“You should share your secrets,” Pierre said.
Ari looked at him then smiled and turned away to study the passing crowd of believers. “Come Ramadan in mid-September they’ll be gorging themselves in the halal restaurants at night. You said you were Christian?”
“I don’t remember saying. You keep track of Ramadan?”
“The culture interests me, obviously. Clean living keeps the conscience clean. They sleep like logs, I’m sure.”
Pierre puffed. “I can see your interest in Islam. Not just the politics. Faith interests me too. Anything I can’t have intrigues me.” Another puff. “I’m not much of anything anymore. You?” He dropped the cigarette and crushed it.
Ari shrugged. Cars drifted by. A siren sounded, then the hoarse hooting of a fire truck. Ari opened his mouth to speak, but out of nowhere three speeding Harley-Davidsons appeared and geared down deafeningly right in front of them. Ari stared with obvious contempt, but said nothing.
“Assholes,” Pierre said. The motorcyclists were staring back at them. You could read their minds. Pathetic old men.
Ari nodded. One of the motorcyclists smiled wickedly.
Pierre said, “Once upon a time we could have made this moment interesting. Yes?”
Ari laughed. “Yes. Very interesting.” Together they watched the Harleys roar away, through a red light at the corner, narrowly missing a pedestrian.
“Jesus Christ,” Pierre said.
“We’re getting old,” Ari said.
“Speak for yourself.”
“Religion,” Ari said. “I guess for some it holds everything together.”
“Or blows everything apart.” Pierre’s brain was soaring on the waft of the tobacco drug.
“You can make that argument, yes. Lebanon, of course.”
Ari resumed his study of the passersby. “I worry about them,” he said. “They have a big problem now, their young people, influenced by fanatics.” He nodded toward the mosque. “But on a personal level, in moderation, it’s like everything else. It can be an asset.”
“I didn’t think you were religious.”
“I’m not.”
“Well.”
“My mother was sick for a long time. I watched her suffer. Her religion was a great comfort—it made her unafraid. And look at these people.” He nodded toward the mosque again. “Death as a road to paradise, imagine having that.”
“Your mother died twenty-five years ago. You still think about her?”
“Twenty-five years ago, yes.” Then he looked at Pierre intensely. “How did you know that?”
“You told me. September 1982.”
“You have a good memory.”
“It was a memorable time.”
“Yes.”
“Many things to keep a person awake at night.”
“I suppose. But awake is still alive, isn’t it?” Ari stood and stretched, shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
“I was Damouri Brigade,” Pierre said.
Ari sat, fished out the package of cigarettes, held it toward Pierre. He shook his head.
“Damouri Brigade,” Ari said, his expression puzzled. Then, “Ah, yes. Damour. Terrible.”
“Elie Hobeika. You know the name?”
“His girlfriend was from Damour. I remember it seemed to justify so much of what he did. He had a funny nickname, didn’t he?”
“HK. Not so funny.”
Ari laughed. “HK, Heckler Koch.”
“His weapon of choice.”
“You knew him?”
Pierre felt a tightening in his chest. “Who didn’t?”
“Damouri Brigade. It’s coming back. Something about the camps.”
“Hobeika became head of intelligence for the Phalange.”
“I see.”
“The last time I saw him he was with someone from IDF intelligence. At the stadium. But you don’t remember.”
“What was HK doing at the stadium?”
“I’m more curious about IDF intelligence.”
“You should ask Hobeika, yes?”
“Hobeika is dead. You didn’t know that?”
“I’m not surprised. There are many people who would not be surprised or sad. He was your friend?”
“We had a falling-out.”
“Of course. So much falling out in Lebanon. Friends today, enemies tomorrow. But on September eighteenth you were still friends?”
Pierre knew he’d said enough.
Ari sighed deeply. “I wish I could help you, but as I said, I was in Tel Aviv.”
“Your mother.”
