Rawi Hage - De Niro's Game

God is dead, I said.

Um-Dolly shrieked and crossed herself, as if she had just encountered the devil himself. I walked in the absence of the sun and I thought I saw the devil stalking me, sniffing like a nocturnal dog above barrels filled with bits of candles, fragments of journals, offal from slain goats, body refuse, rubble, ruins, shit, trash, human waste, house dreck, ship wreckage, broken glass.

I heard the engine of a car slowly ticking behind me. I looked back and saw the outline of three heads behind the windshield. In the dark I heard a man telling me to move onto the sidewalk. I looked back again and recognized Najib in the company of two men I had never seen before. Suddenly, they climbed out of the car, slammed the doors shut, and started to push me. I felt an elbow below my chin and a lock on my throat. One man held my hand and twisted it behind my back, and his companion pushed me onto the sidewalk. They cornered me against a metal door. Najib came up beside me and whispered in my ear, Don’t show up at the machines anymore, do you understand? Don’t even think about showing up. We will break your ugly face.

I tried to reach for my gun, but I was fighting for breath and my right hand was twisted up toward my shoulders.

You bring back what you stole from us, or my friends from the forces here will pay you a visit at your home, Najib whispered with an authority that clashed with his boyish voice. The two guys pulled back my arm and brought me down to the ground. I covered my head and curled like a worm under garden soil and waited for giants’ soles to fall on me like gigantic leaves from high trees in titanic forests. I felt the men pounding on my ribs and on my face. Their feet followed their fists, raining down on my body like a winning jackpot. Najib spat on me and walked away.

I watched the three of them slamming their car doors and driving down toward Hospital Street. Then I bounced back like a demon: I ran with the drive of a thousand vengeful gods, salivating sweet blood and poisonous promises like a mad hyena, like metal piercing a beast’s throat. I jumped over a fence and ran toward the alley that led me to Hospital Street (I, a lightning bolt of wrath, a Trojan horse’s belly on fire, an erect cobra in an Indian valley). I jumped over another fence, landed on Hospital Street, and watched the car lights slowly moving toward me. I pulled out my gun, cranked it, and stood in the middle of the road. The car stopped and started to move backward in the narrow street. It smashed into parked cars left and right. I heard Najib squeaking, like a mouse in a lion’s paw. I fired straight at the car and hit the right light. I moved to the side of the street near the wall, where it was darker. With both my hands extended, my finger on the trigger, I strolled slowly toward the car. Najib was howling, Rja’ ya Allah-rja ! (Go back, for God’s sake, go back!). I fired another two shots at the car’s left light. I saw the men’s confused heads in silhouette, like trapped birds in a glass cage. I bled from my left hand, bit my swollen lip, ignored my tender ribs, and asked them to get out slowly. I said, Slowly. And, slowly. I said: Slowly.

Najib got out first. The other two put their arms up and moved toward me. I laid them all on the ground, on their bellies, in front of the car’s fender, under a raging moon, parallel to my shoes and beneath my heavy breath, my dripping blood, and my shining devil’s eyes. Najib croaked and cried like a hungry infant.

I frisked them; they had no weapons. I released Najib’s two friends and ordered Najib to stay.

We took the car. I sat in the front seat. Najib drove. He cried all the way. He smelled of piss and his pants had a long patch of wetness that went down to his knees. He was crying and babbling and begging me as he followed my driving directions.

When we arrived under the bridge I asked him to get out. He clung to the steering wheel and started to move back and forth, sobbing, begging me not to kill him.

Get out, I said. I wouldn’t hurt you. Just get out.

I am wet, he said. Tell me what you want.

Get out.

He opened the door slowly. Before he had a chance to run, I grabbed him and pushed his waist over the warm hood and put the gun above his ear.

Who were the two guys with you?

I do not know them, he cried.

I know they are from the forces. Little Najib must know something. Who sent them?

Najib cried, and again he begged me not to kill him.

Okay, here is the deal. You talk, I won’t kill. You do not talk, I will play Russian roulette with my automatic gun here. What are the chances, you think? Talk, or I will dump your body and expensive shoes in the sewer for the big rats to feed on. They would love to nibble on the French perfume behind your ears. Ya chic inta .

Najib shivered and a fresh, warm flood of piss came bursting through at his ankles.

Who are they? I said.

Najib cried, and protested that he had never met them before.

Okay then, to the rats!

No! No! Wait. They are De Niro’s friends. Please do not tell him that I told you. I beg you on your mother’s grave.

I am taking the car, I said. You walk home; it will dry you up.

I PARKED THE CAR down the hill from Achrafieh and opened the glove compartment. It contained a flashlight and a paper. The paper was military authorization to pass the checkpoints. Najib’s name was on it. I folded it and put it in my pocket.

I searched the rest of the car, but nothing else was there — no owner’s papers, no weapons. I got out, shut the driver’s-side door, and walked up the hill through the Syriacs’ neighbourhood. A woman with a broom was chasing dust away from her doorstep and into the street. When I walked past, she stopped fanning the ground and took a long look at me. We stared at each other, then I walked on, and the rustles of her broom pondered and rose again.

The moon fell from above and hued the dancing laundry on the little roofs. Above, the heaven of the Christians was luminous with stars and the thin alleys were smeared with shadows.

I was breathing up through the hills, passing ground-floor windows. With quick, intrusive glances I extracted images of sepia photographs showing dead forefathers with remorseful faces, images of flamboyant vases with plastic flowers, of archaic sofas stained by old sins, of picturesque, romantic paintings of green valleys and brick-red houses, of massive, wooden dining tables with vampire chairs under crucifixes crucified on vertical walls. And I heard sounds, sounds of clanging pots, cutting knives, and ultraviolet radio waves that made dogs chase their tails. Outside in the backyards, laundry was hung by flabby arms and paraded on straight pins in army rows, like frescoes on Venetian balconies. I smelled boiling chicken broth, heard onion-scented hands tapping knives on cutting-boards in a crescendo like that of a castrated church-boys’ choir, or of the soundless Aramaic tears that were shed, on that tempest day, for the nailed son of Yahweh and the dangled corpse of his companion, the forgiven thief.

GEORGE OFFERED me a chair.

He pulled out his box of cigarettes, lit his fire, and threw the Marlboros on the table.

Is everything settled between you and Najib?

Before I had the chance to answer, he added: Forget about the poker machines. I have other work for you.

I kept my eye fixed on him. And no cigarette was lit between my fingers; only my throat burned, my eyes itched. Anger crawled down my chest and images from childhood bounced on the table: two boys pissing in the corner of angled walls, shooting doves with wooden guns, thieving candies with little hands, and swinging wooden sticks to herd car wheels down the city hills, wearing cheap open sandals, mouths pounding purple chewing gum, pockets bloated with marbles, chasing Indians and African lions with slingshots and crooked arrows, praying on bruised knees, confessing in foreign tongues while surrounded by flames that danced like our stolen cigarettes did at night in narrow alleys and under the stairs.