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Authors: Elias Khoury

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BOOK: Little Mountain
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Butros comes running from the church. Panting, he tells us: some of the pews have been taken. A whole lot of them came and covered the walls with their slogans. The two priests are very upset (by the way I forgot to mention that the two priests stayed in the church and struck up a firm friendship with Talal).

— What shall we do?

— Nothing. Protect the church and the two monks. Then there were shouts and explosions everywhere. Fighters shooting and looting. Competing with the children for the small items. A new group arrived, fighting savagely in the middle of the street. Looking for war, amid the cries and the cold.

Seeing them darting about in the middle of the street, screaming, I didn’t understand. I watched them. Rage trickled through their fingers and their teeth. They got to the music shop and broke down the door. Seizing trumpets, drums and cymbals, the musical procession set off down the middle of France Street, full of percussion, shouting, and gunfire. Another martyr. The streets made way for them and the war opened its doors to their tears.

I reached the church and went on watching them from the window. Butros was sitting in a corner all by himself, humming his Latin melody. I sat down beside him and heard the footsteps of the two priests upstairs going up to the window and watching.

My voice began to rise, Butros beside me correcting the rhythm of the funerary chant I sang.

SCENE THREE

The two Capuchins are still here. Father Marcel, about 80, and his companion whose name I couldn’t remember and whose age I couldn’t tell, for old age seeped through his fingers like water. They stayed in their room above the church, not mixing with the comrades. I knew that they viewed us with extreme suspicion and alarm. We doubted their motives for staying and they feared us and our intentions. That’s why I was surprised when the commander asked me to go out and buy them some food—milk, cheese, canned things, meat, coffee. … I went, bought the stuff, and on my way back got hold of a bottle of French wine through a friend. I told myself we’d celebrate with the two priests. They were delighted with the present but objected to the cheese.

—We want French cheese.

—That’s not possible, Father. All the shops are closed or ransacked. I nevertheless went and bought them some vile French cheese which used to be sold everywhere—that same cheese my mother would force me to eat though I could never see that it had any taste. We went up to their room, Butros, Talal and I. They were eating.

—Why don’t you taste the wine?

— I’m waiting for you, Father Marcel answered me. We’re going to celebrate together with this wine. We went back down the stairs. Father Marcel was aghast; he trembled with dismay and grief.

—What’s all this? What is it? This is a barbaric war.

—All wars are like this, Father. It’s nothing.

— No, no. Not all wars are like this. I’ve been in a war too. I was an officer in the French army during the First World War. That war wasn’t like this. We respected places of worship and we didn’t harm civilians.

— But this is a civil war. It’s the civilians who’re fighting.

We were walking side by side. Father Marcel bending down silently, fearfully, over the statues strewn on the ground. Picking up bits of debris, muttering words I couldn’t make out, prayers, or curses, or a mixture of both. Look, Father Marcel said. The church is a ship. Look at the architecture: a church is built like a ship. The church is a ship floating above the world. It is in the world but not of it. I’m not sad. This is a barbaric war, and the winds are blowing against our ship and it has been wrecked. But we’ll rebuild it.

— I’m afraid the ship might sink, Father, Butros said maliciously.

— No, no. The ship can’t sink in the world. It is in it and not of it. It might be wrecked, that’s possible. But it can’t sink.

I turned to Father Marcel and saw his face extend across the surface of his white hair as he beheld the shipwreck and its sorrows. This is a man full of memories. These last few moments of his have become memories. Poor Father Marcel.

— But Father, this religious concept about the church, it is common both to you and to the Eastern Christians?

— Naturally, my son. Its an old concept. It was established long before the schisms and the religious wars. The church is a ship and the world a rough sea. No two people disagree over that.

—Then, what
is
the difference? Talal asked.

—That’s a very complicated story. But I can tell you that, in principle, the difference has to do with the fundamental view of the relationship between religion and life.
We
are practical, rational people. For us, religion regulates the relationship between God and life, it is rational and organized, it orders things. But Eastern Christians, now they’re mystics. In the past, they didn’t understand the relationship between religion and the state and now they’ve become a cover for Communism and atheism.

