The swimmer, the bridesmaid and the Party
Abdelkader Benali
Beirut dies a bridesmaid each evening, and wakes in the morning at her own funeral.
I've decided to swim today, not to write, and in the pool – fifty metres long, fifteen wide, enough space to house the dead of the day – the same swimmer I left yesterday goes up and down. She spreads her arms like a bird and steals through the water like a woman.
It is the end of the afternoon and the death of the day is only half on us. I have nothing to fear.
I read my book on the Party of God, turn the pages mechanically and realize that this story of resistance/terrorism needs to be read as fiction, even though the author didn't mean it that way. Born out of a mix of humiliation and longing to make a clean sweep with the oppressor, grown into a movement of resistance, organization, military discipline, religious fervour, charity and rhetoric – it's the kind of enemy you can only conjure in fantasy.
But the swimmer has my attention. She swims so naturally, you wonder about her existence on land, if she can even stand on two legs, this water creature. Her boyfriend is sitting on the side, reading a book and mirroring me. For the first time in weeks I see someone reading a book. I can't make out the title, but it's bound to be one with a hero, a castle and a princess who swims. He is used to her concentrating and he seems to know better than me how long she will continue, because he doesn't look at the water once, she doesn't grab his attention once, he just follows the strokes of the book.
I take up my book. They can't be hard to find in this city, the followers of the Party, who know everything about everyone, those who can tell you how it began, how it is now and how it will end, this war between hand grenades and precision rockets, between Al Quds and Jerusalem, between small villages and tanks. I've seen the women in the parks of Sanaya in Hamra and the men with half-rotten teeth or rolls of fat, but not the boys and men who are picked and chosen by the Party of God, who go into quarantine for years, from whom the most intelligent, most faithful and most trustworthy are chosen to make up the army. A secret army whose soldiers go through life as carpenters, mechanics and water-sellers until the day – these days – they are called to fulfil their role of fighter against the enemy that cannot sleep without a bridesmaid.
She climbs out of the water and falls into the towel her boyfriend holds out for her like applause. She wraps herself, shivers, they turn towards each other, and then they notice me. The stranger is never closer than in the deepest moment of intimacy. They laugh, a laugh I share in. Of course they must have their moment, so I put down my book and dive into the water and forget that there are funerals, spoilt roses and heroes, try with all my strength to keep going with my poor strokes, turn in medieval fashion at the end of the lengths, until enough is enough.
When I come out of the water, dripping, I see that the boy has walked past my chair and glanced at my book. His bright white teeth flash at me as he says, in English, "I wrote that book."
We are roughly the same height and he has dark brown, slightly curly hair. He doesn't look like someone who wastes time.
"Beirut is small," he says, "and in these times, when she is squeezed like a lemon, even smaller. In time she may be so small that she will have to lose the letters of her name. Maybe there is a future for her as a typographical eccentricity."
I compliment him on the book.
"Do you mind if I sit down?" he says, and lights a Camel. He offers me one but I don't smoke, even when I know it will get a conversation going. I ask my pool-guest how he is getting through the days.
"I go to the pool with my girlfriend and count her strokes. It helps me meditate. And I'm reading Memory of Forgetfulness by the Palestinian poet Darwish, written after the occupation of Beirut by the Israeli troops in 1982. I try to think about plans and projects. Somehow or other this exercise in cold-bloodedness calms me. We try to live normal lives between power cuts."
His book is a personal search into what Hezbollah means to Lebanon. While the resistance has his full support, he is uncomfortable with the doctrine. But these matters are now kept strictly separate.
"I discuss it with friends. They say the Party of God dropped their Islamic agenda here in Lebanon in 1992 so they could get power in Lebanese politics. And, so say the commentators, they will go into the army as soon as all prisoners are freed from Israeli jails, and the Shebaa valley is back in Lebanese hands and the Israelis have stopped their violation of the skies and the land."
"That could be a long story."
"Long stories rule these parts, habibi," he shrugs.
On the other side his girlfriend makes moves to go into the water again. "She is stubborn. She doesn't care what happens, she must and will come to the pool."
"And you come with her?"
"I'm trying to master the art."
"She's a good swimmer."
"Do you know," he says,"all the groups that co-exist here in Lebanon have tried to write their history of this land. The Maronites did it, the Druse, the Sunnis. Then the Palestinians came, making Lebanon into their emblem and the launch pad of the Arabic revolutionary Renaissance. Israel has also tried to put her stamp on this land, write her own version of the history book. This is just an area where the story dictates who can, in the end, live long and happily, for over a thousand years.
"Each story in the Middle East ends with a crucifixion. The brothers Grimm with their happy-ever-after would never have been able to live in the Middle East. The outside world can only look on through a lens that lets in a ray of hope; otherwise she turns her face away in shock. But we are used to these stories. Let us live with the crucifixions, one cross more or less on Golgotha doesn't hurt us."
The air becomes clearer and bluer until the sun sighs and begins colouring the sky.
"And now we are in the Shiite story. They are fighting for any small victory, just to affirm they haven't yet lost the battle. Their history is being written now: in the papers, on TV, and with the Katjoesjas striking Haifa."
"Is there a moment when the Lebanese will say that their history has been written enough?"
"Which Lebanese?" he asks, surprised.
"You?"
"The Lebanese are an amalgam. In peace we are Lebanese, but do we ever know peace?"
"The Shiites themselves?"
"That moment will come quickly, but in their definition of time and space, not ours. So when precisely it will happen, I can't say, habibi."
"And peace in the Middle East?" I ask, "What does that mean for you?"
"This, for me," he says, pointing to the setting sun, "is peace in the Middle East."
The girl appears between us.
"Don't tell him any depressing stories, he can come up with those himself."
She shakes her hair in the towel and smiles at no one in particular.