Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

YOU USED to say, “Back to the beginning.” You would talk, and we’d listen. It was enough for us to hear your footsteps for “the beginning” to return, for things to get started.

Not now.

Now there’s no one, there’s no beginning.

The issue is war, and war has no beginning.

I was willing to meet Boss Josèph even though I felt no curiosity about him. I was willing to meet him because I’d learned the secret of war. This secret is the mirror. I know no one will agree with me, and they’ll say I talk like this because I’m afraid, but it’s not true. If you’re afraid, you don’t say your enemy is your mirror, you run away from him.

I agreed to meet with Boss Josèph despite the fact that I didn’t expect to hear anything I didn’t already know. The man would start — as indeed he did start — with cocaine. He’d say he took huge amounts of cocaine before going to the camp, so he’d be exonerated from responsibility for his acts. He’d say the Israelis lit the place up and that his superior, who was sitting with the Israeli officers on the roof of the Kuwaiti embassy overlooking the camp, expected something extra special from him. He’d say that when he entered the darkened camp, he was stumbling on the stones and the flares blinded him, which made him fire randomly, without thinking. When he entered that particular house and opened fire and saw people collapsing on the sofas where they were sitting, he felt a strange intoxication, and that he never meant to kill the two children but was just joking around with his buddy about the effectiveness of the gun and then he killed them, just like that, without thinking.

This is something about us that you won’t understand, Father.

You didn’t get caught up in your war the way we did in ours. You went to war, but we didn’t. Our situation was more like yours when you were in Sha’ab, except that we couldn’t withdraw. Do you remember Sha’ab after you took it back from the Jews? Did you hesitate even once? Of course not. The only time you hesitated was when the ALA informed you of the decision to withdraw before the Lebanese borders closed. Then you hesitated, but you withdrew with the rest. When you met Nahilah, you told her you’d made a mistake and asked her to stay because you thought it would be possible to correct that mistake quickly enough.

Do you remember those long months after Ibrahim died?

Do you remember how many decisions you made and how often you swore you’d stay? You lived in caves. The earth, the rocks, the trees and the wild animals were your companions, and you said you’d never leave. And when you recovered from the shock of your son’s death, you went back to Lebanon and began forging your own path as a permanent journey between the two Galilees. You’d go from Lebanese Galilee in the south to Palestinian Galilee in the north. You created your existence, like a story.

But we moved from war to war. We didn’t fight a war, Father, we lived war. For us war became numbers added to numbers.

When the Lebanese war ended, I didn’t realize it had. The war ended but didn’t end, which is why I didn’t pay any attention to the question of what and how our life would be afterwards.

My expedition to that restaurant in al-Ashrafiyyeh permitted me to meet my enemies, but unfortunately I didn’t feel they were my enemies. At Rayyis’ restaurant it was as if I were in front of a mirror and were seeing my own image. No, I’m not defending them. If the war began again, I’d fight them again. Despite that, I want to say that the real war begins when your enemy becomes your mirror so that you kill him in order to kill yourself. That’s what history is. Can you see the sordidness and inanity of history? History is inane because it dislikes victors and defeats everybody.

Take yourself. When you told the tale of your journeys and your wars, when you saw that woman kneeling close to the Roman olive tree in the middle of the red sphere of the sun, you were designing your mirror. You saw your own image in their mirrors. No, I’m not equating executioner and victim. But I do see a mirror broken into two halves, which can only be mended by joining the parts together. Dear God, this is the tragedy: to see two halves that come together only in war and ruination.

I say these things to you, and you can do nothing nailed there to your bed, which has become your ship on the sea of death. I hear you saying no and telling me the story of Nahilah before the Israeli investigator.

“I’m a prostitute. Write that I’m a prostitute, what more do you want from me?”

Please tell me that story again, I like it so much. The first time you told it to me you didn’t say the word prostitute . You said she said, “I’m a pro. .” And when I asked what that meant you burst out laughing and said, “Prostitute. You’ve always been stubborn, you don’t understand much, do you?”

I asked you, “What did she say? Did she say pro . .or prostitute ?”

“She said prostitute . She said the word the way it is. A mouthful, huh?”

Nahilah was pregnant with her fourth child: Ibrahim had died, Samir was two, Noor nine months, and Nahilah found herself pregnant once again.

Noor saved her. After the birth of her daughter, Nahilah recovered from her sorrow, and the chronicle of her never-ending pregnancy began: Her beauty would round out, her long black hair flowed down her back, and she’d sway as she walked. When pregnant, it seemed as if she were filled with a secret light that radiated from her face and eyes.

You told me that your lust for her would explode whenever you saw her belly growing round. Nahilah would get as round as a ripe apple and give off a smell of thyme mixed with green apples. She would ripen. When she came to you pregnant at the cave of Bab al-Shams, she’d be overflowing with love and drowsiness.

The incident with the Israeli military investigator occurred nine months after Noor was born. Your mother went to register the girl and get an Israeli identity card for her. They refused to register her.

The Israeli registrar asked for the father’s name, and the old woman said it was registered on the headman’s document as Yunes Ibrahim al-Asadi.

The registrar said he wouldn’t register the girl until he’d seen her father. This happened even though your mother had brought an official document from the headman of Deir al-Asad and had thought that registering Noor would be a mere formality. But the Israeli official insisted on the father coming, so the old woman took the document and went back home.

Nahilah told the headman and all the men of the village that she wouldn’t register the girl. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m the one responsible for my children.” From that moment, Nahilah ceased to be an ordinary woman in the eyes of the villagers: She began to mix with the men and sit in their councils.

Soon after, some soldiers came and escorted her to an interrogation. They entered the house, turned it upside down, and found nothing except the blind sheikh, his wife, and two young children. They took Nahilah and put her in a dark solitary-confinement cell for three days before starting to ask her questions.

At the time the Israelis hadn’t yet developed the art of torture with chairs; they invented that after invading Lebanon. This consists of tying the detainee to a chair and letting him sit there for a week with a black bag over his head. The detainee remains tied to the chair inside the darkness of the bag. Soldiers lift the bag once a day to give the prisoner a crust of bread and a mouthful of water, and they take him, with his head still covered, to the bathroom once a day. Eventually the prisoner forgets who he is, his joints stiffen up, and he’s crushed by the darkness. By the time he’s taken to the interrogation, he’s lost all sensation in his body, and his back feels like a sack of stones he’s carrying on his spine. He stands before the interrogator staggering, on the verge of collapse.