Hala disappeared from the scene. Danny, who told the boys of Hala’s detention and release, said the girl had nothing to do with anything. “I don’t know how Malak could have been her boyfriend and promised to marry her. A conservative girl in the full sense of the word who had nothing to do with the political struggle. I don’t know what he saw in her. It’s not enough for a girl to have brown skin and green eyes for one to take her as one’s life companion.”
“Politics is like that,” Danny had said, stressing the difference between mass struggle and assassination. Karim couldn’t think what to say. He didn’t say that the statement was tendentious nonsense, though that was what had occurred to him. He felt lost because sometimes he fought with the boys and was a part of the civil war, but he didn’t know how to tell his comrades that playing with the fire of wars like this could lead only to the abyss. In fact, he did say this to Danny once when they were drinking vodka. Sahar was there, filling the apartment with her vivacity and beauty — a svelte woman with penciled eyebrows, honey-colored eyes, and a loving smile that never left her lips. With her was her daughter, Suha, who was seven, and whom everyone who saw her thought was a miniature of her mother. They were like two sisters competing for the heart of one man, and Danny relished this double love.
Karim said that playing with the sectarian fires of Lebanon and reviving the bloody scores of the civil war of 1860 would mean an end to all revolutionary thinking and a return to the dark ages.
Danny smiled contemptuously as he tried to explain to his hesitant comrade that, unlike Nevsky Prospekt, revolution doesn’t go in a straight line and that Lenin had known, as he led the world’s first socialist revolution, that it would have to get its feet dirty in the mud of history.
“But Nevsky Prospekt’s in Leningrad, not Beirut,” answered Karim.
“True,” said Danny, “but revolution here is the same as revolution there.”
“But here there are only sects, and sects are scary,” said Karim.
“True and not true,” said Danny. “Don’t forget the classes and the class struggle. But you’re right, the sects are a big danger and the only thing that can deal with and neutralize that danger is a cohesive revolutionary vanguard.”
“But where’s the vanguard?” asked Karim.
“We’re the vanguard,” said Danny. “You saw Malak’s heroic action and how he forced the university to reinstate all the expelled students. That was vanguard stuff.”
“But you just said we were against assassinations!”
“Against them in principle, that’s true, but on occasion they are necessary. We’re against military coups, but the October Revolution obliged Lenin to carry out a kind of military coup. Revolution, my friend, doesn’t go in a straight line like Nevsky Prospekt …”
Karim had nodded as though he understood and agreed but he didn’t. Before Danny, he found his will paralyzed. The philosophy professor possessed an irresistible logic — he was a man full of ideas and ambitions who led a student cell at AUB, as well as the Qubbeh district group in Tripoli which was made up of thugs, the unemployed, and agricultural workers, and who went home to drink vodka martinis while listening to classical music.
Danny said he’d wanted to be a musician and that when he was young he’d learned to play the piano; he’d stopped when he began taking an interest in maths and philosophy. “Then came the struggle, comrades, and the struggle taught me that the true philosophy and the greater music are praxis.”
When Karim had asked Danny about Malak he’d said he knew nothing about him. He said he’d arranged his escape from Roumieh Prison, “where Malak had made his blankets into a rope and descended from the prison window to find our comrades waiting for him. He was not alone. It doesn’t matter that Mustafa Qaddour, one of Tripoli’s Republic of the Wanted, was with him, what matters is that the boys showed him the way to Tall el-Zaatar, which I know they got to after major difficulties and after being fired on by the besieged camp’s defenders. Malak shouted, ‘Don’t fire, I’m Malak!’ It seems one of the boys had heard his story, and from that moment he disappeared. The fact is I don’t know. Atef, Abu Iyad’s assistant, advised him to go abroad because he was on the wanted list and the revolution couldn’t protect him. I think he went to East Germany and there the Stasi enlisted him and we heard unbelievable stories and that they did an operation and changed the way his face looked. Honestly I don’t know. Maybe he’s in Beirut right now but we wouldn’t recognize him if we saw him.”
“And Hala?” asked Karim.
“Who’s Hala?”
“His girlfriend.”
“I don’t know,” said Danny. “Or yes, my wife, Sahar, said she was teaching philosophy at the Good Shepherd School and lives like an old maid.”
“I’d like to see her,” said Karim.
“Don’t waste your time. She has only one story to tell and it’s not believable. I think she made it up to give some meaning to her life. Malak supposedly phoned her after a long time and made a date with her at the Express. She went and looked around but couldn’t see him. She went to sit in the corner where they used to sit when they were in love. After a bit a man came and stood in front of her. He looked at her and said, ‘You don’t recognize me of course.’ The voice was Malak’s. It was the voice but not the man. ‘You’re not him,’ she said. ‘I don’t know you.’ He said he’d changed his face in Germany and later changed his name. He said his name was Munir now and he loved her. The girl was petrified. ‘You’re not him,’ she said. ‘And anyway I was afraid he might kill me, after the crime he’d done.’ She said she ran out of the café scared the ghost would run after her. ‘I don’t know why they sent me this man who was pretending to be Malak. I’m certain Malak died in Tall el-Zaatar. He died and never called me once, died not loving me. How could someone who’d committed all those crimes love anyone?’ ”
What did today’s Danny have in common with yesterday’s?
It wasn’t true that this Danny was the hero of an unwritten story, as Karim had thought in the past. Danny wasn’t like heroes because heroes are frozen in our imaginations in the act of heroism. When they lose their balance and life preys on them, they lose their magic and are transformed into mere shadows that break up in the light of ordinary life. The secret of Danny’s allure lay in Sahar — a beautiful woman who worked so as to leave her husband free for political action. He’d disappear and she would wait for him, and when he returned she wouldn’t ask where he’d been. With radiant face she’d lead him to the bathroom, remove his dirty underwear, and fill the bathtub with hot water covered with soapy, jasmine-scented foam. Then she’d leave him to go to the kitchen to fetch a glass of mint tea, sit on the edge of the tub, hold his wet hand, and sink with him into the silence of the steam that rose from the hot water.
This woman of waiting, who filled the life of Danny and his friends with joy, suddenly disappeared. No one had any idea what had happened to her. She went on a trip to Italy to attend an architectural conference in Venice and that was the last anyone heard of her. One rainy night Danny had come to Karim’s apartment and said he was tired. He was sad and confused and couldn’t hold his tongue. It seemed he’d smoked and eaten a lot of hashish before deciding he couldn’t stay alone in the apartment any longer. He said his wife’s sister had taken his daughter to sleep at her place and he was feeling lonely. Then he told the story. He said Sahar had phoned him the day before. He said she’d disappeared three weeks earlier, when she’d been supposed to return after four days but hadn’t and he’d had no means of contacting her. He’d told her sister about it two days ago. Her sister didn’t seem worried or surprised by the news. She said she knew nothing about the matter and promised to come that day and take Suha. Half an hour after she left, Sahar phoned and said she was in Brussels, had found work there, and was never coming back to Beirut. She’d said strange things, that she hated Beirut, hated Lebanon, hated him, and wanted a divorce. She’d said she’d told her sister to get Suha’s things ready because she’d decided to bring her daughter to live with her there in Brussels and she expected him not to object because he was busy with other things anyway, didn’t know his daughter, and had no relationship with her. She’d said she’d give him free rein with their joint bank account once she’d withdrawn half.