Leaving Beirut

by Ghoussoub, Mai;

  Her golden hair moved gracefully in the silk net that tied her hair, as was the fashion among women in those days. She moved with great elegance, and her long silk clothing revealed a tall, beautiful body as she walked. Her face was round, and her skin so smooth and white that you felt you could almost see through it. Her cheeks were so red and her eyes so blue and clear that they made one think of magic. Her mouth was small and always displayed the most gracious and virtuous smile.1

  Her beauty had a fatal effect on King Rodrigue. He fell passionately in love with the girl, forgot his promises and responsibilities, and ‘usurped Florinda’s honour’.

  This was an act unworthy of a king – let alone that he already had enough troubles on his hands, with his throne being disputed by the heirs of King Witiza, whom he had deposed, and his kingdom threatened with invasions of Berber troops from North Africa. The lovely and virtuous Florinda managed to send a distressed message to her father, bewailing her lost honour and her miserable fate.

  When he read the letter, Julian was filled with anger and rancour. His face turned red with hatred for Rodrigue. He clenched his fists. He screamed with frustration. He now dreamt of one thing and one thing only: to avenge his daughter’s honour, and to do as much harm as possible to the unworthy monarch who had been responsible for her downfall. The Arabs are certainly more worthy than this dishonourable man of Spain, thought Julian. He would now give them all the support they needed to invade and conquer; he would show them the way, divulge all the strategic secrets he knew, and even send his best fighters to attack the wretched Rodrigue along with their troops. So it was that Julian was said to have paid a visit to Musa, the son of Noseyr, the Arab governor of North Africa, with whom he had often been at war, and told him that from now on they were allies. When Tarik Ibn al-Walid’s troops advanced into Spain, they found they did not have only enemies.

  In the view of Arab chronicles and legends, Julian acted in an honourable knightly way. However, his existence was actually denied by a few Spanish historians of the time who were not prepared to have a traitor among their princes; others maintained that the story of the beautiful Florinda owed more to myth than to reality.

  But reality changes, and myths survive, and in Islamic Spain both Christians and Muslims erected monumental heroes such as El Cid, Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar, and Khaled Ibn al-Walid, who pronounced to his soldiers the famous words that left them no choice but to fight: ‘The enemy is facing you and the sea is behind you.’ These were national heroes who spoke in terms of boldness and conquest, and they have been spared closer scrutiny by their foes as to their respective motivations. Both the Christians and the Muslims wrote ballads and poems that are still recited in schools today, singing the exploits of heroes, blaming traitors and mourning for martyrs. For Arab historians Julian is a virtuous prince and an honourable father; he is much more ambiguous in Christian tales of the reconquestas, if he features at all. In some stories Florinda is raped by the king; in others she declares that she would rather die than lose her honour; and in more austere and literary Arab versions she manages to avoid the fatal action of King Rodrigue (always at the last minute), and so becomes an acceptable and untarnished victim who can be allowed into classrooms with young students.

  As for El Cid, his legend was continually enhanced, sometimes with conflicting virtues. His sense of honourable conduct was written into a tragedy by Corneille, in which passionate love comes into conflict with the avenging of honour. Rodrigo loves Ximena, but his duty and family pride oblige him to face her father in a duel and kill him. Ximena, his lover, holds the same values as the men of her epoch; her father’s death must be avenged, and so she asks Don Sanchez to fight the man she loves. Corneille heightens the drama in the scene in which El Cid, Don Rodrigo, comes to see Ximena before the fatal duel:

  Ximena: Rodrigo! You! In daylight! Why so bold?

  You’ll ruin me. Withdraw, I beg of you.

  Don Rodrigo: I mean to die. Lady, I come to you

  Before the fatal blow to say farewell.

  The unalterable love I feel for you

  Wishes to make you homage of my death.

  Ximena: You mean to die?

  Ron Rodrigo: I hasten to the hour

  Which will deliver up my life to you.

  Ximena: You’ll die. Don Sancho then can strike such fear

  Into your heart? He’s so redoubtable?

