Broken Mirrors (53 page)

“Your wife’s pregnant and she should rest at home and not tire herself with the bakery. If you like I can go and take her place at work.”

“You?”

“Yes, me. I used to run the whole bakery in your father’s day and your grandfather’s! You think the work started when Nouri Salah’s daughter came along?”

“Your word is my command, but she doesn’t want to stop working.”

“Doesn’t want to? Since when did women have anything to say about it? A woman obeys her husband. ‘Men are the managers of the affairs of women.’ ”

“Managers, true, but not of Hayat. Hayat, Grandmother, is different.”

“Different?! Didn’t you say you’d become a proper Muslim, God guide
you? And now your wife’s expecting any day. In Islam there’s no one who’s ‘different.’ ”

“So when are you going to start covering your hair, Grandmother, and get me a heavenly reward for guiding you to the straight path?”

“All I need is lessons in Islam from an atheistical communist like you! I was a Muslim before they came up with all that nonsense.”

“But the veil is the path of the Prophet, Imm Yahya.”

“The veil is the light of the Beloved Prophet that covers the soul, not a bit of cloth we put on our heads. Get out of here, boy, God guide you and that wife of yours and your son whose new name I keep forgetting. Really! Who goes around giving their children names and then changing them before they’re born?”

On his return to Tripoli, Khaled rebuilt the organization single-handed. He knew that the Palestinian Fedayeen, whose hold over the Nahr el-Bared and Baddawi Camps had been shaken, would be no help to him in a tough face-off in his city, which was now under the absolute control of the Syrian military. He lived in an atmosphere in which overt and covert action blended and which rendered movement through Tripoli’s inner quarters extremely difficult for him as he was vulnerable to arrest at any moment. His relationship with Danny had been severed because Danny had stopped visiting the north, having retreated into his new work. He’d informed Dr. Othman that he wanted to take a long holiday from organizational work to be free to write a long study on the Lebanese Civil War. The objective was going to be to demonstrate the erroneousness of the sect/class discourse that had prevailed in some leftist circles as a justification for the sectarian language that dominated the civil war (the Shia being the deprived sect/class in question).

“This kind of Marxism has become the opium of the Lebanese Left,” declared Danny.

Dr. Othman, who was the main promoter of this discourse, was taken aback. “How can you say that? That theory’s one we came up with ourselves and you agreed with it. Heavens above! Did you think we were joking?”

Danny said he was in the process of writing a self-criticism that would pave the way for the refutation of the idea; he believed there was “a fundamental error in our orientation.”

Dr. Othman never reached an understanding of what the fundamental error might be. He was preoccupied with the inten​sification of work in the south and saw the class/sect discourse as a point of entry for the construction of a relationship with men of the Shia militia. The militia was starting to gain strength in the south thanks to intervention by the Syrians, who were preparing it to act as a substitute for an armed Palestinian presence.

Danny cut himself off from the world and Karim broke contact with the Fatah student cells in order to avoid the sharp ideological divisions that shook them. The only link that continued to tie him to political action was Jamal’s diaries, which he’d been supposed to turn into a literary-political pamphlet but which had overwhelmed him with questions about the meaning of life and love and changed the taste of his relationship with Hend.

In his loneliness, and with the horizon closing in, Khaled thought of giving up political action, of devoting himself full-time to matters of the heart and paying more attention to the bakery. However, following the assassination of four of his comrades close to a security checkpoint and the spread of an atmosphere of pursuit and siege – the objective of which was to break up and dissolve the group – he found himself in a tight spot.

Khaled had discovered he couldn’t go back. The blood of his comrades had been spilled, the destiny of the boys of the Qubbeh quarter was unknown, and he was on his own. His only support was Radwan, in whose life and behavior signs of change had begun to appear.

First, Radwan stopped drinking alcohol: he said it hurt his stomach. Then he started making use in conversation of verses from the Koran and the Prophetic Traditions, ascribing this to his study of Arab literature with Sheikh Subhi Saleh, an outstanding scholar of Arab philology and letters later assassinated in Beirut under mysterious circumstances.

