because his was the only number saved in her mobile phone. I hadn’t even known she had a mobile. I felt so ashamed. All those little details over the past few months—the flushed cheeks, the lightness in her step, the girlish giggling on the phone—in my pig-headed self-absorption, it hadn’t dawned on me that she was in love.

  Hakim looked ancient and had sunglasses on. Yasmin stood next to me. She was nearly nineteen. Wearing black tights, a black dress, and a black blazer, she held my hand tight the whole time. I didn’t try to stop her.

  Sometimes I missed it, the magic of our childhood. Sharing secrets, roving about, whispering. But those days had ended when I went into mourning for Father. Then we were just neighbours who got on well, went to the same school, chatted about this and that—anything as long as it wasn’t personal. If Yasmin was hurt by my coldness when all she wanted was to be there for me, she never showed it. She was the same bright, kind girl who’d been my best childhood friend. But now there was an unspoken barrier that kept us from talking about us, about me and her and our feelings for each other. We moved in different circles, especially once she started grammar school. While I was hanging around with Sascha the Porn King, she and her friends spent the holidays travelling around the Amalfi Coast in a Volkswagen camper van. She even sent me a postcard.

  She had a steady boyfriend. I’d seen him with her, coming and going from her flat. By the time Yasmin turned nineteen, they’d been together nearly two years. His name was Alex and he was German. He wasn’t Muslim. The reason I mention this is because, on our street, there were a few Muslim girls Yasmin’s age whose fathers would never allow them to go out with non-Muslims. But Hakim was the world’s most tolerant father. He supported Yasmin as much as he could, and he never told her what to do. Years later, when I read my father’s diary and found out how Yasmin’s mother had died, I understood why. Hakim had had enough of dogma. He was done with religion, and so he let his daughter take full responsibility for her life. Yasmin never took advantage of this freedom. She went to parties and had lots of German friends. But she was also a good student, working hard for her final school exams, determined to go on to university. She wore make up and dressed like other girls her age, spent summer days at the pool and evenings by campfires, went on holidays with Alex or camping with friends. I often marvelled at the young woman she’d become. But sometimes I felt the same way about her as I did about Alina. I was baffled by how easy it was for her to adapt, to integrate. Whenever anyone asked her where she came from originally, she’d say, “I’m German. But my father comes from Lebanon.”

  Nineties Germany seemed oddly unpolitical to me, though in fact there was a lot going on. I sat up and took notice when the refugee shelter in Rostock-Lichtenhagen went up in flames, of course. Everyone on our street was shocked. For a while, it seemed to make the rest of the people in our town more sensitive to the difficulties facing refugees. When I walked past the sports hall, I saw mountains of sacks stuffed with clothes, and lots of volunteers who’d turned up to help. But otherwise, I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in Germany. I didn’t care that we had a new chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who always looked a bit tipsy to me. I also didn’t care that scientists had cloned a sheep. I couldn’t understand why people were making such a fuss about a dead English princess or about Bill Clinton getting a blow job in the Oval Office. My eyes were always on the East. I paid attention when Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, and when Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, as president of Syria. I cared that the Syrians were still in Lebanon and that Damascus was essentially controlling Lebanese politics. And that cranes were towering above the skyscrapers in Beirut, transforming the cityscape—I cared a great deal about that.

  I idolised Rafiq Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister who used much of hi
s personal wealth to rebuild the country and clear away the rubble that had piled up during fifteen years of civil war. To me, he was a one-man movement, a charismatic orator who brought about a recovery in the land of my forefathers. He had thick black eyebrows, a grey moustache, and silver hair combed back, forelock and all, off a round, pudgy face that reminded me of a French mastiff. He looked like a granddad; I could imagine him enthralling his grandchildren with bedtime stories. He was a single-handed national movement because he knew how to touch the soul of the entire nation. Everyone on our street loved Hariri; even Hakim got over his initial reservations. Hariri opened up Lebanon, got the reconstruction process underway, minimised state influence on business. Thanks to a flat tax of 10 per cent on all incomes, the Land of the Cedars became wealthier. People were happy to overlook the staggering increase in national debt, as the fruits of Hariri’s policies could be seen everywhere: new schools, streets, and buildings, regular waste collection …the list went on.

