Rabee Jaber - The Mehlis Report

What does autumn have to do with how fat the broadcasters are? Saman asked. Nothing, Cecilia replied. She said they were gaining weight because they were anxious. I open the fridge whenever I’m anxious, she said. And she said those same women were happy about the coming rain: “The temperature will drop if it rains, and we can start putting on our winter clothes.”

After they’d finished eating, they took the escalator to the upper level. Cecilia said she was full from the ice cream. Saman pointed out all the steel that was used in the mall’s outer roofing — a series of small circular roofs suspended in the air like flying saucers. He said there was enough steel in this mall to build a whole skyscraper: a skyscraper without any glass at all, made of nothing but steel. Do you see all those beams?

They looked at the movie posters by the cinema. Let’s watch this one, Saman said, but Cecilia was feeling tired. Saman said it didn’t look like something worth watching anyway.

They didn’t stay out late. She had to get up early the next morning. When he got back home, as he was opening the door, he heard the phone ringing. He didn’t pick up. His cell phone started ringing a moment later. It was Gabe’s number. He picked up. Gabe invited him to the Shakespeare Bar on Monot Street. Saman told him he wasn’t alone right then. He was feeling sleepy. He stretched out on his side on the sofa to watch TV: a documentary about the reconstruction of Berlin after the Second World War. He’d seen this one before. Hadn’t it crossed his mind just two nights earlier? And tonight, as he was looking at the mall’s white metallic roofs, it had crossed his mind again. He changed the channel. A Chinese movie. Snow falling on men holding swords. A forest of red trees. He’d seen it before. He changed the channel and picked up one of the newspapers on the table. He read a bit to help him fall asleep. “I’ll read for a while and then go to bed,” he thought.

“After we contacted the parties involved, it became clear the smells descending on Achrafieh and Ain al-Mreisseh, and on other areas of the capital as well, were coming from a steamship called Kunouz — ‘Treasures’ — that belongs to the Rabunion Shipping Agency. The aforementioned steamship is carrying approximately seven thousand cows, transported from Brazil to Beirut and ordered by the Rasim Livestock Trading Company. ‘Treasures’ arrived in the port of Beirut last Saturday after a long journey in which it crossed the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The trip lasted over fifteen days: the ship was not once cleaned in that time, and no one washed the cattle. The head of the Veterinary Quarantine Office at the Ministry of Agriculture, Dr. Fadlallah Mounir, said ‘the cows are in good health, and contrary to the rumors, none have died.’ Blood tests have been run on a sample of fifty of them, and none were found to be carrying any diseases. Dr. Mounir believes the smell is a result of ‘a failure to clean the steamship outside of territorial waters, before it entered the city’s port.’ We contacted the Ministry for the Environment, and they said they were following the matter and had lodged a written complaint. An official source at the Ministry of Health said ‘these smells are not harmful to the health of our citizens.’ And in a phone call with the firm that owns the ship, an employee said ‘the company is sorry for the inconvenience’ and informed us that these cows came directly from fields in Brazil, and that a shipment of similar size would be arriving next month. And an employee at the Beirut Municipality assured us that the head of the Municipality ‘was informed about what happened the day before yesterday, and has been following the matter with the utmost interest and concern.’”

Saman put down the paper. On one of the satellite channels, there was a program about the latest developments in Lebanon: Now that Mehlis has arrested the four generals formerly in charge of the Lebanese security apparatus and put them behind bars, what will his next step be? Will Mehlis accuse any non-Lebanese nationals of planning the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri? Why has the UN extended the term of the investigation commission? What deal has Washington offered to Syria? Will the assassinations start up again in Beirut? Who’s the next target? Why is the Maronite Patriarch Nasrullah Safir defending the President of the Republic against calls for his resignation? What’s the relationship between Iraq and Lebanon at this turning point in the region’s history? What role have the Palestinian refugee camps played? What did Prime Minister Siniora say to Condoleezza Rice in New York? What’s the connection between Syrian General Ghazi Kanaan’s suicide and his testimony before the investigating commission? Will Mehlis tell the whole truth on October 21st, or will he select only those parts of it that will guarantee international stability.?

We have televisions here. In every house, in every room, you might find a TV. When our longing for the land of the living grows too strong, we turn on the television and watch. Sometimes I cannot sleep. Visions, images of life pursue me: I toss and turn in my bed, unable to sleep. If the bed were narrower, as narrow as a coffin, would I sleep more easily, more deeply? I haven’t let the animal with the yellow eyes come near me and lick my wounds. It doesn’t even need to lick my wounds — it’s enough for it to smell me. Its nose alone can steal my scent. That rat eats what’s left of people’s souls. It drinks the blood left over in people’s veins. Without it, without the grace of its final visit, you cannot find peace in death. They kidnapped and killed me before I was even 22 years old. They beat me until I lost consciousness. Then they strangled me as I lay there. How had I suffocated in my sleep? How could I not have woken up when the air was cut off from my lungs? But that’s what happened. I died before my hour. A person lives 70 years. 80 years. 90. The average life expectancy of a woman in Beirut is 75. Six years longer than a man’s. I died while my body was still full of life. I passed away before my time, so how could my body not have a surplus? How can I sleep while the city sleeps, in this darkness?

Dreams accost me, or I feel as if I have to go to the bathroom, so I get up. And when I go back to bed I again find I’m unable to sleep. Every night I’m forced to get up and go to the bathroom. I drink a lot during the day. I drink all the time. I don’t know how many seasons have passed before my eyes here. (How many years have I been here? 22? 23? I arrived here in 1983. The years have flown by without my noticing. But I do notice. I notice at night. And during the day.) I don’t know how many winters have come and gone without my ever having quenched my thirst. The more water I drink, the thirstier I become. Other than that, there’s no suffering here. There’s no pain, no fear. You remember the fear you felt during your life. Along with the joy and the happy moments, you remember the fear. In the land of the living, fear drives you on from one hour to the next. It drives you from the bed to the sofa, and out to the street, to the restaurant, to friends, to family, to college, to the office, then back to bed once more. I used to be afraid my boyfriend didn’t love me as much as I loved him. Then I was afraid I didn’t love him at all. I used to love him, I slept with him, and my girlfriends were surprised that I would spend the night at his apartment when I was still so young. I’m not young, I told them, and when I’m with him I sink into him like a stone into water. At first I was afraid he didn’t love me as much as I loved him. Then I was afraid I didn’t love him. I had met another man. The man touched me with his fingers while he was speaking. A single touch of his fingers and I lost myself. A drop of sweat rolled down my side. Was I sweating from a single touch? It wasn’t sweat. A drop of something came from my body and rolled down my skin at the touch of his finger. What was that drop? I remember lying in the darkness with my boyfriend between my thighs, I remember pulling him toward me, but the touch of that other man’s finger was still on my skin. The finger had left me, and hadn’t. The man was inhabiting my night. Did I love my boyfriend or not? Did I want his touch right then or not? There I was pulling him toward me even as I thought I did not love him. I clung to him, used all my limbs to draw him into me; I called him toward me with my words, my fingers, the tips of my fingers; I welcomed him with my nails, with open flesh; I told him I loved him, thinking that I didn’t. Did I love him or not?