Gate of the Sun (24 page)

In the military camp, we used Arabic, while in the field hospital, it was English. It's true that I don't know the language very well, but I could understand everything. The truth is I learned English in China! Imagine
the paradox; imagine that I learned the importance of drinking water warm in English! In China they always drink their water tepid, almost hot. That's why no one gets fat there. You open your eyes in the morning, and you're desperate for a drink of cold water. But you get warm water, so you drink and you drink and you're still thirsty. For the first few days, I was thirsty all the time. The more I drank, the thirstier I would get. Then I became accustomed to their water, discovered the secret and grew to like it. Warm water enters you as if through your pores: You drink as though you aren't drinking, as if the water were already inside you. To this day I yearn for warm water, but I don't drink it anymore the way I used to during the first days after I returned to Beirut. Perhaps the climate is the reason. The climate is what makes our men fat.

After the first days in China, we were overwhelmed by the feeling that we were outsiders. This happened when we visited the tunnels of Beijing – there were tunnels everywhere, tunnels full of rice and wheat depots, tunnels amazingly camouflaged. Once we went into a small shop to buy clothes. The salesman stood up and pushed aside piles of khaki garments, and we found ourselves descending into a tunnel more than thirty meters deep, equipped for people to live in for months.

An underground universe. A universe of war, a universe of history. In China we learned how a human being could live in history. How can I describe history to you?

Some middle school children came one day to take part in our military training. We competed with them at target practice with Simonov rifles. It's a useless rifle, or that's what we think here, but over there they respect the Simonov enormously, because it's the rifle that played such an important role in bringing American planes down in Vietnam.

The point is that Chinese kids, not more than fifteen years old, beat professional officers at target practice! That was our first lesson – respect your weapon. Of course, you'll say, we forgot everything the moment we returned to Beirut, but that's not true. I didn't forget everything, but I wasn't able to keep things up on my own. How can you convince people from here
to drink water warm? How can you teach them to respect an ordinary rifle when Kalashnikovs are dirt cheap, along with Belgian and American rifles and all the others?

This isn't what I wanted to tell you.

I wanted to try to describe for you the sight of the people doing their morning exercises. I know this is difficult to believe, but I saw it with my own eyes. At seven in the morning, in the streets, music blasts out of loudspeakers scattered everywhere, and millions of men, women, and children of all ages pour into the streets for their calisthenics. The entire Chinese people doing morning stretches!

Can you imagine how these scenes affected us?

First the warm water, then the Simonov children, then the morning exercises, then the soybean that swells up in water that we ate, and then the long, thin bag of rice that every Chinese soldier would wrap around his neck and waist.

It took us into history.

Now, that's history.

Today I might have another reaction, but at the time we were intoxicated by the wine of revolution. Imagine with me a billion Chinese men, women, and children doing their street exercises each morning. Imagine the tunnels and the grain and the ideas of Chairman Mao Tse Tung.

I was convinced and bewitched.

No, I can't say I was convinced one hundred percent, but I started repeating phrases to myself as though they were prayers: “Chairman Mao Tse Tung, a thousand years more.” Of course, Mao died, and stayed good and dead, and the Cultural Revolution ended, the crimes were revealed, and these things no longer stir up the same sort of emotions in us.

But during those days, Father, we felt we were making history. We behaved and talked as though we were heroes in novels without authors, novels we all knew and which we narrated every day. We ended up not speaking when we spoke but reciting lines we'd learned by heart. We would ask and we knew the answer and our memories would speak through us. It was as though we were mimicking ourselves; yes, mimicking ourselves.

Now, that's history.

It drags you to two contradictory places: where you're everything and where you're nothing. You are both a monster and an angel, you kill with the feeling that you're the one dying, you seek gratification and fear it, you become your own god.

History is our becoming gods and monsters at the same time.

I say it because I lived it. No, it's not about China, it's about us. I don't want to desecrate anyone's memory, but you know Ali Rabeh? The martyr, Ali Rabeh, who we mourned so bitterly?

Ali Rabeh was the hero of Maroun al-Ras in '78. He didn't run from the Israelis who swept over our positions in their first incursion into Lebanon. Ali Rabeh, along with a small group of others, stuck it out and fought and became a hero. We thought he'd died because in those days we used to assume that anyone who didn't withdraw was a dead man. Our term for running away was
withdrawing
. Ali Rabeh came back alive, told his story, and became a hero.

I saw an unrecognizable monster emerge from inside Ali Rabeh. We were fighting in the Burjawi district – this was before my fall and before China and before I became a doctor. Abu George was there. This Abu George wasn't important enough to be mentioned in the history books. He was just an ordinary citizen living on the ground floor of a three-story building located at the crossroads that divides al-Burjawi in half – a protected half and a half exposed to gunfire from the Phalangists who occupied the tall buildings of al-Ashrafiyyeh opposite. He was our friend. From his accent, I could tell that he was from Syria, from the village of Maaloula where the houses seem to grow out of the rock and the people still speak Aramaic and pray in the language of Christ.

Abu George lived alone, cooked alone, and listened to the radio alone. He'd look at us with sleepy eyes. He was short and chubby with a broad brow and a round white face full of wrinkles. He never spoke with us about politics; he'd tell us about his son, who'd emigrated to Canada, and his daughter, Mary, who lived in Paris. He said he couldn't abandon the house because it held memories of his wife, who'd died there as a young woman,
and that he also hated the idea of emigrating to Europe: “Better the tares of your village than the Crusaders' wheat,” he'd say. Then he'd watch us rushing up to the roof in our khakis and weighed down with arms and he'd say, “My my, what fine tares!”

Abu George didn't object to our squatting in the third story of his building, where Ali assembled a Doshka cannon. When he invited us down for coffee, he seemed pleased to study our arms and say: “My my, what fine tares!”