  Who has made you so weak and him so strong?

  Rodrigo thinks he’s dead before he fights.

  Undaunted by my father or the Moors.

  He goes to fight Don Sancho in despair.

  Thus, then, in direst need, your spirits fail!

  Don Rodrigo: I haste not to the fight but to my end …

  And even last night the battle had been lost

  Had I been fighting for my cause alone;

  But, in defending King and country, I

  Would have betrayed them with a poor defence.

  My soaring spirit does not hate life so

  As to abandon it, forswearing them.

  Now that my feelings are only at stake,

  I can accept your sentence of my death.

  For your revenge, you chose another’s hand

  Since I did not deserve to die by yours …

  Ximena: … Do not, thus blinded, let yourself forget,

  Just as your life, your glory is at stake,

  and that, whatever Rodrigo’s fame in life,

  They’ll think him worsted after he is dead.2

  The words ‘death’, ‘love’ and ‘honour’ abound in this tragic encounter. But the violence perpetrated by these lovers is for the sake of the highest value of their times among persons of their social status: the defence of their reputation. Honour, and the preservation thereof, is viewed only through the eyes of others; it is a duty towards the collectivity, and individuals have to live by its requirements, otherwise the collective – be it clan, tribe or kingdom – would reject them, which is no easy matter in ordinary times, let alone in a world of constant conflict. The deeds of our lovers do not belong solely to them. Their doings are to be announced and praised or despised loudly, for there is no such thing as a discreet hero, just as there is no such thing as an anonymous martyr. A martyr would merely be another dead person if his death were to be witnessed discreetly. The ‘unknown soldier’ is a compromise of modern societies who took their people to wars.

  The myth of El Cid is a myth of glory. But glory and heroism are tricky matters, for they are not equally lived by all the parties to the legend. For the Christians who reconquered Spain, El Cid is indeed cast in memories of gilt and bronze. But for the Arab historians, who willingly recognized his courage and military prowess – one chronicle speaks of him as a miracle of God – he was also a ruthless and heartless warrior. El Cid was an ambitious combatant who fought for the Muslim princes as well as for the Christians. As a chevalier d’industrie he had been employed to fight for the Moors before their reconquering of Valencia for the Christians, and putting it to fire and destruction. Myo Cid el Campeador, the ‘master of single combat’, had no problem looting churches as well as mosques in the course of his exploits. Born in 1043, he was a legendary figure, whose fame spread to the four corners of Spain when, having been dismissed by King Alfonso in 1081, he roamed the land seeking his fortune.

  Unburdened by religious or national scruple, he leased his services and those of his men as freely to Muslim princes as to Christian ones, intervening in uprisings whenever he saw an opportunity to acquire loot or power. He showed no scruples as to the means he resorted to […] An adventurer, who would not hesitate to betray a friend or befriend an enemy […] He was more of a gang leader than an army commander, roaming through the Eastern Provinces of Spain, ravaging what he found on his way.

  In modern times he might have been called a mercenary, but in those days the values of honour and bravery were different and the Spanish Christians desperately needed a champion, a ‘miracle of God’. The myth
of El Cid tells us to think twice before we go believing in absolute virtue and taking one-sided views of courage and heroism. Corneille, writing in the seventeenth century, was already aware of this contradiction when he made him face Ximena and declare that his reputation and honour were what mattered most, and that as far as love and life were concerned he would be a martyr. Martyrdom, after all, is also a sign of exalted egotism.

  In conquering Valencia, Myo Cid the challenger became the stuff of legend. Any scruples he may have had were hard to detect. The Arab poet Abu Ishak Bin Khafaja cried for Valencia, the city that had seen the cruel side of this warrior:

  The enemies descended on you, wiping away with fire and desolation your grace.

  Misery passed from hand to hand, faces stared into wretchedness,

  Looking into what the arms of the night had done to your squares.

  Homes ceased to be homes and you are no longer yourself.

