Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

— Come on, let’s go light a fire at the top. The top of the mountain must go up in flames. What’d happen? A few shells … no problem.

He lit a fire. Raised his arms. Took off his khaki shirt and waved it in the air.

Here, the quail sleeps. Here, the quail dies, said one of the fighters in his unerring village accent. They stake out the quail and then kill it. The mule was bleeding. It was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the midriff. Its eyes cast down, not moaning, just letting the blood run down its belly without stirring. The mule was king. Sanneen was grayish. Snow, gray patches and incalculable expanses. Were higher than the clouds, said the man with the thick beard, holding a piece of canned meat and chewing it as though it were chocolate. One must eat. Tomorrow, you’ll eat like me. I’m a married man. That means I’m a practical man. I understand things. I know a woman is never pleased. If you make love to her, she gets fed up with so much love-making. And if you don’t make love to her, she asks what the point of marriage is. My wife, whom I left a thousand years ago, doesn’t understand. She thinks I’m not serious. But the matter’s settled. I’m standing on the highest peak of the highest mountain and making up my mind, once and for all, that this wife who’s just like all wives isn’t fit for marriage. Don’t look at me like that. Eating is inevitable. You can’t withstand the cold without hormones and vitamins. There isn’t any bread. The bread has spoiled. It got soggy with snow and has become like a lump of mud. One can’t eat mud and one can’t mix meat and snow.

On the peak, where everything is just like everything else. There were thirty men, sleeping in the snow. Their rifles slung around their necks, gazing into each other’s faces. Asking questions. Nabeel jumping up and down. The football player jumping up and down to escape the cold. The shells flying about lighting up the snow. Planes piercing the clouds once in a while, but still remote. Because the mountain had become remote.

The man with the thick beard called Nazeeh propped himself up on his left elbow, stretched out on a woolen blanket placed on patches of snow and the gray earth. I’m tired, he said. No, the war is tiring, but its not like women. Why do people usually associate war with women? Movies are dumb. In films, there must always be wars and, alongside them, women. They even put in a woman with Che Guevara. And the hero always dies while the woman survives to mourn him. Of course, my wife will cry. She’s like all wives, so she will cry. But even death, which is the question of all questions, isn’t a problem. It’s a trivial question that comes up in times of illness. When a man is sick, his head fills up with problems and he begins asking questions. But when he’s as strong as a mule, he behaves with the simplicity of one.

Talal was standing beside me chewing cold tinned broad beans in an attempt to still his hunger.

— Why are you talking about death and women? You should be talking about victory.

Victory is a tattered robe, Nazeeh would say. Do you see those clouds close by? You can reach up and touch them, but you can’t hold onto them. That’s what we’re like. We can touch victory but we can’t hold onto it.

The gunfire sparked above our heads, then the shells began to sound that faint whining which is pulverized by the noise of their crashing to the ground. Debris was flying over our heads while Sameer, with his beard and his tenderness, leaped gaily, firing, tumbling down through the rocks. I can’t see a thing. This fog is thick, he screamed. But Nabeel didn’t answer. He was on his knees, firing tensely, the curses preceding the bursts of gunfire. For his part, Nazeeh was sprawled out on the snow, relaxed, firing calmly, looking to his right and seeing Talal, nerves taut, fighting like someone praying in a church. Suddenly, the shooting stopped. Sa’eed came running. They’ve run away and left this. He had an automatic rifle magazine in his hand. This kind of war isn’t enough, Sameer said.

— What would you suggest?

— We should stone them. A rifle’s a rifle, but a stone is part of my hand. I should feel that it’s my hand that does the fighting, and not this cold metal which doesn’t satisfy the need.

Talal smiled. This mountain has turned you into a savage.

Thirty men standing on the mountaintop, lighting a fire and dancing. Eating canned meat. Seeking refuge in their memories. We must stop talking about memories, Salem said. We are making the future, memories don’t make the future, memories fuse into ballads and songs. Ahmed’s voice rising, splitting through the rocks, floating into the cold winds. I’m king of the mountain, Ahmed was saying.

— We’re insects thrown into this vast expanse.Mountains … as we climb them, we become little.

— That’s a lie. We get bigger and the mountain becomes little. That’s what they always say: Man in Nature is like a tiny insect. But it isn’t true.

— I’ve grown taller, said Salem.

— I’m the tallest man in the world, said Sameer.

— We are the real kings, said Talal. But we share the throne with these two mules.

The lithe young African boy was running. Slow down a bit, I told her. But she ran on, the sand flying up from her bare feet. She dropped to the ground. I’m going to put you in a little box and put the little box in my pocket. Because you don’t deserve any better. She laughed. I don’t like prisoners.

— And I don’t like prisoners either, but I’m forced to.

— Forced! That’s what all tyrants say; when the truth embarrasses them, they start telling you the story of their troubles and it boils down to their being forced to be tyrannical. You’re just like them.

My foot was getting bigger, the snow lined my shoes. Look, said Talal. The colors of the rainbow spilling into one another. All the colors that I’ve ever seen and those I’ve never seen. The mountain opens its mouth and the sun tumbles out. A mountain rolling through the clouds. The colors resemble the sea but the sea is flat. Colors forming circular gaps. My hand reaching out, catching nothing. The perforated mountain moves. We run toward the valley. The valley embraces my body, cuts it in two halves, and the distant sea enters the clouds. I raise my hand to my face. My face is a big, wizened apple. And my hand rises toward the sun that falls into our eyes as it tumbles between the flames and the mouth of the whale that is about to swallow it.

The villager-fighter carried his shoes and walked barefoot. Yesterday, the sun burned us; today, the fog and the rain have come and taken the sun to the bottom of the valley. But the problem is these damned shoes. They stay wet. I walk as though I were carrying the mountain in my leg. My toes are so swollen I can’t feel them anymore. Snow is against war. He carried his shoes and entered something like a tent. Water everywhere. The smell of sodden wool is like the smell of sheep before their slaughter. By God, it’s the butcher that’s king. What does he care? He does whatever he pleases. Slaughtering and selling, he can eat until doomsday.

What kind of food rations are these?

My tongue was dry and my insides burned. I went into the tent and found the villager-fighter talking politics with Nazeeh. Propped up on his left hand, Nazeeh was shivering with cold. His face was red with sun and fog. His raised right hand gesticulated as he talked on and on.

The Eastern Question must be settled once and for all. For three hundred years now the West has been driving the knife into our side in the name of the Eastern Question and the rights of minorities. We should be done with the question for good.

I sat next to them and listened. Then the discussion began to heat up. The villager-fighters voice rose. I looked at him, he was holding an orange which glowed in the dark tent. The orange took part in the debate in its own way, shifting in slow motion from left hand to right. As the argument flared and abated, the orange would step in to cut the silence in a quick sleight-of-hand as if he had become a trickster who puts an orange in his ear and has a tree come out of his mouth. He put the orange on top of the sodden blankets all squashed together. Nazeeh leaned over and reached out but the villager’s hand was quicker. He grabbed the orange, it danced between his hands, then he let it roll a little.