-A-RARE-CASE-OF-A-MAN-WHO-BECOMES-ANOTHER-A-COPY-OF-AN-ORIGINAL-SO-TO-SPEAK-WHO-IS-EVENTUALLY-REJECTED-
VOL 1
-A SHORT STORY-
TALAL CHAMI
©
Up until February 6, 1984 greater Beirut was under the control of the government. On that day, the Lebanese army was forced to withdraw from the West side of the city, which again came under the control of militias, political groups opposed to the government. Militias around West Beirut were a spectacle not to be missed. A daily-affair. They rode Jeeps as if they were riding horses. Ski-nautique. For all I know. Their rituals comprised life as it happened on the eve of the end of the world. You could easily see with naked eyes their constant physical adjustments. A visual spectacle par excellence. A local Rambo flirted with death on a daily basis for quite some time in little Beirut. A robust, broad-shouldered and extremely serious fella. A War-Junkie. He was associated with one of the most important, if not the most important, of the Maronite militias that arose in the early 1970s. The Lebanese Forces –or Al-Quwwat al-Lubnaniyya led by Bashir Gemayel. Rambo did what John Wayne did in his films: To create a self so real to others that he could disappear into it. Pretty much what Chaplin did with the Tramp. And maybe grab the attention of some film producer, while at it. Who, possibly, would be interested in casting him in a role or in a look-a-like spin off. He was a local celebrity in his own right, you know, his story was all over the news media. Journalists and photographers searched for him over a substantial period. They were after a scoop. He even travelled to the U.S on one occasion and succeeded to spot Stallone himself, somewhere, and who unexpectedly warned him “Not to come here!” It was an awkward moment. Stallone might have felt flabbergasted by his uncanny resemblance and thought this could have negative repercussions. He felt an immediate threat, that the Lebanese Rambo was, perhaps, an opportunist in search of fortune. Of course, he wasn’t. Stallone had denied him direct access! He was allegedly asked by Stallone’s lawyer to stay out, and was cautioned not to use Stallone’s name or even his physical resemblance for own gain. The Local Rambo’s physical transformation was evident and clear indication that Post-Vietnam American War films and more specifically Rambo films of 1980s, made a huge impression to the extent he -and possibly others, eventually transformed into Rambo/s himself. He did not like or fancy Rambo. He became Rambo: A rare case of a man who becomes another. A copy of an original, so to speak. Who is eventually rejected! Patrick Baz told the local Rambo to look away as he took his pictures somewhere in Down Town. Rambo’s right arm and part of his face and even chest looked greasy and oily transmitting a sense of what in food photography is known as specular highlight to them. The light is hitting the arm and bouncing back its reflections. What first draws your eye is his voyeuristic presentation. Every single element in the picture is strategically positioned to convey a specific persona, that of a self-proclaimed “bad boy” or “enfant terrible”. First, his bulging muscles, made to glisten with body oil, are flexing at the camera while he’s drenched in display ornaments. Even his stare just barely grazes the camera almost breaking the fourth wall. What’s more, there is something arrogant about his gaze but more specifically there’s defiance, like the rules don’t apply to him. This sort of entitlement is not uncommon among men of stature which he perfectly encompasses here. Then, there’s his gun. Contextually a recurrent euphemism for phallus, his firearm is massive, erect, and presumably pointing at his target that he wishes to dominate whichever way that may manifest. Even the bullets around his neck serve more for aesthetics than practicality, further supporting the performative function. He exhibits a haughty look of indifference. It suggests he’s in it for the thrills and not much else. Men in the framework of war seem wired to invade and conquer with glory being the primary objective. The key takeaway is that none of these displays bear any significance if there is no audience to play to. The Lebanese Rambo had this funny approach: Rambo fights in the films, I, on the other hand, am real. Rambo sits as he holds a grenade with both hands: First, he mutters some things that are not particularly insightful or informed. One can quickly infer that these are not the musings of someone dialed into politics, but rather the proclamations of a thrill-seeking anarchist. While it’s unclear whether the interviewer is the one holding the camera or whether there’s a third-party camera operator, the visual direction seems very intentional. Ten seconds into the interview, the camera