Rabee Jaber - The Mehlis Report

“The Burj Hammoud district is predominantly Armenian. Most of its residents are employed in craftwork or manufacturing, and some of its smaller streets are extremely impoverished. The Armenians have been living in Beirut since 1915, their exodus, when they fled the Turkish massacres and the genocide that killed almost a million of their people. Although they have integrated into Lebanese society, they have preserved their language, and they teach their children in private schools or in their homes. The Lebanese police said a foot patrol entered the dump site and inspected the grounds, but found no trace of the giant rat. A director at Sukleen, the firm in charge of all of Beirut’s waste, said that although the rats had been multiplying around the site ever since it was closed a few years ago, the use of poison had recently taken care of the infestation. A source in the company in charge of rehabilitating the dump site and treating its waste stated that the site was free of mice and rats in general, and that what had happened was an isolated incident; he said grass was now being planted on the site, and that they were continuing to treat all toxic fumes with the most modern techniques available, and they had devices in place to monitor the temperature and speed up the decomposition process, etc. But residents maintained that fumes and awful smells still come out of the site every summer. Local newspapers have been reporting the spread of asthma and allergies and eye diseases among children in the area, and also among adults, and have noted that many of the elderly were having trouble breathing at night. But this was the first time a giant rat had ever been seen, and it was spreading fear among the households. It is thought that the rat feeds on waste from the dump site but also on remains from the nearby slaughterhouse in the Karantina (La Quarantaine) district. The aforementioned slaughterhouse, which supplies Beirut’s markets and shops with the greater part of their meat, suffers from an absence of advanced techniques with which to treat the skins, feet, and unused entrails of the carcasses. These are neither treated with chemicals nor buried. Black mountains of flies, mosquitoes, and other insects can be seen swarming around the remains on the bank of the Beirut River, where the slaughterhouse is located. The Al-Nahar newspaper reported that the river was threatening to flood the area’s houses with trash because of the approaching rainy season and the rising water levels. And the Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir quoted sources from the Ministry of Health expressing the government’s desire to seek help from experts in containing the problem and protecting the residents of the adjacent neighborhoods from the flood of trash. It should be noted that an international commission led by the German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis is in Beirut at the moment to investigate the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who died along with twenty others in an explosion that targeted his motorcade in the seafront district of West Beirut on February 14th of this year.”

The day of phone calls has not yet ended. He had turned off his computer and was getting ready to leave the office when the phone rang. He hesitates before picking up the receiver, then hears a voice he knows and does not know.

“I’m the girl you were dancing with.”

He remains silent for a moment, then presses a finger to his forehead. “You look different on the phone,” he jokes. This is an unexpected call. He wasn’t expecting her to call. Why is she calling him? It’s as if he’s waiting for a response to his thoughts. He hears her let out a nervous laugh, then stop laughing.

“Will you be out at the same place again tonight?”

He tells her he doesn’t go out every night.

“You’ve got my number,” she says, and then hangs up.

He has plans tonight, plans with Cecilia. He’s told her not to worry about making dinner. He’ll pick something up on the way over. Or they’ll have something delivered. It’s hot out. Autumn came for two days, but then receded. Now summer is scorching Beirut once more. We’ll order some food, he said, there’s no need to stand in front of the oven. She said she wants some advice about work. She’s thinking of quitting her job. There’s an open position that might be right for her at Monoprix.

“What position?” he asked.

“We’ll talk over dinner,” she replied.

“OK, over dinner then.”

He heads out of the building and onto the lighted streets. As he’s crossing the Place de l’Étoile and looking at the soldiers standing on the sidewalk in front of the Parliament Building, his cell phone starts vibrating in his pocket: a silver Japanese device with a blue screen, smaller than the palm of your hand. Modern civilization.

“Are we getting together tonight?” Roger asks.

He tells him he’s busy, but he’ll call him if he’s done early.

“Watch your back,” Roger jokes.

“ Toi aussi .”

He looks at the receding tables of the restaurant terraces as he climbs Maarad Street. The Municipality is forcing the restaurants and cafés to limit the number of tables they put out on the sidewalk. Each restaurant is entitled to only a certain number of tables. They’re not allowed to put them out wherever they want. Every restaurant has a permit now. If a restaurant owner has only paid for a 50-chair permit, he can’t put 100 chairs out on the sidewalk. Saman Yarid sees the Municipality workers setting up steel and glass barriers at the authorized boundaries in front of each restaurant. And he sees the anger on people’s faces. The restaurant owners had protested in the streets a while ago, holding up signs against the new law. But they didn’t make any real noise, and they didn’t persevere. When was that? At the beginning of March? In April?

As he climbs Maarad Street, Saman looks at the customers scattered here and there among the tables and thinks that downtown is less crowded than it was a year ago. 2005 isn’t 2004. Beirut was full of tourists — Arabs and other foreigners — in the summer of 2004. Bin Laden had closed the doors of the West for Arabs from the Gulf, and they had flocked to Beirut in the tens of thousands, in the hundreds of thousands. They had filled the hotels back then. There wasn’t a single vacant apartment in the city. The restaurants were teeming with people, night and day. The beaches were so packed you couldn’t see the sand anymore. The mountain roads were jammed with cars every afternoon and evening. The rental agencies were buying cars from the port of Tyre and ordering new ones from across the sea. The villages were inundated with festivals. Dancing and singing. Wealth and prosperity. The resorts of Brummana were buzzing with activity. The nightclubs of Maameltein and Kaslik and Monot did not sleep. Back then, Maarad Street at 3:30 in the morning looked like the Day of Judgment: the Parliament clock tower was as round as the moon, and smoke rose from the hookahs and enveloped it in a halo, like the edge of an eclipse. Laughter, noise, scents. Perfumes, flirtation, and smiles. A young man was pressing a young woman against a wall in front of the Seattle Café. The name of the place has since been changed to Masaya al-Balad , “Country Nights.” The restaurants change their names with each passing season. It’s not good. You lose your bearings that way. They ought to carve the old names above the doors. But who cares? No one cares. Why is the image of that young man still in his head? A whole year has gone by. Then Saman remembers he had not actually seen any of it. One of his friends had told him about it. His friend’s manner of speaking had etched the image in his mind. By the mosque, he had said, against its wall: she was Lebanese; he was not.