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Marwan is rotting now at a crossroads. Marwan did not marry her. Intissar didn’t need to ask him why. He said to her: You want me to make children who will live in wretched camps getting shelled by the Phalangists? She saw hope in children. For him hope was in fighting. The struggle. Defeat has welded Marwan to the ground of Beirut. He has fallen. She loves Marwan’s generous nobility. They fought alongside for two years. Thanks to him she became a combatant. Everyone knows her, respects her. She holds her head in her hands. She is crying. Habib brings her a bottle of water, in silence. She drinks. Her canvas pants are soaked with sweat and tears. She’ll never see Marwan again. She must see him again. Yesterday he left in the afternoon for the outpost. The bombardments had fallen silent. No planes. He kissed her gently on the lips. She had wanted him. To hold him. To have him inside her. She caressed him. He laughed, he kissed her a second time and left.

Intissar gets up. Ahmad is watching Habib and the others play cards, discussing the negotiations. Rumors. Possible destinations. Where will they go to play cards, and for how long? Intissar suddenly wonders if she’ll go with them. Without Marwan. For an unknown destination. To fight for what? There will always be time to think about it. Now, courage. She has to convince them to go look for the body.

She goes over to the group of cardplayers.

Ahmad is staring at her. She doesn’t know if she should see compassion in his gaze or lust. Or both at once, maybe.

“I . . . I want to go look for him,” she says.

Habib sighs. Ahmad opens his eyes wide. The others drop their cards.

“Intissar, wait. You can’t go there alone. We’ll go tonight.”

Habib looks as if he has resigned himself to accompanying her. He didn’t even try to refuse or mention the danger of the expedition.

Suddenly, a low-flying plane rips through the sky. Then another. The players get up.

“It’s started up again,” says Ahmad.

At over 400 meters a second you can cross Palestine and Lebanon in so little time. The Israeli aircraft need only a few minutes to reach their bases in the Negev or in Tel Aviv. A bomb explodes, far behind them. The phosphorus burns on contact with the air for hours. The wounds it causes are terrible, they don’t stop burning.

They are too close to the Israeli lines to risk anything. Without a doubt it’s civilians who are burning. She remembers the first bombings at the beginning of the invasion. Dozens of victims in the hospital in Gaza, so many children. Horribly burned. The doctors couldn’t believe their eyes—for phosphorus, they consulted the manuals to learn how to treat the wounds, you needed copper sulfate; they didn’t have any, so they watched the hands or feet melt until they disappeared. Then the hospital itself was bombed. Then the neighborhood was reduced to ashes. Then there was the battle for Khalde, then the battle for the airport, then a ceasefire, then the siege, then sporadic battles, and now Marwan is dead.

Which doesn’t stop the Israelis from continuing to drop a few bombs on the crumbling city now and then. A candle wavering. From Mazraa to Hamra passing through Raouche, West Beirut is an immense refugee camp, a giant field hospital. Those who fled from the South have joined the displaced from Fakhani, from Shatila, from Burj al Barajinah, from Ouzay where the houses are in ruins. No more water, no more electricity, no more gas for the generators, no more medicine, no more food. The only respite is at night, when the relative coolness of the sea air coincides with the pause in the bombings. Until the early morning. In the bedroom in that apartment in Hamra, in the last days, that was when they made love, in silence so as not to disturb anyone, with the window open to take advantage of the breeze. Four days? Four quiet days during the negotiations between Arafat and the Americans. A respite, an idle period before the inevitable fall.

“It’s begun again,” Ahmad says.

The second bomb sounds closer, they can hear the shrill cry of the plane moving away from the anti-aircraft fire. She wonders what the pilots can see, from so high up. They must see as far as Damascus, beyond the mountain. Apparently, when Leila Khaled hijacked the TWA plane, she forced the pilot to fly over Haifa, to see Galilee from above. Marwan told her that. He will never see Palestine. Does it still exist, even? She does not believe that there is a city in Palestine as beautiful as Beirut, in winter, when you can see snow on Mount Sannine from the Corniche. A city plunging into the sea like Beirut in Raouche or in Ramlet el Bayda. A city with a lighthouse, hills, luxury hotels, shops, cafés, restaurants, fishermen, lovers by the water’s edge, more nightclubs, brothels, universities, politicians, and journalists than you know what to do with. Dead people, too, so many you don’t know where to put them. What will she do with Marwan’s body? She’ll undress it. She’ll wash it herself. She’ll bury it. If it weren’t forbidden by religion, she’d build a big bonfire and burn it. On the beach. Like a beacon. She’d watch Marwan go up in smoke into the summer sky and rejoin Palestine through the air, with the Israeli planes. No, she’ll bury him in Lebanese soil. In an improvised, temporary cemetery full of Palestinian graves. To whom does the land belong, anyway? To farmers and to the dead.

