Rabee Jaber - The Mehlis Report

We’ve heard that the latest blasts woke up the giant rat. Two thousand pounds of explosive material in the middle of Beirut. The entire city shook. Saman loved the man they killed. That man restored the city. He restored the buildings Saman loves. My grandfather’s name is also Saman. When my father, like his father before him, named his only son Saman (he knew he wouldn’t have another son, he knew it, and so did my mother), my grandfather Saman said the boy would grow up to become an architect, just like his grandfather. My brother Saman looks at the Mexico Villa, he looks at the three identical buildings on Maarad Street, he looks at the arches of our house, and he asks himself what he’s done with his life. He feels the burden of time on his shoulders. As if, this past year, he’d lived forty years in a single stroke.

I want to talk to him. I miss him. I used to love talking to him. I remember how we used to sit together at the university cafeteria eating a hamburger and drinking and smoking. I remember sitting together on the balcony of our house. I remember the walks we used to take on the street by our grandfather’s house on the mountain. I remember the sea and sun and sand. I remember the bronzing oil. I remember all those things. And I remember his laugh. He used to follow me from room to room when he was a child.

The giant rat has woken from its long slumber. It had slept for fifteen years: the years of civil peace brought it sleep. Hunger, and then sleep. There were fewer dead, and so it slept. Now it’s awake. The rat is hungry, and angry. Angry because it’s hungry. Hungry because it’s angry. Why did that blast wake it up? Its offspring — the seven smaller rats — are all on edge. Where’s the food? Where are the souls? The blood? Where are the lives to be eaten? They’re waiting for what will come. One of the rats lost its way in the maze of tunnels and crossed over to the other side. Did it cross the river mentioned in the Odyssey , the river that separates the two worlds? Dante, for his part, never mentioned a rat that devours souls. When I read his book, I felt as if the person who wrote it was someone from this world, not from the land of the living. But Johannes said no, he was among the living when he wrote it. I speak with Johannes sometimes, but he generally prefers silence. He asks me to read the book again. I ask him whether Dante had read Homer. I tell him I’d read somewhere that Dante didn’t know Greek, is that true?

These things aren’t important now, he says.

I ask him when they’ll be important.

He tells me he’s reading right now, and asks me why I don’t go and read as well.

I tell him he’s read that book a thousand times since I’ve been here, and no one knows how many times before I came.

He looks up and smiles. I know he loves me. Even when he raises his voice — which is permitted here — even then I know he loves me. He doesn’t scare me. But I don’t like it when he gets annoyed at me. I want to know things about his life, but he never says anything.

A rat lost its way and crossed over from this side to the other. It stirred up horror among the homes of Beirut. That wasn’t the big rat. The big rat is the size of a mountain. If it left this world and went to the land of the living, it would topple Beirut like an earthquake. I watch Saman watching TV and feel drowsy — that’s the benefit of TV for me. As I watch the land of the living, as I watch images from that world go by one after the other on the small screen, I feel myself doze off, as if I were turning into a tree.

I start nodding off in front of the screen, and I fall asleep. The blue light fills my eyes. I notice myself nodding off before I sink fully into sleep. It’s as if I can no longer feel my fingers, as if they were soil. I’m no longer Josephine Yarid — I’ve turned into earth. I gradually fall asleep, sinking into the sofa, sinking into the soil. Now no longing would reach me, no desires would torment me. I’m soil. I’m asleep. I’m.

At six in the morning the alarm clock goes off. I’ve got to shower and drink some water before going to work. My work’s not far. It’s here, in the library. The sounds of the city waking up enter from the outside, from beyond the window. Streets. Doors. Windows. The smell of coffee. Of milk. Of tea. Voices.

The smells aren’t strong — they’re memories of smells. But I can still smell them. Johannes says that that’s because of the strength of the longing within me, and looks sad.

“Beirut, Tuesday, October 18th: Lebanese young and old are eagerly awaiting the publication of the final special report into the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The German public prosecutor Detlev Mehlis has been busy preparing the report, and the people have been asking themselves whether or not it will reveal the whole truth.

“‘I’m both eager and anxious,’ said Ghada Sinu, a housewife. ‘Every day I get up and buy the paper to find out when the German wolf (Mehlis) will catch his prey and throw the people who plotted Hariri’s murder into jail.’

“Across Beirut, Mehlis has become the talk of the town, even in schoolyards, where children as young as eight are talking about the German prosecutor who was entrusted three months ago with leading the UN-appointed commission to investigate Hariri’s assassination on February 14th. ‘I overheard one of my pupils ask his friend if he’d heard that Mehlis was submitting his report on Thursday. He said that’s when we’ll know who killed Hariri,’ Rhonda Hakim, a schoolteacher, was quoted as saying to a German news agency. And Rhonda added: ‘I asked each of my students to mention the name of a famous person in Lebanon, and one of them said Mehlis, and called him the German version of Columbo, the American TV detective.’ She also said some parents had informed her that their children might not come in to school on Friday, for fear of violence following the publication of the report.

“People in the streets are talking about the Mehlis Report. Anyone walking down Beirut’s famous Hamra Street these days will immediately notice the crowds sitting in the cafés, reading the newspapers and talking about the investigation into Hariri’s assassination.

“Ahmad Hijazi, a businessman, said he had come to this restaurant (Wimpy’s) to read the paper and try to guess what Mehlis would say in his report, and figure out if Mehlis knew the full truth, or if the report would be more general. And Salim al-Halw, a bank employee, said he’s hoping for the best, especially since Germans are famous for their precision.

“Abu Jalal Dakroub, a well-known newspaper vendor on that street, said he was sold out in less than an hour that morning, something that had never before happened in his lifetime — not once in the 47 years he’s been selling newspapers.

“And Youssef Khawand, an employee at Starbucks (on Hamra Street) who was wiping the morning’s rainwater from the tables, said: ‘The newspapers are getting torn up from being passed around so much from table to table. The customers keep asking for the papers and fighting over them.’ A small increase in security forces and military personnel has been observed near various intersections and embassies, and in front of commercial centers.

“Some schools are planning to close on Thursday and Friday as a precautionary measure. Meanwhile, fearing assassination attempts, a number of Ministers and MPs are prolonging their stays abroad, and the Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblatt has taken refuge in the fortified Mukhtara Palace on top of Mount Lebanon. Samir Geagea — the Christian opposition leader who was finally released from the Defense Ministry prison where he spent the past eleven years of his life in a tiny underground cell — is currently staying in a hotel in Paris, surrounded by a heavy security detail.