Behind a ludic title that could lead our imagination to Hollywood, unreality and imagination, “De Niro’s game” is nothing but the coarse reality of the fall of a country which citizens either drowned into the mud of civil war or left searching for a better place.
My first literature experience in Canada was a book written by a Lebanese expatriate, Rawi Hage. This prize winner novel is the first by this Lebanese-Canadian author who spent his early youth in Beirut, a city which was at that time torn apart by civil war.
Thieves, cheaters, dealers, criminals…Bassam and George became all that. George joined the militia and took part in this atrocious war. His best friend Bassam was involved in spite of him in its sinuous paths, but there was still the dream of another life in another land, Rome. What finally made Bassam leave was a feeling; not the fear of war or the pain of losing relatives and friends, not anger nor deception, not even the need of a peaceful life, but a feeling that marked him forever, humiliation.
Despite a poignant description of the Lebanese civil war and its terrifying absurdities, we can hear all through the novel the voice of the diva of Lebanon, Fairuz, mixed with the sound of the bombs, the explosions and the howls of people torn by suffering and for whom the only image remaining is that of blood and death.
In a very simple style, Rawi Hage touches deeply.
Except for a few visits to Lebanon during the war, I didn’t actually live the Lebanese war. I didn’t know its horrors, I didn’t feel its fears, and I never felt that ultimate suffering which leads to apathy, which transforms us into automats that horror no more stirs up, which erases all the references and eliminates all the limits that make us civilized beings.
But throughout the novel I had the impression that I knew what Hage was talking about, that in my unconscious, as in that of every Lebanese, whether he lived the war or not, this episode of our history was quite alive, not only in images and facts, but also in emotions and feelings. These emotions were so strong that, throughout the reading of De Niro’s game, I ended up hating Fairuz and her songs which kept resounding in the middle of this heap of ruins and corpses.
De Niro’s game made me realize why Lebanese left Lebanon and keep leaving it. It’s not just about finding a better place to live in to ensure for ourselves a decent life; it’s about keeping and protecting one of our most precious values, our dignity.
Bassam left, Rawi Hage left, I left, but nothing will erase the memory of this wound anchored in the heart of every Lebanese.
