White Masks (24 page)

“Isn't it just lovely here? The scene of the woman toasting the lentils and reminiscing about Palestine . . .”

“It's great . . . ,” I said, and grabbed her hand, which was lying on a cushion next to me.

She didn't say anything; she didn't pull her hand away or object, and just carried on reading. She took her hand from mine to turn the page and did not put it back on the cushion.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

“Yes, please.”

As she went to the kitchen, it occurred to me that I should follow her ... I remembered that in all the Arabic novels I had read, the woman goes to make the coffee and the young man follows her, then he catches her from behind and swings her around to face him, and instead of describing what happens between them, the writer gives a detailed description of the coffee boiling over. I got up and followed her into the kitchen. She was standing facing the stove and the coffee was already boiling over. When she turned to face me, instead of doing what they do in novels, I told her about novelists and their descriptions of coffee boiling over.

Shaking her head, she blew on the coffee froth and said: “That's what comes of a poor imagination and a reactionary attitude to sex.” Then she put the coffee pot down on a tray and we went back to the living room.

We drank our coffee and made small talk. She'd gone to buy a new pair of slacks, she said, but found that everything was made in Hong Kong, and there weren't any originals on the market anymore.

I got up to leave. She stood and followed me to the front door. I gave her my hand and she shook it. Then I took a step towards her, bent down slightly and kissed her on the cheek, then edged a little closer. “No,” she said, “please don't.” I kissed her on the lips, she kissed me back, and this
time she didn't say, “No, don't.” I wrapped my arms around her, but she pushed me away gently.

“Not now. I'm busy now.”

So I left. And I didn't see her again after that; or, rather, I did, about a week later - in fact, we went to her place, and I slept with her. But she was like a block of ice. She didn't move or seem aroused, and I felt like I was raping her, so I got up and dressed and I left.

We'd made another date to meet at the café, but she didn't show up and she never called. I even went to the film institute to ask after her, but they told me she wasn't coming in that day.

And so, she vanished, just like that! I don't know why she broke off with me. That day, when I was undressing, and she lay naked on the bed, I felt suffused with love: her brown body glistened against the white sheets as I bent down and kissed her, and as I fondled her breasts I told her I loved her and wanted to marry her immediately. But she turned into a block of ice. When I tried to break the ice, it wouldn't even chip! And now, I hear she's married! She never even contacted me, she's married and living on Verdun Street. She hitched herself to some big merchant, some fat cat in the sugar business!

I wonder why she lied to me like that. She was forever going on about “the system” and “bourgeois hypocrisy” and yet whenever I criticized the situation, she said I was a niggling, narrow-minded petit bourgeois ... And now, she's gone and married a sugar merchant! Get that!

Naturally, I refused that part in the film they were making, but she wasn't upset; she did try to convince me to change my mind but she wasn't upset, she said she respected my point of view. And then she disappeared.

So here I sit now...

Actually, before they took him away, I heard them questioning him. What did they want with the poor guy, it was plain he had nothing to do with all this. He seemed like he had a screw loose maybe, or was some kind of a simpleton, but they buzzed around him like bees with no end of questions. I didn't interfere-I don't like getting mixed up in that sort of thing. The poor man was standing with his hands up in the air, as if a gun were being pointed at him, and then he began circling around the room, and they around him. I couldn't figure out why he was going round and round like that, with his hands up in the air. I wanted to tell them to take pity on him, to leave him alone and let him go. I tried to approach him as he circled, and that's when I noticed his smell. I thought he must not have washed in a long time for him to smell like that. Then he stopped dead in his tracks, and he made this rattling, rasping sound: he was trying to say something, but I couldn't catch the words because he was muttering, so I got closer. I still couldn't make out anything he said, he looked like he was chewing his words, then spitting them out, with a rattle from his throat. The others were also trying to make out his words, and one of them was even taking notes. When I asked the officer what he thought the man was saying, he said, I don't have time for you now, I'm busy, the report needs to be ready soon.

“But what's he saying?” I repeated. “It's unintelligible.”

“Comrade, please, I beg you, I beg all of you comrades, just leave me alone with him.”

So I left the room. But that smell followed me, it was - how shall I put it - like the smell of a corpse. I held my nose, I even splashed my face with water, but the smell wouldn't go away.

My father always said that if you wanted to honor the dead you buried them. Why don't they ever bury the dead these days? I think that the dead should be buried even smack in the middle of a battle. The fighting should be suspended, and each side should bury its dead. It's terrible how they just leave them . . .

When I'd said as much to Comrade Omar, back in the mountains, he'd told me that I was having a rough time. And looking fixedly at my good eye, he said, “You're a war casualty, and your injury has undoubtedly affected your morale. Go back to Beirut and rest up, Comrade.” And so he sent me back here.

It's not true I was having a rough time in the mountains. Only once did I say I wanted to give up and go home. It was long before that, and I didn't leave. I just said it, and went and spent two days in my tent. But then I came out and resumed combat with the others. Why did he say I'd been through a lot and should return to Beirut? I'm just fine . . .

All I did was that I wanted to know why they killed the boy. I begged Omar to spare him. I was really serious this time, but they executed him anyway. I didn't even tell them his name. I'm the only person who spoke to him . . . there was no reason to kill him.