Father Marcel resumed his tour. He was bowed with grief. His face blended with the church’s empty space, empty but for the debris and the remnants of the altar. As he walked, the sound of his footsteps striking the floor grew louder, and straw and the bits and pieces of shells flew about the bottom of his brown robe. The thin sun, tinted by the church’s stained glass, reflected its colors on the undulating robe.

Lets go up now, Father Marcel said. Let’s drink to my friendship for the
fedayeen.

Father Marcel opened the bottle of wine like a professional soldier. He filled the glasses and drank to our new friendship. He was happy as a child with the wine but he drank like a soldier.

—Why did you do this to the church? This is no ordinary church. Its a cathedral. Do you know what a cathedral is?

I shrugged my shoulders.

—A cathedral is the central church. The big church. Everyone’s church. And yet you went and destroyed it.

—As you can see, Father, we’re not the only ones here. There are lots of fighters. Aside from that, the church was almost destroyed when we entered it. And you know that we had to take it: it’s a strategic location, and besides the enemy used it to fire on us.

We sat and drank around a small table spread with the cheese and the wine. The other priest sat next to us, eating and drinking, taking no notice of us. I think he was looking at us from under his half-shut eyes with hatred and resentment.

Father Marcel began telling us his story: I came to Lebanon, he said, after World War I. I was a lieutenant in the French army. Then I got to know this country and fell in love with it. I loved two things about it: the commerce and the openness to the West. This is an amazing country, and its people are amazing. I wanted to stay so I did. As to how I became a priest, that’s an interesting story. I believed, like all French soldiers, that we were the bearers of a civilizing mission to the oppressed peoples of the Orient. We came here full of dreams. We were coming to the exotic East. To the land of Lamartine, which we were going to rescue from serfdom. Then, after the battles the French army was forced to fight in these lands, I found that the only way to peoples hearts was not by the sword but through culture. If they studied in our schools, they’d learn our language, would strengthen their economic ties with us and learn about civilization. At first, I wanted to be a teacher in one of the Catholic schools. The teaching led me to God. You see, I came to religion by way of civilization and not, as is usual with you, civilization being introduced to your countries by way of religion.

Talal blew the smoke from his cigarette into the air, his big eyes looking skeptically at the priest. But Father, you didn’t introduce civilization into our countries. You’re just colonizers, coming in with the ten commandments. Giving us the commandments and taking the land.

—That’s not true. That’s the way Communists talk. No, my son, we didn’t take anything. We lost our best men to the cause of our civilizing mission. Then we left of our own good will.

— I don’t believe you left of your own good will. You left because you were forced to.

Father Marcel wearies of the ideological discussion. He doesn’t like ideology. Ideology is the instrument of the age of materialism to ensnare young people. It inevitably leads to people’s enslavement to materialism. So they become fanatical and closed to discussion.

— You were a lieutenant in the French army when it entered our country, Father. So you must have taken part in the battle of Maysaloun.
*

— Maysaloun, no, I didn’t take part in it. I took part in many other battles. In the battles for the Jabal Druze and Ghawtah, outside Damascus. And I recall that we were models of chivalry and discipline, and harmed no one.

— But Father, the massacres and excesses of the battles of Ghawtah and the Jabal are well known. I’ve read General Andreas book about these battles. He writes with delight about the occupation, and the expulsion of the Druze, and the killing of the rebel groups in Ghawtah.

— General Andrea? He was my friend. Poor General Andrea, he was earnest and romantic, his entire ambition was to become a marshall in the French army, but he died of a heart attack. Poor Andrea. Listen carefully. (Here, the priests tone sharpened.) War is war. You can’t fight your enemies, you can’t stop terrorists and spies and the enemies of civilization without killing some of them. The fate of civilization was at stake. The fate of French history hung on the outcome of the Jabal and Ghawtah battles. Leniency was out of the question. Things had to be quick and sharp.

— What’s the difference between a priest and a cop, Father Andrea? He’d be wearing a French officer’s uniform, holding a gun in his right hand and a glass of wine in the other. He’d tell revolting jokes about the Arab dead who were left out in the open in their black clothes with no one to bury them. … We’re tough, the officer would say, surrounded by Senegalese and Circassian soldiers who spoke pidgin French and talked about heroism and civilization and women.

