The Alchemy of Love and War: Lullaby to Lebanon

By John W. Livingston

Dr. Blair Edwards, a macho cowboy from the Rockies, is a chemistry professor at the American University of Beirut during the 1980s. Although he feels at home in war-torn Lebanon, he still wants to freely walk down the street, enjoy a turkish coffee, and admire pretty women. Unfortunately because of the chaos that fills the streets, Edwards has been locked inside the university gates for too long.

One day when he decides his appetite for a passionate liaison overrides his fears of being killed or kidnapped, Edwards convinces a guard to open the gates. While on his way back to the university a few hours later, he is seized by hooded gunmen and taken hostage. The price on his head is eight million dollars. Even as he is tortured, Edwards falls in love with one of his captors, a Lebanese nurse attending his battered body. When Edwards learns he has been chosen to mold American public opinion about the challenges in the Middle East, he formulates an escape plan with assistance from his new love. But will he be able to use his knowledge of chemistry to pull it off and emerge a changed person or die trying?

In this gripping tale, an American professor kidnapped by revolutionary terrorists in war-torn Beirut must attempt to escape, with help from a beautiful and revolutionary Lebanese nurse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532047671

John W. Livingston

John W. Livingston earned a BS degree in engineering at MIT, and a PhD from Princeton. He is currently a professor of Islamic History and Civilization and Modern Middle East History at William Paterson University. He has published articles in leading Muslim Studies journals, penned a novel, and has written two books to be published by Ashgate Press. He works and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he continues to write.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 John W. Livingston.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4768-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4767-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018913295

iUniverse rev. date: 12/27/2018

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 1

T he tower bell over College Hall struck one. Edwards, pressed between the vertical iron bars of the locked gate, peered down the street. A spate of midmorning machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire had reduced the motor traffic to a trickle. The pedestrians, mostly students on their way to and from class and older men and women out shopping before the fighting resumed, walked briskly.

Though it was only one o’clock, some of the shops were already closed and tightly shuttered. Others that were open had their metal shutters rolled partly down as a precaution in case the shelling started early. Rumors had been circulating all morning of a robust bombardment. Radio and television news stations had picked this up and included it in their weather forecasts. Yesterday’s bombardment had lasted through the night. A cease-fire agreement, the 228th in ten years, seven months, and ten days, was to have come into effect at dawn, but few had expected it to hold. Sporadic shells were already pounding the suburbs. If time-tested patterns held, West Beirut and city center could expect unusually heavy shelling in the afternoon, as it was usually heavy after a cease-fire agreement.

Edwards squeezed his face between the bars to see farther up Rue Bliss. Two elderly men had stopped to chat in front of the oriental gift shop across the street from the campus Medical Gate. The shop’s half-lowered shrapnel- and bullet-scarred metal shutter hung like a drooping lid over a glass eye. Several students were standing in front of the tiny juice shop drinking flasks of what looked like freshly squeezed orange, carrot, or mango juice. Next shop down, others were gathered in front munching falafels and freshly baked sfiha, a pizza-shaped delight of thyme, sesame, olive oil, and spices that was rolled up in a long tube and eaten top to bottom like a cylindrical sandwich. Next to that was a shwerma stand, the huge conical-shaped pieces of pressed lamb turning slowly while roasting on a spit in front of a fire, the juices running down the sides of the meat and into a metal pan at the bottom that was covered in bits of carved lamb and tomatoes. The lamb-stuffed shwerma sandwiches would be doused with tahini sauce, pickles, and the juices of meat and tomatoes scooped up from the pan. Edwards could smell the mouthwatering aromas from behind the bars of the gate. His stomach rumbled in hunger. He loved falafel. He loved sfiha. He was delirious for a dripping, messy shwerma and thirsted mightily for a big glass of sweet fresh orange juice. He wanted to tell the guard to unlock the gate. He wanted to go across the street to drink juice and gorge himself on the delicious food. He wanted to walk down the street like a free man, have a turkish coffee at one of the cafés, read a newspaper, eye the pretty Lebanese women. He had been locked up a month, and he wanted out. The bombardment was scheduled for two o’clock. He had an hour.

Don’t even think of it. The guard pulled on the chain holding the wings of the wide gate shut.

I haven’t been out since the semester began.

The guard shrugged. What’s there to go out for? The university is the safest and most beautiful and civilized place to be. The streets are filled with wild animals.

I only want to go across the street.

The guard looked at him as if he were crazy. You can’t.

Why?

If I let you out and you get killed or kidnapped, I could lose my job.

I’m hungry.

Eat in the faculty dining room.

