AMIR’S PARENTS AND BROTHER are asleep. It’s early morning and the light is slowly pouring into the apartment windows but the hallway is still dark. The electricity has gone out again. Three times in less than two days. The conflict outside enters indoors with these frequent blackouts. Blown up power lines in the aftermath of another bomb, another downpour of bullets. In a pair of boxer shorts, an undershirt and runners, Amir stands in front of Walid’s apartment door; the dark wood is scraped from pieces of furniture being hauled in and out every time a tenant arrives and leaves. Walid has been the longest renter to occupy this apartment. Five years. Amir is now seventeen. He rubs his hands over his cheeks. Stubble scrapes his palms. He is tall now, taller than his father and his shoulders have broadened in width. Dark long curls fall around his face; he lifts his hands to push the strands behind his ears but then stops midway, remembering this is Walid’s gesture. Hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, years and years, Amir tries not to remember things about Walid but he can’t stop these thoughts from flooding his memory. He feels cracked open, vulnerable, but the feeling is fleeting.
Now flexing his biceps, he feels strong. There was a time when he used to duck past this door but now he strolls by it, shoulders stiff and straight. Raising his clenched fist, he knocks on the door, rather loudly. Steps back and waits. No one comes to it. Moving forward, he raps his knuckles once more, even louder this time. After a few minutes, Amir hears someone’s feet shuffling across the floor and he hopes it’s not Walid’s wife. She is a calm, well-mannered woman who greets him every morning on his way out to school. Walid married her about four years ago. Her name is Nayla. She is twenty-nine. Amir thinks she’s beautiful when she lifts her lips into a wide smile. And he wonders how she ever married an asshole like Walid. Does she know what her husband did to him? Amir contemplates now. Would she still be married to him? Would she still make love to him knowing what he did to Amir when he was only a child? But then Amir rubs his hands together and knows Nayla wouldn’t believe him, she’d side with her husband, the father of her child, a little boy named Fares. When the door finally flings open, Amir is jolted from his thoughts.
Walid reaches across and pulls Amir by the shirt. “What the fuck do you want?” Walid snaps.
Amir smells his morning breath, something between garlic and tobacco, and he shoves Walid away and glares across at him. He stands in his pyjamas, his shoulder-length hair dishevelled, his cheeks sporting a full beard, grey patches in abundance. His face looks crumpled and his shoulders droop. He seems to have aged since that day, Amir thinks. He almost feels sorry for him, standing there in his tattered pyjamas and, for one moment, he’s ready to turn around and leave him alone, but the image of Walid pumping furiously inside him makes him raise his fist and punch the man until he stumbles back against the half-open door and falls on the floor. Kicking the door wide open now, Amir bends over Walid and punches him several times. Walid winces and cries out, lifting his arms to protect his face, but this doesn’t stop Amir’s blows; he keeps jabbing the man with his fists until there is blood flowing out of Walid’s nostrils, splattering on Amir’s shirt, and then suddenly Amir jerks around and sees Fares standing behind him, hovering by the living room doorway, clutching a teddy bear in his small hands.
The boy starts to cry for his mother, who now rushes out of the bedroom in a thin nightgown, her hair also messy and her face as crumpled as her husband’s. She takes the boy into her arms, then looks between her husband and Amir, her eyes opening wide. “Amir, what are you doing?” she yells, now placing the boy down and kneeling next to Walid. “Get out! Get the hell out of our place before I call the police!”
Frozen, Amir doesn’t move. Nayla gets up from her knees and smashes her fists against his chest and pushes him out. A few inches from his face, she shrieks, “Get out, ya sharmout!” Amir wipes spit from his face. And he suddenly feels sad that he made this mild-mannered woman so angry. He mumbles a quick apology then scrambles down the stairwell, still wearing his boxer shorts and undershirt.
He catches a bus to the beach. The bus driver gives him strange glances at his attire and the crimson spots on his white undershirt, and Amir crosses his arms and his legs as if this could hide the fact that he’s wearing his underwear in public. He looks around the bus; it’s nearly empty except for an elderly couple who whisper something he can’t hear and look away quickly when Amir makes eye contact. Turning, he stares out the window. The shops are still closed and the fish market is almost deserted with the exception of a few early riser shoppers trying to get the freshest fish for lunch or dinner. When the bus turns onto a strip along the seaside, he sits up straight and takes a deep breath. Through the open windows, the smell of sea salt filters in and while the bus passes a small bakery, the scent of flatbread covered with cumin seed and thyme wafts in too. Amir’s stomach growls. He’s almost tempted to get off the bus and buy a zahter for breakfast. But he doesn’t. He keeps staring out the window and remembers, before the rape, how he’d go with his father, just the two of them, and share a Lebanese breakfast of freshly baked zahter from a stone oven and a cup of ahweh. He was too young for coffee but his father let him take quick sips from his mug while he discussed politics with the owner.
Oftentimes, Amir would stare past the owner’s shoulders and watch some young soldiers at a table in the corner of the small café pop olives into their mouths while their machine guns rested against the stone wall beside their chairs. They were regulars and appeared relaxed, sitting back and chatting about things other than politics; they mostly talked about women. And Amir sighed and realized he was different from these men with crew cuts and black army boots. He didn’t talk about girls, hadn’t yet kissed one or held her hand, didn’t even imagine doing so. There was one person he thought about kissing but he knew this was impossible. Mr. Labaki would never kiss him nor love Amir the way he wanted. It was a boyish crush. And he hated himself for having it. He should’ve been falling for the female teachers like Madame Haddad with her wavy black hair and large eyes covered with violet and pink eye shadow.