  On 22 November 1998—two years to the day before Mother died—Émile Lahoud succeeded Elias Hrawi as president of Lebanon, thereby becoming Hariri’s boss.

  “Those Syrian bastards,” I heard Hakim say. “Putting that military stooge in so Assad can keep Lebanon under his thumb. Could they be any more obvious?”

  I’d been following it on the news. Syria had pushed through an amendment to the constitution that cleared the way for Lahoud to become president. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been allowed to run. As a former army commander, he would have had to wait three years before standing as a candidate. Hakim had long been railing against the Syrians and their influence over Lebanon. Whenever we watched parliamentary debates on TV, he’d try to explain what exactly the problem was.

  “The Syrian secret service controls everything, sees to it that the cabinet makes the right decisions. The pro-Syrian ministers are given copies of the agenda in advance. The agenda items are listed in one column, and the other column tells the ministers what to say about each item. It’s ridiculous, totally frustrating!”

  He wasn’t the only one feeling frustrated. Rafiq Hariri had had enough too. On 2 December 1998, ten days after Lahoud took office, Hariri resigned in protest over Syrian influence in Lebanon.

  My attitude towards Father changed after Mother died. Unconsciously, I think; it was the only way I could cope with losing both of them. I had to choose a side, and so I blamed him for everything that had happened. It was easier than blaming myself. Up to then, I’d been obsessed with honouring him, protecting his reputation, glorifying his memory until he came back. I’d never had any doubt that he loved us. But now I began to resent him. Yes, Mother’s death had been partly my fault, but it would never have happened if he hadn’t disappeared in the first place. And this blame soon turned into rage. I was sick of being his representative, of keeping a place warm for him, of hoping he’d return. I decided—no, I swore—to chase up every single clue, no matter how tiny, until I tracked him down.

  -

  9

  I stare grimly at the wall. Blurry scenes from the day flash past. The bustling city this morning, the cedar forest. Grandmother’s contorted face. Her voice echoes inside me as if it’s being repeated over a tinny loudspeaker. My hotel room is dark. I’ve closed the window, blocked out the city. Through the thin walls, I can hear the TV in the next room. A presenter moderating a discussion; every now and again, applause breaks out. The air conditioning is blowing a cool current through my damp hair. I took a long shower, washed the day away. Now I’m reclining on the soft mattress with my feet up. I try to make out patterns on the wall—animals, shapes—but I can’t. It’s a different room from last night, same hotel. Third floor this time, number 302. A different receptionist, same perfume. She saw on her computer that I’d checked out this morning and asked if there’d been a mistake with the booking, if I’d intended to stay more than one night. I said no. How was I to know what awaited me in Zahle and where it would lead? I hadn’t known it would lead me right back here. She addressed me as “Mr. el-Hourani” and flashed her receptionist’s smile. I smiled back, happy to have a stranger call me by that name. Not “Bourguiba,” el-Hourani. That’s who I am.

  It was dark when we got back to Beirut. Only the odd light was still on in the towering office blocks. Street lamps tinged the pavements beneath the palm trees orange. A handshake with Nabil before we parted, a grateful smile when I paid him the agreed fare for the day, a brief nod to the hotel porter, and I disappeared into the cool lobby. My thoughts are flitting around like a moth. I look at my rucksack over by the wall. The diary’s in there. I need to think through the ramifications. I must consider the possibility that it won’t be as useful as I thought. Father took Mother’s name, and he never even mentioned it in the diary. Which means there may be other things he didn’t mention. Or that he lied.

  There are earplugs on the bedside table. The hotel management is obviously aware of the poor soundproofing. I jam them in my ears and say the name so loudly that it reverberates inside my head: Samir Bourguiba. I say it over and over. But it doesn’t sound right; it sounds strange.