“My mother was a wonderful woman. Born here but a true Sabra. She raised us mostly on her own. Did I tell you that?”
Pierre decided to keep silent. But in the silence, long-suppressed images began resurfacing. Shaved skull, unshaven face. He struggled to refocus. Failed. Time to leave. He stood.
Ari caught him by the forearm. The grip was firm, persuasive, not coercive. Pierre sat. He looked around as if the bar had suddenly become unfamiliar. “I should go.”
Ari said, “Wait.” Waved his hand at the bartender whose name was Tal. Turned back to Pierre. “You should try harder to forget about 1982, Beirut, Hobeika, the camps, the stadium. It is unhealthy.”
“It’s not so easy,” Pierre said.
“You want to know the secret that enables me to sleep? It is to understand that it’s always dangerous to think as an individual when you are in a war.”
Tal appeared, smiling. “Yes.”
“Two double Glenfiddich, neat,” Ari said.
“I’m not sure,” Pierre said.
Ari ignored him. “We are not individuals in a war. We are components. Do you understand? The responsibility for what happens is collective. Am I clear?”
“Sometimes…”
“No.” He had Pierre’s wrist now and the grip was almost painful. “Not sometimes. Always. Collective responsibility, yes. Individual responsibility? No. That’s sentimental. Sentiment is dangerous.”
“If you weren’t at the stadium, you don’t…”
“Listen to me. Fuck the stadium. We killed terrorists.”
“Women and children?”
“The children were tomorrow’s terrorists. The women, incubators for terrorists.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“It is the only truth that matters. They were not individuals but a concept called terrorism. We were not individuals, but an opposing concept—counter-terrorism. Soldiers. We were not people then. We were weapons in the service of our people.”
“We were all terrorists.”
“Please, spare me the…”
“Faquat esmaani lahza,” Pierre said. “Just hear me out for a moment.”
“No. I know all about the fucking stadium. I’ve heard the stories. I read intelligence summaries, okay? Listen carefully. I wasn’t at the fucking stadium. But I know. Okay? You keep that in mind.” He stood abruptly. “I have a clear conscience. I sleep soundly.”
His phone rang, he answered and walked away but not before Pierre realized that he was speaking Arabic. He quickly ended the conversation but kept on walking, disappeared.
Pierre assumed that he was gone. But he returned. “The bladder,” he said, and sat again. Then he was fumbling with the leather satchel, extracted what appeared to be a photocopy of an item from a newspaper.
“Just for the record, look at this,” he said, jabbing the clipping with a stubby finger. “Jerusalem Post. September fifteenth, 1982. Read it.”
He read. Edit Burman, beloved mother…“You carry her obituary?”
“And here I am,” Ari said. Left to mourn, Ariel. Other names obscured by the fingertip.
“So, Ariel Burman?” Pierre said.
“Her maiden name,” Ari said impatiently. “My father had been out of the picture for a long time by then. Are you satisfied now? I was in Tel Aviv when you claim you saw me. Okay?”
“She died on the fifteenth. And they didn’t bury your
mother according to—”
“Let me repeat: I wasn’t at the stadium on the eighteenth.”
“Wouldn’t they have buried her on the fifteenth or the sixteenth? And in 1982, wasn’t September eighteenth Shabbat, and the first day of Rosh Hashanah?”
Ari laughed. He was folding the clipping carefully. “So you’re a rabbi now?”
“I’m just trying to work out—”
“Fifteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth. Just listen to me. I know all about the stadium, who was there, what was going on there. Fucking savages, you people.”
He leaned across the table, jabbed Pierre’s chest, just above the sternum, just below the windpipe. He was smiling, then spoke slowly. “Anybody who was at the stadium on the seventeenth or the eighteenth should shut-fucking-up about it. Take that from me. As a friend.” He stood, stuffed the exculpatory clipping back into his satchel. “Good night,” he said without looking back as he walked away. “Get some sleep. You have your health to think about.”
