Sonallah Ibrahim - Beirut, Beirut

The elevator was on the ground floor so we got in. I held on to her arm just as she was about to stumble on the threshold. Then I closed the door and pressed the button.

She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I held her in my arms. She raised her face toward me and I looked into her eyes.

“Are you sure I’m not putting you or Wadia to any trouble?” she asked.

“I’m sure,” I replied. Her eyes were incapable of staying focused, like the eyes of drunks. Her mouth was close to mine. Her lips were open and moist.

“Don’t you want to kiss me?” she asked.

At that moment, the elevator stopped. I pulled aside its glass panels, then pushed open the metal door. We left the elevator and I took the apartment key out of my pocket.

I pressed the buzzer first. Then I put the key in the keyhole and turned it. I felt the door pull from the other side, then it opened wide to reveal Wadia.

His face lit up at the sight of Antoinette.

“Welcome,” he said, stepping aside for her.

She walked in, saying, “I’m afraid you’ll have to put me up for tonight.”

Wadia put his arms around her and planted a kiss on her neck, then said, “Only for tonight?”

He directed his words to me while he was still embracing her: “When the heavy fighting was going on at the start of the war, when night fell, you spent the night wherever you were.”

She gently freed herself from his embrace and headed to the bathroom without having to ask where it was. I followed Wadia to the living room after locking the door to the apartment. From his movements, I sensed that he was drunk.

He grabbed a bottle of vodka on the table and asked me, “Can I pour you one?”

I shook my head as I threw myself on the couch. He poured himself a glass and added a little orange juice to it.

“The night is wide open,” he told me, after taking a swig.

Antoinette came back from the bathroom, having washed her face. He offered her vodka but she declined.

“I’ve got some pot, if you’d like,” he offered.

“A cup of coffee would be better,” she said.

I stood up. “I’d like one, too,” I said. “I’ll make it.”

I went to the kitchen and lit the stove. I put the coffee pot on the burner. I waited until it boiled, and then I poured it. I carried two cups of coffee on a tray out to the living room.

I found Wadia engrossed in rolling a joint, while Antoinette rested her head on her palm and was lost in thought. I put a cup in front of her. I sat on the couch sipping my coffee.

Wadia finished rolling the joint, lit it, and offered it to me. I took two drags and gave it to Antoinette, who took a puff and then gave it back to him.

He took several pleasurable drags, then offered it to me, but I declined, saying, ‘‘I’ve smoked enough. I want to go and get some sleep.’’

“I have to go to bed now, too,” added Antoinette, “so I can work in the morning.”

Wadia finished the joint and then went off to his room and came back with a wide loose robe that he handed to Antoinette.

“I’ll let Antoinette have my room and I’ll sleep in the living room,” I said.

“I can’t take your room from you,” she replied.

“I’ll sleep in the living room,” Wadia offered, “and Antoinette will sleep in my room.”

“The problem is that I can’t sleep by myself. I won’t sleep a wink all night long.”

“Then sleep with me in my room: it has two beds,” said Wadia, putting his arm around her shoulder.

There were two beds in my room, too, but I didn’t say a word. I left them and went to the bathroom to wash my face. Then I went to my room, took off my clothes, and put on my pajamas.

I stretched out on the bed. A little later I felt thirsty and went out to the living room and then the kitchen. The door to Wadia’s room was open and the light was on. I noticed Antoinette in her underwear in the middle of the room. When I passed by again on my way back with a glass of water, I saw the door to his room was shut.

The Fifth Part of the Film

Jenin. Nablus. Jerusalem. Jericho. Bethlehem. Hebron. Black flags fly over the cities of the occupied West Bank. Posters lament the martyrs of Tel Zaatar. Israeli Army jeeps cruise the streets and city squares. Jeeps with two-way radio in the plazas and at intersections. (Note to self: Israeli military jeeps, with lowered carriages, are noticeably distinct, in the same way that Gestapo motorcycles with side-seats were.)

The road leading to Mount Lebanon. Syrian armored cars advance, firing their artillery guns.

A circle around a paragraph from a public statement by Kamal Jumblatt in the al-Anbaa newspaper: “The battle for Mount Lebanon approaches, so take up arms and hold firm; holding firm means we won’t despair too much when one place or another falls.”

Beside the previous paragraph are two headlines: “Jumblatt in a hurry to hold the Arab summit conference.” “Abu Iyad criticizes Arab silence in the face of Syrian military acting alongside the Phalangists.”

Washington. Dean Brown speaks to journalists: “We are trying to keep Lebanon from turning to the left.” “Israel is a key player in the situation, since it is supplying the Maronites with weapons.”

A circle around a paragraph from Time magazine, published September 13, 1976: “In the darkness of night, Israeli commandos dashed ashore in the Christian-controlled port of Jounieh, some 9 miles north of Beirut. As soon as they established contact with the Lebanese garrison, both forces spread out and secured a landing area. A helicopter slowly whirred up from an Israeli cargo ship standing offshore, guarded by a small armada of missile ships. The helicopter, Time has learned, brought to Jounieh a top Israeli official who spent the night in a series of secret conferences with various Lebanese leaders, then climbed back aboard his helicopter and flew out to sea again, just before dawn.

“The official was Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres. His brief ‘invasion’ of Lebanon — a nation with which Israel has no diplomatic ties — was the first of four trips between late May and late August. As if that were not extraordinary enough, he was accompanied on his third trip into Lebanon by none other than Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin, who held talks with as yet unnamed Lebanese leaders. Out of these negotiations has come a secret but potentially decisive Israeli intervention in the seventeen-month-old Lebanese Civil War. Acting with the agreement of Lebanon’s Christian leadership and a moderate group of Muslims, Israel is moving to wipe out forever the Palestinian guerilla bases in southern Lebanon. As Foreign Minister Yigal Allon said last week, ‘A situation will be created in which we will not permit any faction to allow the Palestine Liberation Organization to act against Israel from Lebanese regions close to the border.’

“Beyond that, the Israeli — Lebanese agreement has opened the way to an important readjustment in the Middle East lineup, one that could prove to be a genuine turning point in Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors.”

Beirut. Jumblatt to reporters: ‘‘We’ve put our neck on the line.’’

Headline in a Lebanese newspaper: “The first Soviet official statement calling on Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon.”

A statement by Yigal Allon in the Israeli newspaper, Davar : “The flame of civil war in Lebanon has consumed the PLO’s utopian idea of eliminating Israel by establishing a binational Arab — Jewish secular democratic state to take Israel’s place.”

A circle around a paragraph from an American magazine: “The women of Cairo who are covered from head to toe are still a minority, as are those groups that call for dealing with the Copts by considering them ‘ dhimmis ’, as was the case in the Islamic empire ten centuries ago. Dhimmis were excluded from full citizenship — that is, they were second-class citizens — and they either had to pay the non-Muslim jizya tax or become Muslim.”