White Masks (17 page)

He's got to be someone important, Zayn is sure of that. A neighbor of his in Hamra, a young man about the same age as this one, with a senior position on a newspaper, told him once that the best thing about his job was the foreign women. “They come as reporters to witness the revolution, the toiling masses, and the armed struggle,” he said, “and when we take them to the training camps and the military outposts, they go nuts - they start feeling the guns and firing them. God only knows what gets into them, all they seem to want is to bed the boys ... Maybe it's so they can feel proud that they've slept with a revolutionary, or that they can tell everyone back home how they've participated in the national struggle, or that they . . . this or that.”

“We only just averted trouble there,” says Zayn 'Alloul out loud. Not
that he was scared. Not him. Even at the height of the Israeli shelling of Sharqiyyeh, when everyone in the village was running helter-skelter, screaming and shouting for dear life, his heart was like granite . . . he absolutely refused to leave the house with the rest of his family that day, despite his wife's entreaties.

Still, though, Zayn hates trouble: meddle in something that doesn't concern you, trouble is bound to follow - and you end up with a bruised face. Zayn 'Alloul feels his face gingerly.

Like that day when he got back home - they were still in Naba'a then - and instead of jumping for joy that he was safe, his wife started wailing, “
Ya msibati, ya sh'haari!
Oh, that such a fate has befallen me!” He tried to calm her down but she went on and on about his face. He knew how it looked, even though he wouldn't look in the mirror, he knew his face was swollen and black and blue all over. That was his mistake. He should have kept his big mouth shut . . .

 

Zayn 'Alloul hadn't done anything. The air battles were raging and people were huddled around their radios listening to the Cairo broadcast. Everyone was incredulous that the Egyptian army had managed to cross the Suez Canal and that the Arabs were now poised to defeat Israel. Zayn and a few other men were standing outside Abu Khalil's shop, drinking tea and talking, when the conversation shifted to the Bank of America incident. A unit of the Lebanese police had launched an assault on the bank after an armed group had taken some hostages, demanding that the bank contribute to the Arab war effort. As a result of the operation, two gunmen had been killed, two others arrested, and the hostages released.

“It was wrong to do that,” Abu Khalil was saying. “The war is with Israel. Why attack the bank?”

“It's an American bank, isn't it? And America
is
Israel. Whether it's over there or over here, it's the same war, can't you see?” said one of the young men gathered around the shop.

Newspaper in hand, Abu Khalil edged toward the shaft of light pouring out of the shop.

“Listen up, you young ones, Ali Shuayb took an American man hostage - an innocent man - and killed him. That's not right.” Then he read from the paper:
“It was Ali Shuayb who killed the American, John Conrad Maxwell, after explaining to him - with a bit of help from one of the other hostages, as Ali knew no English - that he was going to die because the deadline he'd given the authorities had expired. The American begged for his life to be spared but Ali Shuayb shot him in the back. The American fell to the ground screaming and pleading for his life, while Ali Shuayb and another gunman, thought to be Jihad Assad, kicked him as he lay on the floor. Then Ali aimed at his chest, fired the gun, and the American breathed his last.”

“Tell me now, how can that be right? It's outrageous,” Abu Khalil added. “We are fighting Israel, aren't we? So the war's over there. This isn't right.”

“Lies, nothing but lies!” Zayn 'Alloul retorted. “Ali Shuayb didn't shoot the American in the back! He shot him in the chest. We don't shoot people in the back. It's nothing but a lie, the government is lying.”

“Ali Shuayb! By God, now there's a man for you!”

“A man to feel sorry for nonetheless . . . He was poor, and it's always the poor that die!”

