Jabbour Douaihy - June Rain

Shafiq loved pleasure and loved women and no doubt had discovered the quickest way to their hearts: enjoyment and laughter. He loved his ‘conferences’ as he called them. He had an insatiable appetite for re-enacting the same scenario whenever it was within his means: a banquet at some country restaurant or one with a view of a river or the sea, spread with a colourful, garden-like display of hors d’oeuvres. Food was to be enjoyed with the eyes, as he put it so succinctly, while gazing at all those appetising mezze dishes laid out on the table, waiting for his dinner guests to arrive, a handful of friends, none of them from Barqa. He would arrive at the restaurant before them in order to put his personal finishing touches on the feast.

He chose his friends from distant places, knowing they wouldn’t broadcast his news where he didn’t want it to go. The group would not be complete without the inclusion of some women at the table, even if they were generally much fewer than the men. And these women were unusual. They had loose tongues, smoked hookah pipes and drank arak . Undoubtedly they were of lowly backgrounds, women he alone knew how to coax out of their dens. As a general rule, he also made sure to befriend an oud player with a beautiful voice. He wouldn’t prompt him to start singing until after the spirits had had a chance to go to everyone’s heads a little, at which time he would pull out the oud from its cloth case, hand it to the singer himself and let the party begin.

In reality, despite the presence of waiters at the restaurant, he spent half of the evening standing, unable to refrain from serving his friends. That was the ideal he constantly tried to emulate, every day. Every action he undertook before and after noon, all of his daily activities, could be summarised as one long effort to prepare the table for dinner. And Shafiq got much more enjoyment from watching the others eat than from eating himself. Food was to be seen with the eyes, after all: all those dishes spread out on the table, and all the people eating it, too. He offered little bites to them and invited them to taste the various dishes carefully arranged. Those dinners, even though they took place in restaurants, were never without some dish he had brought himself. He would order the shankleesheh specially from Rahbeh, the village he knew was famous for it, or he would buy some green onions from a seller who planted them behind his house and gave them clean, fresh water. He didn’t care about what was going on in town, but if he was forced to put his two cents in he would say he loved everyone, everyone was his friend, and life was short and should be lived to the fullest.

Nothing muddied the purity of his pleasure except the daily reminder of his brother Farid’s propensity for fighting and guns. He had anticipated hearing the news of his brother’s murder right up until the day it actually reached him while he was on one of those outings of his through the towns of Mount Lebanon. His eyes filled with tears. He said he had been expecting that news for ages. He asked if Farid had suffered and was told he had died instantly, which gave him some solace before he headed home to his family. The killing of his brother Farid was a devastating blow to Shafiq’s life. The call to revenge beckoned him and along he went with his relatives. They tried to block roads and mount ambushes, but weren’t successful, so he started wearing a gun at his waist and justified it by claiming he had been struck. In other words, he’d been struck by the disaster that befell his brother. His carrying a gun was merely a way of showing his agreement with the basic premise of revenge, but actually going down the path that led to it was another matter altogether. He cut himself off from his buddies for about a month, but then little by little went back to his old ways.

It was clear to those close to him that what he was really up to was chasing after women, and all the organised get-togethers were nothing but bait to catch them. Indeed, he was able to achieve some success in that area, more than he had expected. And his record continued to improve despite his advancing age. As he got older his conquests from among the fairer sex were increasingly younger. He did have faults, such as winking to his friends about women in their presence and signalling his ability to lure them into his trap. Similarly, he used a multitude of hand signals and facial gestures suggestive of his indomitable sexual prowess. He was known for pounding his fists rapidly against his chest to express his pressing need to have sex — which he would have done right then and there were it not for the presence of his friends. On the faces of his companions, before whom he put all his sexual ambitions out on display, were tepid smiles feigning belief in his heroic escapades. It would get to the point where he believed them himself and began cornering some young woman and applying his seductions until he coaxed out of her the kind of response he was looking for.

However, one particularly beautiful and realistic country girl laid down the condition, as he pounded his chest with his fists in anticipation, that before she would submit to him he had to marry her. He had kept his personal life hidden from her completely, while she was good at stringing him along with that natural instinct women possess, even those with little schooling. She was much better than him at plotting and scheming. She would let him hold her hand and let his hand stray onto her thigh only to burst suddenly into tears and claim she was being mistreated and men were always trying to take advantage of her innocence. He was just like everyone else, she’d say, interested in getting her now only to turn around and toss her aside later on. He was afraid of losing her, so he began to secretly plot to marry her, making sure to keep the plan from his friends. But eventually the girl talked and the plan fell on the ears of the spy his wife had planted among his friends. His wife had made an agreement with the spy to tell her only things that might put her husband’s life in danger or expose his family to ridicule or harm. And that was exactly what happened. He told her that her husband was going to get married on Sunday in Abra. She arrived right in the middle of the ululations, got out of the taxi, walked up to him and said, ‘Come on home.’ Then she turned to his bride with contempt and said to her, ‘Did you try him out first at least?’

Laying Claim to the Church and the Cemetery

The priest and parish council of the town of Kfarbayda have hired attorney Nasib al-Sawda to file a case in the North District Criminal Court against Mr. F.R., asserting that he counterfeited or aided in the counterfeiting of documents giving him the right to ownership of the plot of land upon which the town’s church — Saint Joseph’s Church of the Epiphany — is built. The plot includes the cemetery behind the church where the townspeople’s remains have rested for hundreds of years. Court documents indicate the defendant is outside Lebanese soil at the present time and has been served with a court summons.

( Al-Nafeer , 12 September 1961)

A thread of poor luck seemed to run through his entire life. In 1956 he almost won the special New Year’s grand prize draw in the Lebanese National Lottery, missing it by just one number. Of course, that was only because the people in charge of the lottery had fixed the results, having rigged them ahead of time in favour of their relatives and other people with whom they would split the winnings. ‘Crooks,’ he used to say, with emphasis and shaking his head like someone who knew what he was talking about. Then there was the time at the roulette table in the casino in Nice, France, where he had been a guest of one of those filthy rich people who enjoyed listening to his stories despite knowing they were a pack of lies, because they benefited from his talent with the ladies. The metal ball jumped onto number 14 after everyone around the table had been certain it had settled on 13; the number he had bet everything on. The only reason it jumped was to prevent him from winning big time.