“Another one,” says Ahmad.

This time the explosion is huge. The building trembles and they are covered with dust. The cataclysmic noise and the vibrations threw Intissar to the ground. Her ears are whistling. She gets back up, dusting herself off. Carefully, two fighters go out the back to see where the bomb fell.

Why go on bombing if they know they’ve won? What isn’t already shattered? She feels an impotent rage building up inside her, a white-hot fury, as happens every time. What can you do against planes? The few SAM-7 and -8 missiles they have are unusable; not enough people know how to use them properly. Marwan. Tonight they’ll go look for Marwan’s body, she’ll bury it, she’ll cry, and she’ll wait for everything to collapse.

•

The war had displaced her many times since 1975. From her parents’ house to this room in Hamra. Seven years. The first autumn of the conflict, around the time of her twentieth birthday, it was butchery. Armed posses, axe massacres, shootings, pillages, bombings. Then habit set in. She remembers demonstrations, strikes, universities closed, the massacres of the Quarantaine, the siege of Tell Zaatar, it became a kind of macabre routine. Until that morning in August 1978, almost four years ago to the day, when her parents died. Both of them. The attack completely destroyed the PLO headquarters, 150 dead. Mourning struck her down. For the months that followed, she was wiped out. Wandered ghostlike with no weight on the ground. The apartment empty, the windows taped to keep them from shattering when the bombs fell. Permanent twilight. Endless menstruation, a body that kept bleeding. No willpower, nothing. She was floating, like Beirut, according to international agreements. Losing Marwan today isn’t any harder. Or less hard. Start everything over again, always. Lose the city, each time, the city that began to liquefy beneath the bombs, to empty itself out slowly into the sea, the enemy at its ramparts, everywhere. Thinking is useless. Let come what may. She’ll go recover Marwan’s body, wash it and bury it, and then, then, according to what the Americans, the Israelis, the Russians, and other distant gods decide, they’ll do with her what they like.

Nightfall comes slowly. She remembers waiting for the end of the Ramadan fast, in spring or summer, endless. When she was little she cheated—she was too thirsty in the late afternoon, she went to drink in the bathroom, and then, ashamed, asked God for forgiveness. Helping prepare the
iftar
dishes and the countless pastries was a real torture. Her mother suspected that she cheated, of course, but she didn’t say anything. She smiled all the time. How did she manage to resist, her mother, with her hands in the food, preparing the soups, the dumplings, the cakes, the drinks—her father arrived a few minutes before the
adhan
and the breaking of the fast, the sky of Beirut was already tinged with pink and saffron, Intissar was seated at the dinner table, the dishes were served, she felt like a runner at the starting line. Her parents were not religious. They belonged to the Marxist left of the Fatah. Ramadan had nothing to do with religion. It was a victory over self, and a tradition. A victory for Palestine, almost. A tradition that linked you to a world, to the world of childhood and the orange
qamar eddin
imported from Syria, to lentil soup, to tamarind juice from India, to cinnamon, to cardamom, to the night falling gently over an entire people who were stuffing themselves, before singing, laughing, or watching Egyptian movies, old celebratory movies where Samya Gamal always bewitched Farid el Atrash. Intissar tried to dance like her, swaying her bony hips, moving the chest that she didn’t have yet, and late at night they slept a little, until the shouts of dawn and the beginning of the new day of fasting.

Now she is waiting to go recover Marwan’s corpse. Habib and the others have started up their card game again while they smoke. From time to time one of the fighters will take a look outside, a quick patrol. You’d think the Israelis won’t try anything as long as negotiations are in progress, but you never know. They won the battle of Beirut. No one can prevent the city from falling. Intissar admires the morale of the soldiers. For them, this defeat is only a stage. They survived the Catastrophe, the war of 1967, Black September; they will survive the fall. The Cause will survive. They will start over from zero somewhere, wherever it may be. Until they recover a piece of land to settle on. A homeland that is not just a name in the clouds. Not her. If the city falls she will fall with it. She will fall with Beirut and Marwan. She pictures her own body beneath the sun in a narrow street, pierced by Maronite knives or Israeli bayonets, in the midst of a pile of corpses.

However long the dusk may seem, night always ends up arriving.