They just shot him in cold blood, right there in front of me. He stared at me with eyes full of terror and reproach; I lowered my gaze, but I saw how they killed him.

I'd been the first one to spot him. He was lost in the mountains, with his rifle slung over his shoulder. He seemed to be searching for something and I just went up to him and grabbed him. He offered no resistance as I led him away.

“You alone?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I lost my way.”

“Where are your people?”

“Over that way.”

“Come on. Walk ahead of me.”

We set off, him stumbling in front, with me behind, holding his rifle, and my comrades bringing up the rear. I noticed his knees were knocking.

“Please, leave him,” I told them. “I'll carry out the interrogation.”

I took him into my tent and he told me about himself, in a trembling voice, over some hot tea. He said he was from Dowaar, that he had been raised by the monks in Bikfaya, and that he had lost his way.

“But why are you fighting?” I asked him.

“I fight just like everyone else.”

He was very young, with a pretty face. I told him not to be frightened.

“You're going to shoot me!” he said.

“No, we won't, don't worry.”

“But you people kill.”

“No, we don't. We don't kill wantonly, like you. How many in your unit?”

“Five, we were on a reconnaissance patrol, and all of a sudden I found myself alone.”

“No. How many in the entire unit?”

“Oh, lots.”

“That is?”

“That is . . . I, I don't know. A large number.”

“A hundred?”

“More than a hundred. Perhaps ... yes, more than a hundred.”

“Weaponry?”

“Same as yours.”

I hit him.

“You'd better talk,” I said, striking him on both cheeks. “This isn't a joke.” He began to shake.

“I beg you,” he pleaded, “don't kill me.”

“Weaponry?”

He added up their weapons for me, then added:

“Honestly, that's all I know. I haven't been to all our positions; I'm just an ordinary militiaman. Please don't kill me.”

“We won't, you don't understand a thing. Are you hungry?”

“No. Thanks.”

I handed him a Marlboro, which he smoked greedily, in total silence. I heard Comrade Omar asking where the prisoner was. I stepped out of the tent and presented my report.

“That's great, really great,” he said. “He spilled the beans quickly. Bring him out, I want to see him.”

I went back inside and asked the prisoner to follow me. “Here he is, Comrade Omar.”

“You scum, you fascist bastard, you savage!” And he started to strike him; then, moving in even closer: “You're frightened . . . real men aren't frightened ... a combatant doesn't tremble like a child . . . Stand up!”

The boy looked so desolate, I had wanted to go to him and reassure him, when I heard the gunshots. It was Omar, with his pistol; the boy keeled over into a sea of blood while the others fired machine guns and revolvers at the twitching body.

Once they had stopped, I went over to where he lay and turned him onto his back. Two glassy eyes stared back at me.

“Take him far away from here,” Omar said.

And they took him away.

“But why,” I asked him, “why did you do that? I promised we wouldn't kill him.”

“You promised, huh! We did what we had to do.”

“But why? He was just an innocent, young boy! And he was our prisoner.”

“You don't suppose that if they'd taken
you
prisoner you would have remained alive, do you?”

“But, even so . . .”

“Do you think that if
he'd
captured
you
, he would have spared your life?”

“Still . . .”

“Have you forgotten what they did to Saïd when they got him near the Nasra Tower in Ashrafiyyeh? How they roped him to a Land Rover and dragged him alive through the streets, as people gawked? Have you forgotten?”

“But I still . . .”

“Have you forgotten how they hurled the children off the Nahr Beirut Bridge?”

“But even so . . .”

“Even so, even so . . . Just shut up will you. We have to kill them!”

“But we, too . . .”

“But we, but they, but this, but that . . . shut up philosophizing and get off my back!”

“Comrade Omar, I promised him, he was just a boy, without even the first signs of growth on his face. And he had nothing to do with the bridge or the Land Rover!”

“Cut it out, will you? By your logic, no one has anything to do with anything and everyone is innocent. What does it mean to have nothing to do with it? He knew what there was to know and was a fighter like the rest of them, and this is a war. We're not playing games here, and nor are they. They kill us and we kill them.”

“But . . .”

“But . . . nothing.”

I went into my tent and didn't come out for two days. I tried to forget the whole episode and to convince myself that Comrade Omar was right, that what he said was true and I was just being sentimental. And I managed to put it behind me; until the day I felt the maggots swarming over my arm.

It was dark, and we had left our dugout for more forward positions, engulfed in gunfire and shelling. As great flashes of light punctured the darkness, the very stars seemed to tremble in the sky. I was inching forward, on my belly and firing, when I suddenly collided into something. To begin with I couldn't tell what it was. My arm had hit something taut, like inflated rubber, and then in an instant there were maggots everywhere, on my hand and up my arm. I drew back quickly, dropped my rifle, got onto my knees and started brushing my arm off frantically: from my forearm, the maggots had reached my waist, just above my cartridge belt. And then the smell exploded in my nostrils, and I froze. I was rooted to the spot, as if paralyzed. I considered retreating and returning to my tent, but I didn't.

It was only the following morning - when the first sliver of light is still
trimmed with darkness - that I saw him. It was the young boy, his body all bloated, with the first stages of decomposition already evident on his face, especially around the lips. I couldn't help myself, I started howling. Immediately, the gunfire resumed. Still howling, I beat a retreat.