Apology by Association

Editor's Note: Isaac originally shared this piece with me in February 2018 after a transformative trip to Lebanon. I was stunned by it then and I continue to be stunned by it now.  

The chicken taouk and sojok shawarmas were delicious, in a Lebanese greasy spoon kind of way. Bright chunks of grilled sumac-flaked chicken, beet-red spicy sausage, lashings of aggressively garlicky toum sauce, a few soggy French fries, and the ever-present, deeply astringent pickled turnips. All served under the glare of fluorescent lighting at Sindebad’s in Baalbek while an old television blared in the corner. In any case, it was a suitably low-brow equipoise to a day spent wandering the exalted ruins of the town, standing in bacchanalian testimony to Man’s equal grandeur and folly.

We found Sindebad Restaurant after a long search for somewhere, anywhere, open to eat during the celebrations of the festival of Ashura, the culmination of the Shi’a Remembrance of Muharram and the battle of Karbala at which the great schism occurred. With all “real” restaurants closed, we fell back on the universal reliability of the corner fast-food joint, guided there by helpful shop-keepers while they were closing up their stores.

Grateful at the prospect of food, we unsuccessfully attempted to order. Finally, the cashier went to the back and found Mohammed, 50-something, salt and pepper hair, reassuring paunch, genial open face, to deal with us. “What would you like? Chicken? Sausage? Tripe? Lung? Cabbage?”, he intoned in French, jabbing at the brimming aluminium storage containers. “It’s all good, here”. A quick pass on the grill to warm the meat, a twist or two of the wax paper wrapping, and dinner was served.

The sandwiches eaten, the ayran drunk, we prepared for a walk back to our hotel, and an early night spent dreaming about temple gods, and the endless waves of destruction and reconstruction that characterise the eternal places of this world, and Baalbek chief among them.

Instead, Mohammed, apron now removed and hands washed, ambled to our table and said, half-question, half-statement, “You’ll come to my house for coffee and fruit?” A moment’s hesitation and a flicker of doubt on our faces led him to add, “You’ll see, it’s not far. Just five minutes. It would be a pleasure”. Well, if you insist.

As we walk to his home, Mohammed greets everyone by name, describing his relationship to them; “I went to school with him”, “My cousin married his nephew”, “He sells the best nuts”. Down a back alley, we come across a characteristically Lebanese, Art Deco apartment building. A group of people smoking, drinking juice, and laughing with the intimacy of family sit on the ground floor terrace. Their faces show mild surprise at our arrival, but they greet us heartily as Mohammed says tells us “This is my daughter, and her husband, their friends, and our neighbours”

Mohammed’s 3rd floor home is strangely reminiscent of a pre-war French apartment, last re-decorated in the early 60s. Pink bathroom fittings, tall ceilings with arciform mouldings, and floor-to-ceiling mustard-coloured tiles in the expansive kitchen. We sit at the kitchen table, as he puts the rakwa coffee pot on the stove all while peppering us with questions. Where are we from? Ah, Switzerland, yes, he has a sister who lives in Martigny, coincidentally just 30 minutes away from my own village. Why are we in Baalbek? Yes, the ruins certainly are worth seeing, especially when you have them to yourself, as so few people are visiting these days.

Deftly peeling some local Bekaa valley pears with a paring knife, Mohammed talks away, seemingly happy to have company. His wife is not here, she is visiting a sick relative. His father was an army man, thus his good French learned in a military school. While talking, we sip our coffee and slurp away at the most hedonistic pears I’ve ever eaten.

Eventually, with Levantine predictability, the conversation shifts and tinges with melancholy. Mohammed tells a story of riding to school as a child in the back of a military truck with friendly soldiers, lamenting that “those were the days before the war. They don’t pick up children anymore.” He reveals that he used to own a good restaurant with a beautiful terrace, overlooking the 2000-year-old temple of Jupiter, but that it closed “after people stopped coming during the situation”, punctuating the allusive term with an all-encompassing flat, upward-palmed wave, thus the move to his brother’s fast food restaurant.

I ask more about his family, and he shares that his daughter whom we met downstairs used to live 40km away, just over the border in Syria, but fled to Baalbek in 2013 with her husband when their town was overrun by fighting.

“What a terrible situation to be in,” I somewhat vacuously say.

“Yes, very. Her husband went back there a few months ago after the fighting stopped to check on the state of their house. There was nothing left, even the taps in the bathroom had been stolen. Everything has been ruined,” Mohammed responds, quietly.

We sit in Pinter-esque silence for ten seconds; a pregnant pause occurring only when the horrors of reality exceed the descriptive power of language. Mohammed looks at me squarely in the eyes and, misinterpreting my sad muteness as accusation, says with quiet resolve, “They’re not Muslims, you know. Those people who do this. They know nothing of what it means to be a believer.”

As the weight of his words, and the intention of his statement, press down on my heart, I respond, “No, I know they are not. Destruction and violence are never Truth.” A small upward nod from Mohammed, and the conversation moves on.

As we talk, my mind wanders, to thoughts of what it says of the universal human experience, this sense of guilt by association. Of our concurrent sense of obligation to apologise for the actions of others, yet our utter inability to atone or amend for their actions. This Kafka-esque helplessness is integral to life as we know it, condemned as we all are for crimes, both real and imagined, that are not our own.

Here, in Mohammed, is the individual, with desperate dignity, trying to right what small wrongs can be mended. I sit in shame that this affable, gentle man would feel the need to apologise to me, to denounce the actions of those who wickedly claim not just to share, but indeed own, his faith, lest I go home and think ill of him, of his country, of his people.

Eventually, Mohammed walks us most of the way back to our hotel, saying that he’s going for a night stroll around the gardens at the Ras el Ain spring, which continues to supply water as it has done since prehistoric times, before even the Canaanites first built a temple on the site.

On a quiet street corner, Mohammed turns, shakes my hand, saying “I leave you here. Thank you for coming to my house and for the conversation.”

“Thank you for inviting us, it was a pleasure to speak with you,” I respond, inadequately.

“I hope to meet again. God bless you,” he says, as he turns and walks off into the night.

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Isaac Middelmann-Orlov lives in Dar es Salaam, but can be found trying not to cry into good food of all sorts, wherever time and money allow him, around the world.

 Editor's Note: At the time of publication, Isaac can now be found trying not to cry into good food in Paris.