Forty minutes later, having settled the children with coloring books, Leyla stood on the balcony of the flat, the offending
Monday Morning
in hand, and watched Nabil motor out of the marina below—into the sunset, toward their beloved, wounded Beirut.
* * * *
Beirut, Lebanon
Saturday morning, 1:00 a.m., 17 July 1982
Nabil made a fast trip across the Mediterranean from Larnaca to Beirut in his thirty-seven-foot speed cruiser, completing the calm-water trip in under five hours and arriving outside Beirut harbor slightly before 1:00 a.m. Although he had to remain aware of the needs of navigation as he skimmed the quiet waves, he couldn't help but think upon his circumstance and the precarious double life he was leading, which was only complicated by the Lebanese civil war, a war more controlled by outside forces than by the generally life-loving Lebanese.
Did he really have to come to Beirut this weekend to check on the family jewelry and leather goods store? Did it really matter what happened to the store for now with all of Lebanon imploding? Hadn't the more expensive goods been locked away, business being almost nonexistent in wartime conditions anyway? He did it for his father, who would surely die if anything happened to the store and who was "that close" to having a stroke anyway. But did he really do it for that? No, he did it mainly from guilt—from the need to retrieve that necklace for Leyla and assuage his uncontrolled cravings guilt toward her. He had a perfect life with Leyla and the children, and the family had transferred enough of the goods to the Larnaca store and had enough funds in reserve to lose everything they had in Lebanon and still manage—not with the luxury they had enjoyed before, of course, but they could build again.
If Beirut only survived this attempt to wipe it off the face of the earth and return to being a paradise on earth.
He would do just what was needed. He'd only go to the store and that was just to check it. That would satisfy his father. And he could go to retrieve the sapphire necklace for Leyla. He hoped that would please her. Then, he'd return to Larnaca. He'd be on the sea all night, but he could be back in Larnaca before the children woke. What a surprise that would be for them. He wouldn't even go to the Cedars Nightclub. And he wouldn't stop at the harbormasters to meet with the Syrian commander there to obtain safe passage to the store on the Route du Liban. It wasn't that far from the port. He could manage that on his own. Meeting with the major would only make him sink deeper into the temptation he wanted to escape.
He resolved himself on that intent to honor his family, to change his life entirely, as he anchored off the harbor. The thought of his family brought a concern to his mind about his dinner with this family that evening. Something was concerning about that—something he'd seen or heard, or maybe only sensed?—but he couldn't think what it could be, finally deciding that it was just the feeling of guilt of having been in a flat downstairs with the Greek Cypriot, Andreas Tsialis, just before he had come upstairs.
He was so weak. Here he was thinking of having chosen the family life when he'd gone in a different direction as recently as that that evening. He was too weak, and he couldn't get enough of it.
But he would just look in at the store tonight and retrieve Leyla's necklace; he wouldn't go to the nightclub. Despite this mental struggle and resolve, he went below; stripped off the sea-water-soaked clothes he'd been wearing; pulled on the tight jeans, black mesh muscle shirt, and sockless open-toed sandals he liked to party in; lowered the dingy; and, as quietly as possible, with the motor on its lowest speed, turned the prow toward the harbor pier. As he motored in, he watched the night sky. The near-nightly shelling by the sieging Israelis of the uneasy occupation of the city by both the Lebanese and Syrian armies and also by the Palestinian Liberation Army fighters, each dancing around the other as the Israelis trapped them in the city, had already begun. The sky was intermittently lit up by the exploding shells, bringing daylight to the harbor area.
Nabil didn't have a chance of not being detected by the Syrian army harbor patrol, the Syrians having taken control of the waterfront. The harbor patrol saw him in the light from the bursting of the shells before he hit the pier and were moving toward him. As he resigned himself to having been seen, Nabil's thoughts went to the commander of the Syrian harbor guard. With his new resolve to get into the city quickly, check the store, and be out again quickly crumbling, he felt the old desires flowing into him. Well, it wasn't his choice now. This was just the procedure already set up for him to navigate Beirut safely at night.
"Major Idris said you would come tonight," said the soldier who helped Nabil climb up to the stone pier as another soldier tied up the dingy. "
Taal mai
—Come with me."
