The Last Martyr
By Hanan Sooting
July 2006
It was by far the hottest summer since I arrived in Lebanon twenty years ago. I was sweating bullets as I drew out the last tray of lahmi bil ajin mince meat patties from the overheated oven. My face had turned brick red; my sweat-stained abaya clung to me. But I was oblivious to it all – for the sizzling, golden brown meat patties bursting with flavours, were a feast for the eyes. A labour of love.
“Mom, have you washed my blue jeans? Where’s my yellow t-shirt?” Yusuf yelled from across his room, rummaging through his cupboard.
It was Yusuf’s birthday the next day, the 13th. My son was turning seventeen. His friends Hasan, Mohamed and Ahmed had already made plans, a week before. They would go down to Tyre, late in the afternoon and hang out at Al Jawad seafront café. Jawad’s shawarma and falafel sandwiches were the best in town.
“I wish you could remain my little Peter Pan and never grow up” I teased him.
He gave a weak lop-sided smile. Picked up a couple of hot patties, juggling them in his hands.
“Oh mom, you grow up!” He said, stuffing them in his mouth.
But Fate had different plans!
August 1986
I was twenty-three, newlywed, excited. A new chapter was unfolding. My husband’s younger brother, Khaled, picked us up from Beirut airport, in his father’s dark-green Mercedes. His twenty-six year old face broke into huge smiles as he hugged his brother. With amazing speed he lifted our luggage into the trunk effortlessly. Settling behind the wheel, he winked conspiratorially at Omar and said,
“Khaiyi, brother, there are several checkpoints manned by the goddamn Syrian militia - one at Damour, Sidon and Latani. So I think it’s best we get home quickly, before sunset.”
The Mercedes leaped forward as though it had been stung.
“Better keep your papers and documents ready for checking, Leila,” warned Omar. My eyes widened, not out of apprehension, but for the real experience.
As Khaled sped down south to Tyre city, along the only coastal highway that connected the North to the South, Lebanon’s vibrant beauty struck me with a sensory explosion. Tyre or Sur, where my husband’s family lived, is a city built on the ruins of Phoenician, Greco-Roman, Crusader, Arab and Byzantine civilizations. It has its own special story of valour, courage and pride. In 322 BC, the little Phoenician island put up a fierce and courageous resistance against Alexander the Great’s invasion. Enraged and maddened by the fearless audacity of the island’s small population of seafaring traders, his mighty Macedonian army hauled up massive rocks from the sea and built an immense causeway joining it to the mainland. Today, Alexander’s legacy still lives on, for the causeway was never removed and Tyre has remained a peninsula ever since.
Just a half hour before sunset, Khaled cruised down comfortably onto the peninsula. As I sat in the backseat, looking out from the right-hand window, my first Mediterranean sunset welcomed me with a splendid pageantry of colours. The ageless sun, that has shone over countless empires and civilizations, hovered above the shimmering emerald green expanse, while a long stretch of iridescent coral pink clouds floated on the horizon, rising upwards to embrace it in their soft billowy folds. Stately palm trees flashed past. Slanting shadows of the tall, gray marble Roman colonnade ruins, caressed my face as we raced the last lap home.
Omar and Khaled had spotted their father sitting with some friends in front of a coffee shop. My husband rushed out to kiss his father’s hand with a reverence, so rarely seen these days. His father hugged him tight and kissed his forehead. A sudden tightness gripped my throat and tears stung my eyes watching them. I had imagined my father-in-law to be tall, commanding and forbidding, but I stared in total amazement. At fifty-two, Yusuf Abu Omar was stocky and robustly good looking. His wide friendly smile crinkled the sides of his light hazel eyes in a sun burnt, weathered face. His short cropped hair had streaks of silver. His strong hands were calloused when I grasped to kiss them.
“Hadi kinti min Hind,” he introduced me to his friends, laughing heartily. “This is my daughter-in-law from India.”
After everyone had washed and said their evening prayer, Omar’s two younger sisters Fatmi and Fadia laid out the sofrah dinner in an open courtyard, shaded by two large fig trees in the corners: plates of olives, freshly baked khubz bread, tomatoes and beetroot pickles. The sisters were inseparable and incurable gigglers. They worked in tandem and shared secret jokes.
