Beirut, Beirut

by Sonallah Ibrahim

  I moved over next to her and took her in my arms. She rested her head on my shoulder. Then she looked at my lap. Hesitantly, she put her hand on my crotch, then looked in my eyes and asked, “Did you . . . ?”

  “Nothing happened. That’s not what usually happens with me.”

  “And I wasn’t doing anything to turn you on.”

  I looked at my watch over her head. “It’s twelve o’clock now,” I said. “I have to go. You should, too, otherwise they’ll be asking about you.”

  “Ouf – this city gets on my nerves. It’s so small! You can’t move around freely in it without someone seeing you. I wish we were together in Paris. By ourselves. We could have fights and yell at each other. And sleep together.”

  “There are Arabs there everywhere you look.”

  “True. Alright then, Geneva.”

  “Do you know it well?”

  “Of course. I’ve visited it several times.”

  “And did you stay at the Noga Hilton?”

  “How did you know?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Because all Arabs like you stay there.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Except that the owner of the hotel is an Israeli who gives Israel two million dollars a year. He accompanied Begin when he visited Cairo for the first time. He was with him to welcome Sadat at Beersheba last year.’’

  She raised her eyebrows in disapproval: “And what do I have to do with all that?”

  “True. What do you have to do with all that?”

  After a moment, I added, “Also, I don’t have the money to travel.”

  “I’d pay for you,” she said eagerly.

  I shook my head. “What makes you think I even want to travel with you?”

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asked, putting her hand on my chest to push me away.

  Smoothing her hair, she stood up, picked up her bag and hurried to the door.

  I hurried after her, and grabbed hold of her. Then I put my arms around her and kissed her. Her legs buckled and I clung to her body. She began to move slowly, then pulled away, saying:

  “I have to go.”

  “Did you forget that you promised to drive me?” I asked.

  “It’s better if I don’t, so that no one sees us together.”

  I let her go. I straightened out the couch and adjusted my clothes and hair. Then I put on my jacket and headed outside.

  Chapter 20

  The Sixth and Final Part of the Film

  Title card:

  In May 1977, Menachem Begin became prime minister of Israel. Two months later, he visited Washington, carrying with him a plan to restart negotiations to settle the Middle East crisis. Before he traveled, he declared that Israel was prepared to participate in the Geneva summit, provided that the PLO was excluded.

  But the visit resulted in his agreement with President Carter to get around the Geneva conference and remove the Soviet Union and the PLO from the negotiations.

  There were clear indications about Sadat’s aims, and about the keys to his personality. Begin found the opportunity was a suitable one for conclusively removing Egypt from the Arab bloc.

  Begin began by making hints to Sadat via the royal palace in Morocco that he had information about a Libyan conspiracy against Sadat. He made it clear that he was prepared to give the details directly to a designated Egyptian deputy.

  Sadat hastened to send the director of Egypt’s military intelligence services to Rabat, where he met the head of the Mossad, who gave him the details of the conspiracy. Sadat immediately ordered a punitive attack on Libya. For a full week, Egyptian planes bombed Libyan positions at the borders, and beyond. With these raids, Sadat hoped to prove that he was capable of opposing a regime hostile to the United States.

  Over the course of the following months, there was a flurry of secret communications, capped by a secret meeting between Moshe Dayan, Israel’s minister of defense, and King Hussein of Jordan on August 24, and between Dayan and King Hasan of Morocco the next month.

  Two months later, on November 19, 1977 . . .

  Jerusalem Airport. President Sadat comes down the stairway from his private plane (which cost 12 million dollars, paid for by the Saudis) with Ephraim Katzir, president of Israel, beside him.

  Title card:

  On the first visit of its kind by an Arab president, and under the slogan of “Permanent peace at any price”, and under the auspices of American hegemony, Sadat acknowledged the historical right of the Jews in Palestine, and in the Holy City, not to mention the right to the presence of Zionist settlers.

  This admission was the turning point. Begin started talking about acknowledging the right to the presence of the Palestinians who remained until Zionist occupation, in the form of a plan of self-administration for the inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As for those who were not under Zionist occupation, they had no right to Palestine, and had to be dissolved into the state they were living in.

