Broken Mirrors (60 page)

Karim came to his decision as he sat in the café drinking lemonade and smoking a narghile next to the elderly man, who kept up an unstoppable flow of stories, none of which Karim heard.

He decided he’d pretend he hadn’t been able to find the papers. He’d phone Sheikh Radwan on Thursday morning and postpone the appointment because he hadn’t been able to locate them – and then let whatever happened happen. The decision was made.

Karim became aware that Abd el-Malek Dakiz was shaking him by the shoulder as though waking him from a coma, and saying that Gloria was waiting for them.

“Who’s Gloria?” asked Karim.

“I’ve been telling you about her for the past hour. What? Were you asleep? She’s the daughter of my father’s paternal uncle who knows the crusader language. We’ll go and see her for quarter of an hour and then we can go to my place. I’ve ordered a little grilled meat to go with the drink.”

“I’m stuffed. I couldn’t eat more.”

“Up with you, man. ‘The key to the belly is a morsel of food,’ as they say. The woman is waiting for us.”

Karim had never imagined that his night in Tripoli would be spent between two women, the first senile, or pretending to be so to escape Sheikh Radwan and his demands, the second insane and believing herself to be the last guardian of a language that had never existed.

“I’m tired, uncle. Let’s put Gloria off till tomorrow.”

Abd el-Malek explained that the woman was waiting for them, had phoned the café a few minutes before to say the tea was hot, and that he’d promised.

Karim rose sluggishly and went to the apartment, which exuded the smell of all closed apartments. The woman never opened the windows or the thick green curtains because she hated the sun. She told Karim her body had never been able to stand the sun and that even though all her life she’d worn long dresses closed at the neck with sleeves that covered her arms, the sun still burned her and left red spots on her skin, “and now the allergy has spread to my eyes. I can’t see at all in the daylight and I use only nightlights in the apartment.”

Abd el-Malek explained to her that his guest was a specialist in the crusader period and was interested in finding out about the language of the crusaders.

Gloria, who attached much importance to the title “Mademoiselle,” poured the tea, saying her memory wasn’t of much use to her now. She looked at Abu Ahmad and said he was responsible for the loss of the language because he’d promised her lots of times he’d come and record the words she knew and publish them as a special appendix to his book on the crusaders. “You, Abu Ahmad, are afflicted with the family disease, whose name is sloth!”

Abu Ahmad looked at her and said, “
Cando mi intrate fi beit abusch, falso
.”

Mademoiselle Gloria answered him, laughing, “
I barra fuor casa mio
.”

Then he said, “
Gramerze cater ala cairech
.”

“Did you understand what we were saying?” asked Abu Ahmad.

“I understood a few words. It sounds like Latin with Spanish and Italian,” said Karim.

“And Arabic. The most important part is the Arabic. This is the language of our ancestors. I know a few words but Gloria speaks it like a songbird. What a waste of the woman! She has a talent for languages. I have to get back to my work on the book because without me she’s
mamamouchi
. I swear, my boy, I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve made me feel alive again with your interest in culture. You should have been my son instead of Ahmad. Ahmad doesn’t have time for anything. All he wants to do is emigrate so he can make money.”

At his apartment Abu Ahmad prepared two glasses of local arak, saying it was much better than the commercial arak they’d drunk at the restaurant. “This is triple-distilled homemade arak.”

Karim didn’t eat any of the food – he felt a slight pain in his stomach – but he couldn’t not join Abu Ahmad in drinking the arak because he didn’t want to upset him.

Silence reigned, as though the elderly man had emptied his quiver with the effort he’d expended in trying to speak a strange language. Karim guessed it wasn’t a proper language but the remnants of spoken dialects that had formed a primitive means of communication among the hordes of Frankish warriors arriving from various parts of the world on the one hand, and the original Arab inhabitants of the land on the other.

To fill the silence Karim asked Abu Ahmad whether what Radwan had told him about his cleaning the tombs at the Castle of Saint-Gilles and placing flowers on them was true.

