Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

“And Hala?” asked Karim.

“Who’s Hala?”

“His girlfriend.”

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “Or yes, my wife, Sahar, said she was teaching philosophy at the Good Shepherd School and lives like an old maid.”

“I’d like to see her,” said Karim.

“Don’t waste your time. She has only one story to tell and it’s not believable. I think she made it up to give some meaning to her life. Malak supposedly phoned her after a long time and made a date with her at the Express. She went and looked around but couldn’t see him. She went to sit in the corner where they used to sit when they were in love. After a bit a man came and stood in front of her. He looked at her and said, ‘You don’t recognize me of course.’ The voice was Malak’s. It was the voice but not the man. ‘You’re not him,’ she said. ‘I don’t know you.’ He said he’d changed his face in Germany and later changed his name. He said his name was Munir now and he loved her. The girl was petrified. ‘You’re not him,’ she said. ‘And anyway I was afraid he might kill me, after the crime he’d done.’ She said she ran out of the café scared the ghost would run after her. ‘I don’t know why they sent me this man who was pretending to be Malak. I’m certain Malak died in Tall el-Zaatar. He died and never called me once, died not loving me. How could someone who’d committed all those crimes love anyone?’ ”

What did today’s Danny have in common with yesterday’s?

It wasn’t true that this Danny was the hero of an unwritten story, as Karim had thought in the past. Danny wasn’t like heroes because heroes are frozen in our imaginations in the act of heroism. When they lose their balance and life preys on them, they lose their magic and are transformed into mere shadows that break up in the light of ordinary life. The secret of Danny’s allure lay in Sahar — a beautiful woman who worked so as to leave her husband free for political action. He’d disappear and she would wait for him, and when he returned she wouldn’t ask where he’d been. With radiant face she’d lead him to the bathroom, remove his dirty underwear, and fill the bathtub with hot water covered with soapy, jasmine-scented foam. Then she’d leave him to go to the kitchen to fetch a glass of mint tea, sit on the edge of the tub, hold his wet hand, and sink with him into the silence of the steam that rose from the hot water.

This woman of waiting, who filled the life of Danny and his friends with joy, suddenly disappeared. No one had any idea what had happened to her. She went on a trip to Italy to attend an architectural conference in Venice and that was the last anyone heard of her. One rainy night Danny had come to Karim’s apartment and said he was tired. He was sad and confused and couldn’t hold his tongue. It seemed he’d smoked and eaten a lot of hashish before deciding he couldn’t stay alone in the apartment any longer. He said his wife’s sister had taken his daughter to sleep at her place and he was feeling lonely. Then he told the story. He said Sahar had phoned him the day before. He said she’d disappeared three weeks earlier, when she’d been supposed to return after four days but hadn’t and he’d had no means of contacting her. He’d told her sister about it two days ago. Her sister didn’t seem worried or surprised by the news. She said she knew nothing about the matter and promised to come that day and take Suha. Half an hour after she left, Sahar phoned and said she was in Brussels, had found work there, and was never coming back to Beirut. She’d said strange things, that she hated Beirut, hated Lebanon, hated him, and wanted a divorce. She’d said she’d told her sister to get Suha’s things ready because she’d decided to bring her daughter to live with her there in Brussels and she expected him not to object because he was busy with other things anyway, didn’t know his daughter, and had no relationship with her. She’d said she’d give him free rein with their joint bank account once she’d withdrawn half.

Danny had talked like a parrot repeating things it doesn’t understand. He’d spoken in a husky voice and the words had faltered in his mouth as though refusing to emerge. He’d said he was tired and wanted to sleep. Then his heart had begun beating violently and continuously. Karim had told him he ought to take him to the AUB Hospital’s emergency clinic because his heartbeat was racing, “and I’m not a cardiologist. I don’t know what to do. Come on, get up, and let’s go to the hospital.”

“There’s no need,” said Danny. “This always happens to me when I overdo it with the hashish.”

Karim ordered him to lie on his back. He put three cushions under Danny’s head, gave him a glass of cold water to drink, got a piece of ice from the refrigerator and ordered him to suck it. The heartbeat slowed but Danny didn’t cease his raving.

“Better not talk now. We can talk later.”

Danny never stopped talking. He was like someone speaking to himself. He went on for more than two hours while Karim sat next to him and tried unsuccessfully to break the accumulating sentences down into words. He heard the name Rana often repeated but what did Rana have to do with it? Rana was a member of the AUB cell and was preparing to marry her boyfriend, with whom she’d been living for three years. Karim worked out that Danny had had an affair with Rana and that Sahar had seen them at the Mandarin Café on rue de Verdun when she’d thought he was fighting in the south. He said Sahar had come into the café where he was sitting holding hands with Rana. She’d been to the supermarket with her daughter, and they’d stopped by the café because Suha loved the forêt noire . “She saw me and I didn’t see her. Suha ran to me and I didn’t notice. It was all the effect of the hashish. I was on my way back from Baalbek. You know how the boys are there. It’s cold, they light a charcoal brazier, sit round it, scatter hashish on the charcoal, and the smell rises — the sweetest smell and the best hashish and we’d get stoned without smoking. I left Baalbek stoned and instead of going home I made a date with Rana. I wanted to see her at her apartment. She said it wouldn’t work at home because her boyfriend might come at any moment and she suggested the Mandarin and I don’t know why I agreed and we were screwed.”

“So you love Rana?”

“God forbid! I love Sahar but Rana was, you know, a side dish.”

“And she thinks you’re a side dish?”

“Please, don’t start getting philosophical! Marital infidelity is a necessity for the continuation of a marriage. That’s how people are.”

“So you’ve always betrayed Sahar?”

“What? You don’t betray Hend?”

“Of course I don’t betray her, what do you mean? I love her.”

“If you don’t betray her, it means you don’t love her.”

“So Sahar knew you were betraying her?”

“I don’t know. I think she knew but she turned a blind eye.”

“Turned a blind eye?”

“Sahar is an intelligent woman. She knows that a man’s imagination has no bounds, and imagination is the beginning of betrayal.”

“Why didn’t she turn a blind eye this time?”

“Because we were being defeated. Ever since the Syrian army came in and Kamal Jumblatt, the leader of the Lebanese National Movement, was killed, we’d been in defeat and were being dragged through the mud. And Sahar understood that maybe it was over, maybe she’d only loved me because I inspired thoughts of heroism. Maybe she loved the hero and the hero was being defeated, the hero was going to die. I didn’t die, I became unemployed and unheroic. The revolution had failed and all that was left of it was the civil war and the civil war drags you through the mud, especially when it’s in your home. When she saw me with Rana she couldn’t take it anymore and I was like an imbecile, not seeing what was in front of me, with no idea what was going on till I found the girl hugging me and Sahar screaming at her so that she could leave and go home.”