Habib and his soldiers eat some halva with a little bread. Ahmad offers her some, but she shakes her head. Yesterday it was Marwan who would have handed it to her. Fighters are the same, they do exactly the same things they did yesterday, smoke, play cards, eat halva or sardines; Marwan died for nothing, nothing has changed in the world, absolutely nothing, someone plays in his place, someone eats in his place, someone offers Intissar halva in his place, the city will fall, the fighters will leave and Marwan will stay there. Intissar drowses for a bit, her arms crossed, her chin resting on her chest.

Habib awakens her, touching her gently on her shoulder.

“Get ready, we’re about to go.”

She gets up, stretches her legs, empties her bottle of water, isolates herself in the out-of-order bathroom piled with excrement, which she leaves almost immediately, on the verge of nausea.

It’s still just as hot. She takes off her jacket for a bit; her khaki T-shirt is soaked. She withdraws a little into the half-light and takes off her bra. So much for modesty, decency, or the comfort of running. She throws the sweat-drenched bra into a dark corner.

As always before an operation, her heart is beating faster, her mouth is dry. She has strange cramps in her jaw. She concentrates, checks her weapon, the ammunition, the grenades. She makes sure her laces are tied and her belt notched securely. She is ready. Habib and the others pass around a last joint and a bottle of water. Ahmad, Habib and Intissar will go out. The other three stay here in case. One of them has settled into the seat behind the machine gun to be able to cover their retreat if something goes wrong. The second gets the rocket-propelled grenades ready, and the third finishes the hashish as he looks at the ceiling.

Habib doesn’t need to explain the tactics or spell out the marching orders. They are trained and hardened, they understand each other in silence. The summer night is clear, there is some moonlight, they’ll have to cling to the walls. All three of them know that the Israelis will only attack if they feel threatened, if they think a commando is trying to infiltrate their lines. In theory, even though Marwan was shot down, a ceasefire is in effect. They go around the building to reach the main street by the other side and follow the sidewalk south. They pass a few meters away from the improvised gunhole where the muzzle of their machine gun sticks out, and turn right into a little street that penetrates the Israeli lines. Intissar feels a strange pressure in her ears. She can hear herself breathe. They have already covered a hundred meters. Just 200 left. They progress quickly, as quietly as possible, then freeze to scrutinize the night. A few noises, in the distance, cars, from time to time. They will have to carry Marwan. 300 meters. Ahmad guides them into a passageway between two buildings and freezes. By gestures he conveys that the crossroads with the twisted streetlight where Marwan fell is just in front. She should not have come. She realizes that now. She should not have come—Habib and Ahmad knew it. They also knew that it would have been impossible to make her change her mind. She feels herself trembling. The body is there, on the other side of the street, behind that collapsed building. She glances over, sees the charred metal pole twisted like a tree, its shape stretched out. Ahmad and Habib busy themselves around Marwan. She watches the end of the street where the shots came from. The bullets that tore through Marwan’s back. Over there. Total darkness. Silence. Habib and Ahmad cross the street quickly, they are carrying Marwan, Marwan’s head lolls back, his eyes are aimed upwards, to look at the sky, they hurry to get back to her, Habib stumbles, he falls forward, lets go of the body that falls heavily onto the ground, Intissar feels tears flowing down her cheeks, they are in the open in the middle of the street, she is afraid, on the left they hear an abrupt detonation, a tiny pop like a cork, followed by a high-pitched whistle, and suddenly the night is lit up in red, she sees as if in full daylight the terrified faces of Habib and Ahmad, the twisted neck of Marwan on the ground, his mouth open, his hands rigid, Ahmad lets go of Marwan’s legs and runs to take cover, Habib huddles down, gathers Marwan and begins to pull him all alone over to the street, she hears shouts in Hebrew, Ahmad reaches her out of breath and turns around, shouting: “What is that idiot doing? Run, Habib, run, let him go and run,” Habib does not let Marwan go, he drags him as fast as possible, just twenty meters to go, then ten, Intissar hurries to help him the instant a timid Israeli volley scatters the wall on their right with bullets, a big caliber plop plop plop plop chips the cement in the night that’s come back now, the flare fell on a building, she gets hold of Marwan’s hands without thinking, they are hard and cold, they are no longer hands, she lifts him from the ground carries him with Habib, he is heavy the street is again plunged into darkness, that’s it they’re under cover, her heart about to explode, Intissar’s eyes are drenched in tears and sweat, she collapses against the wall to catch her breath. Forty centimeters away from her, Marwan’s face. In the half-light she can make out his fixed stare, his open mouth, the trail of blood on his chin and cheeks, his shirt has ridden up to his neck from the traction, also black with blood. Habib murmurs: “Come on, quick.”