Abboud resumed his work, poring over the shoe in his hand once again.
He signalled for me to go back to driving the thin nails into the circle of leather.
We used to talk politics or the news of the night before, whether it had been a harsh one or calm one. The topic of weapons cropped up suddenly, as it did every time. Everyone was an expert on guns, even people like us in Abboud’s cobbler shop who were unable to fight.
There was praise for the semi-automatic rifle, which shot only one bullet at a time. But there was no substitute for it for long range and for high-precision targets. It could penetrate the trunk of a poplar tree.
There was praise for the Mauser rifle, though it was still new to them and they were only beginning to discover its merits.
There was praise for the 12-caliber revolver, their idol.
There was praise for weapons of all kinds.
Suddenly the man came closer to the door and stepped inside; the talk about guns came to a halt. He began right away, with no introductions and in a loud voice this time, like someone trying to be heard by a deaf man, counting off all of Husneh’s offences. He addressed Abboud, knowing exactly how high he should raise his voice – high enough to render me unnecessary. As stingy as he had been with his words when he first arrived, now he was running his mouth off to no end. Having that rifle on his shoulder gave him superiority over us – we who’d had enough of counting the dead and wounded and sought the cover of walls just to get home.
‘Husneh has been making secret visits to her family or has somehow been sending them messages. In any case, her brother Muhsin is hurting us a lot. Abu Haroun’s wife Khadra was killed from the direction of his barricade, and DeGaulle al-Rami was shot in the back from there . . .’
‘Come on, man, use your head . . .’ one of the people sitting in the shop interjected. ‘The woman just had a baby. She’s overjoyed with her new son. How in the world would she go down to the Lower Quarter and leave her nursing infant behind?’
Abboud didn’t respond. His eyes widened as he began to understand why the man had asked about Husneh a little earlier.
‘She sneaked information to her brother about where we were keeping the 60-mm mortar cannon and he blabbed to everyone else. We noticed they started shooting heavily at that spot, so we were forced to change the location, which changed the coordinates, and now we are having trouble hitting our targets.’
‘Who told you such lies? He should have his tongue cut off . . .’
All of a sudden Husneh appeared. She had been listening to everything from the room in the back of the shop. The whole house consisted of just two rooms. She wasn’t holding the baby. She’d given him to her eldest daughter. The visitor at the shop spoke again.
‘Be reasonable, now. This is dangerous business. We can’t go around accusing one another. Husneh is one of us now. What name do her children carry? Shame on you.’
Abboud took refuge in his total deafness once again, no longer hearing anything even though everyone was speaking loudly.
‘One of our women told us,’ the armed man said. ‘One of our women who is married into the Lower Quarter. We too have our informants. Blood cannot become water.’
Abboud looked to me for help even though I felt he was hearing everything. I could tell from the agitation that appeared on his face when he heard the man’s mounting criticism of Husneh. The voices intermingled.
‘The best solution would be for you to go to your family and stay there with them.’ The man had finally come out with the true objective of his mission.
Even with my voice so close to Abboud’s ear, it wasn’t reaching him. Abboud was unable to hear any more.
‘We won’t allow you to stay here,’ the man continued amidst protests. ‘I came against my will to tell you this calmly.’
‘And if she refuses to leave her house?’ asked Abboud, finally daring to say something. He stood up from his chair with his eyes wide open and his cobbler’s apron smeared with the stains of his profession.
‘Someone else will come and take her by force. I don’t draw weapons on women.’
Abboud heard, not wanting to understand, cowering behind his deafness. ‘Where are you going to take her? What kind of outrage is this?’
They were planning to gather all the Semaani family women who had married into our neighbourhood and put them in Aziz al-Rami’s house. There were around twenty or more such women. It was possible they would turn them over to Father Boulos who would then escort them to the Lower Quarter. We imagined the scene as we sat there in the cobbler shop: Father Boulos leading the women, crossing over the green line with them before they went their separate ways to their families’ houses. And then he’d return with the Rami family women from the Lower Quarter.
‘If that’s the way it is, you don’t want me here, then I’ll go . . .’ Husneh said.
Husneh had heard all kinds of talk. It wasn’t the fact that she was a Semaani that bothered them; it was her brother they had to take into consideration. He was fighting right across from them, bullet for bullet, ploy for ploy.
‘Yes. I’ll go to my family.’
I didn’t try to tell Abboud what was being said because I was sure he knew. But Husneh, to make certain, bent into his ear and shouted so he could hear. ‘I am going to my family’s house, Abboud . . .’
Actually, she no longer had a family. Her whole family was her brother Muhsin.
‘In any case,’ she added not as loudly, to spite us and the armed man standing in the doorway, ‘the closer I get to the Lower Quarter the more my heart fills with joy . . .’ That was her way of taking revenge.
Suddenly three armed men arrived to provide backup for their comrade. Those men we knew. They were Salimeh’s boys – Hashem and his brothers Francis and Abu Layla. They’d been charged with a serious mission and had scowls on their faces. They paid no attention to us. It was clear that we were not going to be able to ward them off.
