White Masks (25 page)

When I got back, I was raging.

“Why couldn't you have buried him?” I screamed at Comrade Omar. I threw my rifle to the ground and went into my tent, cursing.

He followed me and said he thought I was no longer fit for combat and should return to Beirut. It wasn't true, I was perfectly fit for combat - it was just that he couldn't accept what I was saying. My request was simple enough: I was only asking for the boy to be buried. I didn't see what the problem was - God alone knows how unbearable those maggots and that smell were!

So I returned to Beirut and set myself up in this office - and I have never left it since. I'm always combat-ready, but no one ever calls me up anymore; even when Israel invaded the South in 1978, I wasn't asked to go to the front.

But what I want to know is where the maggots come from. People say they come from inside you, but I think they come from the smell. I remember the feeling to this day - it was as if I'd plunged my hand into a rubber pillow of writhing, wriggling maggots; they crawled up my chest, reached my neck and then my nostrils, and then they exploded into that smell.

It was the same smell, when they brought in Khalil Ahmad Jaber. Why didn't they wash him - after all, he could've been infested too - before they questioned him? That interrogation was such a sham!

And now, here I am, I can't say anything or go anywhere, I just can't. They might be able to, but I can't.

There was this guy . . . I don't know his real name, Issam we called him, that's what he said his name was when we were in the mountains together. Anyway, I ran into him here in Beirut one day and people were calling him Ibrahim. I wonder what became of him. I saw him on the street once and he walked right past me, as if he'd never laid eyes on me before! As if we'd never been comrades-in-arms and shared those times together!

He was one of those guys who spent the length and breadth of the day talking politics. He was our political cadre, actually, and we used to gather around for hours listening to him tell us about Mao Tse-tung and about Pol Pot, who abolished the cities and liberated the imagination; he would talk to us about the people's war, about guerrilla warfare, revolution and liberation. I'd never met someone like him before: he was a university lecturer
and
a fighter! I used to think that all academics were just armchair revolutionaries, you know, bespectacled and potbellied, sitting in their offices, full of hot air and flamboyant gestures. Ibrahim wasn't like that at all, you should have seen him that time he was injured. He'd been hit in the foot and he didn't even flinch.

I wasn't far off and I shouted over to him, “Comrade, you're wounded!”

“I know,” he said.

“Retreat, I'll cover you.”

“No, we must get Talal.”

“Talal? Where is he?”

“He's over there. He was hit in the head, I think he's dead.”

His voice was steady as a rock even though Talal lay there dead! He suggested we belly-crawl towards the body and drag it back.

“Be careful,” he went on, “the attack's going to be vicious, but if we don't retrieve his body now we'll lose him.”

I tried crawling on my belly but found I didn't know how to.

“What's with you?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Go on, I'll cover you.”

“No, you go back and I'll get Talal. You're wounded, leave me.”

But he wouldn't, and we retrieved Talal together - Talal, handsome as a rain-filled cloud in spring, Talal for whom every girl in Arabia would have given her eyes, Talal who now lay beside us, his face drained of life. Issam, at my side and still bleeding profusely, said:

“Don't cry ... we die so that life may go on. Men don't mourn martyrs.”

That was Ibrahim.

He asked me what I was up to these days.

“Oh, I'm just around,” I told him “and what about you?”

“Me? Nothing much,” he answered. “I'm back at the university, teaching.”

“What about the revolution?”

“Well, what about it . . . Everything's fallen apart . . . hasn't it? It's finished. It's all over.”

“Ibrahim, no, how can you say that! What of Talal, then? Have you forgotten?”

“Talal is a martyr. And we suffer.”

We went to his office, and there he started talking religion, telling me about praying and fasting.

“Is that you, Ibrahim, talking like this? Where have all our revolutionary ideas gone?”

He said he thought that a return to religion was the only solution.

“But, but there's a war out there, Sir, what should we do?” I asked him.

“Nothing. It isn't our war.”

“Where
is
our war then?”

“It has yet to start.”

“You mean to say that when this war's over, you expect us to start fighting all over again?”

“Yeah, you got it! Once this war's over, then the real war will start.”

“Well, don't count on me. This war has just about exhausted us. One war is enough, Sir. Please, no more.”

He said I should come and visit him at home and gave me his address. I told him I was much obliged.

“No, really, come over tomorrow evening at seven. We'll be doing some religious study.”

“You're really serious?”

“Really, Fahd, come on. It's over, man, don't you realize?”

“What is there to realize?”

He just raised a finger skywards and walked away, limping. Remembering his injury, I wanted to ask him about that foot of his, but he was already gone.

So here I am, alone . . . and I've had it up to the eyeballs with the murder of Khalil Ahmad Jaber! It was just one of those senseless, meaningless incidents: they brought him in for questioning, I saw him, then he left, and then nothing. I don't know why Abu Jassem - our unit captain, his real
name is Sameer Amro - is making such a song and dance about it. We're sick and tired of his endless investigation, of him making a mountain out of a molehill! I'm sure the boys didn't do anything to him, it was just a straightforward interrogation and then they let him go. Could it be that they . . . ? No, they couldn't have killed him. Then who did it? Could it be ... ? No, no, it's not possible . . .

As for that Fatimah Fakhro woman, she's just witless! He had no such thing as a bucket or brush when they brought him in. Why she's been saying that he trudged around whitewashing walls and tearing down posters, I honestly don't know! I'm convinced he was just an ordinary guy, a poor soul . . . maybe he was a refugee. Perhaps he'd lost all his family and he just liked to wander about, isn't that what tourists do? Surely, there's nothing wrong with that!