I’m sick of that place.

The guard shook his head. Five American professors shot and killed, the president murdered in his office, five other professors kidnapped, and you’re sick of the faculty dining room!

Don’t worry. It’s only across the street. Unlock the gate.

The guard ignored the order. A shell from a 155 howitzer exploded thunderously several blocks away from the university hospital. You see! It’s starting early. Go to the faculty dining room.

Please. I beg you. Let me out.

Pulling a wing of his long mustache, the guard screwed up his face in a look of impatience that said he had no time for educated fools. Listen, professor. How many years have you been here? You know the streets are filled with bands of armed thugs looking to kidnap an American. They can ransom or sell you to the highest bidder. And you want to go out for a sandwich thinking you’re in Paris? Don’t you know? Reagan’s secret Iranian arms deal in exchange for the American hostages held in Lebanon has shot the price up for you guys from two to six million dollars!

Edwards kept peering through the bars of the gate, looking up and down the street. It looks safe, he said.

That’s what the others said. Those boys hide around corners with their Kalashnikovs waiting for one of you to come out. Then a car comes, and in seconds, you’re gone. I’ve seen it.

We’re kept locked up here like animals in a zoo, snapped Edwards. I come here to educate them, and they—

A loud horn sounding from close behind gave Edwards a nervous start. Irked at the sudden blast, he turned to say something and saw one of his Lebanese colleagues, a professor of history, motioning an arm from the window of his car for the guard to open the gate. Sitting next to him was a pretty female graduate student—dark gazelle eyes, long black hair, thick fleshy lips. On his way out, the Lebanese professor smiled and waved at Edwards, who waved back. Envying him his freedom, Edwards watched the Lebanese professor screech his car onto Rue Bliss as the heavy gate swung back shut with a ringing clang of iron.

The girl had reminded Edwards of Layla. He hadn’t seen her in a month because of the heavy fighting that raged in the streets and the kidnappers who hovered outside the gates of the university and also because she was getting a divorce and suspected her husband and his friends of spying to get something on her so she could be blamed for the failed marriage and lose out on the settlement. Edwards now wanted her more than falafel. Open the gate! he demanded.

The guard smiled nervously and shook his head. I can’t. It’s dangerous. I tell you, they’re out there waiting. I can smell them.

You let that car out with the girl.

They’re Lebanese.

So?

They don’t kidnap Lebanese. Only foreigners. Especially Americans.

I’m only going across the street.

Sorry. I have my responsibility. I see those bearded fanatics hiding outside the gates pretending to be students.

Edwards repeated that he was just going across the street. When the guard didn’t move to unlock the gate, he put a foot on the lower cross rail of the spiked gate as though to climb over.

Please, sir, you’re a professor. The students will laugh at you.

Let them!

Just across the street, you say?

That’s all. Two minutes. I buy a shwerma and run back.

Be your fate on your own head, the guard said in Arabic, swinging a wing of the wide steel gate open on its semicircular track.

Edwards started on his way out as behind him the guard cautioned, Don’t resist, and they won’t shoot you. They want live hostages. Dead ones don’t sell well.

The clang of the iron gate closing behind him in the wake of the guard’s words had an ominous ring. Edwards shrugged it off and hurried down the street to Layla’s apartment building. Shwerma could wait.

46586.png

Exhausted, sweating, they lay silently on the bed, Edwards gazing blankly up at the ceiling, Layla still quietly tingling in orgasmic afterburn, her big fluffy dog, Kalb, stretched out at the foot of the bed, sad eyes moving in wonder from man to woman, who had gone from frenzied motion to sudden stillness. Layla broke her postcoital silence and asked why didn’t they get married once she got her divorce.

Edwards didn’t answer. He felt small and selfish measured by Layla’s all-giving love. He knew it was for love that she stayed with him. She didn’t need him to get out of the Lebanese holocaust. She had money, family, and friends in France; a valid passport; a visa; and a knockout figure with looks to match. She could leave whenever she wanted. He had asked her why she didn’t leave before she got herself hit by a sniper’s bullet or blown up by a car bomb. She had shrugged and asked him the same question. He had shrugged without answering. He didn’t need to answer. She knew why he stayed. He loved living in Lebanon. He loved the beauty of the country. The exhilaration of war excited him. Lebanon at war was the perfect place for him.

