Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

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 likeisn’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. Revolutionis 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.

You’ll say these philosophical theories I’m repeating are an attempt to cover up my ignorance of medicine. Not true. I’m convinced of these things and that’s why I’m treating you according to my own methods. Of course, you’re not the issue; Dr. Amjad was right when he pronounced you a vegetable. But I’m convinced that the soul has its own laws and that the body is a vessel for the soul. I’m trying to rouse you with my stories because I’m certain that the soul can, if it wants, wake a sleeping body.

In China, in spite of everything, and in spite of the madness of history raging in my head, I learned the most valuable thing in my life. I learned that each of our bodies holds the entire history of the human race; your body is your history. I’m the living proof. Look at me. Can’t you see the pain tearing at me? The Chinese doctor was right. The break in my spinal column, dormant for many years, has suddenly come back to life. The pain is everywhere, and painkillers are useless.

Our body is our history, dear friend. Take a look at your history in your wasting body and tell me, wouldn’t it be better if you got up and shook off death?

I learned medicine in China and returned to Lebanon, a doctor, understanding nothing of medicine beyond its general principles, but speaking English!

After I transferred out of the training course, I was taken to a field hospital belonging to the Chinese People’s Army, where a tall man – the Chinese are not all short, as we have a tendency to think – asked me if I spoke English. He asked me in English, so I answered, “Yes.” I used to think I knew English, which we studied in the UNWRA schools ^*. So they put me with a group of trainees, most of them Africans. The training doctor taught the course in English. I didn’t understand a thing. Well, actually, I understood a little bit, so I decided to pretend I was following everything. I learned to parrot everything that was said in front of me and ended up learning the language. I discovered I was no worse than the others. To speak English, you don’t really have to know it; this is the source of its power. With amazing speed I retained the doctor’s lectures and came back from China rattling on in English, tossing in a few medical terms to convince people that I was a real doctor. Everything was fine.

What I can’t forget is that, when I spoke English in China, I felt I wasn’t myself. Sometimes I’d be my Chinese professor or my African colleague, or I’d imitate the Pakistani. Oh, our group was composed of ten students, eight from Nigeria, me, and a Pakistani. The Pakistani knew more than we did; he said he’d been a student at the medical school in Karachi, had been thrown out because of his political activism and had come to China to study the science of revolution. He didn’t want to study medicine, but they’d forced him to join this course before training him for guerrilla warfare.

I’d imitate him and feel myself becoming another person inside the English language. I’d react as they did – especially like the Pakistani, who would change totally when he got excited, stretching his mouth so that he looked like the heroes in American films when they scream, Fuck!

I figured out something very important. I realized that when I spoke, I was imitating others. Every word I spoke in English had to pass through the image of another person, as if the person speaking weren’t me. And when I returned to Beirut and started speaking Arabic again, I found myself again, I found the Khalil I’d left behind.

In China I discovered that when I spoke the language of others I became like them. This isn’t true, of course. But what if it were? What if, even in Arabic, I was imitating others? And that the only difference was that here I no longer knew who it was I was imitating? We learn our mother tongues from our mothers, imitating them, but we forget that. As we forget, we become ourselves; we speak and believe that we’re the ones who are speaking.

Now I’ve begun to understand your feelings about your father’s voice. You told me that sometimes you felt that the voice emerging from your throat was that of the blind sheikh: “It’s amazing, but I began to look like him, and when I spoke I started to feel it was he who was using my tongue.”

No, no, I don’t agree with that theory. It’s true we imitate, but we shape our own language as we shape our own lives. I don’t know my father. All I remember is a shadow, and I can’t tell you now – or in twenty years – that it’s that shadow’s voice that emerges from my throat.

Of course we imitate, but we forget, and forgetting is a blessing. Without forgetting we would all die of fright and abuse. Memory is the process of organizing what to forget, and what we’re doing now, you and me, is organizing our forgetting. We talk about things and forget other things. We remember in order to forget, this is the essence of the game. But don’t you dare die now! You have to finish organizing your forgetting first, so that I can remember afterwards.

Even now, when I say the word fuck, I see the Pakistani with his distended mouth, white teeth, and fine oblong jaw like the beak of a bird; I feel his voice in my throat, and I can smell China.

I studied medicine for three months and then returned to Beirut carrying with me a new language as well as an education in drinking warm water and in the performance of simple field operations such as removing bullets, bandaging wounds, treating fractures, giving injections and so on.

I passed as a doctor. I worked in a field hospital in Tyre, would stretch my mouth while repeating the Pakistani’s words, and became a doctor. Time’s wheel has turned, as they say, and now here I am, a temporary doctor, in a temporary hospital, in a temporary country. Everything inside me is waiting for something else. These waiting periods breed and erase each other, push each other out of the way and interact.

I look at my life and see images. I see a man who looks like me, and I see men who don’t look like me, but I don’t see myself. It’s strange how we deal with life. We go to one place and find ourselves in another. We search for one thing and find something else. Alternatives pile up on top of us. In place of Nuha came Siham. In place of Siham came Shams, and in place of Shams I don’t know. But now I have to wise up and marry. I’m forty years old, and at forty you either get married or life becomes hell. When a man says he “has to” get married, it means he’s reached rock bottom. Marriage is supposed to happen without that “has to.”

