by Rawi Hage
Big Moustafa turned to address the militiamen: I know this man and his family, he declared. I, Big Moustafa, I am talking to all of you. I, Big Moustafa, have buried many of your friends and family. I am Big Moustafa the undertaker who has washed your beloveds’ bodies and wrapped them in soft cloth and helped you bury them. Now I am asking you to give this young man some water. This man is our guest. Where are your manners? Your dead will shame you if you disrespect my wishes and I’ll never touch any of your bodies if you get killed. Hear me, O people. When you die, I will bury you in dirt and never wash you clean to meet your maker.
Now you all listen to my story, said Big Moustafa. A long time ago, this man’s father and I were both asked to arrange the funeral of a Muslim man who had converted to Christianity. His wife was Christian. When he died, his wife and her family wanted to give him a Christian burial, but his brothers and parents wanted a Muslim ceremony. The parents told me to go to the village with them and bring the body back home. We drove up somewhere in the mountains towards the Christian villages of Kfar Matta. This was before the war…So here we were, this young undertaker’s father and myself, representing two different religions and waiting for the family to settle their feud, wondering which of us would leave with the body. The wife refused to give the body to the parents. She said that her husband had converted and his final wish was to be buried as a Christian. But the young man’s father begged the wife to give him the body and move on. She didn’t have any kids, she was still young and beautiful—she could always remarry and get on with her life.
The young widow suggested a compromise: that her husband be buried in a Christian cemetery but his body be washed according to Muslim rites. He could be wrapped in a white cloth according to Muslim tradition and be buried with his head facing Mecca. The stone would have only his name and dates, and no cross or Fateha. The father requested that a sheik be brought to perform the prayers, and the woman said she wouldn’t mind having a sheik as long as a priest was also present at the burial.
The burial lasted hours. The priest offered the sheik the first prayer, but the sheik declined and insisted that the priest start the prayers since this was his home village, upon which the priest insisted that although the village might be Christian, it still upheld the old traditions of Arab hospitality. The sheik replied that he was eager to hear the priest’s beautiful voice and the prayers of Issa, Jesus, whom he acknowledged as one of the prophets of Islam. This debate by the gravesite went on for over an hour, with discussion and false courtesies, each clergyman trying to outmanoeuvre the other so that he could recite his religion’s prayer last and thereby seal the fate of the dead in either heaven. In the end, the priest was compelled to go first and give the sheik the last prayer, and not utter a word more. But when the sheik was done, the priest splashed some holy water on the grave. The sheik followed with another prayer. For the next three hours, the priest and the sheik stood above the dead man trading rituals and prayers until at last your father went up to them both and said, I will count to three and you will both stop at the same time, and whoever doesn’t I am going to shove down the hole and bury with the dead.
Big Moustafa laughed, his belly bouncing. He turned to the fighter and said, Let him go, for God’s sake. Let him go. These are good people. I know his family. The man’s only earning a living and he brought you one of yours at the risk of his own life. It was a fair exchange.
Before Pavlov drove his car back across the demarcation line, Big Moustafa asked him to come to his hearse to sign some witness papers.
They sat in the car and Big Moustafa shared a broad smile with Pavlov. Son, you believe in the value of fire and light over the filth of the earth?
Pavlov nodded.
Son, you took over from your father. Let me kiss your head. How is your father’s furnace that I heard so much about? If you need any spare parts, here’s my number. Call me. I know a man who imports parts from Germany—I could send them to you across the line. There are still a few people who seek to return to the abode of fire and to leave this earthly pigsty. Let me kiss your head again, son. Nothing pleases me more than seeing a son of the fire and light.
Pavlov walked back to his own hearse and drove away from the narrow street. He crossed the divide, the long road that separated the two sides of the city. He drove his deathmobile over broken glass, falling stones from the shelled buildings and the abundant weeds that peeked from underneath the old asphalt, and arrived back in the same narrow street on the Christian side.
