Beirut Hellfire Society

by Rawi Hage

  And after a little while, Pavlov also danced, mimicking his father. He watched his father lift Moskovian’s huge body in his arms and walk down the stairs with it. Pavlov’s father carried the Armenian along the secluded burial road. He walked with the dead weight augmenting gravity and the hardship caused by gravity, and took the corpse to the mortician’s room. There he beautified the body. Then he loaded it in his deathmobile, and Pavlov and his father drove away and out the cemetery road towards the cremation house, to make fire and dance once again.

  THE HYENA BEGS

  Rifles voiced their menacing bangs in the distance. Battles are underway, Pavlov said out loud. Cadavers would again glide along the burial road, wings folded unlike birds’, feet joined together unlike soldiers’ boots, faces immobile unlike actors’—powdered, preserved, packaged and delivered, to be consumed by earth, gnawed by vermin and vanish again. Not only could Pavlov estimate the frequency of upcoming burials by the intensity of the bombs, he could predict the age of the dead from the location of the fighting and the targets the bombs struck. When a bombardment was directed towards the front lines, the majority of corpses would be unmarried kids, which meant the dancing type of burial. But when the bombs were aimed at civilian neighbourhoods, the processions would be the slow and solemn kind.

  One day in November, his cousin the hyena appeared in Pavlov’s bedroom. Before Pavlov had the chance to ask her how she had opened the main door, she wept, and fell to her knees. Her lover, Son of Mechanic, had been shot dead on the front line. Now he lay in the middle of the demarcation road. His comrades had attempted to retrieve the body, but a sniper was preventing them. His body was in no man’s land, in the middle of the street, unprotected from stray dogs and opportunistic birds.

  She walked on her knees towards Pavlov’s bed, begging for his help. She was incoherent and choking and coughing. She grabbed Pavlov’s hand and started to kiss it, pleading for his forgiveness.

  Bring me the rest, Pavlov said, and I’ll help you.

  His cousin understood. She nodded, still weeping, and rushed down the stairs and towards the cemetery. A few minutes later she returned with a plastic bag with Rex’s head inside.

  Pavlov went to the kitchen, opened the fridge and laid the head next to the body.

  Then he took his deathmobile from the locked garage beneath the house and drove towards the Green Line. His cousin sat beside him, whimpering, the pitch of her voice controlled by the obstruction of an overused tissue in her hand. Her hyena laugh was no more than a faint trace. Can her laugh have just disappeared? Pavlov wondered. What a creature, capable of both murder and love. He had known her all her life. He had heard her early childhood cries turn into chuckles then laughter as time reshaped her face, her breasts and her long black hair. Ah, he thought, and death has finally reached her. Nothing will be a laughing matter from now on.

  He drove down the hill of Achrafieh, towards the port and the Green Line. In silence, he steered his deathmobile to the battlefield. When they reached the shipping containers, he saw the plastic chairs, empty except for a jacket, beside a bin full of coffee cups. His cousin opened the car door and ran towards the jacket. She held it to her face and sniffed it and howled. Three militia boys who recognized her took her inside the building, and Pavlov followed. Her wails echoed like birds’ screeching—sharp, sad and menacing. Fighters peeked between the stairwells and through the holes in the walls. They had beards, and looked comfortable in shirts, sandals, sweatpants; some even held their rifles against their cotton pyjamas. They gathered around, drinking sodas and spitting as they went up and down the stairs, scratching their killer instincts with the tips of their rifles. To Pavlov, they seemed blasé, perhaps mildly entertained by the spectacle of a weeping woman releasing her long, breathless wails that sounded like whips or like hymns on Good Friday.

  One of the militiamen, whose name was Charbel, took Pavlov up the stairs to a higher floor. Through an opening between the sandbags, he pointed out the body of Son of Mechanic. The body lay on its side in the middle of the highway, parallel to the earth and the sky, his rifle still slung across his chest. He wore dirty white sneakers and his feet were apart, legs twisted and bent, in the tradition of photos of casualties of war. The direct sunlight made Son of Mechanic appear suspended in a haze of heat that skimmed the asphalt and advanced like the waves of a nuclear blast. The body gave architectural scale to the devastation of the surrounding buildings with their bombed metal doors and pierced walls like faces punctured by a dermatologist’s malpractice. A broken lamppost hunched down and sideways, leaning like a sprig of parsley or mint.

  Son of Mechanic was slowly decaying, decomposing under the blazing star. His skin must be hardening in the absence of life, Pavlov thought, and sizzling under the eternal burning of the sun. The body was at a stage where it should be removed, covered and well treated. He was looking at the distant cadaver from behind the protection of bags of sand, and dust was floating everywhere. Dust, he murmured to himself, bags of dust to protect us from turning into dust. And he laughed to himself.

  Charbel told Pavlov that yesterday a photographer from Spain who’d been visiting them often to take photos had brought along booze and food. They all drank, but Son of Mechanic kept on drinking after everyone else retreated. Son of Mechanic had offered to keep watch. He drank all night, then took a Kalashnikov, left the container area and ran towards the enemy line, crossing the road towards the other side, shooting and cursing. A sniper shot him right away.

