The Storyteller

by Pierre Jarawan

  I said nothing. It was better for her to think that. It might make it easier for her to get over me if she thought I was a complete bastard. I really would have liked to ask her in, but it was out of the question.

  “What age are you, Samir? Sixteen? Grow up, for God’s sake!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Well I’m not!”

  She shot me one last disappointed look before brushing past me and trudging off into the rain, shoulders hunched, hands shoved into her pockets.

  That was the first knock-on effect of Hariri’s murder in my own life. The second—an almost absurd twist of fate—had significantly wider implications and was far more destructive. For at the exact same time as I was dripping up the stairs to my flat, Chris, who was still in the library, thought of something. He told me what it was later, when he asked to see me in his office. Being the sort of guy who likes precise details, Chris had gone down to the archives, to a dusty shelf way back in the reference holdings, looking for an old newspaper dated 15 September 1982. He wanted to read up on the details of Bashir Gemayel’s assassination, to see if there were any parallels with the attack on Hariri. He found the newspaper, but not what he was looking for. Which is how he caught me out in the end.

  -

  15

  The Volvo’s engine labours on the steep ascent. The rock face is lined with scree, the road winding up in hairpin bends. The landscape of the Chouf region is full of paradoxes—rocky wilderness punctuated by grassy meadows where goats graze among low pomegranate trees. Mostly what we see is pines and juniper bushes, though. We hear the crickets singing on the slopes.

  I keep going over what I’ve found out so far. The lizard-like Ishaq who liked to keep animals with unusual talents was really Ishaq Abdallah, the manager of the Carlton Hotel. The Ishaq of my father’s stories had only one weak spot, his fear of fire. That made sense, since a fire had left half of the real Ishaq Abdallah’s face covered in scaly scars. The rhino who was unbeatable at cards is none other than Sinan Aziz—I met him myself. I’ve been fidgeting in the passenger seat ever since we left Beirut. If my hunch is right, I already know the name of the man we’re on our way to meet.

  “People are desperately poor up here,” says Nabil. The car jolts over the bumps, the engine howling as he drops down the gears, gravel crunching under the tyres. “There are tiny villages all over the place. People can’t afford diesel or gas to heat their homes in the winter, so they cut wood illegally.”

  He points out the occasional tree stump along the road. We’ve just overtaken a man struggling up the hill on a rickety bicycle in the scorching heat. He was dressed in a grey tunic and a white hat shaped like a slightly tapered cylinder.

  “The Chouf is Druze heartland, has been for hundreds of years,” says Nabil. “Their territory extends as far as the Syrian border.”

  I don’t know much about the Druze. Just a few facts gleaned here and there. It seems like a fascinating religion.

  “How many Druze live up here in the mountains?”

  “About two thousand. Of course, there are also Druze in Beirut and other cities, but most of them live in the many villages of the Chouf.”

  One source I read said that the Druze in Lebanon have the right to administer their own affairs and even have some of their own laws. I ask Nabil if this is true.

  He nods.

  “They are bound by Lebanese civil law, of course, but they have separate jurisdiction in terms of family law. They regard themselves as Arabs, but not as Muslims.”

  I’d read that the Druze are descended from the Fatimids, a branch of Shia Muslims in eleventh-century Egypt, but their teachings also contain elements of Greek philosophy, Hinduism, and Christianity. They believe in reincarnation, for example. They even believe that a Druze who suffered a violent death can, in their reincarnated life, remember their parents from the previous life.

  “How come most of them live up here? Were they given this territory?

  “Yes and no. There used to be plenty of Christians up here too.” Nabil paused. “Not anymore.”

  Sinan Aziz’s words come to mind. It might be enough to say you’re looking for a man who’s a Christian.

  “It’s a dark chapter in our history.” Nabil strokes his beard with one hand, steering the car round a narrow bend with the other. If I stuck my hand out the window, I could break off a sprig of juniper. “The government is making all kinds of efforts to bring Christians back up to the Chouf.”

  “Why?”

  “So that they can come home,” says Nabil. “The ones who were driven out.”

  Goats on the roadside eye us indifferently as we rumble by. To our right, the land falls sharply away. Hills and rocky mountains rise up to the left. Far below, Beirut glistens like a string of pearls, with the sea beyond.

  “It’s a resettlement plan imposed by the government. Forced reconciliation, you could say.” Nabil looks at me. “In Brih, for example, Christian and Druze families used to live side by side. That’s how it was in nearly all the mountain villages. But during the civil war almost a quarter of a million Christians fled the area …”

  The civil war again. It’s an omnipresent theme, the after-effects of which can be seen up to today, though they’re not always obvious. They can be hidden by cranes, cement mixers, and the noise of construction sites that promise new beginnings.

  “The trouble between the Druze and the Christians all started around the middle of the nineteenth century,” Nabil explains. “There was a brutal massacre of Christians in Damascus. Then a massacre of Druze by Christians in Lebanon. Neither side gave any quarter. During the civil war, Christians and Druze fought over control of the Chouf. There was another massacre in 1977, in Brih. Men with machine guns attacked Christians at prayer. More and more families started to flee the Chouf, most of them heading for Beirut.”

