Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

Talal blew the smoke from his cigarette into the air, his big eyes looking skeptically at the priest. But Father, you didn’t introduce civilization into our countries. You’re just colonizers, coming in with the ten commandments. Giving us the commandments and taking the land.

— That’s not true. That’s the way Communists talk. No, my son, we didn’t take anything. We lost our best men to the cause of our civilizing mission. Then we left of our own good will.

— I don’t believe you left of your own good will. You left because you were forced to.

Father Marcel wearies of the ideological discussion. He doesn’t like ideology. Ideology is the instrument of the age of materialism to ensnare young people. It inevitably leads to people’s enslavement to materialism. So they become fanatical and closed to discussion.

— You were a lieutenant in the French army when it entered our country, Father. So you must have taken part in the battle of Maysaloun. *

— Maysaloun, no, I didn’t take part in it. I took part in many other battles. In the battles for the Jabal Druze and Ghawtah, outside Damascus. And I recall that we were models of chivalry and discipline, and harmed no one.

— But Father, the massacres and excesses of the battles of Ghawtah and the Jabal are well known. I’ve read General Andreas book about these battles. He writes with delight about the occupation, and the expulsion of the Druze, and the killing of the rebel groups in Ghawtah.

— General Andrea? He was my friend. Poor General Andrea, he was earnest and romantic, his entire ambition was to become a marshall in the French army, but he died of a heart attack. Poor Andrea. Listen carefully. (Here, the priests tone sharpened.) War is war. You can’t fight your enemies, you can’t stop terrorists and spies and the enemies of civilization without killing some of them. The fate of civilization was at stake. The fate of French history hung on the outcome of the Jabal and Ghawtah battles. Leniency was out of the question. Things had to be quick and sharp.

— What’s the difference between a priest and a cop, Father Andrea? He’d be wearing a French officer’s uniform, holding a gun in his right hand and a glass of wine in the other. He’d tell revolting jokes about the Arab dead who were left out in the open in their black clothes with no one to bury them. … We’re tough, the officer would say, surrounded by Senegalese and Circassian soldiers who spoke pidgin French and talked about heroism and civilization and women.

— What’s the difference between a priest and a cop, Father?

The church was a ship, but the helm was smashed. The church wouldn’t sink. And, upstairs, lived two aged priests with their memories and sorrows.

— Why are those who love Western civilization being defeated?

But we were looking for the sea.

The church has become a support position. Grinov shots reverberating in the air, Jaber’s machine-gun lying silent then bursting forth. Rubble all around. And with us, Father Marcel, his companion and memories of France.

— How will you say mass, Father!

— It’ll be a silent mass, he answers me. Amid such cacophony, we seek out silence. We want silence to reign once again. Silence alone is the key to contemplation.

Sameer was talking and telling jokes non-stop, Butros humming his tune, and Talal thinking about his new film. The guns wouldn’t hush. SCENE FOUR

Between the wrecked church and Bab Idriss Square, where the forward positions were, moments blended into one another. The church had become a secondary position, but we stayed in it and it was now our favorite sleeping-place. A large courtyard, thick walls. Coldness and memories. And during the long days, we’d sit between its walls, or around the windows, asking questions and answering them.

— But why didn’t you kill me? Father Marcel would say.

— No, Father! Why should we kill you? We may or may not agree with you. But we wouldn’t kill you.

— But war is full of killing.

— No, Father. The war is one thing and killing you is another.

Death, here, was an interval. Just an instant of love, or an instant of hatred. A moment to step into, a moment to wait for. Talal was always talking to me about death. What is death? You feel nothing. Just like that, all of a sudden, you feel nothing. You open the door, then you step in, then nothing. Id look at his eyes and see them widening. What’s the relationship between death and wide-open eyes?

The battles were a lesson. But death — that’s something else. I carried him across my shoulder, he quivered like a bird.

Death is a bird, Butros would say.

But we fight to win, not to die, Jaber would shout.

We die for the sake of a poster, I answered. The color photograph, with the colored writing underneath, and the tear-filled eyes of the young girls behind.

— No way, Father. We wouldn’t kill you.

And the prisoner, what shall we do with the prisoner? Ahmed would ask.

— Kill him on the spot. This is a war without pris oners. They kill you without justification. They kill you be cause your name is what it is and not something else. *They skin our dead and finish off the wounded. This is a war with out prisoners. Prisoners are killed on the spot.

The bird on my shoulder was quivering. My face wet with hot blood, and his body stretching from my hand to the world’s end. The bird making his last lament, the sea and the rain all around him. I darted between the shells and the explosions. Then I put him down beside me. I sat and talked to him. A child, his face fondled by the breeze, a child who wouldn’t cry. I carried him again. When I reached the hospital, the doctor told me he was dead. I didn’t understand a thing. I returned to my companions and we went on shooting and advancing, and laughed and told jokes.

— No, we wouldn’t kill the prisoner, but take him and put him inside Father Marcel’s brown robes. Butros leaped to his habit, put it on, and raised his hand bidding us be silent, humming his Latin chant. We left him alone with his rituals and dreams.

I was walking about the hall of St. Louis Cathedral. This is an old church, a very old church. Maybe it was built in the age of the church missions. Maybe it was built by the first silk merchant to arrive in Beirut from Lyons, in fulfillment of a vow he made for the success of his commerce. The fact is that I forgot to ask the priest about the history of the church, how it was built and since when there has been a community called the Latins in our country. The important thing is the organ. Lying on the floor, broken, moaning, its beautiful melodious sound gone. And everywhere, the remnants of smashed floor tiles and water from the rain. The thick walls white but pock-marked, with multi-colored graffiti, black and red and green, all over. And between a holy statue and an ancient icon, you can read: allahu akbar, Fateh *was here. And all around, the sounds of percussion and the echo. I didn’t used to understand what an echo was. When we were little, we would go to the wadi overlooking Nahr Beirut and shout, and our voices returned, repeated over and over again. But here the echo has a different beat. One shell becomes a whole battle. The echo mingles with the sound of glass and the rattle of the censer and the pacing of the priests’ footsteps.

— The ship’s been wrecked, Father.

The church had turned into something like an abandoned house. Blankets on the floor, empty bullet cases, the rhythms of our footsteps. In the middle, where the helm and the altar stood, sandbags were being taken to the buildings nearby and echo reigned sovereign over the church.

War destroys everything. But what shall we do with victory?

— We’ll take it to the Jordan River. Imagine victory. Victory means that the poor become the masters and the former masters remain masters but without serfs. The organ will play an eastern mode and our fingerprints will be the flag. Well take Victory to the Jordan River and Johns head will come on a golden platter and they will speak to each other. Then they will go down to the Jordan River together. John will baptize Victory and Victory will carry Johns head before it.