As I say, I’m about as at home with a mechanical object as Attila with a rosary. In fact, in 1951, the Bidwill Brewing Company of Washington, D.C., awarded me an unusual citation, in the form of a dismissal notice, for “burning out three truck clutches within one week” while in their employ as a driver. But after some study of the heating mechanism, I convinced myself that I had determined a simple relationship between the various gauges and dials clustered about me. With a screwdriver, which I was able to identify with the help of a “Do It Yourself” manual, I made several adjustments. I turned one dial in particular—which I hoped was used to set the desired temperature—from a sixty-five setting to eighty. Satisfied, I reverse lend-leased one of Ali’s olives and, munching merrily, walked into the elevator and punched UP. It was the only direction left to me.
ii
In the apartment, Christine, Michael and Mary Jo were asleep in their trundle beds, and Moona was in her room immersed in the rich promise of a musty, well-worn booklet titled “How to Enlarge Your Bust.” It was in Arabic, but the pictures were plain. Peggy was on the living room sofa, poring over her assignment for a class in French conducted by the Embassy, and I sat beside her, my head cupped in both hands. I am a worrier and the thing that I worried about was what I had done to the heating system.
“La plume de ma—Bill—are you worried about something?”
I lifted my head. “Funny you should say that. I was just sitting here thinking that I was worried about something.”
“What are you worried about?”
“That heating system,” I fretted, my eyebrows gathering thickly. “Just occurred to me. You know, even in the States a boiler will blow up every now and then. I imagine that over here they know even less about putting them together than we do and—well, maybe I did something wrong down there.”
“You?” she said, and I cuffed her smartly about the head and shoulders. No one can say “You” to me in that tone of voice and get away with it.
“Maybe they had a reason for keeping the temperature down,” I continued. “Maybe their machinery is cheap and has a low tolerance. Maybe, in a word, I’d better go downstairs and put those dials back the way they were.”
iii
It was at precisely this point that the building began to shake. There was a muffled booming sound followed by a horrible screaming from the direction of the basement, and a few panes of glass shattered and fell to the living room floor.
“My God, the boiler!” I shouted, leaping to my feet in horror. “Ali! Fuad! I’ve killed them!”
The children were awake and crying, and we seized them bodily—Peggy, Moona and I each carrying one. Then we began the most horrible descent of stairs I have ever undergone in my life. People were still screaming below us and the building was shuddering, but I barely noticed. I was dully but exclusively contemplating the problem of whether or not my diplomatic status could save me from facing manslaughter charges in a Lebanese court. You can imagine my relief when I reached the ground floor and discovered that we were merely experiencing a violent earthquake.
At street level, a hubbub of whimpering fright in bathrobes milled all about us, and “Better not go back upstairs,” advised an earthquake-wise Arab who lived in a building opposite us. “The tremor comes three times. The third one is—very bad.” You hear that? Very bad!
“Go to the beach!” roared another Lebanese, and as I blinked up at the buildings that surrounded us, I saw them come crashing down on us, although actually I didn’t—I merely imagined it. But I got the point.
We squirmed into the Volkswagen, Peggy, Moona, the children and I, and suddenly Peg slammed a hand against the side of her head. “Migraine?” I uttered, and, “The coffee!” she squealed. “I think I left the fire on under the coffee! But I’m not sure!”
I turned and looked at her the way Atlanta must have looked at Sherman. “You want my insurance money!” I gritted, and leaped back out of the car and scrambled into the building. At the stairs, I hesitated, and then decided to gamble on the elevator, which would have been all right except that halfway up, it suddenly lurched and halted between floors. Perspiring like a highball glass, I began a review of my past life, but then, abruptly, the elevator whooshed on upwards again. “Bless thee, Ali, and bless thy hideous ram!” I murmured fervently as I dashed out of the elevator and into our apartment. But in the kitchen I saw that Peggy had been mistaken: the fire under the coffee had been turned off. I returned to street level via the stairs, scarcely bothering to touch my feet to them, a little trick I have when I’m in no particular hurry.
