Non, un homme ?a s’empêche. Voilà ce que c’est un homme,

"Non, un homme ?a s’empêche. Voilà ce que c’est un homme"

But who is listening

The 1975 war on Lebanon was a dress rehearsal

When the horrors of October 7 began emerging, my memories took me back to snapshots from the early days of the 1975 Lebanese war; a war on Lebanon that consensus scholarship and media still insist was a "civil war." Yet, Syro-Lebanese poet Adonis had already described its savagery in 1961, in a prescient poem he titled Elegy for the Time at Hand, where he wrote

...Whatever will come will be old / So, take with you anything other than this / Madness--get ready / To stay a stranger... / They found people in sacks: / One without a head / One without a tongue or hands / One squashed / The rest without names. / Have you gone mad? / Please, / Do not write about these things...

The eeriness of those words dwell not in their reality today, but in the fact that they were written in 1961 Beirut, at height of Lebanon's golden age of prosperity, liberalism, tolerance. In 1961 Adonis was reveling in Beirut's liberalism and libertinism, yet he was reading with terrifying clarity the savagery to come, forecasting with ominous accuracy what was to befall Lebanon, and Syria decades later, and in our times October 7, 2023. He was reading six decades ago what was to happen six decades into the future. "There is something amiss, faulty, defective, out of order in us Arabs" he seemed to be saying; "Please, do not write about these things." Yet he wrote about them, and the October 7, 2023 carnage revisited what he had written in 1961.

Might Adonis of 1961 have been using the War of Algeria as a backdrop? Because, here is what Albert Camus had written in Le Premier Homme, in 1960, a unpublished memoir, in rough manuscript form that wouldn't be published in French until 1994. Camus was in fact describing Adonis's Beirut, and Damascus, and the carnage visited on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. And here is how, in a snippet I translated when I first saw the snapshot of the half-naked deformed body of a young woman in the back of a pick up truck on October 8, 2023. A photo that won the AP Team Picture Story of the Year. What an honor!

"Night had fallen," wrote Camus in 1960;

Night had fallen, after a torrid day, in this corner of the Atlas where the detachment had set up camp at the top of soft hill guarded by a rocky gorge. Cormery and Levesque were slated to relieve the sentry at the bottom of the gorge. They called out to their comrades, but no one was answering their calls.? Then, at the foot of a hedge of prickly pears, they finally located a comrade. His head was turned backwards, oddly facing the moon. At first they had not recognized him given the strange shape of his head from their angle. But the explanation was quite simple. His throat had been slit open, and from his mouth protruded a livid swelling, which turned out to be his genitalia. It was then that they got a full view of the body, with its legs spread apart, the soldier’s trousers split open, and its middle section, now under an indirect reflection of the moon, twinkled a muddy puddle. A hundred meters further down, behind a large rock, the second sentry had been presented in the same way, in the same choreographed carnage […] Incensed at the scene, Cormery cried out that “those who did this were not human beings”; that “they were not men.” Levesque… replied that, for them, that was precisely what men did, how real men behaved and ought to behave; their culture, their ways. “Perhaps,” replied Cormery, “but they are wrong; a man does not do what they did." Levesque pushed back, noting that for them, in certain circumstances, a man must bring himself to doing exactly what they did, what may to other be unthinkable. But Cormery screamed as if seized in a fit of madness: “No! Manhood, manliness is about restraint; about self-control; a man restrains himself; that is what a man does...” adding “you see, I am poor; I come out of an orphanage; they slapped this outfit on me; they dragged me into this war; but, me, I restrain myself."

I don't think this bit requires commentary. I'll just copy below the French original, because no translation can do the French justice.

C’était la nuit, après une journée torride, dans ce coin de l’Atlas où le détachement campait au sommet d’une petite colline gardée par un défilé rocheux. Cormery et Levesque devaient relever la sentinelle au bas du défilé. Personne n’avait répondu à leurs appels. Et au pied d’une haie de figuiers de Barbarie, ils avaient trouvé leur camarade la tête reversée, bizarrement tournée vers la lune. Et d’abord ils n’avaient pas reconnu sa tête qui avait une forme étrange. Mais c’était tout simple. Il avait été égorgé et, dans sa bouche, cette boursouflure livide était son sexe entier. C’est alors qu’ils avaient vu le corps aux jambes écartées, le pantalon de zouave fendu, et, au milieu de la fente, cans le reflet cette fois indirect de la lune, cette flaque marécageuse. A cent mètres plus loin, derrière un gros rocher cette fois, la deuxième sentinelle avait été présentée de la même fa?on. L’alarme avait été donnée, les postes doublés. A l’aube, quand ils étaient remontés au camp, Cormery avait dit que les autres n’étaient pas des hommes. Levesque, qui réfléchissait, avait répondu que, pour eux, c’était ainsi de devaient agir les hommes, qu’on était chez eux, et qu’ils usaient de tous les moyens. Cormery avait pris son air buté. ??Peut-être. Mais ils ont tort. Un homme ne fait pas ?a.?? Levesque avait dit que pour eux, dans certaines circonstances, un homme doit tout se permettre et tout détruire. Mais Cormery avait crié comme pris de folie furieuse?: ??Non, un homme ?a s’empêche. Voilà ce que c’est un homme, ou sinon…?? Et puis il s’était calmé. ??Moi, avait-il dit, d’une voix sourde, je suis pauvre, je sort de l’orphelinat, on me met cet habit, on me tra?ne à la guerre, mais je m’empêche.?

Albert Camus (Le Premier Homme, 1960, 1994)