Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

I didn’t understand. I stepped forward, looked at the obelisk and saw its tapered, black head. Just as I was about to express amazement at such a unique architectural achievement with its mingled evocations of color, I noticed the black moving. It wasn’t just a color. It was an extraneous body which moved, hanging on the pinnacle of the Egyptian obelisk. Moving right then left, like a weather-vane. I got closer. No use. To see, I’ve got to take a step back. As I did so, I saw a small black body, the body of a man wearing the double crown, *nodding and smiling at the people gathered round the obelisk to watch this king.

— What’s this? A man at the top of an obelisk!

— I don’t see anything, she said. Just a black speck and you call that a man.

— It’s a real man, I’m sure. It’s a real man sitting at the top of the obelisk, governing the square.

Maybe he is the city’s new governor.

The new city governor looks like Rameses II. He comes over every morning from his shack in the lab, saluting the applauding crowds. Then he ties a rope round his waist, scales up the obelisk, and seats himself on top. So as to go on feeling he’s a king.

The little man who leaves the hospital every morning walks slowly. He’s a sick, frail man, with a slight stoop and short legs, who mumbles incomprehensible words. Some of them come up to him to kiss his hand but he never allows it. He’s a busy man, in charge of governing a vast land. Although he doesn’t understand these new usages in government, he does follow them. He has to scale up a tall obelisk as if he were one of the construction workers. Then he has to sit on something like a stake. There are different kinds, the king thinks to himself: the deadly kind that enters the flesh at the bottom of the spine and comes out at the neck; then, the disfiguring kind which is senseless except that its used as a revenge: here, a naked or almost naked corpse is brought along and impaled; and then this new kind of stake. No, it’s not a stake, the king thinks, it’s the new throne.

The slight pain the king feels gradually recedes before the beauty of the square. He drops down from his throne every evening and walks down a long and winding road. He can deviate from his route somewhat, to please the public, but in the end he has to get to the hospital.

The king enters. His majesty the king, with his short build, habitual stoop, and modern clothes. He bows once more just in case his first bow wasn’t seen by the entire public or maybe as an affirmation of his democratic humility or for any other reason we happen to ignore — though his majesty doesn’t ignore it. He knows everything. And like sovereigns like people, as my father says. While yet corrupting them, kings are sovereign over our cities. For, “kings, when they enter a city, disorder it and make the mighty ones of its inhabitants abased,’’ as Abu Ziad would say when we asked him what he thought of the current situation. Though Abu Ziad knows nothing about politics. He cares only for the little shop we used to go to, rifles slung across our shoulders, to buy what little food he sold, always giving thanks to the Lord. Then, when the rifles vanished and the customers disappeared and new customers came stomping in in their ugly boots, he took to cursing the times and their sovereigns and to repeating this favorite verse of his. And you had to listen were you buying for a thousand pounds’ worth. Or else he wouldn’t sell. The king bows, advances, the applause swells, the square shrinks. It shrinks until it is a small box. The obelisk grows, soars up until it is a stake. I run up to the king, I want to ask him a specific question. I want to ask him about the accuracy of newspaper reports that he is being treated for a fungus growing on his forehead and for bacteria eating away his hand.

— What’s the real story, Your Majesty?

But his majesty doesn’t answer. There’s a cold wind blowing, it’s a huge square and his majesty is in a hurry. He wants to get the ceremonial over with so he can get to work. Though she’s beside me she doesn’t see. Why can’t this woman see my face and the fungus growing on it, and my hand with the bacteria eating it away? Why can she only see civilizations — as though civilizations were sacks of potatoes, all mixed up together, so that you can’t differentiate between them? But she can’t see and the king won’t answer as the wind lashes against his frail body fluttering like a black cloth, an emblem of mourning in a square filling with white and the countless bows of men who have come from every continent.

I held her hand. She was flying across the square, and I loved her. But my body hurt. Things grow or they don’t, but it’s more complicated than that as I always like to say to avoid getting trapped into positions I reject or to die confident that my picture hangs on the wall. He looks like an octopus: a featherless king with his tiny face, his limbs growing and coiling around the Egyptian obelisk in order to grab my head and crush it, but I escape. I run in the middle of the square, its surrounded by a long, thick wall. I can’t do anything. I need a knife, to chop off the black extremities. I’m in the corner, my hand gripping a sharp blade. And the blood around my head is like a crown I don’t want to shed. I’m the real king, I told her. But she doesn’t understand. Why won’t this woman understand? And why this wall? And this other king?

The rain drenching my head and clothes began to dry off. That stubborn man was still holding onto my arm, he wouldn’t let me out of the subway passage. A stubborn man that Bergis Nohra. That’s why his mouth was reeking of alcohol and it was driving me to the brink of despair. Still, in spite of everything, I’m willing to be convinced. I can be convinced that all cities are alike, and all squares too. But I cannot be convinced that women are all alike. The question is more complicated than that and needs to be completely re-examined. While we were destroying Beirut we thought we’d destroyed it. We’d run through the devastated squares and the buildings that had collapsed — or almost collapsed— convinced that we’d destroyed the city. In the end, we did destroy it but when they announced the war was over and published pictures of the terrible devastation that had been visited upon Beirut, we discovered that we hadn’t destroyed it. We had made a few breaches in its ramparts but she wasn’t destroyed. New wars are probably needed to do that. Nevertheless, all cities are alike, of that I’m convinced. Although I didn’t know why they built squares in the middle of cities. To aerate them, my father said, so that the houses don’t devour one another and fungus won’t grow on the children’s faces. But Jamal Pasha *saw otherwise. I remember that after the 1958 disturbances they arrested a man called al-Takmeel and pinned on him all the crimes that had been committed during the civil unrest. Then they told him to pretend he was mad. So he grew his beard and took to sitting around the prison saying he was God and sent the president of the republic letters preaching his new faith and proclaiming his innocence of the crimes attributed to him. He was pretty convincing: it was clear that the lawyer who’d persuaded him to become mad wrote these nice evangelizing letters. Things didn’t go as planned, however. The ropes had to be persuaded and ropes aren’t easily convinced. So they hanged him. In front of the gallows, Takmeel was no longer mad. He confessed and sought forgiveness. I’m not the only criminal, he said, the real criminal is still in his house or in his street or in another city. Although the hangman appeared convinced that day, there wasn’t any time, so he hanged him. The policemen’s consciences were eased; now they could go back to their customary nice duties.