That day Father Boulos forgot to announce himself. He was deep in thought, worried. He was anxious and intent on going down to our quarter to inform those concerned that Syria had delivered a cannon ‘to them’, to the other side that is, and that they were assembling it and soon they would start shelling us, and it was impossible to hide from mortar fire. The moment Muhsin detected a shadow appearing around the corner he fired his rifle. Father Boulos was hit by shrapnel from the stone wall Muhsin hit with his bullet. Muhsin had dispassionately fired his rifle, and he didn’t appear very sorry when he realised his mistake, either.
It was true that his front was relatively quiet compared to others, but the six months he spent behind the millstone bore witness, in the middle of the month of July, to an infiltration attempt that forced Muhsin to request help to stop it. He was alert to the slightest movement coming from the opposing side. A dog or cat passing by would wake him up. If water trickled down from somewhere, or if he heard a sound, he’d double his attention for fear of some manoeuvre or ploy. He’d worked out exactly who the men standing guard in the opposing barricades were. He knew them by name and knew them by the sound of the bullets fired from each of their weapons, and by the way they fired their weapons, in a spray of fire or staccato shots. As soon as he heard a gun being fired he could name who’d fired it with total confidence.
During the remaining days, which were very long, Muhsin ‘committed himself’ to his post, as he liked to say, just as composure required a nosy woman who was going around the neighbourhood gossiping and spreading rumours to ‘commit herself’ to her own house. Muhsin didn’t show any signs of boredom. In fact, in his new seat behind the millstone, he appeared ready to stay there until God knows when. And Muhsin didn’t sleep. He worked while we nodded off out of boredom or left him, often to look for some excitement near the other barricades.
Muhsin laid out his plan the first day he took the millstone post, and he waited for exactly three and a half months for his opportunity. He aimed the barrel of his rifle towards the open space that whoever kept watch in the opposing barricade passed in front of, for one second when he entered his post and one second when he left it at the changing of the guards. It was a gap the size of a small window and Muhsin caught sight of them as they crossed quickly in front of it, like shadows flashing by. He waited for the day when one of his enemies would accidentally leave himself exposed even for a few seconds before going inside his barricade. That’s what he told us later on. And that’s what happened at exactly 12:30 on the 10th of August beneath the hot sun just before lunchtime: he fired one bullet from his long barrel rifle and hit his enemy right in the head. Earlier, Muhsin had called to one of us to go and tell Katrine not to bring his lunch that day because he wasn’t hungry. Then he hurried to add in response to what she might say, ‘Tell her I’m not sick . . .’
Muhsin then turned to us again and ordered us to pull back. His tone was final, which was what made us not obey completely, because we expected something to happen. We disappeared from his sight, but we could still see him. There remained only one mystery: how did he know that his enemy in the barricade in the old three-story building was going to leave himself exposed a few minutes later?
For the first time ever, Muhsin looked around before aiming his rifle. He rested his cheek on the rifle’s neck, hugged the rifle close and peered into the distance. That might have been the longest embrace we ever witnessed between Muhsin and his rifle, more than ten minutes long. Then all of a sudden, without any indication from his body or movement of his head, Muhsin fired a single bullet that pierced the silence encamped there on the front in the middle of that hot summer day. After Muhsin’s shot there wasn’t any response. On the contrary, the silence became more entrenched. A few minutes later we heard screams from a woman on the other side, and so the cries of joy rose up from our side and the bullets began to fall like a rainstorm.
Chapter 16
Now, Kamileh thought, now she could relax. She locked the door and tossed the key up onto the roof. Yusef was dead and Kamileh was now living outside life. Strangely enough, it didn’t seem to her – in the beginning at least, during the weeks following the wake and the burial – that being widowed was going to be pure grief.
From now on, for example, she wouldn’t take a bath until she started to stink, or when Muntaha, the person most often by her side, said something. She wouldn’t change her underwear every day, either, and wouldn’t iron her hair or worry about going grey. And wearing black all the time relieved her from worrying about changing her dresses. Only the black stockings bothered her on those hot days, the way they tore her legs to pieces.
She was going to take a breather to a certain extent, the youngest of her parents’ children, the spoiled one who always got what she wanted. She threw off the weight of the world from her shoulders in one go. She would stop all the cooking and blowing on the fire, stop coring squash and removing hair from her legs, stop bearing pain and visiting doctors, especially gynaecologists. She wouldn’t be spreading her thighs for anyone; her body would retain its integrity, and the big battle wouldn’t have to be fought. Nothing would be wrenched from her and she wouldn’t have to endure the pain of the extraction.
Her life would be smooth, the hours of her days all alike, the normal cycle of December’s cold and summer’s humid heat, from which she would take what she needed and nothing more. After today, she would no longer exert so much effort trying to persuade her husband to have intercourse with her in the hopes of getting pregnant – pleading with him one night, tricking him another night with those attempts at seduction that she was never very good at. She didn’t want anyone entering her anymore. She could stop worrying about having children and making pleas – with her husband and all the saints, too.
