Little Mountain Book

"Memories come back in a burst of images", wrote Jean Genet about his time with the Palestinian fedayeen. Elias Khoury's impressionistic, first-person, thinly-fictionalized account of the beginnings of the Lebanese Civil War is written in and through just such a burst of images. Little Mountain is a short novel, the first four chapters of which present the lived experience of the war - street-battles, battles in the church, wounds and death - and the last, a series of broken, scattered reminiscences in a Paris metro. What binds all of this together - what conveys meaning - is neither chronological narrative (time plays little to nor role in Little Mountain), nor character (at the end, we know almost as little about the narrator as we do in the beginning), but images.

For example: We ran cautiously, clutching rifles and dreams, writes the narrator in the beginning, - evocatively conveying, without conversation or action, through that simple image, the early idealism of the revolution, and the romance of violence. "Nothing remains in his hands save a wetness that recalls the rain." "She laughed. It rang like a bow." "They looked like the shadow of the old oil lantern one of them carried." Each of these images, incredibly powerful in its context, does the work that events normally do: convey meanings (as I understood them), of loss, of love and of futility, all bound up with each other and with the war.

It is not, however, that Khoury has any wish to preserve or worship ideals. There are many striking passages about war in the book, especially the (thinly ironic) descriptions of battle in a church. And in these passages - that are at times strongly reminiscent of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet in the Western Front, in their dispassion, detachment and seemingly unaffected attention to detail, Khoury mixes romance with dirt in a manner that the former cannot possibly survive. Consider, for instance:

"The commander came running. It looks like they're trying to overrun the street. Get ready. I followed him. I stood at the end of a street leading to the main road where we used to listen for the movement of military vehicles. He took Talal to another street, Talal alone. You've got to get down on the ground, the position commander was saying. He lay down on the water, shivering, as it seeped into his body. The shelling was intensifying. We've got to hold our ground. Water mixed with blood. This is the glory of the revolution. You are the pride of the revolution. And the pride of the revolution will stand fast. I was holding my rifle tight and firing. The shots rang in my ears, I couldn't see them. I gripped the hand grenade and threw it. Water splashed up and the shrapnel went flying. The water gasped loudly; this is the glory of the revolution. I was down on the ground. But they weren't advancing. Nothing but an overpowering smell. The smell of rain and brackish water and burning gunpowder. The sound of shells. I couldn't see anything ahead. But Talal stayed down on the ground, shooting, advancing to the main road. Nothing but shelling. The rain was stopping and masonry was beginning to crumble."

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