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“Hold on,” Muḥammad said. “Did you say your ear lobe got shot off? And you were shot through the arm?”
Hassan nodded. “The ear was a close one.”
“Can I see? Is that why you grow your hair long?”
Hassan sighed. “I'm a mess, bro. I have scars all over. Why do you need to see?”
Jamilah thought Hassan sounded defensive. Embarrassed maybe, or ashamed. She imagined she'd feel the same if someone asked to see some damaged part of her body.
“Leave him be,” Jamilah said. “Go on with your story, Hassan.”
Hassan shot her what might have been a grateful look, and continued:
“I mentioned that there were three events that opened my eyes and changed me. The third event occurred a few months later, in June. A propane tank at the American University of Beirut was hit by shellfire and exploded. Luckily it was early on a Sunday and the campus was deserted. One of the generals had a son who attended the AUB and he dispatched my platoon to haul away the wreckage.
It must have been a lovely campus once. On the sea, with red-tiled roofs and cedar trees, and a clock tower that chimed on the hour. You could catch glimpses of the calm, blue waters of the Mediterranean between the buildings. But now most of the windows were shattered, the arts building destroyed, and the smell of gasoline and fire hung over everything. We tied handkerchiefs over our mouths because of the smoke.
We took a breakfast break and sat beneath one of the remaining cedars eating canned sardines and crackers, and smoking. I heard voices, so I took Daniel and another man and went to investigate. We followed the voices to the language arts building, guns and grenades ready. When I crept up and peered through the shattered window, I saw a class in session. I almost laughed. I made my way to the classroom. The students were young, some no older than me, and they looked at me in startlement. I was used to the looks of fear, resentment and hostility that I got from civilians, and I saw all of those emotions on these students' faces.
The teacher was young as well – in her early twenties, I thought. I was captivated by her slender beauty and flowing hair. Every day I shouted clear orders under fire to men twice my age, but when I tried to talk to the teacher I stammered. I said, 'Do you – don't you know that the campus was shelled?' She gave me a bemused smile and said that if they cancelled class every time fighting broke out, no one would learn. I asked why the students were all so young and she explained that these were secondary school students taking a summer course. “It's called Practicing Peace,” she said, and waved to the blackboard.
I looked at the board, and my stomach leaped into my throat. There was a quotation written there:
“A scattered family inherit a beautiful mansion, on the condition that they all share the home. Do they barricade the rooms, some locking themselves in the bathroom and others in the kitchen? Do they pollute the home, foul the pool and burn the garden, rendering the home uninhabitable? Do they make war, piling bodies in the basement and leaving the floor stained with blood? Or do they learn to live together, enjoying their inheritance in peace? What will you choose, sons and daughters of Lebanon?”
I recognized the quote before I even saw the name at the bottom: Kamal Haddad.
“What do you think?” the teacher asked me. There was no challenge in her voice. She genuinely wanted my opinion. I heard some of the students sniggering, thinking perhaps that I was an ignorant gunman who could not understand such ideas. The teacher shushed them. My mouth was dry. I had not consciously thought of my father in so long. I knew he would be ashamed of who I had become. Still, I managed to speak clearly, without stammering this time. I said it was a beautiful sentiment and nothing more, and that all of Kamal Haddad's lovely words had not saved him in the end.
“So you've heard of him?” she said. I said yes. She asked if his death rendered his words less valid. “Great men throughout history have died for their ideals,” she said, “but the ideals live on.” I told her that this quote had been inspired by a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., who was Kamal Haddad's personal hero.
She tipped her head and smiled, and it was like the sun brightening the room, driving away the atmosphere of hostility, and lifting the pall of smoke that hung over the campus. “I never heard that,” she said. “How do you know that?”
I turned away from her and looked at the board. I didn't like all those eyes on me. I said, “He told me so. He used to quote Dr. King all the time:
'When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.'
My father had made me memorize several MLK quotes, but I hadn't known that they were still in my head. It occurred to me that I was a part of that gigantic mountain of evil, and that if a creative force was working to pull it down then it would pull me down as well. The teacher stepped closer and said, “Why are you crying?” and I hadn't known that I was. Then she said, “Who are you?”
One of the students said, “Miss, that's Lucky Haddad. He's a legend.”
I looked to see who had spoken and spotted a gangly, curly-haired youth at the back. He was older than the others – maybe eighteen. A scar starred his left cheek, which was strangely indented. I remembered him. He'd been in my battalion a few years ago, though not my company. He'd been shot in the face by a sniper. I was glad to see that he'd survived, but I felt a twinge of jealousy. Here he was, out of the fighting, studying like a normal human being.
Who was I, truly? I'd been raised as Simon Ibrahim, but that was not my name. I was a Haddad, but Boulos and Sarkis despised me, while Uncle Sami was simply not interested. The only friends I had were Saber, Daniel and a dog named Rocket. My family had been murdered, and I didn't know who had murdered them. Or did I? I was a mindless killer, roaming the streets of Beirut like a demon, fighting for a cause I didn't believe in.
The teacher smiled and said, “Is that right? Are you a legend?”
I said, 'I don't know who I am,” and walked out.
Daniel had been watching through the window. When I exited he said, “Woman like that, you need a map, so's don't get lost.”
I had a rare day off a few weeks later. I dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, stuck my pistol in my waistband beneath my shirt – I never went out unarmed – and took a taxi to Hamra Street to see if I could find a bottle of ketchup. I'd grown up loving ketchup with fries, fish, chicken, you name it. Ketchup was an oddity in Lebanon, but on Hamra Street you could find anything. Fast food to fine French dining, barbershops, the latest designer clothing, bootlegged cassettes, Japanese electronics, everything. I was also supposed to look for mustache wax and a Fairuz cassette for Daniel. He thought Fairuz was an angel on earth. He used to drive me crazy, singing, 'Taljak al mahabbi wa shamsak al herreye'. Lebanon, you're snows are love, and your sun is freedom.
In the end I found the cassette and the ketchup, though the latter cost me a week's wages. And I found the teacher – quite by accident – sitting at a sidewalk cafe table with a few other women her age, wearing a flowing green skirt and a long sleeved white blouse. I wasn't going to stop, but she leaped out of her chair and grabbed my sleeve. She said, “Hey, you're the soldier from the other day.” I nodded my head, tongue-tied. She said I looked younger in my civvies. I said, “I'm fifteen and I'm a captain.” Which was maybe a childish thing to say. She gave me a mock salute and I smiled and shook my head. She reminded me that I had not told her my proper name, and I said, “My name is Simon Haddad.”
She tipped her head in that way she had, and asked if I was related to Kamal Haddad. I said, “He was my father. He died in my arms.” And I turned to walk away. I don't know why I said that. I had never discussed my father's death with anyone.
The teacher snatched her scarf from the back of her chair, took my arm, and said, 'You're not getting away this time.” She walked me to an old Renault, put me in the passenger seat and started to drive. I didn't protest. It was my day off, and an attractive older woman wanted to take me for a drive. There was something relaxing about letting an assertive woman take control. Which she did. I lit a cigarette and she snatched it away and threw it out the window. She said smoking was a dirty habit for dirty people, and that I was not dirty. I laughed it off, but I never smoked another cigarette after that day.
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