The Last Rectangle Read online

  The Last Rectangle

  and Other Short Stories

  Akram Najjar

  The Last Rectangle and Other Short Stories

  By Akram Najjar

  POB 113-5623

  Beirut, Lebanon

  Visit the site for this book at: www.marginalstories.com

  Email the author at: [email protected]

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2016

  The Library of Congress Catalog Number:

  TXu 970-510

  E-Book ISBN: 9781642372533

  Published by

  Columbus, Ohio, USA

  The book may not be reproduced, or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, in part or in full, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.

  All graphics have been illustrated by the author.

  Table of Contents

  The Scarab

  Dr. Giacometti

  The Hakawati

  The Lion

  The Rat

  My Grandmother Never Told Me a Novel

  The Crab

  Dead Cars

  The Last Wish

  Interrogation 1

  Interrogation 2

  The Biology Teacher

  The Festival of Laughter 1. The Funny Dream

  2. The Festival of Laughter

  3. Approaching the Agency

  4. Developing the Project

  5. My Final Project

  The Building Floor 1 Left - Jinal and Maissoon

  Floor 2 Left - Timoshenko the Russian and His Aunt

  Floor 3 Left - Taibah

  Floor 1 Right - The Lawyer

  Floor 3 Right - The Professor

  Trains

  Things I Have Stolen

  Quartet Afternoon

  1009

  Five Houses and Five Stories House 1 - Adele’s Door

  House 2 - Malek’s Operation

  House 3 - Mireille’s Promise

  House 4 - Salwa’s Distance

  House 5 - Dalal’s Spirit

  The Man with Difficulties

  The Prince Who Danced

  Eight Variations on No Theme The Day When the Sky Fell Down in Front of our House

  The Day the Sky Opened its Door

  The Day I Built a Bridge to Space

  The Day My Courage Went Bad

  The Day I Enumerated Everything

  The Day I Almost Broke a Statue in a Museum

  The Day My Father Gave Me a Carpentry Workshop

  The Day I Replayed Silence

  The Law of Negative Inference

  Lenders and Borrowers

  The Last Rectangle The Archway

  Year 1618 - The Teacher

  Year 1762 - The Foreign Painter

  Year 1851 - The Soldier

  Year 1906 - The Bandit

  Year 1940 - The Couple

  Year 1961 - The Black Haired Lady

  Year 1974 - The Drummer

  Year 1982 - The Dancers

  Years 1987, 1990, 1992 and 1993

  Year 1994 - The Selected Artist and the Last Rectangle

  Meet the Author

  End Notes

  The Scarab

  The town of Sour haunts me. Before its demolition by the invaders, it ran out of its real treasure, not its houses and inhabitants but the ruins, those left by hundreds of years of neglect.

  But I was told that if you want to have a real scarab you should immerse a black beetle and keep it in pure alcohol, in darkness, for one month. The skin will undergo a slow whitening. The once brittle and fragile shell will harden, turning the beetle into a perfect scarab.

  I never thought it possible to reconstruct a culture but I pursued my aim of making a scarab.

  As I got out of taxis, as I left supermarkets or crossed parking lots, my head was bowed down in search of the black beast that was to assist me in this transformation. In my briefcase, I carried a matchbox, larger than those we used to keep colored beetles in when we were young. I somehow believed that I owed him more comfort.

  I found him on a very hot day, once, painfully crossing the middle step of a stairway. He walked like an armored car impervious to the sweltering heat outside.

  I tipped the box and stood it on its black sulfured side with the drawer extending outwards. He walked in gently and without looking sideways. I was pleased at his co-operation, a foreboding of success.

  Having closed the box, I faced the dilemma of how to turn it back on its larger side without upsetting him. In the end, I kept it in my briefcase, on its side, as it was.

  In the night, I know he is there. I know what he thinks. I know that he waits for that moment that shall vindicate his lowly existence and plunge him from the icy coldness of alcohol into immortality.

  Often I hear him panting slightly. As I roam around the town, his heartbeat pounds in my ears.

  One day, I thought that I should take a look at him. There was no one in the box, but a black darkness, which stopped at the edges, blacker than the blackest beetle you have ever seen. I dared not doubt his presence by poking my finger questioningly. I kept the box open and never left my room.

  Dr. Giacometti

  I went searching for my limbs in the heaps of bones and flesh which lay scattered all throughout the neighborhood. I fought madly with one man and had to push another man aside when I felt my search was about to yield some results. I needed my limbs. I wanted to find them. Running, snatching, collecting, I located them one by one. My arms full, I walked towards the hospital. I went in and sat down in the waiting room. I kept tapping my heel on the floor. Sooner or later, a doctor was sure to come and see me. I clutched my limbs like a mother holding her sick baby in a night of horror. All around the waiting room, different eyes stared fixedly.