Edwards hadn’t been flippant when he’d told her that he relished the danger of living in Beirut. Living on the edge fit his personality. Ever since he was a teenager, he had been living on adrenaline highs, hunting bear and just as often running from them in the Sangre di Cristo mountains, riding rodeo, football in high school and university, balancing relationships with two or three women at once, and always the magic high of mysterious chemistry. At twelve, he’d inherited a mass of chemicals and apparatuses from a lady he hauled groceries for in Santa Fe whose son had been a research chemist and had died early. Acids, bases, magnesium, sodium, potassium, calcium, sulfur, lead, cyanides, even silver; glass bottles of mercury, chlorine, fluorine, and bromine; six big boxes of chemicals and another two of flasks, distillation units, Bunsen burners, beakers, and test tubes of all sizes—the works. Ownership of the chemical lab of a professional research chemist had given young Edwards the delights of mixing the elements and blowing things up, his bedroom twice, himself every other day.

The best thing that had happened to him, he had told Layla more than once, was to get in so much trouble he had to leave America. He had never been in war, and coming to Lebanon was like entering a paradise for adrenaline addicts. He had found a home, and when he left, it would be as a corpse. Until then, he researched at the university and taught bright graduate students from America, Europe, and all over the Middle East. His undergrads were mostly eager premed students gunning for an A grade to get into the American University of Beirut’s top-notch med school. On top of that, the girls who took his courses were all as sharp as they were pretty.

Why leave? he now asked her, smiling, blue eyes twinkling like a naughty boy. We both love it here. We have each other. I have it all here. Living on the edge in a city at war and a beautiful woman with a foreign accent who gives me sexual fulfillment and intellectual challenge.

Excuse me! What’s foreign about my accent? We’re in Lebanon, darling. You are the foreigner. And it’s getting dangerous for foreigners like you. Do you know what the market price is for Americans now?

Six million dollars. Am I worth it?

Seven as of noon today. It was on television. We have to leave once I get my divorce. Before something terrible happens.

But that’s the point. I love living in a place where something terrible can happen. Machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, howitzers, Kalashnikovs, checkpoints everywhere, every night the sky lit up in red flares and blasts of weaponry in celebration of war, every checkpoint an appointment with death if you have the wrong identity card, passport, or religion, every day an adrenaline high. I’ve found my place in the world. What’s more beautiful than Beirut at night in war? Sure, the close calls scare the hell out of me, but I survive and end up loving it all the more. Every close call is another bond to the place. It’s intoxicating. I have my own personal race in Lebanon. Will I outlive the war or will it outlive me?

Where do I come in this cozy, happy life of yours?

With me. We either outlive the war or get buried together in matching caskets.

Get serious, Blaire. I want to have children, not a contest that ends in a funeral.

I am serious. I don’t mind dying here as long as while I live I have you, to which he then added, and war and chemistry.

You’re a wild animal in human form. You don’t have a human brain. How could I fall in love with a beast? she asked, looking down at Kalb, who pawed his way nearer to her and laid his big head on her stomach. He is a beast, isn’t he, Kalb?

Did you ever consider that I may be an advanced form of evolution—what people will be when forced to live in perpetual war?

What a horrible thought! But I’m afraid you might be right. Look at us Lebanese, how we’ve changed after ten years of war. We take war and death as a natural condition and go on with life doing what we always did—except when the bombs are falling. And even then, we go on dancing and making love and having babies, in between funerals. It’s horrible what we’ve become.

I love what you were and what you’ve become.

We’ll die here if we don’t leave, Blair. Please, I beg you, let’s leave when I get my divorce.

We’ll talk about when you get it.

He was both pleased and disturbed that Layla was risking her life to be with him. It pleased his ego that she loved him. It disturbed him that she expected a commitment. He loved her, as he had so many women, but commitment, marriage, a settled life? No, he wasn’t ready yet. He had his wild oats to sow. He was only thirty-eight.

A nearby burst of machine gun fire shattered the air outside the window, silencing the cacophony of traffic down in the street. Shouts of angry men were spliced by two more bursts of fire, followed by screams of death.

We should leave this madness, she said.

He replied that it wasn’t the time to think of the future with death all around them and repeated that they’d talk about it after her divorce.

Why not now? Thinking of the future is an assertion over death. Are you afraid of losing your freedom?

Edwards didn’t respond.

You Americans! So afraid of losing your freedom, and what do you have for it? You’re in a prison, and you don’t know it. You think it’s freedom and glory to rain war down on the world.

I have to lecture in a little while. The halide sisters. I love them. Fluoride, chloride, bromide, and iodide. And don’t forget little astatide.

There you go again, always escaping into chemistry to slip out of facing reality.

You have it wrong. Chemistry is reality. It’s my fortress against darkness and ignorance.

Keep saying it, and you might come to believe it.

