Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

She stepped back from the tank, put her scarf on and waved, signaling she was going. Naturally, I didn’t ask where to. The shells were dropping randomly and we had to stay put. The woman went without my knowing what had happend to her husband.

— We’ve got hold of a tank.

— What’s this?

A genuine tank, with Nabeel driving it. The soldiers surrendered; they said they didn’t want to fight their brothers. I asked them to stay with us but they left. Said they would come back. The tank took off and we walked along behind it. I want a tank made of all colors. Do you know colors, says the young African boy. I don’t know them, I don’t know what colors mean. Everything is as colored as it can be. And Talal wants a colored tank. The guys brought over lots of colors and began to paint the tank. It refused to budge and we painted its body every possible color. I want a red tank because the revolution has started. The smell of gunpowder everywhere. Beirut has acquired a small of its own. In the past, I couldn’t make our Beirut’s smell. Nobody knew it had a smell. Everyone smelled his own smell, or the waiter’s smell, a mixture of alcohol and cheap cologne. But now Beirut has a definite smell. Everywhere there is gundpowder and empty streets inhabited only by the mist and the sound of the shells and of the Korean rockets barking in the air. Stench and barking.

— And what happened to the woman after that?

— I don’t know.

We took the tank and colored it. We took off the 500mm. machine gun and fixed it down in the church. The neighborhood kids gathered around the tank. They drove it, then it stopped. We tied a clothesline to the cannon from the window. The clothes hung out were of every color. Talal held the loaf, I don’t know what we should do. The revolution should start. But it has started, Salem said. You don’t understand what the revolution is. This is revolution. Revolutions are like this. Do you know why a loaf is round? Because it’s a loaf. A loaf can’t be any different, just like a cemetery. A cemetery is round but we can’t see that from the inside. Everything’s like that. We only see the surface of things. The smell of gunpowder was spreading. Carrying our guns, we were standing in the winter sun, relaxed. Scattered bursts of shooting.

A man approached. You don’t know ’Ammiq. You eat grapes and drink ’araq but you don’t know ’Ammiq. Now, there’s grapes. My father’s a hard-headed man. You don’t know the way, come on, I served in Beirut, I know all her streets. But the mountains are prettier. The sight of grapes dangling from the vine whets my appetite for ’araq. You don’t drink ’araq — that’s a mistake. ’Araq is very important. It’s fire. ’Araq inside me and I’m on fire. Human beings should burn up. ’Araq alone sets you alight. I put away some ’araq inside me and go pilfering. Do you know what I did? After all that had happened, I finally realized that the government was falling apart. I took the armored car I was in charge of driving and went off with it. That was before everything really collapsed. I fled alone with the APC from Hawsh al-Umara to ’Ammiq. My father came out of the house, showed no surprise. He took the APC and leashed it in front of the house. I got up in the morning and couldn’t find it. I must go and join the revolution in the APC. I asked my mother, she said my father took the APC and went down to the vineyard. I ran to the vineyard and saw him trying to fix metal farm attachments to it. I’m going to plow. By God, this APC’s better than a tractor. The APC became the talk of the village. The mukhtar * came by to congratulate us and proposed that an agricultural cooperative be set up. But, Mukhtar, you’ve been plowing your lands with tractors for ages and we’ve not asked you to set up cooperatives. The tractor is private property but the APC is public property. That’s what the mukhtar who knows about these things said. We argued and shouted at each other; it seemed as if things wouldn’t be resolved peacefully. Mukhtar, there isn’t any such thing as private property anymore. Anything goes. Everything’s topsy-turvey. But the mukhtar wanted to take the APC and my father wanted to hold onto it. To avoid trouble, I stole the APC back from in front of the house and returned it to the barracks. It was all over; nobody was going to ride anyone roughshod from now on. That’s what they told us. But fighting in cities is a hard thing. It takes a tremendous effort to kill your enemy. This isn’t war. I don’t know. You might be right. But everything’s fallen apart.

The Kurdish woman asking after her husband, her husband stretched out cold in the middle of the street.

— He’s going to rot there in the street.

— We’ll wait for nightfall then drag him off. Don’t mention it.

She bent down. She was holding a loaf. She bit into it. May God repay you. But don’t forget me.

— We won’t forget you.

And he — he was stretched out on his stomach, his legs raised slightly off the ground, the ground wet with mud, sand and dust all around him.

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

The mountain was full of holes but it edged along. The women were standing in two long lines waiting for the war. But the war wouldn’t come. We’ve been waiting for the war for three hundred years. But the war always comes with two large holes in it: one, above, out of which the woman’s neck rises, strangulated, and one in the middle before we are born. The advancing mountain was full of holes, like the war. The mountain’s just like the war, I told him, my voice rolling down between our feet which stumbled through the night-filled village with its strange silence and cold wind. We reached the forest. An old abandoned house, pine trees. Making a fire inside a pile of stones so that no one would see it.

— Do you see the trees? The people’s war has started. A people’s war needs trees. For Vietnam’s sake, at least.

Jungles and swamps. Trees and the embers of a fire that has begun to die out. For fifty years now we’ve known nothing but wars.

— That’s not important, Talal was saying. Look at the mountains. This is the first time we go up to the mountains. Nabeel was dreaming of sand. I don’t like mountains.

— Why did you come then?

— Duty. Then he smiled. War in Beirut is nicer.

— Swamps and mosquitoes. You like swamps.

— I like the city.

I like women, Talal said. Tonight, well move on from the glory of the revolution, to the glory of death. Death is a tranquil state. In the middle of the shooting, the explosions and the noise, leaping and bounding, you subside into stillness, complete stillness.

But the mountain was full of holes.

A woman standing, holding piles of food, surrounded by men and women. We saw the fire so we brought over some food. The woman put the food down and went. We ate. The food stuck in my throat. I must puncture my neck and then I’ll become a mountain.

The mountain was king. Sanneen was king. But who could climb such a barren mountain? Impossible to move such gear without mules. The mule was the real king. We went up. We carried the ammunition up on a mule, following behind it as it led us to the top. Snow. Fog. And the red shots piercing the night. Talal bent down, put on his glasses. Three hundred years ago the lithe young boy was a leaf lying on a shore. A passer-by picked it up and put it in his pocket. The Chinese seer bided his time. The man didn’t know that things lie in wait. The Chinese seer took the leaf and spoke. The man didn’t understand. And when he came back to ask, he found that the seer had died. That the rice which used to grow in the street had become a fiery alcohol. But the young African boy climbs my neck. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t ask me. He dreams that he won’t travel, but he will. Next to me slept a tall man with a thick beard. He put his hands behind his head and slept amid the drops of water dripping from the roof of the tent and the snow-covered snow.