We inspected the battlefront from barricade to barricade, delivered messages we hadn’t been charged with delivering, congregated close to Muhsin as he sat on his wicker chair behind the millstone. We’d poke our heads out from the alleyway; our chatter would catch his attention. He’d shoo us away and we’d quieten down and disappear, though we stayed right where we were. When he turned the barricade over to his brother at nightfall, we got scared. We worried that the enemies would take advantage of their absence and inattentiveness and launch a surprise attack.
We also worried whenever he rose from his chair — Muhsin that is — even if just for one minute to relieve his balls from being sat on for so long, sliding his hand deep into the right pocket of his baggy pants to move them from one side to the other. And we worried whenever he would put his rifle down, propping it against the millstone, and start slowly slurping his vegetable soup or labniyyeh, the steam rising up from the bowl. He would blow on the spoonful and slurp it up loudly. As long as the food was hot, the noises that came out of Muhsin’s lips and teeth were loud, to the point that we wondered if the people behind the opposing barricade could hear. And maybe they would use the opportunity to shoot at us, while our lead fighter was lapping up his lunch. Katrine always brought Muhsin’s lunch exactly at noon. If she was late, he’d yell to her, ‘Katrine!’ just once, and she’d come running. She’d have to take two trips in order to bring everything he needed — a plate of olives, the salt shaker, the oil decanter and a generous loaf of bread. On the return trip would come the bean and meat stew and the fried eggs. He loved fried eggs and loved to add a squirt of lemon and a dash of red pepper.
He turned over all matters related to the store to his wife so he could go off and fight behind the millstone, about a hundred metres away from his house and his store. Katrine never complained. What use was he, after all, sitting behind the cash register all day long? The man’s presence was always heavy. If a customer asked for some coal, he’d shout, ‘Katrine!’ and along she would come to cater to the customer, because Muhsin refused to dirty his hands with the coal. If someone came to buy kerosene, Muhsin would shout, ‘Katrine!’ because there was no way he was going to allow the smell of kerosene to get on his nice, clean clothes. And if a customer tried to hand him some dirty and wrinkled money, he would look down his nose at him with disgust and ask, ‘Did you give it to the dog to chew on?’ Then he would take the money reluctantly, holding it with his fingertips with total repugnance, and throw it quickly into the drawer as if it carried some kind of contagious disease.
Muhsin wasn’t sick, but he feared humidity and feared the night. They prescribed a woollen girdle for him to wrap around his waist to keep his stomach warm during the hours after midnight when the humidity set in. His brother Halim was younger than him, but he could bear the night and the humidity. During the early days, Muhsin tried to take the night shift. He was the older brother and night was dangerous. They might infiltrate our side at night, and he’d rather be there himself at such a moment. He didn’t want to endanger his younger brother. But he couldn’t bear staying out in the open air. He’d spend the whole night erupting with the air inside his body. He was like an air factory, releasing it from below and burping it from above. Both actions were carried out in the open, for Muhsin didn’t try to — or wasn’t capable of — hiding them. His music could be heard for quite a distance, especially in the silent, jet-black night.
Daytime was boring. At night, it was always advisable for the men on duty behind the barricades to fire warning shots signalling to the enemy we were ready to greet them with gunfire at any time, thus dispelling any ideas they might have of approaching our lines. During the day, not much happened. Maybe an exchange of curses to break the monotony, but that was about it. Usually they were the ones to start it. Our enemies behind the opposing barricades were apparently even more bored than we were from keeping guard so long. The instigator’s voice would come from the three-story building, from behind the sandbags piled up in the openings where the windows had been yanked out. Sometimes the gunfire would grow quiet. They saved the ammunition because it was dear to them and came to them in stingy consignments too. It came to them from Syria. Their weapons were from the East and ours were from the West. They’d put their guns down and start firing curses instead, curses sharp as bullets. The yelling sometimes reached the ears of the enemy and sometimes it didn’t. The space separating the two quarters filled up with curses before grenades and 24x29 machine gun fire drowned out the voices exhausted from long nights of keeping guard and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.
The man would call to Muhsin by name, and Muhsin knew exactly who it was standing behind the barricade across from him. He’d call Muhsin. He knew Muhsin and it was said they were distant relatives. Muhsin would nod his head to him when he started shouting. Muhsin was gracious to him, as they said. He even smiled a little, but was careful not to answer the call. He would take the dare — their secret contest always began with a dare, a sudden call.
‘Come on out, Muhsin, if you’re a man…’
Then a little later, another voice, ‘Show your head, you coward!’
Muhsin bore the insults against his family and all his descendants, all the way to curses against the saints, but they never dared curse the Virgin whose church stood in the middle of our quarter. They cursed our family’s zaeem, and even attacked our dead. The voices and the intonations varied as they took turns shouting from the opposing barricade, and all the while, Muhsin did not respond. He didn’t respond because he thought they were setting a trap for him. They were trying to pinpoint his location and use his voice to hunt him down. That’s what he thought, or that’s what he claimed, in order to excuse himself for not joining in their chorus. But eventually they discovered his weak spot and used it to fish him out.
When Muhsin heard Katrine’s name his ears perked up as he listened carefully. The mere mention of his wife’s name from across the barricades was a defamation he simply could not put up with. The guard behind the barricade building across from him said he was going to screw Katrine because, ‘You, Muhsin, don’t know how to do it right!’
Muhsin didn’t let him finish. He stood up from his chair, withdrew his rifle from its peephole between the sandbags, stood up unprotected and began shooting in the direction of those who were mocking him. He emptied an entire clip, reloaded a second one and emptied that one, too, before his anger subsided. It was the first time Muhsin broke the rule of firm self-control and the first time we sneaked into his barricade to collect the empty shells that were still hot. He fired bullets at them rather than speaking. He hadn’t responded with words.
When one of his foolish cousins came to him at his barricade behind the millstone at sunset to whisper something in his ear, Muhsin pushed him back a little because he didn’t like whispering and he didn’t like the smell of bad breath. He asked his cousin to speak up because no one was around to hear them. He told Muhsin with a courageous look on his face that they were going to whistle for him outside his house at ten o’clock, right after dinner. He told Muhsin not to eat too much so he could catch up with them without letting anyone know, not even Katrine, and he should bring his gun, four clips, and his rubber-soled shoes that didn’t make any noise, the same shoes he wore to go quail hunting. There would be three men, plus him the fourth, intent on… Here his cousin pointed towards the enemy lines, and then he showed him the way. ‘We’ll break down Abu Sada’s door, enter the sawmill through the window, and from there we’ll turn left.’