Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

— I’m thirsty, effendi. **

But the effendi wouldn’t answer.

— God keep you, effendi, please, a drink.

The effendi got a pitcher of water, stood it in front of the metal bars, told us to stand up and drink from behind the bars.

— Ya effendi, what’s going on? Surely … this isn’t Israel. What have we done?

The effendi took the pitcher away and no one drank. Then he came back with three bullyboys, unlocked the door and took us out one by one, lashed us brutally, kicking us around with his boots. We lay thrown to the ground then he climbed onto my body, trampled and trampled, to his hearts content, and until the blood started oozing out of my ears. Then they grouped us in rows of three, the officer stood before us and made a speech about Lebanon and how we should love our country, then ordered us to chant “long live Lebanon.” We chanted, left the police station, and wiped away the traces of our injuries. What we didn’t realize then was that the war had begun. Then, it spread to Ghandour, to the killings. *Then it was ablaze and it stayed that way.

The triangle fits inside the circle. But we didn’t know that the war had started. We thought it would just be a question of reordering the givens of the triangle, of modifying its premises. However, when the triangle blew up, the bloodshed was interminable. It went on until the whole circle collapsed. Every circle is bound to collapse, that is the rule; and when it does, the three faces of the triangle shatter. And we sit under the rain looking for new triangles.

I was all alone. The only horseman. Surrounded by the night with a woman saying she loved me and a circle waiting for me.

— But Bergis, we’re here, not in Beirut or Barcelona or Madrid. Paris is a solid, stable city. Talking about civil war here is quite uncalled for. The National Assembly elections are due in a few months’ time and the left’s victory is not certain. Even if it is victorious, developments a la Chile are not inevitable. Giscard d’Estaing can dissolve the assembly, dollars will come pouring in to shore up the spirit of the Helsinki conference, the Socialists — half of whom are Zionists and the other half favorable to NATO — will be split and France will have averted a civil war. Of course, Paris will be destroyed eventually — like any other city — but not that quickly. Or at any rate, not by civil war. A world war is perhaps the only way to achieve such destruction.

But Bergis wouldn’t answer, he just stood there in the middle of the subway passages, then led me to a big map of the metro routes hanging on the wall and started up his monologue. Look, look, he’d say.

— But why? Are you on the verge of bankruptcy or something?

— Not at all, quite the contrary. Haven’t you seen the new restaurant?

Tomorrow you’ll come and visit the restaurant. — Are you feeling depressed? Do you want a divorce?

— Why are you asking me such silly questions? I’m a measured, civilized man, I’m a businessman.

— Then why are you chasing after a civil war?

— Me? Chasing after? No, no. I’m against civil wars. But I’m frightened. When I see what happened in Leba non, I’m overcome with dread that similar devastation is going to engulf the world. And I’m frightened of devastation. Three times already I’ve started all over again, from scratch. The first time was in Vietnam and that was de stroyed. Then I went to Algeria and opened up a shop for household appliances. I believed de Gaulle when he said we wouldn’t leave Algeria. I really believed him. And expanded the business since we were staying. That whole war there didn’t concern me: I was on good terms with the French as a French national; and on good terms with the NLF people as a Lebanese. Then de Gaulle went and left, he fled. Though in a reasonable way, this time; but he made me lose my business — and my mind. I abandoned the shop and came to Paris to start all over again from scratch. It seems things always lead nowhere in these damned times.

— And if there’s a civil war, on whose side will you be?

— I won’t be. I’m a practical man, a resilient Lebanese. My head belongs in my pocket. I put my mind in my pocket and let it lead the way. Be there civil war or a victory of the left, my head will lead me some place else. I’ll go to Latin America. This time, however, not with nothing but with my fortune. I’ve got everything ready.

Poor Bergis. Standing before the metro board, gesticulating. Like the traffic policeman who insisted on doing his duty in Beirut: gunmen came and took his pistol; still, he stood in the middle of the street, signaling to the few cars that dared to move about; then it got to be he was signaling to the shells: he just stayed there, standing in the middle of the empty avenue signaling to anything until a shell hit him and he died.

— Look how this city intertwines inside this damned metro, it’s crazy. Here, you come out in the Algerian immigrants’ quarter. Here, the Champs-Elysàes. Here, the Place de la Concorde. What would stop the in habitants of those Arab neighborhoods from reaching the Place de la Concorde? Things are both open and interlocking, they can destroy one another at any time. Didn’t I tell you? Civil war is inevitable. Tell me, tell me how the civil war started in Lebanon.

I didn’t tell him. I was standing with her beside me. We came out at the Place de la Concorde and saw the sky. A vast square and above it the sky. The sky wasn’t just an extension of the square, but a dome. Standing on the ground I could feel a dome above my head. Blue or gray or white. The cobblestones and vast open spaces for horse-drawn carriages. A piece of sky, a slice of earth and me in between. Look, she said, look at civilization! But I couldn’t see any civilization, just vast open spaces and eyes. I don’t know where this business of the eyes came from, all I could see were eyes and spaces and residues of sky.

— Look, she said. Look at the time-honored civilization.

But I saw neither time-honored nor modern civilization. Only forms of things bending. There was everything here: water, sky, her lovely lace, the white stone. Everything dancing in white. There, a hospital sign. No, an ancient Egyptian obelisk. For, during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, historians, writers, and philosophers accompanied the soldiers. The soldiers looted and the men of learning studied Egyptian antiquity. Then the men of learning discovered they too could loot. So they started stealing the priceless objects, the Pharaonic mummies. They stole despite the Pharaoh’s curse; they weren’t afraid. And now there’s this pure white obelisk standing in the middle of one of the most beautiful squares in the world. We went up to it: there were all sorts of pictures and signatures on it. Egyptian birds flitting from place to place. Innumerable scenes: looking at them, you can see men and women in ancient Egyptian costumes, words flying from their mouths and nestling in the stone; between one man another, a woman carrying a picture of the Pharaoh-god or her newborn child who would emerge as the builder of the tombs.

— Look, the most beautiful obelisk in the world standing witness to the continuity of civilizations. Civilizations piling on one another like silt at the mouth of a river. The most magnificent ancient civilization standing at the center of the most magnificent modern civilization.

I couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of those words. What I do know is that they stuck the boot into our heads in the name of something very similar. Don’t you read the papers? she exclaimed. They brought the mummy of Rameses II all the way from Egypt so it could be treated in Paris. Fungus had started to grow on his forehead and bacteria to eat away his right hand. That’s why they admitted him here, at the hospital laboratory. He’ll be treated and then he’ll go back to his country, duly honored and revered. Yet another sign of the continuity between civilizations.