Beirut, Beirut

SONALLAH IBRAHIM Translated by Chip Rossetti

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First published in English in 2014 by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing Qatar Foundation PO Box 5825 Doha Qatar www.bqfp.com.qa First published in Arabic in 1988 Copyright © Sonallah Ibrahim, 1988 Translation © Chip Rossetti, 2014 The moral right of the author has been asserted.

ISBN 9789992194522 Beirut, Beirut is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

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1

They searched me twice: the first time at the customs gate, and the second time before the exit leading to the tarmac. Between the two, my leather carry-on bag and I passed a closed-circuit television and an airport scanner. One of them was waiting for me at the door of the plane, probing with his hands under my arms, between my legs, and inside both my carry-on and dutyfree bag. Finally, I was allowed to board the plane.

I stopped beside the first empty seat I came across. I stowed the plastic bag in the overhead compartment and sat down, after putting the carry-on on the floor between my feet.

There was an empty seat between me and the airplane window through which the feeble afternoon sun shone.

Beyond it appeared the enormous billboard for Cairo International Airport. I sat back and stretched my legs out beneath the seat in front of me. Soon enough I had to move them to one side to clear a path for a passenger in a flowing white robe who sat down beside me. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the Saudi ghutra headdress hanging down over his shoulders.

I heard him sigh loudly as he spoke to me: “They treat you like you’re a terrorist or a fedayeen.”

I was busy fastening my seatbelt around my waist, and didn’t bother answering him.

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In a few minutes, the plane filled up. Flowing robes and bulky clothes from the countryside were spread all over the interior, topped by dark-brown faces that spoke of fear and worry. I noticed some of them wearing chic European clothes, their eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, with reinforced Samsonite bags resting on their knees. There were a few women; some of them revealed delicate arms carrying handbags that looked like shoeboxes or jewelry boxes. There wasn’t a single fellaha among them.

The plane finally made its ascent, and my neighbor finished the prayers he had been muttering under his breath. A little later, the “No Smoking” sign turned off, and we heard the sound of the pilot’s voice as he introduced himself, telling us our cruising speed and altitude, and how long it would be before we reached Beirut.

I undid the seatbelt, and took out of my pocket my pack of Egyptian cigarettes. I lit one. I realized from the first puff that smoke was seeping out of it from several holes, so I stubbed it out on the tray table. I decided to put off smoking for a while, to reduce the risk of getting cancer.

My neighbor addressed me as though he were continuing a conversation between us.

“Didn’t the war end two years ago? So why all those procedures?”

I didn’t understand at first which war or which procedures he meant. Then I realized he was referring to the Lebanese Civil War, and the repeated inspections we were subjected to.

I turned to him. “They’re just precautions – there’s no sinister motives behind them.”

The brown face of an older man, around sixty, gazed back 2

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at me. At the center of it were two cunning eyes, surrounded by a light-gray beard with a tapered end.

His eyes roamed over my clothes and hair, and lingered over my finger, which had no wedding ring, and the glimmers of white hair on my head. An intense focus appeared in his eyes as he observed the leather bag placed between my feet.

I felt an urgent need for a drink, so I turned in the other direction, leaning into the aisle to ask one of the flight attendants. I mentally calculated how many dollar bills I had on me, and decided to order a beer. Then I remembered that it cost more than fifty cents, but less than a whole dollar.

Usually, the flight attendant wouldn’t give back change for a dollar, because the plane was Arab, and we were all Arabs.

But for this dollar, I could get a glass of whiskey or gin that would put a little life in my veins.

One of the passengers in the opposite row turned toward me, clutching his armrest with fingers covered with an overlay of yellow. He was addressing the passenger behind me in an Egyptian accent, asking him if he had bought his tape recorder at the duty-free shop.

“These fellows are all heading off to work in Iraq,” the Saudi said, gesturing at him. “They’re forced to travel by way of Beirut. Baghdad Airport is closed, and Amman Airport can’t handle the overflow any longer.”

My need for a drink grew stronger. The flight attendant walked by and I asked her for a glass of whiskey. I ignored the look of disapproval from the Saudi.

A moment later, he asked, “Is Beirut your final destination or are you headed somewhere else?”