  Like all objects of hero-worship, El Cid could not enjoy fame without paying a price, for ‘honour cannot exist without the vilification of sanctions’. A hero can only exist in comparison with cowards, and cowards like heroes could be despised or ascribed cleverness or sensitivity according to the mood of the times and the writers of their history. In his famous book Al-Zakhira, Ibn Bassam does not mince words in describing El Cid – ‘this calamity who made every region he entered famous for its subsequent sadness’ – and his deeds. In speaking of the cruelty of this legendary ‘brave warrior’, who after conquering Valencia burned alive most of its notables, Ibn Bassam wrote: ‘The most dog-like of dogs [has been turned] into a Lion. Called Rodrigo and named the Compreador, El Cid is a fatal disease that leaves marks of ugliness and hatred on the Island.’

  Arab literature is impregnated with the glorification of courage. The poet of all Arabs, al-Mutannabi, who lived in the Abbasid period, wrote endless and unforgettable verses praising his own heroic courage on the battlefield, as well as that of the prince to whose court he was attached. His poetry is so powerful that it is still read by millions even today, for it reflects values that are as real now as they ever were.

  The horses and the nights and the deserts know me

  and the swords and the spears and the books and the

  pens as well …

  I am the one whose poetry the blind can see

  and whose words can be heard by the deaf

  or elsewhere.

  Don’t believe that glory is a concubine or some wine

  Glory is but the sword and fully-fledged victory in

  battle.

  On the other hand, there is a whole string of sayings in Arabic which give an alternative view of this overblown heroism, and give lesser mortals a voice: ‘Running away is two thirds of manliness.’ And ‘a hundred times called coward, and never once called the late.’

  El Cid is a hero from another age, an age when men would never be seen crying, and when no man could dare to say ‘I am afraid’. He lived at a time when the Christian West needed martyrs and the Muslims were relaxed and more inclined to tolerance. Today the roles seem to have been reversed. The Christian martyrs are barely remembered even on the holidays that are linked to their names. Today it is the unhappy Muslim world which is uneasy with itself, whose self-confidence is shaky, and whose discourse is packed with heroes, supermen and martyrs.

  The poetry of the modern Arab world abounds with these poems of hurt egos. They are a far (and terrible) cry from the old Arabic saying: ‘We have a duty of compassion to the dead.’

  The burning fires of Spain

  Swallowed in the name of the cross

  all sciences and achievements.

  Their flames are tongues accusing the soldiers of bad

  and evil to God

  So wrote Elias Farhat, in anger, at the beginning of this century.

  Suleiman al-Issa, the poet of Arab nationalism, like all elated nationalists of a troubled nation, sings of blood, death and vengeance:

  I swear that the tombs will be crowded tomorrow

  Crowded with dead people that are not ours

  I swear that tomorrow Iraq will explode with revenge

  By Abdel Nasser I swear.

  Another poet, the Syrian Badawi al-Jabal, speaks of humiliation and of the hatred it generates, a hatred that burned slowly inside him and was alive well into the 1940s, when he recited a poem that related to the German invasion of Paris.

  I believed in hatred

  to feed our will.

  I adore God out of pity and weakness.

  Woe to the people who did not darken their red revenge

  with their blood. Blood made of resentment and anger.

  …

  The ultimate generosity is to

  water the earth with one’s blood while fighting

  and to meet one’s God thirsty and drained.

  …

  I heard Paris complaining

  of her boastful invaders.

  Do you remember, now, oh Paris, our complaints?

  For twenty years we drank from brim-filled glasses

  Overflowing with humiliation.

  Get a good taste of humiliation yourself now.

  Your greatest men are now servants and collaborators.

  Hatred is slowly burning through our wings.

  Could not the two of us have avoided all this hatred?

  The poet is alarmingly obvious in these lines. Hatred and revenge seep through every word, every letter. But what is most humanly tragic is his last wish. He would have wished to be spared this cycle of humiliation, retribution and negative desires.

