Jabbour Douaihy - June Rain

Once when the group parted company, Eliyya managed to corner him. He started at the beginning. ‘I was told you know what happened… Why did they kill my father?’

‘They killed him because he was standing there. Bad luck.’

‘Standing there?’

‘Yes. He was standing next to me in the square.’

‘You mean they killed him by mistake?’

‘No. They didn’t kill him by mistake.’

‘They meant to kill him?’

‘I don’t know if they meant to kill him. I know that they saw him, recognised him and shot him. They shot him in the back. Two bullets. I was told he didn’t die right away.’

‘Was he shooting?’

‘No. He was in the line of fire.’

‘How so? I don’t understand.’

‘He was in the middle of the battle although he didn’t intend to be. He was not one to rush into battle, your father. He was kind. He used to joke with everybody and put up with everybody’s jokes. When we used to count the men we could depend on in a fight, we never counted him in, nor did he want to be counted in.’

‘Did some innocent people get killed?’

‘Yes. Many.’

‘What made them innocent?’

‘They were strangers, had nothing to do with it. Their only crime was that they were attending the mass.’

‘Was my father carrying a weapon?’

‘Yes. To protect himself. We were all carrying weapons. He had bought his revolver only a few days before.’

‘Had he ever fired it?’

‘No. Your father was a good man…’

The conversation paused a little. Then the man continued. ‘Why did you come back?’

‘To visit my mother. I’ve been away for twenty years.’

‘Good for you. Want my advice? Don’t listen to anyone.’

‘I had thought that when I came back here from America I would be able to see the white almond blossoms. I remembered this is their season.’

‘Spring came early this year. The blossoms fell before you arrived. Say hello to Kamileh for me.’

Eliyya went back to the streets. He tried to remember where the boundaries were and to draw them again.

He wrote in his notebook: The places are the same… The people are the same… the women’s eyes… the men’s silence. In our childhood we played and wandered within our quarter, and here I am now doing that same thing, down towards the river. Not one house has changed. The adults used to shop in our quarter’s shops, pray in its church, and grind wheat in its mill… We used to hear about our enemies’ neighbourhoods, but we never saw them. Before I left for New York, I had never set foot in their quarter. We passed through it by car only twice. I dreaded even that quick crossing, dreaded that they would stop us, make us get out of the car, line us up against a wall and shoot us. That’s how I used to think, even though I used to see them walking in the streets, talking to each other, not paying any attention to the cars that passed by or the passengers inside. We never set foot in their quarter. When out on a stroll we knew that once we reached the crossroads we had left the safe zone, so we would turn back without discussing it, without warning one another. I will visit their quarter now, but I’ve lost track of where the boundaries are… Maybe I’m walking there now without knowing it.

Eliyya drew a compass rose at the top of the page. He sketched the main street and some of the side streets. He marked where the houses of the family headmen were located and drew crosses for the churches. Every neighbourhood had a church and a priest and a butcher and a shoemaker. When the people from the Lower Quarter were no longer able to bring their dead to the public graveyard, they resorted to using a small grove that was easier for them to get to. Eliyya went away, but kept coming back to the almond grove. His father was buried there. He thought about having a private grave built for him, but he knew his mother would object. They must stay together. They died together and should stay together, Kamileh said. And so did everyone else.

He took pictures of the headmen’s houses and the churches. He stopped a passer-by to ask him about the green line. He wanted to know where it had been.

‘Which one?’

‘1958.’

The man’s eyes nearly popped out of his head in shock, having suddenly been thrown decades into the past. Before answering he decided to ask, ‘Who are you? A journalist?’

‘Eliyya al-Kfoury.’

The man hesitated. ‘Where do I know you from?’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘Whose son are you, then?’

Eliyya was not going to get a single word out of the man before he knew whose ears the information might fall upon.

‘I am the son of Yusef Farid Mikhail al-Kfoury.’

That was a complete answer that went back four generations. The man knew who he was. He warmed to him and his expression lightened.

‘Are you Kamileh’s son?’

‘Yes, I’m Kamileh’s son.’

He gave Eliyya a hug. He had known him as a child. The man forgot Eliyya’s question and began asking how he was and how his work was going. Eliyya tried again, and so the man pointed right and left.

‘The barricades were set up on the roof of the olive press. Right there.’

‘Where does the Lower Quarter end?’

The man was confused. He knew where the Lower Quarter ended, but he didn’t know how to show him. He pointed with his hand, drawing a straight line through the houses. He found it difficult to talk, and he didn’t have anything to say. He knew what had occurred. He had either been there or had heard about it but he didn’t see any point in recounting the details. He changed the subject.

Eliyya completed his tour, followed by some children curious about his camera and the bag on his shoulder. He arrived at the church courtyard. His tour had to end there in those humid alleys. He entered the Church of Our Lady through its back door, the women’s door, just as he used to when he was little. An old woman kneeling in the middle of the church with her arms lifted towards the heavens glanced at him. He dipped his fingers into the font of holy water and looked at the little angels surrounding the Virgin. He made the sign of the cross, exaggerating his motions, and knelt at one of the pews in the front row, bowing his head in contemplation.

He wrote in his notebook: My town is full of icons of saints and statues painted in bright colours and small shrines on the roadsides. The icons have happy colours and are full of details. There are lots of animals in them, like Saint George’s frightening dragon spewing red flames and the peaceful farm animals surrounding Saint Anthony, looking at the worshippers. But there’s always a tinge of sadness on the faces of the saints.

He went back to the coffee shop. They filled his ears with generalities.

‘That’s the way we were, one heart, one God,’ one of them said.

The man who looked like Luca Brasi in The Godfather addressed Eliyya directly, as if picking up a previous conversation. ‘We arrived together, your father and I, in the same car. A taxi. The driver dropped us off and turned back. We were planning to find a lift home with some of our friends. We didn’t go towards the church. We stood in the doorway of one of the shops in the square. We didn’t want to go into the church. Your father couldn’t stand going to funerals. We stayed outside the church while they did the funeral prayers and when it was over we edged closer to offer our condolences. It was hot. We were all drinking Cokes when we heard the first shots. When the bullets started raining down on us I lost him. He disappeared. I didn’t know how…’

He was tossing words like bait. He knew other things of course, which he might tell Eliyya about, but not in the café where everyone else could hear.