The Storyteller

by Pierre Jarawan

  I make out the houses’ square windows in the distance. A red ball is flying through the air in front of them. It looks as if the wind picked it up off the ground. Then I hear children laughing.

  “Youssef!” they shout.

  “Look, Youssef’s here!”

  Before we know it, a cluster of kids has gathered around us. They cling to his legs, giggling and asking, “Did you bring us anything?”

  They peep at me shyly as we make our way towards the cabins. A couple of them run on ahead. “Mama, Papa, Youssef’s here! He’s got a friend with him!” they cry, and people start coming out of the houses.

  Laughing, Youssef lifts up one of the kids and spins him around. “Now me!” the others squeal, tugging at him and dragging him away. He looks at me, raises his hands apologetically and disappears behind a house.

  As I watch him go, I feel a hand on my shoulder.

  “Samir?” an old man asks.

  “Yes?”

  “Ahlan wa sahlan,” he says, and smiles. A bristly beard lines his jaw, and there’s a gap where his two front teeth should be. “I’m Abu Karim,” he says, holding out his hand. “Youssef said you were coming along. We’re delighted to have you. Come with me.”

  Everywhere I look, there are friendly faces welcoming me like I’ve just come home after a long absence. A village that time has forgotten. The mud walls are cracked, the roofs are covered in moss, old people sit fanning themselves in front of their cabins. There’s a slight bend in the path as it leads past bright barberry shrubs and hens strutting through the grass.

  The sun is low in the sky. Further ahead, people stand in a circle around an old man. I hear him speaking in a low voice and stop dead in my tracks.

  “His house is a bit further ahead,” Abu Karim says, waving me on.

  I don’t move. The wind carries the old man’s voice over to me, and my muscles clench as the scales fall from my eyes.

  “Abu Karim,” I say in a low voice and point to the group. “When did he come back from Syria?”

  The man knits his brows.

  “Abu Youssef? 1992, al-hamdu lilhah.” Thank God. “She was dying, his wife, when he came home. God knows what would have happened to the kid …”

  I squint. The sun is blinding.

  They all lead back to the beginning. And that’s where you are. You and only you, the rustling bushes whisper.

  “You were wrong, Amir,” I murmur and walk on cautiously, holding my breath.

  The circle opens as we approach, and the man turns to us. The sun is shining right into my eyes. I shield them with my hand, and all I can see is a silhouette coming towards me.

  And everyone wondered what it could possibly be that Abu Youssef was hiding up there in his little house.

  “Father?” I say, my voice trembling.

  He steps out of the sunlight and stands in front of me. His beard is long and grey, and bags droop beneath his eyes, but I can see the little dimples on either side of his mouth. He meets my gaze and his eyes flicker.

  -

  14

  I stamp my foot and twirl. My arm is on Youssef’s shoulder, his on mine. The villagers have gathered around, clapping and singing while we dance. The young men quickly join us, and we line up opposite the women, who continue clapping. Shoulder to shoulder, we laugh and dance. Suddenly everyone’s joining in. The children twirl, the women stamp their feet and throw us challenging looks, hands on their hips. We circle each other. An old TV on a windowsill provides the music—drums, tambourines, zithers, fiddles, and flutes. Even the older folk are on their feet, dancing. It’s crazy. It’s magical.

  Through the twirling melee, I catch glimpses of Father making his way round the circle of dancers, his slight limp visible only to those who know.

  A short time later, the aroma of barbecued meat wafts through the village. Steaming cups of coffee and platters of mezze appear on the tables. The flatbread is still soft and warm.

  Beside me is Youssef, my brother.

  “Please,” Father said, “don’t say anything to him.” We were relaxing by the lake. The mountain range on the other side etched a restless cardiogram on the sky, spiking into the clouds. Behind us, the village lay bathed in afternoon sunlight, and children were laughing in the distance.

  We sat there, hardly a word between us, as if the years had rendered us taciturn. There are moments in which silence is enough, when the bond between two people is so strong that not even the greatest strain can break it. Once everything had been explained, no more words were needed. It didn’t take me long to fill him in. My voice caught at some parts of the story, and I felt my eyes light up at others. My hand was beside his on the grass, and our fingers touched from time to time.

  He cried when I told him about Mother’s death.

  It didn’t take long to tell his story either. He told it so quickly I find it hard to believe I spent so many years desperate to hear it. Her name was Layla. She was the daughter of the hotel’s fruit supplier. When Father left her, she was pregnant. It must have seemed like the end of the world to him. I don’t know if there was more to it than his naked fear of the consequences. Before he’d left her on the morning of 17 September, they’d stood on her balcony—he a Christian, she a Muslim—while Muslims were being massacred by Christians in the south of the city. The sky above them blazed with flares that were lighting up the camps. The militias were avenging Bashir’s death. The war couldn’t have made it any plainer—there was no future for their love.

  Father must have realised in that moment that he’d have to leave the country, because the men behind the massacre were connected to the family of the woman he was due to marry. He must have been out of his mind with fear and worry. I find it deeply moving—because it’s so typical of Father—that he refashioned reality in his stories to make it all more bearable. He invented a fairy-tale world in which he was a hero beloved by all, not a coward who vanished without trace.