  Should we see Julian and El Cid as betrayers of their people, or were they being loyal to different values when faced with new realities and conditions? Is Badawi al-Jabal disgustingly mean in his wish for Paris to be humiliated, or is his a cry for his country’s independence? What if Julian had maintained his loyalty to the Christian king instead of betraying him out of loyalty to his daughter and her honour? What if Badawi al Jabal had understood better the truth of fascism and had chosen to forget his country’s humiliation for the sake of democracy?

  These questions do not belong to some remote past. We could lure ourselves into believing that, in our epoch that imagines itself as without camps or blocs, without enemies and friends, the duel between heroes and imposters, between the good guys and the bad guys, has gone, and has given way to the End of History and to democratic melancholy. Our epoch has widened the scope of the values it is prepared to recognize; it has made things more confused and complicated; it has not abandoned its heroes, but now reckons with counter-heroes as well. Politics is still a terrain of confrontation between multiple values and interests, and when things are not going well in our modern societies, the old mechanisms of sanctifying and demonizing creep back in triumph, as in the good old archaic days. For until now we have been incapable of ‘thinking of Cain without Abel, or of Marcus Antonius without Augustus’. If best-selling biographers are doing well with the demolition of our favourite heroes – see the recent assaults on figures such as Bertolt Brecht, Bruno Bethelheim, Graham Greene and Walt Disney – it is because we still have a psychic need to invest in illustrious figures of history.

  Whereas heroes enjoy the taste of death, which holds no terrors in the face of their immutable faith in the cause they serve, the reverse is not true for traitors or cowards. Traitors are not always seekers of life, nor are they always motivated by greed and cowardice. They face our judgement with more complicated challenges. Heroes may or may not impress us. We may glorify their image or ignore them. But we cannot ignore traitors and cowards. The humiliation that they release in their passing – be it inflicted on them or by them – is far more disturbing and ambivalent than matters of pride and glory.

  During the Nazi occupation the French sent more than three million anonymous letters in which they denounced their fellow citizens to the occupying authorities and the collaborationist government. As Cocteau wrote angrily, ‘There are anonymous letters tha
t are signed.’ One of these signed letters was written by a man informing the police about a Jewish family hiding in a place that he could direct them to. In the same letter the man asks if the police could return his favour by letting him have the Jewish lady’s fur coat to give to his wife. When we reach numbers like this, we are not looking at exceptional behaviour. Such debased behaviour is not specific to France, nor to the period either. Such numbers speak of rather ordinary behaviour, the behaviour of ordinary men and women and not of monsters. ‘Monsters exist, but there are very few of them to present any real danger. Those who are dangerous are the ordinary men,’ says Primo Levi. And precisely because they are ordinary they concern us more, and challenge our sense of sureness about ourselves and our fellow humans.

  Traitors and cowards upset us and disturb our easy classification of things. I always think that the appeal of the film Casablanca is due not just to the charm of Ingrid Bergman or the sexiness of a Bogart turned cynical because of hardened circumstances. Our attraction to it is not based merely on the suspense within the love triangle and the dilemma of passion and duty; it owes a lot to the character of the sleazy police prefect played by Claude Rains. He incarnates par excellence the personality of a traitor, an unprincipled coward and an informer. His stature is not very imposing, being shorter than the other characters, his eyes are small, and his answers shifty. He shows deference to the powerful – a German officer in this case – and arrogant superiority in his lack of compassion for the weak – the penniless refugees stuck in Casablanca. Director Michael Curtiz wanted an entertaining movie and probably one that was not anti-French. His ‘collaborator’ is not an entirely detestable figure; in fact Capitaine Louis is actually somehow likeable. He is the ordinary, the unheroic, personified, and is not the other face of the coin to the Resistance fighters. He is very, very ordinary.

  Why don’t we hate him? Is it because we sense that the corrupt characters are less dangerous than the fanatics? Is it because we now know that totalitarian societies breed, and live off, very ordinary traitors and informers? And that people are left to choose between being mean or being impossible heroes? Treachery and betrayal are a necessary corollary to tyrannical authority and the violence of war.