  The Israeli Knesset. Sadat makes a speech, declaring: “There will be no other wars . . . between Egypt and Israel . . .”

  Title card:

  A few days before . . .

  Israel began testing Kfir planes, which were produced in their factories, in a surprise attack on the village of al-Izziya in southern Lebanon.

  Headline in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: “The leader of the Kfir squadron states that the execution was flawless, and the advanced systems worked outstandingly.”

  Jerusalem Airport. Sadat prepares to board his plane to head back to his country. He shakes hands with the leader of the Israeli Kfir squadron which attacked the village of al-Izziya; he himself is entrusted with accompanying Sadat’s plane in the sky over Jerusalem.

  A circle around a paragraph from an article with the byline of the journalist Jim Hoagland, in the Washington Post: “Investigations carried out by Congress, by way of the committee headed by Senator Frank Church, with some of the CIA leadership, have confirmed that King Hussein received sums of money from the CIA. While Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to bring down the conservative Saudi regime in the 1960s, Kamal Adham, the director of Saudi intelligence and its liaison officer with the CIA, was able to mobilize the greed of Sadat, who was vice president of Egypt at that time. At one point, Adham provided Sadat with a fixed personal income, according to a well-informed source who refused to provide detailed evidence.”

  Ismailia. The Egyptian president’s luxury retreat. Sadat and his wife welcome Menachem Begin and his wife on Christmas Day, 1977. An open-air press conference. Sadat reads from a piece of paper: “We have agreed that the war of October, 1973 will be the last war between Egypt and Israel.” Directly behind Sadat in the photograph, Moshe Dayan’s black eyepatch can be seen.

  Title card:

  Two and a half months later . . .

  South Lebanon, near the Israeli border. Small green tobacco shrubs spread out on the hills and lowlands. Entire families bent over doing farmwork. Camels and beasts of burden. Farmers lie down on the ground, in front of baskets of figs, grapes and prickly pears that they sell with the skin on. Palm fronds and orange tree branches. The Mays al-Jabal pond. Lebanese women wash clothes and household dishes in the muddy waters. Pack-animals drink from the same water. On the surface of the road Palestinian nationalist slogans have been drawn.

  A young Lebanese woman wears a blouse with rolled-up sleeves. Her head is wrapped in a large kerchief tied behind her hair. In front of her is a long low board. On it is a layer of flour. To her right is the oven, consisting of two pieces of stone supporting a brass tray. The woman flattens a piece of dough on the low board, then spreads it out on the tray so it covers its entire surface.

  The same place after sunset. The farmers return to their homes. The roads gradually empty out. From one house comes the sound of a girl singing:

  ‘‘Oh Mama, from Tel Zaatar

  I’ll send you a letter

  From a green tent

  To
tell you what it’s like here.

  Oh Mama, from Tel Zaatar

  Rockets burns the houses.

  Oh Mama, the wounded are dying

  Beirut wails and weeps

  There’s no more houses there . . .’’

  Darkness wraps itself fully around the roads. The howling of a wolf echoes in the distance.

  Title card:

  And suddenly . . .

  Illumination bombs rain down one after the other on the fields. Massive explosions. Tongues of flame dart out in every direction.

  Title card:

  At 1 am on March 15, 1978, the concentrated Israeli attack began for the operation which computers had electronically assigned the name “Father of Wisdom”, but which afterwards was known as Operation Litani. Thirty thousand soldiers participated in it, reinforced by planes, tanks and squadrons. The stated goal of the operation was “creating a security zone 10 kilometers deep”.

  Some hours later, Begin issued a statement in which he said, “There are days in which all citizens of Israel, as well as those of goodwill in different countries, say: ‘Full respect to the Israeli Army.’ And this day is one of those days. Over the last twenty-four hours, in poor geographical and air conditions, the Israeli Army has accomplished the task which the government placed on its shoulders, along a 100-kilometer-wide front.”