  “So this resettlement programme is meant to bring the Christians back?”

  “Exactly. Brih is one of the last places where this ‘reconciliation’”—Nabil supplies the air quotes—“has yet to happen. Very few Christians have come back here, partly because most families have created new lives somewhere else in the meantime.”

  “How do the Christians feel about it? Do they want to move back?”

  “They’re divided. It’s like this, the Chouf was their home too. The older folk remember happy childhoods, family gatherings on the terrace, the Druze from next door coming over for dinner and vice versa. Who wouldn’t want to go back home?”

  “But?”

  “But there’s a law which protects displaced people from paying rent on their current homes. That would all change if they agree to resettle, unless they’re lucky enough to find their original houses still standing.”

  There’s a goat in the middle of the road. It doesn’t even look up when Nabil swerves, driving with one wheel up on the grassy verge until we’ve passed the animal.

  “It’s a tricky subject one way or the other. The government’s going to build a church in Brih, to help the returnees settle in. A school might make more sense, if you ask me. OK, we’re here.”

  Nabil steers the car round the last bend. Ahead, the village nestles in a narrow mountain valley. The blue of the sky lends intensity to the green of the vines on the terraced slopes and the whitewash of the houses dotted around us.

  My pulse quickens when we park the car and walk past the first few houses. The unpaved surface crunches underfoot. There’s hardly a soul to be seen. An old woman in a flowery apron is hanging washing on a line. Two dogs are lazing in the sun, flies buzzing around them. A little boy wearing nothing but a nappy is sitting on the ground beside the dogs and drinking from a water bottle that’s nearly as big as himself. Half the water ends up down his tummy. He laughs and waves at us as we pass by. I wave back. The village looked idyllic and unspoilt as we approached it. Close up, it’s clear that ma
ny of the houses are unfinished projects. Crumbling terraces, unplastered walls, clouds of dust, peeling yellow and blue paint. Brih is a ghost village. A miniature, sleeping Beirut. Rebuilding started, then stalled. New storeys sit half-finished on top of old walls.

  “Are you from the phone company?” The old woman hanging up the laundry is looking at us.

  “Sorry?”

  “Are you from the phone company?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm. I didn’t think so.”

  I look at Nabil. He shrugs.

  “They were meant to come two weeks ago,” the woman continues. She takes a white blouse from the laundry basket and hangs it up without looking at us. “‘Three months’, they said. ‘You’ll have new telephone cables in three months.’ So they said. But nothing’s happened yet.”

  “I’m sorry, we don’t know anything about that.”

  “Not to worry,” says the woman, continuing to hang up her washing. “We don’t even have a phone. But it’d be nice if they told the truth for once. It’s always the same—they make a promise, or announce something, and nothing happens … Oh, hello!” She looks up, addressing someone behind us.

  “Hello,” a man’s voice says, before we’ve turned around.

  “They’re not from the phone company,” she informs him. “I already checked.”

  I can’t see the man’s face at first, as he’s looking towards the ground. All I see is the top of his head and his fine grey hair. His back is badly bent and his shirt cannot conceal a big hump. He lifts his head and looks at me.

  “No matter,” he says. “So you must be Samir .”

  I’m not surprised; I’m transfixed. Images flash through my mind. Childhood memories pull and swirl. I see myself in the shade of the cherry tree. I take Yasmin by the hand and lead her to the steps in front of our building. We are six and eight. Ready, I ask Yasmin, and she nods, barely able to contain her excitement. She sits on the top step and I stand below, like an actor in a play. Yasmin is my audience, her eyes a thousand bright lights. I remember exactly how I felt—paralysed by stage fright, bursting with excitement, presenting a story. Today, I announce with a big smile, I’d like to introduce you to someone, a friend. His name is Amir, and he will be joining Abu Youssef on many an adventure. I look up at her and, in Father’s voice, tell her about the camel Amir, Abu Youssef’s faithful friend. I see Yasmin’s pleasure and bask in her applause. The images keep coming. Now it’s like a curtain has been pulled back to reveal Brih as the real setting of my father’s stories.

  “Amir,” I whisper. I don’t mean to, but my voice won’t come out.

  He smiles. A gentle smile reserved for special occasions.

  I’d like to step towards him, run my hand over his head, and stroke his wrinkled face. I’d like to touch the hump that bears down on him. I want to feel him and see if he’s real. But I can’t move. I’m rooted to the ground.

  He holds my gaze and keeps smiling until I’m able to stir.

  “Come,” he says. “You must have hundreds of questions.”

  His house is one of the few in the village that isn’t a building site. From the outside at least, it looks finished and lived in. The facade is bright yellow, and the polished stone floor of the terrace gleams in the sun. Basil, mint, and a few other herbs grow in window boxes. We’re sitting outside. A lizard darts under a stone. The breeze stirs, carrying the scent of lavender across the open space. A glass of lemonade with ice and a slice of lemon sits on the table in front of me. A few hundred metres away, I see Nabil disappearing behind a wall. He’s taking a walk around the village.