Now he slouches on the bus and thinks he spots his elementary teacher wandering on the beach, but it’s too early and he knows Mr. Labaki has other responsibilities that leave very little time for him to take a morning stroll. When Amir graduated from elementary school, Mr. Labaki had actually kissed him on both cheeks. He kissed everyone. But Amir had taken it as a sign that maybe, just maybe, his teacher could love him. But he was married. His wife was in a wheelchair. He rushed home every day after school to tend to her needs. He was quite the devoted husband. They never had children so his class had become his adopted children. Amir found this all out when he saw him last year at the marketplace. Now at seventeen, he knows this crush would never amount to anything; he was only a student to him and nothing more. When the bus finally stops, Amir rises to his feet and walks past the elderly couple who look down right away. He tips his head to the bus driver and walks confidently across the sand to the shore, his runners already absorbing seawater.
He runs along the shore until he reaches his favourite spot of boulders, hoists himself up and sits down, gazing at the sea, its waves moving calmly. He feels his body quiver from the wind but then he bites his lips gently and commands himself to remain still. He stares at the sea for a long time, thinking about his life and how he doesn’t want to live here, doesn’t want to be with his family and the memory and pain of his rape. He knows it won’t be easy for him to forget about what happened to him but also knows that if he were to leave that apartment building, leave the life he has there, then maybe he could move forward. Just then, he leans over and watches the sea rise from the gusting wind. When he lets his thoughts return to that day on his parents’ bed, Walid thrusting deep inside him, he feels it was his fault, his fault for having feelings for other boys, his fault for letting Walid inside the apartment when his parents weren’t there. It was his fault. He lowers his head in his hands and cries. But then he wipes his eyes and stares down at the sea once more and knows he could bury these shameful feelings here. Toss them in the water where they’d be swallowed by fish or become entangled in seaweed. Leaning, leaning over, he almost wants to fall in and let the sea bury him. Instead, he flings off his running shoes, lets them tumble onto the sand and stands up and dives into the cold water. There is no time for him to brace for either the coldness or the strong waves that threaten to take him under, but he’s a strong swimmer, he knows he won’t die in the sea, not today.
When he resurfaces on the shore, he shivers and rubs his hands over his body, trying to warm himself. His limp penis is noticeable in his wet boxers and his cheeks redden when two men emerge from behind the boulders, staring down at Amir’s crotch area, then smiling at each other in that knowing way lovers look at one another when sharing a secret. Sitting back atop the boulders, Amir watches the men walk together, their hands almost touching. He wonders if they are gay but has no time to ponder this further because a bomb thunders and the rock he sits on shakes, almost tossing him back into the water. With quick movements, he makes it across the street. Another bomb explodes, pushes him and the two men to the ground. Amir covers his head from falling debris and crawls on the cobblestone, finding safety in an alley, where he peers over the edge of the stone wall and sees a few vendors, crushed under blown-up boulders and dirt. Embers burn around them, an effigy of crushed vegetables and fruit, dead fish and people. One woman’s splayed feet are covered in blood, one foot still wearing a red high heel and the other cut and bleeding a dark ruby, nothing like the bright hue of her shoes. She doesn’t move. Amir wants to rush over and help her but he freezes, afraid that if he stands up, another bomb might blow off his limbs. He remains still, hidden in the alleyway, while the sky suddenly weeps rain.
On his way through the hallway of his apartment floor, he hears people arguing and almost immediately recognizes the voices of his mother and father, along with another woman’s and man’s. He stops, looks down at his undershirt and boxers; they are dirty and bloodstained. For a while, he stands there, not moving, not doing anything but listening to his mother shout, insisting her son would never do anything as harsh as punching another human being, he’s too decent and kind. And for a second, Amir thinks he hears a hint of pride in her words and he feels he can approach the apartment now; but as soon as he enters it, his mother takes one look at his clothes and lunges at him, slapping him across the head and pushing him on the sofa, next to his father, who doesn’t meet his son’s gaze. Amir’s father sits with his large hands dangling between his open legs and Amir lowers his eyes too but then raises them to see Walid sitting with a smirk on his swollen mouth. His nose is red and puffy too. Nayla is close to him, her hand rests on his thigh, and Fares is on the floor in front of them, playing with a toy car. Walid insists that something must be done about Amir. He says this as if Amir isn’t present. “Have you thought about the military? He’s almost old enough to join now. They’ll teach him some discipline.”
Amir’s mother interrupts, “We know how to discipline our son, Walid. We brought him up well. He’s…”
“You call punching someone brought up well?” Walid scoffs.
Finally, Amir’s father steps in and rises from the couch. “Walid, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’ll handle it from here.”
Walid takes the hint and stands up too, grasping his wife’s arm, who bends down to pick up Fares. “I hope so. The next time your boy knocks at my door, I won’t be so understanding and accommodating.” He sneers at Amir then walks out of the apartment with his family following behind. Nayla turns and gives Amir a small smile and Amir feels a sort of pity for her then.
But this doesn’t last when his father slides off his leather belt and begins whipping him with it; the strap strikes his bare legs and he winces. “You stupid kalb," his father yells, raising the belt and slashing him across the thighs again until Amir’s legs buckle and he thuds to the floor on his knees. “You think it’s funny to make your family look bad! We’re a decent family. We never had any problems before, until you started making them for us. Your mother is right about you. You’re trouble!”
Amir swallows back the sting of tears. He lifts himself up, but then the belt comes crashing down on his back and he falls to his knees again. When he raises his head, he sees his mother sitting at the dining room table, her eyes narrowing. He crawls towards her and looks up at her, begging to make the beating stop, but she pushes the chair back and heads to the kitchen, where she begins to prepare lunch. Amir smells the fresh scent of parsley and dried mint leaves and hears chopping on the cutting board. His father raises his arm again and the whip of the belt is all Amir can hear now.