Omar’s mother, Soraya Um Omar brought out a tray of aromatic grilled chicken and potatoes garnished with rosemary and thyme. Omar’s eldest sister Nadia and her family joined us. She came carrying her baby son Ali in one arm and a dish of steaming mulukhiyah mallow in the other hand. At first, her four-year old daughter, Eman, and two-year old son, Ameer, were too shy to venture close. They stuck to their father’s side. Eventually, Omar lifted them up into the air, with them wriggling and squealing in his arms. Relatives and friends dropped by for the after-dinner coffee and tea. They were curious to meet Abu Omar’s Indian daughter-in-law.
“Ya ahlan wa sahlan, welcome,” boomed Abu Omar ‘s voice expansively. “Ya Leila, come and meet my fat sister Khadouj,” he joked, affectionately holding his sister’s broad battleship shoulders.
Khadeeji’s infectious laughter jiggled the rolls of flesh under her chin. The crush of her warm flabby bosom were ice breakers. Omar’s uncle Abdullah let out a loud fart. The men guffawed and this set the ball rolling—the family farting competition. Everyone went hysterical. The stink drove the womenfolk indoors.
“Keef halik? How are you?” shouted Omar’s khalto Miriam, loudly.
We were sitting on cushions on a maroon carpet. I looked at her bewildered. Her dark green eyes twinkled. Bursting into hilarity, Omar’s youngest brother Bassem told her, “Aunt Miriam, Leila can hear very well, but she doesn’t understand Arabic.”
“We love flam hindi, Indian films! Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan...” blurted out Omar’s cousins, Salma and Sameerah.
Excited, the girls crowded around me, a barrage of words, gestures and giggles.
“How do you say ‘I love you’ in Hindi?,” “Can you sing a Hindi song?,” “Do you henna your hands?”
“How much do you love cousin Omar?” they teased me.
“Akeed, ad el bahr, certainly as wide as the sea,” giggled shy Rania.
“Laa, ad bahr rain, no, she crossed two seas to be with him!” Zeinab’s teasing reply brought on more laughter.
Their youthful unabashed spontaneity took me by surprise. Later that night, lying in my husband’s arms, he murmured in his deep voice, “We are home at last, habibte Leila. This is your family now.” My heart was soaring. I had flown halfway across the globe, destined to meet my avatar here.
A month later, Omar took me, Bassem, Fatmi and Fadia to visit his aunt, his father’s sister Yasmeen, who lived in Tripoli, near the Syrian border. On our way north, we spent some time sightseeing Beirut. An extraordinary city steep in history and sadly, in tragedy. We walked down the iconic Martyrs Square echoing with revolutionary chants and protests of unstifled voices. We cruised around Downtown Beirut with its high-end fashion designer houses and sophisticated restaurants. Hamra Street, often called Beirut’s “Champs Elysees,” filled with lively coffee shops, upscale hotels, art galleries, churches and mosques. An eerie feeling of déjà vu overcame me as we visited the Archeology Museum. Amidst the shops were stunning Ottoman-era mansions with balconies that hung over the streets and ornate town-houses owned by the same families for generations. Remnants of the city’s glorious past. Under the swaying palms on the Corniche, we sipped iced tea and gazed at the Raouche Rocks. Those sturdy silent sentinels on the Sea. Despite her battle-scarred, shell-pocked face, Beirut has an unmistakable aura of French charm, a pulsating heart flowing with joie de vivre and an indomitable spirit. She has lived through fire and steel, an embodiment of the fiery phoenix.
Ammto Yasmeen was a widow. She had a married daughter, Amal, and two sons Fareed and Maher. They were butchers and ran their own butchery shop below their mother’s house on the main market road. On the verandah of her house overlooking the noisy marketplace, we chatted and drank coffee.
“Leila, it’s bad manners to stir your coffee clockwise,” Bassem said. I looked up, startled, reddening. All eyes were riveted on me.
“We stir our tea and coffee anticlockwise. Like this,” he demonstrated.
I consciously followed, when I heard stifled giggles from Fatmi and Fadia. Then hysterical laughter.
“Bassem, you rascal, stop teasing your poor sister-in-law,” laughed Ammto Yasmeen.
Little was I to know, that in Bassem’s teenage eyes, I was the perfect gullible victim for his pranks. It took me a long time to detect nuances in his innocent facial expressions and guileless talk.