Tal arrived at the table with the drinks, looked confused.
“Leave them.” Handed Tal a twenty. “Keep it.”
He downed both drinks quickly. He was tired. He was very, very tired. But now he knew.
Thoughts of death come almost naturally to people who have spent real time among the dead—doctors, undertakers, soldiers—those who have seen death’s overwhelming presence and then the disconcerting banality of what it leaves behind.
Aggie insisted on dragging him to wakes when they were first married. Showing respect, she called it. But what is so respectful about staring at a prettified cadaver? Death that neither looked nor smelled like death depressed him even more than the reality.
He put his glass down and entered the forward cabin, raised the mattress on his berth, opened up a small storage compartment, felt inside, carefully rummaging among the ropes and flares and charts until he felt the reassuring metal. He spoke softly. Ari, I believe that I have the solution for our difficulties. I think you’ve met my friend before. I know you’d recognize each other even after twenty-five years.
He returned to the captain’s chair, put the Browning on the table.
17. January 17, 1976
He was a captive but he was not a prisoner. He was among fighters but he had no weapon. He knew who his companions were. But they were not his friends. They shared nation, family, religion. They shared victimhood, a common enemy—the aliens, the Palestinians and Syrians and the traitors who supported them. But while there was hatred, there was no passion. He was surprised by the docile patience of their idleness. He would eventually learn what they already knew, that the alternative to idleness was chaos. Looking back from a distant future, he’d wonder how he could have spent the greater part of seven years waiting, always waiting, rarely knowing what he was waiting for.
“What is your name?”
“Pierre.”
“I am Elias. What did you do before?”
“I am a fisherman.”
“I was a hairdresser.”
“I am Bashir. I was a schoolteacher.”
For days they’d hardly paid attention to the periodic crackle of automatic weapons on the hillside. It didn’t matter who was shooting, who was being shot at. The sound was random, recreational. Damour was under siege and they were waiting. Then the bombardment would resume. Whoosh, whump. Unexpected, unpredictable. Day and night. Smoke lingered over the cringing hillside. At night there was the distant flickering of flame. They waited.
They reassured him: Not to worry, the siege is stable for the moment, people are hiding in their cellars, sheltered in the strongest buildings. There are three churches, built like fortresses. There are more than a hundred fighters there—maybe more than two hundred—strong, well-armed men, men who would lay down their lives before they’d allow the terrorists to defile this Christian enclave, this asset so strategically astride the highway south. “Where are you from?”
“Saida. You say you are Bashir? You have the same name as—”
“But I come from the Bekaa. Deir el Ahmar.”
“My mother is from over there, Damour. She’s there now, with my sister and her baby and her husband. Why are we waiting here?”
“They’re safe. They will be fine.”
Damour was under siege because of a highway and because of history, geography and destiny. But soon there would be reinforcements with orders to end this miserable provocation. Have patience.
After days of sitting there below Damour, his impatience had subsided. His family, or what was left of it, was safe. His mother, his sister. He believed that. He grieved for his father. The unexpected encounter, the brutal climax. How can murder happen almost whimsically? No apparent prologue, no ritual, no drama. Death, as sudden as a stumble and as meaningless. He studied the sky, the pewter January sea, felt the sting of rain and sorrow.
The town was only half a mile away but he had no choice but to wait like the others. The young commander, not much older than Pierre, the man they called HK, knew why they were there and what they were waiting for. Of that everyone was certain. HK knew and that was good enough. HK was the leader. His youth was seasoned by experience and a brooding hatred. This, to Pierre, seemed more normal than the foolishness he heard among the other men. The talk of women, alcohol and drugs. Endless fantasies. HK was as desperate to reach the Damour as he was, but HK was disciplined. He too had loved ones in the town but he was waiting for the moment—a moment shaped by tactical significance that was larger than any personal consideration. Everyone had loved ones somewhere. Pierre knew that he could trust HK and that he could follow him.
