“What kind of a shitty committee is this?” Spiro said to the Assyrian.
But Habib Malku didn’t go along with him on this, for Malku knew from past experience that you have to bow your head in wartime. That’s what he said to Father John, trying to persuade him to come to the committee meetings.
“If you come, Father, I will. We all will.”
The priest preferred to stay neutral. “We are staying neutral, with them and not with them. Tomorrow things will topple, my son, it’s better they don’t topple on us. Right now, leave them alone, leftists and Palestinians and I don’t know what, okay, but tomorrow it’ll topple. Now we’re with them, and when things topple, we’ll remain with them, the important thing is that things don’t fall on top of us.”
Everything toppled.
Alice said she came to the quarter, and everything had turned upside down. She came by chance after the Blow Up shut down and she found herself out of work. Her furnished room in Ayn Mraysi became a burden to her, and the war started, and the young women started emigrating from Beirut. The emigration began on “Black Saturday.” On that day in December 1975, everything got mixed up. Armed men attacked the people, and there was a lot of death. The Phalangists, with their masks, were in the city, murdering people and tossing the corpses all over the place. From that day on, the masks became commonplace. Everyone wore masks and Beirut died that day, couldn’t walk anymore, armed men came out like madmen, and bullets whizzed over the heads of the innocent. That day the war turned against the people, and the bodies strewn in the streets swelled before anyone had a chance to take them to the cemetery.
Alice said that after that the emigration of the young women began. Ayn Mraysi area shuddered that frightful night, and the bombs rained down on Zaytooni, where the bars that had been abandoned by their owners were. Everyone started to think about leaving. Alice didn’t leave, she thought about going back to Shekka. She was sitting in her room, alone, thinking about going back to a house she remembered nothing about. But she didn’t go back. Yes, she went back once, and everything was gone. She went back to see her father, but she didn’t see him. They told her about him. They told her at the end he’d become the size of a baby and cried all the time, and that the woman who was living with him would sit beside him and cry. He died before she had a chance to see him. She had no memory of him. She didn’t even see his face that night. Alice was a child and darkness filled the place. She didn’t see his face.
“I forgave him,” Alice said. “God forgive me for forgiving him. He died and I didn’t see him, he lived and he didn’t see me, you never know, even when you know, you don’t know. When he came, he left, and when I wanted him it was all over. Things end where they should begin. It’s all a big lie, this whole life is like one big life.”
Alice completed the lie. She said she accepted a job at the Montana because there was no other way. She’d become like a beggar. Once Zaylaa told her she was a beggar, he told her the worst thing about women was that they all wind up beggars in the end, and he thanked God he was a man. Alice told him she wasn’t exactly sure he was a man. A man doesn’t do that. That day he’d hit her, in the bar in front of everyone, and that day Alice cried in front of everyone and decided never to go back to work. But she went back.
“Being a waitress in a bar is better than being dead,” she said to Gandhi.
And Gandhi would agree with her, and tell her life was difficult, that Suad had driven him to the brink of madness, and that he was worried about her.
When Vitsky was found dead in her small apartment, no one dared to go in except Alice. They were all afraid. That day, Alice took Madame Lillian and led her inside, and Lillian began to scream like a madwoman, and dragged the Reverend Amin, who’d already begun his journey to the next world after his wife abandoned him, through the coals.
Alice sat alone in the Salonica Hotel, unable to find herself a real job. Even cleaning rooms became impossible. She found it difficult to hold a broom because of her trembling hands, and the owner of the hotel would look at her with false sympathy.
Abd al-Hakim the Egyptian was nostalgic for the old days in this country, for this hotel used to be the meeting place of the upper crust of society. It was an oasis, almost like an oasis. Kuwaitis and other Gulf Arabs would come and stay one night there, and Abd al-Hakim was the owner of the one-nighter. Now, what was happening? The hotel had gone to ruins, and he couldn’t leave it. If he left it he’d lose the fortune he’d put into building it, stone by stone. He’d stay, as he would say, because the war would end and things would go back to the way they were.
Alice would say that things would never go back to the way they were. She lived in the hotel with retired prostitutes — four Egyptian and one Syrian — and three women from Beirut looking for work and not finding anything but sleeping with soldiers and armed men who paid very little if anything at all, and the hotel was transformed into something like a nursing home.
Alice said the hotel those days had become a lot like the nursing home she took the Reverend Amin to. There she saw the nun who looked like this man, and she’d point to Abd al-Hakim the Egyptian, and men collapsed onto wheelchairs, and she smelled shit everywhere. And here, too, the smell of shit wouldn’t go away.
“I mop everything with soap, but when you live in shit, how can you expect the smell to go away?”
I asked Alice about Husn, and his connection to Madame Nuha’s murder. She said she didn’t know. She said, “Husn isn’t sure he killed her. It’s true for a while he acted like he was a warrior, but he didn’t fight. Husn didn’t go to war. He carried a gun like everyone, but he didn’t fight. I don’t know anyone who did. None of them fought. What kind of war is this where no one is fighting, but it still goes on? The war continues with no goal. Husn didn’t fight, he carried a gun, and the shithead, excuse my language, became a big man and started believing he could act like one. But he was in love with the beauty salon. He carried the gun against his father’s will. But what did he do? Nothing. He said he went and fought for a few days in the business district, I saw him carrying stolen goods, him and Zaylaa. They went and robbed the place, no one actually fought. All those who fought died, and all those who didn’t fight died, death and more death, my son, what is this mess?”
For two years Alice had been living in the Salonica Hotel. The Montana opened its doors after the Israeli withdrawal from Beirut, which led to the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, but Alice didn’t go back to the Montana. One of the Egyptian girls told her Zaylaa was asking about her. Alice said, “Forget it, I’ve retired, I’m going to stay in this hotel, and I’ll die in this hotel.” And she stayed in the hotel. When I went there to ask about her after the war broke out again in 1984, I didn’t find anyone. The hotel was in ruins, some armed men surrounded it. I didn’t ask the men about Alice, or Abd al-Hakim the Egyptian. I went home and decided to go and ask Zaylaa.
At the Montana, I didn’t find Zaylaa. I found a man that resembled him. Alice had described him to me. She said he was dark-skinned, had a broken front tooth, a thick neck, and a low, husky voice that seemed to come from deep down in his belly. At the entrance of the Montana I saw a man with this description, so I asked him about Zaylaa.
“Which Zaylaa?”
“Hasan Zaylaa, the tough guy, the one in charge of the Montana, isn’t that who you are?” I answered him.
“There’s no Zaylaa.”
“Please. I’m looking for a woman called Alice.”
“Alice what?”
“I don’t know. Alice, that woman who’s around sixty years old who used to work here selling flowers.”