Along the coastline of South Lebanon are large acres of orange groves, bistaans. It was in these orchards where Ammy Yusuf Abu Omar, worked as an overseer. He hired his brother Abdullah, cousins, brothers-in-law, nephews and sons to do the pruning, watering, picking and packing the citrus in crates—a strenuous, continuous tending throughout the seasons. Plump tangerines, juicy mandarins, valencias and clementines hung heavy on branches; birds twittered in pursuit of plentiful fruit and bees hummed contently during blossom time. Oranges fell off trees onto the highway yet no one took them. They just rotted on the roadside. The bistaans were Ammy Yusuf’s paradise, passion and pride. He was down to earth and brutally outspoken; he never minced words yet everyone respected him for his shrewd judgment.
The Bikir season, the first harvesting of the citrus fruits, began in November and lasted until the end of December. It was a crucial and busy time for orchard overseers. Under the shade of groves, Ammy Yusuf, along with his brother, cousins and brothers-in-law, sat on the grass and packed rows of plastic crates, bantering good naturedly with each other. They sorted out tangerines, clementines, lemons and mandarins, wrapping each in tissue before packing them in crates. His sons and the younger men scattered around the bistaan, with buckets slung over their shoulders to pick fruit. The heady fragrance of the ripe plucked citrus drove the flies in a frenzy of buzzing. During one noon-day break, while everyone munched on falafel sandwiches and drank tea, I picked up a big, luscious tangerine from a pile on the grass and sniffed its tangy fragrance.
“Imagine that is your last tangerine on earth, Leila,” called out Ammy Yusuf, sipping his finjan of black coffee. “Yalla, go ahead, eat it, savour the juice, roll it in your mouth and remember its taste. Zaqgriha!”
Ramadhan, the holy months of fasting, were unforgettable. Two hours before sunset, we would begin preparing sumptuous iftaars: kneading the bulgur soft for the lamb kobeh, roasting chicken with freekheh green wheat, chopping tomatoes, parsley, cucumbers, green leeks and mint for tabbouleh, squeezing jugfuls of orange juice and roasting eggplants for babaganoush. This was Ammy’s favourite starter and he poured a whole carafe of olive oil over it. Omar’s uncles’ and aunts’ families were always invited and the house hummed with the hustle and bustle.
After iftaar, the menfolk departed for prayers at the mosque while the women cleared and washed. They got the coffee brewed and layered the kanafeh dessert with fine golden strands of semolina, butter and white goat’s cheese. It was baked a few minutes before the men returned and served hot so that the melted cheese pulled into long strands as we ate it. The evening saharah began with rounds of coffee and dates. Tables laden heavy with baklava and kanafeh soaked in sugar syrup, flavoured with mazahar—orange blossom essence. Whiffs of strong, cardamom coffee permeated the ambiance. Wisps of apple-scented smoke from gurgling arghilli floated into the night skies. Women’s chatter and children’s laughter filled the air.
“Fatmi, get some more hot coals ready for your uncles’ arghilli,” and “Leila, brew another pot of coffee,” were Um Omar’s constant reminders.
“So you fasted the whole month? Did you find it difficult?” Ammy asked on the last evening of Ramadhan, the eve of Eid.
It was not an easy question to answer and I wanted to give him an honest meaningful reply. Without waiting, he continued, “Leila, can you eat an elephant, a fil? Well, you can do it, if you eat it bit by bit.”
I thought I understood what he meant. It took me till years later to realize I had subconsciously and effortlessly morphed; the cultural lifestyle grew on me like new skin.
Three years later, on 13th July, I became a mother. We named our son Yusuf after his grandfather. Motherhood bestowed on me a new identity. It took me some time getting used to being called Um Yusuf. I was often poked and elbowed in the ribs by the giggling sisters to remind me of my new alias.
“What! have you gone deaf Leila?” or “What’s the matter with you, why are you not answering?”
On a bright spring morning of 1996, the Israeli Army shelled several villages on the southern border. It was the 16-day operation, they called the Grapes of Wrath. A few days later, I was hanging out the laundry on the roof, when there was a sudden explosion. It sounded very close. Black menacing clouds darken the azure skies. I ran down, frightened, slipped and lost an unborn baby. My husband rushed me to the city hospital. We stood in the crowded, blood streaked corridor, Omar holding my shivering shoulders. I tried to press my quivering lips tight from screaming. My stomach tightened and heaved. I retched into the folds of my headscarf. The gory mayhem was a gun blast between my eyes. Its horrific images indelibly imprinted in the dark recesses of my neuronal archives.
