1001 Nights Cast

When I was thirteen, I fell in love with the poppies of the South. Rizkallah, the labourer looking after my grand-mother’s olive groves fell in love with me. I knew it, because we laughed a lot together and sought each other’s company amongst the crowd of relatives and friends. He was much older, around seventeen or even eighteen, an age I looked up to then, and respected.

These developments between Rizkallah and me displeased my mother. She frowned, signalling for me to stop returning his jokes so openly and to stay away from him. Laughter she said, could be misread as ‘looseness’.

I ran away from her under the Mediterranean sun, my cheeks burning with fury. I found myself in a field of poppies. I had seen those same poppies year after year in spring and had not looked at them twice. But on that day they appeared like never before, new, as if they had just been invented, for me. I discovered their fragility amongst the hard rocks, defiantly popping between bindies, their dark centres in the blinding harsh sun. I sat on the warm ground holding my knees up to my chest and thinking how much I’d like to run away with Rizkallah, teach my mother a lesson, restore my wounded pride.

Rizkallah appeared from the neighbouring olive grove, riding his donkey, Mouattar. Seeing Mouattar had a settling effect on me, because his life had been much worse than mine. Mouattar, the name, is given to someone who accepts insults and humiliations without protest. Mouattar had endured intense beating, with Rizkallah of course, at the hands of his first owner, Rizkallah’s father. But Rizkallah never ceased to smile, as if he had the best childhood ever. Though poor, he was ready with a jar of figs and walnut jam for me whenever we came to the village.

I waved, making the V sign to Rizkallah, a sign of solidarity against the authoritarian, old-fashioned class of my parents, a victory sign in my adolescent fight against the world.

Rizkallah returned the V sign to me with a smile. What does that mean? he asked. He looked docile. His chiselled long face and gentle eyes…how could my mother think so badly of him?

‘It means we’re going to win.’

‘When there are winners, there are losers. Your family is looking for you,’ he said, ‘They’re getting ready to go back to Beirut, you better join them, there’s going to be a curfew tonight at eight.’

”What’s a curfew?’ I asked.

‘No lights will be allowed, you close all the windows and hide. It’s a practice curfew, they’ll have the sirens going to see if they work and for people to get ready.’

‘Ready for what?’ I said.

‘Ready for war.’

‘What war?’ I said.

In 1967, the war was everywhere except in Lebanon. It was in Vietnam because it was full of primitive people, living under their large hats in the jungles and the rice fields. There was war in Egypt and Syria, because of politics, their leaders not only talked politics but also played politics. But in Lebanon, we only talked politics, we didn’t play it, because we could never win or change anything.

This talk of war sounded very strange. It attributed to us Lebanese more power than we had. I was afraid.

‘There’s going to be a war sooner or later. The south will become another Vietnam.’ Rizkallah continued.

‘Vietnam?’ I laughed looking at the poppies that were acting more coquettish than ever.

‘We’ve got valleys and mountains and trees to hide. They want the water, the water of the Litani.’

‘Over my dead body.’ I said. And I stretched my arms, lying on the warm ground. ‘If there’s going to be a war like Vietnam, then you and I should become guerrillas and fight for the land.’

‘Hop on Mouattar, I’ll take you back to your mother.’

When I saw my mother again, her mood towards me had not changed. On the way back to Beirut, in the car, we listened to the news, how to get ready for the mock curfew. I was glad there was something to distract my mother from me.

‘They’re planning to turn Lebanon into another Vietnam,’ my father said. My mother had never talked politics before, let alone war. War was the domain of men.

‘We can do better than Vietnam,’ she said. ‘Our trees are bigger, our mountains are higher, our men are stronger, they could never take Lebanon. They’ll need a miracle to win, and miracles don’t come free.’

We never went back to the village after that trip in 1967. Rizkallah came to Beirut to bring us the olive oil of the new season.

‘I heard you’re thinking of leaving,’ he said to my mother.

‘Yes we have the opportunity to go to Australia. We’ll go for a couple of years, finish the children’s education and come back. By then, the Palestinians will have gone back to their homes in Palestine, and the situation will be more settled.’

Rizkallah waited in Port Beirut to wave our family goodbye. He had a bunch of poppies for me. He made me the V sign and said ‘Don’t be long, you belong here. Come back soon for the next season of figs, I’ll have the fig conserve ready for you.’

‘I’ll write.’ I said.

‘Don’t write,’ he said, ‘I can’t read.

‘I will come back.’ I said. I made the V sign back to him. ‘V for the Vietnamese Lebanon’ I said, ‘V for Victory’ as the ship was leaving, ‘Virginity,’ all the words that mean love, freedom, beauty, the impenetrable south.

I promised myself that I would go back in a year to see Rizkallah. A year then was a long time away from home. But then Vietnam came to Lebanon and stayed. People and even donkeys disappeared or were transformed. But the poppies remained. They popped, defiant, between the bindies, between the rocks, as soon as Spring showed up.