‘Where’s Husneh? Hurry up. Father Boulos wants to leave before noon . . .’
They caught sight of her inside.
‘If my own mother Salimeh were one of them, I’d send her,’ one of them said in turn to justify what was going on. He continued, speaking to Abboud, ‘War is war, Abboud . . . It’s either us or them.’
Husneh didn’t say anything. She just turned around and went inside the room at the back of the shop. Abboud stood up. It was the second time he stood up wearing his soiled apron. He rushed into the room at the back of the shop. He hadn’t tried to discuss things with Salimeh’s son Hashem; he had surrendered to the decision. Now he had to try to salvage whatever he could.
‘No. You’re not taking the boy with you . . .’
‘Who’s going to nurse him? You?’
‘You’re not taking him with you. I don’t have another son.’ He was resolute.
The little girls started to cry. The cobbler shop guests and I followed him inside. The oldest daughter was holding Raouf, unsure who to give him to, so she too began to cry. The baby followed suit.
Abboud was like a child who couldn’t be persuaded to let go of what he was holding onto. I don’t know why Husneh suddenly tied her kerchief over her hair and walked out of the room towards the shop. She had decided to go alone. We all followed her. We couldn’t believe she was going to leave just like that.
Salimeh’s boys were standing waiting for her next to a Mercedes taxi. She opened the door to get into the car, then turned towards us and said to her daughter, ‘Remove the lentils and green beans from the stove before they burn and peel some radishes for your father. He likes radishes with lentils and green beans. The meatless kibbeh is ready in the oven. Change your brother’s nappy. He stinks. And don’t forget to feed Bashir. Don’t let him go home. He might run into danger along the way. His mother asked me to look after him . . .’
Bashir . . . that was me.
Still they weren’t satisfied.
Salimeh’s son Hashem wasn’t satisfied with spra
ying bullets out of his 24x29 light machine gun, which he had taken by force. The shots he fired would fly into empty space. He’d shoot the gun for no reason, just to establish his presence, as he sometimes said. The only approval he got came from the little kids who’d gather around to pick up the empty cartridges while they were still hot.
He wasn’t satisfied, so he revived the idea of a catapult. Something to cause more damage.
At first he and his brother Francis went looking for some discarded tires. Tires from broken down cars. They removed the inner tube, cut it into long sections and carefully bound them onto a fork of wood like a huge slingshot. They secured it up on one of the rooftops and shouted to everyone to back away. People made futile attempts to stop them.
Hashem launched a hand grenade from it, which exploded in the air on its way to the Lower Quarter. Over on the other side it caused more noise and rumours than anything else.
When they got the 60-mm mortar cannon and along with it an officer – a stranger it was said – to train them how to use it, Hashem was the first conscript. He learned quickly. When the time came to execute, Hashem suggested they wait until people were coming out of the ten-thirty mass on Sunday, the most crowded mass. He volunteered to monitor them on their way into the church. They fired on them on their way out. Hashem was standing behind the cannon, but the shell went too far and landed on the riverbank, setting some dry reeds on fire and hitting a fisherman in the leg.
Hashem got frustrated and started firing the rocket launcher at random targets and at random times of the day and night. He managed to kill some women and children, according to news reports from the Lower Quarter.
But they still weren’t satisfied.
Salimeh’s boys organised two nighttime operations. They amassed their troops and moved stealthily towards the opposing barricades under a cover of gunfire consisting of tracer bullets and exploding bullets. They tried to drive out their enemies from their protected positions, but they didn’t succeed. They had planned ahead of time how they would take them and force them out and how they would divide up the booty, but they failed. Both times they came back with dead and wounded of their own. They weren’t going to win the war and they weren’t going to lose it, either. They had lost their wits, though. They went into the homes of the enemy families in their own neighbourhood and blew up their houses with dynamite; they caused numerous casualties in their own ranks from all the shrapnel that resulted from their lack of expertise in blowing up houses. Then one of them crept into the demolished homes and stole furniture by night so no one would witness his depravity. Those were houses belonging to their enemies who had lived among them, but who’d left temporarily hoping to come back after things calmed down. They blasphemed against the saints and nearly sounded the Muslim call to prayer from the dome of the church just to spite their enemies who had allied themselves with America and the President of the Republic.
They still wanted more, but the ‘revolution’ ended. The president’s term came to an end; the parliament came into session and elected a new president.
Chapter 20
The whole thing had been Kamileh’s mother’s idea. Muntaha would never have dared do such a thing on her own. In any case, she had absolutely nothing to do with it. Kamileh’s mother had whispered something in Muntaha’s ear, and at first she didn’t take what she was saying the least bit seriously. She was asking her to go to Fuad and Butros al-Rami, right after the funeral.
The funeral . . . The sharp smell of sweat . . . The smell of people, the smell of the dead.
They had brought them in their coffins into the church, against the protests of the families, after a big argument. At first the clergy got involved but no one paid them much attention until the family’s zaeem arrived.
