Talal took the story back to its beginning. Karim wasn’t a friend of the young man. He’d run into him at the bar, they’d drink a beer and chat a little. Then Talal had invited him to meet Maroun Baghdadi and now he’d come along and provided, without realizing, a different interpretation for Hend’s dream!
When he’d first arrived in Beirut, and after the glass of arak at his brother’s apartment — where Hend had contented herself with talking to him with, as it were, the tips of her lips — she’d asked after Bernadette, Nadine, and Lara and about life in France but shown no interest in hearing the answers. She’d sat at the table for only a few moments and spent the rest of her time coming and going between the kitchen and the dining room.
“Tell us about the girls. Did you bring pictures?” asked Salma.
Karim’s attention was attracted to the thick black nylon stockings pulled over Salma’s legs. The white that once had erupted at the edges of her black skirt was gone, its place taken by black spots that seemed to bespatter her calves and thighs. Karim hadn’t been aware that Salma had reverted to wearing stockings of this kind after his father’s death. Hend had told him that at the deathbed in the hospital her mother had cried out that the man had lost his sight and that afterward she’d reverted to her old mourning dress.
“And what does Nasim think?” he asked her.
“Nasim didn’t say anything. When we got back to the apartment, he was silent. He only spoke to me when he had to. He didn’t even talk to the children. You’ve seen for yourself how he never says anything when we’re sitting together.”
Karim hadn’t noticed his brother’s silence during his stay in Beirut. Quite the contrary, Nasim had talked a lot and in talking rearranged the whole story. In his version, things were completely the other way round. The older brother, who believed he’d preserved his purity both before and during the war, discovered that in his brother’s version things were totally different and that he’d lost — amongst all his other losses — the ability to repair the holes that had opened up, all at one go, in his life.
The first night, after the welcome dinner, a rush of emotions had overwhelmed Karim as he became aware of the oppressive absence of his father. He’d discovered how powerless he was to fashion words of love for a man whom, with his overbearing ways, he’d believed he’d always hated. He had risen, wanting to go home.
“I’ll drive you,” Nasim had said.
“No, don’t bother. Stay. We’ve drunk a lot of arak. I’d prefer to take a taxi.”
Nasim got up, paying no attention.
“But you’ve drunk a lot.”
“So what? When I drink I see things better.”
They got into the car in silence. Karim felt as though he were being choked. The humidity, the heat, his inability to talk.
“How about a coffee on the Corniche?” said Nasim.
“I miss the Beirut sea. In Montpellier the sea’s all one color, a kind of gray, and the beach is depressing, I don’t know why. Every time I go to Palavas with my wife and the girls, I tell them about the Corniche and Rawsheh Rock.”
They’d stopped in front of Rawsheh Rock and were drinking espresso from one of the small vans serving coffee that were parked here and there along the Corniche. The rock sparkled in the lights that refracted off the edges of the smooth waves breaking against it.
“This is Beirut,” said Karim. “You know, I don’t know what came over me in France. Every time I heard news of the shelling in Lebanon I’d be frightened that the rock would be hit and would sink. In fact I used to dream that the rock had sunk and feel that Beirut had become shapeless and all its houses and buildings were falling down.”
“You dreamed that the rock sank? Strange!”
“What’s strange?”
“You know, it’s like we were young again. Remember how Father would make us finish off each other’s dreams? Now it’s like you were telling me my own dreams.”
“Your dreams!”
“Don’t tell me you’ve come so we can go back to playing that game again! I thought you’d have grown up after being away so long. We’re here to work. We’ve got a project that’s better than a gold mine. In Lebanon today medicine is gold. But it looks like you don’t appreciate the importance of the project and you’ve come to open doors onto memories that we’d closed once and for all.”
Karim hadn’t understood what memories his brother was talking about. He’d come back without giving his decision a moment’s thought. He’d taken unpaid leave and arrived without thinking through the implications of his decision. He’d known Bernadette would never come to Beirut and he had no reason to destroy his little French family, which was his refuge from himself and his sense of loss. Despite this, and because he’d drunk a lot of arak while eating the kibbeh nayyeh, he’d slipped up and told a dream he hadn’t seen.
“Strange,” said Nasim, “I thought that was Hend’s dream. Now you’ve got me confused and I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Give me a cigarette!” said Karim.
“What? Seems as soon as you’ve arrived you’ve started smoking again. Didn’t you tell us you’d stopped in France?”
Karim blew the cigarette smoke into the air and stood gazing at Rawsheh Rock, feeling pins and needles all over his body.
“You told me you dreamed Rawsheh Rock had sunk,” said Nasim, and he burst into laughter.
Suddenly Karim began laughing too. Their laughter fluttered over the place. It was as though the brothers had gone back to being twins, tricking the world with their complementarity and finding themselves some room for independence from the overbearing presence of their father, who used to force himself between them on the excuse that he was the third side of their unbreakable triangle.
The triangle had come apart long ago. The duality, which the brothers had maintained despite the outbreak of the civil war and the fact that they were in two warring camps, had begun to come apart the moment Karim decided to leave for France. It had disintegrated once and for all with the phone call during which Nasim had informed his brother of his marriage to Hend and Karim had choked on his cough and lost the ability to speak.
That Beirut night, in front of Rawsheh Rock, their duality was resurrected. They became two children once more, playing with words, tossing jokes at one another, making fun of everything.
“Tell me,” said Nasim. “There’s something I never understood. Father would hint at it and Suzanne drew the conclusion that it had happened. On your honor now, tell the truth. Did Brother Eugène really fuck you?”
“Of course not. Don’t you remember what your father used to say about him and his sons being ‘up a tiger’s ass’?”
“What?”
“What’s the matter with you? Have you forgotten everything? Whenever he drank he’d finish the session by saying, ‘Thank God, I’m still up a tiger’s ass.’ ”
“I don’t remember but it doesn’t matter. Tell me what a tiger’s ass is first and then answer my question.”
“Being up a tiger’s ass means no one can ride you. Who’d want to get that close to the tiger? That’s my answer.”
“Okay, so don’t answer. Just tell me what it feels like when a man sleeps with you.”