I wedged into the crammed VW, and “Your goddam coffee’s gonna be all right!” I roared. Then I would have scampered except that I saw Ali and Fuad, hand-in-hand and bewildered, near the edge of the milling throng. “Ali!” I called out, and when he got to us I said, “Let us take Fuad.” Ali stared at me, looked up at the building, and then grabbed my hand and squeezed. I opened the car door and Fuad scrambled into the back seat where there were now five people. It was beginning to look like the beginning of the famed Olson and Johnson crowded car act.
“Okay, Ali!” I yelled, and slipping into gear, raced furiously for the beach. We parked along the beach road, waiting for the next two shock waves to pass, and musing the while on the evening’s hilarious events.
“Go to the mountains!” pleaded Moona abruptly as we sat there tensing. “Mr. Blatty, go to the mountains!”
I turned and looked at her in the back seat. “What’s in the mountains?”
“We will be safe there,” she whimpered. “I’ve got relatives in the mountains.”
My eyebrows began to twitch and my ears wiggled. “Can your relatives stop the earth from shaking?”
“Please, please, go to the mountains. Mrs. Blatty, tell him to go to the mountains. We’ll be safe in the mountains.” She began to sob quietly.
“I am worry for Papa,” said Fuad, and just then as I sat watching the peculiar phosphorescence that sparkled on the waves, I recalled a terrifying snatch of the Post report on Lebanon. “Beirut has three times in its history been destroyed by earthquake and ensuing tidal waves.” The italics are mine.
“We’ve been juiced!” I whimpered, and making a jolting U-turn, sped inland along the highway. The VW would do 80 but I felt sure I could get it up to 100.
“Are we going to the mountains?” asked Moona hopefully.
“No—the airport!” I gritted. But no one would sing “Come Fly with Me.”
The flatlands of the airport looked wide and comforting, and we certainly weren’t alone in this feeling, for the area was bumper-to-bumper with terrified Lebanese. I cut the ignition, traffic came to a dead stall, and suddenly in the midst of this upheaval of nature itself, we were surrounded by concessionaires vending soda pop. I can’t say it surprised me, but I can tell you that I wondered about it.
And while I wondered, we sat and waited. The second tremor came, like the sound of distant thundering, and the window panes shook.
“Michael, stop shaking the car!” Christine cried out, for it was her habit to blame her brother for everything.
“You all right back there?” I said without turning my head.
“Go to the mountains,” Moona whispered.
“I have to make toy-toy,” said Peggy.
“You’ll hold your water until after the third tremor!” I snapped, for I am a born leader. The third tremor came, then, sharply, with an unexpected impact. We rumbled about in the car for roughly thirty seconds. And then it was over.
“Think there might be more than three?” asked Peggy worriedly.
“Might be. We’d better sit it out for a while.”
We sat, along with everybody else around us, for about three hours, shivering in our bathrobes in the March morning air, and moodily looking skyward, where planes circled eerily about the airport, afraid to land. At 4 A.M., cars began moving out, and we were able to drive back home.
The electricity was out all over Beirut, and our
apartment building, silhouetted against the moonlight, loomed dark and forbidding as we looked up at it from the street. Ali was waiting for us, and he grabbed Fuad and vanished into the basement. “Well,” I sighed, “let’s do it.” We picked our way along the darkened stairs to the top floor. Once inside the apartment, Peggy and I lit a few candles, put the children to bed and then made way for a little shut-eye ourselves. Just as we got into bed, Moona, nightgowned and carrying a lighted candle, suddenly appeared in the doorway like Lady Macbeth in the sleepwalking scene. “Go to the mountains!” she croaked and then disappeared.
The following morning the electricity was back on, and we heard over the radio that 240 people were killed in the quake and 30,000 were left homeless. All of them had been in the mountains.
iv
Other than the silencing of Moona, the day had other interesting sidelights. Radio Lebanon was operating on a disaster basis, for more tremors were feared. I had tremors enough of my own, however, for whenever I stretched out in a reclining position, I would mistake the thumping of my own heart for a trembling of the earth. I stopped reclining.