The family’s zaeem . . . He stopped at each coffin before it was brought into the church. He stopped and bent over each victim, kissed each one on his yellow forehead, and hugged the widow or the children without weeping. He had done all his weeping at home, in the house those same men had pitched in to build for him during hard times. Everyone who had been able to help out, be it with the building or painting or carpentry, had volunteered their labour. He had wept all alone in his room, for a long time, sitting beneath a picture of his uncle, the one from whom he inherited his leadership position. His brother had stood guard outside the door to his room, arguing with anyone who tried to come in.
‘Let him rest. The President of the Republic wants to meet with him!’
His brother said he’d heard him sobbing like a baby. He stayed all alone like that for more than an hour, and then he stifled his sobs and stood up. He changed his clothes, shaved and sat at his desk writing the news bulletin he would broadcast after the funeral. In it he would place responsibility squarely on the shoulders of his enemies. What they had done had been a trap set for freedom-loving innocents, an act of treachery against unarmed citizens . . . He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He got up, opened the door without warning, accidentally bumping his brother in the shoulder and left. Twenty young men followed after him, their weapons in plain sight. He would never lock himself in his room ever again, nor would he ever cry again after that day. He’d cried in advance, in one bout, for all of his brothers and cousins and relatives who’d died already and for those who were going to die in the future.
When he stopped before each of the dead in the church courtyard, he made the professional mourners stop their wailing. ‘Enough!’ he shouted. A woman whose son was laid out on a bed before her said, ‘The important thing is that you are still alive!’ He didn’t try to silence her. What silenced her were the strange glances her daughter cast at her.
It wasn’t exactly clear from the woman’s tone if she was being sarcastic or expressing her sincere concern for the zaeem. The way she had said it left it ambiguous.
A second battle broke out with the women inside the church over shutting the coffins. People would close the coffins only to have the women raise the lids again a little later. The negotiations and attempts at persuasion were lengthy, with the following result, ‘At the end of the funeral service, we will open the coffins for you one last time and then we will nail them shut.’ That was suggested by the family’s zaeem, who was standing at the head of the worshippers and initiated the funeral prayers himself.
It was a signal the priests should begin, so they quickly started their prayers. They sped through the Syriac hymns, as if running from a fire. Their eyes and minds were on the congregation there in the church yard. The people knew the funeral service by heart. They recited it in Syriac. Some of them knew it better than the priests. The moment the group of priests standing to the right of the altar got to the last line of the funeral prayers, and before they were able to finish it, the screaming erupted. It erupted all of a sudden from a hundred different throats at the same time.
The children who were present were surprised. They looked around, terrified, thinking something had happened. The new incense holder’s eyes bulged open and he lost the strength to hold onto the incense burner. The older people knew what was happening. The ones standing in the front pews didn’t even turn around to look. They weren’t going to look at the women as they clung to the coffins and wailed their hearts out. That final outburst was not something to look at.
In the end it was the priests and the members of the religious brotherhood who managed to succeed in separating the living from the dead. The leader of the family, surrounded by his men, stood at the church door. As the procession of coffins passed by, he leaned over and kissed each one. He bent over his brother’s and his nephew’s coffins a long, long time. They hoisted them onto the roofs of the cars. Two young men leaned out from the windows of each of the cars to secure each coffin on the roof. They told people to move out of the way. The important thing was for them to be able to hold onto the coffins on the way downhill. There weren’t enough cars to transport them all at once to the graveyard, so the cars came back a second time to transport the res
t.
They took them to the almond grove. The pits had already been dug. One straight row, as if they’d been dug by an expert at planting olive trees and orange trees standing like a line of soldiers. Someone had got up early to dig up the ground and prepare it to receive them. One hole for each one, then the dirt poured on top and that was it. They are still there to this day, on land owned by the monastery. They selected this site as their burial ground because the town cemetery in the Rami neighbourhood would be impossible for them to reach to pay their respects. And even if they could get to it, they would never leave their dead there.
They brought Kamileh back to her house on foot. On the way, she’d walk a little and then stop. Muntaha braced her. She’d stand in front of one of the houses, call to the people who lived there, and tell them that Yusef was gone and wasn’t coming back. No one came outside to console her. She’d resume her journey and then stop all over again. ‘Yusef is gone,’ she’d say, addressing some woman standing out on her balcony watching the people on their way back from the funeral. The woman on the balcony would cover her face with a white kerchief, weeping or wanting to give the impression she was weeping. Finally Kamileh made it to her house. They took her inside to lie down and rest.
‘No, not the bedroom,’ she erupted, like a mad woman. ‘I will never go back in there after today. Get me out of here. Get me out . . .’ They took her out to the balcony and let her stretch out on the bench. She laid her head near the dahlias and her mother sat down beside her.
A flock of swallows swooped down onto the balcony. Three black birds with their little outspread wings traversed the nearby space and glided over the people’s heads.
Swallows in season.
That was Monday, 18 June 1957, at approximately seven o’clock in the evening.
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