Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

When Abd el-Malek heard the justification offered by the French consul, first he laughed as though listening to a joke, then he grew furious. He said if that was how things were, why had the French General Gouraud stood in front of the tomb of Saladin in the Umayad Mosque in Damascus and told the Arab leader, “Saladin, we’re back!”

“No, no,” said the consul, “that is a widespread historical misconception. General Gouraud had nothing to do with the matter. The founder of the State of Greater Lebanon had no interest in the past. Those were the words of General Goybet, commander of the Syrian campaign and Gouraud’s deputy. You’re right, there was no call for such words, but you know the warrior mentality and the folie de grandeur to which they’re prone.”

“And why did General Allenby say, ‘Today the crusades have ended,’ when the British occupied Jerusalem on December 9, 1918?”

“It seems you know your history well, Monsieur De Guise,” said the consul.

Dakiz had left the French consulate cursing the hour that Muna had got him involved in the absurd project. “Damnation! The French and the English can claim they’re crusaders whenever it suits them but the original crusaders have to shut up and die in the civil war.”

Abd el-Malek said he’d been so angry he’d phoned his only son, Ahmad, and asked him to divorce his wife because she was “a discord in the land.”

“Me, a discord in the land, uncle?” asked Muna, laughing.

“God damn passports and the day they were invented! Now you, your husband, and your children are going to get Canadian passports even though Canada wasn’t even on the map at the time of the crusades.”

Karim felt as though he had been transported to an unreal world. The man truly believed he was descended from the crusaders even though all his forefathers were Tripolitanians, he was a Sunni Muslim, and his family had built a mosque in the city! What caught his attention was the pleasure Ahmad took in what his father was saying. The whole family was either telling the truth or believed it was. Abu Ahmad claimed he still spoke the language of his crusader ancestors and was sorry his son had refused to learn it and that the only person who could speak it now was his father’s uncle’s daughter, who was eighty-seven years old and lived alone in her house opposite the mosque.

When Karim heard the story of the crusader language, he too was sucked in and found himself inside the imaginary world fashioned by Abu Ahmad’s words, for it had never before entered his mind that the crusaders spoke a language all their own, different from those of the countries from which they came.

He asked about the language and got an answer from Muna that obviated the question. “It’s called lingua franca, uncle, not ‘the language of the crusaders,’ and it wasn’t a language, it was a mixture of numerous dialects, including Arabic.”

“All languages are mixtures,” said Ahmad.

“Fine, so why did you become Muslims?” asked Karim.

“The story of our forefathers is a truly strange one,” said Abd el-Malek.

“Everyone around them were Muslims. You’ve heard of the terrible massacre committed by the Mamluke Baybars when he occupied the Fragrant City?”

“I have,” said Karim, “but I know too about the savage massacre committed by the crusaders when they occupied the city.”

“History is nothing but massacres,” said Abu Ahmad, “but that’s not the point. Our forefathers became Muslims because they had no other option. If you come to the house with me I’ll show you the family tree and how we started mixing with Muslims a long time ago and intermarried with them long before the Mamluke conquest of the city. I deduce that our forefathers became Muslims in order to fit in with their environment. Not me, though. I’m a Muslim by conviction. I studied philosophy at the university and worked as a philosophy teacher at the Mar Elias School and I’ve studied the matter in depth and thought about becoming a Christian again like my forefathers, especially as I love the Byzantine hymns. When you listen to Dimitri Coutya chanting you’d think it was a voice to open the Gates of Heaven. But I discovered that Muhammad was the true prophet.”

The man then expounded his theory on religions. He said Muhammad was the only prophet in the three divinely revealed religions who had died a member of his own religion because he had personally supervised it. Moses wasn’t a Jew and Jesus wasn’t a Christian because the Jewish and Christian religions took shape long after them and it wasn’t certain they would recognize themselves in them. Only Muhammad had died a Muslim and in accordance with the religion that was the vehicle of his message. In this way God had rendered Islam superior to all other religions. This was why Abu Ahmad Dakiz had chosen Islam as a religion; however, he had also adopted the theory of the Sufi Ibn Arabi and become a Muslim “following in the path of Jesus, son of Mary.”

The clock said five. Ahmad looked at his wife and said, “We have to go.”

“Stay the night at my place,” said Abu Ahmad.

“I wish we could,” said Ahmad, “but things aren’t looking good. The atmosphere in the country’s bad and everyone’s afraid the fighting will start up again.”

Karim asked if he’d be able to find a taxi at seven or seven thirty. He estimated that the meeting with Imm Yahya would take a while and so he’d make use of his visit to her to go in Radwan’s car and visit Khaled’s grave.

Ahmad said he doubted he would be able to, given that the clouds of war were gathering.

“I’ll work it out,” said Karim.

“Why? Aren’t you going back with us?” asked Muna.

He told them his friend would be sending him a car at five thirty so that they could go together and visit the mother of a friend who had died.

“We’ll wait for you at Uncle Abd el-Malek’s,” said Muna.

Karim noticed Ahmad’s doubtful glances and said they didn’t have to wait because he could manage on his own.

“At my place. You’ll sleep at my place,” said Abu Ahmad. “My house is opposite the mosque. In any case, you’ll find me there, at the Ash’ash Café, smoking a narghile and waiting for you.”

“It’s an idea,” said Ahmad, apologizing that they had to go back because the Filipino maid couldn’t stay with the children after seven.

“Why not?” said Karim, thinking that to stay the night at Abu Ahmad’s would give him more time to think of a way of getting around Sheikh Radwan’s request.

There followed a strange Tripolitanian night during which Karim discovered the relationship between the dissolution of memory and the disintegration of the present: two women, an elderly man who had found a second youth in the past, and a city dominated by a concrete arch whose significance and reason for being no one could recall.

Karim got into the car sent for him by Sheikh Radwan at five thirty. A young man in jeans and a black shirt, his eyes covered by thick sunglasses, arrived and made a sign to Karim from a distance. The doctor rose, said goodbye to his hosts, and confirmed to Abu Ahmad that he’d meet him at the Ash’ash Café.

The black Mercedes reached the Exhibition district. The young man looked back and said apologetically, “One moment. I just have to go up and get Mawlana.” Karim deduced that “Mawlana” had moved from Qubbeh to live in the Exhibition neighborhood, a new residential district built opposite the land that had been set aside for the Tripoli International Exhibition grounds. At its center stood a concrete arch built by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer to provide the city — dominated by the crusader castle of Saint-Gilles — with a modern symbol to clash with its old one.