Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

“I told him there weren’t any revolutionary parties in Lebanon or the region. He nodded and then asked me to read about the experiences of the workers’ and peasants’ soviets that had been founded by the Democratic Front in the city of Irbid in Jordan in 1970.

“I said the experiment had been a failure. He agreed with me and then asked if I’d read his book and when I told him I’d read it three times because it was the most important book to come out after the June defeat, I felt it made him happy. Then he asked me what had got me into prison and said he was charged with attacking religion and exciting sectarian tensions because of his book on the critique of religious thought.

“Meeting him, Hayat, was incredible. What a great man! An intellectual who’s gone to prison for his ideas. I told him when I got out of prison I’d like to invite him to visit us in Qubbeh. He asked how long my sentence was and I told him ten years, but I’d be getting out sooner than that. I asked how long his was and he said he hadn’t been referred for trial yet but was expecting a sentence no shorter than mine.

“I kept thinking to myself, what is this world? What is the value of thought in this society? Nothing. What does it mean that Sadeq Azm is sent to prison for publishing his book A Critique of Religious Thought ? They talk of blasphemy? Of atheism? The coming revolution will not forgive the reactionaries who exploit innocent souls in the name of religion.”

Sadeq Azm’s book had caused a major fuss in Beirut at the time. The attack had focused on the Syrian writer for his authorship of an essay included in the book and entitled “The Devil’s Tragedy.” In this he had supposed, as a way of buttressing his deconstruction of religious texts, that the Devil, in refusing to obey God’s command to bow down to Adam, was carrying out God’s hidden purpose and that he had agreed to be the rebel and take the consequences out of extreme obedience. The Muslim men of religion had considered this mockery and sarcasm, while their Christian counterparts had joined the campaign against him because of another study in the same book in which he mocked the Virgin’s appearances in Egypt, describing them as a naïve compensation mechanism for the June 1967 defeat.

The al-Nahar Supplement had set the match to the tinder when it published a picture of Azm on its cover over the caption, “The Infidel from Damascus.” Azm was in Ramal Prison for only a few days, after which he was tried and found innocent. It was said that pressure brought to bear on the authorities by Kamal Jumblatt, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, lay behind the judgment.

Yahya never had the chance to meet the Syrian thinker again. He was transferred from one prison to another and treated brutally, despite his wounds never having healed. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement and took to eating only the almonds and honey that were brought him once a week by Hayat, who was obliged to bribe the officer in charge to be sure they reached her husband, who suffered agonizing pains in his stomach.

Things got to the point that in the end his jailers put a viper in his cell. The prisoners at Roumieh Prison would never forget the shouting that erupted from Yahya’s cell that early morning. The man woke to a strange movement and found a snake at the edge of his bedding. Yahya knew, from his experience in the villages of Akkar, that you must not provoke a snake, so he got up stealthily from the mat that he slept on and stood at the iron bars, calling in a loud voice, “They’ve put a snake in my bed because they want to kill me!” At this, shouting arose from all the cells, the jailers heard the cry, “Shake the bars!” the bars of the cells started to shake violently, and pandemonium broke out. The duty officer ran to see what was going on. Yahya told him to open the door to his cell or he’d hold him responsible for his death by snakebite.

The confrontation ended when Yahya’s cell was opened and two of the security personnel riddled the snake with bullets. Yahya was convinced they’d wanted to kill him. He wrote to his wife that he could feel his time drawing near and said he regretted not having had a son (whom they’d decided to call Nabil) with her.

At the funeral, while the bier was borne aloft on people’s hands, the cry went up, “Shake the bars!” People forgot all the political slogans and five thousand men and women walked behind the bier like prisoners shaking the bars of their plundered freedom.

The funeral ended with Khaled inheriting a story in which he had previously participated only from a distance. Khaled had certainly admired his uncle and the aura that Yahya had succeeded in creating around himself, but his admiration was diluted by his rejection of the path the man had taken to his death, seemingly fashioning his end of his own free will. Khaled, who had got as far as the graduating class at Qubbeh’s government secondary school for boys before deciding that the time had come for him to join the Palestinian Fedayeen, couldn’t blame his uncle for anything he’d done. Yahya had been the son of a poor baker who’d been obliged to leave school during fifth primary, when his father had died, to work at the bakery. He was the offspring of the phase of populist leftist ferment that had followed the June 5 defeat. Khaled couldn’t understand how his uncle had had dealings with Ahmad Qaddour and his men, who were just a group of murderers and thieves interested in nothing but thuggery and pillage. The greatest paradox that Khaled had faced, however, was embodied in the person of a young man to whom the name “Fan-it” had become so firmly attached that people had forgotten his real one. Fan-it was twenty-four years old, carefully brilliantined his hair, and took on all sorts of dirty jobs that no one else would think of doing. Most likely the name Fan-it came from the youth’s work at Abu Riyad’s butcher’s shop, where it was his task to grill skewers of meat; in other words, it was his role to keep the burning charcoal glowing, using a feather fan.

But Fan-it’s real skills began to manifest themselves when he worked with Sinalcol on the gambling tables Qaddour used to run in Tripoli. The three-card trick and games of put-five-take-twenty-five, thimble, and seven-eleven were organized on small tables scattered around the inner quarters. These called for both adroitness and strong-arm tactics — adroitness to cheat customers and strong-arm tactics to keep winners from stopping playing: they had to go on till they’d lost everything they’d won or else Fan-it would beat them till the blood flowed down their faces and they put everything they possessed on the table. Fan-it was able to make such a go of running these games that he rebelled against Qaddour, split off from him, and ended up with his own tables and boys. At the same time, he never left his original job at Abu Riyad’s butcher’s shop, where he loved to breathe in the smell of the grilled meat and enjoyed watching the customers’ lips drooling in anticipation of the hot skewers with which he’d present them.

When Khaled began reconstructing his uncle’s by then disintegrated group he was surprised by Fan-it’s arrival at the bakery with the announcement that he’d been Yahya’s right-hand man and wanted to continue the struggle. It was Radwan’s opinion that Khaled shouldn’t antagonize Fan-it and his type but come up with a way of integrating him. However, Khaled couldn’t contain himself and informed Fan-it that he couldn’t include gamblers in the ranks of his organization.

“We have to provide a good example to the masses and you’re a gambler. What will people think of us? Drop the gambling and come back.”

Fan-it refused to give up his little gambling empire but kept in regular touch with the boys and joined them at the roadblocks they set up during the civil war. When Khaled was killed Fan-it knelt before the blood-spattered body, dipped his finger in the martyr’s blood, and traced a circle of blood around his neck. Then he disappeared.