Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

— I forgot the baby’s bottle at home.

I didn’t say I’d go and get it. The baby fell from my wife’s arms and cried. I didn’t hear her crying. The blood. The shells getting closer. The smoke creeping up on us. And the thick darkness. My wife screamed and then began to sob. We went on down. Silence and smoke. The shelling had stopped. But the smoke. In the dark, you can’t see anything but smoke. We went slowly down, the steps quite firm. Interminable stairs.

They were six living things, going down the stairs slowly. Darkness enveloping the stairway and smoke enveloping the darkness. The woman crying silently. Interminable stairs. Kamel Abu Mahdi knows these stairs well. Eighty of them. He counts them going up and counts them again going down. But he’s forgotten to count with this shelling. We’ve surely gone beyond that. He can taste salt all of a sudden. There’s salt on my lips, he told his wife. Where did the salt come from. I said to her there’s salt in my clothes. I heard her moan. Going down very slowly, descending these interminable stairs. I leaned against the wall. It was salty and making sounds like those of distant trains. Down, down slowly. My wife next to me, the kids between our legs and the stairs slow. Where’s the water, I signaled with my hand. No one saw me. I went on down the stairs very slowly.

* An Egyptian singer and popular film star throughout the Arab world where he is still something of an idol. A young girl committed suicide when he died, prematurely, of bilharzia in 1977.

* This seemingly senseless statement is the author’s ironical portrayal of what happened in Palestine, where landowners with a title to their land under Ottoman law were often dispossessed by the Zionists who ’proved” to them by a variety of means that they had no such title.

* A yakhneh (see note on p. 101) of dried white beans. It is hearty, ordinary people’s food, not a refined dish.

** The second caliph who ruled between 632 A.D. and 644 A.D. Under him, Islam witnessed its first great expansion from Arabia to the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and Iran. He is thus a potent symbol of all that is best in Islam and a source of pride for those who yearn for a renewal in the Arab world.

* Originally a Turkish word used in much of the Levant to mean stew.

I was walking in my sodden clothes through the damp passages with their moldy smell of rain, looking for the way in the unfamiliar tunnels, cursing and trying not to look ridiculous. Ever since I arrived in this city, I’ve been going from hospital to hospital, from doctor to doctor and all of them — doctors and nurses all — shake their heads. They carry out tests and say: nothing, we don’t know, maybe tomorrow. Results and yet more results till I’m just about overcome by hysteria and anxiety. Since last night, and after a long day of suffering and interrogation, I’ve decided to be very careful: I must not appear ridiculous. I realized this the first time a nurse took hold of my hand. Stretched out on a plastic mat, my arm had thousands of sharp needles stuck into it. There were three nurses around me. A nurse smiled then began to sew my hand down to the plastic mat. Trying to distract me, she asked what I did for a living. I told her I didn’t do anything. The second nurse drew near and said: do you know how much you’re going to have to pay for this medical examination?

— No, I don’t.

— Three hundred and eighty-five francs.

— I won’t pay.

— We’ll put you in jail.

Here, I burst out laughing. The air was charged with something or other so the laughter exploded and the nurses laughed too.

— Buy why are you laughing?

— Because prisons are temporary things, I told her. We’ve abolished prisons. We were even about to abolish hospitals but for some rather complicated considerations. There wasn’t really the time to tell her how the children in our neighborhood once overran the women’s prison and carried off its rooftop — they dismounted the terra-cotta tiles one by one. The atmosphere just wasn’t conducive. Anyway, the important thing then was my arm. Of course, I paid up the entire amount afterward, though not for fear of imprisonment or the nurse, but just like that, because I felt sad. The electric current rushed through my left arm. I groaned, the nerve throbbed fiercely, on and on. Take a deep breath, scream, the nurse instructed. I breathed but my face was all twisted. It is then that I discovered the smiles on the nurses’ faces. Contorted in an ocean of pain, my own face no doubt looked funny. I tried to control my nerves and stop the muscles contracting. 1 stopped breathing but I couldn’t. The pain flooded my body, the electricity annihilating it. Then suddenly, everything stopped. I got up from the chair and walked, tried walking quickly and fell down. Don’t forget you’re sick, the nurse said. She smiled when I paid up the entire amount for the examination.

I abandoned my dash through that roaring jungle. I must find the way: she’s waiting for me and won’t wait very long. Last time, I arrived half an hour early and I sat in a cafe and the hubbub of thousands of voices. But she never came. When I called her in the evening, she answered apologetically. We agreed to meet today but she was threatening: don’t be late, I won’t wait more than five minutes. So here I am trying not to be late. The problem, though, is that I cant find my way through this maze. I’m sick, these metro tunnels are complicated and half the signs have been removed. I walked calmly and stopped in front of the newspaper seller, then felt an acrid smell of wine stealing up on me. He started to embrace me, shouting: how did you get here? When did you come? I looked at him closely and had to laugh. It was Bergis Nohra, none other.

— Tell me, come on, why don’t you come and visit me?

It was Bergis Nohra, none other.

— I wasn’t, I don’t want, I’m in a hurry, tomorrow.

But Bergis Nohra held me fast. Pulling me by the arm, come on. A stockily built man, fair-haired, thick-necked, a little prone to stoutness, talking about twenty different things at once. He was just the same five years ago. Bergis Nohra still yearns for his village. I’m a Maronite, from Bdadoun. He was just the same five years ago. I was penniless, poorer than the poorest of students. Maybe that’s what made me accept his invitation. I went into a house. At last, to enter a house and sit at a real meal. I was starving and ate as if I’d never before seen food in my life. I drank, he drank; we were drinking from twelve noon until the evening. To start with, I didn’t talk. It was hard making conversation as I wanted to be free to eat. After we’d got drunk and I’d been listening for a long time as he reminisced about his village and his father’s bankruptcy and his adventures, he started talking politics. Spare me, I told him. But he insisted. He started talking about the fedayeen and the September massacres. *He spoke in a skillfully mastered military lingo.

— But how do you know all this?

— I’m a fighter. I was a real fighter, he answered.

Of course I didn’t buy his story. The small, over-handing pot-belly and the luxurious restaurant he owns belie his claims.

— But where?

— In Vietnam.

Again, I didn’t buy it. I let him talk and gave myself up to the drops of cognac. He rambled on and I wasn’t listening, until all hell broke loose and his voice began thundering through the room like a cannon. I jumped up.

— What are you saying? The Foreign Legion!

— Yes, the Foreign Legion.

— You mercenary, you less-than-nothing, you savage, you …

I stood up, took the bottle of cognac and hurled myself at him. He dodged. Listen, you’re drunk, he shouted. You shouldn’t let wine stop you treating people properly. Listen to me, I’m on your side, and on theirs, but listen. I couldn’t. He ran to the bedroom and locked himself in. I must have looked terrifying. So let me listen. I calmed down, sat on the sofa, and waited for him. He came back.