One Night in Beirut

While the Israelis tightened their siege and bombarded the city, the armies of three entities, uncomfortable with each other, were trapped inside and roamed the city, feeding on the captive populace. Brief tense interactions between the separate-power patrols were inevitable. Nabil and the two Syrian soldiers escorting him came across no other patrols, though. And as they approached what had been a lovely stone mansion, now a pile of rocks with an entrance at the side into the underground, on the Route El Arz, Nabil saw Samir Garfeh moving down the alley beside the collapse building over the Cedars Nightclub.

"Antzaroa ya ragal—Hold up men," Nabil said. "I have changed my mind. I will need you to take me no further. And you need not wait for me."

The soldiers needed no more permission to leave him than that, although one of them gave him a sneer and popped his tongue in his cheek, as if he would like to spend some time with Nabil. Nabil, a handsome young man of the erotic and hedonist Levantine, had now established himself in this nearly lawless city as someone who would give men so inclined what they, in their desperation and need, wanted. The soldier could have dragged Nabil into an alley and taken what he wanted—Beirut by night was ruled by the strongest of the moment—and the soldiers of the occupying Syrian army were not shy about taking their pleasures as they were able, but he obviously had been warned off of the major's personal property, and he melted into the night in the wake of the other soldier.

The truth of the matter was that, despite himself and having returned to the city with its devil-may-care sense of dangers and tensions, Nabil would not have resisted. The soldier would not have had to drag Nabil into an alley. Every nerve in Nabil's body was tingling with danger and need and desire. The Syrian was big, strong, and ugly in a thuggish primitive arousing and attracting way. Nabil would have gone into the alley with him willingly. He would have hooked his knees on the soldier's hips as he was pressed up against the wall, taken the thick shaft inside him, and ridden it with pleasure. He even would have moaned with pleasure if the soldier had been rough with him, slapped him a around a bit, and taken him hard. Nabil wanted the pleasure, but he wanted to assuage that with being punished for wanting it.

Hating himself, but not being able to help himself, Nabil followed Samir Garfeh into the club. It was a surprise to find the other young man here. When they had met here the previous weekend, Samir, who had joined the PLO as a fighter, said he was in a unit that would try to break out of the city and get to the PLO stronghold at Baalbek, in the Eastern Mountains, that week. Nabil had worried all week that he might never see the man again. With Samir, it had been a matter or living each moment to its fullest as possibly being the last. Being a PLO fighter in Beirut at this time was being on the last gasp of the endangered species list.

He had told himself repeatedly in the water crossing that he was coming to please his father—to check on the family business. And beyond that he told himself it was to retrieve the necklace to please Leyla. But immediately upon seeing Samir Garfeh at the entrance to the Cedars Nightclub, he knew he'd coming for the chance to see Samir and to writhe under Samir again.

* * * *

"I didn't know if you would come tonight. Conditions here are getting worse."

Nabil caught up with Samir on the landing from the bombed-out mansion's English basement down into the subbasement from which the sounds of a rock band and boisterous conversation were coming. The two men stood between a hell above and a heaven below as they embraced and kissed.

"I thought you would have been gone from Beirut by now," Nabil responded. "I almost didn't come." He neglected to say whether he meant Beirut or the nightclub by that statement. He was coming to Beirut this night anyway—he had just struggled with himself about not coming to the nightclub—to steal himself and ultimately choose family and normalcy, as much as being a refugee from his city of birth could be—over the pleasures of the flesh. He had been equally afraid of coming to the nightclub and finding that Samir wasn't here.

"The possibilities of breaking through the Israeli's lines have deteriorated. I'm told we slip through tomorrow and head for Baalbek and the mountains, or we take a final stand here. Did you know that the Israelis have expanded their artillery? They've brought it around to the south now as well as the west."

"I thought it was expanding—and becoming more intense," Nabil said. "Will we ever survive this? Will our story have a happy ending?"

"Are you speaking of the civil war and Israeli invasion, of you and me—or of Leyla and you?" Samir asked, looking pointedly at Nabil. When Nabil didn't answer immediately, though, Samir, a handsome devil, as all Lebanese men tended to be, and more muscular and masculine than Nabil was, pulled the slightly younger man into his embrace again and kissed him passionately.