  A circle in pen around a paragraph from a book by Ezer Weizman, The Battle for Peace: ‘‘A few minutes after the first Israeli tank crossed the border into southern Lebanon, the telephone rang in the office of Eliazer Raymond, the head of our delegation in Cairo. In spite of the late hour, the leadership in Tel Aviv issued instructions to Raymond to call the head of the Egyptian spy services – General Shawkat – to deliver to him an important message. Raymond notified Shawkat: ‘A short time ago, our forces began a limited operation on the Lebanese border to remove terrorist bases from the region. I hope that this limited operation will not hinder the talks between our two countries.’ ’’

  Dust-yellow Israeli Army tanks advance along a country road. On both sides are Palestinian children, handcuffed and blindfolded. Fires consume entire villages. People run in fear. Houses collapse. Blood on faces. Corpses in the road. A three-year-old girl with blood gushing from her severed leg. A gunman wearing Palestinian insignia fires from the top of a hill. A mortar strikes the hill and it explodes.

  A circle in pen around a paragraph from the memoirs of Muhammad Ibrahim Kamil, Egyptian foreign minister: “The morning after the Israeli invasion . . . I called President Sadat in his presidential retreat in El-Qanater El-Khairia to show him the statement I’d prepared . . . concerning the attack . . . but I wasn’t able to talk to him because he was still sleeping. After that, I continued to try to reach him several more times, at regular intervals, but without success . . . So I went ahead and published the statement without waiting for Sadat’s opinion about it, since the situation was embarrassing to Egypt, especially in the eyes of the Arab world . . .

  “At 1.30 in the afternoon, Sadat called me at the ministry and asked me in a yawning voice why I had been trying to reach him by phone several times that morning, and I replied that it concerned the Israeli attack on Lebanon.

  “With a laugh, Sadat said: ‘Have they given them their thrashing yet?’ I didn’t know what he meant by that, so I asked him, ‘Sir?’ And he replied, ‘I mean, have they taught them a lesson yet or not?’ And I finally understood that he meant, ‘Have the Israelis taught the Palestinians a lesson?’”

  The town of Marjayoun. Two beautiful young women in the uniform of the Phalangist militia have guns slung over their shoulders and are directing Israeli tanks through the narrow village street. They exchange words in Hebrew with Israeli soldiers.

  A van carrying several European journalists makes its way along a dusty road surrounded by trees and rocks. Along the side of the road are wrecked Soviet-made armored cars. From a distance the sound of bombs from Israeli planes reverberates. A Lebanese gunman is in charge of steering the van. Through a loudspeaker, he says: “We Christians have made an alliance with the Jewish people.” Young men in the military uniform of the Phalangist militia and Saad Haddad’s forces wave to the passengers in the van. The van approaches the village of Klayaa. People come out onto the roads. Some of them call out: “Shalom! Welcome!” Several girls run behind the van and throw rice on it.

  The village of Tibnin. White flags on the roofs and balconies of some homes whose appearance suggests that their owners are wealthy. A Lebanese vendor leans contentedly against a Mercedes, having spread out on the ground packets of cigarettes, bottles of whiskey, playing cards and condoms.

  The town of Khiam. Wind whistles through shattered windows. An empty tin can rolls around, making an eerie clatter. The town is completely destroyed, with no trace of human life.

  Title card:

  The town of Khiam had a population of 140 thousand Shia before the Israeli attack.

  The town mosque.

  Title card:

  Under the supervision of Israeli forces, the troops of breakaway Lebanese leader Saad Haddad gathered over one hundred Shia – men, women and children – in this mosque, and set them on fire.

  The town of Marjayoun. Ezer Weizman, Israeli minister of defense, inspects the village. Saad Haddad walks up to Weizman and his companions. He stands at attention silently in front of them, then gives the military salute. He puts his arms around Weizman’s neck and hugs him for a long time, with tears pouring from his eyes.

  Haddad: “All our respect to the Israeli Army. In the name of all Lebanese, I offer a greeting to the Israeli Army.”