Who killed him? Some kind of gang, maybe . . . Abu Jassem says that's impossible, that he's got the place sewn up and no one can move a muscle without his knowledge. And it's true. He's been able to track down the people involved in most of the crimes being committed - it was him that uncovered the murder of the Armenian doctor and his wife. At least that's what he says. And if it's true, then why can't he find Khalil Ahmad Jaber's murderer? In any case, I don't think it merits this huge fuss, and the interminable talking, and Khalil's wife coming here constantly for neverending meetings with Abu Jassem.

And why was Fatimah Fakhro dragged in here and threatened? She had nothing to do with this! Her husband divorced the other woman and stole the bracelets - well, maybe he did and maybe he didn't - and then they killed him. What's the point of interrogating her, of threatening her and
beating her like that? I really don't understand anymore, why we're getting sidetracked by all these petty incidents! And, in any case, why shouldn't people be allowed to whitewash the walls and remove posters if they like?
Ya akhi,
we human beings are born free, and the walls don't belong to us!

Personally, I don't think that he was doing anything suspect around those walls. There's this engineer, Ali Kalakesh, who came in here all high and mighty, complaining about it in connection with his daughter. What could that poor man do to his daughter? In any case, at the end of the day, it's none of my business and Khalil Jaber is dead. He's found his rest, what more could anyone want? Though not before he was tortured . . . He was badly beaten up, that's for sure, but he's dead and gone, and it's over! In a country like ours, where such a staggering number of people have died, is the death of Khalil Ahmad Jaber really an issue?

People say he was the father of a martyr ... Don't ask me why, but there are martyrs sprouting everywhere these days: as far as I can see, everyone's become a martyr, or belongs to the family of a martyr. Where did the son die? He wasn't killed in combat, I'm sure, so how could he be a martyr?

And now Khalil Jaber's a martyr too. I bet I'll be the only one that gets killed without anyone calling me a martyr. And anyway, what difference does it make? Does it matter once you're dead, whether or not they produce a poster of you?

Poor Khalil Jaber, honestly, I feel so sorry for him, nobody should have to die like that. They just dumped him there, like some piece of trash or bit of flotsam . . . Is that any way to treat a person? I don't like to meddle in things that aren't any of my business, but it's because of that smell . . . I
smell it on myself all the time, I carry it around on my own body now. Even though I wash and shower and use soap and shampoo, I still come out smelling like that! Tell me, how can I get rid of this maggot smell?

And, anyhow, why didn't anyone consult me? They interrogated him alright but no one asked me what I thought. I'm sure Comrade Omar said I was a coward. But I'm not. He's the coward. No, no, how could I say that, I saw him with my very own eyes lead the offensive with such bravery ... but I'm not a coward, either - I'm a fighter, just like them. I'm better than they are - at least I stayed the course. The others all drifted away, but I'm still here. I live in the office and do anything that needs doing - the thought of women never even crossing my mind, not after the episode with Samar and the film!

So here I am. Anyway, how to leave and where to go? How could we abandon our martyrs?

I go to the graveyard and I talk to them. Whenever I have a serious problem I go there, and stand beside Talal's grave and talk to him. And he answers me. He says, never mind, let it go. And I believe him. He always says everything's fine. And I believe him. Why wouldn't I? He was my commander. He was the one who convinced me to join the revolution. He was the one who took me off to the training camp, the one who said the revolution had started when the war broke out. We were in his house when we heard about the Ain al-Remmaneh bus.
⁷

“It's started,” he said. “The revolution has started!”

That night, we went downtown, to the old commercial center, and we blew up the Kata'eb
⁸
party offices. It was my first time doing explosives. The streets were completely deserted, it was really eerie. He asked me something and I hesitated before answering, I didn't want him to hear how breathless I was. And Talal explained, with a smile, that it was because it was my first time. He didn't tell me I was afraid, he just rested his hand on my shoulder as I drove, getting out of the car every now and then to lay down the explosives. On the way back, we heard them going off, one after the other, but he dragged on his cigarette calmly and said that it had begun and we had to be prepared for war.

When I go to his graveside, I don't take flowers or anything with me. I go and ask him questions, and he tells me to be patient and that things will change.

“But they're changing for the worse, Talal.”

“No, they're not, you think that, but things are getting better. Everything gets better.”

Once, I told him that I wanted out, that I wanted to give up this whole business and find myself a job. He burst out laughing-I swear I heard him! He laughed so loud I had to look over my shoulder to make sure that the people who were in the cemetery, looking after the graves of their dead, hadn't heard him. He told me to go back to the party office and wait there.

“And if you feel bored, ask them to send you to the units down south,” he said.

I asked but they refused. They told me it was because of my eye.

“Just wait,” Talal said.

So I sit here waiting, and I feel as if I'm bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders, like that mythical centaur: it feels as though all the stars and the moons, every one of the planets, the very heavens are on my back, and I am beginning to stoop under the weight of it all. I'm scared of what might happen if my back breaks, the heavens would come crashing down, as the saying goes ... But they haven't fallen, and here I am sitting tight, immovable. Didn't he promise me that I would hold the sky between my hands? The sky is so distant, and my back is almost breaking.

I'm going to stay put, I'm not going to move; I'm just going to wait. Talal said I should, and so I am: I'm waiting for my mother, I'm waiting to get married, I'm waiting to die, I'm waiting for the revolution, I'm waiting for . . . nothing in particular, just here, waiting for nothing.

They're all the same! The difference is that when they say they're brave, they're lying. I'm brave but I don't expect anything, I'm brave because I know and expect nothing.

I put on my dark glasses, then I take them off, and I tell you that the end does not exist. I am the only actor in the world to admit that that there is no such thing as an end. You may go now, but don't expect an end as there isn't one. Have you understood? No one understands. Still I wait. I'm the one who expects nothing. I'm the one who expects everything.