When they came out of the kiss, Nabil murmured. "Don't make me choose, Samir. Not tonight, at least. Let us have tonight. One night in Beirut before you go to the mountains and I go back to the sea." He could not bear to admit that he had chosen earlier and his being here now had belied that choice. His indecision and fickleness would be the death of him, he feared. He felt so much as Beirut of this night—so much turmoil at the surface, with the desire to dance and party wantonly at the base, with no safety in either element.

"No need to answer that tonight. But some day," Samir whispered. "Someday soon. We can't go on like this. It's not fair to Leyla—or to either of us. But come, I heard the music. The music and the party await us below. Beirut is still alive in the night."

They descended into another world, the world of Beirut before the civil war and the Israeli, Syrian, and PLO invasions—before the world descended on the Paris of the Middle East to try, so far unsuccessfully, to strip it totally and forever of its "everything goes" party spirit. So far it had succeeded in doing this in the light of day—not yet in the underground of the night.

They drank and they danced, embracing close during the slow dances, and fondled and kissed, oblivious to everyone else around them, everyone, like they were doing, squeezing every once of pleasure out of Beirut at night that they could while hell rained down on them from above. This was a gay bar, although it was open to all who wanted to party and to live hedonistically on the edge of chaos. Men were dancing with woman; women were dancing with women; men were dancing with men; those lost and alone danced by themselves, in a trance of protecting false glee. And they were all decked out in eveningwear as they would have done in London or Paris or New York nightclubs. Their houses may be bombed out above their heads, but they all had closets of party clothes still tucked away somewhere to help them cling to the remnants of the life they'd once enjoyed and to stave off the reality of the present hell.

A light flashed in Nabil's face and he drew back from Samir and said, "What was that?"

"Monday Morning," Samir answered, with a laugh. "Cameras. They found us last weekend and have returned to the party." The Beirut Monday Morning was the glossy society photo magazine that the unrepentant resistance Beirut of yesterday put out every Monday morning to report the nightclub parties of the previous weekend. It was Beirut's clarion call to the world: You have not brought us to our knees yet.

"Monday Morning is covering this club?" Nabil asked, shocked that the paper had dipped this far into the defiant decadence of Beirut at night.

"Yes, didn't you see the coverage from last week. We're stars, you and I. Didn't you see us? Here, let me show you." Samir pulled Nabil over to a table near the dance floor where copies of the glossy magazine were stacked for anyone who wanted to see them. Samir was the only one of the two families who rebelled at the separation from Nabil and circumstance in which it was done. He didn't openly defy the families in declaring himself and being linked with Nabil, but he didn't really give a shit if the truth came out in some other way. Samir lived in the today; he had no faith in tomorrow.

Nabil's heart sank as he looked at the cover page and he now knew what had suddenly concerned him earlier in the evening when he'd returned to his family's flat in Larnaca. Yes, he'd known Monday Morning had been at the Cedars Nightclub the previous weekend and had taken photos. He'd just put it out of his mind. But when he'd entered the flat, he'd seen Leyla had that week's edition and had quickly hidden it—it seemed that had been her gesture—on the kitchen counter when he entered the room. The cause and effect just hadn't clicked in with him.

She'd seen a photo of him dancing with Samir.

Samir opened the magazine to show a near-full page photo of the two of them—Nabil and Sami—in an embrace and dancing. It was worse than Nabil thought. The two men were doing more than just dancing. Their hands were in forbidden territory. Their relationship was clearly revealed to the camera.

"Al-haraa!—Shit!" he exclaimed although the exclamation went unheard by Samir in the noisy room.

"Let's party like there's no tomorrow," Samir called out, bringing his face down to Nabil's so that the younger man could hear him. "As they say, 'Drink, dance, and be merry, for tomorrow—'"

"No, don't say it," Nabil exclaimed, moving his fingers to Samir's lips to cut him off. That having succeeded, he exchanged his fingers for his lips and they kissed greedily and Samir groped Nabil's crotch as the flash of a camera went off very near to them.

After that they danced and drank and otherwise cavorted with abandon.

It was 2:30 a.m., with the crowd beginning to thin out to start the treacherous journey back through the rubble of the city to wherever they had chosen to hide themselves by day, that Nabil sobered up enough to say, "I have to leave. I have to check the family store and then start the sail back to Cyprus."

"You're not staying until Sunday?" Samir asked.

"You are leaving the city with your unit of fighters in the morning, aren't you?"

"We're going to try—try or die—yes," Samir said.