  A circle around a paragraph from Israel’s Davar newspaper: “The leader Haddad and the scholar Francis Rizq, teacher of literature in Klayaa and Haddad’s political advisor, are two cheerful and goodhearted individuals, especially when they are under the protection of the Israeli Army. Their happiness shows because they are basking in the light of Israeli and world opinion. They are prepared to answer questions from the press in Hebrew, Arabic, English and French.”

  A convoy of green Land Rovers. The first car carries the leader Saad Haddad who wears the uniform of the Lebanese Army. He is surrounded by his men, armed with American machineguns. The cars pass through an abandoned village. Some of them stop in the village square.

  One of Saad Haddad’s gunmen emerges from a house in the village balancing a wooden table on his head. He heads toward the Land Rover, puts the table in it, and goes back the way he came. Another gunman helps a colleague carry a big gas oven. A third gunman, annoyed, examines the contents of an abandoned house. He only finds a long steel rod, and in exasperation, he picks it up.

  Title card:

  On the fifth day after the start of the operation, the UN Security Council issued Resolution 425, calling for the withdrawal of the Israeli Army from southern Lebanon.

  Two days later, at 6 pm on March 21, 1977, the Israeli Army held its fire after reaching the Litani River, following consultations by telephone between Begin and Washington. The day before, in Damascus, the foreign ministers from the Arab states who refused any acknowledgment of or negotiation with Israel (Syria, Libya, Iraq, Algeria and South Yemen) adjourned their meeting without deciding on any action against Israel.

  Beaufort Castle, which has looked out over southern Lebanon since the days of the Crusaders. Israeli armored cars surround the castle. The main gate to the castle is blocked from inside by the piled bodies of the dead and wounded wearing Palestinian insignia.

  A circle around a paragraph from an Arabic newspaper in East Jerusalem: “This war has restored respect to Palestinian dignity. It can be boasted that the Palestinians by themselves plunged into a war against Israel in full view of a feeble Arab world. The anger from the Arab world has created a feeling of shared involvement and unity, the likes of which the Palestinians have not witnessed for a long time.”

  Washington. The US State Department building. An official spokesman to reporters: “The State Department is s
till studying whether Israel violated its purchase agreements for American weapons, which it used in South Lebanon. The agreements prohibit the use of advanced weaponry (such as F-15 planes) for attack purposes, although they are allowed to be used for defense.”

  A circle around a paragraph from the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: “The commander of the Israeli Air Force, David Ivri, commented on the statement from the US State Department regarding weapons, saying, ‘I can state clearly and decisively that we did not violate any clause in the agreement. We used the planes to defend our forces from the air. This weapon is a kind of powerful shield for our forces, which didn’t result in any violation, because we are only talking about defense.’”

  The Israeli minister of defense, Ezer Weizman, speaks with a correspondent from the Israeli newspaper Maariv:

  Journalist: “In the course of the advance planning, did you take into consideration the complicated aspects of an operation of this size: 150,000 refugees fleeing in fear of the Israeli Army, and hundreds of civilians – or perhaps more – killed and wounded?”

  Weizman: “. . . the Lebanese Civil War has produced lots of refugees, with no end in sight and in numbers that surpass those produced by the Israeli Army’s operation and the operation by the Jordanians in 1970, and by the Syrians when they entered Lebanon, when they slaughtered a lot more ‘ravagers’ than the Israeli Army has in the last ten days.”

  Journalist: “You are an experienced soldier: didn’t you feel a pang of conscience when you saw the Israeli Army using its most advanced planes and artillery, and with a force such as this, against opponents supplied with – at best – Kalashnikovs, and in many cases opponents who have nothing to defend themselves with?”

  Weizman: “In every war you have a heart, a conscience, and all kinds of remorse. Military men who have known the terrors of war and its atrocities up close love peace more than others do. But what should we have done? Should we supply our soldiers with Galil rifles because they have Kalashnikovs? Like anyone else, I have what we can call things that keep me up at night. But I have visited the Lebanese wounded in Israeli hospitals, and I was struck by a feeling that was not entirely pleasant.”