In the afternoon, Radio Lebanon announced that in certain areas, entire mountains had shifted during the night. This spine-grabbing tidbit of information moved me to walk downstairs and into the street, where I began nervously examining our building for evidence of illegal motion during the night. I was crawling around the building on my hands and knees, examining some interesting cracks in the earth, when Ali suddenly came upon me. He probably wanted to thank me for taking care of Fuad, but “What you are do?” he asked.
“I’m trying to see if the building has moved,” I said, pressing my face close to the ground and fingering the cracks.
He was silent, and when I finally looked up at him I noticed an expression of mild alarm in his usually blank eyes.
“Building move?” he asked warily.
“Yeah, could be it moved,” I snapped, not liking his manner.
“Yes,” he said vacantly, “building move.” I returned to my investigation, and the next time I looked up he was gone.
As I crawled around a corner, I ran into a pair of sneakered feet and knew that Ali was back. In his hand was a bowl of yogurt, which he offered to me.
“What for?” I asked.
“Good for stomach. When stomach fix, head fix. You make okay.” He apparently thought I had suffered a concussion during the night.
“Yogurt me no yogurt, Ali,” I said quietly, and “Eat,” he boomed, extending the bowl. “My God, it’s delicious!”
I stared up at Ali in horror and before I knew what I was doing, I sprang at his nose and pulled at it mightily. “Aaiieee!” he screamed, and I guess it was Ali, all right, and not a lifelike rubber mask. These were strange times, though, and I couldn’t be too sure of anything.
I released my grip on Ali, and he sprang away and began running up and down the street, massaging his nose and whimpering frightfully. And suddenly I realized that I had failed Fuad. As if that weren’t bad enough, I looked up and saw that Global Syndrome, the Embassy Political Officer, had been standing in the street pop-eyed, taking in the entire scene. He might have been coming to see me about something, but he abruptly turned on his heel and began walking swiftly in the opposite direction. I slunk into the building on all fours and trembled at the thought of what might come next. I suspected it would be a call from Lenora Borealis. And it was.
v
“Blatty,” the Ambassador began, and then stared at me wide-eyed for a while. “Blatty—did you—did you really pull an Arab’s nose in the streets of Beirut?”
“I did, sir.”
“You didn’t!” he squealed suddenly, leaping a few inches out of his chair. “You didn’t!”
“I did.”
He put a trembling hand to his forehead, shading his eyes. “Why couldn’t you have been fluent in Japanese?” he murmured brokenly, and then swivelled slowly around to stare out the window. “Please leave,” he said finally, in a shaken voice. “Just—leave me.” I left him. I never did find out what he wanted to tell me.
But I had a clue. He might have wanted to tell me that I was now an outcast among Americans and Arabs. Maybe. Anyway I idly pondered the possibilities of seeking employment with the Tibetan Secret Service. Or maybe Conrad Hilton …
14. I’m Invisible to Arabs
FUAD WAS sad, Ali thought me mad, and at the mere mention of my name the Ambassador was seen to collapse in the throes of the “falling sickness.” Into the midst of these jollies fluttered a memo from Gunther Festoon:
MEMORANDUM
FROM:
Gunther Festoon, USIA, I/R, Washington
TO:
William Peter Blatty, NERSC, AmEmbassy, Beirut
SUBJECT:
Reports
I’m worried about you, son. I’m worried.
Your reports—good heavens, man! If your observations are to be of any value at all, they must be detached and objective. “Levitating device?” … “Time Conversion Charts?” … “Quasimodo in an elevator shaft?” … Eh? What froth is this?
You’re tensed up, son. You’re getting too involved with the brutes you’re studying. Frankly, I feared something like this, because of your fluency in Arabic. It brings you too close to these people. Back off, son, in the name of your sanity! Speek English!
(Signed) FESTOON
Kind of grabs you, doesn’t it? I mean, the Ambassador wanted me closer to the Lebanese. But Festoon wanted me further away. I was between two nags!