operator slowly zooms out to reveal a ripped “Rambo” in an equally ripped tank top. Before the video cuts out, the camera zooms back into Donanian’s hands to show that he is squeezing a gripper. This reveals so much about the dynamic at play here. The camera lens doesn’t care about what he has to say, it just wants to see the flavor of the week in action. This war junkie wants to be perceived as a “tough guy” in every sense of the word and the public, embodied here by the interviewer and cameraman, is more than willing to comply with those wishes. It’s a vicious cycle of codependency between spectator and spectacle bred by garish iconography taken sincerely. He’s in his “battle gear” reenacting a war-like scenario as he runs around and flexes at the camera. The whole time, he’s shooting his gun in the air presumably at intruders or enemies. This entire routine feels very staged as it lacks any element of authenticity. There is no real danger, that’s not real military attire, and that is not the real Missak Donanian, so to speak. From his posture to the way he enunciates in the manner of Stallone, he is playing a character. Through a very calculated set of premeditations, he has perfectly replicated Stallone’s whole essence, specifically his portrayal of Rambo. One could make the argument that his is an homage to the lavish displays of heroism depicted by war films of that era. That theory would have been admissible because it’s plain to see the explicit allure of the omnipotent man swooping in to save the day, except for the fact that Rambo seems rather earnest about his character. Much like a kid on Halloween, he believes he is one with the costume the only difference being that come November first, the kid takes off the mask. The question is, does he? I’m inclined to say no. Asked if U.S President Reagan had called on him to save the U.S hostages being held in Lebanon, he said he was capable of this, but qualified his statement by saying everything in due time. One of my earliest memories of war, was that of a graffiti stamped across the bridge wall facing my apartment building in West Beirut at the time. Written in classic Arabic, it read: Sanaj’aal Min’ Al Janoub Vietnam Okhra. -We will make out of the South, another Vietnam! A clear reference to the fate of the American invaders in the Easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula, in Southeast Asia, during the endless war. Today, the graffiti, that I had recalled, had been amended on an adjacent wall: Darayeb Mish Rah Nid’faa. -We will not pay taxes! It is a timely-predicament. As I looked into the street below me, a young man collapsed before my eyes. A few random characters looked on. Some came near him to pull him away from the sniper’s shooting range. I didn’t hear the bullet. He died in the act. Random boys stood-still as a lady-photographer looked through her lens and saw a commander who sat between two low-ranking officers. Sit-still! She said, as she released her film camera’s release button. They all look like ancillaries. The main character was wearing black shades. And a black beret crowned his head, which provided him with immediate identifying qualities in addition to his physical position in relation to the others which emphasized his authority. His face seemed expressionless due to various props it displayed. Masculinized by his obvious mustache. A gendering-trope. The focal point of the mise-en-scene was a white kitten the commander held with his right hand, which he didn’t seem to care for. He held it with cool passiveness. The photographer was able to frame the kitten occupying a lower position. His bodyguard stood on both sides: The one who stood to his right looked away. Showing disinterest or confusion. He carried a machine-gun pointing upward. He wore a military uniform with magazine holders strapped all around him. His flexed right arm differed from the left arm that rested by his standing body. On the opposite left side of the commander, there sat another militiaman who gazed straight at him. He was more interested it seems on the commander’s next act than on the photographer’s consequent actions. They both were positioned in the middle ground of the image to emphasize their military occupation and served as protectors in a moment of truce. I could read Roland Barthes’ punctum in the final frame which was plastered on a random wall at the photographer’s photo exhibit a month later. As I looked at the image, random silhouettes shuffled in and out inside that boite. Out of nowhere, a lady in green stood still. After a long pause, she said: “He appears to be copying Marlon Brando’s opening scene in Godfather, 1972.” She continued: “The commander looks older than the back-standing militiamen. They are all in uniform in a near-battle field/zone position. They