Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

I didn’t understand and I think Salem, the tall one, doesn’t understand it either. Shots and cries and explosions everywhere. The ground catching fire. We run, sit aside panting. He’s holding the B-7 rocket-launcher firm on his shoulder. You’ve got to cover me, he says. I move up and open fire. He shoots his rocket. The blasts, the smell, the flame. Shop doors are smashed, so let everything burn. Tomorrow, the women will come along in their long abayahs * to sort the smell of gunpowder from things and go. The shops must burn down.

The brown African boy bending over. Amman was a succession of white circles. I grab her and throw her to the ceiling. Look. She looks at her body stretching upward.

— Why are you doing this to me?

— Cinema is cinema, I tell her. Life is a deception. Her laugh rings out between her bare ankles. Look at the color of the sea, she says. The sea isn’t blue, the sky isn’t blue. That is the real deception, you see.

— I see that the sky’s blue and the sea’s blue. That’s what I see, I told her.

— Can you see green? Can you see light blue? Of course, you can’t see white. You’re sand. We all walk on the sand, then we become sand. I want to plunge in there between the green and the purple. In the dividing instant. There I want to build a house or a tent or a clump of stones, or drown. That’s what drowning is. Total surrender. It is objects which bend. Have you seen objects when they bend? But I can’t. Nobody can. No one can separate colors, we can only mix them. And when colors start to intermingle, they never stop. Even blending is impossible. Colors have their own temperaments and histories. One color goes into another, then becomes a hint of something and enters into objects; colors dissolve in colors. White doesn’t exist, she said. The young African boy took an apple, bit into it, put it on his head and began to run. The apple fell. Where’s the apple, she said. The apple mixes with the sand and the sand blends into the water. Mud. That’s straw, she said. The color of the apple changes. But it’s still on my head. It’s on the ground, I told her, and bent down to pick it up. Leave it, she screamed. The apple’s on my head. You don’t see anything, she said. No one sees. But its on my head. And I have to travel tomorrow. I can’t leave my mother on her own. Could you leave your mother?

— I don’t know, but I always leave her.

— I never leave my mother. She wants to go to Amman, I’ll go with her.

— And me?

— You! What do you want from me?

— Well get married, like everybody else.

The lithe young African boy laughed. I’m not going to get married. And if I do get married, it won’t be to you. I’m not going to marry a man who’s going to die.

— All men die.

— But you’re a feda’i. I like the fedayeen but I would never marry one because they die quickly.

— All fedayeen get married.

Colors nearing. Talal sat alone on the sand. He took off his glasses, wiped them carefully, and put them back on. The shore welcomed the gentle waves and sent them off again. In the damp place on the edge of the sea the circles multiplied. That’s the difference. He went up to the shore. These are colors. Colors only take on their color the moment they sink. The sea unraveled into endless circles. He took some sand and threw it to the sea. Everything sinks in water. Talal bent down. Where are you, lithe young African boy?

“What is it you were doing in the ancient gardens three hundred years ago.”

My voice drowned in the first circle, to my left. I took off my shoes, held them in my hand, and walked off. I got into the car. Turned on the engine. It crackled, then moaned and spluttered before the car would move forward. Where are you, lithe young African boy? I stopped the car in front of the bakery. Bought a hot loaf and began chewing slowly, the trees planted on either side of the street curling around the electricity poles. And I breathed in the smell of the bread.

Everything’s ready, says Nabeel. But were late and the boys are waiting. Talal looks at his watch, we must go immediately. Nabeel is jumping up and down. What are you doing? I ask him.

— I’m getting ready.

— But were not going to a football match. — That’s how I get ready, says Nabeel.

— What’s the news from Maslakh and Qarantina? asks Salem.

— No news yet, but the position’s extremely difficult.

— I don’t like this food. Bread and zaatarl * It’s not food for fighters, says Talal.

The commander speaking: it’s breakfast. And we’ve got to eat it quickly. Nabeel laughs like a real teacher.

— Don’t laugh teach, I don’t like bread and zaatar.

— Look at what you do to yourself Talal. Why do you complicate things, boy? It’s all dough. Here we put the zaatar inside the bread, there they put it inside the kaaka. **

— I want to buy a kaaka.

It isn’t a question of price, really Abu Ahmed. A kaaka costs 10 piastres, may God ruin no one. But the kid must learn to obey. My mother talks on and on. I look at my father. The slight, wizened man in ragtag clothes winks at me.

— Walk to school ahead of me.

I walk alongside him, he buys me a kaaka, I put it on my head and run. He runs after me: don’t tell your mother, he pants then falls to the ground.

— When I grow up I’m going to be a kaak seller.And the wizened man holds my hand, takes me to school, then goes to work. Take care of yourself. I run into the house but the old man doesn’t run after me. La ilah ilia allah. * Bassam is singing in the Land-rover through the pouring rain. I’m not afraid of them, I’m afraid of the cold. Salem, brother, I swear when this wars over, I’ll take you on a cruise around the world. Its raining and the sky is flashing with explosions. Voices take on the contours of whispers. But we haven’t got enough sand. We must block the street with sand. Bassam dreams of nothing but sand. Why don’t we move the entire sea to the barricade? First we bring over the shore and then the waves. She jumped toward the sea. Follow me, she shouted. The waves rose up to her breasts and neck. I could no longer see anything but her brown arms glistening under the rain-specked rays of the sun.

— You’re a coward.

— Wait for me, I’ll take my clothes off.

— No, come as you are.

I advanced, the waves rose up. I won’t marry you, she shouted. She got out of the water, put sand on her clothes and started to run.

— You’re a tree.

— I’m Mariam. You don’t know Mariam. When I go to Amman, you’ll get to know me.

She was running amid the bullets, the bullets getting closer. I must go, I told her. The shooting is getting closer, I must go, she said. The shooting was getting closer, I stood beside Talal. Nabeel and Salem pressed down the long street and everyone went to his position. Darkness and water. And nothing missing but Gods face in his long beard. The rain falling and the street drowning. Standing next to me, he wouldn’t answer. Water rising to my waist. Hearing a rustle. The sound of rain and thunder. Nothing’ll happen tonight. We cant advance in this rain and darkness. We must wait for Bassam. Maybe hell manage to bring over the waves and the sea to the position.

Darkness stretching without end. We were just standing. I lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke into the wind. Hearing nothing but the rain rapping against the shacks around us and the sound of quarreling rising out of one of the houses behind. Suddenly, everything lit up, the smell of burning and the sounds of shelling. The sky was flashing and shells were falling everywhere. Fires lighting up and the rain boring into my clothes. I took a deep drag from the cigarette trembling in my hand. It was bitterly cold, and behind me swelled up the sounds of voices and the tumult. A fire on the roof of one of the houses went out suddenly. Three women, in their long abayahs, gleaming in the darkness. With their scarves and jangling arms.