Blaring ambulances; Red Cross paramedics rushing gurneys, loaded with torn, mangled bodies of massacred martyrs from the villages of Qana and Bint Jbeil; the strong metallic smell of blood dripping down the wheels; agonized screams and wails of women piercing through my head; harried nurses mopping gaping wounds; and for the first time, I saw grown men crying, twirling tashbeeh beads in their hands. Doctors emerged, in blood stained gowns, trying to assure the crowd.
“We are doing our best to save your loved ones. Pray and have sabr, patience.”
For days, I secluded myself. Drained, disheartened, listless. Nadia told neighbours and friends I was unwell. A stream of empathetic and generous hearted visitors descended, filling every seat in my living room and kitchen. The dining table sagged with gifts of fruit and dishes of food. I found strength and solace in their stories of resilience and courage. In their undying steadfastness and struggle against unjust brutalities.
That weekend, Ammy Yusuf and Soraya visited us. They never came without bringing some delicacy with them. This time it was warah ahnab, grape leaf rolls stuffed with rice and minced lamb, layered with lamb ribs. Soraya had a calm face with pleasant, unhurried manners. Her gentle eyes peered at me anxiously.
“You look so pale and thin. Are you not eating? I’ve made warah ahnab, it’s your favourite Leila” she said, putting the dish on the kitchen table. “You’ll find them tender with a tinge of sourness. Fadia picked the first batch of fresh leaves this morning from the grapevines on the rooftop.”
Ammy took out a folded hatta, a black and white checkered headscarf. He would usually tie it round his head to protect himself from the hot sun while working outdoors. He carefully removed the folds and there in the centre, lay an old, heavy, slightly bent, iron key, about six inches long.
“Leila, this is my family heirloom. It belonged to my mother and it is the key to her home in Palestine. Omar is my eldest and you are now like one of my daughters. I want you both to keep it.”
Stunned by the enormity of his trust, I burst into tears, speechless.
During ethnic cleansing operations carried out by the Zionist Movement in 1948, millions of Palestinians fled their homeland but with hopes of returning. They threw their barrels of wheat and grain down the wells and trudged miles, across borders to reach neighbouring countries. All they possessed were meagre belongings and the keys to their erstwhile houses. Tragically, Palestine was to become a crucible and then a cauldron of political turmoil, occupied by Israel. By the use of terror, Palestinians were ousted from their homeland. Their homes, as well as their agricultural lands and villages, were razed beyond recognition and obliterated from maps.
Hundreds of villages were torched. Men, old and young, were rounded up and executed. Ammy Yusuf was thirteen when he witnessed his father, grandfather, and sixteen year old brother, shot through the back of their heads. Terrified, his mother Huda, ten-months old baby brother Abdullah, and three younger sisters, Khadeeji, Yasmeen and Nisreen, fled to join the Palestinian exodus of 1948 - coated in dust, exhausted, traversing a wasteland of dreams to live in another country as refugees.
Entrusted with an enormous responsibility, far greater than his young years merited, Ammy Yusuf took up the mantle as head of his family. With sheer grit and unparalleled maturity, he nurtured, protected and supported his family.
In his mid-sixties, Ammy stopped going to the bistaan to work. He spent his days visiting his friends at the citrus wholesale market. In spring, after the rains had lessened, he took Yusuf, Ameer and Ali to the damp groves to forage for mushroom and asparagus shoots. He went there mainly to see the orange blossoms. The trees were in bloom, an abundance of tiny white flowers bursting with fragrance. He would wander through the groves, feeling the texture of leaves, crushing the orange blossoms between his fingers to sniff their oily essence and often bending to crumble the soil near the trunks - his little Eden.
On Yusuf’s thirteenth birthday, Omar drove us to Marjayoun, a southern town perched on a high hill, bordering Palestine. We explored Marjayoun’s historic one-thousand year old crusader castle, visited mausoleums of ancient prophets, majestic mosques and churches. Sitting at an al fresco terrace café, the cool breeze kept tugging persistently at my headscarf. Ammy looked exhausted. There were deep furrows on his brow and tired lines circled his eyes. Yet the fire in his hazel eyes flared bright. He pointed across the undulating fertile farmlands, watered by the criss-crossing Latani river, and said wistfully,
“Can you see the coastline there? That coastline stretches all the way south to Palestine. If it was possible, I could walk the entire length of that shore, to Acre and Haifa, just to pick up a handful of sand from Palestine.” I felt the longing in him.