  Amir sits across from me. His whole demeanour is that of an old man. His hand shook as he poured my lemonade, and his eyelids twitched. Yet his voice is steady, more like a man in his mid-thirties. A pleasant, firm voice. It’s hard to look at him and not think of the comical camel. I still feel as if I’ve walked through a magical wardrobe or a tunnel to a parallel world in which all my favourite childhood characters are real. If this is a dream, I’m not sure I ever want to wake up.

  “Nabil was telling me about the resettlement programme,” I say. “When did you come back?” I feel I can talk to him like an old friend I haven’t seen in years, not a man I’m meeting for the first time.

  “I never left,” he smiles. “Except for that brief stint in the hotel. Sixteen months in all. The Chouf is my home. I was born in this house and lived here with my parents. I went to work in the Carlton in March 1981 and came back in September ’82.”

  “You were up here during the war?”

  “Yes. We ended up being the last Christians in Brih. Now there’s only me.”

  “Where’s the rest of your family?”

  “All gone. I have no brothers or sisters, so it was just the three of us, my parents and me. When I moved to Beirut, they came with me. They didn’t feel safe on their own up here. Not that they had it any easier as Christians in west Beirut, but at least the city was bigger than the village, more anonymous. We got a flat in the west of the city. I had a room in the hotel, so I gave what I earned to my parents for their rent. When I stopped working in the hotel, there was no money, so we moved back to Brih. At that stage there were already fewer Christians.”

  “So you haven’t lived anywhere but here since 1982?”

  “No. I only left Brih once in all that time.”

  “To go to Beirut and ask Sinan Aziz about Father?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why did you give up the job in the Carlton if it meant you and your parents would have to move back here?”

  “It wasn’t just the money,” he says. “There was something else.”

  He looks straight at me with his warm eyes, though it seems an effort to keep his head up. I’m guessing that he sees something of the young Brahim in me.

  “Aziz said you were looking for Father because you wanted to forgive him for something. What happened between the two of you?”

  Amir reaches for his glass and drinks.

  “A few years ago, I heard about the resettlement programme, the same one you mentioned. Civil servants and government ministers came up here to tell us about it. They said more than three thousand Christians would be returning within two or three years, that it was time for Druze and Christians to make peace up here. That’s when I thought of Brahim. I liked the idea that we could make peace, even after all these years. All the houses being refurbished or rebuilt in this village used to belong to Christians. They’re going to build a church, lay telephone cables, modernise the hospital, and so on, and so on. The idea is to restore Brih to how it was. I know that won’t be easy. I also know that it’s mostly about politicians trying to make themselves look good with a flagship project. It’s fraught with difficulty as far as the people on the ground are concerned. Still, I like the idea of people coming back. Brih is their home. Some might be friends of mine from way back, people I was in school with or grew up with. It’s never too late to forgive one another.”

  “What did Father do to you?” I ask again.

  “It doesn’t matter now, Samir,” he says gently. “I didn’t find Brahim. His own mother doesn’t even know where he is. When I asked Sinan to call and see her, a couple of years ago, she was under the impression that he was in Germany. The fact that you’re here suggests otherwise. What happened between us formed a dark cloud. That cloud has passed.”

  “I think he’s here,” I say.

  Amir nods slowly.

  “I think so too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t imagine him lasting any length of time away from Lebanon. He loved every stone and every tree in this country.” There’s wistfulness in Amir’s voice, as if he’s remembering bygone times with Father.

  “Were you good friends?”

  “I don’t know whether he thought of me as a friend,” he says. “But we liked
each other a lot. On our days off, we’d often head up to the cedars. Brahim loved it up there. He even showed me his poems once. I’m no expert, but they seemed good to me.”

  The question is still bothering me, so I try again. “Whatever he did to you, it must have been pretty bad if you weren’t able to let it go for thirty years.”

  Amir studies me silently.

  “I understand your wish to know,” he says. “But I’m not going to tell you what happened, Samir. Your father was a good man and I’m not going to tarnish your memories of him over one mistake. Tell me—when was the last time you saw him?”

  “1992.”

  “Were you born in Germany?”

  I nod.

  “1984.”

  “When did your parents leave here?”

  “They fled in late 1982.”

  “And this is your first time here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very different to the image of Lebanon I had growing up.”

  Amir laughs. He puts a hand to his ribs, as if laughing hurts, but it sounds sincere.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” I ask.

  “Brahim? Mid-September ’82. He was still working in the hotel when I left. He was due to get married soon after.”

  “Did he ever show you stories, apart from the poems? Stories he wrote himself?”

  Amir thinks.

  “I only remember the poems, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he wrote stories too. Brahim was a brilliant storyteller. He could talk a tourist into shelling out five hundred dollars for a three-dollar bottle of whisky.”

  I can’t help but laugh.

  “Aziz told me about that.”

  “Why do you ask? About stories, I mean?”

  Amir seems attentive and alert, his gaze warm and steady.

  “Because I know you,” I say quietly. The memories are so powerful I’m afraid I’ll lose my voice. “I’ve known you for a very long time. Father told me stories about you.”