— What’s the difference between a priest and a cop, Father?

The church was a ship, but the helm was smashed. The church wouldn’t sink. And, upstairs, lived two aged priests with their memories and sorrows.

— Why are those who love Western civilization being defeated?

But
we
were looking for the sea.

The church has become a support position. Grinov shots reverberating in the air, Jaber’s machine-gun lying silent then bursting forth. Rubble all around. And with us, Father Marcel, his companion and memories of France.

— How will you say mass, Father!

— It’ll be a silent mass, he answers me. Amid such cacophony, we seek out silence. We want silence to reign once again. Silence alone is the key to contemplation.

Sameer was talking and telling jokes non-stop, Butros humming his tune, and Talal thinking about his new film. The guns wouldn’t hush.

SCENE FOUR

Between the wrecked church and Bab Idriss Square, where the forward positions were, moments blended into one another. The church had become a secondary position, but we stayed in it and it was now our favorite sleeping-place. A large courtyard, thick walls. Coldness and memories. And during the long days, we’d sit between its walls, or around the windows, asking questions and answering them.

— But why didn’t you kill me? Father Marcel would say.

— No, Father! Why should we kill you? We may or may not agree with you. But we wouldn’t kill you.

— But war is full of killing.

— No, Father. The war is one thing and killing you is another.

Death, here, was an interval. Just an instant of love, or an instant of hatred. A moment to step into, a moment to wait for. Talal was always talking to me about death. What is death? You feel nothing. Just like that, all of a sudden, you feel nothing. You open the door, then you step in, then nothing. Id look at his eyes and see them widening. What’s the relationship between death and wide-open eyes?

The battles were a lesson. But death —that’s something else. I carried him across my shoulder, he quivered like a bird.

Death is a bird, Butros would say.

But we fight to win, not to die, Jaber would shout.

We die for the sake of a poster, I answered. The color photograph, with the colored writing underneath, and the tear-filled eyes of the young girls behind.

— No way, Father. We wouldn’t kill you.

And the prisoner, what shall we do with the prisoner? Ahmed would ask.

— Kill him on the spot. This is a war without pris oners. They kill you without justification. They kill you be cause your name is what it is and not something else.
*
They skin our dead and finish off the wounded. This is a war with out prisoners. Prisoners are killed on the spot.

The bird on my shoulder was quivering. My face wet with hot blood, and his body stretching from my hand to the world’s end. The bird making his last lament, the sea and the rain all around him. I darted between the shells and the explosions. Then I put him down beside me. I sat and talked to him. A child, his face fondled by the breeze, a child who wouldn’t cry. I carried him again. When I reached the hospital, the doctor told me he was dead. I didn’t understand a thing. I returned to my companions and we went on shooting and advancing, and laughed and told jokes.

— No, we wouldn’t kill the prisoner, but take him and put him inside Father Marcel’s brown robes. Butros leaped to his habit, put it on, and raised his hand bidding us be silent, humming his Latin chant. We left him alone with his rituals and dreams.

I was walking about the hall of St. Louis Cathedral. This is an old church, a very old church. Maybe it was built in the age of the church missions. Maybe it was built by the first silk merchant to arrive in Beirut from Lyons, in fulfillment of a vow he made for the success of his commerce. The fact is that I forgot to ask the priest about the history of the church, how it was built and since when there has been a community called the Latins in our country. The important thing is the organ. Lying on the floor, broken, moaning, its beautiful melodious sound gone. And everywhere, the remnants of smashed floor tiles and water from the rain. The thick walls white but pock-marked, with multi-colored graffiti, black and red and green, all over. And between a holy statue and an ancient icon, you can read:
allahu akbar,
Fateh
*
was here. And all around, the sounds of percussion and the echo. I didn’t used to understand what an echo was. When we were little, we would go to the
wadi
overlooking Nahr Beirut and shout, and our voices returned, repeated over and over again. But here the echo has a different beat. One shell becomes a whole battle. The echo mingles with the sound of glass and the rattle of the censer and the pacing of the priests’ footsteps.

BOOK: Little Mountain
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