His relatives were going to seek revenge. It was incumbent upon them never to forget his death for one second. Their blood couldn’t bear it for very long. They started ambushing roads at night. Three or four of them would get together and then get out of sight. They would get them sooner or later – the brothers of their brothers’ killers or their distant relatives, it didn’t matter.
From now on, Kamileh wouldn’t do a thing and nothing would be demanded of her. She was frustrated at the killers and frustrated at with the ones who had made her marry him in the first place. She was no longer under any obligation to open her door to anyone, no longer obliged to anyone, least of all his relatives. She would be satisfied to sit beside Muntaha, two absent-minded fools sitting on wicker stools in the summer humidity, while a gentle breeze rose up from the nearby river or the smell of eel wafted around near the mute fisherman. She relaxed her body with total abandon and gabbed with Muntaha about everybody’s business. No one escaped their tongues. They accused every woman who wore blusher and make-up of marital infidelity, and anyone who got a new car or new furniture of stealing and cheating. No one passed along the road without getting their share of that pair’s dirty, scrutinising looks and cutting words.
During her time alone she planted flowers on the balcony, flowers for every season. She checked on the progress of those little lives, helped them along and tied their tender skinny branches with strings. She watered them, pruned them and got mad at them if they got lazy. And later Kamileh’s neighbours would insist that, after spending years by herself after Eliyya left for America, she started talking quietly to her flowers without realising it, sometimes encouraging them and other times chastising them.
That was to be her sole project in life. She wouldn’t visit anyone except her mother; those who liked her could come to her. She would sleep through the night without tossing and turning in bed anymore; no more hanging in limbo for hours on end, waiting for her husband to come back from gambling parties he never once took her to and which she had no concept of – except to imagine they were filled with bright lights in spacious, high-ceilinged rooms, swarming with seductive women in black dresses exposing their breasts and backs. They were parties that lasted until
dawn, when Yusef would tiptoe back home and timidly open the door, trying not to wake her and have her smell other women on him.
‘He has lots of tough cousins. They will avenge him!’
She wouldn’t remarry, because someone who is murdered remains forever present, hovering like an eagle over his widow’s head until she dies herself. He would remain like a sword over her, even if they avenged him and wreaked havoc for his sake. They’d nudge her to get married, but she wouldn’t do it, and they knew she wouldn’t, and besides, there wasn’t anyone who would come asking for her.
She didn’t want to get married again. She had never wanted to in the first place. They had pushed her into it the moment she showed the slightest interest.
‘Get married, Kamileh. Your sisters are waiting.’
She was the prettiest of them and the youngest, too. Whenever a young suitor came their way, she was the only one he liked. Young men liked her without any effort on her part, while she, on the other hand, tried to keep out of sight. She wasn’t going to get married and wasn’t going to let any of her sisters get married. Then Yusef al-Kfoury came asking for her hand. She warmed to him and they sensed it and didn’t give her any time.
‘They didn’t give me time to love him,’ she said. She loved him later on, loved him very much, and the more her hopes of having children dampened, the stronger she clung to him. They packed up her clothes and sneaked her out the back door so as not to give her mother a chance to protest. Her mother had insisted on marrying off her eldest daughter first. ‘Each one in her turn!’ Kamileh eloped, but her mother got over it in less than a month.
He was shot twice. People said they didn’t even give him a chance to pull out his gun. Someone called him by name, so he turned and they shot him, from more than one gun. They said that whoever called his name to make him turn around was not one of the men who shot him. He left her the house she was living in and nothing more. The family offered her money, gifts from rich people or expatriates, which she politely turned down. She was the only one among those whose husbands were killed at Burj al-Hawa who refused compensation. She didn’t want money in return for him. She would never stop wearing black, would never buy new clothes for herself. She went back to where she always wanted to be, there on her balcony where they could forget all about her as she sat drinking coffee with Muntaha and planted, watered and talked to her flowers. Her body was all her own; it wasn’t anybody’s business and she wasn’t going to demand anything of it either.
However, her life’s détente wasn’t to last very long.
One month, no more.
Then the warning came and she returned to battle. The warning came from her own body, which she had thought was going to rest and allow her to rest, too. She started feeling more and more each day that something was waking up inside her, that her body seemed to be slipping from her. Her period was late. She’d get sudden headaches, every day at nightfall, sudden and severe headaches. She assumed it all had to do with her grief, or at least that’s what everyone said. More and more signs of pregnancy began to appear, but she didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want it, full stop.
The first one to notice was Yasmeen, her married sister in Beirut. Every time she came to see her she would start with complaints. Her husband never wanted her to come; he’d send her by herself by taxi, and he didn’t want her to bring any of the children. ‘Yasmeen,’ he’d say to her, ‘staying far away from them all is for the best!’ By ‘them all’ he meant the town his wife was born in and all its people.
Yasmeen would retort that her heart filled with joy the moment the taxi went through the Chekka tunnel and she could see the north. She’d roll down the window and suck in a deep breath of air. But then the sorrow would come back to her once she saw her sister Kamileh.
