White Masks (27 page)

Abu Jassem is now the cadre in charge of the party office where Fahd Badreddin “works,” and he is the only person who treats Fahd with any respect. He even consults him on occasion. Besides his participation in many leadership organizations, he is responsible for special operations - including, it is rumored, the 1972 Munich Operation (although no one was able to confirm this information); he is a very senior cadre in West Beirut with many duties attached to his position. He remains, however, a man of few words.

Since the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon, Abu Jassem has become rather irascible. During the Battle of the Mountains, he was very vocal about the need for decisiveness, arguing in favor of prosecuting the war to the bitter end, to victory. But, as is well-known, the “decisiveness-in-battle” principle was eschewed in favor of Arab and international intervention - in Abu Jassem's words, a mere diversionary tactic before the coup de grâce was delivered. Waving his stump in the air, he curses the pass we have come to.

Gradually, and in spite of his reluctance, he was assigned a car, a driver, and then a bodyguard. He didn't want them, but he was told they were “unavoidable security measures” in the changing situation and that “given the positions of responsibility we are now in, you can't refuse.” So he agreed. But he agreed reluctantly. He dismissed the driver early as often as he could,
and would find some mission or other in the South on which to dispatch his bodyguard, simply in order not to be accompanied.

The captain has not changed much over the years. He's put on a little weight, maybe, but he remains a solid man. People say he drinks - everybody drinks - but he's never been on a mission drunk, so it's not a problem. He is adamant about the subject of border security, because, in his words, there is a very real danger of enemy infiltration. But when it comes to political analysis, he raises his stump in the air as if to say that he knows nothing.

The captain has not enriched himself. That is a fact. Those who have display such ostentation that it cannot pass unnoticed. But he remains unchanged. Although this place is awash with petrodollars, Abu Jassem has lost none of his probity or integrity. Everyone knows that Captain Sameer Amro could have gone the way of many others and filled his pockets, but he obviously has not had that inclination. Or perhaps it's for some other reason we don't know about; or even, simply because he has remained faithful to his principles.

When the subject of looting and other abuses is brought up, Abu Jassem is quick to retort that such incidents constitute the exception and not the rule: “These are passing aberrations which will disappear, leaving only the true combatants.”

His role in Khalil Ahmad Jaber's case is somewhat unclear. Khalil was initially taken in for questioning at the party office when Captain Sameer wasn't there, and it's possible he may not even have read the report submitted by his aide, First Lieutenant Salah. But after learning that the victim was the father of the martyr Ahmad Jaber, he went to pay his respects at the home of the deceased. He listened patiently to Khalil's wife, mobilized his
assistants and personally initiated and supervised the inquiry: he had Ali Kalakesh summoned, he interrogated Fatimah Fakhro, he read the coroner's report closely, and he considered at length the factors which led to Khalil's detention.

“I said only to arrest him ... Why did he die like that?”

They assured him that none of them had been involved in the murder, that they'd released him the same day.

“Then who is the brute that kills a poor tramp for his gold wedding band? Whatever happened to
his
manhood?”

He told them he suspected
them,
his very own men. But then he dismissed the thought. It couldn't have been them - they wouldn't kill a man for his wedding band. After all the banks that were looted, no one out there would kill a man for a petty little gold band, worth no more than a couple of hundred lira!

Faced with such an impasse, he halted the inquiry and closed the file.

He supervised the funeral arrangements personally, he went to the deceased's home and let Khalil's wife know that henceforth her late husband would be considered a martyr. He oversaw the provision of food for the occasion and regularly visited the home of the deceased, and he never tried to obfuscate the fact that Khalil had been arrested for a few hours, on his orders, four days before the body was found. He vowed to lay his hands on the murderers and have them publicly executed.

Abu Jassem took the posters of Khalil Ahmad Jaber to the house in person, and he stood in the reception line alongside the wife and other relatives for the condolences. And when the mourners questioned him on the details of the interrogation, he sipped the bitter coffee placed on the table
before him, sucking his lips in noisily and licking off the froth that stuck to them, inhaled deeply on the first drag of his cigarette, and answered with his customary cool-headedness.

“It is clear,” he said, “that we cannot allow our ranks to be infiltrated. What is going on here is a war, not a game. It's not child's play. Khalil Ahmad Jaber was detained for security reasons. Are we supposed to let ‘irregularities' escape our scrutiny? There was this man, whom no one seemed to know, trudging through residential neighborhoods, sleeping on the street and ripping down posters. He may have been booby-trapping cars or placing explosives outside the homes of law-abiding citizens. We had no idea who he was, but when we ascertained his innocence, we let him go ...”

Everyone nods in agreement.

“We were merely doing our duty. Should we allow the posters of our war heroes to be defaced? You yourselves know the value and importance of their sacrifices: if it weren't for them, none of us would be here, today; if it weren't for them, you wouldn't be able to sleep in your own beds; if it weren't for them, your homes would have been overrun and you would have been driven out of them; if it weren't for them, we would have been subverted from every tenet of our religion and faith. How could we let the posters of our martyrs, our war heroes, be torn down? You know how precious such pictures are to the relatives and friends of the dead, don't you? Didn't Khalil himself exhibit an almost passionate concern for his son's posters? Didn't he come to me over two years ago with a request to print another batch?”

The wife butts in to say that that was true - he always wanted there to be pictures of Ahmad hanging on the walls.

