Rawi Hage - De Niro's Game

De Niro drank some more. Outside, he said, bodies rolled in sand, bloated. Blood turned into dark stains, green flies were feeding, bulldozers dug and shoved cadavers in ground holes. It was all like a movie. All like a movie. Dead people everywhere. Do you still want to hear? Do you want to hear more? More? He shouted at me, Here, drink! He cranked his gun and put it in my face. Drink, I say.

I took the bottle and sipped.

What is my father’s name? he asked me.

I do not know.

Yes, you do. You are a liar. You talk to Nabila, you visit her when I am not there. I saw you. Do you want to hear more? Here, drink more. Yes, you want to hear, and I want to finish my story. We tied men together with a rope and shot them in the head one by one. Dogs snatched cadaver parts and escaped behind little alleys. A fucking Syrian pushed past with his cart, selling vegetables. I asked him his nationality. It was Syrian! Fucking Syrians! They all come here to take our land! I kicked his vegetable cart. Abou-Haddid did not even waste time; he put a bullet in the Syrian’s stomach. Everyone against the wall, I said. Women started to scream, begging us, telling us that they had already surrendered. Kamil grabbed one of them by the hair, pushed her on the floor, and stepped on her neck. I don’t want to hear a sound here, I shouted to them.

Everyone to the stadium. On the way, some of those fighters laughed and tossed hand grenades into the middle of the crowd.

After telling me this, George brooded for a while. He was becoming even more intoxicated. He talked, and then he stared into emptiness. He drank more, and then he mumbled. He mumbled something about his mother, that he had killed her. He began to hallucinate, and looked sad all of a sudden. I thought he was getting tired, so I tried to pull the gun away from his hand, but the moment I touched it, he bounced up and threatened to shoot me. I thought he would.

I killed my mother, I killed her, he said and burst into tears.

Your mother died in the hospital from cancer, I said to him.

For Al-Rayess! he shouted, lifting the bottle and drinking some more.

I have to go, I said.

No one is going anywhere, not before I finish talking, he said. Listen to what happened there in that camp. Listen. Kamil had cocaine. We sniffed, and we shouted, For Al-Rayess! We rounded up more men against a wall, women and children against another wall. We shot all the men first. The women and children wailed, and we changed magazines and shot them as well. It was their cries that made me shoot them. I hate kids’ cries. I never cry; have you ever seen me cry? The rest who came after, when they saw the corpses on the floor, they panicked. Some pissed in their pants. I saw three fleeing from the back; we chased them in the narrow alleys. I became separated from the others, and I lost everyone; I was alone. I broke down doors. I entered a house and found a woman on the floor surrounded by her dead daughters. She looked me in the face. I said, You want to join your family, don’t you? She said, You might as well finish what you started, my son.

My son! My son, George said and laughed. I hit her with the butt of my rifle, many times, many times, like this (and he punched the air with his gun). Blood sprang from her head like a hose; it splashed on my thighs. I wandered through the alleys alone. I saw a woman putting her hand over her children’s mouths. . They cried. The houses were filled with bodies of slain women in aprons, men stretched next to their wives and their raped daughters. Then I stopped. You wouldn’t believe it, but I heard the cooing of a partridge bird, just like the one we hunted up in the mountains, you and I, Bassam, you and I. I followed it through the narrow walls. It ran, and I ran after it; it hopped above cadavers soaked in streams of cooking water. I saw it flying over the olive trees, above the hills. And then it stopped, and came back, and perched on top of a dead man’s body. I saw the hand of a dead man reaching up to caress its feathers.

I saw it! George shouted and took another sip. I chased it again, and it entered a hut. I ran inside, and I saw it slip under a bed. I lifted the mattress; two small children were huddled in fear under there. Their dead mother’s body was in the room, staring at them with open eyes. I just wanted to hunt the bird, George said. All I wanted was to hunt.