"Then there is nothing left for me here in the city," Nabil answered. The unavoidable realization hit him again like a jolt of the blue. He didn't come to Beirut at night like this to check on the store. He didn't do it to please his father. He didn't come for baubles for his wife to assuage his guilt. He did it to couple with Samir. It wasn't Beirut that was tempting him back into the jaws of chaos and danger; it was Samir. If Samir wasn't here . . .

"So, you won't be coming back again?" Samir queried.

"To Beirut? Not until it is free and vibrant—not just at night in the underground, but during the day, as well. No, I don't think so. And not until you are here again."

"So, you have decided—if I make it back to Beirut?"

"Don't ask me that now," Nabil said. "I can't say yet. The world is in too much turmoil—at least our corner of the world is."

"Let me walk you to your store."

Nabil didn't demur. He was too tired, weary—and still too conflicted despite the revelations bombarding him—to say no. He knew what Samir really was asking.

* * * *

It was less than a quarter of a mile to the jewelry and leather goods shop on Route du Liban, but Nabil felt safer in Samir's care now than he had been with the two Syrian soldiers who had brought him to the club from the port. Samir took the dominant role when they were together and he had the physique and sense of command, not to mention the confidence and arrogance, that went with a PLO fighter. He also had an Uzi machine gun, which Nabil was sure the man knew how to use.

Still, as they worked their way into the town, crouching whenever they heard the scream of a shell, now coming from the south as well as the west, they kept to the shadows as much as possible. Once they heard the boots of men assertively striking the pavement and they faded into an alley—but not before they were detected.

"Min jedhab elly hanak? Tarf ali nevski!—Who goes there? Identify yourself!" a gruff, no-nonsense voice rang out.

Samir, who had raised the Uzi to ready, relaxed, recognizing the voice. "Eneh ana Samir Garfeh. Fakt akhth nazha lile.—It is I, Samir Garfeh. Just taking my nightly stroll," Samir called out. "I've just been to see your sister, Emil."

"And I'm just coming from your mother's house," Emil answered.

Samir joined in the laughter that met their responses. This was far into the Syrian territory for a PLO patrol to penetrate, but this was the best of the possibilities for Samir and Nabil. "What are you doing in this area?" Samir asked.

"Do you hear the gunfire?" the PLO fighter asked. "The Israelis are making a foray into the city. We are backing up our Lebanese brothers to drive the Jews back. Who is that you have with you? I see another in the shadows."

"Never you mind my business," Samir answered. "If the Israelis are making a move, are we still on for the breakout tomorrow?"

"Yes, Allah preserve us, we're still on," the soldier answered, his voice more grave now, and then he and those with him melted back into the darkness.

When Samir came back into the alley, Nabil prepared to leave, but Samir didn't let him. He embraced Nabil, kissed him, and pressed him up against the wall, fumbling with Nabil's belt buckle while he kissed him.

"No, Samir. Not here. We are almost to the shop. It's too dangerous here."

"It's too dangerous anywhere in Beirut tonight," Samir growled. "Yes, here, who knows what might befall us the next step we take out onto the street?" As if to punctuate that, a shell exploded nearby, imploding a beautifully designed small villa across the street in the next block.

That the beauty of Beirut—of life—was being cruelly obliterated was not lost on Nabil.

"That had to come in from the west, over the water," Nabil exclaimed. "Then, yes, Hurry. Be good to me," he whispered, as he pushed his trousers and briefs to the ground and reached in between them, unzipping Samir and pulling out his erect cock. They each handed the cock of the other and stroked each other hard as they kissed.

"I'm always good to you," Samir said, with a low laugh, coming out of a passionate, consuming kiss. He gathered Nabil's legs up, hooking the young man's knees on his hips. Nabil, panting, gave no resistance.

"No, don't be good to me, Samir," Nabil exclaimed in almost a sob as another shell landed nearby. "Be cruel to me. Make me feel it. Punish me."

"Khed delk. Khed gudeibi—Take it. Take my cock," Samir growled.

Nabil encircled Samir's neck with his arms and arched his head back in pain and passion, gasping and muttering, "Nim, Nim. Al-lanah ali.—Yes, yes. Fuck me," grimacing as Samir, positioning the bulb of his shaft, worked to breach Nabil's sphincter in an impromptu dry fuck. Nabil cried out as, once establishing his bulb inside the entrance, Samir thrust cruelly up into his passage. As he sank up inside Nabil and set up a steady rhythm of the thrusts, the young man nuzzled his face into the hollow of Samir's throat, and murmured, "Nim. Nim. Ana melkek.—Yes, yes. I am yours. Take what you want. Take it all. Leave nothing for tomorrow."