I do believe it. Chemistry is life. It explains the reality of the universe and the mysteries of the mind’s connection to body and brain. Even love is a series of chemical reactions linking certain nerves.

Bullo shito, Professor Edwards. Save your act for the goggle-eyed coeds in miniskirts fighting to get a front-row seat for your lecture and cross their legs. I’m old and smart enough to see through you.

And so what do you see?

A frightened man-child refusing to grow up and take on a man’s responsibility in the real world.

He kept silent.

She continued. Chemistry tells us we grow old, that there’s a natural pattern to life. And if you don’t accept and follow it, you grow old in loneliness, emptiness, and regret.

With that, they remained sitting up in the bed looking at each other. He knew there was something in what she had said, and he had no answer to it. After a number of seconds, Kalb jumped up and shook himself in a huge flurry of hairy restlessness.

Why don’t we save this discussion on chemistry until you get your divorce? I have to go teach.

The elevator was out of service and had been for five years. Layla accompanied him down the four stories of steps to the apartment building’s entrance and unlocked the heavy, iron-plated security door.

Be careful, she told him as he stepped out on the street. Think about what I said. Remember, you’re not far from forty. I’m thirty, attractive, and more than intelligent enough for you. And I love you. My dog loves you. What more could you ask? I gave you my virginity.

Sure. You were married for two years.

He was impotent. I was frigid. I’ll get a new hymen

Let’s wait until the war ends.

It will never end. It’s lasted over ten years. It will last another twenty. By then, I’ll be too old for children, and you’ll be dried out.

We’ll talk about it later.

The worried smile that lined Layla’s mouth as she watched him leave bothered him. On his way going to her apartment, his only worry had been that he couldn’t get there fast enough, couldn’t wait to get her in his arms. Walking back was different. It always was. After sex, his mind had room for worry. The Kalashnikov kids were everywhere, hiding around corners, in doorways, waiting to catch a big fish to sell in the kidnappers’ marketplace.

46584.png

Edwards stopped at the shwerma stand across from the university’s main gate. He had taken one bite of his sandwich on his way across the street to the Medical Gate of the university when, behind him, a big black SUV with tinted windows came screeching to a halt. Turning as he bolted for the curb, he saw the doors swing open and men charge out with guns. They were dressed in black, beards black as their hooded jackets, eyes wildly flashing in the passion of having made a catch. Two of them had gotten out on one side of the car to block his way to the university gate. Two others were pointing their Kalashnikovs at him, warning him in English not to run. One of them was no more than a kid, barely twice the size of his Kalashnikov, looking scared to death.

Even with them charging toward him, brandishing their weapons, and shouting, Edwards couldn’t believe it was happening. As they continued coming, he threw his shwerma sandwich at the one closest to him and sprinted diagonally across the street, dodging between the parked cars and keeping his head down. Behind him, a shout in English to stop was followed by a warning crack of automatic fire over his head. Edwards remembered what the guard had said about the market value of dead hostages and kept running, adrenaline flowing.

The long rap of automatic fire had stopped the traffic and emptied the street of pedestrians. Edwards heard the stomp of boots behind him. He didn’t look back. He made it to the little alley after the line of shops along Rue Bliss that led up to the Greek Orthodox Church. They wouldn’t follow him into the church.

Halfway down the alley, he darted up the walk to the front of the church courtyard. The gate to the courtyard was bolted shut. He gave it a frantic rattling shake. It didn’t give. It was too high to climb over quickly. Panting in cold fear, he raced up the rest of the narrow alley that dead-ended on a courtyard formed by three apartment buildings standing at right angles to one another. He ran to the building on the right and pushed against the heavy security door. Locked. He pressed the buzzers, shouting for someone to let him in, and banged his shoulder against the door that held solid.

A deafening rip of gunfire reverberated against the building walls. Edwards turned. A frail, fuzzy-headed, pimply-faced kid of fourteen or fifteen had his AK-47 trained on him. Edwards raised his arms. The kid, nervous and frightened, not quite sure of himself, waved his weapon for Edwards to come forward. Edwards nodded and forced out a smile to reassure the kid of his surrender, hoping it would keep the kid’s nerves from accidentally jerking his finger back on the trigger.

Arms stretched high, Edwards took several steps forward. Then, with a cry of pain, he grimaced, clutched his breast with both hands, eyes and mouth open exaggeratedly wide, and sank to his knees, where he remained gasping until, with a final gasp and his eyes rolling upward, he keeled slowly over onto the ground, facedown. Jerking and twitching in spasms as he lay doubled over, he bit his front teeth through his lower lip and then forced an incisor through the soft flesh on the inside of his mouth, all the while twitching in spasms, even as the muzzle of the Kalashnikov was jabbed into his back.

