— Hey Butros, what’s this?
Childhood springs forth: the church at Deir al-Harf, before its walls were clad in Romanian colors and Byzantine icons, when it was naked like the fedayeen. Father Morkos, hands crucified, voice subdued, rising toward the entrance of the sanctuary where stands a boy, rapt with joy. Latin supplications, Byzantine chants, the priest in our eyes. The window is lit up in the colors of the tracer bullets. Butros carries on.
— Don’t you hear? says Salem. -What?
— I hear footsteps, up there. Be careful.
Butros carries on, three of them cluster together. Altar attendants, in their jackets, standing there riveted, marveling at the game.
— Don’t you hear?
The sound of footsteps grows louder. Butros falls silent. Then, suddenly, he wrenches off his priestly robe, clutches his weapon tight. We scatter. The unit commander jumps to his feet, advances. He goes up the stairs, with three comrades behind him. Caution. A battle inside the church? It would have to be an unusual battle.
The four of them return. Nothing. The church’s two priests are still here, and he points upstairs. At first, they thought we were Kataeb,* then when they discovered who we were they got very frightened. I reassured them. I asked them not to light a fire and to stay inside the church at least until morning.
Sounds of nearby shelling and of gunfire getting closer. Christ falls to the ground again. Butros stands him up, but he falls once more.
— Impossible, the base is broken.
— But he’ll stand up.
— Even if he stands now, hell fall tomorrow. The battles tomorrow, Butros. SCENE TWO
— What’s the difference between war and civil war?
In the interstices between one shot and the next, Salem would find the time to ask such questions. He’d ask the question and not wait for the answer. He’d always say it’s not the answer that’s important. All answers are the same. The thing is to ask the questions. Between questions, muscles would color and faces lift from the sand and rubble, looking for the narrow streets leading to the sea.
The sea’s our goal, the commander says. Once we control the Bab Idriss intersection, we open up the sea road ahead of us. Rabee’, the sailor-turned-fighter, knows the taste of the sea and the sea road. That’s why he flexes like an arrow.
— I’m a master of answers.
Yet Salem goes on asking: What’s the difference between war and civil war?
The narrow streets twist and curve, on either side rock smashed against rock. The sound of the shells crashing against our bodies. To the right, fires, to the left, a low building sagging like an old woman, her joints broken by the shells. Between our line of vision and the sea are buildings and walls and metal. Between the shell and the scream, stone falls against stone.
The narrow street stretches endlessly. Between its beginning and the positions, sounds of footfalls, of groups of fighters shouting and laughing. The narrow street contracts. There is rubble where there should be mounds of sand and sand between the streets and the buildings. Between the hand that fires and the foot that jumps, a body crouches, straightens, crawls. When it arrives, it’ll be holding nothing but the sea.
— What does the war want?
— The war doesn’t want anything. But its saying that the asphalt extends the street to the street opposite. And that on the opposite street there are enough metal studs* to make a graveyard.
— Reinforced concrete is resistant. But thick sand stone gives you more of a sense of security. The streets criss cross. But gunfire can open holes in the net, and the fish escape to occupy the sea.
It was four in the morning when we began. The sound of the fighting was growing louder and closer after a two-hour lull. Nabeel was holding his gear tight. The walls beginning to be pierced: first the explosive charge against the wall, then the hands and the hammers coming to widen the breach. Moving from hole to hole, clouded in dust, rubble, and noise. Between each hole, bodies stooped, and we advanced. The fighting was growing louder, drowning our voices and the racket from our breaking through the walls. Walls were the new measure of distance. Our blue jackets were turning white and our hands were covered with the damp dust blowing off the walls. With every wall, we were saving ourselves a street and advanced.
— This is the real Beirut. Talal was saying, covered in dust from head to toe, and laughing with a ring of pride. We’ve learned war and invented new laws.
— We haven’t invented anything yet, said Rabee’. We’ll invent when we get to the sea.
As for Nabeel, he was busy opening up new holes, his body bent over the explosive.
Everyone plugged his ears. The commander was moving back and forth between the passageways of the war and those of the church, making sure of the support groups’ progress. Voices rose and bodies slipped through the dust.
— When will we get there?
Talal was smiling as he told me the story of Monte Cristo. They wrote a novel about him because of one hole he opened in a prison wall. How many novels will be written about us then who’ve opened twenty holes in twenty walls? Down with literature, Nabeel shouted. Careful now. This is the last hole. And then were there and we take them by surprise. Features were hued a bronze-red despite the dust. Everyone looked at his weapon, entrusting it with his last secrets, renewing his pledge of trust in it once again.
Between the last dust and the dust from the shells, the moments were fleeting and shots encircled the air. We ran. Reached the first position, advanced. A wave of dust and voices washing over us as we grasped the pavement and broke it. A few moments of allahu akbar*mingling with the rustle of clothes against bodies. And then, everything was still. We were at the Bab Idriss intersection. Khaled was killed and three comrades wounded. It wasn’t grief so much as something else. When we gathered the following day to assess the battle, Jaber said: an excellent battle. I don’t remember much, but I kept shooting till the rifle ran dry. We were like lightning. As for Talal, he was still in a daze. Its like a film, like the movies. Next time, I’ll film it.
We were scattered across the buildings and the pavements. Feet soaked, bodies slippery, the drizzle coming and going. We’d carried the sandbags over from the ambush opposite which the Kataeb had abandoned. We’d built our barricades and sat down to eat. We were hungry but ate without appetite.
The surprise came in the afternoon. The positions were quiet and we heard only distant gunfire. Rifles at rest and we resting beside them, on our guard, looking into the distance where the enemy positions were. We were going over our memories of the battle, some true, some not, when we saw throngs of people approaching. Children with heads shaven and unshaven. Milling about the hide-outs, searchings for things in the rubble and in the shops. People of all sorts: Kurds, Arabs. … They were all there, with their women and their children.