are dressed for war. But not enacting it. They look masculine and yet the kitten adds that softness touch to Brando’s character in this specific re-interpretation which is by no means intended.” She paused for a second and said: “I have the perception that the producer of the image herself did not know whether the commander was trying to imitate “The Godfather” character or not.” A truc macabre. She was a ravishing Capricorn unleashed. I was entrapped immediately. I tried to keep up with her argumentation and said: “The house in the background reflects the living conditions of its inhabitants. If any, at all. It is a relaxed moment. I think. A break from the exhaustive instants of combat. They are all facing the camera somehow. The commander is surrounded by his guards. They look at him or the people around him for security reasons. The commander’s unintentional pursuit of conflating his military might with that of a mafia boss is evident. He pretends to demystify him somehow by acting out a “real” version of a representational power.” After a long silence, she said: “Rumor has it that the cat held by Brando, in the opening scene of Godfather was a stray, the actor found while on the lot at Paramount, and was not originally called for in the script. So content was the cat, that its purring muffled some of Brando’s dialogue, and, as a result, most of his lines had to be looped.” We both grinned. The truth of the matter is that the three-armed war veterans whose placements on that particular image clearly exemplify the power dynamics at play, looked invincible. The one in the center is decidedly the head of the group surrounded by two subordinate officers who, while authoritative, rank lower than him or at least submit to him. One is looking vacantly into the far left of the camera in slight amusement. The other henchman is seated on the bottom right of the frame looking directly at the head of the leader as if awaiting his signal, his every beck and call. The hierarchy is very blatant here. The commander, being the main mantelpiece of this scene, deserves more attention. His face is cold and gives nothing away which is mostly attributed to his dark tinted glasses. As the eyes are the windows to the soul, this accessory is a very strategic affront on the mere possibility of conveying emotion. This captain has taken all of the precautions to shield himself from being perceived as anything but masculine. He is a lean, mean fighting machine that will not have anything be used to his disadvantage. According to normative definitions of masculinity, men ought to be “strong” and impenetrable. The alley, a clear relic of the war, looks dulled and disheveled. The three men emulate an almost exact level of run-down quality. And yet, they still have some very vague luster or spirit to them. This could be the sense of power they feel entitled to with their massive guns slinging from their shoulders ensuring them a position of supremacy. The cat in hand is very significant. The way the main combatant holds the kitten is domineering, almost like a chokehold, a threat. This serves the purpose of making him seem uncaring and hardened by the war. This is a power move that is even more amplified by the presence of his goons at his sides. The ever-imperious mob boss, Don Corleone, pets a cat in his lap while antagonizing one of his devotees. In that scene, he is almost fenced by goons ready to take out adversaries at his command. The cat in Corleone’s lap is meant to soften his otherwise austere presentation: To show duality between a cold-hearted mobster and a devoted family man as exhibited by how mindfully he caresses his kitten. The officer in the image before me, on the other hand, is not stroking the cat, he is grabbing it. I think that setup is more reminiscent of the typical iconography of the Bond villain, Ernest Stavro Blofeld, played by Donald Pleasence. Originator, perhaps, of the cat stroking trope, He has an infamous scene where he pets a white cat as he delightedly muses about his plans for world domination to his long-time rival in You Only Live Twice, in 1967. He is unsympathetic and irredeemable, so this trope is used to illustrate the wickedness of the character in possession of the feline. This makes sense as throughout history, cats have captured human curiosity but not in a good way. Due to their enigmatic nature, they’ve been associated with gods in the times of Ancient Egypt and witches in the Middle Ages. I walked on to the next image. The Cowboy came down from his Jeep and posed for the camera. Like the thousand times he had posed for a photograph. But this particular one stands out: Basically, as part of his anatomy, the gun rests just below his navel pointed downwards. His stance may be at ease, but he is one trigger away from