No. With Shams, marriage never occurred to me because I was living like someone under a spell. Now when I remember that magic, I see another man. The Khalil sitting in front of you isn’t Shams’ Khalil. Shams’ Khalil was different. He didn’t eat, because love suppresses the appetite; he didn’t speak, because love has no language; and he didn’t mind waiting. When she was there, her presence filled him up, and when she wasn’t, the waiting filled him up.

Then the love went.

The only thing that destroys love is death. Death is the only cure for love. It ought to have been me. It ought to have been me who killed her. I’m the one who. . But I didn’t.

Now I’m looking for a substitute. I’m not looking for a woman like Shams but for any woman. How good it is to find a woman in your bed! But my bed remains empty, and I can’t ask anyone to help me find a woman. A woman is something you have to find for yourself.

Betrayed, a cuckold, and in search of a woman?

So what? All men are betrayed and all of them are cuckolds. I know. There, in the house of the Green Sheikh, I realized this. I suffered and wept for Shams.

I went through moments of great weakness. Shams was dead, and rumors of a death list were everywhere. I decided to go to them. Abd al-Latif with his one good eye took me to the house of Sheikh Hashim, who they called the Green Sheikh. I took off my shoes and joined their circle and twisted and swayed with the chanting, invoking with them God’s name in their dhkirritual. I let my breathing be guided by the hand of the sheikh who conducted us to the final ecstasy where we touched the universal Presence. I twirled with them, experienced the intoxication, and my tears flowed involuntarily. The sheikh asked me to stay behind after the others had dispersed and said he was pleased with me, letting me know that the time to repent had come. He accepted me as a disciple in his order. He gave me a book by the great Yashrati sheikh and told me to come and see him whenever I wished.

On my second visit, when I went to ask him about the story of Reem at Sha’ab, which I’d heard from everyone, I saw his wife pound on the door of their house, cursing the sheikh. He refused to open the door.

Then I learned the truth.

She was sixty-three years old. Seated on the bench outside her sister’s house, she told the story, to those who wanted to hear, of how she’d gone in and found the sheikh panting with the wife of one of his disciples in his arms.

“I saw it,” the woman went on, “and her cuckolded mule of a husband didn’t want to believe me. He said I was crazy and drove his wife home.”

The Green Sheikh’s wife said that when she saw them she started screaming. Everyone, including the woman’s husband, rushed over, and the hullabaloo commenced. She continued: “Then the Green Sheikh raised his hand, everyone fell silent, and he declared, ‘You are repudiated.’ He managed to convince everyone that I was crazy, and ordered me out of the house. I tried to tell them the truth, but no one believed me. A man in his seventies, the old lecher: I saw him hugging the woman to his fat belly while he panted like a dog! They all said I was crazy. The husband took his wife away and spat on me. He should have spat on himself and on her.”

In the house of the Green Sheikh, I understood that Shams hadn’t betrayed me. She’d been under a man’s spell, or under I don’t know what. . I left the Sufi circle and never went back.

I understood Shams, but I was very angry with her for not having told me about her relationship with that other man. I’d have advised her not to kill him. But she was right; only death can put an end to love. By killing her love, she revealed who was the more courageous of the two of us. Me, I waited for my love to die. And with death came death. With death love evaporates and turns into nothing.

I don’t care about people. They pity me because they don’t understand anything. They pity me because I loved her, because she betrayed me, because I fear her ghost and because – I don’t know. For my part, I don’t care. Anyway, I’m in China. The hospital sent me back to China, where I was able to work on my English. I can’t be a doctor just in Arabic, and without warm water! There I was reborn. There, when everything seemed to end, when they decreed I couldn’t continue my military training, everything began. Khalil the officer was swept away, and in came Khalil the doctor. Instead of going to war, I went to the hospital. And today Khalil the doctor has been swept away again, and in has come Khalil the nurse.

Do you know what Dr. Amjad said?

He invited me into his office and started rambling incoherently. He sat behind the desk and spoke as though he were the director of a hospital. Of course, he is the director of a hospital, but come on! A hospital without the minimum necessities – no hygiene, no medication, nothing – it’s almost a prison. And this empty head stammers in front of me, saying I really should work full time. He stretches out his words, hesitates and leaves half of them suspended in midair before snatching them back and continuing. He trips over the letter R, saying, “You’re a nu’se, and you have to work as a nu’se. It’s impossible. Things can’t go on this way.” I tried to explain the conditions under which I was working and how you take up all my time.

“All your time!” he said mockingly. “The fact is, we’ve started to worry for your sanity, doctor, talking to yourself all the time. You think we don’t know what you do in that room? You think talking’s a cure? If talking were a cure, we’d have liberated Palestine long ago. No, it’s impossible.”

I told him I took half a salary and was content with that, and he told me that what I called a half-salary was a full salary now that the Red Crescent’s funding had been cut off.