“It’s both true and untrue,” answered Abu Ahmad. He recounted that it had started with curiosity. He’d visited the tombs looking for the names
of the slain and to confirm the hypothesis that his was a real crusader family. But he hadn’t found what he was looking for: the names were almost completely erased and the tombs themselves had been nearly effaced. After three days of searching Abu Ahmad had seen what seemed to him to be something like letters forming the name of his family. He said he couldn’t be sure but he “had his suspicions” and was very excited. On the morning of Eid el-Fitr, after he’d visited the tombs of his grandfather, father, and mother, he’d climbed up to the castle. “I didn’t wash down all the tombs, just the tomb of my grandsire, and I asked the Lord of the Worlds for mercy on his soul and forgiveness for his sins and those of his descendants.”

“But they’re Christians, Abu Ahmad, and Islamic law doesn’t allow that!” said Karim, borrowing Radwan’s logic.

“So what if they’re Christians? I’m a Christian too.”

“You’re a Christian? A little while ago you told me you were a Muslim, not to mention that Christians believe Christ is the son of God.”

“And so do I.”

“What?!”

“Jesus is from God’s spirit. It says so in the Koran.”

“But Christians say he was crucified, while you Muslims say, ‘They did not slay him, neither did they crucify him, only a likeness of that was shown to them.’ ”

“Correct.”

“What’s correct? You’ve lost me.”

“ ‘A likeness of that was shown to them,’ meaning they did mean to crucify him and the one they actually crucified looked so like him that his mother, Our Lady Mary, thought the crucified man was her son. Do you really think there’s a mother in the world who wouldn’t know her son? Do you get it now?”

“I get it and I don’t get it,” said Karim. “Anyway, what difference does it make to know if one’s forebears were crusaders or Arabs or Turkmen? In the end they’re all the same.”

“Right!” said Abu Ahmad. “But for one to be a descendant of the crusader hordes who occupied this land for two hundred years, and who left behind them only a few castles and a few descendants, most of whom have become Muslims – now that’s a lesson to learn from. I, my boy, am the last witness. The meaning​lessness of history is engraved on my forehead. Everyone should read my forehead to understand what a criminal history is, and how trivial.”

With this, Abu Ahmad raised his glass and started declaiming something that sounded like poetry:

“What’s that?” asked Karim.

“
Tareez! Tareez!
” responded Abu Ahmad. “Silence! It’s poetry. Don’t ask me what the poem means because I don’t know. My father, God rest his
soul, used to declaim it when he was drinking and made me learn the whole thing by heart.”

Abu Ahmad said he usually got up early and wanted to take Karim on a morning tour of the Castle of Saint-Gilles, “so you can smell your country’s history.”

Karim’s sleep was close to sleeplessness – a restless night in which dreams intersected with the black visions of wakefulness. The pain in his stomach was worse but he didn’t get out of bed to make a cup of “white coffee,” as Abu Ahmad had suggested to him before going to his room – Karim had refused for fear of finding himself caught up once more in a web of words. He dreamed of the orange blossom essence mixed with hot water that the Lebanese call “white coffee” and whose heartbreaking smell they love to inhale. He spent the rest of the night stretched out on this bed of drowsiness and sleeplessness, listening throughout to Abu Ahmad’s footsteps thumping in his head.

The image of Imm Yahya, covered in darkness, blended with the ghostly lights that had made shadows on Gloria’s face as she received them at her apartment. Two women living in darkness, the first blind, the second afraid of the light, each embodying the memory of oblivion. The two women occupied his night. He dreamed as though awake and lay awake as though dreaming.

The pain in his stomach mixed with the pain in his soul and Hayat was there. He saw her, her head covered with a headscarf, carrying her daughter and standing at his door while the phantom of death formed halos above her. And he saw her unveiled, love spreading out from around her, her long black hair flying in the wind. He saw Hayat’s hair covering Jamal’s eyes while Hend tugged at his hand to make him go with her.

He would open his eyes and hear the man’s footfalls, then close them again and see two small sharp eyes staring into Khaled’s face – eyes with
something yellow in their whites that cut through the darkness of death. He saw death coming out of the small eyes like a pale thread of vanishing light and heard shooting and saw Khaled shaken by the spasms of the soul as it left his lacerated body.

