Muhsin used the stomach cramps that plagued him at night as an excuse. He said he wasn’t a kid anymore and he might be a hindrance to them, plus it wasn’t useful to have too many people on such a mission. Further, if he was going to have to be killed in battle, he preferred to take his death into his own hands, not have it come as a result of someone else’s mistake. This was a clear indication of his lack of confidence in the people involved in that attack of theirs, perhaps because of their youth and lack of experience in the kind of fighting Muhsin had such intimate knowledge of, though we were never able at the time or later on to figure out how he knew so much about it. What Muhsin didn’t say was that he had a sister, Husneh, who was married to someone on the other side, and maybe he wanted to avoid a confrontation with his brother-in-law or his brother-in-law’s brothers. But he did promise the young men that he would keep guard at his post and wait for their return.
Just after midnight they came back to him. Apparently they hadn’t faced any major difficulties. They told him about the ease with which they advanced and how they found Abu Sada’s door already removed and how when they entered the sawmill the smell of wood was very strong. They heard a moaning sound, so they stiffened up, cocked their guns and told each other to be completely silent. But soon they discovered that in the corner there was a man relieving himself into the pile of sawdust. He was having a bout of constipation and they could hear him encouraging himself to get on with his business. ‘You can do it, son of Naamtallah…’
They knew who he was from his voice and from his name which was very uncommon. He was the butcher from the shop across from the church. He took a deep breath and tried some more, but failed. ‘You’re a coward, Naamtallah,’ he scolded himself.
They waited a long time for him to succeed in moving his bowels. Finally he let out a big sigh and stood to his feet.
‘He wiped his ass with sawdust! Grabbed a handful of sawdust from the floor and wiped his ass with it!’ They told him that jokingly or perhaps they fabricated that detail knowing how sensitive Muhsin was about cleanliness.
He interrupted them, his face full of disgust ever since the part about entering the sawmill. ‘And tomorrow he’ll feed meat to the folks in the Upper Quarter with those hands!’
He laughed and then commanded them decisively, ‘Kill him!’ as if he had been right there in front of him, as if Muhsin wanted him killed as punishment for wiping his ass with sawdust rather than for being an armed member of the enemy lines. And the man wasn’t from an important family, either, just one of the fold, so there wasn’t any compelling reason for Muhsin to show all that excitement. They told him that when they saw the man in that despicable scene none of them attempted to shoot him but rather they just let him go on his way, not wanting to give themselves away for the sake of such a trivial catch. Instead they continued their slow advancement, entered a house deep inside, and came back with a picture of the owner’s father that had been hanging on the wall, as the owner was very proud of his father and his father’s glorious deeds. Now their plan was to let them know what they had done by shouting it and telling the man from one barricade to another that they were going to piss on the picture of his father and if they’d wanted to they could have shot the butcher Naamtallah right in the ass.
Muhsin laughed at their heroics and encouraged them, but he knew deep down that their deeds weren’t going to make any difference in the battle. At any rate, Muhsin didn’t participate in sneak attacks or in ambushes along far-off roads.
Muhsin’s war had its rules, though no one knew from what source he extracted them; for every imaginable combat scenario he had an action and a decisive opinion about what to do. Don’t attack your adversary except when the sun is coming up, the time of deepest sleep. Don’t hit your enemy with just one bullet, because he might still have strategies to kill you. Whoever you are shooting, look them right in the eye…
Despite all that, he nearly killed Father Boulos, none other. After we begged and pleaded with him for a long time, Muhsin agreed to tell us about that incident once, though he avoided talking about his errors. He was amazed that he hadn’t shot him, and when he showed this astonishment of his we felt it would have been better for Muhsin’s reputation if the priest had actually been shot, even if it hadn’t been fatal. Father Boulos had tricked him that day.
The priest called out in a loud voice, announcing his presence whenever he crossed between the two quarters. He was the only one who could move between the two sides. He carried news and letters with him — news of those who died after being shot by the other side, those who died of natural causes, those of their relatives who were sick, and ‘Here’s a hundred liras from your aunt, because they told her you needed some money during these hard times,’ and ‘Tell your nephew to look after himself,’ and secret messages that stayed deep inside the ears into which he deposited them.
That day Father Boulos forgot to announce himself. He was deep in thought, worried. He was anxious and intent on going down to our quarter to inform those concerned that Syria had delivered a cannon ‘to them’, to the other side that is, and that they were assembling it and soon they would start shelling us, and it was impossible to hide from mortar fire. The moment Muhsin detected a shadow appearing around the corner he fired his rifle. Father Boulos was hit by shrapnel from the stone wall Muhsin hit with his bullet. Muhsin had dispassionately fired his rifle, and he didn’t appear very sorry when he realised his mistake, either.
It was true that his front was relatively quiet compared to others, but the six months he spent behind the millstone bore witness, in the middle of the month of July, to an infiltration attempt that forced Muhsin to request help to stop it. He was alert to the slightest movement coming from the opposing side. A dog or cat passing by would wake him up. If water trickled down from somewhere, or if he heard a sound, he’d double his attention for fear of some manoeuvre or ploy. He’d worked out exactly who the men standing guard in the opposing barricades were. He knew them by name and knew them by the sound of the bullets fired from each of their weapons, and by the way they fired their weapons, in a spray of fire or staccato shots. As soon as he heard a gun being fired he could name who’d fired it with total confidence.
During the remaining days, which were very long, Muhsin ‘committed himself’ to his post, as he liked to say, just as composure required a nosy woman who was going around the neighbourhood gossiping and spreading rumours to ‘commit herself’ to her own house. Muhsin didn’t show any signs of boredom. In fact, in his new seat behind the millstone, he appeared ready to stay there until God knows when. And Muhsin didn’t sleep. He worked while we nodded off out of boredom or left him, often to look for some excitement near the other barricades.
Muhsin laid out his plan the first day he took the millstone post, and he waited for exactly three and a half months for his opportunity. He aimed the barrel of his rifle towards the open space that whoever kept watch in the opposing barricade passed in front of, for one second when he entered his post and one second when he left it at the changing of the guards. It was a gap the size of a small window and Muhsin caught sight of them as they crossed quickly in front of it, like shadows flashing by. He waited for the day when one of his enemies would accidentally leave himself exposed even for a few seconds before going inside his barricade. That’s what he told us later on. And that’s what happened at exactly 12:30 on the 10th of August beneath the hot sun just before lunchtime: he fired one bullet from his long barrel rifle and hit his enemy right in the head. Earlier, Muhsin had called to one of us to go and tell Katrine not to bring his lunch that day because he wasn’t hungry. Then he hurried to add in response to what she might say, ‘Tell her I’m not sick…’