“The money evaporated with Kuwait’s oil, Dr. Khalil. There is no money. There’s war and America, but the oil has gone, and the Arabs have gone bankrupt, and the revolution has gone bankrupt and your salary isn’t half a salary, so you’ll have to choose between working with us as director of nursing on a full-time basis and leaving the hospital.”

He said the hospital wasn’t a place of asylum, that he only wanted what was best for me, and he had respect for my past accomplishments. “But you have to do something. Don’t be afraid, you’re under our protection.”

I didn’t answer. He was trying to manipulate me, to make it clear that he knew the ins and outs of the Shams affair. All the same, I was on the verge of refusing his offer when he hung a threat over you.

“We’ll take care of Yunes,” he said. “Anyway, he no longer needs attention and the question of whether he should stay here is still on the table. I’m in the process of getting his papers ready for his transfer to Dar al-Ajazah. ^*People like him are put there, not in a hospital. His condition’s hopeless, and clinically he’s dead.”

Do you see what that son-of-a-bitch doctor wants? He wants to throw you into a home. Yunes – Abu Salem, Izz al-Din, Adam – is to end up in Dar al-Ajazah? May lightening strike him! Do you know what this means? Listen to me, please. I didn’t promise Amjad that I’d consider the proposal seriously out of concern for myself. After all, what can they do to me? It’s God that decides when we die. I said I’d consider the proposal because the idea of that place struck terror in my heart. Do you know what moving you there would mean? You would rot alive – yes, you’d rot and the worms and the ulcers would devour you. I didn’t tell you about Adnan because I didn’t want to upset you, but I’m the only one who visited him, because they sent for me, and while I was there Dr. Karim Jaber showed me something horrifying.

“I’m not a relative of the patient,” I told him.

“Precisely,” he answered. “We reviewed his medical file and found the report you wrote, and we’d like to discuss his condition with you.”

When I said I knew nothing about neurological diseases, he eyed me with distaste and corrected me: Mr. Adnan’s illness was not neurological but psychiatric. He was suffering from schizophrenia and received electric shock therapy.

I’ll spare you the excruciating details of the doctor’s diagnosis since I was certain he understood absolutely nothing. He invited me to see Adnan and we walked through the place, which could have been called anything but a hospital.

Heaps of lunatics, the smells of lunatics, the sounds of lunatics.

Moans from every corner.

Moans rising like smoke.

In front of the cluster of slums that previously was the Sabra camp, there stands a dingy yellow building enclosed on all sides called Dar al-Ajazah.

In this enclosure, which isn’t part of our world, I walked and walked until I got to a room that looked nothing like other rooms and saw an old man tied up in chains; they told me it was Adnan.

We walked through the first floor, where the larger wards are. “Here,” said Dr. Karim, “is where we put the nondangerous patients.”

We walked among them. They clung to our clothes as though they wanted something they couldn’t articulate. The musty smell of food and the sight of the patients in their soiled white garments gave the impression that the rooms hadn’t been aired for years.

I told Dr. Karim that I could barely breathe because of the poor ventilation, but he just patted me on the shoulder, saying that the hospital had been built to the proper standards and was equivalent to the best in Europe.

“And the odor?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said. “It’s the natural odor of a group of people. Any indiscriminate mixture of humans or animals gives off a strong and penetrating odor, that’s all.”

We continued through the halls, which opened onto the patients’ rooms, and I noticed that they were all in pajamas. I wanted to ask why they weren’t wearing clothes, but I held back.

We went up to the second floor, and there I saw!

On the first floor the conditions were more or less humane. The patients’ rooms opened onto relatively large halls, and they could choose to stay with their companions in the hall or sit in their rooms, in each of which were four beds.

Upstairs was unbelievable.

We came first to a large ward full of cots with metal sides. “These are the incapacitated,” he said. Then we turned right and entered the hall of horrors. I saw thirty children tied to their beds, immobilized. “These are the mentally retarded,” he said with a smile.

“But this is torture,” I said.

“It’s better this way, for them and for us,” he replied.

He led me down the long corridor and said we were coming to the “dangerous” ward.

There I saw Adnan.

It wasn’t a ward, or a hall, or a room. It was a cluster of small, dark cells, and Adnan was tied with a metal chain to a bed fenced with metal bars. He was snoring.

The doctor went up to him and tried to wake him. “Adnan! Adnan!” he said.

The patient fidgeted and his snoring grew more staccato.

The doctor put his hand on the black metal siding surrounding Adnan’s bed and launched into a lengthy explanation of his case. He said they’d made a mistake. “It seems the doctor on duty didn’t read Adnan’s medical file carefully and had him tied down. You understand, the man had spent twenty years in solitary confinement under restraint, and when he saw the restraints here he went into convulsions, so the doctor was forced to give him shock therapy. Then he had him tied to his bed, and his condition began to deteriorate. He wouldn’t stop screaming and trying to attack the nurses, and he’s very lucky they didn’t kill him. These errors can occur, of course, but as soon as I got back, I took things in hand. As you can see, there’s not much hope and his condition’s getting worse.”