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See the Story Index for a chronological guide to all the stories.
When it became apparent that I was a relatively normal human being, Boulos, when he was around, began using me as an errand runner. He'd send me to buy Turkish coffee from an old, blind man who ground the beans by hand, or to take in his dry cleaning, or his shoes to the repair shop, all on foot, not in the city but up in our hillside borough. Then he started sending me to buy cigars or brandy. Finally he gave me Sarkis' job, which was to buy food for Rocket.
Boulos wouldn't feed Rocket dog food or even table scraps. Once a week I was sent to a meat packing factory to buy fine cuts of imported New Zealand mutton. It was the only place in the city that sold this meat, and it was a one hour walk, not only down in the flats but across the Green Line. At the time I thought it was an indication of his faith in me.
I heard Gala arguing with Boulos, telling him not to put me in danger. She was the only one who would stand up to him, and I think in a way he respected her for it. She was certainly the only one who would dare to cross Mr. Black. One time she chewed him out for entering the house without wiping his feet, after she had just swept the floor. Everyone within earshot held their breath, as if they expected Mr. Black to kill Gala on the spot, but he simply nodded and said, “Yes, mademoiselle.”
Not that arguing with Boulos did any good. He was like a planet in his gravitas. You couldn't escape or deny him. You could orbit around him or get out of his way. He spoke loudly, laughed loudly, and when he moved through the house he gave off energy like a furnace gives off heat. He was a volatile, hearty and murderous man all at the same time, as I later learned.
The first time I went on the meat run, Boulos told Sarkis to take me, so he could show me the way. Sarkis was sweating like a horse, he was so nervous. Lebanon at that time was ten years into the civil war. Over a hundred thousand people had been killed. The city was divided between East and West Beirut, with Christians on one side and Muslims on the other, separated by a no man's land called the Green Line. There was not a building that had not been damaged, and entire neighborhoods were flattened, as if a mighty fist had hammered them to the ground. It was possible to cross at places, but thousands of people had either been abducted at the checkpoints, or simply shot. And Sarkis was a teeanger – which meant fighting age in Beirut. Checkpoints were dangerous for him.
It was possible to sneak across the Line, though it involved braving sniper fire. That's what we did. The meat packing plant was in Amal territory – the leftist Shiah militia. Sarkis kept saying that we should buy the cheaper local lamb from the butcher shop in our own neighborhood, and pocket the difference. But I insisted that we do the job right. I think Sarkis would have tried to beat me up force me to do it his way, if he hadn't seen me practicing with Saber and Daniel. He knew what I could do.
I've learned that when a man is first put in a survival situation, he tells himself that there are certain things he won't do or tolerate. As he becomes desperate and inured to the carnage around him, he does that thing that he swore he wouldn't do, and he sets a new moral setpoint, lower on the scale, like descending platforms in the cavern of the soul. And so on.
By the time I arrived in Beirut, all the moral setpoints had been crashed through. There was no bottom. On my first trip through the city I saw the naked body of a woman in a sewage ditch in a poor Maronite neighborhood. It was impossible to say how old she was. Her throat had been slit and gaped like a hungry mouth. She'd been in the ditch for three or four days in warm weather, and she was so bloated that the only way I knew she was a woman was her red nail polish. I turned away and threw up in the road, and Sarkis laughed. I asked if the woman was Christian or Muslim and he said, 'Who can tell?' Later that same day I saw a middle-aged man pulled from a car at a checkpoint and shot point blank in the head in front of his family and dozens of witnesses. No one protested.
It was on the meat run two weeks later that I killed a man for the first time. I was eleven years old. Sarkis and a young soldier named Maron were with me because they were going to a brothel right on the Green Line.
Over the years plants had taken root and grown in the streets of the Line. It was literally wild, thick with ferns, trees, jasmine, bougainvillea, marijuana – just a riot of green vegetation. Hence the name. And these magnificent old colonial buildings on either side, crumbling, all their paint gone, broken up from shelling. It was like a science fiction set. Anyway, I would take advantage of the greenery, because I was small. I'd get down on hands and knees and crawl right through the undergrowth.
Sarkis was five years older than me, so he was only sixteen at the time, but he'd visit this brothel whenever he could. It was the only scene of human activity on the Line, as if all the factions had agreed that the brothel would be neutral territory. I never entered the brothel but Sarkis told me that men from every militia visited there and that they all left their weapons at the door.
I left Sarkis and Maron at the brothel, made my way to the meat factory, and came back to meet up with them. We hadn't gone twenty steps from the establishment's door when three Amal militiamen exited the place and came up behind us with their rifles trained on us. Only Maron was armed – he had a pistol holstered on his hip – but the Amal soldiers had us dead to rights. Sarkis, the idiot, had been bragging in the brothel and they knew he was a Haddad. If that wasn't bad enough, one of the militiamen had a female cousin who worked in the brothel, and Sarkis had beaten her. So these guys didn't want anything but to kill us all and probably cut off our heads to show their commander.
One of them placed his rifle barrel right against my chest. I didn't think. I did what I had been trained to do, in martial arts and by my mother. I pivoted, got my hands on the rifle, kicked him in the groin and twisted the weapon out of his hands. Then I shot him point blank. The other two were already bringing their guns to bear on me so I dropped to the ground and shot them both while I rolled. I had done the same drill with live ammo many times, in the mountains with my mom.
What no drill had prepared me for was the reality of shooting another human being. I'd hit the second man in the chest and he was alive, lying on his back, gasping for breath. The third one I hit in the head and he was dead. But the first man – the one I took the rifle from – I hit only in the hip, and I think it shattered his hip bone and severed an artery. He was on his back, all the veins in his neck standing out, trying to stop the bleeding with his hands. I can see him like it was yesterday. A young, skinny man with thick brown hair and a moustache. Camouflage pants, boots and a white t-shirt, breaking the rules by being in uniform at a brothel. Trying to stop the blood that sprayed from his hip as he screamed, “Ya Ali!!” over and over. It was horrible.”
Hassan's breathing grew ragged and he stopped his tale. “I need some water,” he said. Muḥammad took Hassan's empty cup and went to fill it. When he returned, Hassan drank deeply.
“Maron drew his service pistol,” Hassan continued, “and calmly shot the man in the forehead, killing him. Then he did the same with the other two.
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