Two militiamen greeted him. He parked, got out and walked towards the plastic chairs, where his cousin was still wailing beside Son of Mechanic’s body. Pavlov tried to pull her away, but she clung to the corpse, held it in her arms and screamed. Finally a militiaman dragged her away forcibly. She shook her head in protest, and her hair flew and lashed the faces of Pavlov and the soldier. She leaned forwards towards her lover and pulled hard, dragging the fighter along with her.
Pavlov stepped between her and the body, and placed a tender hand on her face. He whispered in her ear, It’s time for the dead to dance.
REX REDUX
The following night, Pavlov removed his dog from the fridge. He carried the two bags outside, laid them in the back of his deathmobile and drove into the high mountains of his youth. The deathmobile climbed steadily through the hills and along the small roads, passing villages and stone churches.
He arrived at the cremation house at a late hour, after midnight. He reached for the key under the vase and opened the door. He took Rex the dog out of the hearse, and gently laid him on the wooden stretcher his father had built with his own hands.
Then he sat on the sofa and conversed with his dog. They both drank what was left from the bottle in his father’s cupboard and Rex tried to howl with difficulty.
Finally, Pavlov lit the furnace, and bade farewell to his companion. He repositioned the head and the body of the dog to make them one and whole again, and eased him into the furnace. He slowly closed the door and went out for some fresh air.
Three hours, he thought, and shed a few tears.
He lit a cigarette and watched the stars circling in abundance over dark stretches on the surface film of sky, suspended and flattened with the simplicity of a medieval map—its unremarkable edge, and its abyss for man to fall into, screaming in horror.
Sparks from the flames, little dots all around him, confirmed for him his father’s belief in the beauty of fire and the supremacy of light. But suddenly the sky turned dark. A sea of mist rose from the valley below and veiled all that glittered and shone. Alongside the mist, a silence surfaced, and the man who loved dogs could hear his own pulse, a steady rhythm that rose with the wet invasion and fell with the cold air. Only Pavlov’s cigarette shone now, like a solitary star. He waited, solemn and immobile. All this shall pass, he thought, and he looked for his matches to ignite another star.
Two hours passed and Pavlov stood his ground in the grey sheet of mist. The damp filled his hair, his clothes and mouth. He was covered in dew. Water, Pavlov thought, also passes away. Towards early morning a faint light broke at the horizon behind the hills and liquidated the opaque mist. Birds called, plants unveiled their colours to the world, and magnificent scenery appeared.
Pavlov compared this vast view of the mountains with the one from his balcony in Beirut. He thought: My window view is morbid and limited. Maybe it was time to contemplate an escape from inherited sadnesses. Last night he had witnessed dying stars, the last light they exhaled before, perhaps, reaching a planet ruled by monkeys who had perfected the arts of papermaking, fire and smoking cigarettes. He thought of water again, and then of dust, and then remembered the furnace and Rex turning to ash. He looked at his watch. One more cigarette.
He was tired and wanted to sleep, but had to be back for Son of Mechanic’s funeral. Other than that and his promises to the Society, he realized, he was free of obligations. All that had bound him was affection for a lost madwoman and the company of a dog
—and both were gone.
He went back into the house, drank water and opened the furnace to let it cool. Rex had disappeared. All that was left of him was dust and small traces of a dog’s bones. He gathered the ashes and put them in a plastic bag. Then he sat outside again with a glass of whisky and a can of beans.
After a while, he walked along his father’s path through the bushes and over large rocks. He balanced at the edge of the cliff. He sniffed, searching for the wind’s direction. He poured the remains of Rex down the slope and into the steep, deep valley. He thought how the dog would enjoy this flight; even Rex’s former companion, Tariq the flying warrior, would approve.
A little later, Pavlov locked the door behind him, slipped the house key under the vase and walked away from the House of Ashes.