“No,” I said, “Beirut.”

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“East or West Beirut?”

I was about to answer automatically that I was going to East Beirut. But then I remembered that Beirut was the only place in the world today where political alignments are just the opposite of their geographical locations.

“West Beirut,” I replied. “And you?”

“I have business in a lot of places.”

The flight attendant brought me an extremely small bottle containing enough for one glass, and a glass with some ice cubes. I opened the bottle and poured the whiskey into the glass, then shook it around several times and raised it to my lips.

Warmth coursed through my insides. I lit myself a cigarette and took some slow puffs.

“Business or pleasure?” he asked.

“Business,” I replied.

“First time?”

“No.” I emptied the glass, and instantly felt the desire for another one.

“Do you have a job lined up, or are you going to look for one?” he went on.

“You might say I’m going to look.”

“What kind of work do you do, exactly?” he asked with interest.

“Writing.”

“You’re a journalist?”

“Not exactly.”

“So you’re not going to look for a job at one of the newspapers there?”

I shook my head.

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“Then are you looking for a political organization you can write for?”

“Not at all. I’m looking for a publisher for a book I’ve written.”

He lapsed into thought, so it was my turn to ask him: “And you . . . what kind of work do you do?”

“As you Egyptians would say, I’m a contractor.”

“A contractor for what?”

“Everything.”

He gestured with his hand, pointing to the Egyptian passengers on the plane, adding, “I have hundreds of these people in Saudi Arabia.”

I began to imagine that second glass of whiskey.

“Do you know a movie director named Sobhy Tawfiq?” he asked me.

I thought about it, and then answered that I didn’t.

“I was with him at the Hilton this morning,” he told me.

I made no response. He was silent for a moment, and then continued with his questions: “Why didn’t you publish your book in Egypt?”

“No one wants to publish it,” I replied.

“Is it your first book?”

“No.” “It must be a political book.”

“Just the opposite,” I said. “It’s a pornographic book.”

He blinked quickly, then went quiet. After a little while, he hesitantly asked, “Do those books . . . make money?”

“Oh, a lot.”

I felt that I deserved another glass, so I decided to sacrifice a second dollar. I signalled the flight attendant as she walked by, passing out newspapers.

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I took two Lebanese newspapers from her, handing one of them to my neighbor. I noticed she had several American newspapers, so I helped myself. I glanced at the lower half of the Lebanese paper, and found it was divided into three main articles: the first was about the press conference that Reagan held after his election as president of the United States. The second was about a recent Israeli bombardment of South Lebanon. As for the third, it contained a statement by the foreign minister of Iraq, in which he defended the war that his country had launched against Iran, saying that Iraq’s military and economic forces would be liberated from the Iranian “distraction”, so that it could counteract the Israeli menace.

I spread out the newspaper and looking up at me in the middle of the page was a large headline that read: “Decisive resolutions for a ceasefire in West Beirut”. I looked for the date, and found it was November 7, 1980 – today’s. I went back to the news item and read: “In the last few hours, firm decisions have been taken to clamp down on the clashes that have taken place in the last two days in West Beirut, following a series of calls between leaders of Lebanese parties and groups, Palestinian organizations and Syrian authorities.”

Below that I read the full details of the events it referred to. They had begun when the car belonging to the president of the greengrocers’ syndicate in West Beirut (whose name was Munir Fatiha) was at an intersection and tried to pass in front of another car driven by a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). The two drivers exchanged curses, then both pulled out guns and aimed them at each other. The driver of the second car fired first and shot the syndicate president, killing him, then fled.

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As soon as the victim’s son – who was one of the leaders of the Nasserist organization known as the Mourabitoun (“the Sentinels”) – learned what had happened, he assembled a military team and attacked the house of Bashir Ubayd, one of the leaders of the SSNP. There the attackers found another party leader, the poet Kamal Khayrbek and his young niece Nahiya Bijani, and killed all three of them. Clashes broke out between members of the two parties immediately afterwards.

