Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

In front of the gaping hole, we came to a stop. We took the ship and placed it inside the sand and earth.

— The ship has sunk.

— No, it hasn’t sunk.

The ship was going into the earth, coming to rest, amid our shooting, the loud chanting, and the priests voice intoning the last words: from dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.

I looked at Salem hiding his grief behind the elongated face and the wan smile. He asked me about the war, how will the war end?

— This war won’t end, Sameer answered, for death has begun and war has just begun.

There was the silence, the sea, and the ship; but Father Marcel’s ship wouldn’t sink, it just got wrecked. And Jaber in his ship swaying like a princess, then falling, descending little by little until the earth was level with the ground again and nothing was left but the writing on the walls, the voices and the gunfire.

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

— Why didn’t you kill me? asks Father Marcel.

— What’s the difference between war and civil war? says Salem.

Death is a bird, says Jaber. And Talal dreams of a sea long as his lover’s hair and, carrying camera and rifle, leaps between the waves.

* Heavy machine-gun of Eastern European origin, usually mounted on a tripod on the back of a pick-up truck. Like Kalashnikov, it has become a generic name for anything of that description in the military parlance of Lebanon’s war.

** The Murr Tower is an unfinished concrete high-rise, adjacent to Beirut’s Hotel Sector over which a famous battle was fought in 1976. The tower was then, and has been ever since, a strategic vantage-point, commanding the whole of Beirut, for the succession of militias that have been able to capture it. The Holiday Inn Hotel was the site of fierce fighting in the battle for the whole sector. Wadi Abu Jameel is an area of mainly narrow streets just off the Hotel Sector.

* A term used by leftists, Palestinians, and nationalists to designate the Phalangists.

* Another machine-gun of Eastern European origin.

* That is a Roman Catholic chant, not one in the Latin language.

** These refer to the so-called tracer bullets which give off colored (usually red and green) sparks in the night sky and are often used in Lebanon for shooting on joyful occasions like a feast or a wedding, sometimes even a ceasefire.

* The Arabic term for Phalangists.

* A reference to the large, round studs across a street which formerly were used to designate a pedestrian crossing, what in French is known as a passage cloutà.

* That is, God is great, the Muslim incantation uttered at every call to prayer and often used to express surprise, admiration, or encouragement; it is also used in battle charges as a rallying cry.

* Maslakh, abattoir in Arabic, was an area adjacent and similar to Qarantina (see note, p. 10) and also the site of the government-controlled slaughterhouse. The two areas were fiercely bombed and finally razed to the ground during late 1975 through January 1976 in notorious atrocities that culminated in scenes of hysterical rejoicing by Phalangist militiamen uncorking bottles of champagne amid corpses heaped on the ground.

** The joint forces (al-quwwāt al-mushtaraka) refer to the loose coalition of anti-Phalangist Lebanese organizations and parties (ranging from the Communists to Islamic groupings) allied with and fighting alongside the PLO in the period 1975–1982.

* It was as a result of the battle of Maysaloun in July 1920 that the French army defeated King Faisal’s Arab forces and was able to occupy Damascus and impose France’s mandate over Syria.

* A reference to sectarian killings, one’s religion very often being evident from one’s name. For an Arab, Ahmed would obviously be a Muslim and Butros (Peter in English) a Christian.

* The largest organization within the PLO.

* The snow-capped peak of Mount Sanneen, one of the highest along the Lebanon range, is visible from most vantage-points in Beirut for many months of the year; it is a potent symbol of Lebanon and used widely in its “mythology.”

* The traditional red-and-white checkered Arab head-dress, now the hallmark of the Palestinian fighter.

* In Arabic, ras means head or cape. Thus, Ras Beirut is the headland of the city that juts out into the sea and the name by which that whole area is known.

What is it you were doing

In the ancient gardens

Three hundred years ago.

In two instants, your life will end

The Chinese seer told you,

The Chinese seer

The corner.

The fish breathe through your green eyes

And your body washes away the travails of music

And the pain from the silence of the gilded sepulchres.

My heart has been weary ever since I beheld you

Somewhere in Asia,

Where the Chinese seer

Played your death song

And danced,

Before he died.

Mohammad Shbaro

The last option is me, I told her as we walked along the shoreline, our feet in the sand. She, in her brown skin and laughing African boy’s cropped hair, mocks me: you’re a romantic, she says and then falls silent and lets me talk on and on endlessly. I talk, dangling about inside the words, pick up some pebbles, put them in my mouth and carry on talking. Then, when I grab her, she escapes to the sand, puts some on her head and swings it in the air. Then she shouts: stop. And I stop, for I’m not able to. Every night, I go back home, broken, and decide to keep silent from now on. I must walk alongside the lithe young African boy without opening my mouth. Then, she will fall into the trap of language and talk endlessly, the way all women do. And I will nod my head, smile a little, then pronounce my judgment: you’re a romantic. But when I’m with her again, my resolve fails and I remain the only romantic. Her neck rises. I don’t understand: a lean face and short-cropped hair mingling with the wind and a neck that extends endlessly. When I try to take hold of the neck and rise up to it, I fall down on the sand. You must understand, she would say. My mother understands, I would say. She’s waiting for me when I come back, exhausted. She thinks that I don’t talk so she doesn’t ask. She just gives me a little food but of course I don’t eat. My mother is saddened, I grow sad and the long neck that I climb extends endlessly. I stop asking questions and walk beside her, head to the ground. What are those shoes you’re wearing, she says. They’re fedayeen’s shoes, I answer her, then we are silent. Her name is Mariam. Of course, I can’t run any farther. I follow her, she runs then bends over. Puts sand on her head, as she always does. Go. Why fedayeen’s shoes? Her laughter rings out and I sink into my shoes, slithering about inside as if they were small ships on a long shore.

— I’m a feda’i.

— And why are you a feda’i?

— Because I became one.

— And why did you become one?

— Because, I don’t know. Because I love you.

— You’re a romantic.

— I’m a prince.

— You’re a dog.

— I’m a hero.

— You’re a feda’i.

She laughed. It rang like a bow. The man grasped his bow and let fly. The arrow glanced. It plunged into the sea and began to sink.

— Why are you beyond the sand?

She said she didn’t like answering any of my questions.

— Do you know my father?

— I don’t know him.

— Do you like my father?

— How can I like someone I don’t know.

— You must like him because he’s my father.

— I don’t like him, I don’t like any fathers.

— But my father died. — All fathers die.