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fedayeen.
Father Morkos, hands crucified, voice subdued, rising toward the entrance of the sanctuary where stands a boy, rapt with joy. Latin supplications, Byzantine chants, the priest in our eyes. The window is lit up in the colors of the tracer bullets. Butros carries on.
    — Don’t you hear? says Salem. -What?
    — I hear footsteps, up there. Be careful.
    Butros carries on, three of them cluster together. Altar attendants, in their jackets, standing there riveted, marveling at the game.
    —Don’t you hear?
    The sound of footsteps grows louder. Butros falls silent. Then, suddenly, he wrenches off his priestly robe, clutches his weapon tight. We scatter. The unit commander jumps to his feet, advances. He goes up the stairs, with three comrades behind him. Caution. A battle inside the church? It would have to be an unusual battle.
    The four of them return. Nothing. The church’s two priests are still here, and he points upstairs. At first, they thought we were Kataeb, * then when they discovered who we were they got very frightened. I reassured them. I asked them not to light a fire and to stay inside the church at least until morning.
    Sounds of nearby shelling and of gunfire getting closer. Christ falls to the ground again. Butros stands him up, but he falls once more.
    — Impossible, the base is broken.
    — But he’ll stand up.
    — Even if he stands now, hell fall tomorrow. The battles tomorrow, Butros.
SCENE TWO
    — What’s the difference between war and civil war?
    In the interstices between one shot and the next, Salem would find the time to ask such questions. He’d ask the question and not wait for the answer. He’d always say it’s not the answer that’s important. All answers are the same. The thing is to ask the questions. Between questions, muscles would color and faces lift from the sand and rubble, looking for the narrow streets leading to the sea.
    The sea’s our goal, the commander says. Once we control the Bab Idriss intersection, we open up the sea road ahead of us. Rabee’, the sailor-turned-fighter, knows the taste of the sea and the sea road. That’s why he flexes like an arrow.
    —I’m a master of answers.
    Yet Salem goes on asking: What’s the difference between war and civil war?
    The narrow streets twist and curve, on either side rock smashed against rock. The sound of the shells crashing against our bodies. To the right, fires, to the left, a low building sagging like an old woman, her joints broken by the shells. Between our line of vision and the sea are buildings and walls and metal. Between the shell and the scream, stone falls against stone.
    The narrow street stretches endlessly. Between its beginning and the positions, sounds of footfalls, of groups of fighters shouting and laughing. The narrow street contracts. There is rubble where there should be mounds of sand and sand between the streets and the buildings. Between the hand that fires and the foot that jumps, a body crouches, straightens, crawls. When it arrives, it’ll be holding nothing but the sea.
    —What does the war want?
    —The war doesn’t want anything. But its saying that the asphalt extends the street to the street opposite. And that on the opposite street there are enough metal studs * to make a graveyard.
    —Reinforced concrete is resistant. But thick sand stone gives you more of a sense of security. The streets criss cross. But gunfire can open holes in the net, and the fish escape to occupy the sea.
    It was four in the morning when we began. The sound of the fighting was growing louder and closer after a two-hour lull. Nabeel was holding his gear tight. The walls beginning to be pierced: first the explosive charge against the wall, then the hands and the hammers coming to widen the breach. Moving from hole to hole, clouded in dust, rubble, and noise. Between each hole, bodies stooped, and we advanced. The fighting was growing louder, drowning our voices and the racket from our breaking through