New winds were blowing and the walls of the cities became covered with the slogan “Islam is the solution!” Under the influence of groups of young Syrian members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had taken refuge in the city to escape repression, a new Islamist language of struggle was spreading and had begun to dominate the minds of young men in the various quarters. Then suddenly Sheikh Ramadan Esawi proclaimed himself emir of the city and appointed Sheikh Salim Muadhen emir of the port. At the same time, he announced that the process of appointing emirs for each of the quarters of Tripoli had begun and requested Muslims to declare their allegiance to them.

Khaled had no idea how things had come to take on the form of armed confrontation in the Qubbeh quarter. It was twelve noon and he was working as usual in the bakery when the boys began pouring in with their weapons, announcing that they’d never let the army enter the area. Khaled picked up his machine gun, tucked his revolver into his waistband, and left the bakery followed by a group of more than sixty young men. In front of the Qubbeh roundabout he saw tracked vehicles entering the district’s winding lanes, so he fired into the air in warning and they shot at him in retaliation. Radwan was injured immediately in the thigh. Khaled gave orders for him to be taken to the hospital and distributed his groups around the crossroads, and the clashes, which ended with the withdrawal of the military vehicles from the area, began.

Khaled saw how the cry “God is great!” had issued spontaneously from the boys firing the B7 grenade launchers and found himself shouting along
with them, intoxicated by the first real victory in his own city among his own people.

The clashes had been preceded by heated discussions at the bakery on the subject of Islam and the emirs who had begun sprouting up everywhere in the quarters of the city. The discussions took on a more serious tone following the battle, when Khaled announced he had no choice but to ally himself with the Islamists.

“But we’re all Muslims,” said Radwan.

“True. All the same …” said Khaled.

“All the same” emerged hesitantly and falteringly from his lips. He was thinking there was no other way: joining the rising Islamic movement was the only way out if the organization was to continue and preserve the boys’ fighting spirit.

The next morning an envoy arrived from Sheikh Ramadan Esawi to announce that Khaled had been appointed emir of Qubbeh and asking him to come and meet the sheikh at the mosque. Khaled went – to object to his new title.

“I don’t like the title emir,” he said. “I’ve spent my whole life in struggle against emirs and feudalists.” The sheikh looked him in the eye and gave him to understand that the title of emir didn’t mean belonging to a noble line. “In Islam, ‘emir’ derives from
imra
, meaning ‘authority,’ and you now have authority over Qubbeh. Whatever you wish, though. We can call you whatever you like,” said the sheikh.

“My name will be Abu Nabil,” said Khaled, “and my boys will have full control over Qubbeh and Bab el-Tabbana.”

Khaled returned from his meeting with the sheikh at ten at night to find the boys waiting for him at the bakery. He informed them of what had been agreed upon and said nothing would change. The organization was the organization and the work was the same work. “We were the army of
the poor and shall remain so, and it’s revolution until victory. That was our slogan in Fatah and will remain our slogan until death.”

“No,” said Radwan. “One thing has changed. Perform your ablutions, boys, so that we can pray.”

“But I don’t know how to pray,” said Khaled.

“Of course you do,” said Radwan. “Islam is the religion that needs no teacher.”

The boys formed rows behind Radwan, who led the prayer, and Khaled found himself with them, praying the way they prayed and believing what they believed.

Radwan stood after the prayer was finished, turned to Khaled, and said in a loud voice that all could hear, “You are now our emir and I pledge to you my allegiance.” Then he held out his hand, shook Khaled’s, and kissed him on the shoulder. The young men stood in a single line behind Radwan, each waiting his turn to ask Khaled to hold out his hand and accept his allegiance.

Khaled reached home at midnight. Hayat was waiting for him. He patted her belly, rounded with pregnancy, and said he was tired. They drank aniseed. Khaled cleared his throat and said he wanted to tell her something.

“Before you tell me, let me tell you. I’ve decided to cover my hair and tomorrow I’ll be another woman.”

Khaled came to visit Karim twice before his death. The first time he said he’d gone to Danny’s apartment in Tall el-Khayyat but hadn’t found him so he’d come to Karim. The second time he came to Karim to give him the news of his impending death. It was six p.m. Karim opened the door in surprised welcome. It was the first time Khaled had come to see him at home. Khaled entered carrying three packages containing an assortment of sweet pastries of the kind in which Tripoli specializes.