And thus it was that Zayn 'Alloul began to recount stories about Ali
Shuayb, about guns and weapons, answering this question and that, as if he knew it all. He'd known Ali Shuayb as a child playing in the dirt, and then as a young man, when he and Ali discussed politics. Ali always said that without the armed struggle, there would be no solution. But Zayn hadn't known that Ali was involved with the
feda'iyeen,
⁴
that he was the leader of an armed group, and that he could occupy a bank in the commercial center and kill one of the hostages, and then die like that. Zayn was getting quite carried away.

“I swear to God, tomorrow I'm going down to the village to attend Ali's funeral. And everyone else should do the same. Ali's a martyr: a martyr who carried arms, fought, and died for the cause.”

As he answered everyone's questions, Zayn 'Alloul felt swollen with pride: Ali Shuayb was from his village after all and he knew him very well. Now they would no longer look on him as a mere garbage collector, as someone with a despicable job.

Then the conversation shifted to questions relating to municipal services, and Zayn told them that though work was proceeding normally they needed more trucks, as the city was growing rapidly. He also said that they really should be armed, well he didn't say that exactly, but he said things that were understood to mean that he was calling for an armed uprising against the government.

That night there was a police raid.

A military jeep drew up outside his house, policemen, with rifles cocked, banged violently on the door. Sleepy-faced, Zayn opened the door in his
pajamas. They grabbed him and dragged him out by the arms and legs. His wife got up, frightened, and then his children all woke up, just in time to see him being led away in his pajamas. He didn't know what was going on; he asked the officer, but they shoved him into the jeep under a torrent of blows, punches, and curses, and took him straight to Internal Security in Badaro.

“But I haven't done anything . . . I don't know anything!”

They hustled him out of the jeep and pushed him into a dark cell, slamming the metal door shut behind him. Zayn began to wail, he'd done nothing, nothing at all, he had no links to anyone suspect, why had they thrown him in here? He fell into a fitful sleep, dozing and then waking with a start, as if someone had punched him in the stomach. He tried to doze off again but he was desperate for a cigarette, so he began pretending to smoke, bringing up to his mouth the two fingers that usually held the cigarette, drawing them close to his lips and inhaling deeply. Then he tried to go back to sleep again. It was a night he wasn't about to forget. That's what he'd told his wife when they brought him home three days later: the three nights in that cell were unforgettable. He didn't have words to describe it, he told her. “It was revolting. I had to urinate in the same room I was held in - into a little tin can which stayed there for the whole three days.”

Then they took him off for questioning. But there was no questioning, just beating and kicking. There were four of them in the room, with him in the middle, like a soccer ball; first, one would punch him, then the next one would catch him, and so on. After that they gave him a taste of the “chicken,”
⁵
and one of them told him they'd make “mincemeat” out of him.

“Godless wretches! Atheists, Communists, sons of bitches, the lot of you! . . .”

“I'm not an atheist ...” He could hear the blows but couldn't go on.

“Don't talk back, you son of a bitch.”

He was more than willing to talk, but they weren't asking him anything. Not one question! All they did was beat him, and then they took him to see the officer. Standing behind his desk, he looked like he too was ready to start thrashing him.

“My respects, Sir.”

“Out with it now! And quickly! Tell us everything you know about the organization.”

“What organization?”

“Ali Shuayb's.”

“I swear I don't know anything.”

“What do you mean you don't know?”

The officer told him they knew everything there was to know about him. They knew that he'd been standing outside Abu Khalil's shop talking about his acquaintance with Ali Shuayb; they knew he was married to Husniyyah and that he worked for the municipal authority; they knew that he was thinking of selling a piece of land he'd inherited from his father; and they also knew he was involved in smuggling arms from the South to Beirut, and that he kept the weapons hidden somewhere outside his home.

“Where are they, you dog?”

“Sir, there are no weapons.”

It was then that the officer went for him. Zayn stood absolutely still as
the officer struck him, shouting and cursing, and spraying his face with spittle. The officer then dragged Zayn back to his cell with a bloody nose.