  Everyone clutched several limbs and waited for the doctor. When will he come? No one was being serviced. I saw no one go in to see the Doctor and no one come out from the Doctor’s room. Neither did I see anyone get bored of waiting and leave. I tried to assemble my limbs in a form I knew but like an umbrella in the wind, they kept springing apart. I noticed that all around me the same effort was being wasted. One man locked his limbs into the stack of another. A wave of imitation swept through the lounge and pretty soon, we all had our limbs adjoined in one whole. Smiles emerged on people’s faces and I decided to mark my limbs to be able to trace them. I pulled out a small felt pen from my breast pocket and marked a little cross onto my own flesh. Others scratched, blemished, strapped and colored their arms and legs.

  Finally the Doctor came and called out a name that no one recognized. He called once again, then another time and in disgust, flung his arms up high and left the waiting room. He went back to his room. I followed him without my limbs which were still entangled in the massive heap outside. Inside the room, what do I see? The Doctor was busy with his own limbs. He was removing the markings from them and trying to assemble them according to a detailed design on the wall.

  The Hakawati

  Why is it they cannot forget me and leave me alone? They keep recalling me. I go through their skeletons like a butterfly through a storm. They stand talking. Have not seen you for a long time. Yes, I’ve been away for a while and here I am now. How did you know about this evening. I did not know. Hisham brought me. He said that after a long search, they had located a Hakawati1 in Tripoli. It turns out that he had been telling stories there for a long while. You would have thought it easier to find him in Baghdad. This will be a long night. We’ll be up till dawn.

  When a waiter moves around with the drinks, he goes through the crowd like a knife
through the sand. The pressure of their stories is too much. He cannot wait till they are all inside.

  They sit and wait for the Hakawati. The lights dim and an able young man in a long Abaya walks with determination onto the stage. I think how different telling stories is from the strength of this man. Why not spare him to do battle and leave the story telling to one whose body need not be strong. He hops over legs stretched out in the front row. Unlike in Baghdad where he wouldn’t have had a special seat, he is seated on a high chair, center-stage.

  My mouth bends with a painful smile. His head is covered with the Abaya’s hood. He adjusts it back a little and pierces the audience with a steady look. Two eyes like butterfly wings on a ragged tree. He speaks or rather tells. His words come out like darts, in strong punches. He tells of the Hakawati who has been with the Arabs for a long time, even as far back as the Jahiliyah2 period and without change, has remained with us through our various transitions. Story telling is not restricted to a few. We all had a grandmother who transfixed us with her stories. The Hakawati is the apex of this form. Yet, he is the professional for he tells stories to stay alive. At the end of a climactic episode, he will stop and wait for the shower of coins which I hope you have ready! I don’t know if I should throw some coins onto the stage, but I fumble in my pocket a little. He continues.

  If the shower is plentiful, the Hakawati will provide a happy ending or at least one that gives satisfaction. If not, he will leave you hanging on a cliff. He can change the life of Antar3 the way he wants, always depending on the shower. The end does not depend on the beginning. But I will not leave you on a cliff, so let me introduce myself, I am Nizar, member of the committee and I have the honor to introduce the Hakawati to you.

  An old man wearing much used clothing walks onto the stage with a gait that is more a style of walking than an infirmity. He does not look like a man from Tripoli. He is not aware of the historical role assigned him in my introduction, nor is he concerned. He has thick glasses and carries a worn out book under his arm.

  He sits on the same chair while I leave without a sound. He opens his book, flips through the pages and starts. We leave Antar at the end of a long night, his dark skin taut with the tension of an expected battle. He stares at his brother Shayboub and tells him of his expectations. Shayboub nods knowing that with Antar, there is no fear and no fear of fear. Wherever Antar goes Shayboub follows. We are on the trail of a tribe that has abducted the daughters of our cousin. They have had to settle for the night. We can attack them in the early hours of the morning, when they are least ready. It is dawn already. A few of them surround the dimming fire. They tell stories to stay awake. These few will be our first victims, since we do not kill the sleeping. We raise our swords up high and charge through them like a storm through the trees.

  The Lion

  The Lion passed through Baaqline last night. No one had expected him. He has not been through since 1956. He came in around 7:30 almost 30 minutes after sunset during that period of the day where only in Baaqline and for only five minutes, dusk can be confused with dawn, where the color of the sky is an even balance between sunset orange and the darkening blue of night. Minutes before or after, you would have known with certainty which part of the day you were in.

  One long road runs through Baaqline. Houses are built above and below the road. Depending on the particular hill in Baaqline, sometimes the houses on the left side are higher. Other times the houses on the right side are higher. The lion came in one end of the road, descending from a previous hill and went through it all emerging from the other end onto another hill.

  The first sight of him created a forward shock wave. People called to each other. Some clapped their hands to signal forward to the next house. The wave traveled with him until he left. I heard of his arrival very early on and I choked. I ran out of the house and onto the street fast enough to observe his thick silhouette going through the olive trees in front of our house. He was moving forward with a steady and heavy trot. He cut through the terraces with ease going up one and down the other without a change of pace. It made him look so low. I ran behind him and lost him near the Baidar4. People stood there in groups. Three very tall people, one lady and two men stood facing each other without saying much. Another two looked ahead to where the lion had gone. I ran after him. I could not keep still. I caught up with him on the next hill but I could not see him anymore, it was getting dark. I could hear his trot, the earth drummed under my feet. He was going away. I caught sight of him climbing over the Ras El Jamous hill to the very top. He then descended and vanished into the woods. I was out of breath. I lay down and rested below a fig tree, my feet pointing towards Baaqline, my back against a large rock. The hum of distant Baaqline gradually decreased. At one time, all was quiet. Every now and then, his trot would reverberate within the rock I leaned against.