He recognized the sudden clatter of weapons being readied, men shaking off their idleness. He stared where everyone was staring—toward the highway. Two men, more like boys, came toward them carrying a white flag. It was near dusk but they were clearly visible, waving the white flag that turned out to be a sacramental vestment belonging to a priest. The priest had sent them down.
They had weapons slung across their backs and moved cautiously, calling out comradely greetings, as they came closer. Then HK appeared. Pierre had never seen a weapon like the one HK was carrying. It might have been an American M16 but seemed larger, more terrifying.
HK moved forward, spoke briefly to the boys and then returned. He wanted two men to accompany him up the hillside for an assessment.
Pierre stepped forward. “I will go.”
HK stared at him for a moment, then smiled and shook his head.
Pierre felt a sudden surge of fear—they are in greater peril than he thought—but the fear evaporated quickly. We are their deliverance. Those boys are their deliverance. His family was safe. His mother. Miriam. He knew it. Elias nodded in his direction, then he and Bashir headed off with HK toward the hillside.
They were gone for no more than twenty minutes. HK was silent as he walked past everyone, and went to sit in the Range Rover alone. The others crowded around the men who had been with him. They just shook their heads, faces empty of expression. Pierre was now confused.
Then HK was back among them. “People will try to leave and will come in this direction. Starting tonight. There is nowhere for them to go, except by sea. We need boats.”
“I know where there are boats,” Pierre said. “I walked from Saida, on the shore. I know boats, I was a fisherman.”
Two other fighters raised their hands. “He’s right,” one said.
“You three go. Get the boats,” HK instructed.
Pierre started walking toward HK, but Elias blocked him. “No,” he said. “You must not ask. The terrorists are massing in the hills. Thousands of them. Damour is lost.”
They came through the darkness, silent, slowly—individuals and little groups, old men and women, children, women carrying infants, families. Small boys struggling with luggage, sacks of household implements. They moved more quickly as they crossed the highway, shadows flitting. There had been shooting. The priest explained that they’d been noticed as they left
the church and the terrorists had attempted an attack but the two boys covered their escape.
Pierre was overwhelmed by the anxiety he’d managed to subdue for days. He ran among the refugees, peering into faces. He accosted women carrying infants until finally someone grabbed him from behind.
“What are you trying to do?” HK demanded, furious.
“My mother. My sister. I have to find them.”
HK frogmarched him away from the procession. “They aren’t here.”
“You don’t know.”
HK stepped back. “Come.”
They were now among the trees. HK was studying Pierre with an almost indiscernible flicker of emotion. “I knew your mother’s family,” he said. “They will not be coming out.”
“You don’t know,” Pierre cried out. HK stood silently. Then Pierre was on his knees.
HK lifted him.
“What is your Christian name?”
“Pierre.”
“Listen to me, Pierre Haddad. We will see an end to this. Together. That is my promise to you, to them. Blood for blood. Remember.”
Elias handed Pierre a Kalashnikov with two loaded magazines taped together. “It’s from HK. Do you know what to do with this?”
Pierre nodded. “Yes,” he lied.
“You’ll need it in the days ahead.”
“What day is it?”
“January seventeenth. Why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t matter. Who is HK?”
Elias just stared at him.
“What does HK stand for?”
“Everybody knows that.”
“What does that mean, though?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“Where are we going?” Pierre asked. The question was instinctive, the answer wouldn’t matter.
Elias smiled.
“Karantina.”
18.
There was a faint vertical glow of light on the wall beside the unfamiliar drape. It was obviously morning, maybe late morning. Cyril had to reflect for a moment to recall what day it was. Saturday. He was sitting on the edge of a strange bed and he was unable to remember where he’d left his clothes. He hadn’t made it home and he recalled the lie he’d told at some point the evening before to reassure his mother.
The Only Café Page 14
