You see here a man on top of the world, said Ziad. Twenty years ago I sat in this place and didn't know my good fortune. I wonder if you'll ever be able to appreciate how I felt then, drinking real Scotch and plundering bowl after bowl of free peanuts? It was sheer joy, and more. You showed me the world. Just watching you and seeing your confidence in things was a marvel for me to behold. Oh yes, good days, my friend. The very finest life has to offer. . . .
They went on to one of Ziad's little restaurants, which was Halim's too now. Then they walked along the river, stopped for one more coffee, parted. Halim took a taxi home and it was as simple as that. A quiet evening between two friends. A commonplace evening toward the end of winter, 1982.
***
Colonel Jundi told him of the killing.
Halim was returning from Beirut one winter morning when he found the colonel's man waiting for him at the border crossing. It was unexpected. He and the colonel didn't have a meeting scheduled. He got into the curtained automobile and they set out across the hills.
A dismal rain had been falling since first light, a hard steady downpour that threatened to go on all day. Deep pools had formed in the ruts of the mountain road and there were washouts on the curves. The major was a new man who had only recently joined the colonel. He drove slowly, picking his way with care. In the distance an occasional goatherd huddled beside some outcropping of rock, which gave little shelter. Halim caught sight of them through the curtains. The land was bleak and the lonely men looked cold and miserable. At last the car came bumping into the yard of the little stone farmhouse. Halim pulled his coat around him and made a dash for the door.
Colonel Jundi was waiting for him in the main room, standing with his back to a crackling open fire. He must have just come in from a walk across the hills, because his trousers were steaming and his boots were caked with mud which hadn't yet dried. The room smelled of wet wool and wood smoke and that special sweet fragrance that came from wild mountain bushes, which were used to supplement fires in the hills where wood was scarce. Halim greeted the colonel and went up to warm himself at the fire. He noticed that a bottle of brandy stood on the table, which was unusual. The colonel poured two glasses and handed one to Halim.
Colonel Jundi seldom drank and never during the day. Halim knew the brandy was meant just for him and the colonel was joining him out of courtesy, because it wasn't proper to make a man drink alone. Gravely, the colonel faced him.
I have bad news, said the colonel. Your friend Ziad is dead.
Naturally, the colonel knew all about Ziad. To him the friendship had always seemed strange because the two men had been so unequal. Halim was an unusual man in every respect and Ziad hadn't been at all. Halim was gifted and would have been a success anywhere, while Ziad had been mediocre and would have failed anywhere. Still, friends could be oddly balanced and the colonel knew these two men went back to the time when Halim had first arrived in Damascus from Argentina.
The colonel's account was terse.
The Maronite sub-chieftain had finally made his about-face switch to Naji. In doing so, as a gesture of his new loyalties, he had rounded up the Syrians in his area. Ziad had the misfortune to be spending the night in the village. He was pulled out of bed and taken away without being allowed to dress. There were five Syrians in all, minor figures like Ziad. The next morning they were found hanging naked from a makeshift gallows in the central square of the village. There had been torture and mutilations. Huge, deep crosses were cut in their chests. It wasn't known whether the carving had been done before or after death.
But now it doesn't matter, said Colonel Jundi. Your friend's suffering is over and he rests, his pain gone. Ours is still with us, but our concern must be for the living. . . .
There were other words from the colonel but Halim didn't really hear them. He left the little farmhouse and was driven back to the border crossing, where he went on to Damascus. It was raining as hard as ever when he arrived home. It was cold and he kept his overcoat on although he had no intention of going anywhere or doing anything. He was too restless to sit in front of a fire and warm himself, so he poured brandy and wandered around the house with the glass in his hand, listening to his footsteps echo.
At the end of the central room, the almond tree outside the window-door was in full bloom, its white and pink flowers bravely set against the gray skeletons of the garden. It was by far the first tree to bloom, recklessly throwing out its flowers in the very deepest gloom of winter, long before the other trees had sprouted even a tentative bud. In the rain and cold its beauty was always astonishing, an unexpected cry of abandon and hope, its delicate colors calling forth the memory of a season that seemed far away. And impossibly out of place in the bare gray desolation of winter. Even now the beautiful little flowers of the almond tree were past their peak and falling, broken by the hard rain.
All afternoon the rain pounded down on the house. Darkness came early but Halim didn't turn on a lamp.
Toward evening a wild electrical storm broke over the city. First hail pelted the verandahs and then fierce thunder and brilliant flashes of lightning crashed across the sky, lighting the great central room and the garden in a pure white intensity which abruptly went black. Only the flowers of the almond tree survived in the darkness. Another flash of unworldly light lit the garden and Halim caught a glimpse of a solitary broken statue beyond the gray trunks of the trees, the stone streaked and weathered with half its head gone, one eye staring.
He was glad the storm had come. The explosions of lightning and thunder soothed him by screaming his own emotions at the night. It was wild and chaotic, a war of the gods in heaven, and its awesome crashes exactly reflected his own black, shattered mood.
ELEVEN
Halim traveled to Lebanon much less that spring, then stopped altogether. Part of the reason was operationaclass="underline" Colonel Jundi's priorities were changing and Halim's reporting was less vital to him at the moment. The colonel expected an Israeli invasion of Lebanon by the summer, which meant the Syrian secret services would have to deal with a regular army in the field, not just the murky intrigues of Lebanese tribal warfare. The term of the Lebanese president ended in September. Colonel Jundi expected the Israeli army to be in place well before then to assure Naji's election.
Not that that particular piece of chicanery matters, the colonel said to Halim. If Naji's elected, he'll be killed.
It's too much to expect us to put up with someone like him next door.
Halim also traveled less to Lebanon because of Colonel Jundi's concern for his well-being. The Runner's double life for Colonel Jundi over the years in Lebanon — and beyond that his triple life for Tajar — had cost heavily. Halim had been working without letup since the beginning of the Lebanese civil war in 1975.
Increasingly he had come to rely on alcohol to sustain him, which worried the colonel. To him, Halim had always seemed a man of impregnable balance and moderation. But he had himself seen the impact of Ziad's death on Halim, and Halim's profound emotional response had made a deep impression on him. It was only then, during that dismal rainy morning at the stone farmhouse on the border, that he had fully come to realize how exhausted Halim was. Nor was that all. Something else had suddenly struck him. For a moment he had wondered if he knew Halim as well as he thought he did.