We tend to walk down the steep hill, the olive grove side, to the "Al Manar" shopping complex. The shopping centre is just in front of the army check point where soldiers inspect the various vehicles entering the city from the south. We always have to go and stand near them to flag down a taxi to take us and our shopping back home. Often these young soldiers signal to a taxi driver to collect us. Once they actually put all our shopping into the boot of the taxi and waved goodbye to us. I often see the soldiers do nice things like that.
Today we didn’t get the soldier’s help. We flagged down a taxi driven by an old man who was haggling with the price. I thought he was going to be an unpleasant character. In no time, this old man, informed us that we had disturbed his singing by flagging him down.
He started to sing with a strong, deep beautiful voice. He sang old, old haunting Arabic folk songs. My husband joined in and the man looked pleasantly surprised. The singer was visibly impressed when suddenly “oudh” - like sounds and notes were provided to accompany parts of his song. It was just one of those rare and special moments.
The man had been a professional singer in Kuwait in his earlier years. He kept on checking in the rear view mirror to gauge my reaction. After hearing us speaking in a foreign language, the old man in wonder asked, “where did you get her from?” He got his answer and replied “yeh, I thought she looked different”.
This lark voiced, fading star, driving his battered and fraying Mercedes, by the time he pulled up outside our building, was beaming the widest beam as we expressed our heartfelt appreciation for the wonderful ride home.
Back at home I noticed a light shining into our apartment from next door. The light came from an apartment normally closed up. The last time I saw anyone in the apartment was some months back, in summer. It was a man and his European wife. Apparently, the man also visits the apartment with his North African wife. But, today there us a cleaner was busy inside, getting it spotless. I am told that this activity means that the woman of the house must be coming over from her home in Europe.
When she is here, she wants to visit some of her neighbours and socialize. But, the neighbours don’t want anything to do with her. “Why?” I ask.
The answer I received was that, the woman from next door lived in that apartment with her two boys and two girls for many years. Her two sons were part of a political party from a neighbouring country. Quite some years back, during a time of civil unrest, they took it upon themselves to go to the area near the check point outside the front of the now Al Manar shopping complex, stop everyone, check their identification papers and put to one side all those who were from a particular religious group. They then killed them, 13 young people, apparently with a bomb.
I heard scant details of this story back in summer and it was always on my mind as I walked that road to Al Manar. The men’s mother was brought up a Christian but must have converted to Islam when she married her now absent husband. The story is that the boy’s paternal grandfather took ill and died after learning what his grandsons had done. Children from the neighbourhood identified them as the bombers. They saw the two men put black socks over their faces and plant the bomb.
Neighbours saw, on that evening after the bombing, the men’s mother pacing up and down the balcony till late at night. The next morning the apartment was deserted. Apparently, there were family links to a parliamentarian who assisted the whole family to move to Europe. Only one of the children, a daughter, lives here nowadays.
The land that “Al Manar” sits on has heard it all; from sounds of screams of those about to be executed to the voice of a lark making the most of the acoustics in his taxi.
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