"Anna semat delik.—I heard that," Samir growled as he got into the rhythm of the thrusts and Nabil started to move his hips, meeting the rhythm. Becoming more insistent and primeval, more cruel and demanding, Samir gripped Nabil by the throat with one fist, slamming the young man's head against the stone wall, while the other hand went between them, grasping Nabil's balls, lacing his fingers through them, distending them, and squeezing them as he slammed his long, thick cock up, deep inside, Nabil's passage in a furious, most-intense-ever fuck. Nabil's eyes watered and he was trembling and sobbing. But still he cried out "Nim! Nim!—Yes! Yes! Take it! Take it all! Punish me!" as Samir fully possessed and brutally fucked him against the wall.

After reaching the safety of the shop on Route Du Liban without incident and Nabil had retrieved Leyla's necklace from the bank safe in the basement, they fucked on a tiger-skin rug on the floor between counters behind the cash register. The shop was still stocked, but not with the most expensive goods. They had been locked away in store's safe for several months. Foreign tourist hadn't shown up in the slowly dying city for a year and the locals didn't have their minds on buying jewelry or leather purses during the siege. They still partied at night, but they did so with the luxuries they already had and were hoarding.

Nabil steadied himself on all fours as Samir crouched over him, mounted him, thrust up into him, and fucked him in the doggy position. There was a desperation in their coupling. Before he had come, but not before Nabil had, Samir turned Nabil on his back, grabbed him by the ankles, raised and spread the young man's legs, knelt between his thighs, thrust inside him, and fucked him in a missionary. When Samir let loose of Nabil's legs, the young man placed his feet flat on the ground and raised his hips to an angle where Samir was slamming up inside him in long strokes, reaching deeper than he ever had been before. Nabil dug his fingernails into Samir's biceps and counterthrust against Samir's assault with the rocking of his hips. At the point of ejaculation, an explosion hit very near them, and they embraced closely, both panting hard and their hearts racing in unison.

"Where was—?" Samir blurted out.

"The bank of flats behind the store, to the west. Not a threat to us. It blocks us from the trajectory of the Israeli guns." Nabil explained.

"We're all going to hell. This is the night of the total destruction." Samir exclaimed.

"If so, fuck me through it," Nabil cried out.

"So, you are mine?"

"Yes, I am yours."

"You will be in Beirut when I return?"

"We will be in Beirut together. Fuck me." Nabil pushed Samir onto his back, his head resting on the back of the tiger's head, just where Nabil's head had just been. Nabil straddled Samir's hips, slowly descended on the thick, hard cock, and arched back, grabbing Samir's ankles with his fists. Nabil fucked himself on Samir's cock, rising and falling, churning, up down updown, picking up speed, taking Samir deep, crying out his passion.

The shell came down in the back corner of the room, blowing the windows out, throwing debris in every direction.

As Nabil had been told more than once, Israel had moved some of its artillery around to be able to shell the city from the south as well as the west.

* * * *

Larnaca, Cyprus

Saturday, 3:30 a.m., 17 July 1982

Leyla Alwaiti turned onto her side, switched on the lamp on her nightstand, and picked up the copy of this week's Beirut Monday Morning glossy magazine she'd placed there. She had carried it around all evening, not wanting to let it out of her sight, while, simultaneously, not wanting it to exist at all.

The magazine was open to the photograph—to the photograph. It had been a double whammy when she'd first seen it that afternoon. It wasn't just that Nabil had been dancing in one of the underground Beirut nightclubs the previous weekend. It wasn't even that it obviously was a gay dance bar. The captions going with the photos made that clear. She'd heard of the Cedars Nightclub. She knew what sort of nightclub it was. And she wasn't all that surprised that Nabil had been there. They had been working on that. That had been what had underlain the Alwaiti family's rush to get Nabil married six years previously. She knew how hard he'd been working to make the marriage last. As far as she was concerned, it was lasting—even with a glitch here and there. Even with him going to the Cedars Nightclub to relieve the tension and danger of having to go in and out of wartime Beirut to please his father. No one could convince the old man how chaotic the situation in Beirut was.