  We didn’t even have the chance to stop him, Charbel said. We battled all morning to take back the Martyr’s body, but their snipers have made it impossible. Still, we asked the headquarters for more men and we managed to make a surprise attack from the shore side. We attacked a battalion of mercenaries. Yes, Gadhafi has sent his mercenaries here. Everyone deals with this place as if it’s theirs. Everyone is everything but Lebanese. Anyhow, we surprised the platoon of mercenaries. They never thought we’d cross to the other side. But we did. We know the terrain. We grew up here. They were all huddling around a little gas stove making tea. They didn’t know what hit them. Boiled water and blood was splashing against the walls. We brought a body of theirs back with us.

  But we couldn’t get to the Martyr. Their sniper is still covering the road. We have to get the Martyr’s body before the rats and stray dogs feed on him. I picked up a loudspeaker and told the enemy that we have a body of one of their fighters and we are trying to work out an exchange, but they did not reply to us. So I hooked the fighter’s body to the jeep and I dragged it around for them to see. I drove under their fire, and the sniper shot at me…but I drove like a madman, fast. They finally got the message and responded. We’ve been communicating through loudspeakers. They want us to pick up our dead friend and return their man’s body, but we don’t trust them. I think the moment we reach for the body, the sniper will get us. We’re not sure if they give a damn about their mercenary’s body.

  Pavlov asked the fighter to walk back with him towards the containers. His cousin had been laid on a mattress on the ground, weeping, and when she saw Pavlov she reached for his feet and whispered, Bring him back, I want to bury him myself.

  Pavlov asked the fighter if there was any way to reach Son of Mechanic by car. Yes, Charbel told him, you can access that main road by way of a small alley. Pavlov nodded. He asked the fighter to fetch a white cloth or bedsheet, and take him to the body of the mercenary.

  Pavlov and Charbel untied the body from behind the jeep. The back of the mercenary’s skull had cracked from bumping along the ground and part of his brain was bulging out, and the torso had been badly disfigured by the friction of the roads. They wrapped him in the sheet, leaving his face and his shoes uncovered, lifted him up and positioned him on top of the deathmobile. Then they laid a rifle at his side. Pavlov made a white flag out of a stick and some white cloth and drove the car through the alley until he reached the main road. There, he stopped.

  Slowly, he opened the
door. With his hands behind his head, he got out and went to stand in front of his deathmobile. He waited for death, but nothing happened. Not a shot, not a word from the loudspeakers, only a breeze from the seaside, salty air wafting from the beaches. Salt to preserve the cadavers from rotting, he thought, a lost, ancient art that should be revived. Salt, he thought, and he kept his eyes on the ground and repeated, Salt, the eye of the Medusa, pillars of salt…And he thought he should cover Rex’s remains in salt, and he thought of all the salt in the ocean and on earth…White, coarse, crystal-like salt for Rex. The idea pleased him and he smiled.

  He stood in the middle of the road that divided Beirut in half. An empty two-way road that separated two fighting militias. A long road that sliced vertically through the city and stretched towards the seas. On both sides were blown-up stores, assaulted street lamps standing in the manner of hunchbacks in a famine. There were abandoned cars and mortar holes in the ground and traces of bullets everywhere. Pavlov turned his head carefully and saw fortifications made of sandbags and shipping containers on both sides. The containers blocked the roads, as did the sandbags, and burned-out vehicles and weeds were sprouting everywhere through asphalt and walls. Grass grew everywhere: in the sandbags, on the roofs of the small stores, between the old beaten arches, on top of the columns lying on the ground…He was in no man’s land and he thought about his own death, the death of his dog and the devastation of fire.

  Slowly, he approached Son of Mechanic, reached down and dragging the body by the feet, walked back towards the small alley. There, Pavlov laid Son of Mechanic on the sidewalk, within reach of his comrades.

  He returned to his deathmobile, got in and began to drive slowly towards the other side.

  ACTING

  The body of the mercenary was still tied to the roof of the deathmobile. Pavlov drove straight across the demarcation road.

  He reached the other side of the city, parked his car and waited at the entrance to a street that had its end blocked by a large shipping container. Two fighters stuck their heads out of a door in the middle of the street and summoned him with a nod of their heads and a half-circular gesture with their guns. He drove along the open street and waited beside the container at the end of it.

  Two militiamen appeared from an opening in the side of the container, guns pointed at him. They were shouting as they brandished their rifles in his face. Get down on the ground, they yelled, and he knelt. He noticed their beards, their jeans and loose T-shirts. From the ground he watched their sandals and their thick military boots going back and forth. He remained where he was, with his hands on his head.

  One of the militiamen put a boot on Pavlov’s back and frisked him, while his companion quickly looked inside the car.

  Get up!

  Pavlov got up.

  Two more fighters rushed out and unloaded the cadaver. Then someone blindfolded Pavlov and dragged him through an opening between two shipping containers.

  Pavlov sat on a chair, waiting, while the fighters discussed the fate of the mercenary’s body. They were arguing.

  Do you have the body’s papers? one of the men finally asked Pavlov.

  No, Pavlov answered.

  How did you get the body?