Abu Jassem continues.

“You see, even though Ahmad died four years ago, his father still wanted to see the pictures of his son kept on the walls. What should we tell the parents and relatives of the new martyrs? Should we tell them that their loved ones' posters are being torn down? How could we? It would be unacceptable. Will the revolution last forever? No, of course not. Speak up, if you think otherwise.”

“No, no, of course not,” everyone replies.

Mr. Munir Itani, an old friend of Khalil's, is getting quite worked up and he proclaims that the revolution is there to protect the walls and that the walls are there to protect the people. But then he glances over towards Abu Jassem and asks the comrade when he thinks all this will be over.

“When all what will be over?”

“This calamity . . . This war . . . !”

“It's going to be a long war, our enemies want to see us vanquished, and resistance is necessary. We are resisting by all the means at our disposal: we are fighting in the South, we are on a war footing in Beirut, and for the sake of the resistance we must try and lead as normal an existence as possible.”

One of the mourners - Khalil's wife doesn't know his name, he's one of Ahmad's old buddies from the sports club - mentions the various protection rackets and other abuses of power.

“It's intolerable, Comrade Abu Jassem,” he says.

“Absolutely . . . ! We will not tolerate such practices, and you must help us uncover them. Name anyone extorting protection money and I will take care of him.”

No one says anything.

“Well, why don't you speak up?”

“Oh, no reason, no reason,” says the deceased's son-in-law. “We were speaking in general, there's no need to go into particulars.”

Abu Jassem picks up where he left off.

“But in order for life to return to normal, schools, restaurants, and movie theaters all must reopen, everything should be operating normally. We have a duty both to resist and to go on with life. Do you think we should let people tear down advertisements and posters from the walls on a whim? People came and told me they'd seen a man doing just that. Should we just have sat there and done nothing? Maybe the man had been planted in our midst, we didn't know it was Khalil, may he rest in peace, so we took him in for questioning. We made public pronouncements about the return to normalcy and here was someone who was hampering the process. It's a fact, everyone is getting back down to business, offices and restaurants are reopening, the situation is improving, and there's no need for people to feel any kind of pressure.”

“Well, what about the shelling then?” someone asked.

“That's not our responsibility . . . you should ask someone else about that. Our responsibility is to look out for ordinary citizens to an even greater degree than for ourselves!”

“But all we see are politicians in fast cars, living it up like the rich, while we grow poorer by the day.”

“Nonsense! You find me a pauper, and I will find him an honorable job.”

“But what about the politicians, then . . . ?”

“What's wrong with them? Ask me, I should know. By God, they don't even have enough time to eat! Ensuring their protection is absolutely
essential . . . security precautions are indispensable in the current circumstances.”

Abu Jassem drones on, and the people let themselves be convinced. That's what people want - to be convinced that there's a reason for all this, that their fortitude, long history, and good reputations are not in vain.

“I will not let Khalil's murder go unpunished, I will discover the guilty party, and then we'll see. But we won't forget that Abu Ahmad died a martyr's death, and a family that can offer up one of its own is capable of any sacrifice or act of generosity. Unto them is paradise promised. ‘Think not of those who are slain in the way of God as dead. Nay, they are living. With their Lord they have provision.'”

Abu Jassem rises to take his leave. Everyone stands up respectfully, even the deceased's wife who, as the person befallen by tragedy, would not normally stand for anyone in such circumstances. One of the women wishes him every success.

Someone else asks the wife a question about the whitewash story; she denies everything:

“Nothing but lies! The captain assured me it was nothing but lies and gossip.”

“Then, who killed him?” Nadeem, the son-in-law, asks.

“Degenerates . . . a gang of degenerates, that's who.”

“Really . . . !”

“Everything's possible these days.”

“It is a sign of the times,” the wife says.

“It is the wrath of God, as we near the Day of Judgment, the end of times,” says the sheikh sitting in the corner of the living room.

The fact is Abu Jassem doesn't have the time for this kind of thing.

His obligations now discharged, he has dropped the case - although he was never anything but courteous to Khalil's wife, on her periodic visits to the party office. Still, tongues are wagging that he's traveling to Europe rather often these days. Fahd Badreddin thinks he goes on missions. Others say that his stump has become very painful again and that he goes for treatment. And the malicious say he goes for rest and recreation.

“But where does he get the money from?”

“Oh, money's not an issue! Beirut is awash with money.”

“But the Arabs don't
grow
oil, so where does it keep coming from?” Fahd asks.

“You're so naive,” a brash eighteen-year-old fighter answers him. “God blessed us with oil so we could be rich.”

“But it is our plague!”

“Well, without it there would be no war,” eighteen-year-old Sami goes on. “Don't you understand, it is oil money that bankrolls
all
the factions in this war.”

“And that's why we don't want it,” Fahd says.

Sami smiles: “I don't know what's happened to you. People say you were traumatized in the mountains.”

CHAPTER VI

The Posters

 

Nada happened to be at her parents' home the day news of Ahmad's untimely death arrived. People said her wailing and keening could be heard
all over the neighborhood. Ululating and rocking with grief, she ran out to the street, her head uncovered and her feet bare. Her sorrow seemed inexhaustible, she spent all her time at her parents' house and even slept there. To begin with, Nadeem Najjar didn't mind. He'd never felt this sad either. Never before in his life had he felt like this.