  Baaqline woke up again, thirty minutes before sunrise during that period of the night where only in Baaqline and for only five minutes, dawn can be confused with dusk, where the color of the sky is an even balance between the orange of the sunrise and the lightening blue of day. Minutes before or after, you would have known with certainty which part of the day you were in. I walked back and came upon some children playing on the gray flat rocks of the Baidar. They saw me and they all stood up and stared as I walked slowly towards them. In the bluish gray of the emerging morning, the whites of their eyes shone with a strength which slowed me down. Some approached me slowly. I waded through them as their sights followed me around. My hair streamed on my sides, I walked like a madman. I had an open mouth, so large I could swallow the oncoming crowd. I am reaching the end of my line. Suddenly, the crowd thickens. They do not move anymore. I am within and have to wade. The faster I wade, the thicker they flow. The slower I wade, the more they draw me with them. Why did I not stay home?

  The Rat

  A mistaken nomenclature in my childhood made me grow up thinking that a rat looked like a foot long crocodile that lived in sewers and hence had the habit of emerging wet and glittering from toilets.

  Determined to avoid all unpleasant encounters with the creature, I always kept the toilet door half-open, I suppose, so I can leave quickly when I hear the rat’s claws squeaking against the shining ceramic. Keeping the door open was a habit that I was never able to shake off leaving me with a flawed sense of privacy.

  When I grew up, I learned that a rat looks like an overgrown mouse - yet, I went on linking the name of the creature with the one-foot crocodile. As I saw more rats, I recalled the vision of a crocodile less and less till one day I learned that people who had pet crocodiles were getting rid of them when they grew too large by flushing them down the toilet, refilling the world of sewers with overgrown mice again.

  The speed with which the image of the one-foot crocodile replaced that of the overgrown mouse was unimaginable: I went back to keeping toilet doors open on trains and in public places.

  My Grandmother Never Told Me a Novel

  “It is not with any specific reason in mind that we agreed to write this novel as a joint effort. It is also not with the intention of hiding authorship that we chose to write it as a joint effort. More than simple ignorance of the reason, we may have arrived at the same state of mind simultaneously and would have therefore written 5 separate novels had we not happened to talk about it one day”.

  The prologue that we penned before we started writing the novel was good. We could not have stated our perspective in a better way. Writing an introduction by each about each would have thrown us into kitsch. But then, when did we ever talk about it? All I can remember is that one evening after dinner at Nassib’s, we found out that he had been writing. He had never mentioned this before and we really knew very little about his interests except that he read a lot. During the evening, someone complained about the short supply of some goods in Beirut and Nassib confirmed it by noting that he could not get ribbons for his typewriter.

 
; The rest of the thread was pulled out in gentle little jerks. We realized that he had been writing little stories, more like fables and why not novels, we asked? Because my grandmother never told me a novel. And since his fables, which we had not read, were about the war, we teasingly started calling him the Lebanese Camus and labeled his writing Resistance Literature. This went on for a while until in a spate of silence with no electric power, we heard him but hardly saw his face as he asked: what is it that I am resisting? It had bothered him. Of course, the joke was on us and we all laughed but the question hung like a sustained peal of a bell, more so than ever since the massive rain that had been falling for the previous two hours suddenly stopped. That was our cue. Everyone scurried to collect their scattered belongings: coats, shoes, scarves, gloves. We left the house in one batch. Nassib’s look of longing must have remained on his face till way after we left.

  As he sat up in his bed in the dark, he covered his knees with the heavy quilt pulling it up to his neck. The central heating pipes look different depending on the water flowing through them, water that he does not see. When the water is cold, they look like icicles. When it is hot, they all glow.

  Two weeks later, Nassib invited us all to dinner again and let the conversation loose. “What did your grandmother tell you this time?” Jumana joked. Nassib grew a slow smile on his face which widened and narrowed as if he were savoring the joke or about to say something. He did: “She told me that all your grandmothers came to see her and that they use to exchange stories amongst one another to keep us from staying awake”. Fine retort, too surgical, probably thought out in advance. Maybe the icicles had helped him shape his wry humor but this was not the case. He was fishing with a long line. It caught. Bahij said: “If each grandmother tells a short story, can 5 grandmothers tell a novel?” “Yes, we can”, said Nassib, shifting the pronoun with silent intensity. The agreement was sealed without method. The novel started without technique. However, some etiquette had to be observed because we still had animal waywardness. “When?” “Next week and every first Thursday of the month. All you have to do is wait for the security forces to try out their war sirens on those Thursdays and you will remember”.