  I was called to help.

  Pavlov could barely glimpse this man’s uniform under his blindfold but guessed he too must be a mercenary, one of Gadhafi’s brigade. They are always wandering, lost, he thought to himself, and smiled.

  Let’s see what the madman here has to tell us. One of the boots turned to Pavlov and walked towards him. Suddenly he was grabbed by the hair, slapped and then pushed to the ground. Someone started to stomp on him. Pavlov moaned under the blows of the heavy boots. The stomping was not frequent, nor rhythmic. It was not even hateful. Pavlov detected hesitation.

  Another fighter intervened, pushed the first man away from Pavlov and ordered him to stand up. He dragged Pavlov to a room inside an empty building. It echoed and had a pungent smell of dampness. The man pushed Pavlov to the floor and pulled up a large, empty olive oil can to sit on. He placed it so he faced Pavlov, and tore off his blindfold.

  So, what should we call you? he asked.

  Pavlov.

  The man burst out laughing. Are you Russian?

  No, I am from here.

  Is that your war name, Pavlov?

  No.

  You are Christian?

  I am not a believer, Pavlov said. He could sense the man’s surprise.

  So you’re a Communist.

  No.

  Then what do you believe in?

  I believe in dogs.

  The man’s laughter echoed in the empty building. You believe in dogs?

  Yes.

  You worship dogs?

  No.

  Are you a madman?

  If I was, Pavlov replied, I wouldn’t be able to tell.

  So what are you?

  I am an undertaker, and the son of an undertaker.

  You don’t look like an undertaker. You look too young to be an undertaker. You look like a fighter to me. You’re young and have long hair, and Pavlov is your assumed war name. And judging by your broad, strong shoulders, I think you’ve done some military training.

  No, said Pavlov. I have broad shoulders from digging graves.

  Did you volunteer to pick up the body or did they pay you?

  I volunteered.

  So you are definitely Christian. Christians love to volunteer. The man started to laugh. But you said you’re not a believer.

  No.

  Yet you believe in dogs.

  I believe that they are superior to humans.

  Why did you do it, dog man? We could have shot you as well. I watched you picking up the body. Is he a relative of yours?

  Who? asked Pavlov.

  The mad fighter who ran towards us. Cursing us and our mothers. My men were about to shoot you. I stopped them. You know why?

  No.

  Because I was curious about what was going on in your head. I wanted to know why a man would do such a thing for another man, a dead man.

  I did it because I wanted them to stop dragging the body. Hector didn’t deserve his body to be dragged around.

  So the dead man is Hector.

  No.

  Who is Hector?

  The Greek warrior.

  You have Greeks fighting with you?

  No. I was referring to Homer.

  What Homer?

  The writer.

  You’re a nutcase, man! Was your dead friend on drugs? He rushed towards us in the middle of the night.

  I don’t know.

  You must know something. Why are you risking your life for this man?

  My father was an undertaker, Pavlov said, and now I am an undertaker.

  I don’t believe you, the fighter said. I think you did it because you know the dead man. You want to bury him. Who is the woman wailing on the other side? Are you doing it for the woman?

  I am doing it because my father would have done it.

  Your father, meaning your Christian father? Like the father of Jesus?

  No.

  You can tell me. My mother is Christian, I know about your so-called Father. I am sure that you know how to use a gun, right? Have you fired a gun, Pavlov?

  Yes, my uncle showed me how.

  The man started to laugh loudly. You know how to use a gun. You’re not an undertaker. You’re a fighter. You just said so.

  My father was an undertaker and so am I.

  I think you’re a combatant. The man slapped Pavlov, hard. You know, you’re not dead yet because I like you, I like your courage and madness. But you have to tell me the truth or I am going to shoot you and throw your body to the dogs that you love so much.

  As Pavlov was about to reply, a second fighter burst into the room.

  Big Moustafa is here, he informed his comrade. Do you want us to hand him the Libyan’s body?

  My father knows Big Moustafa, Pavlov said quickly. Big Moustafa the un
dertaker has his funeral home in Ain al-Mreisseh, he added. Big Moustafa will testify that I am the son of an undertaker. He knew my father before the war. My father talked about him. Big Moustafa visited our home before the war.

  Pavlov’s interrogator said, Bring Big Moustafa in here.

  Big Moustafa, the undertaker, lived up to his name. He had a long white beard and a humongous round belly, and wore suspenders over his T-shirt. His belt barely stopped his belly from falling to his knees.

  This young man claims that you knew his father.

  Who’s your father? Big Moustafa asked.

  Who’s your father? the fighter repeated.

  Awad the undertaker, Pavlov said.

  Awad from Mar Mitr over in Achrafieh! Moustafa laughed. Yes, I know this man’s father. How is he, son?

  Dead, Pavlov said.

  May he rest in warmth and peace. I’ll tell you a story about him. Years ago, I spent the funniest day with your father. And then he invited me to dinner at your house. You were a kid back then. But before I go on…what are you doing over here, anyway?

  I picked up a body, Pavlov said.

  Oh, good man, you took over the business. My sons won’t touch the profession. They all ran away. You’re doing a great honour to your father. He was a decent chap.