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the walls. Walls were the new measure of distance. Our blue jackets were turning white and our hands were covered with the damp dust blowing off the walls. With every wall, we were saving ourselves a street and advanced.
    —This is the real Beirut. Talal was saying, covered in dust from head to toe, and laughing with a ring of pride. We’ve learned war and invented new laws.
    — We haven’t invented anything yet, said Rabee’. We’ll invent when we get to the sea.
    As for Nabeel, he was busy opening up new holes, his body bent over the explosive.
    Everyone plugged his ears. The commander was moving back and forth between the passageways of the war and those of the church, making sure of the support groups’ progress. Voices rose and bodies slipped through the dust.
    —When will we get there?
    Talal was smiling as he told me the story of Monte Cristo. They wrote a novel about him because of one hole he opened in a prison wall. How many novels will be written about us then who’ve opened twenty holes in twenty walls? Down with literature, Nabeel shouted. Careful now. This is the last hole. And then were there and we take them by surprise. Features were hued a bronze-red despite the dust. Everyone looked at his weapon, entrusting it with his last secrets, renewing his pledge of trust in it once again.
    Between the last dust and the dust from the shells, the moments were fleeting and shots encircled the air. We ran. Reached the first position, advanced. A wave of dust and voices washing over us as we grasped the pavement and broke it. A few moments of
allahu akbar *
mingling with the rustle of clothes against bodies. And then, everything was still. We were at the Bab Idriss intersection. Khaled was killed and three comrades wounded. It wasn’t grief so much as something else. When we gathered the following day to assess the battle, Jaber said: an excellent battle. I don’t remember much, but I kept shooting till the rifle ran dry. We were like lightning. As for Talal, he was still in a daze. Its like a film, like the movies. Next time, I’ll film it.
    We were scattered across the buildings and the pavements. Feet soaked, bodies slippery, the drizzle coming and going. We’d carried the sandbags over from the ambush opposite which the Kataeb had abandoned. We’d built our barricades and sat down to eat. We were hungry but ate without appetite.
    The surprise came in the afternoon. The positions were quiet and we heard only distant gunfire. Rifles at rest and we resting beside them, on our guard, looking into the distance where the enemy positions were. We were going over our memories of the battle, some true, some not, when we saw throngs of people approaching. Children with heads shaven and unshaven. Milling about the hide-outs, searchings for things in the rubble and in the shops. People of all sorts: Kurds, Arabs. … They were all there, with their women and their children.
    — Impossible, I shout. We’re against looting. We’re here to protect the people, not to loot.
    — What’s impossible is to stop them, Talal retorts, yelling at them to go away, firing a few shots in the air.
    But they won’t go away. What’s this? What is this? Shapes and colors of all sorts bending over. This isn’t looting. This is folklore. This is a
’eid.
This is Revolution. All revolutions are like this. Beautiful and terrifying and …
    In the throes of our surprise and amid everyone’s shouting to try to stop them, their numbers grew. They scuttled away from our shouting and firing only to come back. Then khaki began to mingle with the other colors. What’s this comrades? Whole groups of them were streaming in. They’d found out that the position had fallen. And had come to fight and loot and live.
    —What do they want?
    —That’s the sea for you. What’s the difference between people and the sea? What’s the difference between the sea and the fish?
    The sea wasn’t the only surprise. As it spreads, war gets to be