Muhammad Abi Samra - Beirut Noir

Would my friendship with Harut and his love for me, my ability to understand the Armenian language, and my belonging to the Party (and this is a tricky if not impossible matter for a non-Armenian person, and perhaps what made my mother constantly repeat that my grandmother’s late mother was Armenian) intercede on my behalf? Would all these factors intervene one day and enable Abu Harut to accept me as his son-in-law and allow me to marry his only daughter Tamara? Tamara, who was blossoming like magic with the beauty of a wild red rose and whose splendor and uniqueness Farah had been always proud of in the village. Tamara knew that I loved her and that I was sure I lived in her heart and her two sweet eyes... But Armenian fathers, in spite of everything, don’t consent to marry their daughters to “sons of Arabs,” except reluctantly. And yet I presumed there was still time, and that I would be able to add to the list of my good qualities later... so I thought.

The naked women at the Dixino nightclub no longer excited me as much as the poker machine at Paradisio, one of the many amusement centers that sprouted up like mushrooms during the war spreading all over. Perhaps I’m not being precise enough about describing my feelings: I spent an entire week in the embrace of “Raquel,” not leaving the room, obsessed with all the sexual pleasure that I discovered. However, it is possible to say that a different, fleeting exaltation possessed me when I entered this place, accompanied by Harut, out of curiosity. It was the same exaltation as the one that overwhelms a child who’s entering an amusement park for the first time. Was the reason the lights, the music, or those intoxicating sights which deceived the eyes of the people occupied by their games, fixing their attention on the numbers and symbols cascading before them on those graceful machines, making us pass by right near them, invisible like ghosts? Was I enticed by the relief on their faces at the moment they won, knowing that I was not a money-collecting enthusiast? Or was it the direct challenge that my mind formulated at that moment to discover the secret of those machines’ programs? What is the right time to start ejecting money after the pockets of so many people have been exhausted? Would I be able to decode the mystery and be the cleverest and luckiest player? Or is this the time in which I smelled it burning — like in our teen years — and which passes with a delightful slowness, here in this place that seemed outside of time, without thinking about the death lurking in the very molecules of air that we breathe in Beirut? I don’t know what reason to give for my attraction, nor do I know what gripped me, but I do know that I was suddenly a child again and desperately wanted to play with that machine.

Only a short time passed before I got used to the place and started going there without Harut. This made me feel more relaxed. Something led me to Paradisio like I was bewitched. I didn’t think about my future there, or my past in my village, or the shaky and unstable present in which I was living... as if I were on a swing.

I am the little plant uprooted from in front of the doorstep of our house. No longer planted in soil, my aerial roots extend upward, suspended in midair, not touching any land at all. Who am I? For a time I was not Majd the village kid, and of course I was not a city kid either. I wasn’t Christian or Muslim; I wasn’t Lebanese or Armenian. I tried hard to be something but I couldn’t. Who am I? When did I become a monster who didn’t dare scare anyone but himself, because he was so distant from his fluid self, like a colorless liquid, a self whose truth he didn’t show until he forgot it? I am merely what others want to see... When did I start taking on this role? How and why?

My anger at myself, Beirut, and Lebanon perhaps didn’t stop at the Paradisio, but I eventually did calm down and forget the bitter taste filling my mouth for a little bit. The place game me distance from my questioning and my reality that made me homeless and without an identity in Lebanon, the distant Lebanon that still didn’t know me and neither did I know it. Here alone did I dare to separate out the features of my face as I used to see them in the mirror every evening. Here alone I cast off my face, my age, my body, my sexual desires; I reconciled with my old age and accepted it, as befits my feeling that I don’t belong. Exactly like the poker machine, which doesn’t distinguish between one player and another. Thus I was there alone... free of Harut, my family, and my love for Tamara. Unrestrained by these chains, I didn’t have to speak, think, or concentrate on anything. I used to lose money there with massive pleasure, as though I were spending a part of my life that I didn’t want. I was donating it to the devil. To counterbalance this, I returned once again to give from my pocket what I had won yesterday and buy new clothing for the naked angel of my dreams.

I don’t know how this happened, but one day I suddenly noticed I was totally immersed, to the point of being almost in a coma, in the body of this machine of fleeting death, this machine of the next life. This machine of dreams. Perhaps the four red hearts on the colored screen in front of me were my sure win in the carré ace game, the special prize dedicated to someone who got lucky that night. For moments the place returned to reality and the people had to wake up for a few minutes and everyone around me started to yell with joy or greed, cursing their luck, feeling deep jealousy, before returning to their previous state — that is to say, disconnected from reality. But none of this matters. Only one voice filled my ears and it didn’t care about the amount that Avo, the owner of Paradisio, gave to me with his own hand.

I hadn’t informed anyone where I was. Did my mother send him after me because it was my birthday and everyone wanted to surprise me because I always ran away from these kinds of occasions? Was it the sound of the explosion that thundered a bit earlier and shook up my heart for a minute but that I ignored? This wasn’t the first time I stayed out very late during intensive bombardments. Was it because of the party’s state of alert, fearing a surprise attack?

“Inch beses, Harut?” — What’s up? — I asked in Armenian. He didn’t answer but grabbed my hand and led me outside.

I don’t know how much time passed with me over there driven into the ground like a nail. Did I die all of a sudden and arrive at the gates of hell with the tongue of the flames of hellfire charring my face? As we approached my apartment building, the sounds of little explosions, one after another, increased because of gas canisters in people’s apartments and cars parked both in front of the building and under it. These sounds brought me back to reality but I was not sure that I had really returned. It seemed to me as if I were observing the scene from above, or from behind a transparent curtain. I saw the paramedics, Party and civilian ambulances, armed men belonging to the official security forces and the militias. Women and men in nightgowns and pajamas, party clothes and normal clothes. Babies and children and teenage boys and girls and old people. Toys were flying through the air, mixed with papers, arms and legs, and dreams. All of it seemed tenuous, light, and floating, hovering above land without gravity. Is this Resurrection Day? Have the dead risen?

Hurry, there are people alive, hurry, there are corpses, hurry, there’s someone burning and he’s alive, there’s someone choking and he’s alive, someone trying to lift a wall off his shattered skull, without hands... Hurry... hurry, there’s the voice of a child.

“Hurry, they’re alive... Majd, they are alive, hurry up!” Harut called from the seventh hell or seventh heaven, I don’t know... I’d gotten separated from him when I saw the bloodied faces of my family, their closed eyes, black dust obscuring their features and everything else. Were they sleeping, had they lost consciousness, were they alive, or were they simply dead?