Rabee Jaber - The Mehlis Report

When had he started becoming so attached to her? In bed, she tells him she’s been having nightmares, a lot of nightmares. She sees herself on the road as the shelling starts: the bombs are falling all around her and she wants to run away, but can’t. Wherever she turns, she sees the falling bombs: white ones that look like crystal spheres, like the metal balls people hang from Christmas trees, but she knows they’re bombs, she knows they can wreck houses and trucks, and she knows a single piece of shrapnel can kill you.

He tells her the state of the country is behind her nightmares: the tension and anticipation as everyone waits for the Mehlis Report.

But she says she’s been having these nightmares her whole life. She can’t remember a single week of her life when she hasn’t had some. In one, she saw herself without a home. She tried to find it, but the building was gone. She looked for it on Sassine Square, then at the Alexandre Hotel, and then on Sodeco Square. She combed Achrafieh looking for her home, but couldn’t find it. Then it occurred to her that it might have crossed the demarcation line, crossed Bechara al-Khoury Road and gone to West Beirut. She says she crossed that line in the nightmare. The war was still raging in her dream, and she could see Bechara al-Khoury all dug up and covered with barrels and barricades. She saw a burning car, and soldiers, and men in civilian clothes: some of them were eating a red watermelon, and others were taking aim and shooting at the stray cats and dogs. She saw them, and she saw the building. She saw her house. She saw the green shutters. She saw the house over there, its balconies overlooking the bridge in the Basta district, in West Beirut. How the house had moved all the way over there, she didn’t know. It didn’t seem strange in the nightmare. It was as if it were normal for houses to move from one place to another, as if the building were a car or an animal. She wanted to go home — and that was her home, she knew it, she had lived there her whole life, and all her things were inside — but she was scared of the men and the soldiers. There was a fair-skinned boy among them: extremely fair, as if he had leprosy. He was holding a black rabbit. The boy walked up to her and told her to follow him: Don’t be afraid, I’ll take you home.

Saman looks at the smoke rising from the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. He feels some tightness in his heart, and in his stomach, as if he were caught in a vise. He wants to help Cecilia. But how can he help her? When she tells him about the nightmare, he doesn’t have the feeling she’s fully woken up from it. He feels as if she is still there, still in the heart of it. She is still on the demarcation line looking at her house, which has escaped to the other side; she is still looking at the leper approaching and telling her to follow him: Don’t be afraid, I’ll take you home.

Saman doesn’t trust him.

Cecilia says the boy put the black rabbit under his arm and started clapping — she didn’t know why he did that. Then she falls silent.

Saman asks her what happened next.

Cecilia says she woke up from the dream while the boy was still clapping. That was the end of the nightmare. There was nothing else.

Saman says nightmares are like that, it’s hard for us to understand them. Once in a dream he saw himself running along the road in front of his grandfather’s house on his mother’s side — a summer house on the mountain. He was running and dogs were chasing him. It was dark but he could hear the dogs barking, and when he arrived at a lit-up place and turned around for a moment he saw the pack of dogs emerge from the darkness. They looked like wolves. He saw their faces — not their teeth, but their quick faces, gray and white. Their barks were terrifying.

Cecilia says a woman who works with her in Monoprix told her the cook who disappeared had been sick.

“Sick how?” Saman asks. “Physically sick?”

Cecilia had asked the woman the same thing, but the woman shook her head without saying a word.

When Liliane speaks, he doesn’t listen. She’d said strange things about a ship carrying cattle. He didn’t understand. His mind was somewhere else. Why had he left the house last night? He shouldn’t have left. But he was afraid she would insist on seeing him, afraid she would come to his house, which he didn’t want, so he had gone out. “I said I’d go out for a bit and then come back,” thought Saman Yarid.

But he didn’t manage to come back. The alcohol wore him out, weakened his resolve. Was it the alcohol that weakened him? No. It wasn’t the alcohol. If it were the alcohol, how come he had no trouble driving from Kaslik to her place? He wanted to drop her off and leave, but she wouldn’t let go of him. Liliane clung to him like an octopus, rubbing his face, until he finally got up in the darkness, unable to breathe, his head pounding. She clung to him as he climbed up the dark stairs to her apartment: the light was out. What had brought him there? It was like spending a night in hell.

But the memory of that night is fading now. He knows it was the last time. He can feel it in his gut. A bodily sensation. As if he had just swallowed the pit of a plum.

His relationship with Liliane is over. The pit is stuck in his throat. That was the last time. He won’t do it again. This had nothing to do with psychological weakness. It had nothing to do with the stairs. Nothing to do. He dozes off in that familiar place, on that familiar sofa, beneath those familiar windows. He dozes off in a house he inherited from his father, who had inherited it from his grandfather. He doesn’t want to think right now. He wants to sleep.

But his cell phone rings. It’s one of the Monoprix numbers. He has come to expect those numbers lately.

Where are you? Cecilia asks.

He says he’s at home.

She says she tried to call him yesterday, but his cellphone was off. And she tried the home phone as well, but he didn’t pick up.

I was with some friends outside the city, he says. They came by and picked me up and I didn’t get back till late.

He feels ill at ease saying this. He’s usually nonchalant during these kinds of phone calls, but not this morning.

She says she wants to tell him something.

What? he asks.

Not on the phone, she says.

Come over to my place then, he says. Can you leave?

She says she’s busy now, but this evening, after she finishes: she won’t be staying very late tonight, she’ll be done before nine, we’ll meet tonight.

And she adds: I’ll be home after nine; you come over here.

He feels uneasy as she speaks. He knows she can tell he’s done something wrong. He knows from the tone of her voice. He knows because she doesn’t want to come to his place. He knows because he knows. Strange things are happening deep within him these days. As if unknown corridors were opening up inside his body. These impenetrable feelings. All this uneasiness. These ups and downs.

She says she’s busy right now, but she wanted to hear his voice. And then she says she’s discovered something strange.

She says she’s discovered something strange in the kitchen storeroom, not the one connected to the kitchen — there’s another storeroom connected to the parking lot, its door is by the elevator, the elevator the customers use. It’s a small storeroom with old cooking equipment and some other stuff, she had never gone in before, but she needed some pots and baking dishes, so her assistant took her there — he came with her and she found the pots. She handed him some pots, picked up some others, and was about to follow him, but then she saw something else she wanted, a tray by the old refrigerator, in a corner of the storeroom filled with cleaning supplies. She put down the pots to pick up the tray, and as she bent over to pick it up off the ground she felt a cold draft on her neck. A terribly cold draft, as if from a freezer. But the refrigerator wasn’t plugged in! Its door was open and there were bags of “Yes” brand cleaning powder on its shelves. They used the fridge for storage, not for refrigeration, so where was the draft coming from? Cecilia said she managed to budge the fridge a little — she was able to push it — and when she had moved it a bit she saw an opening behind the fridge, something that looked like a doorway, but without a door. She was looking at the entrance of a tunnel. She moved the fridge far enough for her to enter, and went in. She walked along it until the light coming from behind her grew dim. She stood there in the darkness, and knew the tunnel kept on going.