firing his weapon, though he may not be so reckless given the fact that his finger is not on the actual trigger. He faces the camera as a random photographer snaps a few images of him. He is looking straight at the lens. He is emitting confidence with a relaxed military posture that cannot be reversed: He is wearing a ‘Cowboy’ hat and hence the alias. A traditional cowboy hat and trigger-happy posture. He is wearing a jacket and a white t-shirt under it. A red, party-identifying scarf falls on his shoulders with the icons of Kamal Joumblatt on the right side, and the symbol/insignia of the PSP on the left side. Kamal Joumblatt’s image depicts him wearing an Arab koufiyya. It is the depiction of a well- known portrait of the Druze leader. Heroes fight and die in uniforms. The uniform legitimates the cause. The cowboy is carrying a machine gun. What a cowboy’s pistol, in the hands of a modern, civil-war time, militarized cowboy should look like. Taxi Driver’s Travis’ khaki jacket with his battalion insignia comes to mind. A recurring feature of his wardrobe. It appears in his first scene, as he enters the taxi office in slow motion, and the camera watches him do a half spin toward the personnel man, to the sound of portentous music by Bernard Herrmann. Travis, himself, was a war veteran who was attempting to re-adjust to civilian life with dire consequences. The Cowboy’s face shows ambiguity and rebellion in his frozen act. His back to a parked vehicle with windows closed. The car behind him act as a barrier, a fence, that protects him from the stray bullets. For some reason, the image is split in three parts: the two side-parts of this image are distorted, defocused parts of the actual image of the cowboy. This split reflects his own identity-split: name/alias etc. It conveys the idea of haziness/fogginess that surrounds him or someone like him. His long hair hides under his hat, possibly, and his white beard reflects age/maturity. You can tell he is assuming his authoritative role even for this random image. His right hand’s index finger rests on the machine gun magazine and not on the trigger. His relative facial unresponsiveness does not translate into composure. The cowboys’ gaze is calm and neutral, there are a lot of facial cues that point to immense fatigue, no doubt a token of war. He’s clearly seen combat and is tired of it. Yet, despite his semi-worn-down presentation, he seems alert still, almost painstakingly so. What stands out to me the most is the explicit contrast between our cowboy’s camouflage-heavy uniform that is meant to conceal him from view and the boisterous red scarf that asserts a clear bias and pleas for attention. Once again, this man’s masculinity is upholstered by the spectacle factor of performance. Stories of Raping random girls, killing random children, and cutting open the wombs of random pregnant women were the order of the day. The conflation of both the hard body and the violence emphasized these virile acts: Once added the weapons became quintessentially, the required artifacts of masculine performance. Days and nights in the ravaged city looked like scenes from Coppola’s Apocalypse Now unknotting. I thought to myself: War is a visual occurrence by all means. I reminisced about Nick Ut’s “Accidental Napalm” photograph –as the defining image of the Vietnam War. That little girl will not go away, despite many attempts at forgetting. War photographs are frozen moments in time. I freeze what I see. It’s not what you see. It’s what I see. It’s my truth. It’s not the truth. It’s my eye. It’s the way I saw it with a specific lens, with a specific light. You wouldn’t have seen it the same way I have. Someone would claim. The Vietnam war was ending in the same month, the Lebanese Civil war had started. A clear-dissolve. And it is even more thought-provoking when we know for a fact that USS New Jersey, or BB 62 -the only U.S battleship providing gunfire support during the Vietnam War, also took part in U.S operations during the Lebanese Civil War in 1983. Beirut, a disfigured city. Once a hide-out, where coup d’états, political assaults, espionage and even felony could be planned, where financial deals, bank transactions, and international trade could be brokered, was alas! a ravaged city. Disfigured and ultimately forsaken. Forgotten. It is still. During a shelling of the town, an almost wasted, Finnish journalist raised a glass of Bordeaux in a random Boite and said to me: “You’re Lebanese? You’re lucky! You have a war, you have something to live for! We have nothing back in Finland.” I think that hadn’t we had a war –we probably would have died slowly. War had renewed us. Forever.
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The Axles Of My Wagon Wheels 
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