  “Without your mother, I’d never have had the courage to leave,” he said. “She was so much stronger than me.”

  He took her surname, though not as an act of revenge against his mother. “I wanted to be untraceable,” he said. “I didn’t want anyone to find me.”

  Anyone? That would have included Amir.

  “He was the only one who could have linked me to Layla.” Father looked out over the lake. A gentle breeze rippled the surface. Most of his face was hidden by his long beard, but the regret in his eyes shone all the more clearly.

  “That’s why you wanted him gone—you told Abdallah it was Amir who locked the cellar door.”

  A quiet “Yes.”

  And what about Youssef’s surname?

  Layla had put a missing-person notice in the paper, using the composite sketch. She didn’t mention his name in the notice—I don’t know whether she was trying to protect him or simply didn’t know his surname. Needless to say, no one made contact. Layla’s family disowned her because she was pregnant out of wedlock. Worse still, she was bearing the child of one of those hated Christians. Who knows what would have become of her and the baby if an old man who passed the corner where she begged every day hadn’t taken pity on them? Before he died, a few years later, he married her and gave her his name.

  “Hamoud,” I said.

  Father nodded without looking at me.

  He cried again as we sat there. The sun was dipping behind the mountains, red like glowing embers, as he said, “I loved them both. I learned to love your mother. She was my rational love, the one with the brighter future, the woman with whom I wanted to start over.” He clasped his fingers and looked into the cradle of his palms as if he saw his reflection there. “Layla was my irrational love, the young, impulsive one. I really did love both of them.”

  Of course, hearing all this pained me. I felt anger, disappointment and bitterness too, but also pride—pride that
I’d actually succeeded in finding him. And even if it was disturbing to learn the real reason for his disappearance, it was comforting to know that there was a reason, and it wasn’t me. I wished Nabil could see how all the little cogs were fitting together, how I’d solved the case. I’m sure he’d have been delighted that it all suddenly made sense—the secretive phone calls, the mysterious money transfers. After I was born, it seems Father could no longer ignore his guilty conscience. Seeing me must have been a daily reminder of that other child, the one he’d left behind. He told me he’d tracked Layla down and discovered that the child was a boy. She’d called him Youssef. He began to send her money, anonymously. But at some point she managed to trace the source of the money, and eventually discovered where we lived. On that awful winter’s evening when Father had come home dripping wet and confused, he had just learned that his irrational love was dying, and he knew he had no choice but to leave us. He had decided to take responsibility, ten years too late. The country was attempting a new beginning and his first-born son was there, all alone.

  What would I have done?

  The logs are still burning when we return to the village with the boxes from the car. We stack them carefully in Father’s living room. The young men who’d helped us with the boxes brush the dust off their clothes and bow politely as they leave the room. Youssef takes my arm and leads me outside. When I look back, I see our father take the faded newspaper out of the box and recognise himself in the photograph he used to have on his wall.

  “This young man,” says Abu Karim when we’re all gathered together that evening, “is going to bring us either a lot of trouble or honour and glory.” He pinches Youssef’s cheek. Youssef indulges him and everyone laughs.

  “If anyone shows up and tries to take that stuff away, we’ll put up a fight,” another old man shouts.

  “It’s a pity you weren’t collecting sports pages, young man.” Abu Karim leans in and taps his chest. “You’d have found a photo of me for sure. I was a volley-ball player, a bloody good one.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a whole chapter to yourself,” someone says. Abu Karim waves a dismissive hand. More laughter.

  The air is cooler up here in the mountains. The odd light is still on in the houses behind us, but we’re shrouded in darkness. Only the glow from the shisha coals illuminates our faces each time someone takes a pull and passes the hose on. Father is sitting in a chair opposite me, stroking his beard with one hand. Our eyes meet. He smiles and I smile back. Then he looks beyond me into the distance.

  “If he can pull off this project, he will change the country,” Father said earlier, as we were making our way back to the village from the lake. We saw Youssef standing about a hundred metres away, waving at us. Father’s voice sounded wistful. “Putting his idea into action is going to be difficult, but it could allow future generations to live a life that was unimaginable in my day.”

  I look over at Youssef. The others are still talking about the book, but he looks as if he’s somewhere else, years ahead maybe, looking for a publisher, or up on a podium addressing a crowd of cheering young people. As he stares into the distance, he raises one hand to his chin, and in that instant he is our father all over.

  We are both obsessed by the truth. We have both spent most of our lives searching for that truth. But while my journey ends here, his search will go on. I should be jumping up in outrage, I suppose, shouting at the top of my voice, because his ambitions are based on such false assumptions. But when I see them there together, I can’t help but smile.

  Perhaps it doesn’t exist, the higher truth I’d always hoped for, the one eternal truth that answers all questions, that explains not just facts, causes, and effects, but also the deeper, unfathomable questions: What is it that connects us? Why do we feel drawn to each other? What is it that makes us feel like it was only yesterday that we met, when in fact it was years ago? If it does exist, that higher truth, then it may lie solely in the recognition that we cannot choose who we are. I see Father across from me, and I see Youssef, half-hidden in the shadows, his eyes fixed on a faraway place that promises a better future. And I think to myself, maybe that’s what makes us brothers in the end: our father changed both our lives by telling us a story.