I'm certain that the man didn't like us or, if
like
isn't the appropriate word here, didn't think much of us, and that was his right, not to mention the fact that we hardly inspired admiration. Now, in fact, I'd say we inspired pity – the way we'd talk, set up ambushes, build bunkers, shoot, and drop dead.

In al-Burjawi, our wounded dropped by the dozen. It was unthinkable to turn the street into a second front: Anyone who occupies al-Burjawi has to get all the way to al-Nasira in the center of al-Ashrafiyyeh or
withdraw
. We stayed on, however, so we could die. It wasn't our decision, as you know; we were just troops, potential martyrs.

One day, after Ali had finished his morning coffee with Abu George, he thanked him and was already climbing the stairs to the third floor when he heard Abu George say, as he had dozens of times before, “My my, what fine tares!”

“So we're tares, you son of a bitch?” Ali yelled.

Without warning, he started beating Abu George savagely. Ali must have been harassed that day – or maybe even terrorized – I could see fire in his eyes. He was beating the life out of him. Abu George was doubled over, shielding his head with his hands and moaning as Ali kicked him.

“Spy, traitor, where's your communications setup?” Ali shouted at the top of his lungs, panting and swinging punches.

This had nothing to do with Abu George, the man was innocent, far from a spy. It's true that he wasn't enthusiastic about our cause or our war, and it's true that a tinge of contempt could be detected in his gaze, but he was neutral.

Ali, on the other hand . . .

Ali was a monster. What caused his eruption was never clear; it was as though there were a monster inside him, as though the war had become a spirit that possessed him. We were afraid he'd kill the man. It wasn't just a beating, it was murder. Ali was killing Abu George with his bare hands, his feet, his brown, full face and his curly hair. He devoured him.

We feared for Abu George. We all feared for him.

“And what did you do?” you'll ask me.

Nothing, I'll tell you. We froze and looked on and didn't say a word. We waited for Ali to finish, we saw that Abu George had come out of it alive, we finally opened our mouths.

We weren't petrified because we were afraid of Ali. No, we stood and watched as though we, too, had become like Ali, as though we were watching a wrestling match.

All the others said they'd been afraid for Abu George, but I was more afraid for Ali. I could see that he'd turned into another man, a man I didn't know, a monster.

History, dear Abu Salem, extracts from our inner selves people we don't know, people whose presence we don't dare acknowledge. In China I found myself in history and felt capable of doing anything; I wasn't afraid of myself or for myself because I couldn't see. When you're surrounded by mirrors on every side, you lose your ability to see, and the monster of history makes you its prey.

Abu George survived.

Ali suddenly calmed down and left. Abu George slowly began to pull himself together, as if he were gathering his scattered limbs. He managed to get up, took a few things: a pair of trousers, a shirt, some underwear, and left muttering a few incomprehensible words under his breath. I think he was cursing in Aramaic, a language usually used for prayer.

In China we opened the book of history and learned the art of war and the art of seizing an opportunity. Our Chinese trainer told us that the central idea in a war of the people is to exploit advantage: to withdraw when
victory is impossible, to attack in large numbers, to concentrate our forces and wipe out the enemy. To guarantee victory in a battle, we have to be greater in number and better armed than our enemy.

By exploiting advantage, we can delude our enemy into thinking we are capable of permanent victory.

He'd use the word
victory
, and we'd hear it and feel victorious, as though words could cast magic spells – for words are either magic or they should be thrown into the wastebasket.
Revolution
is the same thing – a magic word with magic powers.

We started discussing things we knew by heart, fighting as though we'd fought before and dying as though we were mimicking our own deaths.

God, what times!

I speak of those times as though they were over, but actually that's both true and false. We're “caught,” as Major Mamdouh used to say. We're caught and have no alternatives. We get out of one tight place only to crawl into another. “All that's wrought is caught,” as they say. That's how history works: When you have no alternatives, you get caught and twist in the breeze in spite of yourself.

I sit before you with Major Mamdouh's words resonating in my ears. I'm stuck here, so are you, and so is Dr. Amjad, and everyone else. And Mamdouh? I believe he got out of his tight spot because he managed to get a visa for Paris. But what became of him? Did he become a millionaire and live an easy life? Of course not. Mamdouh got to France, married for the sake of getting married (as he said in the only letter he sent his mother), and died of a heart attack.
No soul knows in what land it shall die
.

We were talking about history and I don't want to upset you with Major Mamdouh's tragic end – even though it wasn't a tragedy – tragedy calls for tears while Mamdouh's death made me laugh. Imagine, a man who spent all his time searching for a way out of the trap and then, when he gets out, dies! Mamdouh died in '81, so one year before the Israeli incursion into Lebanon – a year before his appointment with death. If Mamdouh had remained stuck with us in Beirut, he would have died in '82 as thousands did, but he postponed his appointment.

I go back to China to say that history bewitched me during those two weeks of intensive military training. I discovered how it was possible to open the book of history, enter it, and be the reader and the read at the same time. This is the illusion that revolution creates for us. It makes us believe we're both the individual and the mirror, and it leads to terrible things.

I'd fallen under the spell, until the day the doctor said I was unfit to continue training and told me to pack my bags to go back to my country. But instead of taking me back to Beirut, they took me to another camp and pronounced me a doctor.

I won't bother you with the ins and outs of Chinese medicine, which I never learned – I remember almost nothing of it, particularly not the names of herbs, which our teacher knew only in Chinese. But I discovered the human body. I discovered the existence of an interconnecting natural logic with a precise regime that controls our bodies. Through the body I discovered the soul of things, the links between our bodies and nature, and the limitlessness of man.