DANCING
In the early morning in Beirut, Pavlov sat on his balcony and smoked. Then he went down to the cemetery and stood by his parents’ graves. Soon, he said to his father, I’ll exhume your body and light you a magnificent fire. Soon, he said, when the eyes of my uncles are not watching me, I will liberate you from the heaviness of mud and burn you to ashes. He lit another cigarette and walked back to his balcony and stayed there until he heard the first tuning note, the note that presaged a chorus and began the burial dance. Tears for Son of Mechanic starting to flow.
Oh, the sound! A trumpet started it, followed by loud drums and cymbals. Pavlov went into the bathroom to wash his face and comb his hair. He grabbed his white shirt and black tie and hurried down onto the street. His cousin had hired a new band to play at her funeral-wedding to Son of Mechanic. She was all in white, with a white lace handkerchief and flowers in her hair. Pavlov joined his two uncles and the group of fighters, his feet tapping to the new repertoire of death tunes. As the band crescendoed and the drums boomed, Pavlov danced, carrying the coffin on his shoulder, grabbing a handle with one hand and waving his other hand in the air, stomping and smiling, laughing and jumping in the sunlight. In the middle of it all, he let out a loud howl and danced.
That night and the next, he listened to his cousin’s lamenting laughter as she roamed the cemetery. The sound bounced between her house and the cemetery gate and her lover’s headstone. On the second night, Pavlov went out and stood on his balcony, watching her white robe as it flowed inside the cemetery in the manner of ghosts and desert jinn.
Near midnight, two motorcycles appeared below his balcony. Pavlov grabbed his coat and car keys and went down to meet them. He saluted Hanneh and Manneh, who informed him that Jean Yacoub, the man who had lost his son at the hands of a warlord named Assaf, had died. Pavlov nodded, and made his way over to the garage that housed the deathmobile.
What had happened to Jean Yacoub was this: He had waited in his car at the end of the street where he knew Assaf’s motorcade would appear. The moment he saw the metal door of the gate opening, he got out of his car and walked towards it. He waited on the sidewalk for the first car to exit the gate, then pulled out his gun and aimed it at the tinted rear window. But Assaf the warlord had a habit of sitting next to the driver in the front, and he escaped the attempt to kill him. Jean Yacoub was gunned down on the sidewalk in front of the building where his son had been shot. The bodyguard emptied three rounds into him. The blood that escaped his body gathered on the cement and formed a small pool, then gained momentum and ran down the edge to where the sidewalk and the asphalt met. It formed a thick, long line along the road, and for days afterwards people crossed back and forth above the sidewalk without noticing the dark colour of defeat.
Hanneh and Manneh had the papers for the morgue. They retrieved Jean’s body and helped Pavlov lay the corpse in the deathmobile. All three men, and the cadaver, drove to the cremation house.
Jean Yacoub was burned in the house, and his ashes were gathered and carried to the cliff where one wind or another was bound to pass. Hanneh and Manneh sprinkled his ashes where Pavlov’s father had once sprinkled those of Jean’s son. Then Pavlov and his friends ate and drank in his memory before turning around and driving back to the city.
* * *
The next morning Pavlov noticed a fly trapped inside his window. It buzzed and bumped against the glass, frantic, its wings refracting rays from the winter sun that shone on Beirut and, he assumed, on other parts of the world. Pavlov leaned against the wall of his living room and watched, hesitant, hoping that the fly would discover the crack in the glass and be saved from its entrapment. He approached it with a newspaper in hand, and directed it towards the crack in the glass, but the fly became frantic again and beat its wings loudly against the window until finally it reached the opening and escaped in the direction of the distant trees. Fear comes before emancipation, and frenzy before flight, Pavlov declared to the memory of Rex.
The ceiling fan started to spin again, announcing the return of the electric current. Pavlov opened his closet and reached for his wrinkled shirt, set out the ironing board, removed the iron and began to shape the white fabric in straight lines. The fan stopped and the electricity cut out just as he was about to hang his shirt back in the closet. He went to the bathroom and checked the water pressure. Feeble. He counted his plastic razors, and positioned his shaving brush within reach of the mirror, the soap by its side. He grabbed his shoes and polished them.
