“Agreed. And the other condition?”
“You’ll make us thyme tarts and spinach tarts and kubbeh to bring back with us when we return to Beirut.”
“Agreed.”
“Every week.”
I laughed, and so did Sadiq and Hasan. Abed looked at his brothers and said, smiling proudly, “Learn the art of negotiation. I’ve secured tarts and kubbeh for you that will help us on the days of famine and culinary catastrophe produced by Chef Hasan!”
19
1975
Amin and the boys were not able to come to Sidon the next weekend nor the following one. The roads were blocked between Beirut and Sidon. Automobile traffic stopped, and strikes, demonstrations, and fires spread through the streets of Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre, and other cities. In Sidon dozens fell in clashes between the civilians and the army. The battles continued for five days and stopped only after the withdrawal of the army from the city — a short truce that allowed the civilians to bury their martyrs, count their wounded, inspect the damage to their houses, and gather the information coming from the hospital in Beirut.
The previous Wednesday had seemed like an ordinary day, cloudy and laden with rain. In Sidon there was a demonstration; nothing new. The people of Sidon often demonstrated to express their opinions.
The populist political leader Maarouf Saad was at the head of the demonstration, as usual, with Dr. Nazih Bizri, Sidon’s representative in Parliament. It was a demonstration for needy fishermen against the government, which had granted a monopoly on fishing for ninety days at the height of the fishing season to a private company belonging to powerful men and headed by Camille Chamoun, the previous president of the republic. Rain was pouring down, and the demonstrators were few. Then a single bullet flew, seeking Saad. He was hit. They took him to the hospital of Dr. Labib Abu Zahr, and in the afternoon transferred him to Beirut. It was said he had suffered bleeding and a sharp drop in blood pressure.
Sidon ignited, Lebanon blazed.
My aunt stayed long at her prayers because she was beseeching God to heal Maarouf and return him to his home and family safe and sound. “O Omnipotent, O Generous, O Kind, O Merciful, O Compassionate.” I was overcome by silence, silence steeped in clear, heavy fear; and my talkative uncle was suddenly silent, like me. He stayed in bed and kept his eyes shut, so we didn’t know if he was awake or asleep. My aunt would call to him, “Are you awake, Abu Amin?” and he would answer her with a sigh, without opening his eyes.
On Thursday, March 6, nine days after being struck, Maarouf became a martyr.
The news spread before it was broadcast officially. It was said that the government was waiting for his body to be taken to Sidon before announcing the news, but it reached people in the south and they marched toward Beirut. They met the body halfway and continued on behind it, returning to Sidon, where the funeral was held the next day in the Great Mosque of Umar.
I went to the funeral. I hadn’t advanced a single step into the house on my return or even closed the door behind me when I heard my uncle calling me: “Come here, Ruqayya.”
“I’m coming, Uncle.”
“How was the funeral?”
“All of Sidon was there. The leaders of the National Movement came from Beirut, and thousands of civilians and delegations from the south and the Beqaa and Jebel al-Shouf and Beirut and Tripoli. They carried his bier in a fishing boat; the fishermen carried a boat draped in black and filled with flowers. The young men carried pictures of him and signs saying “Hero of the Battle of al-Malikiya” and “Martyred for the Poor” and slogans of the Lebanese National Forces, of the Palestinian resistance groups, and of the delegations that came from the Arab states. The men were crying and shouting, and the women were crying and trilling and scattering rose petals and basil leaves and orange blossom water.”
My uncle suddenly sighed, and said, “Our hope lies in the youth. I’m going to sleep.”
I called Beirut, and found only Hasan at home. He said that the funeral in Beirut was very large. They carried a symbolic bier from the Mosque of Umar to the Martyrs’ Cemetery, and there were processions and parades and symbolic funerals in many various places.
“Was there gunfire?”
“Gunfire and anthems and loudspeakers broadcasting stirring words and speeches.”
“When your father and Sadiq and Abed get back call me, even if it’s late. I won’t be asleep.”
From that Friday to the next my uncle Abu Amin kept silent. My aunt said that maybe he had lost the ability to speak. She would sit next to him on the bed, talking to him and asking him questions, and he would not answer. When she insisted he would reply by a terse expression, and then close his eyes and turn his back to her as if he was going to sleep. But when Amin and the boys came on the next Friday night he greeted them and told them that he wanted to talk to them. He said, “Tomorrow, if we live.”
In the morning my uncle asked me to help him change his clothes. I took him a basin of warm water, soap, a small jug, and a towel, and I helped him wash and change his clothes. He had breakfast and then asked that I make him a cup of coffee. He drank it and said, “Call the boys.”
They sat around him, and he said, “I want to tell you something.”
I glimpsed a smile starting on Abed’s face, and for a moment it seemed to me that the boy would be silly enough to say that there was no need, because we know it. I scolded him with a look; he received the message and kept silent.
My uncle began to speak about Maarouf Saad. He said, “I met him for the first time in ’35 when he was teaching in Madrasat al-Burj in Haifa. For two years he was teaching and participating with us in the armed resistance. He would go back to Lebanon on Thursdays and Fridays and during the summer vacation to share in implementing the boycott decisions, and to work with the youth here in the south to prevent the export of fruits and vegetables over the Palestinian — Lebanese borders, to the settlers and the occupying British authorities. They would wait for the trucks coming from Beirut at the Awali River or in Tyre or Nabatiyeh or Marjayoun, blocking the roads. They would make the driver get out and would throw out the cartons of fruits and vegetables.”
Strange, by God it was strange. My uncle talked two or three hours, or maybe four. He gathered the beads of his words from here and there, stringing them before our eyes like a rosary. He specified the place and the time, moving from one time to another and from place to place, from a well-known date to personal events he had witnessed and in which he played a part. He would mention the leaders and commanders, “May God not forgive them,” and his companions, “God have mercy on the martyrs.” He would visualize their images and leave them hanging on the wall in the background of his words. He continued speaking.
I said to myself, my uncle will live a thousand years. He’ll recover from his illness and be just fine.
Suddenly Hasan said, “Rest a little, Grandfather. Rest now and in the evening you’ll finish the story for us.”
He said, “The time for rest has passed, Hasan. Listen, boy, listen. Maybe you’ll tell the story one day to your children.”
I imagined I saw tears in Hasan’s eyes. I looked, and then averted my eyes, and listened like the others.
In our country they call it “sweetness of the spirit,” the last outpouring of energy. I had heard the expression often, thinking that I understood it; but I did not understand it before that day.
After Amin and the boys returned to Beirut, my uncle spoke to me only of Tantoura and his father and mother and brother. He told me long stories of his childhood, with abundant details. He ended only by recalling the day he differed with his brother about leaving, the day he returned from Sidon to take the women and children and his brother drew a weapon on him. He said, “You were with us, Ruqayya, you saw it. Have you forgotten?” I said, “I have not forgotten, Uncle.” But he repeated for me everything that happened, as if I had told him that I had forgotten. He would always end his words with the same expression, “My brother didn’t understand me. He was angry with me and left before I bade him farewell. Whenever I sneaked back into the village, I visited my mother’s and father’s grave, but I didn’t know where his grave was, to propitiate him and make peace with him.”