Actually, though, Festoon had harpooned me without cause, as it were, for outside of NERSC I had spoken precious little Arabic in Beirut, and if you must know, Hawkshaw, it was for a damn good reason. I mean, wherever I went, Arabs would speak Arabic in front of me because they knew I was an American and thought I couldn’t understand them, and if you don’t think this made up for a lot of bukras, you’d better wise up.
Take that time at Al Ajami. Al Ajami was an Arabic restaurant in downtown Beirut, and as I left there one afternoon—after eating my fill of charcoal-broiled lamb slivers topped with lemon juice and mint-leaf garnish—I saw two little gum sellers coming toward me. I slid behind the wheel of my Volkswagen and heard one of the girls say in loud, fearless Arabic, “It’s an American. Cross your eyes; he’ll feel sorry for you.” A small, dark face appeared at my car window, but before the little girl could start her sales talk, I turned and looked out at her with my eyes crossed, and somewhere in infinity, for one memorable moment, our gaze must have met. She dropped her gum box and ran, her giggling girl friend close at her heels, and—well you see now, this is the kind of thing I’ve been talking about!
ii
Awareness of my curious linguistic advantage first came to me high up in the Lebanon Mountains, at the birthplace of Kahlil Gibran, the mystic-eyed Lebanese who wrote The Prophet and other Arab maunderings before his death in 1931. I was sightseeing with Peg in the stone-walled, tile-roofed cottage in which Gibran had done most of his writing, and if you think Gibran’s relatives weren’t taking advantage of his past labors there, you’re out of it. It was a tourist trap.
Like all the other tourists who were there with us that day, Peg and I were perspiring, now and then squinting at the little bare-walled study we huddled in, now and then watching the storybook-Arab who was holding us all sweatbound with his tale told there beside the desk Gibran was supposed to have worked at.
There was certainly something incongruous about his swarthy, Hajji Babaish face—typical of some of the villagers, but not at all like Cornell Wilde, or even Edmund Purdom—and the neatly bound copy of The Prophet clutched in his teakwood brown left hand, but I didn’t feel up to calling it to his attention at the moment. I just clammed up and absorbed—except for my pores, which were busy exuding.
“There,” exulted my nomination for “Nomad of the Year,” pointing with the book toward a cedar table, “there is the desk of Kahlil Gibran, where he write his poems! And here,” he conti
nued in Arabized English, “is the seat he sit in when he write!” With that, he stooped over slightly and rubbed the book on the wooden seat. “Now,” he said exuberantly, “who wants to buy book that touched Gibran’s seat, hah?” No one appeared to want to buy “book that touched Gibran’s seat,” and we all filed past a gradually despairing huckster as all walked out and no one bought.
I was last man to skulk by, and as I did, I saw the bright glow in the Arab’s eyes die and yield cornea space to a blank and frimmled stare. “Awlad el haram el wuskheen,” he intoned reverently, seeming to shrug off the day’s disappointments with a prayer to the Prophet and an inscrutable philosophy compounded of centuries of stars, green hillsides and magic nights, but what he actually said was “The cheap bastards!” and that’s when I knew I had the “power.”
iii
Ever since that incident, I never went out of my way to let the Lebanese know that I spoke Arabic. To those among you who may say that this was “grossly unfair,” “shabby business,” “not at all British,” and so on, you may have the right of it there, but I really don’t think that you do, because my Beirut psychiatrist, a certain Dr. Abdullah Id, encouraged me to continue with this device. He told me I was fulfilling, in a limited way, a wish that every little boy contemplates but no little boy ever realizes—virtual invisibility.
The most material advantage of this arrangement (the psychic gains were enormous) was to be gained in the congested, colorful Arab souks or bazaars. You had to have all your wits about you when you went to buy something from a Lebanese merchant. Whether it was a goatskin hassock or camel bells, the merchant would normally not yield up the true selling price of an item without a serious struggle. It wasn’t money that was the prize, it was simply a matter of being “one up.” So the merchant’s initial asking price was always fantastically high, leaving just enough slack so that shrewd bargaining would eventually whittle it down to what he would have settled for in the first place had there been an unsportsmanlike showdown.