All this done, he stepped out onto his balcony and waited for the tolling of the bells. The weak sun hit his face and he wondered if the fly was aware of the relationship between interior and exterior, if it contemplated the question of false transparencies or ever asked why the visible universe could not be attained because of the treachery of glass, if it was grateful to Pavlov for his grand act of altruism. Fear and misunderstanding between man and other creatures is common, he thought. The fly, he remarked to the sun, in its great terror, must have thought that I wanted to capture and devour it, and surely believed it had won its emancipation by its own heroism and ingenuity. I, the fly proclaimed, escaped this fantastical entrapment through my skill in flying and the persistence of my will! Idiotic fly, Pavlov mumbled to the sun, suddenly vexed and saddened by the ingratitude of all creatures and by the vastness and loneliness of the cosmos.
His thoughts turned to his sister Nathalie, up in the mountains. Perhaps he should visit her and her husband and their daughter, five years old by now. He wondered if his sister read to her daughter or if, instead, she contributed to her daughter’s entrapment in a world composed of the butcher’s ignorance and her own joyless practicality. Maybe, he thought, he could help liberate his niece—a small directional movement, and then she might be capable of grand, liberating flight?
FAMILY OUTING
Pavlov took his deathmobile, which had always been a source of misery and shame to his sister, and went to visit her. On the way, he stopped and bought a doll, sweets, bread, picture books, a basket of fruit, two bottles of Johnnie Walker (the red kind), a dress for his sister and a silk scarf. He drove along the coast and north, and before he arrived at the city port of Jounieh he took a turn uphill towards the mountainous region.
When Pavlov arrived at the village, he parked in the centre and walked towards Nathalie’s house with his bags of gifts. At the gate, a dog growled. Joseph glanced up but didn’t recognize Pavlov—or maybe he had forgotten about his brother-in-law’s existence. In any case, he didn’t call off the dog and continued working on his car, its parts scattered on the ground. The dog began barking threats, so Pavlov ordered him to fetch his sister, and the dog obeyed. In no time, Nathalie came out and ran towards him, berating her husband for not opening the gate where Pavlov stood, bags in hand.
The husband barely greeted Pavlov and returned to working on his car, but his niece, Rima, watched shyly from the porch as Pavlov advanced with a large smile. His sister accepted his gifts and kissed him. She shouted out to her husband: You didn’t even recognize my brother! Lucky that Barbus is here to announce his coming, or you would have left him to stand unwelcome at the gate.
Pavlov noticed that Josep
h had gained weight. He took in the butcher’s strong hands, his loose pants with a waist that reached above his belly button and cuffs that hovered above the ankles, and his style of shoes that hadn’t changed since Pavlov had last seen him at work, standing with a piece of chopped meat or the head of a goat in his hand.
Pavlov gently approached his niece and brought out the books and the doll, and offered them to her. She smiled. He took her in his arms and kissed her.
Joseph watched all this, reserved but not hostile. Like many villagers, he met the arrival of city people with uncertainty or indifference, and eventually a hint of amusement. But Pavlov’s sister was unusually affectionate. She had a new, motherly look to her. Her hips had widened, and her long skirt and red cheeks helped her blend in with her agrarian surroundings. Even her voice was louder now. She was very excited to see Pavlov, and she didn’t hold back her enthusiasm. She brought him coffee and seemed appreciative of his gifts, touched that Pavlov, her self-absorbed little brother, the bookworm who had talked only about antiquity, had grown up to become a thoughtful uncle.
You bought all these things? she asked in an uncertain tone that fell between a question, affection and approval. I guess the dead Greeks in those books didn’t totally dim your mind! Look at you. For once you remember us.
Over dinner, Pavlov told his sister that on his way to the village he had noticed a large convoy of military trucks going uphill. It seems they are preparing for a battle, he said.
Joseph replied that he had already spoken to the commander of the region, and the commander, a second cousin, had assured him that the military presence nearby was a precautionary measure, and purely for training purposes. No battle would be fought there.