Karim had no idea what had been dream and what apparition; he woke at six in the morning to the smell of coffee spreading through his room. He opened his eyes and felt skewers of light piercing his drowsiness and saw Abu Ahmad standing in front of him holding a coffeepot.

He closed his eyes again but Abu Ahmad’s voice called him to get up because it was already six and they had to go to the castle before he set off for Beirut.

He had begun to get out of bed when he found Abu Ahmad sitting on the edge of it, pouring two cups of coffee, and saying, “There’s nothing nicer than to drink your coffee in bed in the morning!”

Karim said he’d visited the castle many times before and there was no need to climb up again this morning as he had to go back to Beirut; but Abu Ahmad insisted. “It won’t take more than two hours. I’ll show you the tombs and then we can go down together to the Mahatra quarter and I’ll show you Mamluke Tripoli, an architectural gem, though people call it Old Tripoli, which is wrong. Old Tripoli is the port – that was the city of the Banu Ammar and the crusader city – and then we can have beans for breakfast at Akar’s and I’ll take you to el-Tall.”

“Please, don’t talk to me about food!” said Karim, rubbing his stomach, which still hurt.

Abu Ahmad was as good as his word. The visit to the Castle of Saint-Gilles took no more than two hours. They’d climbed up to it by seven a.m. and at nine fifteen were shaking hands in farewell at el-Tall in front of the long-distance taxis to Beirut. The man talked the whole time; even when they were eating their breakfast beans, Abu Ahmad found a way to talk and
chew simultaneously. His words were filled with the clangor of history. He spoke of the genius of Raymond de Saint-Gilles, who had built the castle to prepare the way for the taking of the city; in this he was unique in his day because castles were usually built for defense; this, however, had been built for attack. He spoke of the effaced graves and the prisons that the Ottomans had built. He pointed out the church, which had been converted in Mamluke times into a mosque. He knew the castle inch by inch, as though he’d been born there, and he knew how the crusaders had built the only residential quarter that surrounded it. He said Tripoli had been the port and the soldiers in the castle had built the Mahatra quarter to serve their needs. “Don’t believe anyone who says they’re of crusader origin and live here. They were Arab and Turkmen servants and if they have crusader blood it’s because of
droit du seigneur
. The Dakiz clan is the only crusader family in Tripoli because after the massacre we fled into the surrounding fields and lived in Bahsas before returning to the port. We refused to live in the Mamluke city, which was just an extension of the servants’ quarter.”

He said the restoration had been carried out in part by the Germans, in Khan el-Khayatin and Souq el-Haraj. Then the Lebanese architect Jad Thabet had completed it in Souq el-Bazarkhan, making the Mamluke city once more a gem, but the Tripolitanians didn’t love their city. He said he could think of nothing more beautiful than the mosque of Sayed Abd el-Wahed, built by Abd el-Wahed el-Maknasi in 1305, which had been a Frankish caravanserai before the latter had converted it into a mosque; or the Ajamiyeh madrasa, founded in 1365. “A wonderful city,” said Abu Ahmad. “All its quarters, not just Mahatra, bear witness to the beauty and magic of Mamluke architecture, especially the Great Mosque of Umar.”

They sat in the café in Souq el-Haraj, where they had breakfast, then made their way through the Old City, where the white restored walls were already starting to peel, until they reached the Mosque of Tinal and the
Ramal cemetery. They entered the cemetery and Abu Ahmad went over to one of the tombs. He fetched water and washed it while Karim searched for but failed to find Khaled’s grave.

“Thank you, Abu Ahmad, for this lovely tour,” said Karim as they said goodbye.

“
Pissonyu!
” said Abu Ahmad.

Karim was wondering how to respond to this insult when Abu Ahmad quickly allayed his confusion. “That’s
la cerise sur le gâteau
, as the French say. I’ve been keeping this expression from the crusader language for the end. It’s really
‘pas un mot.’
Now you’ll never forget our language.”

As Karim was getting into the taxi he felt a hand touch his shoulder. He turned to find Sheikh Radwan’s companion, who said he’d just happened to be passing, and asked if Karim needed anything.