“Inshallah, God willing,” I whispered to the wind.
Sometimes, Ammy took us on meandering drives around the southern bordering villages of Naqoua, Maroun el Ras, Srifa and Kfar Kila. There, on the hillsides, Fatmi, Fadia and I collected velvety gray-green sage, thick green zaataar oregano and rosemary sprigs and the spiky thymbra scrub for herbal tea. On grey boulders, Ammy and Soraya sat and sipped their thermos of tea. A lost childhood, yet so blessed to have suckled the purest at their mother’s breast.
July 2006
Suddenly, everything changed overnight. We woke up to the sound of Israeli fighter jets streaking across Lebanese airspace. There was an air strike on Beirut. The thirty-four day war had erupted. Our landline phone never stopped ringing. Loved ones from India. The Consul from the Indian Embassy in Beirut called, asking me to evacuate immediately. He said there was an Air India plane waiting, specifically for the evacuation of all Indian nationals.
“I’m so sorry Sir, but I can’t leave. I have a family now, a husband and son. I have a home here.”
“Look Ma’am, this is an emergency alert. The situation will worsen,” he urged me.
“I’m so sorry, I am not leaving. Thank you so much for letting me know.”
I had made a choice; a choice I would choose over a thousand more wars. We laid down mattresses on the floor in two rooms. Ammy and other male members slept in the living room. Every night we huddled together, the women holding their children, hands cupped over their ears to shut out the terrifying rat-a-tat-tat of staccato gunfire. Blazing balls of missiles whizzed past the windows and over the rooftops, shattering shards of glass somewhere. I held my son tight around his stomach, pulled him close to my chest, smelt his hair, and prayed.
“Don’t be afraid, habibi, hayati, my love, it’ll soon be over, inshallah,” I whispered.
Our ears had become accustomed to the deadly whistle of falling shells, savage rumble of explosions, and with the sight of men digging bodies and pulling limbs out of the rubble. It could be ours tomorrow. There was an explosion some blocks away. Bassem rushed home – a red hot flying shrapnel sliced his left arm just below the elbow. He didn’t realize he had lost an arm, until Khaled, running behind him, picked up the bloody limb and screamed for an ambulance. Bassem survived with a prosthetic arm. Aunt Miriam’s daughter Zeinab, Soraya’s niece, was on her way to our house with a bowl of boiled feva beans, when she was struck by a stray rocket. It blew her to pieces. We screamed. Aunt Miriam raced down the street, screeching hysterically, collecting pieces of her daughter’s flesh in her abaya. Some days later, slivers of Zeinab’s scalp with tufts of hair, were found decomposing on our rooftop.
Our food supply was almost depleted. Some of the women were even skipping meals. Fatmi managed to dig out some gnarled carrot and turnip stumps from our backyard garden. After weeks of surviving on tinned meals, the steaming carrot shoraba soup with boiled rice was heaven-sent. We became war weary and haggard, waiting for a ceasefire. It was interminable.
Finally, on August 14, the UN announced a ceasefire. The very next day, Israeli fighter jets zoomed in for their final concentrated air raid on Tyre city. We heard a giant roar and a flash of white light scything through the air. Something hot had zipped past my right cheek, sending glass shattering. I grabbed Yusuf and fell over him. The ground lurched from under my feet and a hot powerful blast slammed us against the wall. A shower of bricks, wood and glass covered us. Through the swirling dust, shell-stunned and disoriented, I heard Yusuf coughing under me. They had found Ammy’s body buried under the rubble. The left side of his face was smashed; his left leg mangled, twisted horribly; his white tasbeeh beads clutched tightly between his fingers like bleeding rubies.
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The unfathomable reality that he was no longer alive was devastating. I remember him still in the richness of remembrances. In the orange blossoms, he gave me last spring, their tiny, pale yellow petals pressed flat and dry, between the last pages of my diary. A lingering fragrance. Martyrs made by war and martyrs seeking peace never die. They live on, in Promised Gardens, in the cool shade among Talh trees, with fruits and flowers hanging in abundance, by bubbling waters flowing eternally.
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Hanan Sooting is an aspirant writer who reads a lot to be able to write a little. She has lived in Lebanon for twenty-eight years and this story is inspired by her memorable experience and connection with that region. She lives in India and has a deep interest in culture, history and environmental sustainability and enjoys road trips.
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