  -

  15

  When Amir had to leave the Carlton, he and his parents could no longer afford to stay in Beirut. So they went back to Brih, where his parents were shot a year later because they refused to leave the Chouf. Amir was forced to watch. His punishment was to survive. He’d cursed Father for years, he told me on the phone.

  I’m leaving the village after three days.

  “Have you got the photo?” Father asked this morning. We were sitting in his living room, surrounded by boxes, like the day we’d moved into our new flat all those years ago.

  I nodded and looked at the Polaroid. Abu Karim had taken the picture. Father’s sitting very straight, looking directly at the camera. His beard is so long it’s almost brushing his thighs. Youssef and I stand either side of him, each with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Did you manage to get everything done?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Except for one last thing.”

  One day I’ll tell my children about these days. They’ll be waiting wide-eyed in their bedroom for the final chapter. Their eyes will light up when I tell them what it was like to meet Abu Youssef and his friend Amir. And I will describe the following scene in great detail:

  The wind was whispering mysteriously as I looked up the hill, which was bathed in a magical glow. Against this soft light, the two figures approaching each other on the slope looked like shadow puppets. One was bent, the other limping. I turned to leave just as Abu Youssef and Amir, after so many years, were reunited for one last adventure.

  -

  Epilogue

  As the saying goes: If you think you understand Lebanon, it’s because someone has not explained it to you properly. The same could be said of my father. Like Lebanon, he remains a mystery to everyone who loved him. A master of the art of survival. An opportunist. A storyteller. He embodied Lebanon like no one else I ever knew—a love of poetry and a love of a party were as much a part of him as melancholy moods and an ability to turn a blind eye to reality. Is he a bad man because of the things he did? Or is it the things he did that make him so human, because they show how he always followed his heart? Did he find what he was looking for? I don’t know. I didn’t ask. The last time I saw him up close, I studied him for a long time so that I’ll still be able to remember his face when the colours of the Polaroid have faded. I think of the little dimples at the corners of his dry lips; the wrinkles, especially on his forehead; the way his beard curls; the deep brown of his now tired eyes.

  The sky is cross-hatched in green, the sunshine filters through the needle-canopy of the cedar I’m sitting under. A lizard darts across a stone. The air is full of the trees’ resiny smell. Beirut sparkles far below, and the mountains to the north disappear in the haze. I am always deeply moved when I think of Lebanon: its undying beauty no scars can destroy, its tragedy, its blessing to be a home to so many—though this has also been partly its undoing. And I’m always deeply impressed by how it perseveres, how it resists this undoing and finds a way to rise up with all its modest strength. Up here you don’t see the lines that divide the country. Up here, you don’t hear the seething. You don’t feel any of the tension in the air down there. This is what Lebanon looked like once. This is the country as Father knew it, the country he learned to love.

  One of my favourite characters in a childhood story once said, “There are two kinds of feelings associated with the word ‘farewell’. A farewell can be sad because what you are leaving behind is so precious and important that you are loath to leave it. But a farewell can also be happy, because the power of what lies ahead does not stir sadness but joyful anticipation.”

  I know how the story ends now, I text Yasmin. My sc
reen lights up moments later: Can’t wait to hear it.

  The cedar I’m leaning against is still young and much smaller than the others. But it’s old enough to have seen this country change, and it will undoubtedly live through many more changes. Will they be for the better, as my brother believes? I don’t know. Perhaps it is essential that we disappear one day, so that future generations can write about us. We won’t feature in the history books we leave behind, so others will be forced to look for clues, to ask who we were, what we did to each other, and why. But many waves will lap at the shore between this and then. Many aeons will go by. And in the end? In the end, the cedars will be there, standing close together, looking down on Lebanon. And if the wind comes from the right direction, blowing up from the sea, you will hear them. You’ll hear the cedars whispering to each other that I once sat in their shade. That I came this way to find my father.

  -

  Short history of the Lebanese civil war to 1992

  1970: PLO militants are driven out of Jordan in the Black September conflict. They regroup in Lebanon. Many Palestinians had already taken refuge there in 1948, fleeing from Israeli troops.

  13 April 1975: In retaliation for an attack on a Christian church, Maronite Phalangists kill twenty-seven Palestinian passengers on a bus in Beirut. This marks the start of the civil war. The country is rapidly divided and sub-divided into territories controlled solely by whichever military organisation has claimed them. The Green Line, the invisible border separating Muslims and Christians, runs right through Beirut.

  Two broad coalitions oppose each other in the civil war: The Lebanese Front on one side, comprising right-wing and predominantly Christian parties, headed by the Phalange (also known as Kata’ib); and the Lebanese National Movement on the other, comprising Palestinian guerrillas, Nasserists, Baathists, Druze, Muslims, and leftists. These coalitions go through various permutations and combinations throughout the war.