Yallah!

Edwards rolled over with a moan. Eyes gaping glassily over the barrel of the Kalashnikov aimed at his head, he stared into the frightened face of the kid and opened his mouth as if struggling for breath. Blood trickled out with a gurgling sound, followed by a sputtering groan and a final spastic jerk of his body before it went rigid and his eyes rolled upward until only the whites were showing. A second later, the lids ceased fluttering. Blood continued trickling out the side of his mouth.

Gawking in fright, the kid took a step back and looked down the empty alley. Yallah, he ordered weakly, turning back to Edwards and raising his Kalashnikov to coax the hostage to his feet. He nudged the muzzle into the man’s ribs. The whites of the man’s eyes kept staring at him like frozen marbles. Sweating, the kid kneeled to see if he was really dead. When he leaned his head down to feel if there was any heartbeat, Edwards let out a bloodcurdling shriek that sent the kid back on his heels in a scream of terror. At the same moment, he kicked the butt of the Kalashnikov that was resting on the ground and, springing up, smashed his fist into the kid’s face, felling him to the ground. Still conscious, the kid was reaching out for the Kalashnikov that was an arm’s length away. Edwards kicked him hard in the ribs and then in the head. Gasping, the kid curled up like a dying caterpillar and didn’t move.

Edwards picked up the Kalashnikov, aimed it at the lock on the security door, and was about to shoot when a burst of fire from the other end of the alley caught him across the legs, sending him down. Holding his riddled legs and writhing in pain, he saw another of his attackers come running into the courtyard with his gun raised. Edwards struggled to get up and was on his knees when he saw the butt of the Kalashnikov coming for his head.

Chapter 2

N othingness gave way to darkness, which in time gave way to a blur of gray light that hatched an inchoate pounding at the core of his head. Head throbbing, he cracked open his eyes. He heard voices. Arabic. His eyes twitched open all the way. Light penetrated the fringes of his blindfold. He was in a car. Going up a mountain road. The swerves and sudden bursts of acceleration that rocked him from side to side and front to back whipped the pain to higher levels.

A voice, loud, gruff, the rapid staccato of guttural Arabic; the words exploded like bullets inside his head. Too bad we had to shoot him.

A younger voice, angry, cursing: He’s a devil. He spits blood like a snake. I hope we kill him.

The leaders have big plans for him. A strong taste of contempt resonated in the hoarse, throaty voice.

Then the younger voice: When their big plans fail, then we shoot him.

A burst of laughter followed, and this by a third voice, serious: Why shoot him when we can sell him? He’s worth eight million dollars at the going rate.

A schoolteacher? A thousand dollars, maybe.

A thousand dollars for us to keep him, you mean.

Why don’t we just shoot the devil and throw him over the side of the mountain?

The laughter crashing against his ears sent shock waves booming through the cracked shell of his aching head. Breaking through the wall of pain, the dawning realization hit him—he was a hostage doomed to sit in a limbo of darkness a number of years, immobile and deprived of women, wine, good food, society, and his research. Years of boredom would wither him away into oblivion, until he was either ransomed out of his living death or given the bullet in the back of the head that would mercifully end his misery. Inactivity had to be worse than death.

He felt the car ascending and turning, heard the screeching tires and blowing horn, and then felt the descent. They had to be coming down the other side of the mountain. When he sensed the road had flattened out and become straight, he was sure they had come to the plain of the Beqaa Valley between the two mountain ranges that bordered Syria. If his kidnappers were Shi’ites, they would be heading for Baalbek. When the car at last stopped and he was carried out, he pretended to be still unconscious. The cold air against his arms and face and the earthy smell of hay, fertilizer, farm, and animals confirmed he was in the Beqaa.

He was carried up some steps, taken into a building, and dumped onto a hard bed, the sudden burst of pain in his head from being dropped almost making him cry out.

Keep Rambo guarded. If he tries to escape, shoot the son of a bitch. To hell with the leaders and what they have planned for him!

He needs a doctor. Look at his legs.

You’re right. Call Dr. Ismail so he can cut them off. There was a round of laughter. Then we don’t worry about him running away.

I’ll cut them off with my bare teeth, along with something else, fucking Shaytan Amerikani! Look. He broke my nose.

The men left, laughing.

Edwards heard the heavy clang of an iron door slam shut. Shortly, it was reopened. Someone entered and began cutting his trousers away. He kept from grimacing or shouting out when fingers probed and pressed the bullet holes in his legs. He kept his