We slowed down in front of a book and magazine vendor who had spread out his goods on the sidewalk. I bought a copy of the Arabic translation of Miles Copeland’s Game of Nations, which revealed the secret of the well-known “game room” inside the Pentagon. Likewise, I bought several books that were banned in Egypt, among them one on the October 6 War and the Camp David Agreement. There were several porn magazines, including one that was new in Arabic. I flipped through its pages, and then bought it.
Wadia pointed out a book by Naguib Mahfouz in an unusual format, and another by Jurji Zaydan in a cheap binding with faded colors.
“Those two books are pirated,” he said.
My face registered surprise.
“They are photocopied from the original edition. Publishing here isn’t subject to rules and has no standards. Most publishers are thieves. They make an agreement with you to print, say, three thousand copies of the book, but they secretly print five thousand. Then they get out of paying what’s owed to you, making the excuse that only a limited number of your books were distributed.”
We continued walking, then moved off onto side streets. We entered a modern building and took the elevator up to the second floor. I followed Wadia into an open apartment. On the door hung a sign for the Nazar Baalbaki Agency.
Wadia’s office contained two desks that faced each other, a metal shelving unit for books and folders, and a television. The furnishings were obviously new and chic.
“Does Nazar have money, or is someone else backing him?” I asked, as I put my suitcase next to the wall.
He sat down at one of the two desks, pulled out a pile of newspapers and magazines, and began flipping through them. Then he said, “A group of rich people from the Gulf, so he says.”
“But in reality?”
“Libya, mostly.”
I tossed my shoulder bag on the other desk, and sat down at it. I pulled out the envelope that contained my manuscript, and set it to one side. I picked up one of the magazines.
A young man brought us some cups of coffee, and Wadia gave him the manuscript, asking him to take it to the archive so they could make three copies of it. Then he made several phone calls, the upshot of which was that he managed to get the phone number of Adnan Sabbagh. He dialed the number several times without getting an answer.
Wadia was engrossed in his writing, while I made use of the books on the shelving unit to look up the addresses and phone numbers of several publishing houses. An hour later, the photocopies came back to us, and I busied myself going over them. After another hour, Wadia finished writing, and left the room. He returned after a few minutes and tried calling Adnan’s house once again, but with no success.
He carried my suitcase for me, and we left the office. We took a taxi to his house. I went up to his apartment while he stopped off at a nearby grilled-meat shop.
The refrigerator was filled with beer cans. I took out two and carried them into the living room. A few moments later, Wadia arrived, and we sat down to drink our beers while he turned the radio dial to search for the news.
“There are at least seven Lebanese radio stations broadcasting from now until 10 pm,” he said. “One belongs to the Phalangists, and another to Suleiman Frangieh, and a third is run by American churches and speaks in the name of Saad Haddad’s mini-state in the south. The fourth one is Nasserist — it broadcasts songs by Umm Kulthoum, Abd al-Halim Hafez and Shaykh Imam, and is run by the Mourabitoun. And on top of that, there’s the official station.”
Fairuz’s voice reached our ears, and I asked him whose station that was.
“All the stations play Fairuz’s songs,” he replied. “Even though she’s a Maronite.”
The news was calm: the morning funeral service had passed uneventfully. The parties and organizations had offered each other condolences and announced a desire to stabilize the security situation. The Mourabitoun station said that Bashir Gemayel, the military leader for the Phalangists, was making ready to announce a Maronite state in the eastern district on the anniversary of Lebanese independence, which would take place in two weeks’ time. As for the official station, it was interested in news reports of accidents and miscellaneous crimes — the most important of which was a crime that took place in Jbail province (a Christian area, apparently). Elias al-Shami had raped a woman named Mariam in the village of Ayn al-Quwayni, and when she became pregnant, he abandoned her. It was a huge scandal in the village, and a doctor agreed to give the woman an abortion. Then pressure was put on Elias, until — against his will — he agreed to marry her. Not long after that, he killed her with pesticides and then turned himself in to the Phalangists.
I drank my beer before the food we’d ordered arrived on a big tray covered with clean linen. Removing the cover revealed paper plates filled with small pieces of grilled meat, and several plates of green salad and mezze, one of which was hummus with tahini, and another was green mint, a third was garlic mashed with potatoes, a fourth was pickled cucumber, and a fifth was pickled eggplant stuffed with garlic and green cilantro. There was a fork and spoon wrapped in thin paper. Everything was clean, neat and mouthwatering.
We ate, dividing our attention between the radio and the television, which capped off the midday period with an episode from an American TV series. We both took refuge in our beds for a nap. But I couldn’t doze off. I got up, went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. Then I made some coffee for myself and for Wadia when he woke up. I put a bottle of whiskey and a container of ice on the table. We began switching between the television channels, moving between an American cop show and an Egyptian one with the title Loyalty Without End, and then the news in French. From the choice of evening programs, we selected an American film about the Beatles. We switched to Channel 5, and patiently waited while a long string of ads made their way through the expected roster of perfumes, cigarettes and foreign toothpastes, not to mention the Toshiba fan, featuring four blades and a nightlight, and the radical changes coming in the Arab region, as predicted by the Jordanian monarch in an exhaustive magazine interview.
Finally, the film began, so I filled my glass and Wadia reluctantly agreed to drink also. By the time we got halfway through the film, we had had several glasses, and we gradually returned to the 1960s: prison, Vietnam, Gamal Abdel Nasser, ’67, the students’ uprising, Che Guevara, and Brigitte Bardot. It wasn’t long before we were overcome by a violent feeling of depression.
Chapter 5
The Sunday papers made much of reports of the security détente. Al-Safeer announced that the next twenty-four hours would be decisive with regards to the security situation in West Beirut, and the final and radical handling of what it termed “transgressions against personal security, dignity and property, and activities involving extortion and threats, protection money and robbery, not to mention entanglements between individuals and organizations, as well as undisciplined elements that frighten peaceful citizens and rob them of their dwindling insistence on clinging to their land, nation or cause”.
The newspaper had a spread of photos of the meetings between the leaders of the different organizations and parties in West Beirut and the leaders of all the warring sides. One of the photos had them all together, with Yasser Arafat in the middle. Likewise, there were photos of the memorial service for Bashir Ubayd and Khayr Bek in a church, and photos of the funeral procession, at the head of which was a beautiful young woman in her twenties: Nahiya Bijani.