I searched all over the paper for new details, but only found a reference to a lead article in the Lebanese paper al-Safeer, which said that armed militias in West Beirut – who were followers or allies of the Lebanese National Movement, the Palestinian resistance or the Syrian government, or who were (to use the newspaper’s expression) “operating on their own account” – were responsible for the security vacuum and the chaos, as well as the crimes and lawlessness that take place under those conditions, from murder and armed assault to extortion, illegal appropriation of apartments and buildings, and the piling up of uncollected trash.

I put the newspaper to one side and spread out the American paper. It had yesterday’s date. At the bottom of the first page I spotted a small article with the title “The war that doesn’t want to end”. My eyes quickly scanned: The armed clashes that took place yesterday in West Beirut offer a highly indicative picture of the state of affairs in Lebanon since the civil war broke out in 1975 among the people of this beautiful country. (Its 3 million inhabitants before the war have been reduced to 2.5 million now.)

Officially, this war ended in 1977, once Arab peacekeeping 7

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forces, primarily made up of Syrian troops, assumed control.

But the various conflicts between the two sides have not definitively come to an end. Mostly that is because recently these clashes have centered on internecine fights within each side, reminiscent of Chicago’s gang wars in the 1920s and 30s, or bloody fights between Mafia families.

This past July 7, Bashir Gemayel (age 33), the young military leader of the Maronite Phalangist militia, and de facto ruler of East Beirut, led a campaign of elimination against the strongholds of his partner in the Maronite front, Camille Chamoun. He cynically called it the “corrective movement” and in a few hours killed more than 500 men from the “ Tigers” militia, who were followers of Chamoun.

As a result, a submissive Chamoun agreed to participate in the meetings of the military council of “Lebanese forces” under the command of Bashir Gemayel, in exchange for his continuing to get his share of the profits from Dbaiyeh harbor, in addition to a million dollars cash.

Four months before the massacre of the Tigers, an explosive charge, operated by remote control, went off in Bashir Gemayel’s car. It took the life of his daughter Maya (age 3), who had been born the night before another attack her father organized against the summer palace of the previous president Suleiman Frangieh, in the village of Ehden. Among the victims were Frangieh’s oldest son Tony (age 36), his wife Vera (age 32) and their daughter Jihan (age 3).

These massacres accompanied the rise of Bashir Gemayel, and his ambition to impose his leadership on the Maronite front, or the “Lebanese front”, as it calls itself. It is composed of the forces of Pierre Gemayel (the Phalangists), Chamoun (the Tigers), and Frangieh (the Giants), not to mention 8

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Charbel Qassis (the Permanent Congress of Lebanese Monastic Orders) and Etienne Saqr (Guardians of the Cedars).

On the other side of the Green Line that separates the two halves of the Lebanese capital, similar battles take place between the various forces that make up the opposing front – sometimes called the Islamic front, and other times, the Nationalist, Progressive or Leftist front.

In addition to the Palestinian organizations, some of which have ties to Arab countries that are at each other’s throats, such as Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya, this front is made up of Nasserist parties whose allegiance is divided among Iraq, Syria and Libya, and two Baathist organizations, one of which follows the Iraq line, while the other falls in behind Syrian leadership. Others are Communist groups that fly the flag of Marx and Lenin, a socialist party that is considered the liberal wing of the Druze sect, and scattered Islamist factions, some of which represent local leadership for Sunnis and Shia. These are semi-feudal leadership positions bound by firm ties to monarchies in the Arab world, whereas others represent new forms of leadership for these two religious communities, some of which enjoy the support of Khomeini, while others are in Gaddafi’s good graces.

Discord can easily flare up among these widely-differing groups, as a reflection of existing struggles among Arab regimes, or because of struggles over spheres of influence, in the same way that the trivial dispute in the street could lead to a wideranging mêlée. Every individual, one way or another, follows an organization or a party. Tribal thinking holds sway: the parties he follows must leap to his aid, whether right or wrong, using one dominant idiom – that of the gun.

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The newspaper concluded its editorial by stating: “The coming few hours will reveal whether it is possible to cordon off the clashes and impose order, or whether the country will continue its slide into a seemingly bottomless chasm.”

The Saudi was reading his newspaper with interest as he nervously looked up at me from time to time, trying to get a fix on my reaction. I let my face stay frozen until I finished reading, then I turned to him.

“Obviously, we’ve arrived at just the right time,” I said.

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