Then he was silent, brooding. He pulled out his magnum, opened its barrel, took out two bullets, spun the barrel, and said to me, Three out of five. Game now, here.

I declined. I tried to pull the gun from his hand, and he called me a coward.

You are not a man, George said, and that is why your woman was looking for someone who is a man. He pointed the gun at my head. Coward! he taunted me.

The only coward here is you, I said.

He looked me in the eye. Then he said, You are leaving. I see your bag. You think you have to go. Your face is all cut. Your eye has a scar.

It is from your boss, I said. It is his goodbye gift to me. You have killed. I know you have killed. You killed that old man as well. And his wife. You always killed.

We always killed, Bassam, George replied. He looked me in the eyes again and repeated, We always killed. The man who killed Al-Rayess, that man confessed. He mentioned your name. You gave him the plan for the foundation. You killed Al-Rayess.

That is why you came? I asked him.

Yes, I came to take you to the Majalis . They want you back there. You know, a few more bubbles. A few more slaps.

So, why did you drive in this direction? I asked him. The torture chambers are on the other side.

No, Bassam, the torture chambers are inside us. But I am fair, and you are my brother. I will give you a way out, De Niro said. I took Rana from you, he said, and he pointed his gun, and his eyes emitted red like blood, harsh as a stone, veiling lives, and shining in the windshield’s light.

I ARRIVED AT THE PORT AND WENT TO FIND THE SHIP. I looked for the Egyptian captain.

There you are, he said. Do you have the money?

I paid him, and he led me down to the engine room. This is Moustafa, the mechanic. You stay here with him until the ship leaves the port, then you go up on the deck. We are leaving soon, the captain said. He climbed back upstairs.

Then the engine roared and chuckled, and the pipes swelled and ticked, and Moustafa smiled at me and said, First time on a ship?

Yes.

He laughed. If you feel dizzy, go up and get some fresh air. He smiled again.

The boat moved slowly into the sea.

A COUPLE OF HOURS passed, and during all that time I sat very still and made my mind blank. I wanted it to stay blank for a long time.

Finally, I went up on the deck and watched the little light on the shore fading into the black of the night. A few sailors rushed up and down the stairs and onto the decks. I watched them and held my bag, my money, my gun, and my jacket on my knees.

The air was still, and the ship sailed quietly from darkness and into darkness, from water into water, from earth into earth. I watched the slow death of the distant twinkles on the land.

Ten thousand waves passed under the floating tank that moved away from my home.

Ten thousand fish sang underneath the waves and nibbled on the garbage thrown from the cook’s hand.

I looked at the sky. It was covered with light signals from faraway planets bursting with gas and the happy bonfires of dead humans singing warriors’ songs in a landscape of burning rocks, and sending Morse code signals to ships steered by alcoholic captains into islands inhabited by sirens who sing in cabarets and offer up their salty sex organs that taste like the marinated fish of Sunday’s family gatherings after the families have endured the moralistic discourse of fat priests who douse congregations with incense spilled from the pendulum motion of their jerking hands, a motion that rocks like the swings in parks that are swamped with baby strollers pushed by Filipino nannies on temporary visas and with small paycheques that are transferred at Christmas to faraway families who live in huts by the sea and receive Morse code signals from those old creatures from astral space. The creatures read oracles and long letters home from nannies who watch the kids of executives pouring sand in plastic buckets and climbing geometrical cubes in red-striped sailor’s shorts, and the creatures can also explain letters home from orderlies dressed in white aprons who cruise the elevators in old folks’ homes, changing the sheets of senile, retired sea captains and society ladies, who are in complete ignorance of the presence of their three-piece-suited sons and oblivious to the repetitive, high-pitch complaints of their daughters-in-law, complaints like those of seagulls that feed on the sea trails of sailors’ food, and rest on the deck, ogling me with xenophobic eyes, sharpening their beaks, and taking off to other planets on mythological wings.