The Syrian major was sitting at a desk in the customs house when Nabil was brought in. He was a burley, heavyset, hirsute man in his forties. "
Kent amel an tati al-lilah
—I was hoping you would come tonight," he said, swiveling his chair around, as Nabil was brought in. "I have the itch and need to relieve the tension. The Israelis are active tonight. They seem to want us out of the city. Strip off those clothes." And, when Nabil had and stood naked before the Syrian officer, Idris sucked in his breath and said, "You have a beautiful body. Perfect, like Lebanon itself, and as desirable to be subjugated and possessed. I love violating that perfection. You will want an escort to the Cedars club afterward?" He slouched forward in his chair, and unzipped his trousers.
"Just to the Route du Liban tonight, and only for a short time. Perhaps your soldier can wait for me and bring me back."
"Perhaps . . . if you please me."
Nabil went down on his knees between the Syrian major's thighs, pulled the man's fat erection out of his fly, and pleased him with his mouth. When Major Idris wanted him more fully, he pulled Nabil up and laid him down on his back on the desktop, positioned himself between Nabil's spread and raised thighs, penetrated him, and fucked him slowly and methodically, neither man speaking, to his ejaculation.
The man didn't arouse Nabil deeply, but he was a man and he had a cock that could achieve and maintain an erection. He was thick, but not long. He wheezed and grunted as he worked hard to plow the young man, and he didn't last long—not long enough to make Nabil come. But this was just a means to a desired end for Nabil, and having any man's cock inside him was better than none. The major was not less tolerable than Nabil's English professor—the man who had initiated him—had been at Al Jamaa, the American University of Beirut, and who Nabil had let fuck him for good grades. Little had Nabil known what path of desire that was to take him on.
Nabil lay there, his head turned to the window, watching the nightly fireworks over the city, thanks to the Israelis, and tried to pretend that he didn't enjoy having a man's cock moving inside him, even if the man was old, ugly, and fat. But the truth he was tortured trying to escape was that he did. The man had a cock and he could get it erect. Idris lasted long enough for Nabil's concentration to focus on the shaft inside him and for Nabil to dig the heels of his feet into the edge of the desk, raise his tail to improve the angle of penetration, and to move his hips to the rhythm of the fuck. Major Idris laughed, knowing that the young Lebanese was now a full partner in the copulation.
The Syrian officer had won out through the wanton desire of the Lebanese youth just as Syria was in the process of overwhelming and fucking hedonist Lebanon—the Syrian man and nation each having its way in ruining the beauty of Lebanese sensuality.
It was enough for Nabil that the man had desired him, had wanted to possess him. Nabil had been raised in a position of underachievement behind an older, athletic brother his parents had adored. The best attribute Nabil had been accorded was that he was "pretty." He had merely embraced that. All a man needed to debase Nabil was to pay homage to his beauty.
Unfortunately for Nabil's resolve, the Cedars Nightclub, an edgy gay dance bar in what had been the subbasement wine cellar of a mansion on the Route El Arz, was located between the port and his intended goal, the family jewelry and leather goods store on Route du Liban. Nibal and his escort of two Syrian soldiers slipped along in the darker shadows of the streets leading from the port. The Syrians were in ascendance in this sector, but they never knew when the Lebanese army or the PLO fighters would choose to encroach. There always, as well, was the threat of the Israelis picking any given time to make a ground assault on the city center. They continually probed the edges anyway.
His escort probably would avoid a firefight with other Syrian patrols or even with roaming Lebanese arm and PLO units, but Nabil was a Lebanese civilian and should not be on the streets at night. They could take him from his escort and, if they found what he was useful for, what Nabil had sought and been sought for, as Beirut decomposed, he could have quite a night in their "care"—very probably a terminal experience in the "use, abuse, and discard" atmosphere in the war-torn city.
Nabil hadn't known a night in Beirut to be this bad before. His beloved city, once known as the Paris of Middle East, with what had once featured wide, tree-lined avenues; classic European architecture; a world-class seaside esplanade; and unparalleled nightlife, was descending into a bleak hell of devastation. In spite of it all, the city maintained resilience. It was losing the battle of being a beautiful and serene European-flavor city in the Middle East, but it was refusing to give up its nightlife—the spirit of pleasure in which it had long dwelled.