‘Luck is for whores, my sister. It’s all in God’s hands.’
Then Yasmeen would chastise Kamileh to go fix her hair and take better care of her appearance and eat. She’d go on about women their mother’s age who hadn’t yet given up on looking elegant.
It was the cravings that gave Kamileh away. She longed for fruits that weren’t in season, in front of her sister. ‘I want fresh dates, Yasmeen!’
‘What on earth made you think of fresh dates this time of year?’
Yasmeen looked her up and down and after thinking about it a little she asked, ‘Are you pregnant, Kamileh?’
Kamileh laughed sarcastically. She wasn’t pregnant. But what exactly was happening to her?
‘How could I be pregnant?’
‘Why couldn’t you be pregnant, sister?’
Kamileh burst out, ‘Who could I be pregnant from?’
And so Yasmeen screamed in her turn, ‘Your husband . . . It’s been less than a month since he died hasn’t it?’
Kamileh was lost in thought for a moment.
‘No, no. Not possible.’
‘Tell me, when did you sleep with him? Tell me . . .’
Kamileh felt a burning sensation in her throat. ‘Saturday night. They killed him on Sunday.’
‘Shall I come stay with you, Kamileh? I’ll go home and get everything in order there and come back tomorrow.’
‘No, you go home,’ Kamileh refused. ‘I don’t need any help.’
A couple days later she threw up, for no reason. It was still morning before breakfast, and she was home alone. That was at the end of July. Weapons started arriving in town on mule-back, smuggled weapons. Strangers who were said to be army officers, camouflaged in civilian clothes, drove the mules. They crossed the river over wooden bridges that had been quickly built for that purpose in an area that was not in plain view. They unloaded the shipment near the flour mill where the men of the family tried out the rifles by shooting at the trunks of some nearby poplar trees. They whistled in amazement every time they went to inspect the marks the bullets made on the trees. People said weapons came from Syria to the other side, too. They arrived from inside the city, from the old souk where the fighters were hunkering down. They would load them up and take them up across the river, too. Before noon, war planes passed by flying low, keeping an eye on both sides, as they said.
Her period was two weeks late. She couldn’t ignore it any longer.
She went to see her mother. It was the first time she had gone out on the main road since her husband died. No, it was the second time in fact, because she took flowers one other time to the place in the almond grove where they had buried them so hastily, in one long row of little mounds of dirt. She brought him a bouquet of red roses and placed it beside his picture. Each little mound of dirt had a picture on top of it. His grave was the third one from the right. She stuck a stem of white lilies into the dirt.
Other Burj al-Hawa widows went out to participate in the elections. They carried posters of candidates and joined in the rallies. They were deliberately chosen as delegates inside the voting precincts; they argued and challenged and ululated and danced with joy and zeal when the election results were being announced.
Kamileh walked like a stranger, wrapped in black, trying to escape all the prying eyes. Evil’s hot wind scorched the roads and rumours were rampant.
‘Saeed al-Rami was killed.’
‘Where?’
‘He was reading the newspaper inside the pharmacy. They came in and killed him.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘Say hello to my brother if you see him there!’ That’s what one of them said just before shooting him in the head.
Everyone fled the scene and he remained there alone for two hours bleeding to death.
Kamileh told her mother what was going on with her. Her mother slapped her in the face for not listening to her from the start, the day they buried the dead. But her mother was not a woman who gave in. She tried to hang on to what was possible.
‘Go straight away, on your way home, hurry to Muntaha’s and have some coffee with her. Tell her about your cravings for dates and that your period is late. And tell her not to tell anyone.
That’ll guarantee she’ll spread the word around to all the neighbours. She’s your friend. You know her better than I do.’
Kamileh changed the subject. ‘They killed Saeed al-Rami.’
Her mother didn’t show much dismay.
‘What’s going to happen, Mother?’
‘They’ll kill two in return.’
She turned towards Muntaha’s house. The streets were completely deserted and the tank that had been stationed in the middle of the square for the last month slowly circled around. The soldier who’d been outside its hatch ducked down inside and pulled the door shut. It moved along the road leading to Tripoli, preceded by a small military Jeep leading the way out. They heard on the radio the day before that the army wasn’t going to interfere in family feuds. The army commander was not taking sides. For a month the rumours had been flying, rumours of revenge and fear of what was to come. And all the while Kamileh hadn’t felt a thing.
She sat a bit at Muntaha’s but she didn’t dare tell her. She was afraid people would make fun of her if they thought she was imagining the pregnancy. Muntaha told her they had put up a barricade on the roof of the nuns’ school. They’d piled up sandbags that they watered every morning to make it harder for bullets to penetrate them. She told her that in his sermon after the gospel reading, Father Antonius said, ‘My children, pray many Our Fathers and Hail Marys so God will make us victorious over our enemies.’
She didn’t accept the truth until her belly began to show. Even then she said, ‘Maybe it’s bloated with water.’
June Rain Page 21