“So those are for Danny, not me? I’ll get them to him, don’t worry.”

“No, they’re for you and Danny,” said Khaled.

“What will you drink?” asked Karim. “I have a bottle of village arak that came to me yesterday from Douar, great stuff. Shall I set up a small one?”

“Still playing the bad boy?”

“We’re your students, boss. You taught us everything we know.”

Khaled said he’d prefer a glass of tea.

Karim made the tea in the kitchen. He carried it into the living room and found Khaled gazing at the floor and smoking avidly, his mind so far away he failed to notice when his host entered.

Karim sat, poured the tea, lit a hand-rolled cigarette, and looked at his friend. Khaled, however, neither raised his head nor reached for the tea.

Karim cleared his throat and said, “Welcome.”

Khaled raised his head, rubbed his face as though waking up, and asked Karim about Danny.

“I haven’t seen him for a long time,” said Karim. “It seems he’s busy organizing the paper’s archives. Last time I met him, which was about three weeks ago, he told me he was organizing the archive on the civil war and writing a book evaluating what happened.”

“But the war isn’t over,” said Khaled.

“Come on!” said Karim. “It’s finished. The Syrians have taken over the country, the boys in Fatah have decided to go back to the theory of ‘all guns against the enemy’ and gone to the south, and the subject’s closed.”

“And us?” asked Khaled.

“You and we and everybody else have to look at things again and think about what to do.”

“But we’re still fighting,” said Khaled, and he recounted in detail the battle for Qubbeh that he’d waged with the boys. He spoke of the agitation everywhere, from Tripoli to Homs and Hama, and said the revolution had started to reshape itself.

Karim said he wasn’t convinced that kind of agitation could make a revolution, and he was tired of revolutions anyway. He told him of his project to write a book about Jamal.

“So you and Comrade Danny are still writing books and leaving us to die like dogs. No, Karim, we aren’t done and we won’t be till we’ve squared the books with you.”

Then Khaled smiled and said, “In fact, though, your writings have their uses.”

From his pocket he took two blue cheaply produced copies of a book and said he’d come especially from Tripoli, in spite of all the dangers, to give them to their authors – “you and Danny.”

Karim flipped through one of the copies, then went back to the blue cover, where he read the words Organization for Righteousness and Prosely​tization, and the title
Arms and the Lebanese Balance of Power
.

“We wrote a book that’s been put out by the Islamists? You’ve got to be joking!”

“Anything goes in this war, as Danny used to say.”

“But we’re atheists, and everyone thinks we’re Christians!”

Khaled took the book from Karim’s hand, opened it randomly, and said he’d put “Islam” for “the working class” and “socialism” wherever they occurred, “and it worked fine.”

“What! Islam! You too, Khaled? And what are you going to do with the memory of Yahya, who died a Marxist and struggled for socialism?”

“Don’t bring Yahya up. I know what you and Danny thought of him, you thought he was a populist and impulsive. And Danny used that French word which makes my skin crawl every time I hear it. What was it again –
lummen
? That’s it –
lummen
.”

“
Lumpen
,” said Karim.

“
Lummen, lumpen
. Nonsense anyway. You had a very low opinion of Yahya, so spare me, don’t ask me what he would have thought. If my uncle were still alive he’d have done what we’re doing now.”

There was silence and all that could be heard was the sipping of tea.

“You, comrades, can give up, but not me. What would I do with the boys? Leave them to split up and go back to being neighborhood hoodlums working for Intelligence and taking drugs? We’re poor, we live in the low-income neighborhoods, we don’t have apartments in Hamra and Tall el-Khayyat like other people, and without a belief to bring us together we split up. Without Islam everything will fall apart.”

Karim wanted to say that Khaled’s new choices were wrong but he didn’t. What was he supposed to say? It was true, the war hadn’t ended and perhaps never would, but this phase was over. When those who had struggled started writing their memoirs, it meant they were finished and it was time for them to withdraw.