Chapter 9
The gunfire was extremely close and sudden enough that a glass of whiskey nearly fell out of my hand. I was sitting in the living room with Wadia watching a French movie on television.
“The top floor, most likely,” Wadia said, without taking his eyes off the television screen.
I put my glass on the table and asked him, “What do you think it was?”
He shrugged. “Could be anything,” he replied.
I stood up, walked to the balcony and pulled open the door. I stepped outside and the cold air brushed my face. I stood watching the quiet street plunged in darkness. I glanced at my watch and found that it was midnight.
I could sense Wadia behind me and heard him say in a soft voice: “The best thing to do in these situations is nothing at all.”
I turned around and went back inside. He followed me.
“This isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last,” he added. “Only two months ago, three armed men knocked on the door of the apartment directly next to mine. When the person inside opened it, they shot him. He was an Iraqi Communist.”
I lit a cigarette. “And who were they?” I asked.
“Iraqi intelligence.”
“They killed him and left, just like that?”
“The man who was killed was under Arafat’s protection. Lebanese Communists avoided him out of a desire to maintain their relationship with Saddam Hussein. When Arafat learned what happened, he issued his order to Fatah’s security apparatus. It arrested dozens of Iraqi Baath agents. After that, things were even among all sides as usual.”
The sound of a car speeding in the street rang out. It stopped in front of our building. The sound of a conversation among several people came up to us. The sound of their voices grew distant, then a little later echoed back, muffled, and then broke off. Then a knocking on the doors of the floor below us rang out. Then it was silent.
Wadia had lowered the volume on the television, and I was about to turn it up again when heavy footfalls approached the door of the apartment and the doorbell rang.
Wadia’s face grew pale; then he got up and walked toward the door, shouting, “Who is it?”
We heard Abu Shakir’s voice: “It’s me, Mr Wadia. There are some comrades from Group 17.”
“Fatah security,” Wadia whispered to me.
Wadia turned the key in the door, and hesitantly opened up, revealing the doorman accompanied by two young men armed with Kalashnikovs. One of them was of medium height, in his twenties. A look of embarrassment appeared on his face — just the opposite of his colleague, who was older than he. His face was clearly lined with experience and authority.
The older one politely asked to see the owner of the apartment, and Wadia presented himself. I pulled out my passport.
“Did the two of you hear the bullets?” he asked, looking back and forth at our faces.
“We heard one bullet while we were sitting here,” Wadia replied.
“And you don’t know where it came from?”
Wadia shook his head, and the young man asked to take a look around the apartment. Wadia stepped back from the door and we went with the man to my room, where he inspected its contents without touching anything. Then we moved to Wadia’s room.
The gun was still in its place on the bedside table. Noticing it, the young man picked it up and raised its barrel to his nose. Then he brought it out to the living room. He pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and wrote down in it the gun’s identification numbers, then he left the gun on the table. He tore a white piece of paper out of the notebook and wrote several phone numbers on it.
“Please call one of these numbers if you learn anything,” he said, handing the paper to Wadia.
Wadia took it from him. “I know the number,” he said. “Will do.”
The two men expressed their regret for having disturbed us. They left the apartment and joined Abu Shakir, who walked ahead of them to the next apartment.
Wadia closed the door while I poured myself a glass of whiskey.
“Pour one for me, too,” he said, flinging himself into a chair.
I filled his glass and handed it to him. He raised it to his lips, then returned it to the table, saying, “Now I remember. I’ve met that gunman before. At the time he was in the Popular Front.”
“Why did he leave it to go to Fatah?” I wondered.
He shrugged. “Who knows?” he replied. “Maybe he got into an argument with his superiors, or he disagreed with them ideologically. Or he made some mistake that they wanted to punish him for. Maybe the salary was the reason. Fatah pays its fighters more.”
I reached out for the gun and picked it up. I turned it over carefully.
“Do you know this is the first time in my life I’ve touched a real handgun? I was well trained with Russian rifles during the Suez War. An old soldier trained us. He was harsh with us because of our political opinions. When we went to prison, he was transferred there. By coincidence, I believe. He enjoyed being in charge of tormenting us. He would have us gather in front of him and order us to squat down and call out ‘Long live Gamal Abdel Nasser!’ As though cheering for Nasser required all that distress.”
I put the gun back. I happened to look at the television set and saw that the film was over; the presenter was reading the latest news bulletin. I turned up the volume.
The situation in Beirut was quiet. The situation in the Gulf was just the opposite. Iraqi and Iranian forces had begun destroying petroleum facilities in the two countries, and the number of war refugees from the two sides totaled over a million.
The final news item came from Egypt, the gist of which was that an American transport plane had been destroyed in the early hours of the morning on its descent into the Cairo West Air Base, during training for the US Rapid Deployment Force. Thirteen American soldiers were killed.
I felt a little elated and poured myself another glass.
“You’re drinking a lot,” Wadia said, as he slowly sipped his drink.
I turned off the television. “I can’t sleep,” I said.
“I’ll give you a Valium.”
“That makes me spacy in the morning. You know I need to be fully alert when recording the shots.”
A sly smile played over his lips.
“I see you’ve become enthusiastic about the film,” he said. “Generally speaking, Antoinette is a fantastic girl.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s not complicated. She goes to bed with men quickly.”
As I lit a cigarette and approached the bookshelf, I told him: “That’s completely the opposite of what I want. I go to bed with women slowly.”
I flipped through the few books on the shelf and picked an old one by Colin Wilson.
“Read it,” said Wadia. “He claims that prolonging orgasms will lead to eternal happiness for humanity.”
I put the book back and took another one.
“That’s not a problem for me,” I said.
“So what is your problem?”
“What do you feel during orgasm?” I asked him.
“Sometimes I haul with pleasure.”
“Lucky you.”
I picked up my notebook and my pack of cigarettes from the table.
“I’ll try to sleep. Goodnight.”
I went to my room, took off my clothes and lay down on the bed. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling, and I thought about my ex-wife. Then I thought about the first girl I loved, or to be exact, the first girl we loved. Wadia and I and two other friends of ours were in love with her at the same time. That was at the university, at the beginning of the 1950s, when the wealthy and the aristocratic were the only ones who could break the hidden barriers erected between the sexes. We stood around her all the time and walked with her for hours on end. When it got cold, we would play the hand-warming game, and she would put her right hand in my left pocket and her left hand in Wadia’s right pocket.