Oh God, now he'd lose his job with the municipality. In that dark cell of his, Zayn felt very sorry for himself. “If I lose my job, what will I do? Nothing! There's nothing I know how to do aside from being a garbage collector. And the municipal corporation is a state agency. But I haven't done anything against the state, I'm not against it, on the contrary, I'm all for it. And I don't know any Ali Shuayb. Poor Ali, calling him a dog when he's a martyr . . . they're the dogs . . . and even if he weren't a martyr, he's dead, and they killed him . . . and the dead may suffer only mercy! Some God-fearing officer he was! ... Oh, but why won't they let me smoke?”

In the evening, a man in civilian clothes came and unlocked the cell and told him to come out. Zayn was sure he was in for another beating.

“Sir, honestly, I know nothing.”

The officer in charge of the so-called interrogation had told him that if he confessed and told the truth, the beating would stop. So he made up his mind then and there to confess. He would tell them that he was a member of Ali Shuayb's organization. And then surely the beating would stop.

“I have something to say,” Zayn said.

“Shut up,” said the man.

“But Sir, it's something really important.”

“Shut up, will you! And listen. A jeep is on its way here now, and there'll be a First Lieutenant Nujaym asking for you. You are to go with him, understood?”

“But, Sir, I have something to tell you, I want to talk to the officer who interrogated me.”

“It won't be necessary. Not necessary, you hear. First Lieutenant Nuj aym will be coming here to take you to the Military Tribunal. There you'll sign some papers and then you can go.”

“What do you mean, go?”

“Go home.”

Zayn 'Alloul couldn't believe his ears. They were lying to him! They were going to take him off for more questioning and another beating. “But Sir . . .” The man in civilian dress walked off and Zayn'Alloul waited, sitting on a wooden bench in the empty hall. His mind was made up, as soon as he saw Lieutenant Nujaym, he would confess. A knot in the pit of his stomach.

Night fell, and still no one came for him.

Then there were footsteps outside and, craning his neck, Zayn saw an officer running in and shouting.

“Zayn 'Alloul!”

“Yes Sir!”

“Get up and walk.”

Zayn did as he was told.

“Where are your clothes?” the officer asked, surprised.

“They took me from the house in my pajamas.”

“OK. Let's go.”

He was bundled into a station wagon. The officer sat up front, Zayn in back, next to a soldier holding a rifle between his legs. The officer said something to the driver, which Zayn strained to hear. The officer was saying
that the question of Ali Shuayb and his extremist Communist group was really getting to him.

“We've arrested a hundred people, and not one of them is linked to the organization. So where is this organization then? All our information seems to be false. The organization has disappeared, vanished into thin air. Yet they're still out there killing people. It'll be our turn next.”

Clearing his throat, the driver ventured that it had nothing to do with them whatsoever.

“It's between them and the authorities.”

“What do you mean? We
are
the authorities. You want the country to fall apart?
We
are the country, and it is our duty to eliminate every single one of them.”

The station wagon reached the Military Tribunal.

“Get out!” the officer barked.

Zayn 'Alloul climbed out of the vehicle and followed the lieutenant. They entered a luxurious office. The officer saluted and stood to attention. The man sitting behind the desk was in civilian clothes; he yawned ostentatiously as he asked:

“Where is he then?”

“Right here,” replied First Lieutenant Nujaym.

Zayn stepped forward; he could see there were papers on the desk.

“Sign here.”

“What are these?”

“Hurry up, will you ... you don't need to know everything! They're papers, just papers. Sign.”

Zayn 'Alloul took the ballpoint pen from the man in civilian dress and signed.

“You can go home now.”

Joy slowly enveloped Zayn'Alloul. He'd never felt so happy, not even on his wedding day. Of course he was happy the day he got married to Husniyyah, but he was also consumed with embarrassment. The young men from his village were being bold, slapping him around the neck and shoulders as he cringed with shame. He knew they were all thinking about how he was going to sleep with her that night. But his happiness now was different: it was unadulterated.