  I examine the business card May gave me before she’d closed the front door:

  SINAN AZIZ

  RHINO NIGHT CLUB

  AL SEKKEH STREET, MAR MIKHAEL

  BEIRUT

  961 1 701 463

  “Never heard of it,” Nabil said when I showed him the card in the car. “But that doesn’t mean much. Mar Mikhael is the nightlife district in east Beirut. Lots of bars, nightclubs, all fairly pricey. Don’t worry, we’ll find the place.”

  What was I expecting when Grandmother had told May to get the card? Not a nightclub, that’s for sure.

  “Do you know this Aziz guy?” Nabil asked.

  The lights of Zahle had almost disappeared; all I could see in the rear-view mirror were little specks burning out like shooting stars. Shortly afterwards, we turned onto a motorway. BEIRUT 53 KM, the signs said.

  “No, I’ve never heard of him.”

  He asked how the visit with my grandmother had gone, and I told him everything. The car had been shuddering along the poorly surfaced motorway for a while.

  “Nabil,” I said, “I’m looking for my father.”

  “Your father? So that’s why you’re here?”

  “Yeah. He disappeared more than twenty years ago. My grandmother … I was hoping she’d know where he is.”

  “But she couldn’t help.”

  “No. I’d been hoping to find answers there. But all I got was even more questions.”

  “Hmm,” Nabil kept saying, as I told him about my encounter with my grandmother. It didn’t seem to surprise him that my parents had got married in Cyprus. “Well,” he said, “it was probably unusual in those days. But today, it’s a real industry.”

  “What do you mean, industry?”

  “Lots of travel companies specialise in civil weddings in Cyprus. Fly there in the morning, get married in the registry office, have your marriage recognised by the embassy, spend the afternoon in a hotel room, and fly back in the evening.”

  “But why?”

  “Because there’s a niche in the market. Civil marriages are prohibited here. And a religious wedding is only possible if you marry someone from the same religion.”

  “How many couples would actually want an interfaith wedding?”

  “More and more of them. It’s becoming an important issue, especially for the younger generation.”

  “And I suppose the religious leaders see that as a threat?”

  “Exactly. It’s extremely divisive. Taking marriage out of their hands would undermine their authority. In a country like ours? Forget it!”

  “Why can’t there be both? Religious and registry office weddings?”

  “Because that would be a compromise. And these people don’t like compromise. There was this one case that hit the news a little
while ago. We have a law dating back to 1936—a leftover from the French Mandate, pre-independence. It allows for civil marriage in Lebanon if neither party has a religious affiliation. This particular couple had their religion removed from their family registers so that they could have a civil wedding. He was Sunni, she was Shia. There was an uproar. The minister for the interior had to decide whether the marriage was lawful or not.”

  When Grandmother hurled her anger and disappointment over my parents’ civil wedding at me, I assumed it was because of the scandal aspect, especially with the civil war raging and religion being so important. All the more so for a woman like her, who obviously cared a great deal about her reputation. What Nabil was telling me came as a major surprise.

  “Have people learned nothing from the civil war? Don’t they know that they need to put their religious differences aside? Otherwise Lebanon will never be united.”

  “Samir,” he said, looking at me with a smile. “You’re a dreamer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because not much has changed, that’s why. The Grand Mufti of Lebanon himself weighed in, Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani. He issued a fatwa. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it went something along the lines of: Any Muslim with legislative or executive power in Lebanon who spreads ‘the virus of civil marriage’ is an apostate.”

  “He accused politicians of apostasy?”

  “Yes, including the prime minister. As you know, the president has to be Maronite, the prime minister has to be Sunni, and the speaker of parliament has to be Shia. So when Qabbani accuses politicians of apostasy, he means people like the prime minister and the speaker. They’re violating Islam, he says, so their bodies won’t be washed after they die, they won’t be wrapped in a shroud, and they won’t be buried in a Muslim cemetery.”

  “You’re saying this cleric threatens politicians?”