Elias Khoury - The Journey of Little Gandhi

Vitsky no longer saw Simaan Fayyad after her arrival at the Sabbagha family house. But she used to say that all the Lebanese are like Fayyad, they don’t know what they’re asking for and they don’t know what they want. She especially hated the Reverend Amin and refused to talk to him. She’d look at him with disgust when he’d come to visit Madame Sabbagha. She’d go into a small room next to the kitchen and turn on the television.

The Reverend Amin didn’t try to speak to her. He knew she hated him, and he didn’t like her either. He saw her as the main obstacle in his new relationship with Lillian Sabbagha.

The Reverend Amin was lonely. From the time his wife left he felt sad, and as if the world were slipping out from under him. His church had become empty; no one came to it anymore. He, too, decided not to pray there. He’d pray in his house, all alone. He’d read the Bible but wouldn’t give any sermons. He felt his throat was dry and he needed a lot of whiskey. He’d find himself alone in front of Our Lady Church, and Father John would drive him home.

Gandhi told Alice senility had eaten up the Reverend Amin’s brain, that he could no longer speak normally. He spit more than he talked.

And Alice would smile. “That’s life,” she’d say. “Who’d have said that all glory reverts to clay in the end.”

No one remembered how the Reverend Amin used to be, how he opened his church and built his parish singlehandedly.

The Reverend Amin told her, and Alice believed him.

He said he’d lost hope when he wasn’t elected to be pastor of Beirut after the Reverend Fuad Tahhan’s death. It was then, in 1963, that Alfred came. Alfred was an eccentric man. They said he’d been involved with the unsuccessful military coup attempt undertaken by the Syrian Socialist Party in 1961, and that after a year in prison he worked as an officer in the Secret Service (Deuxième Bureau). Alfred wanted to marry the Reverend Amin’s daughter Samia, but she refused because she was in love with an American student with a red beard who was planning to marry her and take her to California. Alfred was the one who encouraged the Reverend Amin to establish an independent church in Ras Beirut. He rented the house and gathered the parishioners and convinced Dr. John Davis to be the first. Alfred Sawaya was in his forties, bald, with protruding eyes and protruding red lips.

Alfred came to the first church meeting and said a pastor must be elected. He announced his own nomination and started campaigning about his virtues, and about his grandfather who was the first in Lebanon and Syria to embrace the Protestant faith.

The church would have slipped out of Amin Aramouni’s hands had John Davis not settled the matter. The tall American stood up in the middle of the small hall, which was full of men and women, and spoke in Arabic.

“It’s not right,” he said. “You are an officer, Mr. Alfred, and an officer doesn’t have the right to be a pastor. We want Reverend Amin.”

Amin expected Alfred to defend himself, but he didn’t speak. He left the church and didn’t come back. And from that day on the Reverend Amin became the respected and cherished pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Ras Beirut.

Amin never forgot that he began his life as a missionary and that his duty was to minister to non-Christians. And so he found in Little Gandhi what he’d been searching for.

Gandhi had closed his restaurant for good after the death of the dog and went back to the shoe-shine business. He’d put his box in front of Faysal’s Restaurant and start working at six in the morning. He was, with his loose-fitting clothes and his head bent over his box, the main guidepost in the street. He was the shoe shiner everyone went to. He worked quietly and carefully; you could barely hear his voice. When he spoke, he’d whisper and wave his hands, as if he thought his voice came out of his hands. His customers didn’t understand a word he said, but they came anyway. Business was booming for him, especially after the Reverend decided to include him in his little church and the whole congregation started going to him.

Gandhi told Alice they were a strange bunch of people.

He told her the Reverend’s followers were a bunch of idiots, smiling all the time.

“They always want to prove how happy they are.”

Gandhi was pleased with them. A never-ending supply of shoes and smiles. He’d smile back at them, but always with some hesitancy. He didn’t quite know what to do in order not to spoil their happiness for them. Should he smile, or listen, or pretend he was completely wrapped up in his work?

They’d come, stand with their shoes on his shoe-shine box, and talk incessantly. They’d ask him about his work and his children and he’d answer them as best he could. Gandhi spoke about that blond bearded man in particular, who never stopped asking questions. He’d ask him about his village, his father, his grandfather, his opinion about Beirut.

“I don’t know anything,” Gandhi would answer.

“This is exactly what I’m interested in,” the man said. “I’m very interested in simplicity; philosophy these days is all about discovering simplicity.”

He started visiting Gandhi at his humble house and eating with him. He’d sit on the wooden bench inside his small house, talking and asking questions.

“I look for life wherever I can find it.”

The blond bearded man told everyone he had discovered the simple life through Gandhi, that Gandhi was like Jesus, and that the poor were the salt of the earth.

Once Gandhi was in church.

Gandhi didn’t know why he agreed with the Reverend Amin to go to church. He was a “son of a gun,” as he said, but that wasn’t enough justification for going. Maybe this young bearded man attracted him with his simplicity and his womanlike tenderness; or maybe it was that he wanted to see how they prayed; or because he thought there couldn’t be any danger in the matter; or because he couldn’t find a good reason not to.

“No problem,” he said to the Reverend Amin.

“Sunday, nine o’clock,” the Reverend said.

“Sunday,” Gandhi answered.

Gandhi sat in the back and didn’t understand a thing. He watched while they chanted and shook their heads and bodies. “It’s like watching TV,” he said to Alice. And suddenly the show ended. They all sat down as the Reverend Amin closed his eyes and began to pray. Soon afterward, the bearded fellow climbed up to the pulpit and spoke about simplicity. The Reverend Amin was sitting in an aisle seat and the bearded man stood, giving his sermon and pointing up with his index finger. His sermon was in perfect classical Arabic, half of which was lost on Gandhi. His voice was shaking and you could see the veins in his neck popping out. His hand went up and down as he said, “Blessed are the meek.” Everyone sat in their seats muttering “hmmm” as if they understood.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. / Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. / Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. / Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. / Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. / Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. / Blessed are …”

He’d say “blessed” and point with his finger, and the heads would turn to the back where Gandhi was sitting. Gandhi felt like a dog and soon found himself leaving the church. Their glances pierced through his face, and so he got scared and went out of the church, leaving the bearded young man on the pulpit caught up in his own words.

Gandhi told the Reverend Amin he had gotten scared.

The Reverend laughed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, putting his foot up on the shoe-shine box. “That young man is very zealous. He doesn’t know how he should speak. God forgive him.”