Elias Khoury - Little Mountain

LEBANON

BEIRUT

They call it Little Mountain. *And we called it Little Mountain. We’d carry pebbles, draw faces and look for a puddle of water to wash off the sand, or fill with sand, then cry. We’d run through the fields — or something like fields — pick up a tortoise and carry it to where green leaves littered the ground. We made up things we’d say or wouldn’t say. They call it Little Mountain, we knew it wasn’t a mountain and we called it Little Mountain.

One hill, several hills, I no longer remember and no one remembers anymore. A hill on Beirut’s eastern flank which we called mountain because the mountains were far away. We sat on its slopes and stole the sea. The sun rose in the East and we’d come out of the wheatfields from the East. We’d pluck off the ears of wheat, one by one, to amuse ourselves. The poor — or what might have been the poor — skipped through the fields on the hills, like children, questioning Nature about Her things. What we called a ’eid ** was a day like any other, but it was laced with the smell of the burghul and ’araq † that we ate in Nature’s world, telling it about our world which subsists in our memory like a dream. Little Mountain was just a tip of rock we’d steal into, wonderous and proud. We’d spin yarns about our miseries awaiting the moments of joy or death, dallying with our feelings to break the monotony of the days.

They call it Little Mountain. It stretched across the vast fields dotted with prickly-pear bushes. The palm tree in front of our house was bent under the weight of its own trunk. We were afraid it would brush the ground, crash down to it, so we suggested tying it with silken rope to the window of our house. But the house itself, with its thick sandstone and wooden ceilings, was caving in and we got frightened the palm tree would bring the house down with it. So we let it lean farther day by day. And every day I’d embrace its fissured trunk and draw pictures of my face on it.

We feared for the mountain and for its plants. It edged to the brink of Beirut, sinking into it. And the prickly-pear bushes that scratched our legs were dying and the palm tree leaning and the mountain edging toward the brink.

They call it Little Mountain. We knew it wasn’t a mountain and we called it Little Mountain.

Five men come, jumping out of a military-like jeep. Carrying automatic rifles, they surround the house. The neighbors come out to watch. One of them smiles, she makes the victory sign. They come up to the house, knock on the door. My mother opens the door, suprised. Their leader asks about me.

— He’s gone out.

— Where did he go?

— I don’t know.

— Come in, have a cup of coffee.

They enter. They search for me in the house. I wasn’t there. They search the books and the papers. I wasn’t there. They found a book with a picture of Abdel-Nasser *on the back cover. I wasn’t there. They scattered the papers and overturned the furniture. They cursed the Palestinians. They ripped my bed up. They insulted my mother and this corrupt generation. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there. My mother was there, trembling with distress and resentment, pacing up and down the house angrily. She stopped answering their questions and left them. She sat on a chair in the entrance, guarding her house as they, inside, looked for the Palestinians and Abdel-Nasser and international communism. She sat on a chair in the entrance, guarding her house as they, inside, tore up papers and memories. She sat on a chair and they made the sign of the cross, in hatred or in joy.

They went out into the street, their hands held high in gestures of victory. Some people watched and made the victory sign.

We called it Little Mountain when we were small. We’d run along its dirt roads or on the edge of the asphalt which cut into our feet. We’d walk its streets looking for things to play with. And during the holidays, I’d go with my father and brothers to the fields called Sioufi and frolic between the olive and Persian lilac trees. There, we’d stand on top of a high hill overlooking three roads: the Nahr Beirut road, the Karm al-Zeytoun road **and the third one, which we called the road to our house. We’d stand on the high open hilltop, run through it and always be afraid of falling off onto one of the three roads.

He stood perched on the high hill. Holding his big father by the right hand, he’d watch the cars far away on the road below and marvel at how small they were. They weren’t like the car he rode to his uncle’s distant house. Very small cars, one behind the other, like the small car that his father bought him and set in motion by singing to it. There’s not a sound to these metal cars going by. Soundless, they move along regularly, one behind the other, in a straight line. They don’t stop. Inside are miniature-like people. They aren’t children of my age — he’d think to himself — and once, when he asked his father about the secret of the small cars, his father answered in the overtones of a diviner that the reason was that Ashrafiyyeh being a mountain, the Beirutis went and spent the summer there. And compared with Beirut, the mountain is high. The distance between us and the Nahr Beirut is high, like that between us and the Karm al-Zeytoun road. And the farther you are, the smaller things get. Later, when you grow up, you’ll see that the cars are very small. Because vision is also related to the size of the viewer. I would nod, feigning comprehension, not understanding a thing. Generally, I’d let my father tell me his story, which he always retold, about distances and cars and distract myself by chasing a golden cicada flitting among the green grasses or perched between the branches of the olive trees.

A long line of small soundless cars. We’d sit on the edge of the hill and watch them go by, waiting for the day when we’d grow up and see that they were very small really, or go down to the road and see that they were very big. They trickled by like colored drops of water of varying size. Trucks, petrol tankers, all sorts of small cars. We could tell the difference between them although we couldn’t name them or say what they were for. They were far away and small and wed hold each other by the hand waiting to grow up so they’d grow even smaller, wed hold each other by the hand and wait to understand the secret. And I always used to wonder how come cars were small just because they were far away and I would daydream about the stories of dwarfs they told us at school or of the man whom the devil turned into a dwarf, which my grandmother always told me.

Little Mountain where it was, the vegetation that covered its handsome mound was giving way to roads and we rejoiced at the opening of the first cinema in Sioufi. But surprises awaited me. We were growing and what we had been waiting for, so long now, didn’t happen. We were getting bigger, wed go to Sioufi to watch the cars — and see that they’d gotten bigger. We got bigger and the cars got bigger. Hemmed in by the gathering clamor and frenzy. We were getting bigger and the once-straight lines were curving, the clamor getting closer and the spaces narrower. I walk alone, Little Mountain twists and turns. I search for memories of when Palm Sunday *was a ’ eid and we came out of the church to the sound of Eastern chants: I find only a small, neglected picture in my pocket.